energies

It's been a while since I put stuff from my figure drawing class up here. Last week we had a model with really dynamic poses. These were all 1 minute poses.


And although I know a lot of things aren't perfect about these two drawings, I really like them for some reason.


Probably the way they're so disproportionate.

what if i did THIS...

Still animating. My plan now is to finish the remaining 20 seconds in the next two weekends. Then spend the rest of the time (3 weeks) fixing all the animations that need to be fixed and editing the thing.

So here's the new stuff:

And I was just experimenting with editing styles with the last clip, so it saves me some time when I actually formally start editing:

brilliance

I happened to stumble upon the making of the title sequence for Taare Zameen Par, an awesome Bollywood film. The title sequence is a really charming series of frame-by-frame animations, and it's wonderful to look at the working environment of these people and the products they come up with... and comparing it to the working environment of animators everywhere else in the world.



How many people know his name? And the names of those sculptors meticulously handcrafting the characters...They're not graduates from well-known universities... I doubt half of them have any formal education in art either.

And look at how they time their shots!!



These things just make me really happy and inspire me in ways I can't properly express.

News!

1) I'm a member of this recently created association of filmmakers called Student Filmmakers of India (www.studentfilmmakersofindia.com). I uploaded two of my animated films on there and now I've been selected as Best Director of the Month for April 2010 for my film Trails. It's a small community right now so it isn't that competitive. But it still means something.

2) I have my first big interview day after tomorrow.

3)My parents moved back to America yesterday and I get to reunite with my dog this weekend after so many months.

:)


(update: 04/27

I realized that the link for the Student Director of the Month won't be working after April 2010, so here are some screenshots from their website:



This is along with 2 other people, whose names are there when you scroll down. This is all that my window could fit!

And when you click on my name you get....!

Summore Tests!

And some more!! This is just me testing my animation and at the same time trying out different things with editing and composition and style and what not. I'll have more than just mirroring effects in the final piece, I promise.



So I tried animating with pastels and boy it's messy. I had my production class today where I showed my tests and people pretty much like it the way it is right now. I still want to try and go back and refine the lines a little with crayons, so they're not just of even thickness. Especially the stick figured characters.

So much more animating left to do!

And on a side note, I no longer have flu!! Yay.

Floo

So I guess I can say that I have officially started animating for this project. Am I happy with what I am animating? No. I've been really sick with some sort of viral flu for the past 4 or 5 days and now is not the time. People are out frolicking in the apparently warm weather and I am still parading around in my winter jacket.



I really hope that I develop a proper style quickly in the process of animating this. I can make beautiful individual abstract drawings of Bharata Natyam dancers, but once I start animating and get a couple of frames into it, the figures start to resemble "beautiful and abstract" less. It's one of the challenges I have to overcome for this project, I suppose.

I really like the drawing style I have in my Figure Drawing class, and it's probably because I'm using charcoal, and also maybe because I'm drawing big. I don't know if I would be able to animate with something like charcoal/pastels, but I really want to try. The thing is, I don't know if I have the time to experiment anymore. Right now, literally whatever I animate has to be in the final film. I guess this is one of the problems of making a complete film from pre- to post- production in 10 weeks. There is so much scope for learning, but not much for going back and perfecting from what you learn.

But anyway, what I have above is what I've done since the last update, quickly put together. It isn't exactly what the final film will look like, but it hints heavily at it.

We'll see..

Hello Hello, Testing Testing...

I figured I'd start experimenting. It's better if I figure out potential problems with animating at this stage rather than later.

This is a quick AfterEffects test I did. It wasn't shot properly because I need someone to teach me how to use the scanner in our lab. The drawings I did today were supposed to be rough and for experimenting, but I might end up using it in the end. So I didn't want to risk batch scanning the papers without any training with the scanner and having it eat all the paper up.

Not sure how I feel about the animation though.




Will post more details about the project later.