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!