Nose bleeeeeeed

On Saturday I went into the shower, literally just got in shampoo'd and then it happened. The biggest nose bleed I have had in a very very long time!
I didn't know what to do cause it wouldn't stop and my hands weren't doing anything to staunch it.
I turned the shower off and waited for the rest of me to dry, then stepped over to the bath (leaving a bloody footprint on the floor) and sat in there. I kept thinking how embarrassing it would be if I fainted and someone had to come in to help me cause I was completely starkers.
I had blood all over my face, all down my arms, on my torso and feet. I looked like I had eaten someone.
We have a random ob-long mirror in our bathroom so I could see everything. I wanted a camera. How often do you see that much blood up close?
Unfortunately I didn't have one in there (not sure why you would...) so I drew it instead.
I promise you this is not exaggerating...naked and bloody

Woah, big post ahoy!

I'm not sure why I called this post that... it has nothing to do with pirates... never mind.

I havn't posted in ages because I have had a lot of work to do. This term we had two modules, one is our production studies (which is due in on Jan 11... wish us luck), the other is professional practice. For this we had to create a blog (I had this one already, but it was a really good opportunity to re-vamp it a bit), write an animation CV, write 2 covering letters to places we might want to work and create a buisness card. Then we had to hand in a folder with all the designs and thought processes that went into everything. That was due in on Thursday, I handed in on time which is always good. 

We had a mini animation christmas thing at the same time where we could get to meet some more animation students. Something they havn't done before, it was really nice. Everyone was free to flick through the folders, so every so often I'd look over and someone was looking through my work who I didn't know. It was quite an interesting experience.

I'm fairly confident that everyone who completed the module will do fine.

Night before the dead line I was so awake and in a really good drawing mood, something not to be ignored. I ended up staying up till about 2 drawing my main character Neeva. Here are some sketches. 

       

After these warm up sketches I decided to re-visit some of this years life drawing and put Neeva in the poses. I have only done a few of them, but I enjoyed doing it so will probably do some more in the future.

Some sketches

So these are just a few quick sketches I did before we started animation. We are now on clean up so they are a bit old. But kind of sweet none the less.

'Home Sweet Home'

My housemate, Niomi, is creative writer for animation and we thought it would be a fun idea to collaborate. She would give me some ideas for character designs and I would design them. I'm hoping it's something we can continue for a while.
Here's our first try;

Home sweet Home is a story created by Niomi about a retirement home for childhood fantasy characters such as the Tooth Fairy. The idea being that parents are taking over the character's 'jobs' leaving them no choice but to retire.
Unfortunately, due to the fact that they aren't needed anymore, they have developed various social disorders.
These are some working sketches for two of the characters:

The Easter Bunny

He is extremely fat and is constantly comfort eating. He no longer has to deliver his eggs, so not only does he have a huge supply to munch on, he doesn't get any exercise either. He  has one glass eye because he ate so much chocolate that his real one fell out. He is particularly sensitive about it and so is a very antisocial. He is prone to anxiety and is often binge eating alone in his room.

The Tooth Fairy

Miss Tooth is a kleptomaniac. After years of taking teeth unnoticed she has developed a rather distressing theft problem. After having to give out shiny pennies and never having anything for herself, she now can not resist a shiny object when she sees one. Although you'd never expect her of anything as she's a cute grandmother figure who smells pleasantly of mouthwash.

Fireflies

Its about time I put some things up here about our group project. We are creating a 90 second short film in a team of three. It's a hand drawn piece, and new experience for all of us.
We have actually finished animating and I have already cleaned up 2 scenes. Its really exciting seeing things come together.

It was my main job to create our characters. They are cute little creatures which ended up being a mixture of red panda, rabbit and squirrel.
I'm quite happy with them and they are rather fun to draw.
If you want to see more about the film our production blog is:
Fireflies

I don't think we're in Kansas anymore...

So me and my house mate stayed up very late watching Wicked on YouTube, thats right, the whole musical! The actress who played Glinda was incredible! She did alot of cute hopping and twirling. She also used a lot of twinkly spirit fingers. Anyway, I now give you some fan art.

"With a Gahhhhh"

"beautiful"

 And because no Oz post would be complete with out her:

What a weekend!

My sister came to visit me in Bristol, a long promised trip (since her birthday in June!!!) We started off by going to see the new Harry Potter film at 11pm with all my flat mates. It was decided by everyone that the film was suprisingly good. I though the pace worked and the actors have stepped it up a gear, finally! There were two suprises in the film. The first being that I found I really like Emma Watson! I thought she looked absolutly beautiful and she was probably the best actor in the film. This is quite a bit thing as I though she was rubbish in the other films and somewhat stuck up in her interviews. But I'm glad she was good, I don't like not liking someone, even if I'm never going to meet them.
The second suprise was the bit of animation that was placed in the middle. I thought it was a good idea but why godness why did they have to do it in poor quality cg!!! Just because it's there doesn't mean you have to use it! It was our opinion collectively (as a house) that the animation should have been done using shadow puppets or chalk and charcol animation. It spoilt it a little bit, especially after the rest of the film was so beautifully shot. I guess you can't win everything though.
Saturday was jam packed with a shopping trip to cabot where I speant a lot of money (oops)
I also managed to get myself a free dinner at a family friends, the best couliflower soup I have ever had, hands down! (I wish I had some right now....)
Then to the Tobacco Factory for the Stroud Theatre's production of 1984. To be honest, I had just said yes so I could see my mum and my brother (I'm such a home bird) and boy am I glad I did. Embaressingly I didn't know what the play was, I have head of it in different forms (V for Vendetta for example) but not by that name.
It was acted out by 8 people, 1 set and some rather beautiful and disturbing animation.
I think it was probably the best thing I have ever seen.
Seven of the actors swapped between narrators and characters, seamlessly and one man played the main character Winston. It was very proper acting, complete with alot of spitting.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=hiyv1sxMu0Q

