Life but not as we know it…? That’s because it’s drawn with a subdominant hand!

Today we began Life Drawing!

(All drawings were drawn using a 3b pencil with varying degrees of sharpness)

We began with a 10 minute full body sketch focusing on structure. It was a nice warm up. It was important to consider the muscle tone and bones so I focused on his ribs, his elbows and knees, places where his bones were more prominent. His leg muscles and arms were easy in comparison to his stomach – because he’s got a realistic body, (not a chiselled six pack) we had to consider a different sort of structure, where the muscle tone was and where there was more flesh and which parts of the body it rested on like the ribs or the hips.

It would have been interesting to work on the face and feet more because of course the bone structure is far more complex but I didn’t give myself enough time.

The body as a whole is a fascinating structure and It was great to observe how everything worked to create the pose, where the weight was held etc.

The next task focused on one part of the body of our choice. We had 10 minutes to draw it oversized. It was an easy option to pick hands or feet because I’d drawn these several times. Instead, following on from concentrating on the underlying structure of his torso, I focused on his middle again, but this time close up. Although i’m not comfortable with drawing details like nipples or genitals I felt pleased I was able to focus enough to get a result. One of the most challenging parts was placing the bellybutton in a correct spot; judging the size and extrusion of his belly to the right degree based on my observations.

It was time to focus on the full form with a single fluid line – 10 minutes.

This was difficult – mainly because there was a hand involved and also because I wanted to draw in my normal style where I use very repetitive pencil strokes. I had to be firm with myself and stop doing that, focusing instead on the fluidity of form.

I’m not too happy with this, I don’t think it’s fluid enough, I think I need to let go with the drawing a little and interpret it more freely.

The 30 minute work saw us drawing the body but focusing on detail, and making special focus on feet which can get missed off and are of course, fiddly!

So to combat this I started from the feet upward which although it didn’t mean I had enough time to add in too much detail, everything seems rather proportionate and at least he now HAS feet, unlike my other drawings.

Retrospectively, should I ought to try drawing from the feet upwards often?

After a break we set about drawing with our sub-dominant hand for 10 minutes, with no particular focus except accuracy I suppose. Aargh! It makes your brain hurt when you want your hand to do something and it can’t!!

(apologies about the scan quality, it’s suffered)

Next our piece focused on volume, drawing on what we did a while ago – using circles and bands and wave forms to represent volume.

I like drawing this way, the results are interesting because once you add detail it magically comes alive! It makes sense.

(again, sorry for the scan quality)

Then we did a 10 minute exciting action pose which provided another challenge – perspective. The stick he was holding was closer to me than he was. It was quite difficult, more than I expected. I tried my best however to represent it. His hand was also a challenge – his fingers were in a difficult position and I just couldn’t get it right! (howls in anger!)

Next! Model moving around the room? Told to stop in a different pose? We draw it? That’s alright. How long is the pose? We don’t know!

Now that was something we weren’t expecting! (it gets so exciting around here! 😉 )

It was actually more like observational studies in the real world, because you never know how long your model is going to stay still for.

We did a 15 minute sketch of the full body next, focusing on hands and feet and by the end of this I was not a happy bunny! I couldn’t get the result I wanted at all! Maybe I need to draw it bigger next time… this is interesting because usually I’m happy with drawing very small, but now maybe my drawing style has changed.

Well! That’s it for today – tune in next time for more Life Drawing! (exit to the Star Trek Theme)

 

TVPaint rides again!

We continued our TVpaint classes this week, learning to create an animatic on the program using one of the comic strips we’d prepared earlier (Blue peter reference intended!)

As well as this, the lesson was full of handy tips on how to improve our Morphs which we’ll be presenting NEXT week, along with a finished Animatic with sound.

Although I started a little late learning TVpaint, I think i’m finally getting the hang of at least the basic parts and am beginning to feel more confident with trying out some of the more interesting stuff such as animated “Custom Brushes” and Camera moves. I can tell it’s a much more useful program than the ones I’ve previously worked on like Pencil, but it’s getting to know the complex layout and methods that’s the challenge!

What was reassuring to know was that there’s no right way of doing it and experimenting with it is one of the best ways of working it out – thank goodness for that, because that’s how I learnt the programs I was familiar with before starting the course!

CHECK BACK FOR MORE UPDATES!

 

 

So long! Farewell! Auf Wiedersehen, Goodbye!

Time to say goodbye to our acting classes! (which is a shame, because I really rather enjoyed them!)

The end of our acting lessons saw us putting together all we had learnt in the previous classes.

Our task was to tell a story – a creation story from Hindu, Inuit or Greek cultures. We were split in to groups of five, which meant enough people to play major parts and then swap to fill minor roles or play scenery, narrate etc.

Our group had to perform the Greek story which had various contrasting locations and characters.

We used a variety of dramatic techniques, such as levels to imply status, the physicality of characters to show their personality and applied various voices to make scenes more interesting.

