history of design 09/12/07

reh sent me through a georgous presentation i think that she really should be doing graphics rather than web design i wish that the others in our group would get on and produce somthing that we can hand in.

drawing david cope 06/12/07

came in to finish off the printing of my echings did finaly get them all done before i had to go and pick up the kids i hope that they dry alright.

drawing david cope 5/12/07

finished off my etchings for david cope and took them down to the studio to print them so that they would have time to dry before they were due to be mounted next wed.

cel animation 4/12/07

finished off the story board and started to work on the character modeling

study skills 03-12-07

Did a presentation on my diary so far i thought that it went ok but was only for 10% of the course so i will haave to keep working. I learned from this that films do not import into power point you only get a link so you ahve to be really care full where you put them. I had put together a short clip of the professor scratching his head in nightmare befor christmas.

drawing with steve 03-12-07

handed in tombstoning i left the character design sheets till well too late and ended up doing them on the day only got the design sheet for the main character done in his wheel chair, and not a very good drawing at that.

drawing david cope 28/11/07

decided which pics to use for my final peice working out which i could leave out and still tell the story and which i should do in mono print and which would be best as pen and ink.
the depressing nature of this project and to a certain extent the tombstoing project are starting to get to me.

history of design 28-11-07

posted a transcript of the lecture that sue gave on de stijl and what i am going to say in the de stijl presentation i hope that the others read it and do somthing useful

cel animation 27/11/07

work on mouth positions for a rabbit character

drawing with steve 26-11-07

working on drawings for the public information film he seams to be pritty happy with my rough sketches and script. spent some time today working how to layout the story board for the target audiance.

history of design 26-11-07

we were let off our lecture today to work in our groups for the presentation next week scott and jack did not turn up reh and

drawing david cope 21-11-07

i went down to the studio to pick up some sheets of aluminum for making the echings and got on with etching the designs from the mono print.

Cel Animation 20/11/07

working on scene design for fear and script for my character i thought that this character was a bit butch.

The script that i chose was the speech from dirty harry the effect i am going for is the opposition of a macho script with a soft pink character.

Also generated a story board sheet based on one in the stop motion book i started to transfer my story board sketches over.

study skills 19/11/07

lecture on note taking we were asked to take notes on an article and we then evaluated the work that we had done. We then talked about how we make notes and how helpful they are to future work.

Drawing David Cope 14/11/07

picked on the right of the child (not to be abducted) that I was going to use and started to come up with stills for the drawings work.

Cel Animation 13/11/07

Broken up into new groups and given a new project fear to be made in a 3d media we spent the morning brainstorming story ideas we settled on using a fear that is fundamental to the character that we are using we then focused on the fears of plasticne cahracters.

study skills 12/11/07

Given information on reading and use of the library. We were also given information on generating a bibliography of every book we had looked at so that we would not waste our time redoing work. This seams to me to be a very large amount of effort to put into a very small section of the course but it could be a good technique for working with films which are much harder to scan luckily archives already exist.

Drawing Steve Howard 12/11/07

explored the script and plot ideas for my tombstoning project to acheve the required 30 secs. also had a look at a comedy treatment for pissing in a straight line in the same vane as the spoof safty information vids on you tube.

history of design 12/11/07

a more substantial look as Marxist analysis moving on to the gramsci ideas of hegemony we then went on to look at propaganda using a film of hitler as a focus.

Drawing David Cope 07/11/07

learning how to make mono prints with referance to dry point which is what david wants us to use for some of the rights of the child prints.

Drawing Steve Howard 05/11/07

Decided on doing Tombstoning started to focus on the type and length of animation and the audiance

history of design 05/11/07

had an early look at base and supers structure (Marxist analysis) after the reading we had been given (from Marx). I had found the reading really rather hard almost impossible to make sense of. Sue suggested that we use as secondary source to make sense of the primary.
Looked a a busby Berkley movie from 1933 with more discussions of the mass in both production and consumption of entertainment.

Drawing with David Cope 24-10-07

we got asked to draw round each other and write words on the subject of growing through the teenage age years in the out line David was very keen that the words reflect the part of the body on which they were written.

I found this a difficult task hard to put into words such personal stuff. I think it may have been a good exercise in that if it is not that if i am not finding it that hard then I am not putting myself in to the work. It was also a little embeing in forunt of the peer droup to be doing that sort of stuff.

Drawing with David Cope 24-10-07

Got given a projects to produce a printed story board using mono print to be on the subject on the rights of the child.

we had to resurch the topice looking at films on the films from canada web site which did not work on the university server.

I found the unicef web site instead which had lots of very intresting information on the rights of the child it was still not obviouse which right to pick

Study skills / history of design 22/10/07

Was given some work to hand in we were divided into groups for the project we had to reschurch De Stijl for a presentation and for an essay on a particular member fthe design group. My group looks ok I hope that we can pull well together.

Drawing Steve Howard 22-10-07

more life classes started with an exercise on drawing a picture of a face upside down a fun exercise I found I had to draw the face as shapes otherwise my brain kept turning it the right way up.

Drawing steve howard 22/10/07

got handed story board project due in on the 3/12/07
project is on a public information film we have been asked to resurch on history of public information films very intresting looking at the old films from my childhood.
did research for the second half of the period.

trapped 09/10/07

work on trapped. Focusing on my sections of the story board and setting the background design allow work to properly start epphsis put on generating the start and end images for the work to commence and getting agrement bettween the difrent people exactly where the change over point would be.

history of design 08-10-07

we read: a definition of modern and the way it had changed meaning over time. some extracts from dickens on modern a time line from 1771 to 1901 and an article discussing ornament in the Victorian era. lecture was on the rise of the middle class and its effect on culture in the movement from high culture to mass culture.

