A random character with no purpose.

Hello guys.

Decided to make a little blog post here on this fine afternoon showing this little character I made about a few weeks ago.

I had this character sat on my desk for a little while, I made a simple green character that I was going to use to practice with (And so I did) but then he was just sat there looking all lonely so I decided to add some horns and stuff to his head, I was going to paint them to give them more depth, plus they may come in handy for future projects which may need these horns. The horns are made of left over epoxy putty that I had when I mixed too much whilst working on a 3 inch armature, didn't just want to waste it.

Also, pictures were taking with my new iPod touch, the quality is great and is far nicer than my webcam!

So yeah, not much going on, just felt like sharing this dude for the sake of keeping this blog updated on a regular basis.

Feeling Inspired.

Hey guys.

A sudden surge of inspiration has hit me like a ton of bricks, not literally, that would hurt..

This however, doesn't mean I'll be jumping straight back into the project. That would be dangerous, I need to slowly ease my way back into the project by animating small segments, by practicing with a character I just made this morning for fun. (Breath!)

I want to have some real fun with these little sessions rather than trying to make over complicated messes of hell, there's still nothing worse than animating a characters legs without tie downs. That's actually one of my biggest problems when it comes to animating, since I just have a computer desk to work at I don't really want to be drilling holes through it. I think I need a stage of some kind... Actually, that's perfectly possible right now so I might get working on that soon. It'll have to be after this project though since it's all shot on my desk, it would look strange if in one shot it was on my desk and then it was randomly somewhere else in time and space.

I thought about some ideas for my next project...I don't think I'm going to jump right into another one right after this one. After a successful project, you feel a mixture of accomplishment and exhaustion, a bit of frustration sometimes when people pick at the tiniest mistakes.

So far, I seem to have given Early Battles a serious kind of feel when I talk about it, trust me guy's it's far from it! There are hands in shots, camera being knocked and all kinds of rookie mistakes, plus add that to some gory fun and you got yourself a bit of a laugh.

Now, I do want to embark on a serious project very soon but, my style stops me from being able to. The overall feel of my work is not serious or scary, but I do want to create that effect with future projects. LOADED was one of them, the characters style stood in the way though. They looked horribly childish and that makes me appear childish when I'm trying to create something "Real".

I think I'll leave it there for today. I don't know who reads this at all to be honest with you, I don't think anyone does but if you do then that makes you a pretty cool guy type thing. So keep on being cool you one person who actually enjoys me rambling about "Playdoh". It's plasticine really, this stuff:

More Complications.

Hey guys, it feels like it's been a very long time since I posted here. I've been holding off on posting here as I don't want to disappoint people or bug them with pointless updates, I think it's time to talk.

Early Battles has been at a complete stand still for a few weeks now. I don't want to work on it at all, I just don't want to work on it at the moment, I've hit a metaphorical brick wall which has put a stop to my creativity, no motivation at all, literally. I have managed about 1 minute of animation so far, it's about half way done and I just don't have the motivation to finish it off.

That doesn't mean I'm not going to finish it though. 

This crap happens every time, I'm pretty sure it happens to other people too but they manage to get around it, I'm looking for that way right now, and it's not showing itself to me.

For the time being, I'm going to be looking for something else to do until I feel inspired and motivated. Last time this happened, I got over it quickly, let's hope this is the same!

There are valid reasons as to why I have no motivation, but I don't believe it's necessary to talk about why.

You're probably sick of this crap happening, and reading these types of blog posts. I got a bad feeling about the next blog post...

Well, that's enough so see you next time!

Update for Early Battles.

Hey guys, been a little while since I posted anything, been trying to keep quiet about the progress of my project and what the whole project is actually about.

Well anyway, I will give you a small update on the progress I've made so far on the project.

Alright, so I started animating on the 22nd October I believe, so far I have about 30 seconds done. According to my storyboard, I'm not even a quarter of the way through yet, which is saying something considering the usual length of my animations.

I can tell you now, I have some fairly creative ideas going on for the project, but I've not been able to execute them all perfectly like I managed when practicing, I think I'm just gonna focus on these ideas to get this animation going rather than trying to make everything perfectly smooth like some of my practice footage got close to.

And that's another thing, practice footage. Right before I started animating, I got set up to start animating for the actual project but I decided to go with one more practice/warm up session. I came out with some of the best animation I have ever done here, the footage contains several takes at certain movements, this is something I don't usually do.I usually try something, like for example, I might try to move a characters hand up and then I would move onto the next thing without trying it again. Very happy with the way it turned out, but I'm not sure I'll post it until I post the complete finished Early Battles animation.

