Friday 3 May 2013

All done all handed in!! (a cringeworthy final word)

Today was the final hand in for university and boy does it feel good to have got it all done in time!! The final task left to do is to post a final evaluation blog post...

So here it is

When I first came into this course I had no previous experience with the adobe creative programmes, I had no concept of the process of animation production or an understanding of the industry. But with time I have gradually built up a cluster of knowledge, experience and confidence in a field that I enjoy that has provided me with the first few steps towards doing something I enjoy this much for a living.

Some of my work has been terrible and I would say some of it is downright embarrassing - however, with my gift of amazing hindsight, each has taught me something that I either did or should have done to better my work so I don't regret them. Each mistake has been a well learned lesson.

I'm pretty proud of SOME of the work and hope that in the future I manage to add to that pile. I have said that I need to work toward a loose style of some form that may make my work look a bit more consistent.

I think this wouldn't be a very good final post if I were to neglect mentioning Pictoplasma 2012. When we met the stars of Picto and listened to their talks it was a massive boost of not only inspiration and excitement but confidence - in the fact that they too are human and that it is possible even for us merely mortal, Newcastle college students to work hard and do well in this creative industry.
I would say the most useful bit of knowledge after this was probably how to work dragon stop motion. That little piece of software is something you can use for many different things and the use of it has sparked off so many ambitions. I think the animation I enjoyed the most was using dragon to animate the silhouette tree cut outs. I found it easy to understand the concept and I enjoyed sitting beside the lightbox moving cut outs and for it to have created a fairly smooth movement on screen. I definitely intend to use this method in the future.

What I found the most difficult was either rigging a footroll or learning to create and stick to timeplans, it could be the latter. For someone who works on getting a to do list entirely crossed off rather than divvying the tasks up onto days and sticking to it - doing a timeplan and taking it seriously worried me because of how much could go wrong and make tasks last longer than what time was given to spend on them. However I feel I can say I follow timeplans pretty well now.

To finish I would like to say I have enjoyed my two years on this course and would thank everyone who helped me throughout including teachers, peers, family and even strangers :D as someone who was unsure about what I wanted to do in life, this course has helped point me in a direction where I know I'll be happy with whatever it is I end up doing. I have gained invaluable knowledge and experience that I can build upon and use. And one day if I become rich, successful and famous - I bet I'll find this post and cringe with every word with how cheesy it sounds.

But this is Georgie Goldsmith finishing her university course and posting as an FdA Animation and Illustration student for the last time (unless I remember all the important things I should have said in this post and post even more)...
Cheers

Wednesday 1 May 2013

Nothing like a nice deadline to provoke procrastination like this...

So whilst I was trying to get all my creative juices flowing not too long back it has only taken until the day before the day before hand in for me to start doing things like this... I'm pleased with this but know it should be alot better... the fact I had Rolf Harris singing in my head all the time I was animating this should be mentioned... Now back to the boring typing up...

T-shirt / sticker design

In an attempt to create a T-shirt design for Tee party I came across the idea that I could just make a design then have it as a sticker for final show too... this is the work I finished a couple of days ago.
 This is what I finally had for a piece - although I still like the pink in the original image below...
Anyhow,

Cheers

Monday 29 April 2013

Paul Hess illustration task


This was the task set by Paul Hess, Illustrator, we were to illustrate a ghost story about a little girl who keeps getting visited by an ominous presence... She sends him away but not before he vows to her "I'll be back! I'll get what's mine!"

Saturday 27 April 2013

Card ideas again



I got sick of trying to draw dogs so went for some flying seahorses instead?

Friday 26 April 2013

Quick update

Here's a very short shot of Miss Pui Lee (II) breaking the board at a Taekwon-Do class that I have traced over for the commercial I am making...

Tuesday 23 April 2013

Inspiration

This Tee Party competition I'm going to do some work for - whether it gets entered or not - is proving to be a challenge... The design brief is so wide and vague I can barely think of anything to do for a design... I've looked on the Dudes Factory website for some ideas as I really like some of their work and have some of their mystery mis-print t-shirts and jumpers from last year's Picto. trip...

I really like the 110 Special Black artwork on the shop page some of which I have posted from the site... I especially like the panda t-shirt...




110 Special Black


Joint the dark side - Smithe

Mcbess 

It is apparent that the majority of T-shirts I have looked at have some form of recognisable trait to them - one had the artist's rendition of Jesus on it, another a man's face, obviously one has Darth Vader on smoking a joint... Witty things like these seem to go well on T-shirts... This is something I will take into onsideration when I'm considering designs for Tee Party... Character designs are also quite popular... Personifying everyday objects such as the glass in Mcbess's 'Old Fashioned' design...

