Hello All!

Sorry for no updates the past week or two. It's been a busier week of the summer. However, I have been getting into photoshop A LOT more. Where as my work process before always consisted of drawing on paper and scanning. I was determined over the Summer to move digital entirely, thus I have forced myself to use my tablet more. I have been experimenting more than anything, trying out some further ideas for my Final Year film. I am getting really excited about the use of Water in whatever story I go with and would really like an underwater sequence so I've been trying to get a unique underwater setting in photoshop. As you can see below...

Now i'm not saying it's perfect but I like the brush strokes and how simple block colour can still have depth. Creating this image also helped me figure out what parts of my film will need to be done in Photoshop and what can be done in Flash. Very excited!

I promised a friend I would post some links to some inspirational flash video's, I'll post the one for now by an Effects Animator named Jason Keyser. His work is incredible, at first I thought he'd used some kind of 3D software to create the work in his showreel but later learned it's all Flash and let's just say, I now know what area of animation i'm aspiring towards. Here's his site, in particular his Effects Showreel: http://www.keyserhouse.com/

That's all for now, I should be posting up a piece i've been working on just for fun, based on the Gears of War series. OH! I am also on Twitter and have one follower as of this moment, so if you are on twitter, please please follow me using this link: http://twitter.com/#!/Jpedartybits

Thanks for reading and looking, please keep checking regularly for updates! :]

Waiting on the 3rd Year...

This blog has changed from 2D to 3D and is now back on to 2D, where it belongs. I am now waiting for the 3rd and possibly final year of my University education, came around fast I have to say. To catch up: After making the horrible decision of changing to CG midway through my 2nd year, I was able to change back and complete (to some extent) a Showreel. Which, even more to my amazement was nominated for the "Best 2D" Glammy, an honour to have it on the big screen.

But as the 3rd year approaches, I have spent the entire holiday thinking of some ideas for my final year film. Something that will leave a mark, show my unique style and ultimately look awesome! I have decided I want to make a film currently titled "Tiny Knights" and i've released a little piece of art for it. Hopefully it'll be a good mix of action, colour and fluid animation. I'll go into it a little more later in the year when production kicks off around December.

 A rough design for how the environments might look. I want a lot of the world to move and not just the characters. Making everything block colour will make that easier to achieve.

Plot driven, not really saying anymore till later. Sorry!

So a few last things I want to put down are my intentions for next year and what I'm hoping to achieve and improve on. First, I want to find my style. Granted I believe it comes from producing work and I feel as though i'm already discovering it but I would like it defined in my final film. Secondly, I want to draw a LOT more, things that move in particular. While it's nice to see different locations, I hated drawing static objects all year. I found it irritable and enjoyed drawing the dog, capturing his actions and observing how he moved. Finally, I want to work on fluidity in my animation. I don't feel as though I'm awful at the moment, but next year i intend to move entirely onto flash animation, which may be an entirely different ball game. I so i've started watching endless flash films over the summer to get a head start on what I can achieve by moving digital. That's all for now, i'll be sure to update at least weekly with lots of pictures hopefully!


Week 1: 09/08/2011