Might want to make a sandwich for this one...

It's LOOOOONG.

I've been quite the busy bee these past few days. I already uploaded my work on Friday to here. Saturday... I'd LIKE to share my work but as it's for prints that I intend to sell, I can't really share them just yet. Unless I put watermarks on them or something. I'll consider that.

Until then, here are some teasers.

Blue seems quite captivated by something... but whatever could it be? You ain't gonna know, suckas.

And here is Blue (again. Sheesh, she seems to be the one I draw all the time) in various colouring stages.

Lets see, what else... oh yeah, I also did another Crumbs poster. This time, we have a little bit of character interaction, to show the viewer what the relationship between the various characters is like.

This reminds me of that demotivational poster with the owls. You know the one I mean, right?

I still haven't gotten round to my speedpaint. I definitely will later this week. But I know for a fact I'm not gonna do pigeons this time. People are gonna start thinking those are all I can draw!

Anyhow, moving onto today. I came in super duper early (for me) to get cracking on some frames. I managed to complete one of the sequences I wanted to include in the show reel. For now, I'm only showing screenshots. Clips won't be seen in their entirety until sound is added and they're deemed suitable for public viewing.

Call me big headed but I think my lighting is starting to improve a tad. And is it wrong for me to really like the colouring of that puke?

I regret nothing.

And finally, today was the day where we presented our toy ideas to Paul from Oddco, who came by to talk to us last week. I was really impressed with everyone's presentations and ideas, there were some real crackers today! Alliterative brains, colourful robots, phobias, zombies, cupheaded superheros and evil junk food against my plastic pigeons. So to see mine get picked along with four others was very surprising. Although Paul and David seemed interested in my design and idea, I wasn't sure if it would hold up against everyone else's. I assume I just squeaked past someone else. T'is the only logical explanation.

So yes, my design is going to be made into a toy. I'm pretty chuffed about that! But I still wish everyone could have got their designs picked. Only two didn't and it was only because there were just five spaces.

Paul offered me an idea, suggesting (if I were to take Crumbs away from the toy entirely but keep the pigeon design) that I could go the whole tourist route and give the pigeons various defining British stereotypes, particularly in London where most of the market would be. I admit to being quite intrigued by the thought... a Queen pigeon? Guard pigeon? Chav pigeon?

Well, all of that will come in time. For now, I have to busy myself with... CINEMA 4D.

Yes, you unholy bastard. You've got me in your clutches YET AGAIN. I can never seem to get away from this beast. It clings to you, like snot.

But wait... what is this?

HA! I'm actually getting somewhere!

I still need to thicken it out and make it actually 3D but I'll get there! And I intend to get there on my own this time. I need to tame this beast without having to rely on others to do it for me. That said, if anyone has any 3D advice, for the love of all that is decent and good, don't be shy. Come and tell me and I shall wish so much good juju on you, like, you don't even KNOW.

Well, this was indeed a mouthful. But you've all come to expect that of me, haven't you? I aim to please.

And now I'm going to do something that has nothing to do with pigeons for a little while.

Haha, I just arted.

Check it out! Oh, and sorry for the smell.

Just some things to slip into the portfolio I think. This one was something of a practice for the Crumbs comic- how speech bubbles will be presented, what font to use, how textures look on the background, that kind of thing. If you saw my third Pictoplasma entry, you'll have seen the sketch. Basically something of a summary of Pink and Green's friendship.

As well as this, I also coloured another sketch from my Berlin book. I've wanted to redo my very early loop animation for a while now and with the approaching deadline, thats looking less and less likely. But that doesn't stop me from doing a poster for it and at least looking like I TRIED to improve on it.

Which I did, dagnabbit.

To be honest, it's probably just as well. I've been thinking of various ideas for how I could expand on this and to be frank, now is not the time to do it. So at least we have this to tide us all over (since y'all are looking forward to it so much after only hearing of it like... two seconds ago). I have to admit, it looks pretty nifty. I might print it out and put it on my wall so I can feel 'professional' or something.

I'll also upload this as I thought it was pretty freaky. I accidentally turned off the lineart layer and all you could see was the colours and shade. Add a dark background and a eerie glow and ba-da-bing! Instant WTFery!

... and yes, I have been working on Blues intro sequence. Here's a screencap. I DID have more than one but I accidentally the whole thing.

Hopefully it'll run just as smoothly coloured as it did in the rough animation.

Well, it's quite late now. I'm gonna conserve my energy for tomorrow and watch a buttload of Two Best Friends Play. Ever since seeing that Celestia and Luna spoof yesterday I've been hooked. Just what I need, ANOTHER distraction, eh? Hey ho.

