cheesy cameras

Sparky is concerned about his mummy's addiction to vintage toy cameras.


Lubitel 2


Diana


Kodak Brownie 127

cum laude

Finally finished my Bachelor of Animation with Honours. I am so glad it is over. I learned a lot in the process but it was very draining and I think it will be a little while before I do anything like that again. I'm not sure about my thesis but I think the film project turned out OK.

betty and sparklepuss: garden has four parts: the physics of potting mix, the physics of lemons, the physics of tomatoes and the physics of harvesting. I made them in that order, and I think it shows. I got a lot better with my animation towards the end. I would like to show them on the web, but Andi says I should enter them in festivals, so I guess I need to make some other betty and sparklepuss stuff for the youtubes. I might post some still frames or something.

Right now I'm doing tourist stuff in New York, though, so don't expect anything new right away. This city is giving me sensory overload at the moment. Way more people than I like to deal with at one time, but it does have some nice stores and things. I think I will still be glad to get home.

[/lurk]

I have run out of things to say about my lack of blogging. Yeah I don't blog. Guess I need more motivation or something. Like maybe some readers to nag me?

Added some drawings to my website. I thing this one sums up how I feel at the moment.


Also I got busy with a video presentation for a girls' school or something. I had never made one of those before, so the experience was quite stressful but also very edifying. They were really happy with it and played it at their speech night, so I guess it all went OK.

More later.

does anyone still read this?

It has been kind of difficult to motivate myself to blog lately. When I am not dealing with the depression (and obsessive-compulsive disorder and autism) I usually get kind of stressed with everything I haven't done yet and I forget about blogging and personal correspondence and stuff. I think the worst thing about clinical depression is a kind of numbness and apathy and a feeling that the apathy is reciprocated.

But enough about me, I'm pretty sure my loyal readers (both of them) are more interested in Betty and Sparklepuss:

I finally finished a draft script for the new short film, garden. The script came after much creative visualization and procrastination (and Andi telling me that I needed to have a script now). It's based on a bunch of conceptual drawings:


Betty experiences Newton's third law of motion


Betty chases a brush-turkey with a rake


lemons are funnier than oranges


Betty snaps

I don't think I could have come up with the script first. I kind of think in little visual vignettes that I have to draw down, and then I like to have other people to help me make sense of them and it kind of grows in an organic sort of process. I'm pretty sure it's not the traditional way of doing things, where the script is done first and then the storyboard and visual elements. I think I have to draw the idea first, and then maybe I can gather the self-control to work out a story and decent composition for the picture.

With my first film, samwich, I just had an idea and I went and animated it straight ahead, without any planning (except for a six-panel cartoon "storyboard"). I didn't even do any backgrounds or layouts or anything, and I added the sound, music and voices after the animation was finished. Yet somehow it worked and the responses to it have been overwhelmingly positive and I got away with it. But samwich was only a minute or so while garden is shaping up to be about 5 minutes, and I need to learn a more disciplined process where I plan things beforehand. I think it requires a bit more thought and self-control before I rush into the drawing part.

Right now I have to do a storyboard and animatic, so I can start to see how I'm going to put it all together. I made some animation tests, but they lacked the spontaneity and looseness of samwich, so I'll have to try again. Spontaneity is a really hard thing to plan.

betty & sparklepuss project

I met with Andi today to talk about my honours project. She's really happy with the idea of using Betty and Sparklepuss in an animated short. Except she said I have to go and flesh out the characters of Betty and Sparklepuss, and work on designing the garden in which the story will take place. I drew some concept art, which people think is funny:



My research on the physics of animation is going fine. I found a couple of neat sites - Alejandro Garcia's Animation Physics and also this one. Also I got my copies of Thomas & Johnston's The Illusion of Life, Whitaker & Halas' Timing for Animation and a couple of others from Amazon. I think they are going to be very useful.

I watched some Wile E. Coyote vs. Road Runner films again. Andi suggested examining the physics in them as part of my essay, since they are perfect examples of both principles of animation, and how the laws of physics can be violated for comic effect. I think the animators who made these films must have had an intuitive understanding of physical laws and properties and how to apply them (and also when not to apply them).

linoprints

der Kater hat seine Haare aufgespuckt

I drew this while I was taking notes during my first honors lecture last week.

I'm studying Animation with Honours now, which is a bit daunting. I decided to study the physics behind the principles of traditional animation, which should give me plenty to work with.

As part of my honors work I'm supposed to keep a sort of professional journal, so I have decided to use this blog for study and work-related stuff, and my livejournal blog for personal silliness.