First semester summary

During the first semester, I experimented with the new software that was available in weekly tasks set by my tutor. We handed in our progress on each weekly assignment for feedback and learnt about the programs to be used in the next weekly assignment during those lessons. To help me with the introduction of these new software's I consulted various sources from the internet including YouTube, Lynda and Yahoo answers to explore each program. I also took out "Timing for Animation" by Harold Whitaker and John Halas for reference on my animation and bought "The Animator's Survival Kit". As well as this, I found Nick's advice to use video reference when animating vitally resourceful and will use this technique as much as I can for accurate animation. Overall, out of 3D, 2D and stop motion animation, I found 2D to be the most engaging and relatable and I plan to follow this as my pathway.

As I progressed through the first semester, we started life drawing classes which I found to be quite challenging; I searched on YouTube a life drawing playlist and made my way through it as I knew it would become a  imperative part of our second semester. I also began to attend life drawing weekly to improve my observational skills, as I'd spent a large portion of practicing in front of a computer monitor. I've seen a fair amount of improvement from my initial life drawing sketches and hope to keep this development as I progress through my course.

More backgrounds for Penryn 800 project

Life drawing update

Digital painting in Photoshop

Using a line drawing from the internet I experimented with photoshop and brush tools to fill in the line drawing with cool colours in contrast to my source. I found this effective but without the line drawing it resulted in a mess of colours indistinguishable in contrast points. To counter this in my next backgrounds paintings I will use sharper tones to illustrate this.

After the lesson I played around with the brushes more in Photoshop to get a better feel for digital drawing.

CelAction2D renewed

This was the outcome from attempting to fix the ice problem. I found it still to be quite jumpy, but next time I start a CelAction2D project I will revise on graphs to enable a smoother motion.

Update on weekly tasks

 These pages are from the tasks we were set weekly by Cathy on different subjects. From the top ascending they were: composition in backgrounds, redrawing of old drawings, nature drawing, tone included in backgrounds. Around these weekly tasks are also drawings from various exercises or work that I had been working on during that time. I found looking at the composition of backgrounds very insightful, as it's one of the things I most need to practice. The perspective of different objects included in this was particularly useful to look into further, as well as the characteristics of the objects.

From one of the weekly assignments of redrawing old drawings, I drew an extension of one of my sketches from last year using Photoshop. When using Photoshop I experimented with different brushes as learnt in previous lessons, however I want to learn more about blending colours to create a smoother looking gradient. I've asked an illustrator I know if I can observe them working in Photoshop and have set this up for a few weeks later to achieve a better understanding of her work and help me in the future when using Photoshop.

Cleanup assignment

My key frame TVpaint file

Thomas Poole's clean version

For our weekly 2D project we were partnered with someone in class to swap our key frames in TVpaint and cleanup each others work. I didn't know how much to include in my TVpaint file so I kept my simple, and Thomas did a great job of cleaning it up emphasizing each indication of an exaggerated movement I included. I found the time frame of a week hard to keep up with his work, and only managed to present a first draft line drawing after filling out his key frames and following the rough up. I was not happy with the form or proportions of the characters I drew and plan to redo it when I get spare time.

This was exported just after I started editing the original

This was my first draft outline drawing