The Villager
I’m open for commissions :D
If you are interested send me an ask or email me at murdersaurus@live.com!
I take payments through paypal under the same address :D
I can also animate stuff if you are interested, although it might be a bit more expensive
New Toons join my ranks
I came up with an idea called The Terrible Case which the characters Detective Jerry and Joel were born as the main crime solving duo against the homicidal maniac known as Terrible Tom. I am working on an animatic for an animation that may or may not be made due to this exercise be just a practice project. I might make this animation into a youtube video.
The End of coursework for this year!
I managed to get all my work in on time and it was good to get it all off my shoulders. I honestly tried my best with my work for this year, I can only hope that my best is good enough to pass second year.
I really hope I don’t have referral work because if its the case I do and I’ll need to stay here longer its not going to be fun. I’d love to go home early and see my family, I didn’t get to spend Christmas with them because I wanted to get some serious work done on my title project. It wasn’t fun but it helped me in the long run. Although it has made me a little homesick now thanks to it. I am happy with how this year went, it didn’t go perfectly but what does to be honest.
The title project is probably the one project I feel was the worst to work on because I completely lost my creative flow for it and it became more like a nuisance than a fun project. Its a shame that’s how it went but I can’t control that. I enjoyed working on my pre-production, red or dead and the funny in 15 project because they were real great learning curves for me. I had great fun setting up gags for funny in 15 and animating killer cowboy tarts for pre-production. All in all I think it was a successful year of learning.
My Showreel is here!
I feel as though I should have experimented more with more action shots as my characters are too static. Anyway enjoy!
Dear Nana: Report making
I have been working on my report and writing about my experience working with the third years on this project, I wrote about what I have learnt and how it has made me think about how I’ll be sorting my third year project out if I do pass and return. Lydia has assigned me to animating scenes out rough so she can go over them with the final line art and colour.
The Title Project
I have just completed all of the animated shots I was allocted for the title project, which my team agreed on, together. All that needs to be done now is to put it onto a disk.
I don’t feel as satisfied or happy with this project as I did working on the Red or Dead project, as my team had a constantly absent member, and failed to communicate properly - unlike the Red or Dead project, where I worked with an amazing and much more capable team. Because of the poor team performance, my motivation and creativity for this project was crushed. On top of this, one of the team members seemed determined not to do the work he was asked to do and simply do whatever he felt like instead, leading the project to be constantly led off track, forcing myself and Rachel to fix his mistakes. I also recieved the blame for his poor work, which did not help things.
During feedback sessions, I was told my style was “too dominant”, despite the fact that it was not in fact “my” artstyle, it was the style the team agreed upon. My wish was that Rachel, one of my team members, would redesign the characters to go with our backgrounds that she made, but we did not have enough time.
Looking back, had I known so many things would go wrong working on this project, I would have worked with a different team and just gotten it all done and out of the way as soon as possible. This project has been the single most frustrating experience of my time at university.
The Title Project
Within the return of the title project I was assigned to clean up and re-size some of my shots within the animation whilst others finished their shots. So far I am happier about how this project is going as it was going terribly wrong due to a teammate being unreliable and not doing his part in the team.
A New Member
We welcomed a new member nicknamed ‘Moomin’ of the group in as this new member’s old title team project crumbled so he wanted to help us. Sadly our unreliable teammate hasn’t shown up to any of our group meetings or answered to any of our attempts at contacting him via phone, email and the internet. Although this is the case we are doing better than we have before thanks to Moomin as he is eager to help in any way he can. I can honestly say that he has helped me believe that we can still make this a good structured animation.
Whilst I was cleaning up and reanimating things within my old shots I realized some flaws I didn’t spot because I was working on it so much I missed it. I fixed these flaws and I now have a sense that I have improved since then.
What are studios looking for? How can I get into a good animation school? What should I be studying?
I get a lot of these types of questions now and again, and I never know how to answer them. I can’t be sure of what studios are looking for, I don’t control admissions policies to schools, and I have little idea what makes for a current and relevant curriculum. There are a lot of variables in your bid for a career in animation, and it’s kind of impossible to control most of them. You must be crazy to want this job!
I find it helpful to focus on the things I can control. Among those things are your study habits and how you spend your personal time. It’s good to work hard and have goals—without them we would get nowhere. Study hard and make decisive strides towards achieving your art goals. But in the heat of that pursuit, don’t forget to go out and live your life!
If you spend any amount of time looking at artists online, you’ve probably figured out by now that there are about a million dudes and dudettes in internetville who draw better than you (I relive this realization daily). Once your have done your best to rise to their level, the only tool you have to compete with these crazy talents is your background, your personal character—is you!
Consider developing your whole self with the same raw focus and intensity that you develop a particular skill set. Get focused. Go out, have adventures. Run, jump, skin your knee, fall in love, root loudly for the away team at a baseball game, barely escape a crash of stampeding rhinos, live to see another day. Experience things big and small. Go for a walk. The world is full of wonders.
I know this advice is not particularly animation-specific, but maybe that’s for the best. At any rate, it is something I feel strongly about. Animation is great, and there are few things that I enjoy doing more than drawing and storytelling. But in order to have stories to tell, first you have to live them.
Be good, and see you soon!
PS, if you were looking for advice on draftsmanship you should probably be reading this.
My Experience Working on Dear Nana
My experience working on Dear Nana as a 2D animator was interesting. It really made me think about what I should do next year whenever I am the person bringing second years in to help me sort out my 2D work. I learnt about how Lydia (Animation Director) managed the work and timed her work deadlines. It made me realize how much work and organising there is in the 3rd year of Digital Animation. It was a great experience working with her and it was interesting trying to animate in this style.
