Life drawing holiday sketch dump

As you can tell by the previous post, i spent the past week in Cornwall relaxing and doing some experimentation with life drawing. i wanted to spend a week just life drawing to see what sort of things i want to develop, as you can imagine theres quite a lot i want to work on, but im looking forward to it. I also wanted to get a big chunk of sketchbook completed with just external life drawing as i'd never done so before, you know, knocking out some of those 10,000 crappy drawings before the gold dust. Its been fun and im fairly pleased with the outcome, i dont think any of the drawings are 'wow' worthy but at least thats a stepping stone in the right direction.

So please feel free to critique and let me know any areas you think i should really focus on improving to add to my list.

Life drawing in Cornwall

I moved out of my student accommodation for the summer just over a week ago and went straight back out the door to go on holiday to Cornwall. It was definitely needed after working solid on animation projects with no rest for the past 8 months! I used the holiday to unwind and relax, getting some much needed life drawing practice in. It was really fun to have no restrictions or rules and just to experiment with what ever I wanted. Unfortunately the weeks over and I'll soon be back to reality animating on various project, client and personal. Expect all my life drawing to be uploaded soon, but here's a few snaps from my travels.

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.