Yeesh, there's more Ps in that title than on a public bathroom floor!
... I'm sorry.
Today Dave wanted to talk to me about making up a portfolio for my interviews. Basically I need to think of college projects, personal projects and clips to put in said portfolio in both A3 and in a show reel respectively. I'll need to think about that a bit more. I've got a few things I've worked on out of college that I want to include, such as caricatures, Underdog character developments and so on but I also need to decide what is strong out of my college work. I feel the need to redo a few things. I think the strongest things that could be featured are my E4 e-sting works and what I'm working on now.
My main concern is that I've basically got a full portfolio of character designs, storyboards and portraits but not much else. I think I might experiment with set design and do backgrounds and so on to feature in the portfolio. Obviously I'll discuss this with Dave beforehand.
Moving on, I've finally finished the poster that my friend Ellen wanted me to design for her. As I've mentioned before, Ellen co-hosts a radio show every Monday evening called The Cocktail Hour and as I'd designed a poster for them before, she wanted me to do one again, this time with her, Dave and Scott. I was more than happy to oblige and got right into it, despite the poster not turning out the way I wanted it to. Stubborn thing that it was. But eventually it co-operated with me and here we have the final result.
As you can see, I like rainbows. It contrasts nicely with the simplistic colours in the rest of the poster. And you probably won't get the chicken teapot reference if you haven't heard the show. They're really happy with it and will be using it as their Facebook picture. I think I'm basically their poster designer now. Sweeet.
It's been over a week since the last update and quite a few things have happened, all of them rather spiffy. Lets get right to that, shall we?
1. My cold packed its bags and left, off to infect some other poor soul. Sucks for them but yay for me!
2. I passed my theory test on Tuesday! My first driving lesson in over a year will be this upcoming Tuesday.
3. I've been asked for an interview at both the places I applied for through UCAS- Northumbria University wants to see me on the 29th February and Newcastle College on the 8th March. I need to put a portfolio together for both. If anyone has any advice, please don't be afraid to share it with me!
4. I have completed my animatic (alas without sound) and presented it to Dave, Paul and everyone else yesterday. Overall it went very well and now that the animatic is done, I can hit the ground running with the animation. I've already got plans for marketing: posters to everywhere, clips on this blog and on Facebook, concept art anywhere I can put it... the possibilities! I converted to the Facebook Timeline and the cover pic is pigeons, pigeons, PIGEONS.
Ah yes. Life is good.
Yesterday, I went to Ashleigh's house after college, having been promised a nice meal and some relaxation goof offing time. But it was a trap. She wanted revenge on me for inflicting the impossible six legged sausage on her (God rest Erik's soul... actually no, sizzle in Hell, you phallic shaped abomination! SIZZLE!).
So she trapped me in her living room, tied me to a chair, threw Vaseline at my face and then covered it in mod rock, blinding me and only leaving my mouth uncovered, which she then used to stuff a pack of frozen sausages in, cackling with laughter as I sat there breathing through my nose.
Obviously I survived, to her disappointment. But hey, she got a really snazzy mask out of it!
... Yeah, obviously I'm talking rot (you could never fit a pack of sausages in there no matter how big anyone says my gob is). The real reason my face was mod rocked was for an interesting side project that Ashleigh is working on, something to do with her character Caelyn. I hear she mod rocked her arms too. Hopefully we find out what she's working on there; I colour myself intigued. And hey, Caelyn must be a nice lookin' fella if he's got my features. El oh el.
Lets see, what else... oh yes, my better half''s birthday was last tuesday and, as he's become quite the fan of Deadmau5, I took the opportunity to make his picture revolve around that somewhat. I also hadn't drawn Ruby and BF for quite a while and therefore decided to combine the two. Here is what came of it.
Ruby didn't seem to realise that Deadmau5 uses a material to be able to see through the mouth. Oops. Ah she means well. And BF appreciates it too. Or he will once he stops laughing at the sight of her crashing into everything with a big mousehead on.
