I wouldn't put it past me to suddenly stop writing this entry and slam-dunk my mind into dreamland.
But anyway - I slipped a few more days again from the exertion of working. If I really wanted to be committed to my blog, then I wouldn't keep on letting these instances take place. Saying that, it's just one week to go until Friday 17th - the day I break up for the holiday. From the current position that I stand in with my work, I have to say, I don't feel too ecstatic about this.
This morning I was up at...well, there wasn't any awakening whatsoever since that requires falling asleep - something I ignored doing altogether. Throughout the night I had worked on my storyboards and designs, ideally to try and hit a good enough spot on where I want the story to go in context with the movements.
In case I haven't wrapped up the current plan for the 30" animation yet (probably not):
The animation, of course needing to be 30 seconds in length, also needs to demonstrate an amalgamation of previous exercises done before into the feature presentation. This includes a variety of techniques like the lip syncing, walking and squash/stretch.
Many a person studying in my course of course have both large ambitions and high expectations so a powerful story or cool scene paves the way for their plots. I went with various others - going the simpler route. In my animation, there is no particularly exciting backbone to the story, or over-arching character issues...
Nope - it's actually just me waking up to discover snow in the morning - basing it off the recently occurred weather event. The reason here is essentially down to my desire to use backgrounds, as well as having something logical and manageable for voice acting. I'm no professional, and I can't see any reason to prepare a potentially inciting piece of movie to only have it shattered by unbelievable voice acting. That's pretty cynical of me, but really - I'm in no shape for voice acting yet.
Since my ability to draw wasn't sufficient enough, I turned to How to Draw Anime & Game Characters, as well as Mamoru Hosoda's designs. I think I mentioned this before. I feel my drawings have improved vastly though, so I'm keen to continue practising from the book(s) over the Christmas holidays when I get the chance.
Tuesday, 14 December 2010
Wednesday, 8 December 2010
Inspiration!
Up at 12:15pm again today. I did get some good sleep so this is becoming inexcusable.
Because I just wasn't sure which direction to take my design for myself as a character, some obvious Anime Design 101 was essential. I love Mamoru Hosoda's design work so I punched a few of his films into Google image search to find various screenshots. I sketched/traced a number of screenshots involving Makoto from The Girl Who Leapt Through Time - as well as any other characters of the film that were included in various shots of her.
To try and understand that Hosoda magic of the designs, I copied various emotions of Makoto (and I believe it's a principle in design work to draw different emotions) and I was sort of beginning to pick it up. When it came to drawing the leading male characters, it struck me how dimensional the sides of the face are - it's not simply a case of "Well here is where the ear would be when the face wraps around...", there is some bizarre feeling of depth to the face.
Before moving onto some more of Hosoda's filmography, I whipped out Tadashi Ozawa's 'How to Draw Anime & Game Characters' Vol. 1. Whilst flicking through the earlier pages...I was shocked. The basic face structures, including eyes, nose and dimensions were pretty much line for line to Hosoda's designs - granted, his designs are fairly generic in terms of anime but I had always thought there was more to it. Well, his mouth shapes and opal eyes are fairly distinctive; but the fundamental to drawing things in 3D lead to exactly the same results.
I carried on further with drawing some of the characters from Summer Wars - the leading male character in particular. When drawing him in various shots where his head is faced oblique to the left or right it surprised me how much difficulty I was having getting the distance of the ears to the eyes correct - as well as how far apart the eyes had to be from one another. After too many occasions of rubbing out and rectifying, I finally got it right.
My mistake? It's my old nemesis. I draw the back of the head too small.
Last year I toppled the issue by learning to draw the outline of the face much smaller to the initial circle but often still run into issues where I just cannot correctly 'hinge' the ears to the jawline. Often, the ears end up being too far back and the balance of the face is resultantly thrown off. I'd have to practically scratch in some extra skull with the pencil! Now I am getting a little bit better at maintaining a sense of balance to the head of the character.
John and Nikki wants our family - the Siresu-Mani-Jajopi family - to do something together before we break up for the Christmas. When John requested for some ideas on a date and what to do, I suggested that on Saturday we go ice skating or eat out. Sinoun jumped out to the idea of ice skating, loving that kind of activity. Eventually, Nikki came along and decided on plan of eating over at someone's place, and then playing pool down at one of the pubs (Forgot the name - I played there with Luko. William Cobbet?). Everyone decided it was the best, most suiting plan for the day. I agree.
Later shot to the Waitrose before it closed. I brought a pizza, and back home whipped it into the oven. Yannis and Georgia also were having pizza - but theirs was from Dominos. Unfortunetly, Georgia's was cold, they didn't have any dips and the side-dishes were also lukewarm. It's just as well I got mine from Waitrose of all the times. On the flip side, Georgia and Yannis did get a free drink.
Because I just wasn't sure which direction to take my design for myself as a character, some obvious Anime Design 101 was essential. I love Mamoru Hosoda's design work so I punched a few of his films into Google image search to find various screenshots. I sketched/traced a number of screenshots involving Makoto from The Girl Who Leapt Through Time - as well as any other characters of the film that were included in various shots of her.
