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).