Serious Business

Deadlines are approaching so it's time to get the ol' act together.

Coming in to see the exact things we need to hand in on the small whiteboard was both helpful and scary.  For obvious reasons I'd like to assume. I'm choosing to be positive about this though. Now that I know what's expected of me, I can deliver more confidently than I would if I were to work through this blindly.

To start, I think I'll just make a list of what I need to do still. i've made some progress since last week, which is good but I'm not sure if it's really made much of a dent in the big picture.

PPD

Blog: Well, as all I have to do is update this thing with my progress, I think it's safe to say this one's covered.

File: OK, lets see what needs to be done as of today. Most of it is finished, it just needs to be printed out. That said, I've crossed out the finished ones so I don't start crying in hysteria.

• Skillset research/Report
• Uni progression- UCAS- Institutions looked at
• CV
• Business Cards
• Swot Analysis
• Competitions/live briefs
• Opportunities- Oddco brief
• Companies- Oddco, Studio AKA

Animation Work

Script

Animatic

Storyboard

Live Brief- This seems to be the toy design one we were given at the start of the week. I think it's time for another sub list!

• Coloured designs
• Elevations
• Presentation

Presentation: I'm gonna guess that this is the presentation we did on our animations talking about their development and so on. The board never actually specified.

And I assume scenes from the finished animation which for some reason wasn't on the list. I guess it goes without saying though.

Portfolio

Decide what pictures are going in/what new ideas I want to include

Still life/life drawings

Commentary of each individual piece

Evaluation of portfolio

Research: Look at the different ways people have presented them, such as PDF and paper versions. Also look into how various companies want people to present their show reels.

Show Reel: Make two versions- one back to back piece of all animations, the other being the best bits cut together.

Speedpainting: This isn't compulsory, I've just always wanted to do one.

... well golly. That indeedeth be a lot. But don't despair, myself! I can get through this! It's wonderful timing that Dad bought me a big box of Monster energy drinks from Costco. Gonna need all the help I can get on this one.

OK, so now that I know what I need to do, it's time to figure out when and where I need to do it.

I have a few main priorities right now. Namely printing out the PPD stuff that still needs to be printed out, the live brief work (as the presentations are on monday), the plan for the portfolio, the Crumbs scenes I want to animate and the speed paint. So now it's time for my plan for today and the weekend.

Yay, more reading. Because I know you all enjoy that!

Today

At college: Work mainly on the toy design brief. Finish the elevation and work on the presentation.

At home: Print out the PPD stuff that hasn't been printed out yet. After this, work on coloring the scene I sketched out earlier this week. Obviously finish the toy presentation.

Saturday

Have a look at what I want to include in the portfolio and what still needs to be finished. Start for on the commentaries for every individual picture (just a short paragraph should be enough). Also do a planning sketch for the speedpaint.

Sunday

Get to work on the speedpaint. After this, work on a scene from crumbs I want to include in the show reel. Have a last check on the toy presentation and add final touches.

Looks like I have a busy weekend ahead of me. Hopefully I'm able to get all of this done in the time given. Once this is done, I'll work on a plan for the rest of the work. Until then, take care chaps! I'll be sure to update you all with my progress.

Making Da Magics

Don't mind me, I'm just makin' a My Little Pony themed post rather than talking about my actual work. Hey, I have to leave some stuff to talk about at the PPD session tomorrow, am I right?

The person who analyses various parts of MLP has made another video, this time about how the unicorns magic is made, which you can see in action in the above .gif. I know it might not be particularly useful for most of you but it's interesting nonetheless and you never know when you might need to apply such techniques to your work.

And also here are two friggin hilarious videos here of the princesses playing video games. I could say I was putting this up here primarily because of the really good flash work (which IS impressive) but the number one reason is the fact that it made me spray coffee all over my monitor. Which, considering my computer problems as of late, probably shouldn't be a good thing. But I'm choosing to take it as one!

The glue and crayons bit... dear GOD...

These kind of give me an idea for a couple of my characters actually... yay for inspiring character development!

*ahem* As for getting on with work, don't worry, I intend to work my pants off this weekend. I have an idea for the speedpaint, some non college projects and what scenes I need to work on for the show reel. I'm ready to kick ass and take names.

Awww yeeeeeah.

Take care, my dears!

Coming This Summer...

... well, no, probably not.

But check this out for a brief! Now, I'm having a hard time deciding...

Textured?

Or Non-textured?

Oh, I should probably explain what this is all about.