To try and understand that Hosoda magic of the designs, I copied various emotions of Makoto (and I believe it's a principle in design work to draw different emotions) and I was sort of beginning to pick it up. When it came to drawing the leading male characters, it struck me how dimensional the sides of the face are - it's not simply a case of "Well here is where the ear would be when the face wraps around...", there is some bizarre feeling of depth to the face.
Before moving onto some more of Hosoda's filmography, I whipped out Tadashi Ozawa's 'How to Draw Anime & Game Characters' Vol. 1. Whilst flicking through the earlier pages...I was shocked. The basic face structures, including eyes, nose and dimensions were pretty much line for line to Hosoda's designs - granted, his designs are fairly generic in terms of anime but I had always thought there was more to it. Well, his mouth shapes and opal eyes are fairly distinctive; but the fundamental to drawing things in 3D lead to exactly the same results.
I carried on further with drawing some of the characters from Summer Wars - the leading male character in particular. When drawing him in various shots where his head is faced oblique to the left or right it surprised me how much difficulty I was having getting the distance of the ears to the eyes correct - as well as how far apart the eyes had to be from one another. After too many occasions of rubbing out and rectifying, I finally got it right.
My mistake? It's my old nemesis. I draw the back of the head too small.
Last year I toppled the issue by learning to draw the outline of the face much smaller to the initial circle but often still run into issues where I just cannot correctly 'hinge' the ears to the jawline. Often, the ears end up being too far back and the balance of the face is resultantly thrown off. I'd have to practically scratch in some extra skull with the pencil! Now I am getting a little bit better at maintaining a sense of balance to the head of the character.
John and Nikki wants our family - the Siresu-Mani-Jajopi family - to do something together before we break up for the Christmas. When John requested for some ideas on a date and what to do, I suggested that on Saturday we go ice skating or eat out. Sinoun jumped out to the idea of ice skating, loving that kind of activity. Eventually, Nikki came along and decided on plan of eating over at someone's place, and then playing pool down at one of the pubs (Forgot the name - I played there with Luko. William Cobbet?). Everyone decided it was the best, most suiting plan for the day. I agree.
Later shot to the Waitrose before it closed. I brought a pizza, and back home whipped it into the oven. Yannis and Georgia also were having pizza - but theirs was from Dominos. Unfortunetly, Georgia's was cold, they didn't have any dips and the side-dishes were also lukewarm. It's just as well I got mine from Waitrose of all the times. On the flip side, Georgia and Yannis did get a free drink.
Tuesday, 7 December 2010
Scooby spooked!
This isn't anyway to go back to a normal schedule! I don't have much to say!
Well, mainly because I spent most of today not doing anything mostly because, once again, I'm cowering over the challenge of the 30 second animation (among other things).
I got up at 12:15 or so which is bad but not so much as the 1:15pm (!!) waking hour made last week. 7am to 8am was my aim but it didn't happen and most of my blame could probably go to Sophie and everyone getting back late from Becky's party up in Guildford. Actually, my blame is mainly towards Yannis and Georgia sexing it up next door. It's TMI, and they will likely kill me for bringing this up in a public place like this, but I swear on some occasions I woke up in the middle of the night to it. They are no where near as noisy or 'showy' as Nat was though.
Got up and had some tea, my hair was a mess. At 1:00pm I got out my camera to take some reference photography of my room for the animation. I had done Graphics GCSE before, but I got an F for it - found too hard. To the point though: I'm certainly no experienced person to perspective drawing and architectural design despite doing it frequently before, so for this animation I'm somewhat cheating the system and using my photographs as a reference to digitally paint from and over. I would LOVE to design my own scenes but for now I want to play things nice and safe.
Took various photos from different angles, with various lighting conditions (such as my sink light) and I even included myself in some of the quirkier perspectives to get a good grasp on the proportional basis. The outside hall way was included into the photos as well. Of course, I'm doing this with the assumption that I'll be including backgrounds. Given however that I need to actually practice actual movements with perspective use, it's a no-brainer that some actual setting is needed for justification. The problem is that I'd like to take my pencil tests further and draw them into the computer. If I do that though, all sorts of other cool possibilities open up!
On Facebook, Nikki brought up that Taekwon-do was on at 6pm tonight. She of course wanted us to go, or else threatened to beat us up with her mastery of the self-defense arts! I wanted to go but I felt too bummed out and afraid (of the animation) to do anything. At some point before 6pm I heard Sophie bring up Taekwon-do, and I rushed out to ask her about it - I assumed she was going. Nope! One of the chaps next door in 96 was, and Sophie merely found the idea of practising Taekwon-do in casual clothing absurd. I do to, but I don't feel in the position to chip out money for the gi/uniform though.
Yannis, having done this kind of fighting style at young age, tempted Sophie to go. "No way man! *kung-fu stances/noises* - isn't my kind of thing! I'm contemporary! *ballet pose*" She disappeared upstairs.
