Summer sketchbooks!

I drew in four sketchbooks over the summer: an A6 one handmade in India which I got from Bristol's Christmas market last year, a smaller-than-A6 one to carry while out and about, an A5 one from Asda to draw in at home and another A5 one dedicated entirely to an idea I've been toying with: a spin-off of Mudskipper, taking place in the same universe but with new characters I'd be more comfortable giving up the rights to if I pitched it as a series.

Here's a selection of highlights, in order of which sketchbook they're in rather than chronological order, starting with the handmade one!

Holiday sketches

Hi guys! I've been neglecting this blog since my uni term finished, but I certainly haven't been resting on my laurels: I've been continuing to work on my webcomic, Mudskipper (which celebrated its first anniversary on the 10th of August and is about to start its third chapter) and, of course, I've been filling several sketchbooks.

The highlight of those sketchbooks has been the mini-holiday to the Lizard Peninsula in Cornwall I went on between the 24th and 27th of August, where I did a TON of sketching, particularly in watercolour. Click Read More to see them, including some photo-to-sketch comparisons!

Sometime after this post, I'll make another compiling the best of my sketchbooks from May, June, July and August, so stay tuned for that too.

Business card!

The design for my business card is finished!

While I'm happy with the basic concept of using the card to tell a two-part story, I can already see a mistake: the pixel dimensions of the files. I think next time (and there certainly will be a "next time") it would be wise to draw the artwork on a larger scale to ensure it'll print better; I might even outline and colour it in Flash since vector-based art resizes better than pixel-based art, but I was under too tight a deadline to get as comfortable with Flash as I am with Photoshop or Paint Tool SAI. Oh well, all good lessons for the next time a brilliant two-part story pops into my head!

Sketches for a business card

I'm designing a business card for my Professional Practice module, and I've had this idea of telling a story - albeit a very simple one - with the card itself to demonstrate my visual storytelling ability to potential employers (the two sets of poses will be on opposite sides of the card). These are the rough sketches; over the next few days I'll refine them to be more consistent and on-model, ink them on the university Cintiqs, colour them and, of course, add my contact details.

Semester 2 showreel!

I got my showreel for Professional Practice finished ahead of schedule (I thought as long as I had Adobe Premiere open, I might as well edit it in the same sitting as my Exploring Practice animatic), so here it is! Compare it to my Semester 1 showreel - I can't believe how far I've come in four short months, and yet I know I'll only top this in Year 2.

Like my previous showreel, it's set to the beginning of "Winner Winner" by Kevin McLeod.

mudskipper.the-comic.org

@KatDoesThings

The completed animatic!

It took several weeks of hard work drawing and editing, and it's super rough due to being completed so quickly, but it's finally done!

The music is an excerpt from "Almost There," composed by aivi & surasshu for the Cartoon Network series Steven Universe - my tutor John mentioned that I was allowed to use copyrighted music just this once (it falls under the “educational” part of Fair Use). Maybe someday, I’ll be able to work with them in an official capacity, and this animatic is the first step to making that happen.

I hope you enjoy it!

Semester 2 life drawing!

Click "Read More" to see a sample of my life-drawing work from this past semester! Compare these to my drawings from semester 1. I think I've come a long way, but you can decide for yourself.

Semester 2 notebook!

Here are the doodles I did in my big notebook during semester 2!

Semester 2 sketchbook!

I kept three sketchbooks this semester: a small one for observational and imaginative sketches, a big one for notes and doodles, and my action analysis sketchbook. Click Read More to see most of the drawings from the first one!

Pull, push and lip sync!

Here are two animation exercises I did as part of the action analysis project: a stop-motion pull and a CG push.

My first attempt at a pull:

My second, and so far last, attempt at a pull:

My first and only attempt at a push:

Lip sync in Flash:

There's a slight syncing issue at the end of this one due to having to piece the video together when Flash wouldn't export it properly, but it does play properly in Flash, I promise - I'll see if I can export a proper version even if it's too late to get that assessed.

If you're wondering, the audio comes from here: thepurpleredwagon.tumblr.com/post/59737506258/inspired-by-this-post I wanted some audio I knew I wouldn't get sick of scrubbing through over and over again, and this was cute enough to fit the bill.