There was a scene where Winston is thrown into room 101, the door are on wheels and make a screen behind him. The actor is there for a while but the projection of the animation stays longer and gets more horrible. He is swamed by a sea of rats which cover him wherever he try to escape in the room. Truely it was heartbraking.

I have never cried at a play, but this one upset me to the core and I just wanted to cry until there were no more tears.

More arts!

So this weeks life drawing was not so successful, I don't know if it was the fact that I was over tired or it was really cold but I just couldn't connect.

Having said this I think it was a really valuable lesson in perseverance. I felt I couldn't just get up and go, so I stuck it out and got to the end of the session.

I like that every week we try to incorporate narrative to the poses, here are some of the sketches that I managed to do. The range from 30 seconds to 5 minutes.

I was getting more into the drawing by this stage, we had embarked on the 30 second challenge and it was fun. Though I don't know about you, but I found drawing 3 figures really hard to draw in such a short period of time.

Weirdly it was doodling some Tangled art that calmed me down. I'm really excited about the film and have probably spoilt it for myself by watching every clip I can find and pouring through a lot of online art work. It was pretty happy though as one of the clips made me laugh out loud, defiantly a good sign.

Buses and sorrow

 This week in life drawing we had to place our subjects into frames, as if we were storyboarding. It was a really fun excercise. I'm only just getting into storyboarding and it was really interesting to see that where you place the people really effects the mood and even their social standing.

This picture was particularly challenging because we had to draw them looking up from a mirror, as if they were under the floor. Unfortunatly we ran out of time and had to finish there, but it would have been fun to try a few more poses from this angle -  

Yay

http://parkablogs.com/content/book-review-art-of-tangled

I'm so chuffed that I have pre-ordered the art of Tangled!! It honestly looks like its going to be the best art of book yet... well, for I want. There are loads of character poses and shiv! How exciting! Now I just have to wait till the 4th of December to get it!

Today's Life Drawing

This week we were doing sequential poses, which was really usful for me. Most of theses are 3 minute poses so we had to get the information down quickly. Really enjoyed this week though.

Life Drawing 2

Ok here are my drawings from last weeks life drawing. By the end I just wanted to draw in coloured pencil, I guess they are softer. I didn't feel so confident about that week's drawings but still enjoyed it.

Thought of the day....

People are really nice.

I, along with a team of students, have been conducting research into the job roles and career paths of concept art. (I myself am more interesting in character design, but its good to know what to look out for.)
Anyway, the research has included emailing to people out in the industry and asking them questions about what they do.
I wasn't sure how many people would actually have time to do this, but I have managed to get 3 finished questionaires and a load more saying that they will!
Anyway... this resulted in me getting very excited!

If you havn't looked at these guys already look now!!!
http://leisha-riddel.blogspot.com/
http://pringading.blogspot.com/
http://melmillerart.blogspot.com/
http://tanyajscott.blogspot.com/

and whilst I'm linking check these guys out too ----
http://amandazima.blogspot.com/
http://inner-workings-of.blogspot.com/
http://heidschoetter.blogspot.com/

Mr Bingley

Mr Bingley is my Boyfriend's housemate's hamster. He is absolutly adorable and pretty special to boot. He like to sleep in the most odd positions, like with his head hanging down a tube or with his body in the most curved part of a tube. He is a pretty curious creature, but was happy enough to let me draw him. (Actually quite hard considering hamsters, when awake, don't stop moving).

The urge to try and draw him over took, here are some sketches..

Waterfalls and Wolves

A spot of life drawing

The first of the new term, yay!

SS Great Britian Project

Last year we got the chance to work on part of a film for UWE. It was a project called SS Great Britain - The Incredible Journey. I was really excited, it's the first proper animation 'job' I've had. Although we didn't have any creative input it was really interesting.

Mostly it was a scene colouring job, but we also had the chance to do a bit of character animation. I jumped at the chance and was given 2 scenes to paint and 2 to animate.

With the project completed I sort of forgot about it and I have missed my chance to get my hands on my finished scenes which was really stupid.

However, the film is shown on the SS Great Britain and my name, along with a list of others in my year, is listed in the credits. I was really excited when I saw that.

My work is mingled in the third part of the film, which is more 2D based.

I have the scenes from before I worked on them somewhere, will upload when I can. But for now; this is the link to the full film.

http://www.ssgreatbritain.org/movie/index.html

Sketches

These are a few sketches that I have done over the summer, I have more but I need to scan them in at some point!

So the girl and guy are some designs that I have made for a fan fic of Peter Pan. It's Peter and the girl is Esme.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy

XXX

Tangled!

Anyone else really excited?!