Character Drawings

Here are some of my character drawings, well their heads any way! What do you think?

Life Quotes

These are just a few quotes about life that I like and may add to my animatic for Studio.

Life is like an onion.
You peel off one layer at a time
and sometimes you weep.
~ Carl Sandburg ~

Too much sanity may be madness.
And maddest of all,
to see life as it is and not as it should be!
~ Miguel de Cervantes ~

Life is a series of collisions with the future.
~ Jose Ortega y Gasset ~

Foundation Studio

I do enjoy Studio. We have watched quite a few animatics especially animatic versions of Gorillaz music videos. Also, animatics of Howl's Moving Castle. I watched it the other day and it was really good!!!
We did some learning about doing storyboards. Here's my notes.
*Sound effects
*Cutting
*Zoom
*Panning
*Pace
*Use arrows

work in 16-9 widescreen as its more cinematic. Download from Blackboard!!!
Also, use a soft pencil for shading and thick dark pencils or pens for other parts.
A good idea is to cut on the beats of the music.

mmm my notes must be in a different notebook so I will find that in my mess of a room and type them up. Sorry so this will be a short post... for now!!!

Process and Production 1

Ok what we have been doing in Process and Production 1 :)

We looked at a few people work such as John Mader, Gollan Levin, Jaap Blank and Zachery Lieberman (sorry about spelling)
We also set up blogs and del.icio.us accounts.
Mine are obviously this one
http://dogactor87.blogspot.com
http://del.icio.us/dogactor87

on everything I use my username is always dogactor87... long story why that name but if you ever need to find anything of mine just put that into a search engine or something!!!
Oh Tag for people on our course is - mmvran1


We then looked at www.tiletoy.org
They used a chip called 'Basic stamp'

We should be doing one but one of 2 boards
Talio board - is £160 for an intro kit
Ardrueno board - is £20 each

We also looked at Tuomo Tammenpaa who is a media artist/creative director
and Daniel Blackburn who is a managing director.

Look up Digit


*Update blog by 2nd Nov
*No P&P on Mon 30th Oct
*Have a look at Rustboy

We discussed the Bradford Animation Festival. SI amam really thinking of going especially to see certain things.

Workshop

In Workshop we have been doing a lot but here is a basic low down on what we have actually been up to.
We started by doing mind maps, which is one of my biggest hates in design! I did enjoy the group mind map though as you got some funny answers :D We had the theme Autobiography given to use so when I next see a scanner I will up load my mind map for you all to see how much I wrecked my mind thinking of ideas to go in it!!!
NOTE 2 SELF!!!
Remember to add drawings, colour and NO arrows!!!

We watched 'How art made the world' which is a BBC documentary that was very interesting even if I knew a lot of it any way. I found the story of Gilgemesh (ignore spelling) story quite interesting and especially like the idea of Trajens Column (again sorry cant spell) its a really good idea and I will have to go see it when I go to Italy this Christmas!!!
I made some points of what most good stories include - a hero, a good plot, sound and emotion!!!

Next up is scanning!!! It was basically learning how to scan and edit our storyboards but next bit is going to be my notes sorry!!!
Scanning - File, Import, Scanner name. Do in Office mode and scan at 800dpi
Save my storyboards as PNG and if there's no colour turn into greyscale.
Also, always make master files, which are high quality and DON'T mess with them... they are a back up!!!

There were a few problems with Illustrator but I got the idea, I don't particularly like Freehand so I think I will stick. Sorry my notes again.
File, Place
Find image on PC
Shift key to keep to scale.

Window, transform - set box to 160mm x 90mm

New
Size - A4
Units - mm
RGB Colour

Place storyboard box over the image. High light both!!!
Object - Clipping mask - make

LOCK LAYERS
Option + Alt
Pick object, press O+A and makes copies
If you press shift after goes up/across exactly

Control + Y = to see unseable objects

Well unless I have other notes that's what I have so far. Enjoy :)

Kreacher Animaton

If any of you have read Harry Potter and the Order of the Pheonix you will know the character, Kreacher who is Sirius Black's house elf. Here is an animation that someone has made of him with the voice from the american audiobook. Its really interesting to watch so have a look.

Family Guy's Brian Goes Blogging

I found this news article today and I thought it might interest anyone who reads this blog! It has a lot to do with the work that we've been doing in New Media Culture too.

FAMILY GUY'S BRIAN GOES BLOGGING
Family Guy fans can now go online to check out some nuggets of wisdom from the Griffin’s martini-sipping family dog, Brian. The character is featured as a guest blogger on familyguy.com and olivereader.com, posting his first entry today, Oct. 16. In addition to dishing dirt on his dysfunctional family, the talking canine is promoting his upcoming book, Family Guy: Brian Griffin's Guide to Booze, Broads and the Lost Art of Being a Man.

Brian will blog for five days, sharing details of being violated by a Borders Books security guard, offering a scintillating review of Danielle Steel's latest novel and listing all the things he plans to do as a published author, including bedding more women, donning a cardigan sweater and a pipe, starting to call wine "vino" and tricking out his Prius to look like Kit from Knight Rider. among many others.

Storyboarding Tips

Arrows - Suppose the camera is tracking in, following a bad guy's footsteps. Draw in an arrow pointing into shot to show the camera's movement. Now the hero's head is pulled back by one of the bad guy's goons. Use an arrow to show the movement of the head being turned. What about a zoom in? From each corner draw in arrows pointing to the centre, draw in a new smaller frame to show the end of the zoom. Generally I try and use thick white arrows to show camera moves and thin black arrows to show objects moving.

The Floating Frame - What if you want to show the camera panning to show a cityscape, or following a character as they walk through an airport? There's two options here: 1) Illustrate one shot using more than one storyboard frame showing the key stages of the shot's movement across a number of frames or 2) Draw out the entire scene (e.g.. the horizon of a city) and place a frame on it with an arrow indicating the direction of movement.

Transitions - The storyboard can also include transitions in your film. Write these in the gaps between the frames e.g.. DISSOLVE TO :

Timmy Cartoon

This is just a funny cartoon that someone did based on the theme were doing 'Autobiography' it made me laugh and its totally insane but it helps to give ideas for my storyboards.

Starting Blog

Ok well this will be my blog from now on and it will be probably be just for my course information, work and research. Enjoy looking!
Emma