[Personal] Book's for Uni #1

Usually I would take stuff out from the Library, however since I live far away from the City Center and every time I have been to the Headingly Campus something I want is taken out, I have decided to buy most of my books. Now I have been doing this for a while now so I thought I would share with you the books I have collected so far to help me with University:

Tezuka School of Animation: Vol. 1 Learning the Basics:


This is by far one of the best books I own, gotten to me for Christmas 2011 from my Brother who said this is the best book to learn key framed cycles. I have attempted one or two and so far it has been of great help. Written by the creator of Astro Boy, this book goes through the basic walk cycles, jump cycles, run cycles ect.

Though it is essentially a "How to draw manga" book, however in a more professional sense, instead of focusing on a cliche drawing style and stereotypical anime poses, it focuses on actual poses and uses characters that he himself has created and used in previous animations.






School Girl Milky Crisis: Adventures in the Anime and Manga Trade:

A little gem I found in a charity shop, though it isn't the most useful book at the present, it is a book that will infact help me through the course of my third year of university. The writer talks about various anime and manga in Japan in great detail, how manga started and how it built up to the fandom that it is now.

It has quotes from various articles, magazines and interviews. It also talks about various anime shows and his views on them in comparison to some older / newer shows, this book is really going to help when I write my dissertation next year.








Television Culture:

Though this book has little to do with animation, it is rather helpful when discussion animation theory. The book discusses Ideology, realism and narrative, topics that have been brought up an awful lot during my time studying Animation. This book has already helped me during one of my assignments and I hope that it will help me during my third year when I write my dissertation.












How to Draw and Sell Comic Strips:


This book is really for me personally and not really for University, it is a book discussing the history of comic books, how to draw them, how to sell them and how to publish them yourself. Before gaining an interest in animation, I always wanted to be a comic book artist, a book like this might help me in the future and it doesn't hurt to practice a little bit now does it.

The best thing about this book is that it doesn't show you how to draw comics, it shows you how to draw panels, lettering, how to lay comics out and appreciates that everyone has their own drawing style, and you wont sell a comic if you just take someone else's style.






Illustrator's Figure Reference Manual:

I bought this from a charity shop earlier today, something i have started noticing after going to Drawing lessons is that my life drawing is slowly starting to improve. I wanted to take it a step further and start drawing people in my free time, so I thought a book like this would help.

Though I will possibly use this book for helping me draw characters rather than to use it for life drawings, I will at some point start to draw real people with it. This book is incredibly interesting having people from different angles doing various positions with and without clothing, a very helpful book indeed.







These are all the books I have collected so far, I will no doubt continue collecting more books to help me in the future, that is when I get some more money!

[Inspiration] Anime Influences #3

As far as a story goes, I have a few idea's for ones that I want to make, some I have put to paper as you should see in a previous post. However, there are some that I have not yet put to paper, as in fact remain in my head until fully developed. Strange you may be thinking? Not to me, once I write down an idea, I stick to it, only changing minor things. There are some ideas that as of now I am not prepared to create or animate or even script. However there is one thing I want to make that has been inspired greatly by my all time favourite anime; One piece:

One piece is a masterpiece of a show, with its current 576 and still ongoing episodes each one revolves around a boy who made a pirate crew and are now sailing the seas in search of a lost treasure known as One Piece. The show invokes all of your emotions and does them perfectly, it'll make you laugh, it'll make you cry, it'll make you heart warmed and even make you angry. It is possibly the greatest adventure show in my opinion, and inspires me to create a show like it.

In my head I want to make an adventure animation / comic that will make you awe at the sites, cry at the sad parts and smile during the heart warming scenes. Something like this is very different to shows I have planned, such as "The Uni-verse of Jack Miles", the untitled show now with the name of "Adrift the Snow", and a show starring the Pandas. I want to successfully create these shows before creating an adventure show, so I can make sure it's the best I can make, getting all of the animation mistakes down, practicing my script writing skills and just planning out skills.

