We had four long poses, the first two being the longest. Here are the drawings.
I’d forgotten how much I loved doing life drawing, though it really was tough to get into drawing the anatomy properly. Over the summer, I got into the habit of life drawing in a sketchbook with a fine liner pen in very quick strokes. I do feel though that the class could have benefited from having a few very short exercises.
I follow a number of Disney and Pixar artists on blogger. Last year I attended the guest lecture with Matt Jones, and it was probably the 2 most inspiring hours of my life! After the lecture I went back and found his blog and instantly added him to my “follow” list. I now keep up to date with his posts, and recently he has uploaded some posts that show his work from life drawing sessions at Pixar.
Here is the post from Matt Jones' blog: http://mattjonezanimation.blogspot.com/2010/11/another-skirmish-in-gesture-class.html
In his classes, they do a lot of quick poses in pen and ink; their main priority getting the ‘gesture’.
In some of his most recent drawings, they had models who would put on different outfits and who would actually ‘act’ out made-up situations which the artists could then translate in their drawings.
Another exercise they tried was to draw the pose of the model and then draw in an ‘object’ that from what the pose indicates; the model could ‘do’. For example - in one of his sketches, he has drawn the model in a normal standing pose with her arm slightly out. He then drew a hoover to go in the model’s outstretched hand to make it look like the model is hoovering.
I thought these ideas were really fantastic and creative. Perfect for artists attending life drawing classes to open their mind and really be able to be creative and have fun with their drawings.
I may suggest this to a tutor soon. As well as the fact that there should really be compulsory life drawing classes for everyone in the second year. First year life drawing was so brilliant, and everyone knows life drawing is essential for artists’ to develop and become better observers! I’ll suggest it perhaps to a course rep to bring up at a future meeting.
Moving on - This week I began to ‘alpha channel’ my scanned frames of “Fifi and the Jam Jar”. We had a workshop with Stan on Friday (week 4) telling us how to do so. I wrote notes on all the steps and was able to complete the alpha channelling in around 3 (very time-consuming!) sessions over 2 days.
Here are some of the finished alpha channel frames. (Click to enlarge)
Stan also taught us how to put our finished frames into After Effects and apply a photo background. I was able to get to this stage and here is what it currently looks like:
I still need to go back and sort out the timing. As well as go back and clean up the alpha channelling on some of the frames. (This is mostly due to the bottom half of Fifi cutting off and exposing the background at some points. I also need to apply the standing and fallen jam jar frames too, as the jam jar disappears from view at two points in the sequence.
Also this week I began to think of ideas for the next animation exercise: “Dialogue between two characters.”
I recently watched BBC’s “Sherlock” and enjoyed it tremendously. I decided to choose a quote from this to do for my dialogue sequence. I watched some clips online and have chosen a short scene where the character “Molly” in the series talks to Sherlock at the beginning of the first episode.
The clip is 9 seconds long. Though if I am able to finish the dialogue quicker than expected I can make the clip longer, as the conversation does continue longer than I have actually cut it.
Now that I have the clip I can start to plan the design of the characters, what era they may be in, where they are, what setting there is, what personalities they have etc.
I will go into this more in my next post.
Inspiration:
I have taken inspiration this week (in relation more towards my next dialogue task) in Wes Anderson’s film, “The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou”.
Wes Anderson’s films are different to conventional cinema. He has a very different approach to story-telling and camera space than most American film-makers. His work is creative, innovative and perfect. He has a very unique aesthetic which is masterfully directed on screen, making his films stand out in a beautifully quirky and fresh way.
His approach to camera angles and direction convey a very 2D aesthetic ‘feel’. Anderson is known to all industry professionals as an absolute perfectionist, using “mise-en-scene” to it’s fullest advantage. Every single frame are always balanced elegantly with colour, setting, actors and props always considered for aesthetic appeal. Each frame could easily be hung on the wall as it is.
Here are a number of screenshots from various Wes Anderson films which I like (though mainly from The Royal Tenenbaums):
I was specifically inspired by one of the first scenes from “The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou”. The characters are in a beautifully decorated hall at the after-party of the premiere of Zissou’s newest film from his adventures at sea. I really love the setting for this, and thought it would be perfect for my next dialogue task’s setting.
Wes Anderson’s films are relevant to my interests in animation. His “perfect” style of shots and mise-en-scene are really captivating and I absolutely adore the detail he puts into every aspect of directing each of his films. I love putting little details into my own work, and his style of film-making is absolutely wonderful to watch and study. They are the type of films you can watch again and again and you will always be able to find something new to look at in the scene. It’s a lovely and innovative style to film-making, which is steadily growing in appreciation and popularity. I hope to apply his style of film-making excellence to my own films and animations in the future.
(c) All Rights Reserved Wes Anderson 'The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou', 'The Royal Tenenbaums', 'Fantastic Mr Fox'
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