Cycle of Walk

Well, I planned for shopping in Farnham at 9:00am, to then work before 10am in G01 but I got out of bed at 11:15.

Cold has, for the most part, cleared up now - which is great. Whilst making my tea the cleaner came up - a different one than who I usually see. Whilst waiting for his bucket to fill, he told me "this place is usually clean compared to others" - it was a nice compliment. I said we try, and although he admitted again that whilst it isn't spotless, it's still a fair job.

Sometime at 12, at headed into Farnham for a spot of shopping. Mainly - DVD-Rs (cases for them). Quick snoop at Waitrose had the discs themselves. of course, but they were in the 'cake' packaging which wasn't what I was after. Headed instead to WHSmith - and there I found a variety. Picked up a pack of 10 for £10.99. Ah yeah, before heading to town I also dropped the lightbox back to the library. Lacking any hole-punched paper (it has specific to the peg bar) made it useless. :(

So with that done, I rested a bit and headed to G01 to finish off my walk cycle. Not a lot of light boxes were actually being used at the time - only about 6 or so. Everyone else were working on their sketchbooks. Added in the last few frames, and waited about for a line tester to be available. As it happened, one eventually was - at the far end. On the flop side, this was a line tester hooked up to a Mac, whose Dragon software failed to export the animations last time. But this time could be different so I re-shot the frames; plus the resolution and picture quality is better.

With all the frames taken, I eagerly hit the spacebar to watch the result - the walk was silky-smooth, and character illuminated from my efforts. I did hick-up on about 4 frames - one misplaced a little near the beginning, and three were a back-to-front on a leg lift, but they didn't detract too much from the believability of the performance. I'm glad I gave the stickman an eccentric jive to its walk in the end - it has added a lot to the essence of the animation. Drawing this simple walk cycle and seeing its results has given me confidence that I can leave as fluent and strong impulse to other next exercises. I can't stop watching it!

With that out the way, I went to export it to QuickTime and...it failed. So: don't use this line-tester again. I shoved the Dragon files themselves - both the ball bounce and walk cycle - onto my USB dongle and shifted to a Mac next door. Alas, QuickTime exported them fine and even better, I finally got the ball bounce done too.

One of the guys (who has frequented G01 as much as me, as of recent) told me that tomorrow Ron and Andy only want the sketchbook and comic-strips handed in. Well damn. That's good news but threw me off a touch as well. Besides that, at least I don't have to stick the animations on disc quite yet. I could get on with the character motivation exercise now but I didn't think to bring the frames with me.

Instead...I tried animating a bit of my own inspiration. Just passionately going for it - just whatever I felt could and should be done within me. That said, I tried roughing out some sketches for a punch scene I had in mind. Inspired by anime (Yup.) and director/animator Mamoru Hosoda, I wanted to see if this 'energy' of movement in mind could translate well into paper. Did some rough guides, going from a stern, standing position to a broadly-hunched wind-up to a punch and finally to an almost fish-eye perspective of the punch about to be delivered. These words are hard to follow, basically one of the things I had always wanted to explore is bringing the exaggeration and the energy of a fight into animation. Of course, most animations and their fights are exaggerated to begin with - but I want to refine the subtle details. Impacts of a punch, for instance, must be irresistible to play around with.

I'll scan and show the work done so far in any case at some point - and maybe even a line-test if I get far enough with it.

Headed off shortly and silently without saying a good-bye. Reviewed my animations a couple of times on the laptop. Eventually headed upstairs to put on some dinner. Sophie, Rob, Georgia and Yannis got back with shopping. It was nice to see everyone together again after a good week or so - in particular Rob and Sophie! Put on the spaghetti bolognese and caught up with everyone. Rob noticed my apparent cold. After eating my dinner, Jamie popped up. "McJAMMIN'!!" gleed Sophie, and Jamie snarkely responded "...Who're you?" I love it when he shoots her down like that. :(

Doorbell rung and I popped down to see who it was, probably a friend of Yannis or them lot out for a smoke. Nope! It was two Fashion students selling Krispy Kreme doughnuts, door-to-door, for a pound. (to fund their fashion show, if I recall) No thanks. I "reassured" them that I'd tell my fellow housemates upstairs. When I returned to the kitchen, they asked me right off the bat who that was. I told them "just two people selling Krispy Kireme doughnuts" - "Krispy Kreme!?" asked Sophie in a surprise. Yeah, and I told her it was for £1. Surprised by the apparent great value there (I didn't think so) Sophie reached out the kitchen window to call for their response. When confirmed of their whereabouts in the student village, Sophie darted out the house in an act to get her hands on some delights. She returned shortly - with two of the confections and a balloon. Yannis returned from his room to the kitchen and witnessed Sophie with them and further enquired how she obtained these items. He himself followed suit and went looking for the fashion students. The two of them outside kept screaming out their selling of Krispy Kremes which grated on Rob's nerves. (I almost got him to belt insults at them through the window - one of his more noticeable traits)

Man, after looking at the website though...I feel inclined to go hunt some of the places down when I return for Christmas. Mr.Donuts in Japan was awesome - irresistible places to visit and eat, my two companions would agree as well. Krispy Kreme looks just as good, so.... :(

Tomorrow I'm to hand in my sketchbook work so far. I've done most, if not all the required stuff so far - it's just a case of binding together the diary comics and tidying up the book.