Yesterday, we were visited by someone who works at Oddco, a company in Newcastle that works on toys. They're mostly known for their Bad Taste Bears and also their Deadmau5 figures. Which I am now going to start collecting.

After presenting some examples of the toys and what the company is about, we were given an optional brief. This was to create our own series of toys to present to everyone next week. Just a few sketches and a general plan of what the toys were, what materials they were made of and so on. I thought it was a good chance to try something with my pigeons; try and make a little plastic collectible series.

And the best part is, if they like the design, it can be picked along with another four people to be made into an actual toy! Now isn't that pretty spiffy!

I think Blue agrees.

I think I'll have this coloured by the end of the week at the latest. Something to toss into the show reel AND have after the title card. And no, it won't be subtitled. I just wanted it to be clear what Blue was actually saying.

Finally, remember that Regular Show-esque pigeon doodle I did? Well, I put it up on Facebook to show people and I found some friends asking me to add eyebrows to it. So I figured, why not?

Here's the result.

One wanted a unibrow, one wanted Eugene Levy. Why not both?

I'm thinking of making a sort of collection of these, with every pigeon having one distinguishing/random feature. It'll be something to procrastinate with anyway.

Anyway, onto other news before I wrap up this entry. Yesterday I went with Dave, Callum, Paul and Paul Hess to have a look at the Star and Shadow Cinema that will be the venue where we will exhibit our work. Not for final show, this is after, where we call the shots and can present whatever we like, college animations or otherwise. It seems like a really suitable venue and we'll start working on preparations alongside our work. The exhibitions won't be until July.

And that's pretty much it for now. For the time being, I'm just gonna watch YouTube videos until it's time to catch my train. I'm feeling a tad iffy which I hope will pass soon. Being ill sucks.

*Insert witty title about coloured pictures here*

Make one up, I'm too lazy.

Today, I managed to finish the birds eye view of the Crumbs setting, just to give me an idea of where everything is. It's far from perfect but it's just a little guide for myself, really.

... the perfectionist wants to try and make this better but damnit, I have to get my priorities straight. This was only supposed to be a rough plan anyway.

So now I know where everything is. It'll help with consistency as well.

After that, I decided to colour some of the Berlin sketches. I'm considering including these in my portfolio as they show a bit of variety to my normal stuff. I'm not entirely sure what I was planning to do with Ginger in this picture but I knew that I wanted to use bright coloured and make everything dramatic yet make Ginger stand out. To my surprise, adding shadow and darkening Ginger's layer really made that work. At least in my opinion.

And my regular show Blue doodle... thing. I'm quite proud of it, even if its not entirely on model. Either way it's a nice change of my normal style. I might try drawing like this more often, if only to experiment more.

Paul said I should try doing more pictures like the one I did of me with the twisty arms and devil tail to try and push myself a bit more. I couldn't agree more; I had a lot of fun with that one. He also mentioned a company for me to look at that works by traditional means. Unfortunately I can't remember the name. I'll have to ask him when I next see him.

Now to print out my PPD stuff and look for life drawing references online. Yikes.

Emma's Serious Business Game Plan

Alright, time to get down to business.

I know I have a lot to get on with but it seems that all my priorities are tangled in the ol' noggin. So to help my sorry head out, I'll make this entry to make a list and organise said priorities.

• Animate important scenes of Crumbs
• Speedpaint
• Organise portfolio and writeups
• Show reel
• Sketch more in Berlin book
• Print out PPD shenanigans
• Geography of setting in Crumbs
• Life drawings and still lifes

Oh God, that's a lot of stuff to do. I'm scared.

... well, nevertheless I shall have to venture on. Who knows, if I get cracking, it'll seem like I have less to do than I really do, right?

... rrrrright?

OK, what am I going to do today... well, generally the best way to do stuff is to get the quicker tasks out of the way faster. That would obviously be the PPD stuff as I pretty much only have to print stuff out. I'll deal with that at home so consider that one taken care of. The geography of the park setting I can work on after this entry. I need to include some life and still life drawings which I would probably do at home (using references from the internet... I think asking my parents to pose would be weird. Fully clothed I could do but I doubt they'd want to stay still for any given length of time). And the speedpaint I can do whenever. So the ongoing things are the crumbs animation,  portfolio, sketchbook and showreel. So lets now put this in order of importance.

• Birds eye view of Crumbs setting
• PPD
• Life and Still Life drawings
• Speedpaint
• Animation and showreel
• Portfolio
• Sketchbook

Ahh, it's nice when your to do list gets all untangled. And now to get to work!