... ooh, I also attempted to do 24 Hour Comic Day this year but sadly I had too much college work to get done on time. Curses, foiled again! I did manage to get three hours done though. Here they be for your amusement.
And finally, here are some stills (well, I'll count them as stills, they're coloured frames of the animatic but they might be redrawn) of Crumbs.Which yes, is now it's official name.
And because I'm super nice, I'll share with you the opening of the animatic. This part has sound and everything (which didn't work on the finished animatic for some reason. Oh well.)
You won't be seeing more of the animatic on the blog I'm afraid. At least not any time soon. Don't want to spoil things for anyone after all.
Now, I really should get to work on that poster I promised Ellen...
Well, everything is going pretty well for the most part. Except for my head cold which is kicking my proverbial bottom (which makes no sense, considering if anything it should be kicking me in the head... heh... ain't that a kick in the heeeeeead!).
But that's literally the only thing that's relatively sucky right now. I'm pretty much organised in what works needs to be done for my project and as my new theory test date draws nearer (which I ain't tellin'!) I'm having to juggle studying for that with finishing my presentation and continuing the animatic but it's actually not all that problematic. I think I'm just used to being left to my own devices and coping with various things.
It certainly helps to organise everything though. So on that note, lets figure out what the old SMART targets are for this week and plan my next few days.
S- Specifically I have to have the presentation for my work complete by this time next week, along with the new script, treatment, proposal and, at the very least, the animation for the animatic done (if I don't manage to get all the sound effects and voice work added. If I do, obviously this will be done by then). If i get al of these done, I will have a head start on working on everything else, especially if I add sound to my animatic. In terms of a non-college goal, I need to pass the criteria for the Theory Test study site I've been using so they can pay for my next three resits if I fail my test. I would prefer to do this before Monday at the latest. The reason I want to achieve this is obvious. I want to finally start driving lessons again and I'm tired of failing this thing.
M- I'll know for a fact I'll have done what I planned when the animation for the animatic is complete to go along with the presentation. I'm certain a week will be long enough for me to get everything done.
A- I don't think this is particularly unachievable. The only aspect I am being a bit more flexible with is adding the sound to the animatic, which I would achieve in a perfect world but obviously I do not want to stress myself out and add more pressure to myself than I need to. If anything, the most stressful thing this week is studying for the theory. To achieve my goals, I will work on a plan that will organise what I will get done on what days and what specific tasks will be given priority.
R- The majority of my goals are relevant as we are presenting our ideas next week, which includes a Powerpoint presentation including a proposal and treatment. The animatic was also included in this and also gives us all quick start in animating the final piece. The theory studying is particularly relevant as my test is... soon. Like, very soon. The only thing not particularly relevant is finishing adding the sound, which I've already mentioned and is low on the priority list.
T- I've set myself a week in total to get the college work done and till Monday to get my theory studying done. This time next week I'll have the presentation complete with an animated animatic and (hopefully!) with my theory passed.
Normally I do a weekly plan but to be quite frank, I keep spacing out cos of this gosh-darned cold (which I still believe is the plague) and don't think I'll really be able to focus on thinking ahead in much detail right now. So I'll just discuss today's plan, which is studying my theory for two hours, working on my CV if I don't finish it at college and if I have the motivation and haven't bashed my head against the wall out of desperation, I'll finished some of the presentation work.
Hopefully my head will be clearer soon so I can think about organising my work in further detail soon. Right now, it's a bit too much like this. I'll get back to you.
Well, I'm pleased to say I passed both modules. It was said on my feedback sheet that I didn't stray from my comfort zone, which I can't really deny. Yes, my strengths are in traditional/character design/2D/concept art, that whole general chestnut but I should have really taken the opportunity to try and expand my skills in other fields. I'd be lying if I said I didn't try to however, I kept trying to use Cinema 4D for Erik and I did get to use a few sequences, even if they couldn't be used in the end due to... I'm sorry, I know a bad workman blames his tools but Cinema 4D is self aware and doesn't want to work if it takes a dislike to you. But damnit, I tried.