The space for my chase

Part of our assignment to create a high-speed chase sequence was to create layouts and backgrounds of the space in which the chase occurs. As with the character designs, I decided to use a setting I'd already created and thought I knew well: my aliens characters' part-barn, part-wrecked spaceship hideout, which I sketched out based on a real barn in Bishop's Cleeve in June 2014:

I wanted a base for my characters that really looked like a melding of two worlds, and while I was happy with the exterior design, this assignment made me realise I hadn't thought about the interior all that much. Part of the brief was to have the characters go up some stairs, but my tutor told us this could be interpreted loosely, so I designed some "stairs" formed from the large plates of metal of the spaceship. As I imagined why Katsuko might be running up those stairs, I came up with the scenario of Ikki chasing her and appearing menacing to the audience - but in reality, he's just trying to give her her homework.

After doing those rough drawings, I did a slightly more refined cross-section of the wreck, with a bit of colour:

And from there, it was time to start creating layouts, concept art and backgrounds.

Action Analysis: Quadruped Locomotion (Primary Research: Zoo Animals)

Because I'm so fascinated by dogs as it is, I mostly focused on them for this research assignment - in fact, I ended up drawing so much of them that I have to separate other quadrupeds into their own post!

I visited Noah's Ark Zoo Farm and was very impressed with the variety of species - and therefore, the variety of movements - they had on display. I got some excellent research out of the trip; my only regret was that my phone battery ran out before I could film every single animal!

Click Read More to see my sketches and videos.

Character designs for a high-speed chase sequence!

On my "Pigs in Tutus" post, I mentioned creating and developing two characters only to abandon them for a different set of characters who better suited the sequence I needed to make. Some might say I'm taking the easy way out by doing this, as the characters I'm going for are two I've been developing since April 2013: two of the cast of my webcomic, Mudskipper, whom are very close to my heart. That's exactly why I decided to board a sequence with them rather than two characters I'd only just created; having an emotional attachment to them provides me with motivation to refine their designs more than ever, and pay due attention to the cinematography of the sequence.

I created Mudskipper partially for fun and partially as an exercise to simulate the development and production of an animated TV series, including drawing the main characters hundreds of times until their appearances and attitudes felt "right." Let's press fast-forward on that process:

Action Analysis: Quadruped Locomotion (Primary Research: Dogs)

As soon as I got this action analysis assignment, I rushed to contact anyone I knew who had a dog and asked if I could come over to do some studies during the Easter break. While I waited for said break, I studied dogs from a bit more of a distance in two locations: Queen Square near the centre of Bristol, and Ashton Court Estate. I got some good sketches from both, but I couldn't really get close to the dogs without things getting a bit awkward for me and their owners.

I managed to "borrow" three dogs for closer analysis: Merlin, a 15-year-old Lurcher, Duffy, a 4-year-old Bulldog, and Rudy, a 4-year-old Egyptian Street Dog (like a smaller, lankier German Shepard). I was lucky to get a good variety of ages and breeds, as I feel those two factors affect a dog's movement the most.

Click Read More to see my sketches and videos!

Action Analysis: Flight Dynamics (Secondary Research)

After I got the assignment to study flight, I sought out videos of birds, and got very lucky when I discovered this clip from the Natural World documentary "Super Powered Owls":

Scientists set up an experiment designed to examine how an owl achieves silent flight - the perfect thing for an animator to study. I dove straight into the full documentary on BBC iPlayer and did as many sketches of owls (and a few other bird species) as I could. Click Read More to see these sketches (with a few dog and otter studies mixed in).

Action Analysis: Flight Dynamics (Primary Research)

When I got the assignment of analysing flight dynamics, I realised how lucky I was to live close to Bristol's habourside: it's full of seagulls, pigeons and crows, presenting the opportunity to not only study flight from life, but to compare different species' flight patterns. Doing so was a very interesting insight into how different, yet similar, bird species can be, even within the same geographic location.

I also visited Noah's Ark Zoo Farm and saw their Birds of Prey Display, which was perfect for studying flight: the birds flew right in front of my face, the keepers explained the differences in their flight patterns, and the audience are allowed to stroke Bella the barn owl after the performance. You wouldn't believe how soft a barn owl's feathers actually are (this contributes to their silent flight).