Got to think of something funny and original... hmmm...


Monday 22 April 2013

Scraperfoil work

I bought some Scraperfoil from Wilkinson tonight because I was having trouble drawing and concentrating today... I feel the tasks I have given myself worked out pretty well, I thought the gold foil tester square would be good for the metallic look of a dalek - it was good fun... More to come hopefully - I have like three more rainbow boards :D



Sunday 21 April 2013

Interview

I had my interview with Newcastle college on Friday - I'm not sure how it went. I may have been reading the situation negatively and so perhaps I'm wrong but I got the feeling the interviewers weren't convinced. I guess I shall find out soon enough either way and I'm not going to dwell upon it. I have momentum to gather up to get the work for THIS year done before hand in week - I still want to be ready at least a day or so before the day so I can bind everything properly and hand in un-rushed. :)

Cheers

Monday 15 April 2013

By the way new facebook address




Cactustrophic Productions here I come...

Storyboards done

Although they're rough I'm glad to finally have an idea of how I'm going to put this animation together... these will be subject to change but I'm happy with them...

As I mentioned on my facebook page - which has changed address to www.facebook.com/CactustrophicProductions
"I do not mean to insinuate Awesome does not grace other Dojangs too I'm just trying to sell the UKTC North East's ones... xD

Target setting

After a discussion with Dave I have some targets to set myself... So here's ten things I need to do this week before Friday regarding the deadlines and priorities I have (Bracketed stuff is a deadline)

1. Incidentally I need to set myself more targets so voila! (Now)

2. Add more to my portfolio (And Show reel) for my interview on Friday e.g.. life drawing work etc. (Friday)

3. Storyboard my Future Lions competition entry and have an animatic done. (Tuesday)

4. Discuss inspirations for the posters (I need to discuss more inspirations) (Friday)

5. Discuss more inspirational stuff on here... (Ongoing)

6. Treatment for Future Lions. (This Tuesday or next depending on how much you can fit into a week)

7. Posters (Next Thursday)

8. Editing Future Lions (Next Friday)

9. Bake Chocolate Chip Ninja cookeis for a friend's birthday. (Wednesday)

10. Be ready for my interview on Friday. (Duh Friday)

I also need to work on CV's, Business Cards, Paul Hess Illustration work, Tee Party T-shirt designs, Greyscale Gorilla 5 second animation if time, and designing a monster for the new project Dave introduced to us this morning...

Next tasks today is Portfolio work and Storyboarding... Cheers

Friday 12 April 2013

Having got carried away with Pokémon character hats

After much hard work trying to resist the urge to make a tiny prototype out of felt, I finally caved and spent several hours sewing myself a keyring sized magikarp - I'm missing some googly eyes and yellow moustache strings but otherwise I would say I'm pretty darn proud that the pattern I made from scratch actually worked :) chuffed

Also I've included the other characters I've tried turning into hats and such - some of them are pretty terrible but I was really just enjoying drawing them :)






Hats off to whoever thought of this before me x3

Okay so this morning my Auntie was talking about hat knitting patterns and I got thinking about the fish hat I bought my little sister a while ago - the idea struck me that my Pokémon playing friends would appreciate the idea of a Magikarp hat like it so set about designing my idea on paper... It was then brought to my attention by my brother that this idea is already a 'thing' and so my awesome idea isn't actually original :( but I did enjoy drawing another Magikarp nevertheless xD
I felt I should share this with you...




Thursday 11 April 2013

A summary of my day so far...

 
So work began with finishing off the resizing job I was given from a former student of mine who wants the image to be 2.4 x 3.5 metres so I traced it up in illustrator to avoid it getting pixellated in any way and resized it to the size he wanted... this is the outsome...
 
 
I can't really comment on how I think it has gone as it is not even really my work xD
 
Moving on, this is a still from some footage I captured on a Thursday night class in Tae kwon-Do, our instructor is demonstrating a twisting kick.
 
 
From here I essentially 'rotoscoped' the one frame and incorporated it into the poster... I am pretty happy with how these are going and am slowly but surely finding things I want to incorporate into these... like the shadows on the lettering is new and I think it may stay...