Drawing Steve Howard 08-10-07

More life classes I think that i may be improving he gave us a talk on perspective and we drew some boxes. we then did more life poses using lines and curves. We then drew an angry chair. after the break we worked on heads using a spheres and boxes technique. This system allows easy sketch out of heads in any orientation. I was very pleased to have 'got it sort of' sort of straight away I am sure that the others will move on ahead as they all seem to be able to draw really naturally.

study skills 08-10-07

lecture on the the learning process
lecture on time management and a hand out of the time management sheets.

made a light box 05-10-07

Built a light box today from timber and a strip light it works pretty well. Good use of my woodworking and electrical skills to produce something very useful.

Drawing with David Cope 03-10-07

Lecture on the subject of opposition we had to produce a picture using black squares on white paper on oppositions this was a paired project I teamed up with Joe.

for the record top left then clockwise loneliness/ companionship confined/open adult/child construct/destruct

I felt that I shouted Joe down at times which made me feel bad afterward and I wonder what he would have produced left to his own devices.

after the break we had to draw a small region of a project that meant something to us. I had a interesting discussion with David about use of line to define a space and he suggested that out lines were important and useful.

Drawing David Cope 3/10/07

We were asked to bring in a object for home to draw today I brought in the model of the Egyptian obelisk on the embankment. Dave asked us to draw a section of it. I had a very interesting discussion with Dave about drawing the edge line for this sort of drawing where the difference is in tone between the edge of an object and its background. The conclusion of the discussion was that for animation a more stylised approach may be be more appropriate where the edge of an object is more clearly defined than would be usual.

Cel animation am/pm 02-10-07

Spent time working on a set of timings to break the story board down in to sections I suggested that this was done frame by frame. This was then typed up and distributed this was good to have been done early as it allow us to work out who was doing what to make the distribution of work fair. I felt this showed my strength in running a project. We picked a character drawn by Meryn Steve didn't like it as it was too simple and suggested that one of Meryn's other characters would be more appropriate. We then set the background and started work on our storey board sections. Meryn agree to produce a character sheet for next week

Drawing Steve Howard 01-10-07

life drawing class for animation very difficult and emotionally draining a reall shock to the system drawing people from the class in 30 second poses need to include scan from session. drawing of wheeled office chairs trying to draw emotion into the chair. very hard difficult thing to do

Drawing with David Cope 26-09-07

This course was presented as a fine art course we were shown a set of images to reflect the life of the tutor and we had to draw conclusions on what he had done with his life he then gave us a lecture on oppositions and the difference between an icon and a symbol.
we then did an ice breaking exercise.
draw images to represent your self and images to represent your journey to college.
then draw an image to represent a word we were given I was given fragile.
I did not acquit my self very well on the ice breaking exercise my understanding of the brief was poor.

Handed trapped 25-09-07

Today we were handed our cell animation project trapped. This was to be a group prodution.

My initial toughts on the brief were that it would be easy.

After brainstorming story ideas we picked stuck in a box. We then ran though a story board and it started to become apparent that there maybe more work than it looked like at first

.

Cel animation pm 25-09-07

This is a session that allows us to proceed with our projects but also we are to bring in animations to look at. We saw: Steam boat willy, a live action and and animation combination from the 1920's. The old animations have a lovely unreal charm.

Trapped 25-09-07

we continued to work on our cell animation projects Peter reviewed our progress and was concerned that we were not all taking part he suggested that we work on our initial designs for our characters. As we had mostly agreed on our story board. He said we were getting on and seemed pleased with our progress. While I felt that I was driving the group quite hard I could see the project deadline looming every day spent on planing is one day we can't spend drawing.

history of design 24-09-07

got given project on the de stijl art movement. To be done in a group. other groups have been given other movements we have to present and produce a 1000 words I understand that the main artist to represent the movement is Mondrian. I have never seen the appeal of geometric abstraction so I am going to have to work hard on this I did record what Susan had to say on my movement so we may be OK at last I may have a chance not to really stuff up by saying something she really disagrees with with no evidence.

study skills 24-09-07

lecture on presentation skills Susan presented the reading we had been asked to do as we will have to do for our art movement project we that marked her speaking the class was very mean and aggressive and marked her down heavily this does not bode well for our marks on the presentation element of the module.

First introduction to cell animation

Tuesdays are cell animation all day we were lectured on the different types of animation.
Mostly I knew this material.
We were also briefed on the use of the animation camera and associated software. The use of the hole punch and animation pegs

First Day

I had to skip the first day for child care reasons. Not good!
During our induction we had been given an extract from Adrian Forty 'objects of desire' to read for the afternoon session on History of design. I really did not like the article I did not agree with it in several respects though the main point ,that design is only relevant to it's societal context, is one I regard as bleeding obvious.

My First Post

Hi
This is a reflective diary for an animation course.
I will be including some work and some analysis some of my notes etc.
I hope that this process will make me a better animator and a clearer thinker about animation.
I am not expecting anyone other than me to gain from this process.
Initially I am going to be writing what has happened in the past three weeks I hope to catch up.
The blog should be many short posts so that I can tag them by project and subject as well as by week.
Regards Zac