Try it yourself.

It's been quite a productive week for my little self.

After a few days last week where NOTHING I drew looked right, things suddenly turned around. Very strange too, considering that my sudden burst of productivity came on the 11th, the day the Japanese earthquake and tsunami occurred. Apart from the fact that the whole thing is a horrible tragedy, I ended up beside myself with worry as Turnerface's sister has been teaching in Japan for the past few years and is still there currently (in fact, she is due to return home in only a matter of days). After a couple of hours Turnerface informed me that her sister is fine as she is a couple of hundred miles from the epicentre, but Turnerface was still trying to get in contact with all the friends she has in Japan. Then, when the tsunami warnings were extended to other countries I needed to find out if other people were okay: one of my best friends is from Taiwan so I made sure she knew about the disaster so she could check her family were alright and another of my friends is out working in the Philippines. Fortunately they were all fine, and after a tense couple of days, Turnerface finally heard back from all of her friends, all of whom are safe. A small mercy amongst the horror. I shall donate more to the relief effort soon, and it would be nice if you could too.
Needless to say, I was a bit jittery the whole of that Friday whilst waiting to hear back from people. I don't know whether it was the nervous energy that helped or what, but I produced my favourite bit of animation so far. On Monday I finished the sequence off. Here's a cleaned up linetest - the timing isn't exactly right but you get the gist:

The weekend was spent compositing and lip syncing. I also made a rather big decision considering the shading that I had intended to include. As you can see from previous shots I've uploaded, I was trying to put this kind of scruffy shading on my film to give it a bit of life and stop it from being flat. However, after working on backgrounds which I'm planning to make fairly textured and just taking in sheer time elements, I realised my film doesn't need the shading. In fact, it looks better without. So that was a nice, accomplished feeling decision. Here's the first shot I put together after this epiphany (yes, the background's being worked on):

At the moment, I need to get my dissertation out of the way and done because it's just a massive obstacle blocking the path to film completion. Plus, for someone who usually doesn't find writing too difficult, I'm really not enjoying writing this damned thing so the sooner it's gone, the better I will feel generally.
This week should be quite fun though, as I will be heading to the BAFTA Scotland New Talent Awards to lend my support particularly to the lovely Nuria Gonzalez-Blanco, whose nominated graduate film Christina and I coloured last year, and to my classmate Mr. Will Anderson, who is nominated in the Experimental/Art category. All this, and I'll be seeing Neil Buchanan and his hair metal band perform on Monday. That's right, Neil Buchanan of Art Attack fame. Exciting stuffs, no? As long as I don't spend my entire time laughing at a Vietnamese version of Pokémon Crystal... it's far too distracting. Keep away from that for a while and I'll be onto a winner.

Filler Material.

Today I received a letter from my dear friend Eve, written on deli paper (she tends to write her letters when there are no customers in Subway). She also sent this lovely bookmark:

I decided to stick it on my desk to provide motivation. I also thought I'd document my desk space in the studio so I can look back on it with fond memories. So here's my desk...

Here's my model set for the charity shop, sat alongside my Serious Film Schedule of Seriousness. How I wish I could say that I'd stuck to said schedule and was not behind. I'd made it all scary looking to try and keep me on track... clearly hasn't worked. You can also see my second anniversary card from Charlesworth, my Facebook wife.

Here are some pencils telling you that it's my desk. They're works by an artist called Dalton Ghetti who seems to specialise in making sculptures at the end of pencils. Crazy mad skillz he has, either way. You can also see Frollo and The Schofe, who act as the 'If you don't do work, face the consequences' part of my desk.

The other side of my desk. I decided to put up pictures of things that inspire me (more or less my favourite things). You can see the HMV inspiration poster Charlesworth made for me, ReBoot, the Old Spice Man, Bruce Forsyth, Athelston from the Never Mind The Buzzcocks lineup, my mum and brother Morgan, Red Dwarf, Mike Scott of The Waterboys, Journey and Steve Perry Approving and Led Zeppelin, specifically John Bonham because I love him. Also, my fairy lights, because they are a necessity.

Lightbox with (gasp!) frames! I've been propping my lightbox up at an angle on a nice Chinese style box I bought for £2 from a charity shop, seen as I haven't put anything in it yet. I rather love my desktop background, which is a stupidly pretty still of Ram, Tron and Flynn from Tron (another one of my favourite things).


Sorry for this filler material. I have got several more shots done and they're coloured by the wonderful Mother and Morgan but I haven't edited them together yet. Work on the sound side of things will be underway soon as I met up with Neil, the lovely chap who has agreed to help me. We both agreed it would be quite nice if my brother agreed to play some clarinet for the soundtrack but he's a little reluctant (as I expected) so we'll have to see. Either way, I'm excited. I've really been looking forward to finally get the ball rolling the on the music side of things.

Finally, to continue the random, not-particularly-related-to-my-film stuff, here's a GIF I made tother day to motivate me:

You may have to click on it to make it work...

If giggling Jeff Bridges doesn't make everyone feel better about life, I don't know what will.