Archive for April, 2006


And So It Begins… The Masters Project

Hey everybody! Well, after a pretty slow start to the term, I believe the pace is going to be picking up steadily now that we have a few assignment deadlines looming in the horizon. I’ve finally decided on my final masters project which will be spread across these last 2 terms. I must admit it’s taken me quite awhile to come up with an idea that I’m satisfied with. There were so many elements I wanted to include, what with it being the culmination of all that time spent learning and honing your skills on the course and drawing inspiration from experiences and significant moments in your life – ideally it’s supposed to be THE showcase piece of your portfolio isn’t it? Who knows when I’ll get a chance to work on something of a similar scope and within such a focused environment again.

After fussing and fretting, I realised that instead of trying to think up that perfect piece of animation that showcases great characters and set designs, amazing sequences of character animation and a story combining humour, morality and pathos, a compromise inevitably had to be reached. Maybe the next piece I work on will include what’s missing in this one. One can hope.
Anyway, I don’t want to digress from the point of this post…

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“Wait, Mister!” – An Introduction

Welcome to the production log of my 3D Animation Masters Project at Bournemouth University. We were given the opportunity to work on either 2 short single term projects or 1 that extends across both terms. I chose the latter, and also decided to work on an individual project instead of being part of a group. All of us were assigned weekly tutorial sessions with a tutor whose main task is to discuss our progress, guide us along and offer feedback. At the end of the day though, it’s down to the students to decide what they want from the project, how much effort they want to put into it and keep it squarely on track.

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Webcomic with WordPress

Just when I’ve almost given up the pipe dream of creating my very own semi-regular webcomic, what do I stumble across? A free webcomic theme for WordPress! And it looks sooo easy to set up and run too! Just waiting for me to install and tweak endlessly….. Darn these tempting distractions!…. Grrrrrr….


“Wait, Mister!” – Draft Storyboards

OK. After coming up with the story idea, the next step for me is to put it down on paper. That’s where the thumbnails and storyboards come in. As promised, here are some sample panels from my first draft. With the lack of certain standard storyboard features (e.g. text describing actions and sound effects/music), what I have at this stage looks more like a set of glorified thumbnails, or a rather pedestrian comic. Sketching out all those panels (37 in total) took me about a full day to complete. It helped that I already had most of the shots visualized in my head. I then did some minor digital tweaking and coloured some of the panels just to quickly test out a raw colour scheme. Overall, I’m pretty happy with it. I’ll have to get started on the character designs next, do up more colour tests, and piece together a basic animatic to get a grasp of the timing for the short film. The target for the completion of all these components is this coming Wednesday afternoon – in time for my second tutorial. We’ll see how that plan goes…

Storyboards Page 1 Storyboards Page 2


Sketches – Cairo Portraits

Sorry people. This has been way overdue. On my trip to Cairo I did manage to do some quick portrait sketches. Not as many as I’d like, and not exactly the kind of subjects I was looking for, but it’s still good practice. Anyway, just to show you that I did stick to my plan and haven’t completely neglected to sketch. Cairo is a great place to draw. If you can afford it, just sit down somewhere, kick back and start drawing.

Cairo Portraits


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