Finally, I went to Slimbridge Wetlands Centre to observe a variety of water fowl. I didn't get as many drawings of them in flight as I would've liked, since they spent most of their time in the water, but I did get some useful videos of swans and ducks flapping their wings - and their otter exhibit came in handy for the quadruped locomotion part of the assignment.

Click Read More to see my observational sketches (with a few dog sketches mixed in) and video recordings.

Wicked gestures

I live literally down the road from the Bristol Hippodrome, so last night my mum and I went to see Wicked on its UK tour, with Ashleigh Grey as Elphaba, Emily Tierney as Glinda and Samuel Edwards as Fiyero. Of course it's illegal to take film or pictures of a theatre performance, but there's no law against doing gesture sketches of the actors!

This was quite an interesting experience, because in the dim lights I could hardly see what I was drawing - I had to depend mainly on how it felt to move the pencil, and that was a good learning experience. It was also a great study of acting, since theatre actors need to "telegraph" their actions much more clearly than film or TV actors to ensure they're read from the back of a theatre - it was especially good to study that with a cast as skilled and "animated" as this lot were. I highly recommend doing this next time you go to the theatre!

Click Read More to see the rest.

Industry Research: Storyboarding for Animated Television Series

Today the UWE animation first-years had the pleasure of giving a presentation to the two co-founders of Rumpus Animation, a small-but-impressive local studio. It was quite a good learning experience for me; I feel as if I learned as much from my peers as I did from my tutor, and even though I was anxious going up and talking to everyone, that process allowed me to discover some gaps in my research that it's not too late to fill.

Click "Read More" to see my presentation (slightly adapted to better suit reading as opposed to being presented live).

Tim Allenby's "Grave Mistake"!

I recently volunteered to be an assistant animator on a third year student's final film: Grave Mistake, a funny and frantic story of Death trying to recover the soul of a girl he accidentally reaped before her time. You can see a ton of material relating to the film, including the animatic, on its website - my job is the seemingly small, but important task of animating background characters. Click Read More to see my design sketches, animation thumbnails and, of course, final animations!

Character Design: Pigs In Tutus

Our first official assignment as part of the Exploring Practice in Animation module was two design two characters, with complete free reign apart from one caveat: they have to be able to perform lip sync. My first thought was an ironic response to a comment our tutor made to drive home the point of an abstract animation assignment being, well, abstract: "I don't want no pigs in tutus, only stuff that moves." Well, thanks to that assignment I now have the raw animation skills to draw pigs in tutus to my heart's content!

I liked the humorous contrast of such heavy, clumsy creatures doing ballet - but as I noted at the time, I was worried my classmates would draw this connection and I wouldn't come off as very original, so I developed a few backup ideas...

...like this modern-day, all-female adaptation of The Country Mouse and the Town Mouse, but I wasn't quite as excited by the idea of adapting an old story as I was by the prospect of doing something completely my own.

I tossed more things at the wall to see what would stick: an elephant seal selkie (for fun more than the assignment), a Chihuahua and flea duo (again, inspired by a comment my tutor made: "the characters have to be able to interact with each other, so don't do a giant and a flea"), and a crocodile inspired by this Yahoo Answers question that gained memetic status. I thought all of them at least had potential, but then, a pun for the title of the ballerina pigs' story popped into my head...

...and I realised it would be a waste of that pun to develop any other idea, so I got stuck in like... well, a pig in muck.

Sadly for these two, we got another different assignment later in the semester: to storyboard a 15-20-second action sequence, and the physical comedy I had in mind for Swine Lake didn't fit the bill, so I decided to use a different set of characters for the storyboard assignment. The experience matched what I know about the development of animated features: that entire plot points, characters and even films can get canned before starting full-on production, and it was a good reminder not to invest too much time or energy into a project before settling on it for sure. At least with these sketches, I can always go back to these characters when I'm not so busy!

Two Characters, One Door

At the beginning of semester 2, we were given an assignment that won't be assessed (at least I don't think so), but which would get us thinking and ready to dive into exploring practice in animation: make a rough storyboard for a 15-second sequence, and the only requirement for the story was that it had to involve two characters with a door between them.

