Thursday 10 January 2008

A Bit About Everything

First week back and I am finding it surprisingly easy to get back into the swing of things; got the Maya project done although I think I might have rushed it a bit as there are some bits where the piping went a bit dodgy so I will probably get marked down for neatness but all in all I am farley pleased with it. Once this essay is out of the way I hope to spend some more time on Maya trying to learn everything and just having a general play.

My character for motion studies has been completely revamped and I can actually draw him reasonably quickly now. Here is the video i talked about last time:


I have done some Photoshop pictures of him over Christmas too and I have tried to continue doing that since I got back but the version of Photoshop that’s on the studio computers is a lot more up-to-date than the one I had at home and all the buttons are in different places, so I will have to sit down one day and figure all of that out. I am really starting to get into the storey for this character and have started to jot down some ideas for scenes and I am finding that going through ideas with Rosie, my partner for this project, is producing some good ideas, although I am a bit worried that I tend to take over on projects like this.

Ideas for the essay are coming thick and fast too; I read Ted Hughes’ The Iron Man the other day and I think I could just write the essay on its relationship with The Iron Giant. I have also watched Porco Rosso and The Incredibals which have helped me to establish some recurring themes and trends in The Iron Giant and Spirited Away, if I have the time I want to try and watch some more of Miyazaki’s films mainly because I have never really been into anime and I am finding the differences between this and western styles really interesting. I have also found some really useful stuff on the internet, including interviews with Bird and Miyazaki, below is a list of them:

http://www.onlineghibli.com/spirited_away/
http://nausicaa.net/miyazaki/sen/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hayao_Miyazaki
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0594503/
http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/people.php?id=51
http://www.midnighteye.com/interviews/hayao_miyazaki.shtml
http://film.guardian.co.uk/interview/interviewpages/0,6737,1569689,00.html
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0083348/
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0129167/
http://www.timeout.com/film/chicago/features/show-feature/3073/cartoon-crusader.html
http://movies.nytimes.com/person/81910/Brad-Bird/filmography
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/features/film/e3i653608aa3a0ea3bba6ec63fa98301e01
http://www.usatoday.com/life/people/2004-11-02-bird-secret-identity_x.htm
http://www.slate.com/id/2169280/
http://uk.dvd.ign.com/articles/594/594806p1.html
http://www.collider.com/entertainment/interviews/article.asp/aid/5920/tcid/1
http://www2.warnerbros.com/corpcomm/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warner_Bros._Animation
http://www.animationusa.com/wbmore2.html
http://www.xsibase.com/articles.php?detail=67

So now I think I need to go through all the stuff that I have found and see what is the best angle to approach the essay from.

1 comment:

Andy Wyatt said...

Tell me more about your thoughts on the Maya chair you designed. What was the inspiration for the design? What was the most frustating thing about the process? You say there were some'dodgy' bits..what do you mean by that?