No Life Drawing Session Today. Guest Speaker Michael Cawood

Today there was no life drawing class, instead we had a last minute guest speaker Michael Cawood who gave us a talk about the animation and the games industry where he had worked at over the years. He provided a brilliant breakdown of working in the animation industry, that building a strong network is a must when you're out there in the industry world. Michael also gave us tips on how to create and structure your own website for what the industry are looking for. The talk went on for a further hour and a half comparing full time jobs and freelance, what to show when you're creating your portfolio on line etc...

Overall I found the talk by Michael Cawood very helpful. It provided a huge insight in working in the animation industry. I hope the university will bring in more guest speakers before the end of the year to encourage us to push to produce animation to the highest of quality.

Company Research #3

Welcome to part 3 of my inspirational company research..

It's been a while but for my third company research it has to be Warner Bros. They are an American based animation studio. That makes film, TV series and music entertainment and their headquarters is based in Burbank, California. (Which I wouldn't mind working out there. I've heard it's a really brilliant place to live) Anyway they have several subsidiary companies and I won't name them all because the one I am interested in and will be talking about is the Warner Bros. Animation.

Just because it is animated related to what I want to pursue as a career. But when I was a child growing up if I wasn't watching Disney films. I would definitely be watching Looney Tunes!! Everyone must have at least watched a couple of episode and have enjoyed it thoroughly. Whether you are a child, adult or even an OAP, Looney Tunes was and still is a really good TV series to watch.

Just look at these screen shots from the TV series showing stretch and squash poses..

This inspiration of my love for animation style is the same as I mentioned in my first post about the style of animation in Looney Tunes. It's use of stretch and squash is just brilliant, the animation is so smooth and the use of stretch and squash technique shows brilliant exaggeration of the characters poses. It's so good that it just looks normal like nothing looks out of the ordinary. That's how good and effective they have used these techniques. That is why Warner Bros. is one of my inspirational companies to look at when I was growing up looking to a path towards animation.

This is what happens when I draw (18/02/15)

Today was the first time I've been to a life drawing class this year! I need to try and go to more life drawing classes as I need to improve my drawing skills. Here are some sketches from today's session which was held at the University of South Wales.

Creature Performance Animation UPDATE 1

Here is the first update for the production stage of my Creature Performance project. First of all I will be animating a walk cycle using the free Doberman dog rig that I have downloaded on line.  It's been a very long time since I've animated a quadruped.

Since I like doing character animation, I struggled to get going from the start as it has been a while since my last quadruped animation. But after being consistently at it I managed to get a good rough blocking of the walk cycle.

Here is my first pass of the blocking stage.....