Later on I felt hungry and felt it was time to eat. I wanted to get my other blog entries written up before then, but once again procrastination was making its rounds. Sophie had her friend Kalem up - the two along with Jamie and Yannis were up in the kitchen. Decided to have a sausage and onion casserole with potato dolphena-something. Me and Sophie took a while to eat our dinner as we were so engaged into talking. Of the things we discussed, I brought up Yannis and Georgia's pick 'n mixing at night. (keeping me up and all) Fearful that they might of not known this (and thus stir up bigger talks) I gulped a little - but Sophie was aware for what seemed as long as I had. In fact, she and Rob would be frequently bringing up their sexsation. We all know however that Yannis and Georgia seem to be believing that we are unaware of this - unless it's just that they do not want to bring it up.
Well, mainly because I spent most of today not doing anything mostly because, once again, I'm cowering over the challenge of the 30 second animation (among other things).
I got up at 12:15 or so which is bad but not so much as the 1:15pm (!!) waking hour made last week. 7am to 8am was my aim but it didn't happen and most of my blame could probably go to Sophie and everyone getting back late from Becky's party up in Guildford. Actually, my blame is mainly towards Yannis and Georgia sexing it up next door. It's TMI, and they will likely kill me for bringing this up in a public place like this, but I swear on some occasions I woke up in the middle of the night to it. They are no where near as noisy or 'showy' as Nat was though.
Got up and had some tea, my hair was a mess. At 1:00pm I got out my camera to take some reference photography of my room for the animation. I had done Graphics GCSE before, but I got an F for it - found too hard. To the point though: I'm certainly no experienced person to perspective drawing and architectural design despite doing it frequently before, so for this animation I'm somewhat cheating the system and using my photographs as a reference to digitally paint from and over. I would LOVE to design my own scenes but for now I want to play things nice and safe.
Took various photos from different angles, with various lighting conditions (such as my sink light) and I even included myself in some of the quirkier perspectives to get a good grasp on the proportional basis. The outside hall way was included into the photos as well. Of course, I'm doing this with the assumption that I'll be including backgrounds. Given however that I need to actually practice actual movements with perspective use, it's a no-brainer that some actual setting is needed for justification. The problem is that I'd like to take my pencil tests further and draw them into the computer. If I do that though, all sorts of other cool possibilities open up!
On Facebook, Nikki brought up that Taekwon-do was on at 6pm tonight. She of course wanted us to go, or else threatened to beat us up with her mastery of the self-defense arts! I wanted to go but I felt too bummed out and afraid (of the animation) to do anything. At some point before 6pm I heard Sophie bring up Taekwon-do, and I rushed out to ask her about it - I assumed she was going. Nope! One of the chaps next door in 96 was, and Sophie merely found the idea of practising Taekwon-do in casual clothing absurd. I do to, but I don't feel in the position to chip out money for the gi/uniform though.
Yannis, having done this kind of fighting style at young age, tempted Sophie to go. "No way man! *kung-fu stances/noises* - isn't my kind of thing! I'm contemporary! *ballet pose*" She disappeared upstairs.
Later on I felt hungry and felt it was time to eat. I wanted to get my other blog entries written up before then, but once again procrastination was making its rounds. Sophie had her friend Kalem up - the two along with Jamie and Yannis were up in the kitchen. Decided to have a sausage and onion casserole with potato dolphena-something. Me and Sophie took a while to eat our dinner as we were so engaged into talking. Of the things we discussed, I brought up Yannis and Georgia's pick 'n mixing at night. (keeping me up and all) Fearful that they might of not known this (and thus stir up bigger talks) I gulped a little - but Sophie was aware for what seemed as long as I had. In fact, she and Rob would be frequently bringing up their sexsation. We all know however that Yannis and Georgia seem to be believing that we are unaware of this - unless it's just that they do not want to bring it up.
Monday, 6 December 2010
Lazy Absence No.1
I'd apologise for almost a week's worth of AWOL material but as of writing this there isn't anyone viewing the blog. (But that's fine!) The snow really kicked in and any attempt to be productive - aside from the odd character designing - was out the window.
Throughout the week of the snow, it was a marvel. It's one thing to see so much snow collecting here in the UK, it's another to see it before three to four months in the new year. I partook in a bevy of snow related shenanigans - namely snow ball fights from the kitchen or outside. I also attempted to roll a snowball to as big as I could be bothered to make it multiple times.
Here's a summery of what occurred:
Throughout the week of the snow, it was a marvel. It's one thing to see so much snow collecting here in the UK, it's another to see it before three to four months in the new year. I partook in a bevy of snow related shenanigans - namely snow ball fights from the kitchen or outside. I also attempted to roll a snowball to as big as I could be bothered to make it multiple times.
Here's a summery of what occurred:
- Character designing
- Trying to throw snow balls through our kitchen window at Rob and Chris
- Building a great big snow ball and ditching it in the car park
- Rob and Chris sniping people with food from the fridge (sandwiches, frankfurters, salmon etc) from the kitchen window.
- Making a bacon sandwich.
I'll be resuming as normal now. Fortunately, not much had actually occurred despite the occasion. Days were quite fast, but slow in pace.
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