Thursday 12 March 2009

CHEWTV

This ChewTv thing ahhhh! I really like it but really despise it at the same time. It's allowing me to be as creative as I want which I love but I keep wanting to change my idea and move it in better directions, which I just don't have time for.

Last week was a wasted week I spent 2 solid days working and then my friends made sure my spare time was filled with them. It was fun, but left me with a week and half to produce something that I would actually hand in.

It's taken me a long while to actually get to the computer with this animation, I just kept fiddling with the character and it probably was a waste of time when I could have been animating. I have been learning a combination of photoshop, flash, illustrator and the pen tablet. All of which I really enjoy. The graphics tablet allows me to be sketchy from the off yet with the ability to go "undo", genius button.

I find it really frustrating though knowing what I want to do and taking forever to get there. Literally when you don't know your way around properly on programs, I kind of try and blag it not knowing if there is a quicker or more concise way. I need to swallow my pride and actually speak to people and ask, I find it hard as I feel I am to far behind. So far I have produced a really crude animatic, the 3 poses of the character , and I have a feel for exactly how the colours and story should be. In theory mine shouldn't take long to animate, but I need to learn so much before I animate it ,so I can do it to the standard I want. When I get into something I want it to be perfection which I forgot what I was like. I used to be a perfectionist, then my teacher told me to loosen up, I did to the extreeme and I tend to deviate all over the place now, throwing down sketches anywhere and not really considering them to be anything. I did this for the start of the project but I did it so much I ended up really just sketching the character with such minor changes no one would really notice but myself. Finally I sketched up a final view for the turnaround and scanned it in. This took me on to illustrator where I pened in the lines which took me a while to grasp and then finally to photoshop where I coloured it. I had a distinct style in my head when I coloured this, a cross between musiqotherapie, Jim Flora & Kate Larkworthy.But with a really distinct lighting to make the character look like he was under pressure. The character still had to look dopey and innocent so I maintained features that I had gathered up from characters such as Dopey from Snow White and other stupid looking monkeys on the net. He is still a really simple character though so he should be easier to animate with. I added in large eyebrows for extra expression as he won't really be moving so alot of the feeling is going to come from his face. Anway lets see what happens, if I don't hand it in, it wont be for lack of trying just for embarassment of what it looks like.

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