Crummy Little Interlude

This might be one of many as... well, this is quite awkward actually... I can't find my camera cable to transfer the clips and images. Seriously, it's like, gone. Normally it's always been there yet the one time I desperately need the bugger, it packs it's bags and pisses off to... well, somewhere that's not here.

WHERE I NEED IT.

Inconsiderate pile of- *AHEM* anyway. Never mind though, that just means I'll have to do those updates later.

So until then, here's a little something I just did. Callum told me about this nifty spiffy (See Rachel? I didn't say it!) program that can record whatever you're doing on screen- Camstudio I believe it's called. With this, I'll be able to maybe start doing speed paints and show all you totally interested folks how I make artings.

This was a mere practice though. Hence why it's completely shit.

Yeeeeah, not the best in the world. But once I get acquainted with Camstudio and my editing programs, I'm certain the quality will pick up a tad. Here's hoping anyway!

Pictoplasma Part Three

Two parts in one day! My my, aren't you lucky.

... yeah, I'm really sorry about this.

Anyway, here are most of the sketches I did while I was in Berlin. I wanted to take a sketchbook like I did last year and draw as much as I could. It's very easy to get inspired at Pictoplasma. So I took the chance to try and push myself, draw some unique stuff and try to develop my characters a bit further. I haven't included every sketch I did, mainly because I didn't like them that much or because some were practice comic thumbnails that I still need to develop further before I'll let anyone see them.

Unfortunately you haven't been spared from all these. Enjoy!

Sketches of Pictoplasma's yeti mascot from last year.

Sketches of Ginger, Tobias and Sara

Ruby and BF being loving and badass and all that jazz.
Also featuring pigeons. You'll be seeing more of them.

Potential character development. Tweak seems to approve of Scarlet.
It seems that she's one of the few to make his eyes look normal...

Both the 2011 and 2012 mascots from Pictoplasma interacting.
It seemed pretty funny to me.

Blue character sketch.

Pigeon mid flight sketch

Expression sketches for 'Not a Drinker'

Close up of detailed image. I might colour this.

Character sketches of a little chihuahua who keeps popping
out of my pencil every now and then. I might develop him somehow..

One of the sketches where I tried to push myself. I could see
Ginger doing something like this. I hope I haven't butchered the
anatomy too much.

Another new thinga-ma-jig. As Rachel was busy drawing grotesque
imagery for her animation, I was inspired to draw a zombie pigeon.
I don't know if Blue is more disgusted by the fact that its a zombie or
buy how bad the anatomy is.

... I was starting to get Regular Show withdrawals at this point.

Funny story about this one. When I showed the Regular Pigeon sketch to Rachel, she
told me it freaked her out because of the eyelashes and then sketched a pigeon with a
bow on her head to show she was a female. So this abomination was born in response.

Points if you can get the reference.

... I don't know. Chibi BF threatening Green I think. Maybe the pigeon
crapped on BF and he scrunk down to get revenge? Would make more sense
than some of the animations I'd seen anyway.

Updated character sketch for Mayor Fat Cat.
I lost the crummy moustache and gave him a fluffy maw instead.

This one... I'm not entirely sure actually. Some sort of McBess inspired thing I think.
The devil tail was Paul's idea, something about Pictoplasma bringing out a different side to you.
Works for me.

I liked the original photo so I'm including it. Haters to the left.

Blue trying to get Tweak to STFU and listen to her.

Another sketch of the previously mentioned chihuahua.
I think I'll call him Titan.

 

And this would be the Crumbs Hardback Comic Book cover.
IF I HAD ONE!
... sorry, almost lost the happy. BUT THE HAPPY'S BACK!

... I have Fairly Odd Parents on the brain for some reason.

Chick Blue protecting chick Pink. Potential backstory development?

Baby Lilac likes baby Blue for protecting baby Pink. Baby. Baby. Baby, oooooh~

Green being a dick as usual.

This pretty much sums up Pink and Green's relationship.
Can't take credit for the quote; I believe I read it on Frog Raccoon Strawberry.

Blue posing

Grayson being his usual lovestruck self. Also a sketch of Rick.

At this point I hadn't drawn anything else and so Rachel doodled a sad face.
Leading me to draw this. I... wait, I don't drink anymore, I can't use that as an excuse.

And fnally, last but not least, Rachel's dragon drawn in my... er, style, I suppose.

And if you haven't boiled your own eyes out from the sheer horror then congratulations for making it to the end! We'll be back tomorrow with stuff from the character walk! Whoop dee shoot.

Have a good 'un, bros.