Animation 29/8

One animatic, fully completed with sound. I feel quite happy with my effort so far in regards to animation, its probably my least stressful class in this course. Having the familiarity with the program before we started helped I think, and using my previously created world was a good decision in regards to time management. Next step is to begin animating in Harmony, adding colour and all the full animations. I still havent decided whether I keep the same colour palette or create an all new one for this piece, however this time around I will spend a bit more time on the colouring instead of the rush job I did last time. Im pretty sure I want the fish to be a goldfish colour however, easily recognisable and orange is a great contrast to the blue river. Im really tempted to share this on facebook, but I think Im going to wait until the finished product. As they say, patience is a virtue.

Photography 23/8

Todays class was spent working on our proposals for next week. I still dont have a definitive idea yet which is a huge problem. I want to do something post-apocalyptic I think, and play around with printing textures onto photograms made with stencils. I will however have to double check the dark room fluids before I use them, because we found out today that someone has been using the film fixer instead of the paper fixer and I would hate to ruin my stuff by doing that.We also went to the popup gallery down the st to look at a lovely exhibition of oil paintings on wood. The artist had a focus/inspiration of a ceramic swan in two different sizes, and explored different colours, angles and compositions to create some amazing pieces. The swan was the obvious recurring image in all of the pieces, and there seemed to be an even split between warm and cool pieces.

Professional Practices 22/8

Todays class was a short problem solving task based around a group setting, definitely a handy skill considering the current committee situation. Its to be expected in a committee of 30-40 odd people planning a small event, that there will be headbutting and different levels of enthusiasm. There has been a couple of alternatives put forward, and I really like the idea of our class creating a showcase amongst ourselves. That way we can have a go at all aspects of a committee, instead of just sitting and watching essentially. I had a meeting with Chris on the friday, so he could show me some behind the scenes stuff of Smugmug.com, to help me decide whether I will use that site or not. From what he showed me, I think it will fit my needs at least for while I am studying, and theres room to upgrade the account if I change my mind on what I want the website for later on. Now that I have made that decision, I can crank out my website.

Animation 22/8

So, all I need to do is find the final sound effects for some of my animatic, refine the linework and then its ready for harmony. It was really helpful that SIT has folders on the system with a huge range of royalty free sounds that we can access. I now have a decision to make in regards to colour scheme. Do I carry on with my purple dragon, or do i use the opportunity to change it up a bit and experiment with a new palette. At this point I feel like Im on top of my animating process timewise, so I count that as an improvement.

Photography 16/8

We have finished the testing phase of our printmaking now, with a photogram, screen print, mono print and a pinhole camera image. Im still a bit ambivalent as to which methods I prefer, but at least now I know my options. The stars were a stencilled screen print, then I used the covered stencil to create the inverse mono print, and the bottom is a mono print background that I created by painting a base of black ink onto glass, and then sponging on some purple, red and white colours. I left the ink texture blotchy and so when I printed this first one onto paper, the blotches came through too. I re-used the same ink for a second and third print to test the diminishing returns and got increasingly more black showing through. Once the backgrounds dried I went back in with the star stencil and printed silver stars onto them.

First print from a mono print setup. An experiment with mixing wet ink before printing

A mono print made from the screen print stencil

the second screen print, slightly incomplete

Photogram with colours inverted

Photogram negative.

Another attempt, I was hoping to get good definition of the heart locket

Professional Practice 15/8

Southsure frustrations were a big topic for the start of class today. Interesting how a problem solving exercise can bring out the courage in someone to broach the subject.



Serif is the little flicks at the bottom of the letters. Serif fonts for printed documents, Sans serif for online documents.

Make sure your font choice for the website is web safe.

Web safe fonts - Arial, Helvetica, Times New Roman, Times, Courier New, Courier, Verdana, Georgia, Palatino, Garamond, Bookman, Trebuchet MS, Arial Black, Impact.

Artist Statement.

• Keep it short
• Grab attention with the first sentence
• Introduce personality and enthusiasm
• Give hints at "why" for the artwork
• Use first person. (I, me, mine)

They dont

• Summarise resume
• Give a physical description of the work
• Sound Generic
• Use "art speak"

Questions to think about

• What keeps you coming back to the studio
• Whats the best way someone has responded to my works
• What am I asked most frequently about my work
• Whats my artists story(not biography or resume, how i got interested in art, what ive learnt)
• Who is my art for. (family - less stress, love based)

Artist Statement

Art is an escape from reality that I love to explore. Mixing colours for a perfect sunset, interpreting my photography with pencil and paint, creating an imaginary world where I control all of the dimensions. My family are the biggest recipients of my art, our bond over the years is displayed over their walls for everyone to view. This support from my family is what helps me continue to create, even through the patches of lesser inspiration.


CV is complete, about time, my previous CV was written 5yrs ago lol. It now has my NZCDMD qualification on it, the first thing that is 100% relevant to the career Im angling for.

Leigh brought up in class a discussion about our roles in the committee meetings and the uncertainty surrounding them. I brought it up today at the full committee meeting during general discussion. Unfortunately there was no straight answer today, but there were steps put in place to hopefully nail down exactly what is expected of us, because the entire project belongs to the 2nd yrs so we are only included in certain things/information sharing. A few of us continued the discussion after the meeting and it turns out there is quite a bit of unrest with a decent chunk of our class. I really hope we can figure this out, because it currently feels like an "us and them" situation with the 2nd years and Im not sure whether we will actually get much experience other than "do as your told" grunt work. Only time will tell. Either way I suppose its experience in dealing with potential workplace situations in where I will be the bottom of the barrel staff member. 

