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