Week 44 Ominous Buildings, Mr One Legged Pirate Bird and Picnics

• Train drawing adventuuures: Didn’t get far drawing with my arm but as always it’s something!

• Figure drawing adventuuures: did a bit of gestures and some longer poses…ran out of room. It could always be better though it’s been a while since I did these due to my break from drawing.

• PV semi meeting: discussion about what needs to be done for the screening version of the film with team members that were present; shall start work tomorrow! I have nitpicked it and gathered feedback as much as I could; all that’s left is action and animation feedback.
• Concept Art/Visual Development Research presentation: I did my talk about the different approaches out there with a slideshow of cool artists’ work and apparently I was exactly 14:59 minutes in duration. Whoa. That was longer than I thought. It’s not a particularly exciting or interesting topic because it wasn’t a new area of learning for me but I did what I had to do. I practiced it several weeks ago but I didn’t rehearse for it recently.
• Popped in at the 2013 RMIT Animation and Interactive Media Graduates Exhibition Night, “Ocular Concoction“.

I got real lost for 40 minutes as I realised that my tablet’s previously saved offline maps were useless — the public transport journey planner website told me to go to an entirely different quiet street. As a result, I found myself in the company of a quiet area with a mechanics’ place on one side of the small road with an ice cream truck tailing me on the other for a while and a curved road ahead of me with dense trees and concrete pathways transforming into gravel tracks. I stopped and fumbled with my tablet, very confused as the ice cream truck decided to park itself facing towards me. No I don’t want ice cream, I’m lost right now.

Upon realising that this wasn’t the place and that I’m late, I quickly left and headed for the main road. Got stubborn, asked for directions twice, waited for the bus and finally found my way to the RMIT campus made up of relatively empty buildings due to their holidays. Felt silly as I have visited this campus before last year! Why was I lost in the first place?!

Luckily I found myself acquainted with the lovely lady administrator who promptly went out of her way to google where I needed to go and call the studio space’s owner to help us out in recognising the place.

I finally got there and found myself in a reasonably sized dark lit studio with graduate films already being screened (I was late after all). There were tables of snacks scattered, decorative lights and people reasonably packed, watching, laughing and applauding to each graduate’s work. Greeted one of my sketch meet peeps who was graduating there, and managed to stay around 40 minutes, grab a lamington before rushing back home.

Glad I got to see at least glimpses of the wide variety of work and support a friend there– still I have yet to see his animation though! Some of the 2D animation trailers there looked really good but I didn’t get to see these in their entirety unfortunately; I couldn’t stay too long! I wasted too much time getting lost. I couldn’t go to their showcase later in the week either.

• NAC week 1 critique: nice chat session and laughs over at google hangouts; first time using it but it tends to lag my laptop! I shall have to shut down more programs next time.

Still, that one legged pirate seagull did remind me of all the times people jokingly tell me to amputate my RSI arm. I am never sure how I should respond to those.

16th Sat: what am I doing

• PV Progress: Matte painting block ins

17th Sun: Birds and Picnics

• Sketchmeet Annual BBQ Picnic: It was wonderful to catch up with peeps and meet a few new ones! A pair of black swans, flocks of seagulls and pigeons visited too. I think ate too much for the day and vomited my dinner afterwards but I’m fine (my fault!).

Drew the view; it was a great sunny day! Wished I drew in the black swans though. I think I was one of the three only people who drew something that day. And someone just had to call my makeshift drawing pad a “hippie sketchbook”…I’m just putting my mountain high amounts of unused photocopy paper to use!

• PV matte painting: worked on this until I got somewhere (was very rusty); blocked almost all of it.

 

18th Mon & 19th Tues

Matte Painting version 1 for the first opening shot for my film, Position: Vacant. I actually put my alias name, my real name, my website url and a quote somewhere in here (no, it’s not the signature). Muhahahah.

Shot 1 painting: Originally I was to do this but then RSI kicked in and a 3D modeled building was made instead. Now that I can draw again in bursts, I’m taking up this task so this is my attempt at establishing the mood when you first see the film. This one took a long while not just because of my aching arm, but because I was designing from scratch sans the camera angle as well as figuring my workflow again. This might be too dark for the film’s version but I’m liking the contrast. Version 1 probably as I’m going to get feedback by next week’s update and I will need to see how it will compose with the rest of the film.

• NAC week 2: snuck in a pen sketch from imagination…I couldn’t finish week 1, let alone week 2’s homework but I’m doing what I can. The matte paintings took up all of my time due to the breaks I needed and I how I have to figure out my workflow again.

I don’t know who this is, as it’s a brain doodle but at one point I was thinking of the main character from Mirror’s Edge…and how I still haven’t played this game that I have on Steam. I like drawing portraits but I think my anatomy knowledge from memory is always screaming for improvement.

Reflection for the Week

 

Other Adventures first: 

• Watching Phoenix Wright: Dual Destinies Case 2: the investigation scenes were quite entertaining due to the balantly stereotypical Japanese folklore characters but the courtroom moments were horribly dragged on and ridiculous in terms of pacing and common sense.

“Simon Says on Steroids” – Simon Blackquill is too overpowered and annoying and finding his prisoner status and circumstances unbelievable while Apollo Justice is…less smarter compared to his previous game as a defense attorney but looked real cool in Case 1. Athena Cykes is emotive as usual, don’t mind her. Mr Filch…I hated him and then his theme music and character somehow outshone all. Going to miss Filch, Mayor Tenma and Jinxie.

• Pikmin 3: got pressured to play it so I fit in a tiny game session for the week. Was incredibly rusty with controls but I finally saved the Captain at Day 8. All this fruit collecting kept making me hungry.
• Started watching Contrast (PS4) and it’s been a refreshing take on puzzle platforming games.