Life Drawing

Proper old school life drawing class at DJCAD...
Great model, dramatic lighting and classical music....

1 minute poses...not enough time to even put masking tape on the drawing!

Creating 'neon' in photoshop CS3

For my 2D character design, I've been researching how to create 'neon' effect in Photoshop...

here's a great tutorial link...https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMpk_bk1L0I&index=22&list=PLR6NkeqscAx1G47ES3keltSaZi4DNOpXk

And this is my first attempt, using a sketch of an eye I created in a sketch book....
Just off now to do some life drawing, which will give me some new figures to turn into neon, and practice creating a sharper, sketchier line.....

Concept images for final project

For the past two weeks I've been looking at the storyboard concept for my final film !

The premise:

Set in a dark room, a 2D woman is taken hostage in a camera film negative. She must overpower her captor to become 3D.

I've used a style board  to put together a rough visual guide, which will provide a visual framework for the story and images to evolve from.

These images are for working reference only - they are not my own work...

UV Mapping - basics

UV Mapping in Maya

This reminded me of pattern cutting in costume making...

I am used to XYZ axis in AutoCAD and Google sketch up and today I learned a about the UVW axis -  XYZ axis' are used in all 3D modelling software...to avoid confusion, mapping is known as UV (not sure what happened to the W!)

Here's some basic UV mapping, applied to a pre-made object of a torso...

Final film research: Dark Rooms !

Research for final film....

I've had some vague ideas about 2D & 3D transformations but no underlying structure or theme....

so I have been letting the ideas soak...

I was chatting with my husband last night and we started talking about dark rooms. I had a call scheduled  with my very good animator friend Karen Watson http://explore.bfi.org.uk/4ce2ba84caa82; to brainstorm and give shape to some of these ideas I've been having....the two conversations ignited an idea and the story idea arrived ! 

Today I've been researching Dark Rooms and the photographic dark room printing process....

http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-Print-BW-Photographs-in-a-Darkroom/?ALLSTEPS

And I've found these images on line...the top one is from a photography student's blog....http://arlettaelizabeth.blogspot.co.uk/2014_11_01_archive.html

I love this image; the colours, the loose neon style of text and the whole general feel of the image.

The striking simplicity of the colours in a dark room, plus the process and the subsequent analogies and metaphors will be perfect to tell the story...

First attempt at a walk cycle

I've been reading 'The Animator's Survival Kit' - Richard Williams
and thought I would try out some sketch ideas for a walking man...
I drew the images on detail paper, using a base line for the character to make contact with...the contact drawing seems to be very important...
I then took a quick photo of the sketches on my phone and imported into my old version of Photoshop CS2, and tried out a rough walk cycle; using simple block colours, lighter and darker tones to differentiate the left and right arms and legs....
Each frame was set to .5 second, the timing is a bit slow and I think I might need to add some in-betweens, to make the walking smoother...

Really pleased with this first attempt though, and like the simplicity of the character...

Playing with eyes

Whilst researching Pixar's Inside Out, I came across some youtube tutorials for colouring in eyes.
Sketched one in my book, then photographed it and imported it into photoshop...
and played with colours and highlights...