Back to work :3

So, I've been back at University for a few weeks now
Apologies for the lack of updates since coming back, there's been a lot going on lately, but hopefully I'll be back to blogging regularly now :3

I guess I'll begin by talking about the holidays as I kept myself quite busy during that.

I spent some time practicing 3D techniques, as mentioned in my previous blog post, but unfortunately didn't get quite as far with that as I wanted to. I didn't really feel very accomplished whilst at home in the holidays and without any feedback (I couldn't upload things, so couldn't ask for advice from friends or from lecturers) so it mostly consisted of me playing around with the software for a few hours a day, learning different rigs, but not really having amazing work to show for it.
I do feel it helped a lot, but I went in wanting to improve my showreel tons and I don't feel like that has happened (I only ended up being truly happy with a couple of things I animated)

I finished about half of the things on my list and then chose to do something I felt was more productive from a CV perspective and enrolled on a EU recognized adult learning course named ECDL, which I completed in a couple of months and received a qualification for :D So not a completely wasted summer, luckily ^_^

Here's one of the animation tests I did during the summer, that I was most happy with
I spent quite a lot of time focusing on the characters facial expression and subtle eye movements and I think it's probably the best animation I've done in CG to date, so I'll definitely be including it in my next show reel once it's all fleshed out :3

Other than that, my holiday consisted of doing art commissions (my style has changed a lot o-o) Editing game footage to music, to work on timing and spending time with my family/relaxing :)

Here's a few other things I worked on during the holidays

Art -

The above work is mostly commissioned pieces I worked on during the summer, along with a comic I made. My 6 year old bamboo tablet ended up on it's last legs, so I decided to buy the Cintiq 13HD I'd been saving up for last holiday (but didn't save up enough to get, before I came to uni) and bought it just before term started :3

It's an amazing little thing and I think it's making me pay a lot more attention to little details in my work as well as work faster and more efficiently, which can only be a good thing :D All I can say, is 3 months packing biscuits 9 hours a day, last holiday was totally worth it, even if it was hell at the time ;u; Hopefully it'll last me as long, if not much longer than my Bamboo did c: Little thing is still fighting onwards, even with the odd connection issue from time to time :'3

The three orange Charr drawings are post new tablet and as you can see, my work has become much more loose since getting it :3 


Editing -

I really wanted to practice my editing more, I find it really relaxing to just sit down and edit footage to music, so I edited a couple of GW2 video's, most that I recorded myself and one that I used the watercolour style cutscenes of Guild Wars 2 for. The cutscenes in this game are beautifully done and so was the ending theme of Guild Wars 2 'Fear not this night'. So I chose to combine the two, editing a lot of the cutscenes to the music, which I found lots of fun :3

Below are a few of these videos







I have a couple of animatics to post up and a few life drawings, so you'll be seeing more from me soon c: but for now, that's all from me :D

Until next time ~ 

Holiday Work Master Post

Hey everyone c: It's been a while since I last posted, so I figured I'd come change that :D

For a start, I passed first year with a 2:1, which is awesome :D Really happy, because I was having my doubts about some of the stuff passing (3D Modeling) so it was a huge relief to know I don't have to retake anything in the holidays ^_^

As I mentioned a couple of posts ago, I've been working on some basic animation tasks during the summer holidays c: Unfortunately I have an internet bandwidth here which is preventing me from uploading large files to the internet whilst at home (basically anything but pictures) >.< However, I'll make a checklist of all the things I'm working on, here and then post them all up at once when I'm back at uni with that shiny fast broadband, the ones I'm happy with will probably end up in a showreel of sorts :D

So I thought I'd make this the master post for all of my holiday work c: As not to clog up the blog with everything c: I'll probably elaborate on each video in another master post, when I'm back on campus ^_^ 

Here's the list I'm working from in 3D (Compiled a mixture of tasks from the 11 second club and Animator Island)  -

1. Ball bouncing in place (No Decay) 
2. Ball bouncing across the screen
3. Simple character head turn
4. Character head turn with Anticipation
5. Character thinking
6. Flour Sack waving (loop)
7. Flour Sack jumping
8. Flour Sack falling
9. Change in character emotion
10. Overlap/Follow through (tails/hair.ect)
11. Character Laughing
12. Standing up from sitting
13. Biped Run Cycle
14. Biped Walk Cycle
15. Quadruped Walk Cycle
16. Quadruped Run Cycle
17. Dragons/Birds (Wings) 
18. Scared character peering around corner
19. Startled Quadruped
20. Character jumping over gap


and to end this post, a drawing for you :D I worked on a few days ago for a friend c:

