Ninja skills need improvement.

My lovely colouring minions (aka my mother and brother, Morgan) have sent me back the first shot they've completed and it must be said they've done an excellent job! I'm hoping they can keep this up as it would be a massive help to me...

Twas a Café Crawl Saturday today, though I say 'café crawl'... we only went to one Starbucks and stayed there for around four and a half hours. I drew a couple of folks (in theory I should be excellent at drawing people eating and drinking soon) but I gave up after I started drawing this one guy and he cottoned onto the fact that I was drawing him very quickly. Even when I pretended to draw Christina (who was very close to him in my line of sight) it still wasn't enough to stop him looking round every few minutes to make sure I wasn't looking at him... that or he was just staring at me for no good reason. Either way, the drawing of him looks nothing like, naturally. Soooo I just drew some random stuff in the meantime. I've been faffing about with graphite and pencil drawings recently, as well as scanning graphite drawings and adding colour in Photoshop. Here's the results of today's doodles:

I don't know where this one appeared from within the recesses of my mind but ah well. I might faff about some more with this later but it'll do for the time being.

Here's dear ol' Jay and Lori. Methinks that Lori is a linguist; I can imagine her wanting to master many a language so she can be a true polyglot. Jay, however, is more of a biologist. He's definitely doing some kind of Biology course at university. Don't know what though, I know he's unsure as to what he wants to do for a career. He's laid back like that. He also cannot get a grip on language like Lori can.

As a pleasant distraction from drawing Jay and Lori over and over again (though I do love them really), my one of my best friends, Sarah Turner (who shall almost always be referred to as Turnerface), asked me to draw my interpretation of the two characters in her project so she can show examples of different styles. Her work is based on the Faust tale so she's asked me to draw Faustus and Mephistopheles. So far, I've drawn Mephistopheles. Faustus shall have to wait a little while longer whilst I get some more shots drawn out.

 

Mephistopheles, original pencil sketch

 

Mephistopheles, coloured

Charlesworth shall be staying with me for a few days this coming week which I am rather excited about. We shall motivate each other to work whilst having great amounts of fun in a Journey/Neighbours daze. Plus we shall be seeing True Grit and therefore seeing JEFF BRIDGES. Hells yes.

Café Crawl Saturday

Today has been spent drawing and colouring. These are no doubt useful practices for an animator.

First of all, my classmates and close friends, Christina and Richard, and myself had a Café Crawl Drawing Day. To make up for the distinct lack of animation-specific life drawing classes on our course, drawing people sneakily out and about is usually the subsititute, so I suggested a café crawl. We only managed to go to two cafés today (slightly longer drawings than anticipated. On my part anyway) but next time I'm sure we'll manage more. There is a silly number of cafés bunched together around Middle Meadow Walk in Edinburgh so venues are easy enough (there are two Starbucks literally within a minute's walk of each other there). One of my drawings isn't finished yet as the some of the pens I was using ran out halfway through so I shall have to purchase new ones in order to complete it, but there is one that I'm rather pleased with.

Christina, drawn with 6-colour pencil, 22/01/11

I can't decide whether it's sort of cheating to use a pencil with a lead that's split into six different colours, but at the same time it sort of leaves the final result of the drawing up to chance, which I like. Sometimes there's a budding Dadaist within me trying to get out. Either way, methinks Café Crawl Saturday shall have to become a regular thing. It's nice to take a break from film work whilst still doing something productive that will help the production in some way, shape or form.

Now it's back to colouring for my film. I've got two shots cleaned up and scanned which I'm rather excited about, so now it comes to colouring them to see how my desired look will appear onscreen. Here's a frame from Shot 9, a lovely close up of Jay looking a little unconvinced:

In the end, I want the shading to be sort of scruffy looking and a little jittery, whilst the backgrounds will be textured to avoid everything from becoming flat. Unless that's the look you're going for, a flat appearance is a real danger with 2D hand-drawn coloured frames. I'm debating whether the shading needs to be more obvious or not. There's a very fine line, I'm finding, where the shading can be a little subtle one minute and then overpowering the next. This is a problem on the skin in particular.  A few more hours messing around is needed, methinks. It is exciting/a relief to start to see some of the drawings looking complete; it makes me feel like my film will come together like it's formed in my head.

I have also just received a present which made me smile. We all need inspiration, don't we? Well, HMV have been capitalising on this for a few years now with their 'My Inspiration' posters. You know the ones: famous musician/actor/filmmaker is pictured with a quote from something which inspires them. They're dotted all over any HMV store you care to look in. Well, one of my best friends, Creative Writing and Film Studies graduate Hayley Charlesworth (who shall almost always be referred to as Charlesworth) has made one for me and it has made me very inspired:

I'm very tempted to print it out and stick it on my wall/studio space but a part of me wonders whether this would be seen as cheeky seen as I'm not famous yet. Having said that, I can be purchased on the HMV website. When I was in the Hallé Youth Choir, I took part in a recording of Elgar's The Dream of Gerontius (which has since won a Classic FM award for Best Choral Performance - oh yes, I'm very proud of us) and the CD can be bought here. Buy it if you care to. It's very good, but I am rather biased.

And finally, speaking of Journey inspiring me, it is the former lead singer of Journey's birthday today: Steve Perry, aka 'The Voice' (no, not you Russell Watson). I have a book of codeword puzzles that has one for everyday this year and today's contained the word 'journeys'. It's almost like it knows. Anywho, to celebrate I've been listening to Journey and Steve Perry's solo stuff all day (like I need a reason anyway) and to finish, here's a GIF of the man himself from the infamous Separate Ways (Worlds Apart) video:

The best checkered shirt dance you'll ever see.