I came up with this semi-autobiographical scenario of an uptight university student who's absolutely going to pieces over the fact that he might be late and his laid-back lecturer who couldn't be more chilled out about student attendance. Here's the initial doodle of them and the door between them...

...and some more refined character designs.

After that, I defined the space they would inhabit in the film a little more clearly...

...and created some very rough story sketches, timed out to the first 15 seconds of Kevin McLeod's Stormfront in order to help me fit the actions into the time frame better. By this stage I'd added the additional conflict of the student having to juggle his briefcase, coffee cup and various papers before he can open the door (again, semi-autobiographical)... only to realise that the door is locked, ending the sequence on a darkly humorous cliffhanger.

Sadly, this was as far as I got with the slightly less rough storyboard before I got sidetracked by assignments I'm actually being assessed on and therefore have to prioritize - although I suppose that's not really getting sidetracked. I did have fun with this assignment, though, and I'd love to revisit it someday...

Action Analysis: Dance

During my first semester, my tutor Chris Webster said, when setting us an abstract animation exercise, "I don't want no pigs in tutus." Guess what I drew for my character design exercise for the sake of irony!

To make the pigs' movements and stances believable, I studied videos of ballet (of course, the ideal would be drawing them directly from life, but I didn't know of any ballet schools near the centre of Bristol), and particularly larger people doing ballet - as luck would have it, Channel 4's series "Big Ballet" is literally all about that, so I decided to watch it and sketch the most interesting poses and movements as I went.

One of my favourite examples of timing in the dances is at the 18:14 mark - the slight delay of the dancer on the right is just so funny to me, and that comedic timing is something I'd very much like to capture in my animation. As for serious examples, the 30:04 mark is a perfect example of the kind of movement I want to animate: visible weight to the dancer's body, but with a delicacy in the way she carries that weight. I think in my case, it also helps that these aren't professional dancers: my two pigs were a seasoned ballerina and her immature pupil, so it helps to look at all levels of expertise.

In the end, I decided to scrap the "pigs in tutus" idea for another sequence - but I feel my study of dance will still come in handy for my animation practice.

Click "Read More" to see the sketches I did while watching episode 1!

Critical Perspectives poster

I decided to write my essay on the 2009 film Mary and Max, since it's one of the few places I've seen my medium, animation, and an important part of my identity, Asperger's Syndrome, intersect, and I feel it would help my practice to analyse it in detail. The poster consists of a still from the film I captured myself using VLC Media Player, a wallpaper pattern from the film that I took from hdbitz.org and made as seamless as possible using a program called Paint Shop Pro 9, the film's logo (taken from the DVD cover on amazon.co.uk) and 314 words written in the voice of one of the title characters of the film, printed out and stuck onto the still/wallpaper combination. I chose to print the text onto ordinary printer paper and the logo onto Bristol board and physically stick them onto the poster (which is printed on fine grain artist paper) rather than compositing it digitally, since the film itself uses a very "hand-made" aesthetic. Click Read More to read the text if you're having trouble making it out.

Notes on my chosen cultural text: Adam Elliot's "Mary and Max" (2009)

Critical Perspectives seminar 3: 29/1/15

Critical Perspectives Seminar 2: 15/1/15

Looking a “cultural text” in context

Critical Perspectives Seminar 1: 8/1/15

Critical Perspectives 12: 11/12/14 - The Intersectional Self with Jenny Rintoul

Critical Perspectives 11: 4/12/14 - Considering the “Other”, with Alex Franklin

Prep for Semester 2

Content: Assessed Work:

• Blog → Plays the role of a sketchbook (what are you INTERESTED in?)
• Poster → 2pm Feb 9th
• Essay → 26^th March

Assessed on these three things en masse

After Xmas break:

Seminars – program-specific → uses stuff from the blog

Leading up to poster

No hard-and-fast rules for the blog – just ongoing engagement

Reference EVERYTHING!!! (citations)

Have a critical perspectives folder!

