E4 Progress

Hey Guys!

I forgot that I never got the chance to post my Esting progress, so here it is in all (or none) of its glory! This is pre-editing and pre-characters so the sound and transition is a bit off.

This also needs to be re-rendered at full quality because I didn't have the time before my college hand in, the mac towers were being a bit temperamental! But hopefully it will be completed and something I can be proud of by the time I come to submit to the E4 competition!

Still debating whether to animate the characters in 2D and composite them or in 3D now that I know how to rig, hmm decisions man...

Cheers,

Liam.

Working towards success

I recently listened to a very interesting and influential podcast by Chris Oatley who is currently a character designer and visual development artist for Disney. He also runs the podcasts and website "paperwings" with fellow artist and web comics creator, Lora Innes.

The podcast was entitled "why NOT to pursue artistic growth" which at first sounds funny because as an artist it is our main goal, to improve and become increasingly better as a professional, however I have come to realize that for too long I have been setting myself the task of becoming "better" as an artist my whole life! When in fact, this is immeasurable, unfathomable and an intangible goal to set for success. It is a life long endeavor in which you never truly become perfect as a creative person, you are always growing and evolving as an artist.

And so, I've begun the task of setting myself small projects in which I have a measurable means of control, something that is tangible, possible and realistic, but most importantly, something I can complete! Something I can "win" as Chris put it. Gaining a "win" is so invaluable to building confidence and the more "wins" you can achieve the more you are going to snowball and move forward as an individual.

The kinds of tasks I'm talking about aren't such like, "draw in my sketchbook every day" or "paint more" because again these goals are unbounded and interminable in that they don't have a specific target, or a specific end. These types of intentions are just setting you up for a loss.

Really then the kind of tasks you want to be setting are things like "fill my sketchbook by this date" or "publish my webcomic by this date" or "complete my personal short animation by this date" these goals have a definite and concrete target that are setting you up for the "win" and naturally the more wins you can accomplish the closer you will be progressing towards that big dream or that broader horizon.

Conclusion...

It is important to dream big, but in order for our dream to not become stagnant or bleak, we must forever take one step forward at a time, successfully completing the small things in order to reach that "final" goal, or apotheosis.

Liam.

(P.S. sorry for such a long winded post I promise more visuals the next time around!)

Nice To Meet You

Here is a little short walk cycle test of my character "Ealhdun" in preparation for an assignment at college! My first time animating a foot roll! Was annoying at first but I managed to get my head round it. Was nice to rig and animate an 'actual' character instead of a shoddy box to! Animating things in 3D is so EASY! It actually makes it quite fun because you can just focus on what you want to do, contrary to traditional 2D animation, where I just get annoyed at my severe inadequacy and inability to draw... But learning these things in 3D can only be good for my career, perhaps the Hand drawn animation will have to remain personal until I feel confident enough to apply to a certain major studio, like that day will ever come!

Once again thanks for watching guys!

Liam

Sexy Martian MuthaF*cka

Hey Guys,

We got given a task in class to create and animate a simple, segmented 3D character from primitive objects such as a cube. After "rigging" the character with a "skeleton" it allowed me to animate the character using Inverse Kinematics, here is the result of my experimentation's!

Hope you enjoy it :)

Thanks Again for Watching

Liam.

Pixilation

Some silly little Pixilation experiment's we created in class.