Anyway, after a nice day of solid hard work I feel I have earned myself a chocolate bar, bottle of pop and a trip to the corner shop to buy them xD Then it's back to putting my nose to the grindstone xD

Tuesday 9 April 2013

Poster attempts

Blogger isn't working I was trying upload the post with these so I'm re-posting... Each took about an hour to do and I'm quite happy with them despite the fact my wrist got worse again after almost three weeks of it healing well Dx


Wednesday 27 March 2013

Easter egg fun

The place where Lewis works wanted him to design some hard boiled eggs - so naturally I painted some for him... I was fed lots of lovely ommlette as payment so this is what I finished in like 2 hours




Monday 25 March 2013

Quick update

I have a facebook page!! If anyone is remotely interested it is a little more professional - or at least intended to be so than this page... this is the address



In other news I was at a MMA sparring competition yesterday - fellow members of my Tae kwon-Do club went and entered - I was part of the moral support team...

Steve has given me permission to use his kick in my Tae kwon-Do project which I am currently collecting footage for... I cannot post the video as blogger keeps claiming there is an error however I can add a link to somewhere it has already been posted...




I also have green screen footage of kicks in real time and slow motion some of which are children so for the sake of their privacy - despite the fact I have parental consent for each of them I will keep that from the internet until they're in the final piece.

So here are some of the punches and kicks I CAN post =D




Thanks to Lee Wallace, Pui Lee and William McElhone

Thursday 21 March 2013

Curled up in a fetal position on the stairs

It appears I have an RSI... To us lay people that is a repetitive strain injury that I have inflicted upon myself from drawing for too long whilst holding my graphics tablet pen too tightly causing my tendons, nerves and muscles to protest profusely x3 despite the fact it has improved already since the first sign of it on Tuesday afternoon it is still not functioning properly and it doesn't take much for it to go ping (painfully :C) - my swot analysis would require me to count this as a threat... I can't really draw or even work the mouse pad on my laptop x3 My P.O.A. will be resting it for a few days (thankfully the weekend is nigh) and paying my lovely doctor a visit if I don't show any improvement in too long... Which I doubt will be necessary this should be fine after a little while :) in any case I will endeavour to post my work so far tomorrow and discuss up and coming projects that I'm being briefed for tomorrow and I can show you exactly what caused this immense pain I'm in now - just in case anyone is interested in how to cause Georgie injuries she can't stand x3 anyhow,

Goodnight

Monday 18 March 2013

Planning ahead

So I have a couple of modules on the go, and a couple of projects within each... So I'm putting down a timetable that will probably not get followed to the letter precisely but will hopefully be of use to me in the coming weeks...


Week 1 - This week

Capturing footage for Tae kwon-Do commerical
Illustration work
General organisation - eg. CV and Business card

Week 2

Capturing Tae kwon-Do footage for the commercial
Illustration work

Week 3

(Easter week 1)
Illustration work and shooting/editing the Tae kwon-Do commercial

Week 4

(Easter week 2)
Illustration work and editing the Tae kwon-Do commercial

Week 5

Working on small projects
(Tee Party, Card designs etc.)

Week 6

After Effects editing on things like my ghost girl animation.

Week 7

Final editing, printing and binding ready for hand in...


Not sure if there is much more to post about... I shall sign off for now guys


Cheers

More attempts at business card ideas...




I'm still working on the business card ideas... I'll come up with something good eventually... I don't think I've quite got the composition right and such but I'm doing my best...

in any case I should post about the stuff that will be coming up soon...

In a bit,

Cheers

Tuesday 12 March 2013

Another life drawing session

This was a fifteen minute sitting that I used to focus on the face - I was pretty happy with this :)


CAAD class doing a short ident in After Effects

 Okay so this might be a little too bouncy and may need to be calmed down a bit but for a first attempt at doing it I'm really pretty happy with it =D

Friday 8 March 2013

More sketching

Just a quick post with another life drawing... Again printed from google


Wednesday 6 March 2013

New sketch book




So life drawing started on Tuesday for the first years and I decided to go along. So glad I did because I'm dead happy with how I'm drawing now - I can finally draw again!! I bought a new sketch book so I can put some work together to take along to my interview - it was mentioned sketch books are interesting discussion points in these things so if my work is good enough I think I will take this with me in April.


I also printed some life model images off the internet, I know that's probably a mega weird thing to do (it was solely for the drawing I swear) and it's bad since they're a flat image rather than a real 3d human but I wanted the practice so tough.



Candy hearts is the title of the greyscale gorilla competition which I'm currently puzzling over - I'm considering a real heart exploding into little candy ones... Not sure how I could do this - but I'm working on it :)

Meantime,
Cheers



A trip to Seven Stories


It was our luck that Seven Stories in Byker was holding an event about getting your childrens picture book published tonight. We we're given tips for excellent texts, getting noticed, and how not to annoy publishers and got an insight into the world of Axel Scheffler - illustrator of the Gruffalo.


