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.

I'm so dizzy, my head is spinning...

My mum and brother are doing a rather good job colouring frames, don't you think?

I shall colour the eyes later. They are not composed entirely of flesh.

I tried to churn out as much animation as I could for them seen as they were on half term week and were asking for as much as possible. I got three shots done for them and the frame above is from one of the shots. All animation done thus far is coloured (but not shaded... that's my domain...). Shots 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9 and 10 are all animated now so I've got a fair part of the first scene done. Now I'm starting to get to the shots that require more complex backgrounds. I hate backgrounds. Hopefully I'll be able to get my head round it all quickly and painlessly... I'm working on a panoramic background for a wide pan in the charity shop, using photographs I took of my model set. This is it thus far:

Still needs work. Like I say, backgrounds hurt my head.

I'm worried my work my suffer a little at the moment as I keep going dizzy. I've long suffered from dizziness and fainting but now I'm going dizzy in circumstances I never have before, leaving me very tired, weak and completely unable to concentrate, which is worrying. I'm hoping that I just need stronger lens for my glasses. I'm due an eye test so hopefully I'll be able to get an appointment in the next couple of weeks. Methinks a trip to the doctor's won't go amiss either... sigh.

This is the end to an otherwise fun week. Charlesworth and I had a smashing time helping each other not procrastinate, watching Neighbours with our Paul Robinson 'I Like Me' mugs and obsessing over Journey, Jeff Bridges and Weebl's Stuff. We saw True Grit on Wednesday which lived up to our expectations (we had been excited about it for weeks) and continued the day by going to a pub called Lebowski's where I was served a drink with two ice cubes stuck together. I christened this The Jeff Bridges Bridge:

You should know by now that Charlesworth and I have obsessive personalities and proud. We also made many pointless lists, as we like lists.

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.

I hate my vacuum cleaner.

I have a flat inspection tomorrow, so I have tidied and cleaned. However, despite vacuuming my floor for TWENTY MINUTES, you can't tell the difference. The shit little wheely vacuum cleaner this flat has is beyond pathetic. I would buy my own vacuum cleaner and take it with me once I move out if I had the money. Plus, despite using rubber gloves, my hands still smell of bleach. Ugh.

Anywho, filmy stuffs! Methinks I have settled on a title for the film, gasp! I'm going for Donated Memories. Now, if you think this is rubbish, believe me this is the least naff sounding of all the possibilities I came up with. And there were MANY, MANY possibilities. My brother was the one who came up with Donated Memories, though he said Donated Memories: The Past Returns so it sounds like some kind of Star Wars epic. I told him that that would be the name of a sequel, to which my brother said that I must make the sequel just so the title can exist properly.

Dissertation work had been eating up most of my time this past week but I've got a couple of shots sorted. This be Shot 4 and 5:

Considering the transition between the shots was done solely in Photoshop at 2 in the morning, I'm rather pleased with it.

I'm about to eat delicious looking ice cream with the wonderful Christina. We shall do Valentines with style.

I've always had a habit of liking the villains more in Disney films

Horrible gale force winds and rain + pulled muscle in foot = not being able to walk very fast and missed train; fail, me. All trains heading to Manchester getting gradually more and more delayed; fail, train service.
Anywho, I'm back in The Ham of Old now having a natter with my mother about the 50 animated Disney features and a rather rubbish list ranking them in order. NO ONE should rank Home on the Range higher than Pocahontas. No one should rank Home on the Range higher than anything really. That film is rubbish. I'll shush now before I ramble about this for far too long. Anyone who knows me well enough will know that my favourite Disney film is The Hunchback of Notre Dame. It is glorious and would be even better if it didn't have the fat, annoying gargoyle in it and if the other two gargoyles didn't sing. Just give Frollo more airtime. More Frollo airtime would mean more Tony Jay voice acting and this is GOOD.

On my way to Preston where I needed to change trains I drew this lil thing:

It's not the best quality image in the world as I took it with my camera as opposed to scanning it (our scanner at home refuses to work), but you get the idea. I particularly love drawing Young Lori. She's sweet.


Another shot is ready and waiting to be coloured. Here's the linetest for part of it:

I ended up redrawing half of this because Lori's hand grew in size from acceptable to GINORMOUS by the time she reached the right-hand side of the screen, and that just won't do. Methinks this works though.

Animation work is going to have to take a slight backseat until the 2000 word section of my dissertation is handed in on Thursday... ugh.

What have we here...

Good Lord! It's a lip-sync!

Not only is this a lip-sync, this is Shot 9 more or less finished. The background needs attention, once I figure out exactly where in the room Jay is facing at this point (as the movement has differed slightly from my storyboard) but other than that, the first shot of the film is (nearly) completed. Hazaar!