I had a great time at RJDM, learned a ton and got lots of valuable production experience. As well as all that it left me eager to make a start on some of my own projects!
Anyway, I started a job as a ward clerk at Chester hospital this week, mostly training and shadowing someone who knows what they're doing. My plan was to work for money during the day at the hospital and then come home and work on animation in the evenings. Things didn't really go to plan..
I'm putting it down to the fact that I've got so much to remember from my day job that by the time I get home I just want to chill out and let it sink in. I'm quickly becoming a lot more comfortable with the job though so I'm optimistic that I'll get into my animating in the evenings routine within the next week or two.
The weekend hasn't been much more productive than the week really. I've started work redesigning my main character from my final major project at uni. I worked the story into something I was really happy with so I'm eager to make it into a finished short.
Click here for the animatic for Growing Pains!
I don't think much needs to change storywise, I'd like to work on the pacing a little though. I think some more time with the size changing of the main character would help. One thing I'd like to work on more before getting started animating is the design side. I was never really happy with my final character design, the design of the whole thing actually seemed quite bland to me.
Now I've got a bit more time I want to correct that. I've got a lot of designs in my sketchbook but I haven't scanned them in yet. This quick Painter sketch should get the idea of where I'm going across though..
While it's not a massive stretch from the original character I wanted a design more influenced by the story. My original design for the character remained the same while the story went through all it's changes.As you can probably tell, I was going for something organic and plant-like with the new design. I'll upload one of my more finished drawings soon where you can see how his legs actually look like tree trunks/roots going into the ground, and obviously his head is shaped like a tomato : P
I'm actually pretty happy with this direction, and I'm looking forward to animating the character with his bendy arms and legs!
Before I finalise this design though I need to make this character more interesting. At the moment he's still nameless and has a pretty boring personality. I'd like his personality to influence his design, and vice versa, so I won't be modelling until that's locked down.
Other than redesigning this character I've been looking into how to rig bendy arms and legs (and some tools that would rig these for me)
Like I say, not the most productive week but it's all progress. Next update should be further design work for Growing Pains and some animation for the postman and sofa shorts I'm working on (depending on how productive this next week is)
Cheers.
