Kaidonni’s Art Blog

A few months ago had you asked me if I liked using graphics tablets, I would have said NO. I tried my brothers out…it was very unwieldly. Then, a few weeks back, I decided to take a more liberated approach to animating and took out on loan a Wacom A5 graphics tablet from uni…it was very good. So much so I ordered my own. Anyway, who would want to keep taking a graphics tablet out on loan (free of charge, unless you count the hour’s travel and £2.80 spent to book it or pick it up or take it back…I work at home, uni has a sort of negative impact on my productivity).

Anyway, I got my graphics tablet on Thursday, but it couldn’t be installed until last night. I’ve experimented with it today, and have had great fun with it…

I’ll have to figure out how to embed images direct into the blog…can anyone provide any advice on that?

The image following this post (that I have managed to find out how to embed now in a blog) is of Melville, sketched out with my tablet in Photoshop, then sketched out a second time and corrected more, and then colourised. Some shadow is present. It’s still a WIP, though. I don’t think it’s finished yet. Perhaps more touch-up. A lot more. I used different layers, making it far easier to draw and paint this. First time I’ve used a graphics tablet in Photoshop, too. Any comments on the pic so far?

Okay…

http://img159.imageshack.us/my.php?image=melvillewipsinisterpg4.jpg

Copy and paste that link into the URL box…Imageshack doesn’t like the idea of embedding the image into my blog…some sort of internal server error or something…

I can safely say working on my coffee binge animation equalled a productive day for me. Same can’t be said of trying to get the bloody thing online. YouTube…I refuse to use it. First, it was a minor niggle that it locked up Mozilla Firefox mid-uploading a video. Then, it started to happen frequently. Now, it’s bloody rampant. ONE VIDEO! That’s all I managed to upload today. JUST ONE! And it was small enough. Nothing wrong with the file format. The rest screwed up my net connection. Time and time and time again. It got to the point where trying to load up Mozilla didn’t work. Then the Windows menus disappeared. I had to reboot. Either Mozilla or YouTube has something wrong with it…maybe it’s that I’m uploading when there’s too much uploading by everyone else, and it’s overloading the system and messing with my open browsers…I dunno. I just refuse to use it now, I can’t waste time on trouble like this. No offense meant to YouTube or Mozilla. There is nothing wrong with the video files whatsoever…sometimes they upload, but most of the time…

Anyway…back to the main matter at hand…my coffee binge animation. Worked on the ease-in and out, and added more in. Even padded out bits in the middle. Enjoy…

Coffee binge animation

I will mention I have trouble with getting this blog to upload videos. But that was right from the start…YouTube just got worse over time for me…only thing I can do is work around the issue…I think t’internet is conspiring against me…anyone know if a UFO hit a satellite, a la Maximum Overdrive?

Okay, worked on the coffee binge animation from earlier and tweaked it some…here goes nothing:

Further animation work

I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t blogged before. I have. And rarely kept my old blog at Live Journal up-to-date. Here I am, with another blog…but not just any blog. An art blog! Drum roll, please?

I opened this blog a couple of days ago, but hadn’t written anything yet. Fighting laziness isn’t easy. And keeping blogs up-to-date isn’t easy for me, either. Did I mention that I’ve always failed at keeping diaries? Be prepared for the onslaught of ‘Got up…had breakfast…had wash…got dressed…got money for the bus…* Think I’m joking? I might be able to find one of those old diaries…and scan a page in. I’d much rather scan in my current work, though. Scanner isn’t hooked up at the moment though, need to leave a message with my brother…it is his computer, afterall.

At the moment, I’m in the final semester at uni, final year…May 11th is the date (I’ll try to get an extension on my uni work though). I kinda mucked up uni, procrastinating and all. I do want to do animation, just that thinking about doing something and actually busting one’s ass to do it are two entirely different things.

I’m currently working on trying to improve my animation quality, using simple stick figures in my attempts to impart character. One step at a time…I don’t have much confidence in my drawing ability. Maybe I’m just too rigid at the moment…or maybe it’s that I need to combine pose-to-pose and straight-ahead into little thumbnail sketches on my next short animation. It would help…doesn’t need to be anything overly-complex. Just simple plans. I had done that for this one animation, but then decided to make it shorter and disregarded the planning…oopsie.

Here is the coffee binge animation I’ve been working on…well, here are two for comparison. The first…ouch. The second…much better. There’s a third one, but it’s still a WIP, just some minor changes. Haven’t uploaded that one to YouTube…it’s attached to this blog entry. I’ve been told by the people at AWN forums to work on the easing in and out and on the spacing between events, and so shall it be. Of course, I should be careful to not spend too long on this animation. Maybe the work on the easing in and out should be worked on here, but really improved in the next animation. Afterall, if I were to work on all the principles in this single animation, I’d never finish it! It’d be a very good comparison to a later date when I have much improved, too:

First test

Second test

Coffee binge test

Comments are welcome. Constructive comments. Thanks.

The other module I am working on is developing a character. My lecturer’s disagree with why I’m doing it…but, meh, lecturers…I have learnt to take what they say with a *cough*truck load*cough* of *cough*cyanide*cough*. Sorry, must get that cough looked at. My character happens to be a possum named Melville. Been drawing lots of little thumbnail sketches of him in different poses, in ink. Really helps me stop being a perfectionist. I even spent yesterday afternoon pausing and unpausing Ice Age 2 to see how Crash and Eddie moved. Need to do that again. And the same with Over The Hedge (I’ve used the concept art on that DVD as reference material…it’s really helped me shape my character more freely and without sterile drawings…sketches all the way! Thick, JUICY lines…that reminds me…you’d wonder if there were any characters under some of the sketches on that DVD…LOL!).

Melville is an unfortunate fella…his story (which I am not focusing on for the purposes of the module…I need to explore character a bit more freely…although you’ll find this novelist disgruntled at this notion of separating character and story…it’s an outrage! Maybe I should throw that opinion of my lecturers’ into the bin too)…his story is he’s escaped from an animal laboratory. Yep, complete with survivor guilt and a naive mind as to what one has to do to survive in the wild. I don’t fancy his story being too sentimental. Darkness is called for. Maybe a Human cylon here and there…LOL!

Hopefully soon I can get the scanner hooked up…