Another show I have taken inspiration from isn't an anime, however I felt it necessary to include it since it is another show that makes me want to create an adventure animation, this one is the classic; Adventure Time:

Adventure Time will be mentioned another time in the blog for it's drawing style, however for now I will talk about the storyline. The story for Adventure Time revolves around a boy and his dog, who goes out seeking adventure in the Land of Ooo, which is a post-apocalyptic future a thousand years after a nuclear war broke out on earth. The show has a audience of both Adults and Children which is what makes it fun to watch, the light hearted humour for kids and the secret humour for adults.

Adventure Time and One Piece are both very different, however the sense of adventure is very much present in both of these shows. When I finally create my adventure show I will be sure to take some inspiration from both of these shows!

[Drawing Class] 13/12/12 - Drawing Heads Again

Today we didn't have a life model, and so we each took it in turns to draw each other using specific mediums that Tom tells us to use. We didn't use easels today and instead used our own sketch books on our laps to draw. Here is how they turned out:

JACK SCAN THE PICTURES OKAY?

After the lesson was nearing a close, Tom told us to get out everything we had done so far in the entirety of this year and he wanted to check if we was missing stuff or needed to improve on any drawings. I showed him all of my work and he informed me that I wasn't missing any work, however I still need to get the drawing of the massive city we all helped draw. 

[Personal] Traditional Backgrounds #2

Earlier I attempted to create a background in watercolour pencils, I thought I would take that a step further and tried to create a background with watercolour paints. With the help of a tutorial I was able to produce this:

Inspired by the first painting I did I wanted to do another drawing where it shows the sky and the ground, I prefer this one to the last one I created as it has alot more colour and speaks alot more than the previous one. I used a tutorial to help me create the sky, though the sky didn't turn out as "sky like" as I had hoped it still looks pretty good in my own personal opinion, the tutorial is below:

The tutorial was incredibly helpful and with it helped me do the ground on my own. Using a similar method as how I painted the sky, just with less blotches here and there for clouds. I will defiantly do a few more painting in the future, most likely in watercolour however I may change my medium to something different too. 

[Project Related] The new Style!

Picking up from the last post about the armories project, instead of changing the animation from a 2D prospective, Anthony felt that instead we should keep it 2D and do it in a German Tapestry type style. We all agreed that this was going to be the final design choice and we began working on the animatic, however, this time we did the animatic all on one long piece of paper in a continuous storyboard type thing. once we all drew it out we scanned it onto the computer and using aftereffects we created a animatic with it, below is the animatic with the old lines in it:

Again I am still in charge of the backgrounds, and I have currently done 3 of the backgrounds, the animation is coming along smoothly and quickly. We are now waiting for Will to finish the new animatic with the new lines in it, which should be finished shortly. We are also waiting on the music score to be requested to the composer. We are still good for time and will almost certainly get it done within the next 2 weeks. Below are the backgrounds I have created:

As it stands now, I have a few backgrounds to finish and possibly the the helmet at the beginning of the animation to create, Will is still helping out by doing research and helping me with some background animation, and Anthony is doing the character animation and designs. Hopefully we will get it all together with the score before Christmas rolls around.

[Drawing Lesson] 22/11/12 - Female Model

After a year and a few months of life drawing, we finally had a female model! It was a glorious day, we took out our easels, set them up and began drawing. Here is how it turned out:

[Animation] Loops #2

Well I haven't done a flash loop since November of last year, so it's nice to finally do one! Since Elroy's lesson and the usage of lightboxes I am starting to get more into key framed animation. Rather than do a jump loop or a dancing loop, I wanted to do something that will help me in the long run; a full turn of a character I created. Here is how it turned out:

As you can see there are 3 characters spinning, the first one is the rough drawing of the character spinning, the second one is the drawn character but still in rough, then finally its a redrawn character with colour and shading. I also recently did a panda version of a full spin, here is how that turned out:

Both of these characters have been drawn and animated before, both in my free time and both in animation classes with Elroy. The first animated spin was inspired after a lesson wit Elroy where I did one of my characters turning around, I wanted to figure out what the character looked like all the way around the body. The panda animation was done thanks to a similar reason to the first animation, I did a loop of the panda jumping in Elroys lesson so I wanted to do a full spin of the panda so I know what he looks like all the way around.

I will most likely do alot more of these spin cycles as I think they are helpful and fun to make, I may do it with a few more of my original characters instead of the panda's I keep drawing.