Birds and beasts

Now I've got the hang of two legged creatures, lets get our pencil around some fur and feathers.
Here are my first attempts at animating a vulture (my decision heavily influenced, but not referenced from the vultures from Jungle Book) and my favorite animal, a black bear, who sadly has a limp thanks to my astounding premier pro editing skills. That's what I get for choosing "one of the hardest creatures to animate"...oh Nicki I should have heeded your warning, but what can I say? I like a challenge.

Learning to walk

...and push and throw.

A nameless Stick man (any suggestions welcome) going through the figurative motions.

Not exactly formula 1

Timing and mechanics. Be honest, if you didn't know what course I was doing would animation be the first thing that came into your head when I said that module title? Makes it sound more like a science doesn't it? Well, in this case it kind of is.
Here we learned secondary motion, changing speed and animation of fabric.
This was probably (next to my character design/animation projects) one of the most interesting projects to do video reference for. When you have to animate cars, flags and a whip it pays to live in a city with a castle five minutes away. Let me tell you though, trying to explain to Anne Summers that we needed a whip for art purposes was no small feat.
So here are my examples. I'm not particularly happy with the whip, premier cut the bottom off and it settled in such a great way at the end. The flag however came out rather well.

Bringing a painting to life

A great piece of art makes you feel that sed piece is coming to life, leaping off the page. The next project we were assigned took this literally! We were sent out to choose and research an already existing painting and edit it to make the art burst into life in time to music.

Normally I lean towards fantasy art, finding a really interesting piece called "Dragon's knight" by Boris Vallejo (If you haven't already definitely give his work a look-see, it's impressive to say the least). But in the end I decided to turn to the work of Salvador Dali, as I rarely get to explore that form of painting anymore.

So here is my piece dedicated to "The discovery of America by Christopher Columbus", accompanied by the song "Adiemus." The song, in my opinion, compliments the themes of religion, impending war and a new era rather well. An epic moment of history needs epic music.

 

At the beginning

I figured that as this blog will be dedicated to my art/animation related work and adventures, I need to show my work from the very beginning; the very beginning of my course that is. A major part of life is progression after all.

So here are the first three projects I did in my first year of uni. A bouncing ball, a cannon ball and a balloon. Attempting these three across one week certainly reminded me of the importance of weight. Personally, I like the balloon the most, there was a lot more freedom as to how it could fall, the other two were more straightforward. Enjoy!

MEET CHARMER

One of our first projects at university was to design a character of any shape, size or species. Being a fan of the weird and wonderful I chose a Goblin who was short in stature and even shorter in temper. Here are a few drawings that show the development of the anything but charming Charmer:

While most Goblins ride rabbits, toads and even foxes if they are large enough, Charmer decided to choose something easy to manipulate. A mole seemed perfect as it's blindness must make it easy to lead right? Oh Charmer, you do know moles can cope just fine without clear vision right? Well, at least Charmer is determined to prove me wrong.

Around this point I also gave Charmer a tooth staff to show that, despite his size, he could easily take down a larger animal (unless he just picked it up off the ground.)

And then what happened? Well on blog-spot they sat, Charmers mole grew three sizes that day!
We also see the return of the other goblins I drew, as they are now all residents of the same troop. It was then I realised I'd created an entire universe for this little guy.
Then again, I suppose that's a job well done!
I'll be more than happy to come back to Charmer in the future.