TV PAINT - suite

Here is our final assignment of the year at the Animation Workshop. We worked on TV Paint again with a frog and a fly as characters. We had 6 sec to make them interact ;).

TV PAINT

2012 is almost finished and for this last week before going back home (hellyeah) we have been introduced to this very cool program TV Paint! Thanks to our new teacher Rune Ryberg ( AWESOME ARTWORK THERE !) getting used to it was not such a big deal. Here is the result of 2 days of work : a little flying cycle starring "the owl" in Sleeping Beauty.

Conducting*

explanations soonish*

Selfportrait for the classgroup photo*

Intro to Photoshop

In order to get to know better our dear Photoshop, we got to do a monster illustration using a background, a good composition, textures, colors... The 2 first drawings were my roughs and the last one is what I came up with as a final picture. Still some work to achieve but this assignment helped to become comfortable with Photoshop.

I am trying Photoshop*

Walk cycle

This week we have been introduced to the walk cycle by our new teacher Alberto Campos. We get to work on the famous Pink Panther. After studying its modelsheet during the week-end, here is what came from our 3 days of animation. Our assignment was to make a normal walk cycle without any attitude.

Aisling / Mickey

Week 45 - week 46

After we worked on planning our last animation starring Mickey Mouse casting a spell, our next task was to in-between our scene. To achieve this, our teacher Rebecca Bang Sørensen gave us the key-poses of a scene from the movie "The Secret of Kells" which we had to in-between in order to train ourselves before focusing on Mickey's scene. 

Back to Mickey with this new dimension of drawing these very clean in-between frames I realized how important touched-up key-drawings are in the view of the character design and of a good reading of the movement. I noticed a lot of incoherences in my animation but the aim was for me to understand what were my mistakes. So, more than filling the blanks I let between my key-poses, I spent most of the week to clean these keys in order to check and keep the feeling of a fluent action. I will not say I succeeded entirely but I am very happy to have been able to keep the design of Mickey while making him move how I wanted. I think I reached some of the fluidity I expected in his actions but I know I have still a lot to do. Animation is a long process and the more I travel inside of it, the clearer I see its keys.

Drawing for Animation 2/2

 These two last weeks we were taught Drawing for Animation by Frederik Villumsen and Rebecca Bang Sorensen. We have finally been really introduced into the animation workflow and our assignment was the following : we had to create a 6-seconds-footage  with the character of Mickey in the Sorcercer's Apprentice in which we had to tell this story : 

“Mickey has put on the Sorcerer’s magical hat and is conjuring his most powerful spell! The result is not what Micket expected.”

The result looks still a little clumsy and unfinished but what I got from this module was more that I expected : for the first time with our animation basics in mind we were able to depict precisely a personal idea in animation. I went from this crazy picture of Mickey casting his spell through a silly ritual dance to this final result. What a joy when you realise that this is possible. We are about to begin another step in the animation process which is the inbetweening. It will fill in all the blanks and static frames you can see and we will I hope get a fluent and smooth final picture. I'll conclude by : IT HAS BEEN THE FIRST REAL SELF TRANSCENDENCE. 

Moreover I posted some of my notebook pages in which I doodled teachers, classmates, illustrations... and also was writing my everyday expectations and reflexions about our organisation and workflow.

Drawing for Animation 1/2

Character Design

 Here are some character design researches. I have been very inspired by James Wood and Meg Park. After studying their sketches and how they construct their characters, I tried to work from photos of people which I tried to caricature. Very difficult to dare pushing the realism to something that graphic.

Animation Basics

3 weeks ago we had two intensive weeks about animation basics. We learnt the basis of it and had different assignments to practice. We went through different basic principles such as the bouncing ball, the seaweed, the headturn... and we also got used to anticipate movement thanks to the exercice of TV-croquis which consists of sketching from an animation or a movie. Here are some TV-croquis, and two of our main assigments : the attitude ball with a tail and the flour sack. For this last one, we had to follow an imposed storyboard and the flour sack but we were free concerning the acting. Even if my final animation struggles a lot yet, I am very happy to have been able to surpass myself and to finally tell a story in motion :)

Have a look at our weekly teachers' blogs : Jody Ghani and Laura B. Schjødt 

Some life drawings - october 2012

Composition * Design

The week has been completely awesome for me : we have been taught by "the great" Lawrence Marvit who introduced us to design and composition in visual arts. Here are some of the different assignments we had to explore.

* After tasting a really dark chocolate, our mission was to picture our sensations while eating it only using a line. Very difficult task when you do not dare play with the thickness, the form or the texture of it. I managed to get the closest to what was happening in my body.

* Second approach to the visual translation of our senses, we had to listen to the album Kind of Blue by Miles Davis and same exercise : trying to relate the music to something visual only using a line, shapes and three grays. This is so interesting to realize how you can relate everything you feel to a story.

* After a week figuring out how to compose and design a picture properly and with simple shapes, we received an extract from Shakespear’s Hamlet for which we had to create a final picture. We had to considerate all the "rules" composition offers (focal point, pressure, shapes...) to be able to emphasize the mood we wanted the scene to be. The scene takes place on one of the towers of the castle and the dead king ghost is appearing in front of three guards.

This week was very intense and very surprising because I was not expecting how important the composition of a picture could be. Also it has been a pleasure to explore our body and brain to understand that inspiration comes first from our deepest sensations. Now I will think twice before drawing.

Visit Lawrence Marvit's artwork : clic!

Commission "Escale Bio"

While I was working last july as a seller in an organic shop near my hometown my bosses asked me if I could find some ways to "dress" their new shop. I decided to set myself a goal which was to create big wall paintings. I had "carte blanche" concerning the content of them so I just let my hand go through these new volumes and mediums... It has been a real self-transcendence to be able to finish them and be proud of them. Now they exist and live with the place and the people that run it. The pictures are not very good but you get the idea*

Construction * Perspective

Here are our first week assignments. We went through a lot of construction and perspective basis in order to compose and construct our future characters properly.

Check out our teacher’s blog : Magnus Møller