First animation assignments of 2nd year

Back in school! In the first animation assignment we did this year, we had to use Pink Panther, standing on a seesaw, picking up a boulder, attempting to catapult himself using the boulder, aaaaand then "something funny happens." The second assignment was to do a pose test using a line reading (and character, obv.) from Disney's Robin Hood. More wanky notes to follow after both videos...




(^Contains dialogue)

WANKY NOTES

PINK PANTHER:

I made a ridiculous foot placement mistake during clean up -- well, not clean up exactly, I should say tiedown. But I'm on to different assignments and it would take a lot to get me to clean any more of this up. For one thing, when I was rough animating (that's pretty much where the magic happens) I was drawing extremely loose, just racing away. Okay, volume I can get somewhat under control during the tie down stage, but this is the least loose character that I can think of off the top of my head -- especially when you're trying to stay on model. So during tiedown I was struggling to turn my "organic" (to use a polite word) drawings into these exhaustingly geometric ones.

For the second thing, I don't like Pink Panther all that much. Admittedly, when I was rough animating, I started to get into it more, because my whole "what happens"- idea emerged out of character. It wasn't about a gag for me, not really that much about being funny, but about trying to present a personality, and connecting/acting with a personality that I previously didn't find very interesting.
Most of the connection that happened at that time between Pink Panther and me was subsequently scrubbed away by the tedium of the tiedown.

Anyways, that whole personality thing was my revelation du jour. My way has never been the story way or the surprise way, unfortunately; I'm a terrible writer. My way is the character study way. For now at least -- who knows, anything can change.

And while this isn't saying much, I've never been more "in control" of my animating, and the bit about stuff "sinking in" during Summer vacation would appear to be true.

ROBIN HOOD:
I'm not very familiar with the character, didn't actually make an effort to match the model sheet, but I tried to let the emotion in the line reading determine the poses. That almost succeeded in the last expression, because to my ears Robin sounded annoyed by the fact that it just wasn't "done that way" and hoped that it would actually be that easy... But now, by explaining it, I obviously admit defeat in trying to make the viewer understand it without the aid of such a disclaimer. Result is meh but I had a BLAST especially during thumbnailing -- this, in all its suckidity, is a page that I doodled while I was listening to the line reading over and over again:

No other notes about the pose test itself (shock ;), but this was a mini-assignment designed to be completed and group-watched by the end of the class, which was all cool and fascinating.

Meatball movie fanart

I saw Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs yesterday, and I was -- to keep this short -- COMPLETELY BLOWN AWAY by it.
So I TVPoodled this and abused multiple different TVPaint brushes in the process.

Here's a text-free version 'cause everything's always better without text.


(By the way I'm back in school yay!)

SO much!

First, to make this legit here's a doodle.
I'm reading The Wind in the Willows, for the first time (yeah I know: FOR SHAME), and naturally was compelled to commit some silly sort of Mole and Water Rat to paper. These are only first sketches and I should return to this subject.

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My birthday's coming up. Few things would have been more glorious than spending it in San Diego visiting HMS Surprise, but that plan was woefully dependant on my finding a summer job. Can't afford it this summer -- I'll leave it for some school holiday!
Wondering what to do... For various reasons I'm not crazy about hosting a soirée at my place. And I can hardly invite people whose situation is no better than mine, as far as I know, to a restaurant. Who's reading this in the Vancouver area and would like to do something like a beach day or a sketchcrawl or another cheap thing this coming weekend? (...Jesus. :[ Some host.) Or a movie -- I love movies. As you can see I am easily amused and persuadable. No gifts. ...Because you would be left to pay for your own refreshments, so.....
Oh wait. Actually I am fascinated by "Altar Boyz". Could be funny. There's a performance almost every day. I hesitate to ask people to pay $38 for one, but would anybody be interested?

Of course, if I get this temp job I've applied for, I'm gonna go to work on my birthday. Not that I mind, and I would welcome a job even if it was friggin Christmas, but I just wish I heard from them soon one way or another, so I could know which days I'm free.

I know this whole post sounds like a cry for attention but I swear it truly is just social awkwardness. :]

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Oh yeah, by the way, I liked Moon, and Sam Rockwell is just as excellent in it as he can be expected to be. I was much more impressed by the atmosphere than the plot, but I'd like to recommend it anyway. First and foremost for Rockwell's performance, which makes you forget 100% that he is mostly interacting with a special effect.
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As soon as I read George Clooney was playing Mr. Fox in Fantastic Mr. Fox that I wrote about in the last post, I got this dreadfully unshakable image of Ocean's 11-13 with animal puppets (as avid readers know, the original book revolves around a heist).
On the one hand, like I said: DREAD. On the other, there is something undeniably fabulous about the idea. Now I think Ocean's 11-13 with animal puppets should be done -- at some point, but not at this point, not on this movie!? "Dread", I repeated with a Jerri Blank -voice.
I told myself to calm down, Wes Anderson would not do something like that. ...And then I saw this photo.

