morning warm up sketches

 

I thought I'd post one of my typical morning warm up sketches - I spend my time while I eat my breakfast practicing simple intersecting shapes and similar exercises that I learnt from the drawabox course I participated in last year.

bitey: week 3 - ribbon smoke

 

 Key frames of ribbon smoke, as first assignment.

dry-brush paintings: old leather boots

 

 

This piece is a still-life dry-brush painting of some old leather boots I painted at the Leatherhead Institute as part of a fine art class run by Julia Hawkins.

 

Since earlier this year, I've been taking some local fine art classes in Farnham and Leatherhead. The tutor is a fine artist called Julia Hawkins, who is an established oil painter and artist. Just before Christmas while lockdown was brought back a step, we had a class practicing dry brush painting as a festive treat. With Julia's guidance this was the piece I painted in burnt umber. I really love these classes and I hope that covid doesn't persist to disrupt these classes come the new year. I particularly enjoyed this class as it felt a little less constrained, opposed to the typical lessons of meticulous fine art.

bitey: week 2 - matchstick flame

 

I've been slacking with studies given the last week has been a hectic Christmas. I've seen a fair few good friends, drank my fair share of beer and eaten a lot of chocolate. I should have posted this about a week ago, but I was caught up with current festivities. As a result, I'm about a week behind on the bitey course; I will continuously strive for perfection as we break through to the new year! I have a free week ahead, and I intend on finishing errands and catching up on a lot of work.

more candle flames

 

A poster on the forums mentioned that I was focusing too much on effects in my animation and not enough on the realism of the core animation. On this piece I started with the candle stick, then added the flame after. I feel that my candle flame is lacking and it needs more attention, so I may revisit this file to reanimate the flame. I need more practice when animating flames, but I will move onwards to my next assignment nonetheless.

I've kind of hit a slump this week in terms of work - I think it's because of the upcoming festivities of Christmas. I will continue to strive to curb the bad habit I've developed of being distracted by messages and stretching my attention between key animating and listening to podcasts/music.

Upwards and onwards...

bitey: week 2 - candle flame

 

First attempt at a relatively simple bobbing candle flame - more to come!

more lightning

 

bitey: week 1 - lightning

 

I've started the FX course on www.bitey.com - this is my first weekly assignment: lightning.

fire 05 study

 

I've spent some time getting to grips with the node editor amongst other things in ToonBoom Premium - I do think I prefer this software, as it feels more versatile and I can adapt my animations to what suits them. This one took a little longer as there were 3 different layered aspects; I think I'm going to complete a few more smaller pieces that are less time consuming to understand fire's fluid motion better and get more practice in with the program.

fire 09 study

 

fire 12 study

 

koffing

 

fire 04 study

 

My 21 days of Toon Boom Essentials is up, so I've started animating in my 21 days of TBAdvanced. I'm getting more comfortable with the effects available, as well as this, I'm 'fixing' my animation studies as I go along rather than relying heavily on the source material.

fire 11 study

 

I feel that the fire should flicker and fade out smoother; something I will pay closer attention too in my next study.

flame test piece 02

 

flame test piece 01

First little test piece witha  glow effect; I want to try using the inbetweening and key framing features of TBH.

wafting smoke

 

I thought I'd try the standard wafting fire smoke from the first exercises I attempted about a month ago. I'm sure with more practice I can create a better effect, but I've definitely improved largely over the past month.

TBH effects testing

 

raw footage from TBH

shadow and blur effect, white background

 

directional blur effects, alpha background

I found the glow effect inefficient when applied to white backgrounds; I tested a similar shadow and blur effect. It's a shame there isn't directional options to the shadow effect as there was with the glow effect. I would of preferred if I could add direction to the effects with a white background if possible, but I'm sure I can overlay the black (alpha) background animation in Adobe After Effects ontop of other layers.

ToonBoom Harmony test

I've been getting myself acquainted with ToonBoom Harmony over the past week. I've picked up the basics and I'm better understanding how to navigate around the application. I started with a simple bouncing ball test to exercise my ability and focus on ordering the timeline and using the correct tools with accompanied hotkeys.

rocket smoke

 

I was feeling inspired by the smoke animation studies, so I experimented with animating a rocket firing into the air.

smoke 18 study

 

smoke 10 study

 

smoke 01 study

 

smoke 15 study

 

slash

Some simple test pieces of duplicated slash animation.

smoke 8 study

 

In retrospect I believe I should of used the last few frames to chew out from larger smoke sausages, as well as represented more form in the centre of the smoke burst.

smoke 5 study

 

smoke 4 study

 

breakfast studies 17/09/20

 

I have a habit of sketching at breakfast, as I can be quite the slow eater. I do this somewhat frequently and usually pertaining to closeby objects and photographs. Although, I do often get too distracted by the drawing and my cereal goes soggy.

smoke 17 study

 

I'm finding it difficult to retain the illusion of form with shadow; I believe it's easier to show with intersected sphere's, but this doesn't seem apparent in the coloured animation.

smoke 19 study

 

smoke 16 study

I started off with something a little simple; this exercise helped me understand the forces applied to smoke. I'll be adding to this by later studying smoke clouds adding the third dimension.

dust

 

I've spent the past few months working on a commissioned music video to be released in about 3 months time. As a result, I've lacked uploading to my personal blog. I want to try exploring 2d effects more heavily, as I spent a fair amount of time working on them in Sketchshow's music video, which expanded upon my intrigue for special effects animation.

box-morphing

Some more experimenting with cubes, this one I spent a little more time on warping between frames.

paper floating

A simple test piece of paper floating; experimenting with stretching frames an timing.

lifedraw

box experiments

I recently bought a Wacom lycra glove, and this has given me more motivation to use my tablet. I've learnt a lot about perspective since I last put it to good use; I thought I'd test out some freehand box rotations.