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.

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!

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!

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!

 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!

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!

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.

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).