Zlogspot - animationandvideo

TET. Mobile Phone Sketch. There was a time when I would sit in front of the TV on an evening, sketch book in my lap, doodling away turning lines and shapes into all manner of characters and quite a few dragons too. With the rise of social media and advances in mobile phone technology my sketch pad has been replaced with Facebook, email and other social app checking. So my lack of creativity is basically your collective fault for distracting me with Likes, comments and other blips of information that really don't need to be checked every few minutes... well not really. I could just put away my phone and pick up a sketchbook again but... I've never been a big fan of flatbed scanners. For me they're an unnecessary hurdle for getting my art from sketch book to computer where so much of my work ends up these days. Back in the day, before scanners I used to draw directly into the computer with the mouse - reproducing my hand drawn sketches on paper on the screen. Whilst I got fai...

Jump Fail Animation The only way to get better at animation is to actually do some. I figure I can't keep sitting around waiting for time to complete full projects. So the other day I fired up iClone6, after having watched an iClone tutorial on creating action scenes, to try and create a short action sequence of my own. The result is this short sequence of a character attempting to jump between two roof tops but failing to make the distance. The character features on of Gary Pye's recently released Comic Faces which you can read more about under the next heading. Watch the finished scene in the animation below, that is also a comparison between my first render of just creating the basic action, and my second render, done a few days later, that includes some facial expression and a little more arm movement once the character realises he's falling. I wouldn't say it's perfect animation by any means. I had issues key framing the arms and legs. If you look a little too ...

Screen Shot from 'Random Testing Unit'. Towards the end of last week, inspiration hit with an animation idea I could create relatively quickly in Muvizu (so I thought). Over three days I wrote a script with the working title of 'Random Testing Unit'. I can't go into great detail about the script as it would spoil some of the initial humour. I can tell you, the basic premise is a comedy sketch featuring a Police, Random Testing Unit, road stop and a driver who is stopped to be tested. The finished animation will run for around 3 minutes. By the way, if you're looking for script writing software the free, online version of   Celtx is great. I swear by it as the easiest and fastest way to write a script. The paid version has many useful tools but for me, the script writing tool is enough. About two days into writing my script I felt confident enough that it was going to come together so I began designing my set in Muvizu. What I've come to realize with 3D sof...