Our teacher’s main feedback after watching our (Bafta-winning 😉 ) performance, was that it was “very Greek!” and in retrospect it was kind of like an over-acted Greek tragedy or something! We took a very light hearted look at it, however I think we grasped the main concepts from earlier lessons about staging and voice and that’s the main thing! It was great fun to do and made me feel more confident, not only with vocals and staging, but generally too! Acting classes are good for self-esteem. In terms of animating, I feel better prepared to create interesting pieces and tell convincing stories with the skills I’ve picked up over the lessons (not to mention, would definitely like to have more goes at voice-acting!)

Be sure to check in next time, I think we could be seeing a return of the life-drawing!

TV paint polishing here and there

Also today I’ve been doing some independent work on my Morph using TV PAINT – adding  some colour and trying to make it look more interesting. We didn’t have a lesson today, so I instead worked on compiling and editing my scans in TVPAINT and seeing what I can do with this image sequence generally with the tools I have, experimenting with various brushes, maybe later i’ll try and add some textures, especially to the helmet.

Have you forgotten how good these cornflake’s taste?

Today’s acting class combined what we’d learnt about Tableaux and the Voice in our previous lessons. We had to make a short performance in the style of a live action Storyboard, complete with voice overs.

I’ve been told we might be able to get the footage of the performance later, I’m waiting for the teachers to get back to us – technology isn’t very helpful.

We began class with various warm-up exercises and then progressed to doing 30 second pieces in groups of three, only using the words, “yes”, “no”, “maybe”, “you” and “me”. The results were hilarious. My group (having one girl and two boys) decided on a love-interest scenario; one boy is wooing a girl who’s returning his affections, then another boy steps up and tries to attract the attention of the same girl. The girl is flirty, acting coy and saying “Ooh maybe”, the first boy is outraged and indignant and the piece ends with a few punches!

The point of the exercise was to get us to use more nuances, inflection, enunciation and body-language because it’s easier to hide behind a large script and let the words do the talking whereas here with such a limited vocabulary we had to use different ways of expressing emotion, intention and reaction.

This was key to our main task of creating a live action storyboard, because the actors here would not be able to move and speak as they would in a more realistic performance.

The context was a Kellogg’s Cornflake’s commercial. We had a script which had two roles, a husband and wife. The setting was a rainy caravan holiday;

The weather is torrential and the wife is setting a table for breakfast. Her husband enters the caravan laden with groceries and announces breakfast has arrived, presenting the Cornflakes to his wife. She’s unimpressed, he tries to reason that the shop was small, they resolve to endure the task of eating Cornflakes, sit down and try their first mouthful. They’re both surprised, clearly enjoying the apparently delicious taste. The shot changes to a packet shot of the product with a voiceover saying “Kellogg’s Cornflakes. Have you forgotten how good they taste?” There’s a small joke at the end where the wife then looks out the window and comments about the rain saying, “do you think it’ll last all week?” to which the husband replies, “maybe, it’s a big enough box!”

We were put in to groups of 5 or 6 and allocated ourselves various roles; husband, wife, physical scenery (people being doors and windows) voice over artist and camera operator.

Those of us who weren’t speaking or character acting performed sound effects for wind and rain and the door opening and shutting, just with our voices. Our voiceover artist voiced both the husband and the wife as well as announcing the cereal, the actors mimed their roles with mouths shut and it gave the piece a really interesting look. I reckon it would have been funnier if they’d mimed with mouths synchronising to our voice artist’s voice, because it would have looked disjointed and surprised the viewer.

There was a debate about whether to have the window in front of the couple or behind. In our rehearsal we tried the window behind, but our teacher then recommended we try it at the front, so the camera could do a Hitchcock-ian zoom in and out of the window and the actors could clearly look out of it.

This was all filmed in one shot, so if we wanted close ups, the camera had to move in and out or track the actors. Where there would have been a cut scene in a real commercial, we zoomed in on the cereal (which had just been placed on the table) then zoomed out again, with the actors and set having re-arranged themselves out of shot.

It was difficult not to corpse when rehearsing because we did a very light-hearted version, with angelic choirs singing when the voice over announces the product name and such, but overall I think ours went well. I loved seeing the other group’s performances; everyone had a different take on it and it was a great opportunity to compare ideas and criticism.

Next week we’ll be taking what we’ve learnt a step further, I don’t know where, but it’s further!

VOICE!!!

Today’s class saw us focusing on The Voice.

How we speak and how our voices are unique as well as how we can create character.

We considered some main points when it came to Vocals,

Relaxation – basically what it says! To get a good voice out you have to be relaxed; tense yourself and you try to speak and what you’re saying comes out horribly forced. Relax and words flow freer, you can make more use of your vocal range. We reserved brits tend to use less and less of our vocal range because our language isn’t as expressive as say Latin languages. In order to fully use your voice you must therefore let go of inhibitions!

