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.

Character Design for "Tasty Spacemen"

I'm working on a new project with the current working title of "Tasty Spacemen". Here are some of the initial character design ideas, focusing on silhouette.

"Tasty Spacemen" silhouette sketches

Businessmen

Some character concepts for a short flash animation needing a "successful businessman" main character and his boss. They were all just pencil sketches initially, I thought I would have some fun cleaning them up and showing a little variety of simple styles.

Businessman & Boss character concepts

Art Tests

The last month has been pretty hectic with moving house and exciting job opportunities. A couple of which jobs wanted me to complete and art test to show my skill in those particular areas.

The first company was Spongecell and they wanted me to create a web advert for the Honda Santa Fe.

The other art test was for a Jerrard Wayne Creative and the task was to design some marketign material for an imaginary advertising  agency. I realise it looks more like music industry branding than advertising, but I like the way it turned out,

Life Drawing

I have missed life drawing since uni. I have been searching for a group to join and found a lovely bunch of people in Wimbledon. Although I have found some good online life drawing resources (my favourite being lovecastle), it was great to do some real life drawing and meet new people. 

life drawing 22md Jan 2013

Flash to Premier to Vimeo Export Settings

This is mainly so that I don't forget how to export my Flash animations properly, but hopefully this will save someone else some time too.

1. Create your Flash project at 640*480px and 24fps.

2. File => Export => Movie.

3. Save type as Quicktime (*.mov)

4. Go to "Quicktime Settings..."

5. I unchecked "Sound" as, although there is sound in the Flash project, it was only used to check timing and it is easier to manipulate sound later in Premier. Then go to "Settings..."

6. Set the frame rate to "24" fps, key frames to "All", Depth to "Millions of Colours+"and Quality to "Best".

7. Set up the Premier project at "DV - 24p Standard 48kHz". Import the flash .mov and sound (mp3 seemed to be fine for me).

8. When you are ready to export the video: "File => Export => Media ". Set the format to "H.264" and preset to "NTSC DV". I found it useful to modify the output name so that it describes the export settings. It made it a lot easier to work out which settings produce the best quality and file sizes. 

9. The export for the video will now look ok, but will have thin black bars on each side, to get rid of this, but also remove a thin slice from the top and bottom of the frame, set the source scaling to "Scale to Fill".

10. Then upload your video, I was using Vimeo, but I am sure the quality and file size will be fine for Youtube.

Lonely Drunk Lady

I have been getting in some more practice drawing females thought I would add some colour to my favorite sketch of the last couple of days. Her friends have abandoned her at a party so she is getting drunk in the corner with a comfortable wine.

lonely drunk model

Adventure Time Christmas Card

I have always loved handmade cards, partially because I don't like the idea of spending money on uninteresting designs which are often never quite 'right' for the person or occasion. But mainly, I really appreciate the time spent crafting something for someone else to enjoy. I wish I had the time and energy to make personalised cards for everyone I cared for. I make the most effort for my Goddaughter, especially as I get to spend a lot less time with her and her family than I would like to. 

Merry Christmas Time

She has great taste, and is currently is currently into Adventure Time. I hope she enjoys colouring it in.

Bereavement Backgrounds

I have almost completed the "Bereavement" episode of the SMILE animation project and so while I am waiting for the sign off, here are some of the backgrounds.

Outside

Hospital Bed

Graveyard 1

Graveyard 2

School Computer Room

SMILE Storyboards 3

The storyboards needed some slight modifications in terms of content, but rather more dramatic change in terms of presentation. While the black background looked nice online, it was not practical for printing (printer repair technicians were called). And so a more minimal and predominantly white layout was designed.

3rd draft of the SMILE animation storyboards

The complete series of storyboards can be found here.

SMILE Storyboards 2

A second version of the SMILE storyboards was in order as the comic strip it is based on has been edited. A brief SMILE intro has also been included to highlight the SMILE mission statement. I thought it was important for the presentation of the storyboards to be as clear as possible, hence the typed instead of handwritten narration, and comments. 

SMILE Intro Storyboard

The complete series of storyboards can be found here.

Peaceful Fisherman

This is Mr Hopoe, I'm not yet exactly sure who, where or what he is other thanbeing a fisherman. I thought a character with human anatomy would be a good exercise and I am hoping to see Mr Hopoe from this 2D incarnation through to 3D animation.

 Mr Hopoe enjoying a peaceful day fishing

SketchBook OnThe Train

I've had SketchBook (a sketching app android & iOS) for a while now, but I've been really enjoying it lately, especially how quickly and relatively innoculosly you can draw people.

some sketches from my journey to London

If you have ever played DrawSomething you will know how tricky it is to draw with your finger, especially on public transport, but the ease of playing with colour and restraint on fidelity produces some really interesting sketches.

SMILE Storyboards

Here are the storyboards I created for the SMILE animation project. There are 6 of them, and this is what they look like:

Bereavement