Macho Man

I was saddened by the news of the death of Randall Mario Poffo AKA Macho man Randy Savage. He and all the other old school wrestlers were a big part of my childhood.
So here's to you Macho Man "Ooooooooh Yeaaaaaaaaaaaa" Rest In Paradise.

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And here is yesterdays life drawing work

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MADAME TUTLI-PUTLI

I'm posting this up for the people that might of missed it but 'MADAME TUTLI-PUTLI' is now online to watch. Not much more needs to be said than, if you haven't seen it, Watch it! If you have seen it, watch it again!

No matter how many times I have seen it I still manage to pick out something I didn't notice before.


DIRECT LINK


Behind the scenes:
Animating Madame Tutli-Putli


Animatic and film comparisons


There are plenty more videos on youtube.

Life Drawing 1

As I'm trying to advance with my animation skills I have decided to get back into to doing life drawing. I haven't done any since 2009 and I think I would most definitely benefit from doing as much as I can. My plan is to try and get a routine of doing it every morning for an hour or two.
My only trouble is not being able to afford to go to classes or having friends that would be up for posing for me, so I'm having to use something called VIRTUAL POSE which is a 4 part series consisting of loads of quicktime movies which you can rotate 360º around the model. It is not as good as the real thing but certainly better than nothing.  I have also got myself a timer so I can keep track of how long I'm spending on each drawing.

Here is yesterday and today's studies

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Skinny skin skin

Well well well, what do we have here then! I'm currently making up a generic puppet to practice with. It is so I can do some basic principle shots to put on my showreel.

To start me off I have gone back to my head mold from an earlier post and carried on where I left off. I have also decided to leave my attempts at making a sophisticated head armature and am going to just make a very basic one with eyebrow and mouth movement.

I have an inner core for the mold so I can cast a skin in silicone. This was made with Polymorph ( I think it's called friendly plastic in the U.S)  I just whacked a load in to the mold and then clamped each half together. It only takes about 10 minutes to harden depending on the amount you use. It needed trim the excess plastic of which I had to do with a Dremel drill.  It's not as pretty looking as I have seen them made but this is all trial and error so it will do.

Then its time to cast the skin. I still have some Dragon Skin left from last year so I used that.  It is my favourite Silicone so far. Easy to use and only takes 30 - 40mins to set and de-mold. I also have some flesh colour pigment to tint it. I forgot how little you actually need of the pigment and went a bit overboard with it.

I'm not going to say this was a success as the casting has revealed loads of imperfections in my mold and also the original sculpture that I hadn't noticed.  Also there is a really thin part on the back of the head but I managed to patch that up with some of the excess silicone from seaming the head.
That was also another thing I'm not too happy with is my really poor seam job. Another thing,  I completely forgot to do when casting the skin was to set the actual eyes into the mold to save cutting back the silicone in the eyes which I have done a bad job of doing :S So lots of little things went wrong but like I say I'm not too fussed as its for a practice puppet. I learned a lot from the process of making the skin and it will still work out ok.

I have also made the skull that goes inside the skin. I made this by spreading a layer in on each side of the mold with Polymorph. I let them set and chopped them down and split up the the top of the skull and made a hole where some wire will attach to the eyebrows.

I have started the armature for the skull but I have got a little stuck with it at the moment and will figure it out while I am making the rest of the puppet.
So that's how far I have got with that.

As for my last post about Animation Mentor, I have sent in my application for it and am now waiting to hear their decision. This will take a few weeks. There is the chance I wont get excepted or will get refused the loan but I have my plans now so I feel I am kind of on the right track with where I am going.

Here's a newer version of my work in progress video. Now with added sound so you can hear just how awesome I am at voice acting ;)



So that's all for now. I hope everyone is well!

The Happy Haps!

Over the past few weeks I have kind of been stressing about how I want to get where I want to be in life, which mainly is a character animator. I think I have spent way too long bogging myself down with technicalities and not just getting down and doing it. This has led to my one decision. I am going to try and apply to the Animation Mentor character animation course. I always said to myself that if I cant improve my skills with my own learning disciplines then it will be time to seek help. Now is that time.

I love stop motion with all of my heart and can dream of doing nothing else but the fact is I also love CG and always have. After seeing 'Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs' I was in awe. Then 'Tangled' came along and slapped me in the face. As much as I want to be a stop motion animator I would also love to do CG and who says that you cant do both! There are plenty of people out there that have done the same. Justin Rasch has worked in games, Webster Colcord as a VFX animator and even the great Phil Dale has dabbled as animation supervisor on "Tales Of Despereaux'.

So I am going to give it a shot as I believe Animation Mentor could really help me with being an all round better animator for both CG and stop motion. Its all the same principles.
Getting myself into even more debt cant be all that bad...can it?

Anyway here is two shots from a little practice piece I am working on. There is still some polishing to do but I am happy enough with them.



I am still doing bits and bobs on my owl project. I have the armature built and padded out but am a bit stuck with how I am going to pad the wings out with and also how I am going to give the fella his feathers. I will post up some photos of that soon when it looks a little more respectable ;)

I have also been doing a lot of practice with digital painting. It has been nice to sit and actually try and paint something instead of it being super quick concept work.

A scene from Sweeny Todd.

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Here is some screenshots to see the progress of it

And here is the second digi painting I did.

Quorra from 'Tron Legacy'

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And a close up and some process shots to go with it.

I did start another one but as it took me around 13-14 hours each painting its going to have to be put on the back burner until I have some more spare time.

I hope everyone is doing well!

A big congrats to Justin on his awesome new venture !!!