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.

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 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!

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.

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...

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!