Preparation for CalArts: short life drawing class

Whilst working on my first short film, ive been attending a life drawing class once a week. Its been really fun and a great chance to relax from all the film related stress ive encountered. Unfortunately Wednesday was my last lesson for a while as i'll be moving out of my student house and back home for the summer.

Going life drawing once a week during this film has seriously been one of the best decisions ive mader in a long time. Its been a great way to relax and cool down ready to carry on animating. If anyone is thinking about making a short film, i seriously recommend going to a life drawing class once a week!

Anywho, heres a few of the pieces ive done from said classes. 

Attempt 1: 10 mins per individual pose with ink

Attempt 2: 10 mins per individual pose with ink

Experimenting with black chalk on white paper and erasing tone with a rubber

Experimenting with white chalk pencil on black paper

Experimenting with drawing tone with a 2B pencil

A failed experiment drawing with tone using charcoal on a foreshortened pose. the pose was a tricky one and i really struggle with drawing just with tone and no outlines, but i gave it my best and learnt a lot from it, the main thing being that the life model mentioned AFTER drawing her that she had fake boobs and they're dam near impossible to draw!

Short film progress

Wow its been a long time since i last post here, well a lots gone on since my last post, heres a mini update:

• I recently was accepted as a student designer for my university starting next academic year, pretty big news as its technically my first job in the industry, even if it is for my uni, at least im getting paid!

• I ran an animation workshop for my university, was a new experience and had some fun doing it. learnt a lot about teaching considering i hadn't done it before, and was pretty interesting to see whether i was successful in teaching people stuff, turns out by some miracle they understood my ramblings :)

• I passed my second year of uni with flying colours and am on my way to graduating with a first class degree in animation, just gota keep pushing forward.

So its been a pretty busy yet positive few weeks, but for now, back to the short film progress. Ive been animating non-stop for the past month and all the rough animation is almost finished. Just over half the film has been cleaned up and about a quarter printed ready to be shot in the sets.

Ive decided on a title for the film and it will be called 'Tunnel Vision'. All credit goes to my dad for the title idea, mine were terrible.

Also, ive managed to get a sound designer on board to produce a soundtrack for me. I was majorly worried about the audio and thought id just let the entire film down by creating a piece of poo soundtrack. luckily, my lecturer knew id make a hash of it and recommended me a previous student who had a strong interest in sound design. Its quite fun sitting back and being the director if im honest, its nice to tell someone to do work and not do any yourself haha well, working with sound anyway, while he's tinkering with sounds im busy animating.

One of the first scenes has now been shot ready for the final film, so its all coming together, just rather slowly. But heres a couple images of whats been going on including a screen shot of the final look that ive made into a movie poster. i could have just kept it a screen shot, but wheres the fun in that?

7 seconds worth of animating works out to a LOT of paper...

Hand drawn animation can get very messy as well, but a graphite covered hand is a sign of a successful day.

A couple frames from one of the opening scenes.

Animating a hand is one of the hardest things ive done in the animation world, there is way to many joints and muscles!

With all this hand drawn animation, you didnt think it could get more hands on, but ohhhh no, even the lighting is done on set. these are christmas lights attached to the ceiling of the set using paper clips cut in half.

And lastly, heres the first screen shot/ film poster, im loving playing around with lighting and textures and hopefully that'll show on the final animation, but for now, back to work.

My first 3D Animation

Well, my Advanced 3D module is all finally over. I eventually managed to get it to a standard i was happy to hand in. I may consider putting it on my show reel next year but i'll make quite a lot of changes first, theres still sooo much i want to do with it but just didnt have the time. But for now I'll take a well earned break from maya to regain my mental stability. So here it is guys, dont expect much, this is my first time animating in maya :P enjoy!


Advanced 3D Final Animation from Reg Isaac on Vimeo.

My First Show-reel

Well, now that year 2 at uni is coming to an end and im starting to think about round 3, i thought i'd have a go at collecting my work so far together into a Show-reel. Its fun to look back at all the animation ive done so far, not to mention highly embarrassing and cringeworthy, but im pretty proud of my progress. Considering i had literally ZERO animation experience when i came to uni, to see how far ive come now is pretty awesome, and i cant wait to get even better!

Sooo, let the animation compilation extravaganza ... BEGIN!!!

Enjoy :)


Reg Isaac - Character Animation Progress Reel 2013 from Reg Isaac on Vimeo.

Animation in Progress and Life drawing.

Well, i started test animating the first scenes of my film last week. It went relatively well, was a big learning curve and opened my eyes as to how many things i need to change for when i shoot the final product.

I visited Second Home Studios yesterday to speak with Chris Randal, BAFTA Nominated Animation Director/Producer, about a specific way of lighting a part of my animation. hopefully if time is kind to me, i'll get to do it :) A big thanks to Chris for letting me come in and speak to him!

Heres a shot of the test animation in progress

  

Whilst in Birmingham, i figured id do a bit of life drawing. Didnt have much time but as it was such a beautiful day, i couldn't resist.

Life Drawing practice

Trying to regularly go life drawing in and around uni work, its proving difficult but every little counts, here are a few from the past couple of days. These range from 20 seconds to 2 minutes. Soon i'll be converting to pen to improve my use of line and try to speed up my sketching, whilst still improving my observational skills.

Animation has begun!!

So, I'm currently in the process of making my first animated short film, animation is in progress with hopefully the first 30 second to be completed within the next 2 weeks. At least I hope so otherwise I'll fail my uni module :P
Here's a quick snap of the opening sequence, its just a piece of simple animation to run along side the title at the start but every little counts :)

Preparation for CalArts 2014

So, im looking into applying to CalArts for 2014 and will be trying to constantly practice life drawing until then, obviously uni will get in the way over the next couple of months but after that, i am not going to stop drawing! For those who don't know CalArts is ranked the 2nd best animation school in the world (1st in my opinion) so doesn't just accept anyone and everyone. This is something ive been considering for a good 2 years and have only recently decided heck, i'll probably not get in, but just lets go for it and see what happens. I'd really appreciate any feedback what-so-ever so please :)

Ive recently joint a lil' group with a few other budding animators all looking to apply to CalArts 2014, we've decided to set small assignments to keep us drawing ready to apply. Hopefully we'll all improve to awesome extents and be accepted into there with open arms... Well we can dream, anyway.

Heres a few life drawing scribbles ive recently done, the task was 100 hands but with uni biting down hard i only managed 50, but its better than nothing so its all positive progress!

And lastly a few sketches from an external life drawing class i attended when i had time, im looking to go to a lot more of these but unfortunately not until uni's out of the way.