Breathing – that important thing that your body does; the correct use of breath means you can speak fluently and coherently. Just recognising when you need to breath is a step in the right direction to good vocal skills. Being aware of how much body you use to breath tunes you in to your whole respiratory system, including your vocal chords.

Tone and Resonance – Tone is literally the sound you are making. A person can usually have about 2/3 octaves in their voice. An opera singer or generally someone who exercises their voice regularly can have 4 octaves! The more you exercise your voice, just as you would practice a musical instrument, the more tones and twiddlie bits you can do with it! It was great fun to be made increasingly aware of how we made sounds, whether that be an “mmmmm” sound with the front of our mouths or an “innnng” sound through our nasal cavaties!

We then picked up some scripts, an adaptation of an excerpt from a Terry Johnson play, “Dead Funny”, the scene being “Tonight Matthew…” We had to work in pairs, playing two characters discussing one’s planned activities for that Sunday night, specifically a “one night only” Take That gig in Liverpool.

We all interpreted it at first as the first character, Sam, being hugely overexcited about going to see the performance, with the second character, Alex, being less than impressed at Sam’s attitude.

Alex: you got a ticket?

Sam: I’ve got twelve!

Alex: handy, that way when you fall asleep you’ll have something to stretch across.

We then were instructed to work on developing the characters. Actors when given a script and a character would consider a huge number of things about said character,

Where do they live?

How old are they?

What do they do?

What do they like?

What’s their opinion of other characters?

I was playing Alex and so came up with a story that he and Sam were 30 something flatmates; a sweet and sour pair, with Alex being the slightly more sour one. He is a transvestite and so is self-conscious and so is rather defensive and serious. He takes his job at the bar he works at very seriously. Rather than being the camp stereotype, he’s highly cultured and so wouldn’t tolerate Take That, is a bit of meglamaniac and takes the fact he’s slightly older than Sam as a signal that he is by proxy, more mature and intelligent than Sam!

Sam meanwhile was a blogger and critic who is much more relaxed than Alex.

We then redid our performance and the characters suddenly were much more alive; it was fab to be able to perform them with so much added detail.

It was only later that it was pointed out the scene could be read the other way, that Sam was mortified at having to go to a gig and Alex was consoling him. I DID NOT EVEN THINK OF THIS POSSIBILITY! So, we turned the performance on it’s head and it was obvious the characters and the way we played them shifted as we saw a different side to them; sadness and sympathy.

Next week we’ll be combining what we learnt about Tableaux and portraying a story through a picture, with portraying a character through voice. Tune in next time for the next update!

TV paint continued.

Today we also continued our TVpaint classes – these are somewhat hard to keep up with because our teacher goes very fast, but he’s always happy to explain in detail if we don’t understand.

i’m finding this the hardest lesson at the moment, but if i try hard enough i’ll get the hang of it! TV paint is very fiddly and i reckon i’ll best work out how to use it by experimenting as i work.

however, today we learnt some interesting techniques such as key framing and creating custom brushes, as well as the camera tool which is useful for animatics.

(I can’t grace your eyes with glorious examples yet i’m afraid because the format isn’t correct)

More updates coming soon!

Draaaammaaaaaaaah Darling!

Acting for Animation

Today we began our new subject focusing on the “drama” part of the Drawing Drama and Design unit.

The aim of this lesson being to understand and explore how a picture tells a story. As animators this is obviously very important because all of our pictures must tell a story, we need to learn how to communicate meaning effectively.

We began with some warm-up exercises which led to us saying some facts about ourselves – our teacher made us aware that we were telling stories already, our stories.

We played a game of charades where our physicality had to communicate what animated film we were describing, then expanded on this by creating a tableau (still image / scene using ourselves), first describing a popular animated film, E.G; Snow White or Cinderella. This became more complex when we had to depict moments in history like Nelson being wounded in the battle of Trafalgar or the French Revolution. This was frustrating as we only had 10 seconds to do it and couldn’t communicate to organise ourselves because it would give away what the content was. (the other groups were supposed to be guessing what we were showing)

However, for our final task we were split in to groups and had to create a scene, with each character entering one at a time, until the final tableau is formed. My group’s scene was a footballer having just scored the winning goal in a penalty shoot out. This meant the key characters were; The Striker, Goal-Keeper, team members and a Referee. One team would have just lost, so would be mortified, the other team would be jubilant. The goal keeper would be furious with himself and the referee had to be unbiased.

Using the concept of levels to signify status in the tableau, the losing team and the goal keeper were lower down and miserable in their defeat. We used curled up physicality, with heads down, not looking at the camera. The Winning team were upstanding with clear open facial expressions and physicality – arms in the air, clearly celebrating. The referee then was upright but in a neutral pose while blowing the whistle, making it clear this is a game and it’s just ended and he’s an impartial force.

We were told we could improve by having the losing team’s faces more visible so we can see the miserable faces. but apart from that i personally felt quite pleased with the clarity of the scene and the framing and depth, with our goal keeper in the foreground and the teams further back, with the goalkeeper in the middleground.