Project 3: Story Telling Ideas

I've been trying my best to think of an original idea with my project for a while, and generally, the same story where a character wants to become something comes out. This bothered me a lot, as I was determined to create something original, with my quite fitting words.
But although the story I favour at the moment is not exactly original, and has some weak points, here it is so far.

A small colony of penguins in Edinburgh Zoo, who feel detached from the rest of the penguins in the rookery, collect various bits of litter of interest from visitors in their nests, like band badges, chains, and other things like roller skates, bags, which they often decorate them selves in. (Appear "emo" :D)
They hear a sound from afar, and through the wire walls, can see a flock of puffins land upon some rocks, dressed in gowns made of thistle, heather, fox gloves, scottish primroses, all being herded by an impatient Scottish terrier dog.
All the penguins of the group shrug it off, and mock the flamboyant puffins, but one young female penguin, who clings to the wire wall and watches with awe and amazement.
The terrier orders them to practice their routine, and the puffins leap off into the sky, swooping and crossing, preparing for a show.
The young penguin imagines her self being able to fly and be dressed in such a beautiful way, but the other penguins notice she's still paying attention to puffins, and pull her away, reminding her how flying and such things are lame.
She nods and goes back to her nest alone, where she takes off her silly band badges, and pushes all such things alike aside in her next box, to reveal under a bunch of necklaces  hair ties, flowers she had been collecting in secret.
She stares at them, sighs and wishes for such life. She goes to re cover them with the other litter she has, where a pair of skates on top of a skateboard rose from the pile of collectibles.
She looks at them, ponders, looks back to the fence. Her eyes fill with awe again, and then with determination. She sees scrap pieces of paper with famous skateboarders jumping through the air, and has an idea. She goes running with the paper to her friends to propose the idea of creating a ramp for skateboarding, all the penguins agree, with the thought of being a cool skate boarder.
They build the ramp together at night, and after it was made, they all rested.
She woke at early morning, when all the birds and puffins wake, before the penguins, and she tries to mentally prepare her self for what she is about to do.
She lovingly puts on some of her collected hair ties around her flippers, happy with finally being able to do so.
She brings out the skateboard, and takes a deep breath at the beginning of the ramp. Once she has collected her self, she stood back, and gained speed, and eventually off the ramp, over the fence.
The herded puffins who are there for their routine show practice look in horror as she flings her self over a wall with the skateboard, and mask their eyes when she quite ungraciously lands into the bush on the other side.
The puffins rush to help her, sit her up, the penguin now embarrassed of what just happened
The Scottish terrier waddles up after, bouncing in excitement  to have found a new act, the skateboarding penguin.

Sorry to make it so wordy.
But the idea of having the penguins decorated in local Scottish flowers excited me, and I chose to have them as puffins and penguins, to really stress the idea of trying to become what you're not, or can't be, but discovering your good points when trying. Cheesey but this story idea has been the most exciting to me, yet.

Film Review: La Jetee 1962

lajetee by lucyyelding

Animation drawing exercise: Gestures

In our animation class we were having fun doing quick 2 minute sketches to show different emotions through gestures.

(This drawing got ruined during the commute home and this the only photo that remains, sorry!)

Project 3: Story Telling

This project we're focusing on story telling to create a pre-vis in maya of our 1 minute cartoon. Given 3 random words, a character, place, and prop, to create our ideas from.
I was given:

Trapeze Artist

Skateboard

Circus

I was a little disappointing at first, as a Trapeze artist would feature at a circus most likely if I had not been given this character title, but, I will have to use this to push my self to think of something exciting.

Trapeze artists always perform high up in the air, moving like majestically, with grace and passion. It's the idea of becoming high up which interested me, and how the movements seem so natural and beautiful, like nature.

This gave me my first idea of a bear character who is part of an act at the circus, the story I had in mind broken down:

Bear getting ready for performance
Gazes upon Trapeze Artists with awe and wonder
Flash back to him as a cub watching his family climb up the trees in nature and collecting fruits
His owner slaps his face with powdered clown makeup, returning him to reality
Owner makes him practice performance, but the bear keeps messing up as he is watching the trapeze artists practice.
Owner gets fed up, tries to take him back into his cage
Cage reminds him of his capture as a cub, which frightens him and causes him to panic
People stop to try and calm him, frightens him more, and causes him to collide into a lot of equipment
Lands on a skateboard, with costumes covering his head, unable to see where he's going but still panicking, moves blindly around the circus, and eventually breaks though the fabric walls, and is lead down a hill, no one being able to stop him
He is too scared to jump of the board, the board takes him down a steep hill, and off a truck with a board ready to load goods onto.
He becomes air born, scared at first but begins to put his arms out and embrace the moment
Lands face first on the floor in a park, surrounded by pigeons.
Pigeons laugh and clap, the bear sits up dazed, and is then pretty happy about what just happened.

The problem with this story is that it lacks something, I'm not too sure what. It's a bit cliche, but I very much enjoy the idea of a bear character.

I was suggested to look at what skateboards are related to, what sort of "type" of people are related to them,
I thought of "emos", this sort of young person who dresses quite dark, the opposite of a show girl.
I also thought of the american skating community, the sort of almost beach wear with a hoody, sort of community.

I was then suggested the idea of a girl who is having her dreams of being a show girl repressed by the people she's friends with, who are all "emo" and shun the idea of such a flamboyant life style, which is secretly her life dream. I want to create a story with the idea of the skateboard being the means of becoming air born to allow her to act out her dreams, but I have yet to come up with anything I think is satisfying as a story yet.
Exciting project!

Life Drawing

Todays warm up. The first figure we drew came out pretty bad, but as i got more into it, the drawings became more fluid and I was able to add shading in the time given. 

Nervous

I draw details in pencil and went over in charcoal and ink, which was a mistake, as all the pencil details in the eyes were lost. 

Sorrow 1

Sorrow 2

CGAA SpeedPaint Challenge: Day 2

Jack Frost's Asylum For Malcontent Snowmen...

10 mins

I kind of drew over it, but that's a town he's over looking. hehe

CGAA Speed Paint Challenege Day 1 - development

I liked the idea of the 3rd image of my last set of speed paints, though the drawing it self was pretty weak. I took it further for 8 minutes just to clarify the scene a bit better

It's still pretty messy and still doesn't look like a waterfall of tinsel ahaha, but yay for pink!
I ran out of time to bring back the wires to add the vine-jungley affect.

CGAA Speed paint Challenge - Day 1

A Christmas Tree Jungle...

The last picture may be hard to read, but it's supposed to be a waterfall of tinsel. I wanted a pink drawing but it ended up a hot mess! Ahaha

Was still fun, nether the less!

I limited my self to 5 mins each, which is why they're quite blocky. The last one I think has the best idea, but weakest in drawing. I'd like to develop it more!

Speed painting

Seeing everyone speed painting is great and it's amazing to see everyone getting better with each post

I got pretty bored with this by the end. I need to break a habit of doing the same thing, i need to draw back to the earliest tutorials we had and get some erratic shapes down before I draw.
Here's what I got anyway! I think the lack of energy is obvious
And I was painting with the colours of the wind in the first picture.

I really like the 3rd I want to develop it further but I'm lacking any ideas.

Project 2:Presentation

Presentation Final