Illustrator: The Pen Tool

Today we had our Illustrator induction and had a go at the pen tool. The image above was a pen tool exercise that the class did and i think i fared quite well, i even helped out another student. The pen tool seems useful for work with logos however i'm not sure i will be using it much in regards to my animation. Perhaps this will change the more i get used to illustrator.

  Later in the session we experimented with different line effects, this was fun but it also felt extremely gimmicky rather than serious tool for creating logo purposes.

Story Boarding Act 3: Peer Review 13/10/14

So today, before we started on our next project (for which i have made another blog post), we had a quick peer review for everyones refined storyboards, i set myself a goal of leaving at least one constructive comment that was a little more negative and a positive comment for each storyboard as i found that as much as i enjoyed the praise i got for my first draught i wish i had more comments pointing out flaws in order to improve on next time, and you know how the saying goes; treat people how you want to be treat.

  These are the comments left on my storyboard;

  The mix between people liking my sketchiness and not is something that i can deal with, not everyone likes that particular style, but when people say its clear but then other comments say it isn't i feel it is a little jarring, furthermore i have no understanding what the comment saying "either use more colour or none at all" means or why the writer thought that'd be an effective way of improvement... maybe it'd be worth doing a peer review where i present it to the class and ask for comments in order to stimulate a discussion, for example how it isn't clear and how personally they would improve it etc etc, perhaps in the future i will organise a peer review for myself in this way.

Story Boarding Act 2: Refine, Sneeze, Refine, Sneeze 7/10/14

I am rather full of cold today, nevertheless i think that the extra work and comments on my storyboard has gone a long way in improving it, despite having my eyes closed mid sneeze for half the day... In order to make some improvements i decided to bring in my laptop in order to get some reference images to clear up some sketches in order to use writing less, like one of my peer comments said. I also picked up three coloured pencils in order to show different effects. I chose Red for movement, Blue for sound, And yellow for lighting which i realised was a mistake when i found it so hard to read back the lighting directions i wrote for myself, it did give some idea of lighting in the images themselves but as a note to myself; don't try and write in yellow again... EVER! 

  The story itself didn't change very much, it was still the same basic story as before, i didn't change the shots around that much either up until the shooting scene either, i did however refine my drawings so that they were clearer and added the other instructions with colours visually using arrows and lines and evidence of areas i also made sure there was less unnecessary writing so instead of a constant cutting back and forth for lines it has a simple "drug transaction" written in for the two key shots i want to use of the two characters, jack and the mafia boss. Here are my finished sheets:

The deadline for completing these storyboard is this sunday and next monday is when we will have another peer review for our more refined storyboards.

Story Boarding Act 1: The Brutal Twist 6/10/14

For the first part of our course we were given an introduction to storyboarding. Mike Showed us a few examples of ways animators and film makers storyboard. We saw how storyboards develop from rough sketches on sticky notes to more anatomically refined drawings clearly giving instructions on how characters and props should move and where shots should start and end.
  The thing that fascinated me the most were the images of the thumbnails all stuck up chronologically on walls, theres something about the mid point between an idea in your head and a full (potentially feature length) production that has always fascinated me, i remember from an early age being forced to watch a making of documentary of the original StarWars trilogy, seeing the film in its rough planned out on boards and loving the idea of the film being practically already made and being put up on walls like some kind of bizarre gallery... at that moment i was more concerned about the cool action scenes, but i definitely developed more of an appreciation for story boarding as i grew as an artist and developed more wacky stories in my head that simply writing didn't feel like enough, but i digress...
  As a task, Mike asked us to think of a nursery rhyme and develop a story board with it. Despite having a terrible memory for nursery rhymes i managed to pull a mangled mess from the deep dark hole of my brain known as my childhood and identified it as Jack and Jill. For Those who don't know how the rhyme goes, its something like this:

Jack and Jill

Went up the hill

To fetch a pale of water

Jack fell down
And broke his crown
And Jill came tumbling after.

Thats the basic Rhyme, a few people added different verses over the years but i decided to stick to the traditional two part rhyme we all know and love.

  Being the special snowflake i am i wanted to put a bit of a twist on the original rhyme and i decided to stylise it a bit. Being a big fan of the Sin City visual novels and film i decided i wanted to go with a gritty crime story in a film noire style, i was going to focus on strong shadows and harsh light in a 1950's generic American city setting, obviously with a hill involved. The storyline basically went; Jack and Jill are taking part in a drug trade at the top of the hill (the drugs representing the pale of water) Jack gets shot through the head and theres a dramatic cliff hanger where "jill comes tumbling after". Here are a few of the thumbnail sketches of some of the frames;

  For the last part of the lesson we put up our sketches onto the walls for a peer review, despite most of the class being burnt out and a lot of the comments being relatively half-arsed (Me being guilty of a few lazy comments myself) there were some good constructive comments pointing me towards styles i may want to look at for references and to look at streamlining my ideas, for example less simply writing the direction of scenes and more showing it visually through drawings. Other than that my peers seemed to enjoy my twisted version of Jack and Jill.

When we develop our storyboards further i will definitely use this feedback to improve the quality of mine.