But I suppose they mean I didn't use the editing programs as that aspect was covered by other people in the group. So taking that on board and now that I am back to my own original project, I'm now going to have to gain better skills in using such programs. Up until recently, I had been using Jasc Animation Shop 3 to tie the frames together and converting them in various files to put them in Windows Movie Maker (I was young and naive!), add sound and then convert a ridiculous other number of times before I finally got a mov. file. You don't need to tell me that all that was needless and pointless; I just seemed to enjoy doing things the hard way back then. I've since grown sense and started to animate frames in Photoshop, which is tons easier and as I've acquired a lot of adobe programs, I've started to use After Effects to add sound effects and clips together. I was a little apprehensive about using it at first but I was surprised at how quickly it came to me. It was basically a case of importing the mov. clips or sound clips and placing them in order on the timeline. I did find it a bit confusing to convert the file back into a mov. at first but I got there eventually. Now that I can confidently use an editing program that's on my own laptop, I feel it opens a lot of options up and I'll certainly be using it a lot from now on.
Anyway, I'm nearly done with the treatment and I'll get to work on the proposal and the presentation later today. I'm feeling pretty good in terms of getting work done as the presentations won't actually happen until NEXT Friday as Dave won't be in at the end of this week to see them. Sometimes it's good when life turns out your way. I should definitely have the animatic done by then to present to everyone, voices and all. I plan to have all the animatic animated by Wednesday of next week at the latest, giving me Thursday to do the voices. As of this week though, the presentation and proposal are the main priority.
Now, I'm a bit stuck on something at the moment. As you recall, I've coloured the backgrounds in my animatic, being the odd person that I am. I do like how they look now but as I'm doing the pigeons in a lind of papery cut out look, I'm considering doing the backgrounds in a similar way as well. As of now it's just an idea, I might feel different about it later. I'll put the two versions of the same background up together for reference.
Both of them have their pros and cons... the main one with the cut out version being I'm worried it's too distracting and will divert attention from the characters. I think once I've featured some of the characters in both versions, my decision will be easier to make.
And here are some more pictures of the animatic. Just a bit of padding cos I don't have much else to say.
It's always amusing to see all the frames together in a tangled mess before putting them in order.I've more or less got the first sequence done, complete with sunrise and a view of the area, which I won't show just yet. Otherwise I'll be showing the whole animatic at this rate.
Speaking of the area, I've changed the setting of the animation. Instead of an urban town, the pigeons will now be residing in a park. And as the piece will no longer have narration, I'm thinking of changing the name from Pigeon Planet to Crumbs.
... ah what the heck, I'll show some stills. I'm feeling generous today.
As you'll probably have noticed, I've been colouring the backgrounds instead of the characters at this point. I'll save the characters for when I'm working on the real deal.
I'm starting to feel much more confident about this piece again! Here's hoping that'll last...
And here's Grayson again. Because I love Grayson and everybody else should too.
Mum says not to call them caricatures because they don't exaggerate people's features that much but as of right now, I'm not really sure what to call them.
But yes. Today is Mum's birthday and Dad commissioned me to draw a picture of Mum for his gift to her. I actually didn't take too long to do this in comparison to the other caricatures I've done. I think this is because I didn't use a reference, already knowing what Mum looks like in detail.
I try to always go with a theme that I think the receiver of the art will enjoy. For example, Mum's favourite colour is green and the simplistic black and white background with added sparkle is a design she's quite fond of. So taking all this into account, everything was in the back of my mind already so this was very easy.
I'm happy to say Mum loved the picture. Dad felt good that he'd gotten something Mum would genuinely love and I'm now £20 richer. Everybody wins!
Now, onto my pigeon work. I've decided to redo my script. Not deviate by much but instead of have a narrator, I think I'll have the pigeon's talk to each other and have the animation just be how they cope with situations. This will mean I'll need to round me up some voice actors. I'll ask around and see who's interested.
The clips I'm about to show you are from the new script. Both Green and Pink are drunk from alcohol some one left around and Green convinces Pink to go and steal a whisker from the infamous angry cat. In his drunken, post-puke state, Pink doesn't take much convincing.
