Thursday, 23 October 2014

Haven't updated this blog for quiet some time, but here's a tank I've recently finished modelling and texturing for my 3D class. Still in the middle of rendering my frames, but when that's all finished I'll throw it up here!

Tuesday, 17 June 2014

Before I forget, here is a quick snippet of illustrations I've worked on in the past week or so for Supanova this weekend!
I'm currently in the middle of designing badges, and will try to post the end designs when I can.


My first semester of my animation course at Central has finished, which is good timing since I've had to throw myself into preparations for Supanova this weekend.

Out of the whole coursework I feel that my flash animation is the most accomplished, where I'm quite happy with the motion of the character along with the colouring. I've tried setting the actual flash animation onto this blog, but something kept going wrong with the coding, so I've done the next best thing and posted it on deviantart, where at least that way the animation retains it's button abilities.


Character Animation by Krikin on deviantART

Another project I was quite satisfied with was my cityscape animation with 3ds max, where although the animation itself is relatively simple, it effectively shows my city design. This project was one of my first introductions to using the After Effects software, and luckily it seems to be quite efficient to use. Though most likely that is due to it's usage being similar to photoshop.



Overall my main focus until next semester begins is just getting more comfortable with modeling in 3ds max,  and also getting more comfortable with texturing as well.
I'm also going to try to attempt more practices with flash, where I want to build up a stronger sense of motion for my animations. I'll try to keep regularly posting on this blog about my progress.

But for now, all attention is focused on Supanova!

Sunday, 1 June 2014



I think I can almost say I'm done with my character animation after working on it non stop for many hours today. I decided to do 3 different environments, 1 per animation, because I seem to like challenging myself.  Everything seems to have a nice flow, all that's left is to just clean up the details and create a profile for my character. Can't wait to have the final product ready for viewing!

Otherwise not much to show on the 3d side of things, where I'm now being acquainted with the waiting time for rendering animations.. Which is a lot, where I spent 20 hours rendering 250 frames for a simplistic canyon environment. Here's hoping I'll be able to steal a couple of computers this week and plow through the rendering process!

Wednesday, 21 May 2014

Alright, I think I'm basically done with the walk cycle for my animation! The turnaround and the jump cycle shouldn't take me as long thankfully.

Sunday, 18 May 2014

While I haven't got many exciting things to show as I'm in the middle of finishing my last assignments, I thought I'd show the beginning of a new print I'm working on for this year's Perth Supanova. Although I like the colour scheme I've established for this illustration, I think I still need to create a stronger contrast for the lighting.

I might have more stuff to show for my flash animation project in the next day or so!

Wednesday, 7 May 2014


After attempting my canyon environment countless times, I've finally reached a point where I'm satisfied with the end product. The biggest aspect I've learnt from this model is how to prevent stretching with the texture on the mountains, something that was giving me grief around the last hurdle of this project.

The problem now is probably going to be my patience for the next assignment, where I have to use this environment for my animation, especially considering each render took about 30 minutes.. Hopefully I'll be able to figure out a way of culling down aspects of my model in order to reduce the render time.

Been a bit quiet here the past couple days, mainly due to the fact that last Friday I lost my drawing tablet pen. Against all odds my teacher actually found it, so feeling pretty relieved at the moment.. Excluding the fact that I've wasted my money on purchasing a replacement, but I guess it never hurts to have a spare.
Anyway! I've done a quick sketch tonight to get back into the swing of things. Will try to post some images of my 3D environment render in the next day or two.

Saturday, 26 April 2014

I had most of my turnaround frames drawn out earlier, though decided to redo them as I thought some of the anatomy and positions needed fixing/refining. The only thing that needs fixing now is just the positioning of the feet in some of the frames.

Wednesday, 23 April 2014

After some consideration I've decided to finally bite the bullet and go with the UVW process for texturing my spaceship. It's going to take a lot of time to get all these bits and pieces stitched together so I'm really hoping it's going to be worth it in the end! I've already spent a few hours with this process and it doesn't even feel like I've gotten half way through. I guess it might be true that this process can take as long as it takes actually making the spaceship itself haha.

I also might have some exciting news (for myself at least) in the next day or two, but for now sleep beckons me!

Tuesday, 22 April 2014

Squeezing in a daily sketch before I head off to bed! The focus for this one was trying to render the skin tones and all it's nuances.
I've quickly sketched out the rest of my character's jump cycle, I'm liking it for the most part, where I think I've gotten a good flow for their cloak. The only thing I'll probably fix up is the second last frame, where I think I need to stretch out their pose a bit more. Looking at it, I think it is slightly interfering with the flow of the animation. That, or I might need to add another frame in between the last 2 frames..

Just scanned through my frames for my walk cycle just to see if everything was going well and I'm pretty happy with the results, especially since this is my first attempt with hand-drawn animation!

Got to say, something bizarre about seeing your own pencil drawing moving.

Now I'm even more determine to finish and polish my other sheets and get everything ready for next week!

