Sketchysketchy

I'm well overdue for a blog about my sketchbook projects. So here is a few bits and pieces so far:

The first image was a practice of Fashion Illustration. Our brief was to draw anything that came to mind. I was watching Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds and Nowhere Man by The Beatles on YouTube when I drew this. I went for the whole Twiggy-esque look to the model then coloured her lips and eyes in various shades.

 Again this drawing was for my 'draw anything for a week' project. I was focusing here more on Children's illustration, looking at Lauren Child and Nick Sharratt for inspiration. I named him Valo (which is the Finnish for light and also the last name of Ville Valo from the band HIM)

 

 Here I spent the week drawing myself as an animal. I chose a wolf, however I tried drawing it in various different ways such as making the snout much more dominant making myself look much more fox/dog like instead. I then carried on with little scribbles around the page.

I decided that as awesome as being left handed is, that I needed a change. I spent two weeks drawing with my right hand. The first page was inspired by David Shrigley's drawings and animations. I took a very silly approach to life and drew things that came to mind when I daydreamed or sat thinking.

This project fitted well with my right handed week. I call it 'When I was five...' I drew things I did when I was around the age of 5. Little qwirky things I remember. I set this project myself.

I found I draw and concentrate much better when I listen to music I did when I was fifteen. I then looked at the music videos from them. I drew certain scenes from the videos into my sketchbook. This was mostly a challenge of anatomy and the use of shadow. I really wanted to experiment with shadow so here I stuck to using black ink pen and permanent marker. The black ink pen worked well as I could smudge it nicely to add shade.
The first image is that of Gerard Way from the My Chemical Romance video, 'Helena'.

This one here is of Brendon Urie from the Panic! At the Disco video 'I write Sins, not Tragedies'

Walk Cycles.

This week has been walk cycle week within the studio. I've doen both a 2D walk cycle and a 3D walk cycle. My Maya one involved making a monkey walk, I haven't edited the arms, as I found I completly messed up with my previous attempts, so I left this one quite simple.

And my 2D one...

My 2D one isn't that great. I found the whole walk cycle really confusing. I'm going to try animating it again soon

LIFE DRAWING.

I felt it was time to post up some of my Life Drawing. This isn't everything i've done, just a selection :)
I did some muscle studies as well which are here:

The most recent is at the top, then it works down in chronological order.

The Bradford Animation Festival!

So I went to the Bradford Animation Festival this year, I totally loved every minute of it.
I've been left in awe by the makers of Fable 3 and how they created their characters, the creators of Brink who've bought some incredible characters to life. I also saw how Sony made 3D which was just amazing.
I left feeling very inspired after seeing all the wonderful pieces of animation from across the world. Meeting Paul Mendoza from Pixar was incredible. Seeing how both Pixar create their characters, stories, then seeing them animate it all together. I saw how Warner Brother's created the visual effects in Inception which was mind-blowing. Chico and Rita was a wonderful, heart warming film as was The Illusionist, which contained some beautiful almost watercolour like backgrounds. The Secret of Kells has become one of my favourite children's films with it's simplistic characters, but fantastic flowing smooth animation, beautiful celtic patterns, and Spike and Mike's Sick and Twisted was by far the funniest thing I've seen all year.

I also played too much Golden Eye on the Nintendo 64 with Perry, Phoebe and Jack. 

I booked to go to a scriptwriting workshop too with Alan Gilbey which was amusing. I learnt a lot from him, especially techniques when pitching an idea to a production company. He also taught us ways to engage your mind with an idea, how to bring it to life, and develop it into a fantastic story.
I also went to a character design workshop with Curtis Jobling who created Bob The Builder, Frankenstein's Cat, Biteneck Beatniks and Dinosaurs After Dark. He was incredible to talk to, especially about his work and how he creates and designs his characters. He got us to create some drawings based on shapes and charicatures, these are mine:

Mayaaaa Modelling :3

Today I had a go at playing with the rig on Maya :)
I've done two poses so far. I'll probably do some more later on

SPIDER!

My animation using the concept of reaction, squash and stretch and a double take.

I based mine on a character seeing a spider, then leaping backwards in fright :)

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My lastest sketchbook project; Drawing to Music!

 This song was 'Under the Rose' by HIM. It's one of my favourite songs ever. I'm going to carry on working into this piece and really bring it to life. I used mostly acrylic paint on this, however I enhanced it with permanent marker, black biro, and H & B pencils.

I based this one on 'The Last Amazing Grays' By Sonata Arctica. The wolf in the centre was painted with acrylic paint, then had higlights done in grey felt-tip pen, permanent marker, pencil crayon and various H and B pencils.

Pink Floyd's 'Comfortably Numb' Another of my favoruite songs. I took a lot of imagry from the lyrics, such as the idea of having balloons for hands. I'm still not finished on this piece, I need to carry on adding to it and drawing back into it.

 

Regina Spektor's 'Samson' I used a lot of biro in this, especially for the small drawings of the scissors, hair and books. My favourite part about this piece is the stars. I really like how they turned out. At first they looked far too bright and didn't match the mood of the song. I washed over them with watered down white acrylic then after outlined them in a scruffy way and added some highlights in pencil crayon. I also like the silhoutettes I drew of Samson having his hair cut off just off centre of the page by the ends of the long hair. I find in the official video the use of silhouettes is quite apparent and reflected upon in my work. I did this in biro as well, so a bronze hue became apparent on the photo.

The music video for this song is beautiful, and the animation is so simple yet brilliant to look at. It's based on oragami but the way it's filmed really gives a lovely sense of movement.

I was listening to 'Another Stranger Me' by Blind Guardian for this piece. The idea behind it is two conflicting opposites. This is by far my weakest piece, I really don't like it. I find I've made it far too busy within the centre of the page, especially with the patterns. I like the two characters, but i'm going to do a lot of work to it.

The last piece is one of my favourites. Based on the song 'Gobanno' by Eluveitie. The whole song reminds me of Winter turning into Spring. I've still got to add a few more little drawings to this, then it should look much more completed. Eluveitie sing mostly in Gaulish and the lyrics to this song are from a traditional Gaulish song.  From listening to it, I had the idea of an Ancient Tribe sitting within the forest amist a campfire telling each other stories of battles and Folk lore.