I created this to give a bit of context and explain why Pink does the dangerous thing that makes him lose his foot in the first place. I also think that having him hungover and woozy would bring a bit more humour to the situation than him standing there in shock.
Here are the clips in order. No sound or VO work is added just yet. I'll be voicing the characters for the animatic. And no, I'm not saying what the exact lines are just yet. Spoilers.
Which I would have presented to you all sooner but I had to go to Scotland immediately after hand in and wasn't able to get online the whole time I was there. And I forgot to do it yesterday. Oops.
So here are the finished idents! Well... finished-ish.
OK, long story short, we felt that for various reasons we weren't able to have the idents complete to everyone's satisfaction. Now, as far as I'm concerned, the Library and Dragging sequences were fine. The Park one however just wanted to give everybody grief and eventually we just had to hand it in as is. I'm sad it had to be this way as this was the sequence that featured the flower I created. But hey ho, these things happen I suppose.
...Well this is embarrassing. It seems that blogger keeps failing my server or whatever so no matter what I do, I can't upload any of the videos on here at this point. Well that sucks. I suppose I'll have to try again later and give a detailed opinion of each one.
After a few days of unsuccessfully trying to use blogger to upload the videos, I decided to see if anyone in my group uploaded them onto YouTube. Rachel has all the videos on her blog linked from Youtube (maybe I should have done the whole unlisted thing she did... that would require using my brain though) and so I hope she won't mind me pinching them from her channel.
We'll start with the Park sequence. As you can see, it looks kind of trippy. We'd like to say this was because the point of view of the audience was high or something but it was because for some reason Final Cut Pro or After Effects or whatever abomination we'd decided to work with decided to create some strange effect. If we'd had time, we could have put in some weird sounding music to add to the freakiness of it all. Come to think of it, I did find some bird sounds and general background noise tracks but sadly there wasn't time to put it in... or rather if I'd suggested putting it in at the time, I might have gotten a Mac thrown at my head. Which probably would have been deserved.
Eh, maybe I'm being too hard on this one. It does create an interesting effect, even if it is intentional and the flower I animated does do its job at least. Not to mention Rachel's reaction to it.
And look at me in the background being dragged by Lien's box. Now THAT'S comedy!
Here's the one I was shown being dragged by the creatures. I love the character's movement, especially Rachel's character's tail and Ashleigh's little ball dude falling and being dragged along as well. So cute!
Not to mention yours truly kissing the gravel. And featuring the grungy MTV logo I threw together. All in all, good stuff. I like the music as well and the logo's movement.
And I think this one might be my personal favourite. I'm afraid not many of my contributions made it into the final piece sadly. The speech bubbles were scuppered by Cinema 4D and Erik was foiled by much of the same. However, you do see my back as the camera moves and the music playing was discovered by me. Check out idiotech sometime, there's fantastic music of various genres on there, all free moneywise and royaltywise.
I think what makes this one my favourite is the logo. Rachel did a top notch job there. I just love how it all works together with the music, which is top notch editing. Bravo!
It's possible we MIGHT be redoing some idents, even trying new ideas entirely. Zoe expressed an interest in light graffiti which brings nostalgic memories of a Photography project I did in Sixth Form. If everyone was interested, we might do that. Obviously depends on how much we can get done with our final films taking priority.
As we are now off for assessment week, it's back to pigeons! Yep, I have to work on an animatic, storyboards, scripts and present all of them and whatnot when I go back next week. I'm unsure of what I want to do with it now though. My previous ideas don't seem as appealing to me as they did at the start of the year... I think I'll ponder it more over dinner but I absolutely must start my animatic tomorrow. No time to lose!
In the mean time, I found this on tumblr that I think could be very helpful to us all. It certainly has been to me.
As you can see, I even attempted some exaggerated movement with Grayson. Not sure why he's running so fast or why he looks so freaked. My best guess would be that he's either running away from his brother or he's late for work.
Huh. At least I can upload pictures...
Anyway, expect to see more pigeons from me soon, you lucky ducks.