The Elongated Inbetween

 Another quick practise until I settle down tonight to work on assignments. Here is an animation concept that had always interested me, the 'elongated inbetween'.
I first really became aware of this when a while ago people were posting animation stills from well known movies, such as Aladdin. Although at first it was made humorous, it got me thinking about how and why this method was being used.
The elongated inbetween is very useful for a numerous amount of reasons, though what I find is that it helps to create a lot of fluidity for an animation, and also helps to exaggerate a movement which helps for better story-telling.

Although very simple and rough, I've done a quick study of how elongated inbetweens work. Where, once the timing of the frames have been sorted, you can't actually tell how the image is distorted inbetween the main key frames. i.e.
Overall definitely a necessity to hold on to with my future dabbles with animation!
I also forgot to post my very quick sketch from the other day, want to try out slightly different colour schemes for portraits and also look at strong lighting!

 Out of all books and resources I've come across, I feel like Richard William's 'The Animators Survival Kit' is the most accessible and knowledgeable book for a beginner like myself. Although I've probably covered more items in Flash, I feel like I should definitely attempt aspects from this book as a good practise tool.
 The first aspect the book introduces is timing and space, where as animators we have to master these concepts in order to create a convincing animation.
One such practise to help show this concept is the bouncing ball, where using the simplicity of the shape we are better able to see how an object travels, how it's momentum changes over a period of time and so on.
Here was a quick animation I made while studying this idea, where following the instructions of the page above, I toyed with the squash and stretch of the ball in order to further advance the idea of movement.

I will post more of what I read from this book while also posting more of my dabbles with flash in the near future!

Saturday, 19 April 2014

Quick one before bed! It's been tough trying to squeeze everything in between work.. But hopefully tomorrow will prove to be a more productive day!

Friday, 18 April 2014

 After the last screenshot I posted I've been slowly working my way through the model adding what details I could to the design of the spaceship, such as the octagon pattern on the wings. I'm now at a stage where I'm able to texture the design, though still deciding what method of texturing the ship will be most effective. I did originally consider UVW mapping, though when it came time to flattening the map there was way to many shapes to even consider stitching together (well, at this stage of my knowledge on the subject). For now I'm going to at least find textures online and possibly make my own on photoshop to contribute to my design. That and maybe find a tutorial here and there that might expand my skillset for this topic.



Quick colour study while in between working on other stuff that I'll hopefully post soon. Already noticing how I'm able to sketch at a faster and more precise rate!

Wednesday, 16 April 2014

A quick sketch for today, just found a photoset online of women with very colourful makeup, with very interesting colour combinations. I drew the one above where those particular colours drew my eye for some reason. That and the facial expression was fun to draw!

Daily Sketch

A more polished colour study for the blog! Trying to look at a moodier colour scheme, and also trying to practice rendering different textures, which in this case is fur.
Decided to do something different from what I usually do and try colouring with a more muted colour scheme. A lot harder than I was expecting, but definitely shows how a colour scheme can drastically change the atmosphere of an image!

Tuesday, 15 April 2014

Another daily sketch to add to the blog! Here I've used yet another new brush on photoshop whilst practising my colour application. For a quick sketch I'm pretty satisfied with the results! Already I can start to see how using different brushes can create a substantial difference when trying to blend tones and colours together.

Didn't get to spend as much time as I'd hope for rendering my spaceship tonight, but I'm happy with the direction it's going! Just have to slightly fix the sizing of some of the shapes, but I think it has a solid foundation. The image on the right is a design belonging to Concept Artist Alexey, where I decided to go with his design as I loved the shape and form of the spaceship. Also, by having an interesting but challenging design I find that I'm more determined to produce something to a high standard.

Will try to work on this more tomorrow and hopefully I can start playing around with textures soon.
Trying to push myself creatively as possible, where I'm aiming to produce a sketch once a day! I'm also aiming to try to use as many different brushes as possible and experiment different ways of illustrating and also how to apply colour schemes.

This will hopefully keep things fresh and also hopefully increase my drawing skills, but most of all increase my rate of production!

Tonight the aim is to work on my 3d skills as they are still at a raw stage. Will post what progress I make tonight with my space ship so I can reflect on what still needs to be done, and what I can also improve on.

Sunday, 13 April 2014

Welcome to my first post of my new blog! After having a few issues with my last provider, I decided to go ahead and make a new one, where the last one wasn't great function-wise.

Recently I've been trying to get into the habit of sketching more whilst taking less time to achieve the results. With animation I find that the priority is to get things out at an efficient time, so I can't afford to be slow with my production. While I'm attempting to sketch more I'm going to force myself to use different brushes in photoshop, as this can often produce new and interesting results. The image above is my first series of sketches using a brush I have not used before, and I'm quiet please with the results!
Overall I'm going to try to keep going over the form of the human body in order to make my work more consistent and also add more expression to my characters (something I think will be necessary if I want to get a foot in to the animation industry).