Animation 15/8

Thumbnails done, and inbetween panels almost done as well. I will have the timing sorted before class next week so help me god... I still need to put a title screen in there somewhere, but I still have 12secs to play with currently so by the time I have tweaked everything Ill be at the 30sec requirement.

AH Animated clips could be a good way to colour my animation, simple blocky designs but effective at telling the tale. Flat colours would simplify things as well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQ9oov8KLwk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkEpnL9KacQ&t=8s

I need to watch my procrastinating closer before I let it get out of hand.

Photography 9/8

 Todays pinhole effort. I used one of the pre-made tin cameras because Id left mine at home. Its a slightly different angle to the one I took last week, but it has the detail that previous one was lacking. Im quite enjoying the blurred feel to these images, and playing around in the dark room developing the paper. I guess the sense of accomplishment is a bit bigger with an image that requires effort to produce.











I tried lino cut printing today. Ive done woodcut previously at school many years ago so I had an idea of what I was doing. Im actually int he process of developing a family tree tattoo, which is why I came up with this twisted tree design for my test piece. What I have learnt is to do a test ink so I can see what tool marks are still visible and adjust them before making my final prints. Now I just need to figure out how to combine printing and photography for my project.

Prof Prac 9/8

This week was the website proposal. I was a little lost at first as to what I actually wanted to do because a website wasnt really in my initial plan. However, after doing some research, I have come to see how beneficial it can be. A portfolio was something I didnt have until I had to create some things to apply at SIT, so having a digital record will be a step in the right direction. I think I will try and get the website out of the way asap so i have more time to focus on everything else.

As to the Southsure awards, I have had 2 Advertising subcommittee meetings and 1 installation meeting so far. Its been a learning experience for sure, and the next few weeks are going to be interesting. I just hope the few classmates that arent taking it as seriously as they should, pull finger and actually help out.

Animation 8/8

So, I was a little bit behind at the start of todays class, but I have now started inputting the sketches into Storyboard. I finally got off my butt yesterday and got Storyboard on my home computer so now there is no excuse for my procrastination. Even though drawing the panels on paper, and then redrawing them into storyboard is taking longer, I feel overall it will give me a better result because I can refine my images as I go. I have to be careful of the mistakes I made last semester , and make sure I actually do enough work each week.

I am 1/4 of the way through, so another few hours and I should be up to where I should be for this week.

Photography 2/8

After inverting and patching the fingerprint, I can see potential in the photo after all. Identifying the building going straight up on the right hand side helps to clarify that the image is looking directly up.  At this point I am not going to change the hole size, but I think I should take a new test photo in better lighting, a more open area and with the tin in a more stable position. The lighter grey suggests that there was actually light hitting the outside edges, and just needs some tweaking to get the conditions right.

Right now I need to come up with a concept for my project, that incorporates positive/negative spaces. Im a little lost at this point in regards to ideas. Possibly a dark townscape, using printed designs in the shadows? Digital or physical construction? Digital means easy corrections, blending, the ability to create several different compositions with the same images but physical means i can use the actual prints themselves, creating contrasting textures, can draw directly onto the images with pen/pencil.

Professional Practices 1/8

Researching the Job Market

- do your research and know what you want
- have realistic expectations
- set meaningful job search goals
- look for opportunities to network
- continue to expand your horizons

What Do I Need To Know About the Job Market

- what industry do i want to join
- what country would i like to work in? city? area?
- how much money does that industry make?
- what are the job forecasts for that industry for one year? one decade? twenty years from now?
- what position would i like in the industry?
- what is a typical salary for that position?
- what skills does this position require? what skills am i still learning?
- what or who do i need to know to enter the industry
- where does the company stand in the industry?

What Do I Need To Know About a Company?

- what's their financial situation?
- what's being said about them in the news?
- what does their website say?
- what do their customers say?
- what do their employees say?


Job Market Research Exercise

What industry do I want to join? Graphic Design/Advertising, Animation
What position do I want to hold? Animation artist, game developer, graphic designer
What skills do i have and what skills do I need? Have - Drawing, photoshop, toon boom animation, story telling, problem solving, Maya, Unity. Need - Networking, professional presentations, work experience, long term experience with maya, photoshop, unity, toon boom.


Generate a list of 3 companies that you would be interested in working for locally, nationally, and internationally.

Local
- Emotive Design
- Back9 Creative
- Market South

Nationally
- Weta
- Kaleidoscope 3D
- Rocketwerkz

Internationally
- Disney Pixar
- Nickelodeon Animation Studios
- Dreamworks Animation

There is a distinct lack of animating studios in invercargill, however Rocketwerkz in dunedin has been a gaming company that Ive been keeping an eye on since I heard they were setting up there. Partially because my other half played DayZ a lot when it first came out. Im definitely torn as to exactly what direction I want to take career wise, but it is definitely in the digital art stream.

Animation 1/8

Storyboards storyboards storyboards. Using Ruby's suggestion, my story now begins at the rivers edge and jumps straight into the interaction between Draco and the little fish. This definitely cuts out some of the fluff that I had in the original story. I still struggle with pacing in my head, but as discussed with Ruby, Ill have a better idea of just how long my animation will be once I have got my thumbnails finished, and shifted over into storyboard in a couple of weeks. I need to research some different perspective angles for drawing Draco, as Im only comfortable currently with the side on view. Note to self, go back to original Spyro references and see what I can find to help. Add in some Toothless references as well, particularly the clockwise spinning motions from How to Train Your Dragon.