His sketch books were left out for us to look at and his work is so beautiful it's inspiring, the fact it was there right before our eyes gave it a more real feel, again like in Berlin giving the position Axel is in a more human appearance. Again I feel like it's possible to be so successful with the right balance of hard work and good fortune anything could happen. I'm really pleased I went to this event and now that I know what to expect I bet I will return for more.


And what's more I had two books signed by the man himself!! I was thinking of perhaps giving them as prizes to the children best behaved or hardest working in my classes but I think I might just keep them myself.













Monday 4 March 2013

Business Card designs



These are my rough business card designs (of the front and back in respective order) - I can't find the memory stick that has the original illustrator files of the logo on but when I get home I'm going to replace these logos with hopefully less pixellated versions...

Until then...


Cheers

Better late than never

PPD task one - today is the day I finally embark on the dreary and wordy journey of a real SWOT analysis...


Overall my strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats are going to be listed alongside job roles I could fall into and am interested in... I then work out what skills I'm missing and work a plan out to fix this so I leave university with the most skills I possibly can...


Strengths - Storytelling, composition, drawing, communication, presentation, digital skills, patience amd acting.

Weaknesses - Software skills, model making (sculpture), lighting and drawing skills.

Opportunities - Sneaking into life rawing classes with the first years, work on software available - Maya is free online on which to practice and learning to model make with Dave.

Threats - Time element (not much time left?), deadlines - things will take priority if they need handing in, lack of inspirations and for a lack of things to list, bing ill...

Specialist Job roles I like the sound of

Storyboard artist
Layout artist
Compositor
Editor
Animator
Model Maker
Illustrator
'Lighter'

New skills I need for these job roles

Storyboard software skills and knowledge!!
Premier pro experience
Better Drawing skills - incl. light and shadow
Flash experience
Photoshop and After Effects improvement of skills
Shake understanding
Model making
Greater Colour Theory knowledge
Understanding lighting to represent daytimes - or a more technical understanding rather than theatrical...
Maya understanding


Learning plan with this in mind

Model making class with Dave
Research and document Colour Theory and lighting
Download and play with the Student Maya package
Research the software called 'Shake'
Steal Andrew to teach me how to use Flash
Practice Photoshop and After Effects further
Try out and improve my skills in Premier
Sneaking into life drawing classes this week with the first years...


These targets will be easy to cover in one way or another before the course ends this year...


Long typed up post over


Cheers

Plans for the future



Our work based learning module requires us to produce projects from a live brief. This can be from a competition, commissioned or requested based brief that follows the module guidelines. It can be illustration or animation - I want to do a brief for both...


Greyscale gorilla has a 5 second project competition that I intend to enter. The brief for February was 'Candy Hearts' however I don't know when the next brief will be released so I will do the February one and if the next one is released I'll do that one too... then if I have more time I'll go back in time and do other cool briefs I see on the site too...


I also like the idea of the Future Lions competition - this year's competition hasn't been released yet but the old ones suggest it will be similar to the usual 'averts whatever you want however you want' format. I want to create a series consisting of a parody advert, perhaps using made up jargon like those seen on the television these days and a load of posters.
Alongside this I will come up with a load more briefs to do... I think this is going to be fun

Cheers

Update on everything


It has been a while - I will blame it on my current ailment, I'm recovering from being ill so haven't been able to post as I would have liked during the handing in of two modules. This is my quick update on where I am currently regarding modules, and own work...

This is my final piece for my digital skill application module; it's my animation 'Friend' in progress. So far I have perhaps just under a half of the animation complete. I still don't like the way this looks but it will do.





Blogger is not allowing me to upload my showreel but I also went for an interview at Sunderland University a couple of weeks back. I feel it went quite well and the interviewer said she enjoyed the showreel that I cannot post at this time.

My Contextual studies essay was handed in last week so this weekend I have been module-less... which has been an amazing feeling... I managed to tidy my room and recover from whatever I was ill with much better than if I had a module to worry about. So I'm back, refreshed and ready to try and get some work done... I hope... 

One slight problem I feel I will be facing is the now complete lack of inspiration I have... During the module where I had no time to work on funny little projects I had so many ideas - I had ideas swimming in my head like fish in the sea - and now? These fishies have been spooked and are in hiding again... which sucks... Hopefully I will overcome this and come up with some work to do...

Thursday 14 February 2013

Quick update because lying awake at 4am is more constructive this way...

Just a little good morning to everyone,

I've done some mental maths... I can assure you it's more mental than it is maths that is for certain, but I feel I may have over half of my animation complete in time for hand in next week. Today I will be animating as many animated assets as humanly possible in a day and the remaining elements will be completed over the weekend, this gives me time next week to play around with basic sound effects and prepare everything to be handed in... I'm feeling quite optimistic though that might be the sleep deprivation talking.