Find a way to manage all this – don't get hung up on the essay

Better to have too much and edit it down

The seminars will help you write it

Use the UWE Harvard reference system – practice using it on your blog

One set title: “Present a detailed, critical analysis of a cultural text”

Identify a cultural text you want to know more about

Find one with a representation of an idea you want to explore

The “Anaconda” video is a cultural text! Not just written texts

Critical =/= negative; how and why things work

Resist the urge to boomerang back to familiar territory – you're here to learn NEW things

You can mention other texts (contrast) but don't go into detail

Identify the broader issue

Poster – inherently tied to your essay

Will be discussed in the seminars

All posters will be exhibited in February!

Posters in this context are junior versions of academic presentations

Seminars are at Bower Ashton – NOT Ashton Court

x1 hour session a week (Thurs.) except 22^nd Jan and 12^th Feb

SHOULD be on online timetable

There WILL be prep for seminars – tasks (see Blackboard)

Seminars make university university – STEEL YOURSELF; take part

A kind of luxury item – builds confidence

Office Hours will be posted after Christmas

Talk to a librarian about research

Action analysis: Quadruped Locomotion (secondary research)

I decided to focus mainly on dogs for this part of my action analysis, since I've always been interested in the differences between breeds' physiology and temperaments - and now, their movements.

I've found Vines to be an excellent source of animals in motion (the blog Actual Dog Vines is especially helpful), but I've also spotted a few interesting dogs on YouTube. Let's start with this slow-motion advert for root beer:

Look at the way the dog's flabby, loose skin trails behind him as he runs at 0:31! A perfect example of the animation principle known as drag.

Action analysis: Inorganic Things

Let's kick off this blog's action analysis (the study of How Things Move) section with a bit of fun courtesy of the blog capnskull:

"the drum is filled with hot steam and then sprayed with cold water. the pressure on the outside of the drum is far more than inside. the pressures try to maintain and find balance taking the drum as a casualty."

I really love the suddenness with which the drum "recoils" - it's as if it's alive and reacting slightly belatedly to the water, or as if the drum were an animated character and the animators were chemistry and physics themselves. I'll have to refer back to this drum next time I animate a character reacting suddenly to something.

I didn't have time to research this area in great detail, but I found two artificial lifeforms designed to simulate the movements of living things, and the accuracy (or lacktherof) of that simulation is fascinating. First is this robot, Spot, made by Boston Dynamics - you can see how it got its name, as it simulates a dog's walk fairly accurately. The part I find most interesting is the way it stumbles in response to being kicked at the 0:28 mark of the video - it briefly struggles to regain its footing in much the same way a real quadruped would.

While this isn't quadruped locomotion, it's too fascinating not to at least mention. These are computer programs that taught themselves how to walk - I found this GIF on Imgur and while I looked for more information about the project, unfortunately all I could find out was that Steve Grand, creator of the video game Creatures, is attached to it.

Even so, the learning curve these programs went through is evident in the GIF: Generation 1 obviously only manages half a step; Generation 20 masters taking a few steps but fails to keep its balance for very long; Generation 80 solves that problem by swinging its neck and tail to generate equilibrium; Generation 999 manages to walk without that exaggerated swing.

Generation 80 definitely has the most characterful walk. I feel an incredible urge to animate my character Ikki (see here) walking using it as reference.

Critical Perspectives seminar prep for 29/1/15

Task: Choose a cultural text and find one journal article and one book/book chapter that deals with either that text or its themes; find a key quote from each and source it

Critical Perspectives 10 – 27/11 – Participatory Culture, with Jenny Rintoul

Critical Perspectives 9 – 20/11/14 – “Social Media – Access Denied” with Rachel Evans

Critical Perspectives 8 – 13/11/14 – Making Cultures, with Alex Franklin

Critical Perspectives 7 – 6/11/14 – Making Histories with Clare Johnson

Critical Perspectives 6 – 30/10/14 - Cultural Hierarchies, with Rachel Miles

Critical Perspectives: summary of "Woman as Objects - Feminist Critique" from "A Queer Romance" by Caroline Evans and Lorraine Gamman

