Blast from the past

Well it has been a while since my last post, I really don't know where the time goes!

So a little update on what has been going on.

I cant remember if I have mentioned or not but last August I badly damaged my knee with supposed ligament tare and missed out on a few months of work experience on a stop motion commercial. I was not happy about that at all but one must keep smiling and carry on.
It took until January this year to get my knee scanned and that was only because it re-injured itself while putting on my trousers :S So I finally had surgery on it at the beginning of last month and It is healing away nicely now. I did have some super cool bruising which I named my "Nebula" as it resembled something that you would find in the deep depths of the universe.

So that is whats been going on the whole of last month. Lots of pain, being uncomfortable and sleepless nights. Fun times ey!

Anyway, I have been accepted into Animation Mentor and am scheduled to start at the end of September which will be amazing but I am not getting myself too excited yet as I am still in the process of sorting out loans and what not as there is no way in hell I can pay for it until I am in a very steady job. I'm keeping my fingers crossed an am just hoping for the best with that one.
I'm getting myself ready for if I don't get my loan accepted and cant start the course
then I will have plenty of resources to get on with.


I have done a few little character designy drawings just exploring a style more that I have been playing with for a while now.

Self portrait

My brother

A very quick one of my mother

Last night I was going through some of my old hard drives and stumbled upon all of my first ever animations. It really got me thinking about how much I have improved or even have I improved? I think I have improved a lot but not as much as I could of. It is quite encouraging I think.

So I thought I would share all these old animations on here. There is a load of 2d work and stop motion work so be prepared to laugh and cringe. I think all of them are from 2004 - 2005 then there is one from my very first couple of months at university. Enjoy :D

2d stuff:

 

Stop mo stuff

And this is the uni piece from 2007

I hope everyone is doing well.

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.

Click to view bigger

And here is yesterdays life drawing work

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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.

--Please click the thumbnails to view them bigger--

Here is some screenshots to see the progress of it

And here is the second digi painting I did.

Quorra from 'Tron Legacy'

--Please click the thumbnails to view them bigger--

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 !!!