I'm unsure about how ready the music will be for the background but I'm sure even if it doesn't get done in time for this stage of hand in I'm sure it'll be fine and ready for the eventual hand in :) I am admittedly behind otherwise music could already have been done but lets not dwell upon that and focus more on the positives :)

Sunday 10 February 2013

Extra origami

If anyone wants me to try and post the instructions on how to make these let me know and I'll try...
With the help of a hair pin I managed to make smaller roses - it's always a fun challenge to me to try and make my origami smaller and smaller to see how small I can fold something and still have it resemble what I was intending to make at the end...





A little origami to brighten up the day - or rather night...

Thanks to a newspaper article from Kirsty Allsop that I will need to acquire from my grandmother to credit sufficiently I have managed to make a rose out of paper - this is two of such roses I managed to fit together in a sort of reverse flip of the Tudor rose which I'm pretty happy with - especially since I did this after reading the instructions a half hour ago and haven't looked at since...
So yeah, flowers make pretty awesome procrastination projects :)



Tuesday 5 February 2013

Link to Vimeo

Blogger is taking way too long to upload a simple video... it's only a few seconds long but it has been uploading for over an hour almost... so I shall post the link to the video on Vimeo...


cheers

Monday 4 February 2013

Iss - shoes

So I still am finding it mega hard to draw even the simplest of things... it is MOST frustrating to say the least...

However since I am finding it hard to work on my backgrounds I have bought a book that should help me...

http://www.parkablogs.com/content/book-review-impeccable-scene-design-game-animation-and-film

This is a review of the book - I thought it would be a good idea to post this so you first of all catch the name of the book but also get an idea what it's about and how helpful it could be...

I think it's really inspirational - I want to just start all of my backgrounds again and make them look like this - something I would totally do if I could make anything I do look anywhere near nice... :(

Working on it in any way I can though - this animation WILL be done at least to the point where I can hand it in and not fail the module - then I can start over if I want so it can look nice and then I can finish the whole damn thing...

Monday 28 January 2013

Quick update on my background

So this is the work in progress I have for the background - this particular background includes a school playground in which children will be animated playing; a field, upon which a boy and his dog are going to be hugging and the roadworks on the end of the street, where two guys will be sharing  cup of tea...


The quick video I have made wouldn't upload on blogger but you can find it here - http://vimeo.com/58375136

Cheers

Uni says jump - we say how high?


So I'm finally getting to the PPD tasks I'm supposed to do for college... (Professional and Personal Development)

I have already posted a SWOT analysis and still find it a pointless concept but it needs to be done in the name of Foundation Degrees...


So...
Strengths -        
  • I have picked up some more general skills on Photoshop, Illustrator and After Effects... 
  • I have completed my script for my animation
  • My boyfriend has agreed to write the music for said animation
  • he has also agreed to write more if it is a success
Weaknesses - 
  • I still am not up to speed with my drawing skills - hopefully they will continue to improve so I can finish my animation in time...
  • I can't think of much more at this given time I shall return to this... Expect more...
Opportunities - 
  • I am working to get my animation done so that I can get more done regarding things unrelated to college and so on...
  • I've set up a vimeo account that hopefully will fill up with interesting things once I am not stressing about how behind I am in this animation...
Threats - 
  • Aforementioned drawing skills are pitiful at the minute - hopefully they will improve...
  • Lack of easy access to the internet - college's wifi is absolute poop and I can only use the internet at home at certain times when the internet wire is available to plug into my laptop (curfew being like 10 pm) - this comes from having a grandmother who dislikes the idea of wifi as it'll keep me up all night which is why I would want it so I could work through the night when I can't sleep so I don't have to worry about when my retarded body clock won't let me get up on a morning... sorry rant over...



Therefore using this SWOT analysis to act as a list of things I need to sort out...

I need to -:

  1. Hone my drawing skills again so I can actually draw something acceptable that doesn't resemble a drawing by a 6 year old on speed...
  2. Think of more to moan about for my weaknesses
  3. finish my animation so I can get other things done so I can have nice things to put in a show reel...
  4. Try to get everything internet involved done in the times I'm actually online... rather than forgetting bits...


Boring paperwork done - I will endeavour to upload imagery of my almost finished background set for my animation to make up for such a pitifully lack of pretty pictures...


Cheers

Tuesday 22 January 2013

A little help from ma friends...

Paul helped me put the cacti into a logo format that looks pretty professional... I'm pretty happy with this - I've started my vimeo account and uploaded the image as the whatsit...

So if anyone is remotely interested...

https://vimeo.com/cactustrophic

Cheers