Holiday work

Not sure if we are supposed to be writing these over Christmas; I had promised myself I wasn’t but I am bored (yes I am that sad that writing a blog constitutes as a boredom busting activity). Will start off by apologising for the last two entries which were just a bit of a rant, was having a bit of a bad month or so, nothing to do with the course. Anyhoo, have got past that now.


I have finally got my arse into gear and started doing some more work on my character. Have started off by completely redesigning him, I am happy with his new look but it takes me about half an hour to draw him so I might need to simplify him a tad. I have also attempted to build a plastercene/modelling clay bust of the character, I was using plasterscene that was left over from a project I did last year so I had a pretty good range of colours and a decent amount of the stuff. Problem was that its over a year old and has been sat up in my loft which I don’t think it agreed with as it was extremely tough and when it finally started to get soft it just turned to goop. As a result my model is really just a glorified blob and I can only really use it as a drawing aid but I have done an animated turn-around of it, which I will try and remember to post at some point. I have also done a couple of walks for my character but I want to line test tem to see if they work before I take it any further.


The good ole chair is also being tweaked although I think that I am being a bit too ambitious with my design after my previous experiences with Maya but I’m hoping to get back to Falmouth early so I can spend a couple of days swearing at the computer.


Ooo, just remembered I put something in about the diving board animation in my last post. That is now done; well it was done two/three weeks ago. The bit I put all the work into did not really work at all and the bit I rushed because I was tired and wanted to go home worked fine, maybe I should put less consideration into my animation and just scrawl it down instead and hope it works, because most of the time those are the bits that work the best. Hopefully if I put some more in-betweens into it, it will smooth everything out a bit.

Moan, moan, moan

A bit happier today after yesterdays moan, still can not really remember anything about Maya, although I was farley pleased with my chair and enjoyed stretching it about, the one I have at the moment dose not bare any relation to my drawing so I think I am going to have to start again from scratch but at the rate I am going it might actually be quicker to build one.

Have also finished re-doing the animation in the diving board exercise, I have put a lot of effort into trying to get a good walk for the character since we are starting to do that in motion studies, although I think I have probably just ripped off one of the sequences from The Animator’s Survival Kit. I also think that I rushed the ending a bit but I shall see what it looks like when I line test it. The inking still needs to be done on it so that might not happen till after Christmas. Have not really got very fare in developing a walk for my character, in fact I have not got anywhere; suffering a bit of a burn-out from the last project and a bit disheartened by the marks from the character sheet, its just starting to sink in now that yesterday’s presentation is out of the way. I did not think that I had done amazingly but at the same time I did not think there where any huge mistakes. Haven’t got any feed-back on what I did so wrong or how I can improve and that seems to be the general consensus amongst people that I have talked too. Ho-hum, it won’t draw itself so I better start doing something.

Sorry, moaning again, thought I said I was happier! To end on a more up-beat tone I am looking forward to the weight thing tomorrow, hopefully it will give me the kick-start I need to do these character sheets.

My very very late entry (oops) :P

Sorry this is a bit late this week, the old blog took the backseat whilst Dan and I frantically tried to put together our presentation. Difficult to know how well it went but I think in the course of doing this project I have successfully lost any passion that I had for Monkey Dust, hope that didn’t show in the presentation but it probably did.

Anyway, in response to Andy’s comments from last week: the acting workshop was ‘different’, it has helped to certain degree, especially when we where starting to do the character walks last week. Although some of the stuff we did towards the end did not seem to relate much to movement but you never know, it could come in useful, trying to keep an open mind and all that.

Maya still succeeds in confusing me and leaving me swearing at the computer, I am fine in the lessons but the moment I try and do anything myself everything I have learned goes completely out of the window and buttons that did things in the lessons mysteriously stop working or acquire different functions that often have disastrous consequences; I have lost count of the number of times I have turned my so called chair into a shapeless blob. Perhaps some kind of handout with all of Maya’s key dooblybangs on would solve my chair melting dilemma, especially if we are expected to create our own masterpiece over Christmas. Having said that the only time I will be able to use Maya will be in what remains of this week and the two or three days before the deadline when I get back from my holidays since my computer does not have Maya on it and it would most likely implode if I tried to put it on it; I have enough problems with word.

Sorry, having a bit of a rant. I’m off for a beer and a burger to calm the nerves.