This excerpt analyses the concept of the “male gaze” from the perspectives of several writers throughout the 20^th century, concluding with the analogy of Michel Foucault's concept of the panopticon: a prison in which a single watchman may be watching any of the prisoners at any time, requiring them to assume they are always under scrutiny. In a male-dominated society, women are in a similar position to those hypothetical prisoners: Evans and Gamman cite Simone de Beauvoir's descriptions of “learning to appraise her adolescent self through male eyes” and John Berger's observation that in our culture, the spectator is usually assumed to be male (“Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at”). The authors mention that Berger “has no model of discourse to explain power relations” besides an “implicit” one, and argue for Foucault's panopticon as an “explicit” model for discussing the objectification of women (while also touching on the objectification of men in the gay community), as opposed to looking at the topic through a purely psychoanalytic lens – they admit psychoanalysis has its uses, but state that it “offers an inadequate amount of desire underlying sexualised looking” in the discourse (“ideology is inscribed in discourse... a way of thinking speaking, experiencing”, as Catherine Belsey wrote) that is feminism. Evans and Gamman make it clear that women live in a society in which they are under constant scrutiny while arguing for the importance of analysing that fact using several different methods and perspectives.

Critical Perspectives 5: 23/10/14 -- Creativity and Authorship, with Clare Johnson

[The lectures] will be recorded (on Blackboard) along with slideshow + office hours – check it regularly! Same for UWE email)

Engagement = IMPORTANT → Show up to everything

8 weeks of lectures (with some discussion) until Christmas; after that 7 seminars

3 things:

• Blog (throughout module) → set it up between now + next Thursday; “learning log” - allows tutors to track your growth
• Poster (summary of essay) – due Feb 9th
• 1200 word essay + bibliography – March 26th → “present a detailed, critical analysis of a cultural text” (artefact) – same for everyone

Both 2pm – university standard

Semester 1 showreel!

Here it is: three months of hard work condensed into 95 seconds, set to a piece of free music that I almost want to pay for because it's so good! Please excuse the glaring errors in the framing of some of the animations (the bowling ball is an especially bad offender) - I assure you that once I'm making one of these for potential employers instead of tutors, that won't happen! (Not that I think any less of tutors - I just didn't know any better at the time.)

Animation exercises

UWE's animation course is very good at encouraging its students to learn by doing - not that I've been on any other university level animation courses, so I can't compare it to anything, but it's a very good way to learn, I can say that much.

At the time of posting, my showreel for the first semester is currently rendering, and when I post it here you'll be able to view all of these exercises in one artfully arranged 90-second chunk set to music, but it can't hurt to post them all separately so you can scrub through them and pick them apart at your leisure. Click "Read More" to see the stop motion, hand drawn and computer animation exercises I did within my first few weeks on the course!

Life drawing

Here's a compilation of some of my best work from this semester's life drawing module! I really enjoyed this part of the course; I've taken life drawing classes before as part of my Access to HE course and enjoyed those as well, but the nice thing about life drawing is that you can always go to a new class with a different teacher and different models, each with fresh new approaches, and learn something from them that you couldn't from the previous classes - plus it's impossible to study the human figure from life too much.

Click "Read More" to see the drawings!

Sketchbooks, part 3: autobiographical doodle compilation

A recurring theme in both my sketchbooks is little autobiographical drawings of interesting things that happened to me that day. Click "Read More" to see all of them so far.

Sketchbooks, part 2: the big notebook

As promised, here's a selection of doodles from my notebook! Most of these are a lot sloppier and (ironically) smaller than the stuff in my small sketchbook, but for me, that's part of the fun of it.

Click "Read More" to see them!

Sketchbooks! Part 1: the small one

Happy New Year! One of my resolutions is to be a much better student, and while I can't undo how much I've neglected this blog over the past few months, I can stop it from getting any worse. Christmas has been a stressful time for me, as it always is - I don't deal well with routine changes and interacting with 10+ people at once, and I've needed several days to recover from each instance of the latter. That's not an excuse, but hopefully it provides some explanation for why I work the way I do - everyone tackles things differently, after all.

I've kept two sketchbooks over my first semester at UWE: an A6 one for observational and imaginative sketches, and an A4 one for notes, but plenty of doodles (of both kinds) find their way in there too. I'll make at least two posts compiling my sketches, starting with the majority of the small one (I've cropped out some notes that would probably only make sense to me anyway, as well as some of the more personal, self-indulgent doodles) in all its sprawling, disorganised glory, followed by a compilation of doodles from the big one, possibly along one or two themes.

Click "Read More" to see it!