Why I haven't really updated much

Project's kinda hit an awkward standstill based on some critique last week. I dunno quite how to explain it, but thefirst 40 seconds of this Um Jammer Lammy video should give some explaination. Think of Parappa (the hat wearing dog) as me, PJ (the bear) as my tutor, and the guitar as my plot.



Yup. God damn bear. =(

Basically, he wants me to take out any reference to the fact the main character's going on a date by himself until the end of the movie, but I cannot in any way think of any way that's gonna work. The fact we can see there's nobody there provides pretty much the entire basis for the visual gags in this thing. Apparently, I'm supposed to compare it to films like Shallow Hal and Fight Club, but the more I think about it, the more I believe this project has very little to do with those things, in the way their perception of vision is implimented. If I were to compare it to anything, I'd go with sexually depraved mime, except his girlfriend's the only thing that's invisible.

So yeah, I'm currently stuck in a slump with a half-finished storyboard. I can't think of any reason to go with his idea, though the entire class is supporting it, meaning there might be a bit of potential grading damage if I stick with the idea that makes sense.

It's generally just....urgggh.

A New Showreel

An up-to-date showreel I made for the portfolio review segment of the upcoming Flip Festival.

Very very rough animatic

And by rough, I'm talking extra sandpaper, zero lubricant kinda rough. There's no sound or even any timing on this because it was a rush job, but it more or less gets the plot across.

http://spamtheweb.com/ul/upload/2609/8525_d41animatic.php

Thanks to Kyle Carroza (creator of the Nick short, Moobeard) for his suggestion on the restaurant scene. I'm currently bothering him on how to improve on this, as well as giving me lessons on how to pitch my ideas across so I can get advice from other people.

Date for One - Character Designment

OK, new uni year's here, so time to pick up this blog again.

Since I last posted, it was recently decided I should shy away from the whole Wonchop idea for now, since it's something for more later down the line.

So, I'm proceeding with the idea of Date for One. Step one is to decide on a firm character design.
Initially, I started off with the rather bulbous looking style from the posts below. After generally nagging from tutors about how I stick to specific styles, I tried some different methods. Somehow Tonic Trouble, a game that came with our PC billions of years ago, came into my head, and I tried experimenting with drawing long heads and applying characters to that.

It looked particularly interesting, and showed a fair bit more expression than the last design, so I decided to go with it further, tweaking it with different hairstyles, and eye shapes.

Some various attempts at the style, including one of the more amusing aspects of my idea.

The eyes eventually got smaller and more rounded.


Various designs lined up, including the old design, all in their pants.

Some designs for the other characters who may show up during the toon.

So yeah, much as I hoped to be a bit more experimental with how I went about my animation this year, the fact we're doing two projects lasting about 8 or so weeks each instead of one big one with months of production, it's same ol flash again.
FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF
Now I need to try and get an animatic done, and maybe do some of this 'research' stuff I apparently have to do to make me sound cool.

Ps. Blogger Image Uploader, you still fail bucketloads