Task #2 - Bouncing Ball Across Screen

My second holiday task was to animate a ball bouncing from one end of the screen to another, I'm not as pleased with the outcome of this task compared to my previous one, but hopefully with a bit more work and practice, I'll be able to get this one on par with the other one :3 I've also recieved some really good feedback on the other one, which I'll talk about in a future blog post (when I have applied these changes to my work)

Below is my first attempt at this, It was suggested that I try animating almost entirely with the graph editor, which I did for this one. The graph editor has turned out to be a really, really useful tool, but something I think I need to work a lot more on, so I completely get the hang of it.  :3



 From observation, a few things I can see, need work on this are that the stretch and squash seems a little bit too visible for me. When I re-work this animation, I will make the stretch of the fall a lot more subtle, as I feel that especially when the ball changes direction, the stretch becomes distracting.
Another change I will probably be making is I feel the bounces are too close together, so spreading them out a little would be of benefit c: I'll be working on both these things along with whatever I get from the guy who agreed to help mentor me over the summer.

In addition to this, there are some feedback tutorials with my lecturers on the 13th, so I should have some information on what I was doing right, or wrong in regards to all of the work I submitted on either the 24th or the 31st of last month :D Which should be really awesome c:

We also get our grades on the 27th of this month, so just under two weeks time! So I'll be updating with any feedback I get from that and tell you if I have to re-take any of the modules in the summer (fingers crossed that I don't, but I'm not to confident in how my Damaged Detail and 2D to 3D Projects are going to hold up in the marking process)

But other than these things, I'm pretty much free to work on whatever I want now c: I'll be doing some observational drawing in my free time (another thing suggested), particularly over the coming week, when I'll be going home for a few days, to catch up with an old friend of mine (and won't have my computer or maya)

Other than this, I'll be updating when I have new work to show :D or new information on things :3
Expect another blog post in a week or so once I've had these tutorials and improved on the beginners tasks I've been working on :D

Until Next Time! c:

No rest for the wicked...Aka: Task #1 - Bouncing Ball (No Decay)

Hey Everyone :3 I'm back again o-o It's so soon but meh, I've had a nice rest over the weekend, Geocaching with my flatmates, so back to business! :D

Basically, on Saturday, I posted my showreel, seen in my last blog post, to an animation 'newbie' type forum space, asking for some critique. I got some really helpful feedback, especially on the movement of the dragons tail, it should be moving more from the base outwards and I was given this video of Haku from Spirited Away to pay attention to, the next time I animate them.

The general consensus was that I should be going back over all of the 12 basic principles to get them down first, instead of rushing into complicated things like I have been.

As I've mentioned previously on this blog, my main aspiration on this course is to eventually end up in the field of 3D character animation...Having a showreel composed of almost entirely 2D work, this is clearly something I need to work on a lot xD

On this forum, I was approached by a 3D Character animator, currently freelancing in the industry who gave me some amazing tips, advice and feedback and offered to act as a kind-of mentor to me, during the holidays. Which is a really great offer and one that I am extremely thankful for :3 He suggested a few animation exercises to do over the holidays, including the basic principles, which will hopefully help me to improve my timing, spacing and how I approach animation in general c:

Here is my first task c: A simple bouncing ball (using the squishy rig I used way back, in my 3rd ever blog post. This ball was animated on the spot, with no decay (bounced the same height each time)



I'll work on this one more, possibly, based on any feedback I get on it :D
I'll hopefully be posting these at intervals throughout the holidays until I've completed the majority of the basic principles tasks I've been given :3 I've added a 'Summer Tasks' tag to the side bar of my blog, so I don't clutter everything else on my blog, up with all of these posts xD I've also linked my showreel in the 'useful links' section, because It's going to get buried very quickly else xD

But yes :D Task 2 is a Ball Bouncing across the screen, which I'll be attempting tomorrow :D

See you very soon :3
~Char