Moved to Tumblr

check out generic-chris.tumblr if you want to see what I am upto, as that is the platform I am blogging on now.

Forest Gossip

Rabbit told hedgehog a funny story about bear. Bear didn't think it was funny. Now bear is grumpy. 

A Pigeon a Day

I'm trying to get motivated to draw every day. I started this week  by sketching pigeons in the park, and I thought I would carry on the theme in some kind of sketching/design exercise. To make the exercise a bit more interesting I made sure to use a different style for each pigeon each day.

Have a Happy Otter !

A Valentine's day card for my lovely wife. I hope at least she gets the reference.

Valentines Otters

Sad Story #1

I was inspired by The Brothers McLeod "Three Six Five" - one second of animation a day for a year. So I thought I would give it a bash. Starting with Sad Story #1 (Thanks Filippo and Aurora for initial spark of inspiration).

Then I realised that getting some good timing is more important than sticking to arbitrary time-frames, so I paced this tragic event a little more carefully.

Sad Story #1(.2) 

(very loosely) based on a true story

The second version is at a convenient 100 frames so maybe there is scope for a frame based theme afterall...

Here is the original 1 second long animation:

Sad Story #1 (.1)

Girl Run

I thought I should work a bit harder on my animation cycles, so here is a run cycle for a girl that I made in flash. I am not too happy with the character design, but the limbs are a realistic length and there was some fun secondary motion. 

Tortoise Walk Cycle

I made a tortoise (definitely not a turtle) walk cycle .gif and thought it might be useful to share a little of the process.

In flash I did a quick character design for a tortoise. I then cut the design into pieces, turned each piece into a symbol and used them to block out how I thought the tortoise might move. I then used the blocked out animation as reference for drawing animating the legs, and remade the shell so I could give it a 3D swaying effect. I also redid the head and neck in order to make a slightly more complex dip.

For the final walk cycle I tidied up the lines on the legs and hand drew the neck animation. For all of the tweened parts, I made all of the lines 'boiling' and removed the tweens to put the keyframes on 2s (1 unique keyframe every 2 frames).

Hope you like it, I really enjoyed it and hope to do more.