Anyway, I don't know when you can expect Early Battles to be done, I haven't worked on it for about a week now since the time I usually do any animation (At about 7:00pm) is occupied by the neighborhoods fireworks. (Don't even get me started on last night, I don't even know why people are letting them off)
I like to have absolute silence and a relaxed state of mind before I animate, if I don't I'll rush into things and get easily annoyed (Thanks anxiety) which usually ends up with me getting upset and miserable just over a tiny problem like that.

Hmm, that's quite a lot of writing without anything of real interest. How about a quick picture?

I got quite a lot of pictures actually, just not sharing them otherwise I'll spoil too much.

Oh yeah! I just remembered something! The interest for LOADED is back, it's probably going to be the next project but..... It's not going to be the same. I'm in the process of re designing the characters whilst I'm not animating Early Battles. I'm gonna re do the entire story board, but still using the same ideas, just a different feel. And that whole secret meaning behind the animation? Pffft, not anymore. I can't work it into the project without it looking stupid so I'll save these "Special Meanings" for another time.

I actually got quite a lot of ideas written down for animations, each idea I come up with gets progressively darker, this last Idea I just had though... geez. It's gonna be interesting when I get around to it.

Well, I think that's enough of a blog post/essay today. Gonna do some drawing, come up with some more ideas for my next project and yeah, that's it for now.

See you all in the next post, with something a little more exciting, I hope.

New Cam, 10 seconds done for Early Battles

Hey guys! Gonna try and keep this one short, need to leave the house in 15 minutes to go to college, well anyway....

New camera has been here for a couple of weeks now, Microsoft Lifecam Cinema, and it's great! There are some problems though, but I'll talk about that another time.

I finished everything I needed to do before I started animating Early Battles, making the characters and stuff like that, and then I went on to practice a little just to get back into animating after a long time without doing so.

I think the animation turned out very good here, I made more practice that turned out even better than these, but I'm not posting them yet.

Anyway, roughly 10 seconds of animation done already for Early Battles, just got the first bit out of the way which can be considered the boring part, now onto more interesting stuff. Will probably animate more tonight so long as I am able to work in peace like I have been able to for the past few weeks, believe it or not.

That's all for now, need to get off to college, got an early bus to catch and I have a whole day to look forward to animating!

Finally! Things are looking up!

Hey guys, things are starting to look up!

As you know, I've been farting around trying to get my hands on a new camera whilst trying to find money from somewhere. I finally got around to it, got the money and I know what I want, I'm buying it tonight and I don't know when to expect it arriving, but man I'm so happy to have finally found what I need!

This long absence has been very good for my creative mind, I have not been thinking about "Early Battles" at all since I stopped and I have become very excited and happy about the project, I was thinking about the animation too much and I wasn't having much fun with animation since I was having a few problems, but now is probably the best time to get cracking with some animation. Got tons of new ideas, tons of inspiration and maybe even some new skills?

Well anyway, once camera get's here I will be animating something as soon as I am given the chance, either straight after college or on the weekend, very excited to get on with something.

I have also managed to "Acquire" a copy of Flash, already been drawing and messing around. I want to make a sprite animation with the sprites I have been making at college during free time and breaks and I also want to make some completely original ideas in flash, don't have any ideas for that yet but when inspiration strikes I'll get to work on it. I'll just have to look at some tutorials to refresh my memories and then I'll experiment again.

I've also been drawing a lot too, I finished my 30 day drawing challenge and I think I should carry on drawing everyday but I need to be pointed in the write direction. I need ideas and help, I want to improve and I want to learn how to draw the human body correctly, just can't seem to get a hold of the right resources, I want to check in the library at college to see if I can find anything I can't find on the internet.

I have recently become very interested in forming a band, don't want to jump into that yet, I need a few more years of practice and I really want to play with some people so we can share ideas. I'm a very big fan of progressive rock/metal and this is the type of music I want to play after being inspired by many bands. This idea is rapidly turning into a huge dream of mine, never thought I would feel this way actually.

Well anyway, don't want to go on too long so I'll just make a little brief summary: Camera is coming, Got flash back (Again). And the rest isn't important.

Would have been done.

Hey guys, been a while since I made a blog post and nothing has happened since. I'm just finding money to buy a camera so I can start animating.

I would be done with this project by now too,  just annoyed with money. I literally haven't thought about or worked on the project for a few weeks now but I'm doing all I can to get this god damn camera.

I'm actually working on another little project right now, I'm doing a daily drawing exercise which I'm 15 days into. One of my current goals is to basically get better at drawing, I'm practicing by drawing my own things, drawing from observation and drawing people! I'm posting all this on my deviantArt page which is kind of like my secret getaway from things

Still practicing guitar on a daily basis and I'm seeing a lot of improvement since last month.

And that's pretty much it, just getting some money together to buy a new camera and I'm just drawing and playing the guitar whilst I'm not able to animate.