Hungry hungry koalas...

Took a break from film work this weekend to draw some koalas. Some hungry koalas... hope you all had a lovely weekend too!

Film Progress

Pitch week was a buzz of excitement and nerves, but I managed to trick enough people into voting so that I am now directing a team of 10 to make our graduation film, Sapling. The first few weeks have involved too much planning and not enough drawing for my liking, but nonetheless, here's some stuff I found time to complete!

 Working alongside my technical director we've been perfecting the model and ensuring the rig is going to be as awesome as it possibly can. I've discovered a fondness for the therapeutic qualities of modelling, but now I'm totally itching to get back into animation!

Render Testing

With less than two weeks until I pitch my grad film, I've taken some time to work on a small render test which demonstrates the render style I'm aiming for. I'm gunning for something a little bit different from the typical "3D" style - I want to create a 3D film that simulates the flat cel-shaded look of 2D animation. So many beautiful films have achieved this, and I can't resist having a stab at it myself. 2D has wonderful appeal and allows for stylisation, whilst 3D maintains solid form and structure and permits the use of technical enhancements that 2D can't take full advantage of. Combining the two provides the advantages of both and offers solutions to their disadvantages. So, after lots of rigorous tutorial-watching and hours spent playing with settings and waiting for renders, here's what I've achieved so far. (wingless, for now :))

I rendered this in two passes - one of the Surface Shader, one of the shadows - and composited them in Photoshop. It's far from a final result, but I've learnt a lot from doing it. Hopefully, with a little more learning and experimenting, I can get something I'm really happy with. :D

Finally, here's the character sheets I did before modelling!

WWF Fundraising

I've taken part in a little fundraising event organised by Gillian Reid to raise money for the WWF. Her boyfriend Matt is running a half marathon in October to raise money for the charity, and because we artists don't do running (well... I certainly don't) we did some arts instead. Here's my little contribution.

CLICK HERE to head over to the Etsy store and pick up some exclusive prints!

Griff

So Griff has been my personal project over this summer break. He's a character for a short film I'm developing and hoping to make in my final year of university. I decided to take a break from the endless and painful task of storyboarding to work on a little walk cycle for him. He's pretty happy-go-lucky, innocent, naive and a little bit clumsy. It was a nice break from Maya and good to re-familiarise myself with Toonboom again. I may return and clean this up but for now I had to reign myself in and realise there were more important things to be doing :P



And to make this post a little less dull, this evening I attempted a little lighting study/concept piece. Hopefully it's not a total fail...

Doing the computer thing...

So for an animator, I don't post up a lot of animation, huh? So I'm gonna change the way I use this blog a little bit and put more animations up, and maybe some pearls of wisdom that I find every now and then.

I'm really lucky to be spending my summer break in Luxembourg interning at Fabrique d'images as a 3D character animator. Many of you know my turmoil with Maya - I never thought I'd touch the program. I don't know how but something changed my mind... Now I'm here working beside some really talented 3D animators on one of the squishably cutest TV shows I've seen! Funny how things have turned out :) Between hours I've been working on some simple exercises, trying to improve my workflow and nail my timing. Workflow is half the battle in Maya, so I've really been trying to learn and find a good way of working.



This one's still in progress - for the moment trying to nail the timing and weight. One of the things I've never done is push my work to a high level of refinement. So that's my plan for this one.

Fathers Day!

Drew this for my Daddy! He flies model aeroplanes. :)

 Happy Father's Day!

At the mercy of the cats

First of the two days of our annual trip to Marwell Zoo. Always one of my favourite parts of the year.

Charcoal Life Dump

I discovered that I love using compressed charcoal. I think it frees me up in a way that pencil or chinagraph doesn't. I also prefer the aesthetic of it. Maybe I'll keep up with it, and screw the damn chinagraph that I've been wrestling with for the last year.