I'm hoping it only looks worrying because it's out of context. No way is Anderson sneaking in a single Ocean's reference. By the way, yes, those animals are wearing ski masks. While that is ridiculously unnecessary, at least I can't remember any Oceanites wearing ski masks -- there may yet be hope. :P

I feel kinda write-y

(I know. SUCH quality. But what am I gonna do, go all the way to school to use a scanner? It's only friggin biro.)


My "new-old" cat -- if the tail looks short, it's because she only has half a tail.


I tried to draw caricatures of the mains of My Life in Film. Obviously failed. It's terrib messy too. But, you know, biro, so there was little chance of correcting myself. Even weirder: although the caricatures are so not and it looks like a bleeding panda fight, I kinda like it! Mostly because I was overjoyed by the mere memory of the show. Anyway, it's the first thing besides life drawing that I've drawn in so many days.
They're all looking somber due to the death of Hugo the fish (in Beth's hand there).

My apologies to Alice Lowe, who's quite possibly the most adorable actress I've ever seen, and to beautiful Andrew Scott, for not doing them justice. Little bit of apology to Kris Marshall as well.

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Two images of Wes Anderson's upcoming Roald Dahl adaptation Fantastic Mr. Fox have popped up on movie sites. I like the look of'em.


I knew it was going to be stop motion animation, but I didn't expect this kind of look, like a dollhouse come to life, instead of ...well, what we've seen in Henry Selick's films or in The Life Aquatic. Not that I didn't love those, but this look corresponds much better with my personal images of the book -- almost perfectly, in fact. So quaint and intricate. I'm swooning over that little badger painting and the realistic-looking miniature books.

There are things that could go wrong but not horribly wrong, I think. No Mark Mothersbaugh and an animation director (Mark Gustafson) whose work I happen to be completely unfamiliar with, but we'll see. George Clooney as the voice of Mr. Fox? I think the whole cast is going to sound American (or, in keeping with tradition, the villainous farmers will have British accents). That's one disappointment. Still, if the Brits never filmed the book during all these years, all can I say is you snooze you lose. Waited since Giant Peach for a Dahl adaptation that looks this promising. I love Tim Burton's take on the Chocolate Factory, it's a darling, funny film but there's an abyss between the book and the movie. More animated Dahl adaptations would be awesome. In my mind I keep seeing Quentin Blake's illustrations of BFG and Witches moving.

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[Oh and since I'm going on about book adaptations... One of the Pitch Party judges this year had a blurb where it said she's currently producing an animated series based on the Little Nicholas -books by Goscinny! FREEEEEEEAKOOOOOUT! :D ]

Pigloo is going to be huge: T/F?

Good news, I've got the flu! I have no idea if it's swine-y or just regular, I don't know how to tell. Whichever it is, I feel nowhere near death. = Good news. Good in the sense that it gives me a legitimate reason to slack off, so I don't feel as guilty about doing that as I usually feel.

My pitches see dem here!




For readers other than schoolmates, these were my entries to the "preliminaries" determining which six pitches our school would enter to Animation Magazine's annual Pitch Party contest. Obviously I didn't make the six, because Mr Wells' composition sucks, TLB was slapped together in about half a minute (not the idea but the drawing!) and Pigloo probably wasn't original enough (Pigloo is totally my own little bundle of joy, but let's face it cartoons are so overpiggisized even if the pig in question happens to live in an igloo) -- whatever, they have a slewwwwwww of faults besides the ones I've already mentioned -- but even in spite of that, the whole experience was positive and I definitely look forward to pitching again next year.

I wish I had something new to post. I am lazy and my brain is even more muddled than usual. I don't even have the energy to check if muddled is a real English word.

How do I reech tees keeds?!

Hey alles, come to life drawing club and bring your friends! :D Seriously, we'll even move it to 6:30 so you don't lose as much super fun Summer Sun Time -- or work, if you're lucky enough to be working. Otherwise, the summer LDC may not continue past a couple more weeks because of the money situation. Waaaah


Anyways, this week at LDC I was utterly out of the zone. Which is evident in how unfinished all my drawings from that session are. I do like ^this one though, because I managed a pretty good facial likeness.
I also indulged in some old school shading which I used to do with a pencil; here I used the conté like a pencil. I don't usually do that nowadays because it's slower, but I was all slow this week to begin with, so what the hell. Kinda nostalgic.