tWitches

So this is the recent project I've been working on. It's actually called Witches, but I have recently developed an idiotic and annoying eye twitch, and it is affecting everything I do. Specially, when writing my blog. 

Anyways, it was me and Dan working on this animated title sequence. It suppose to be three of us, but Alex had to dig his way out from under the big pile of other work so we had to leave him to it.

I'll skip the part about how we made the film for now, as it's quite a long process and might add it to this post next time (which will never happen). Meanwhile I'll put some pictures up of my concept design for you to look at.

And now I must dash, as either right side of my computer screen or my left eye is starting to twitch again...

Home made

I've got a very good mum. She loves me very much and spoils me rotten.

Now I don't think that way, but when last time me and Alex visited my parents, he told me (whilst chomping slice of cake, that MY mummy made specially for ME and for ME ONLY!!!!!!!!!) that I'm well spoiled by my mum and dad.

Anyways, the blog is about a hat. My mum loves knitting and she loves to knit for somebody rather than for herself, so she's always in search for a knitting target. Most of time it used to be me, but nowadays she makes piles of tiny socks and hats. Not because she keeps gnomes in her garden or because her two cats were complaining recently about cold weather. It's cause she has two grandchildren, therefore I feel completely forgotten and abandoned (not really to be honest).

Nevertheless, she found a spare minute for me and asked would I like a hat and if I do - what kind. I do like hats, so I've done a little research what would be nice to wear on my stupid head. I found a really nice one and send a picture to my mum.

She promised to knit it for me. The only thing, she said she'll do the knitting part, but I'll have to do the sewing and decorating bit as she has more knitting orders from her grand-babies waiting.

Oh well. She's very good, my mum.

On the left is a hat from a shop. On the right is my mums and mine joined effort. Ta-da:

Ga ga ga!

I was on the internet today (like I am every single day, all day long, like a sad girl...) and I saw the picture of Lady Gaga. Now I'm not a very big fan of her, but she was wearing these huge shoulder pads and it suddenly struck me what she reminded me of:

(If you don't know who the character on the right is, then check it here)

Side TV ident

Few backgrounds from our grad film

Hello, below I've uploaded few drawings that I've done for our film. It was obviously very time-consuming as any art work. It was actually quite frustrating as well to come up with something new and different from what I usually do. It took some experimenting mixing different media - photographs, pencil drawings and photoshop colouring (I have actually scratched my graphic tablet quite badly). For the final result I ended up applying texturing to flat 2D drawings and drawing on top in photoshop.

So here we go:

I AM AN UTTER RUBBISH UPDATING MY BLOG

The end

Our graduation is finally finished and after days spent filling application forms and spending lots of pounds on DVD packaging and posting we are finally getting some results from short film and animation festivals.

So far "Reap What You Sew" has been accepted to:

• Ellensburg film festival
• Animation festival in Lithuania - "Tindirindis"
• Film festival in Tirana, Albania
• London short film festival
• Mexico film festival (We are in the Speak Out against domestic violence competition)  

It's nice that.

Acrobats

This is a little test for circus acrobats. This is my last bit for our showreel. The first acrobat swings ones then catches the other one which is slightly shorter and fatter than the first acrobat. I haven't drawn him yet as he's still in his trailer finishing his lunch. Update soon to come... 

Logos shmogos

As mentioned earlier we've got to make a showreel. Apparently deadline is around 20th of March so I should really start getting on with it properly. Its three of us working on it - Alex, Dan and me, so each of us have bits of different thing to do. My first bit is creating a logo. We still haven't made our final decision about the title and I think at this point we are not going to, as we heard those titles too many times by now.

Dan if you're seeing this - please tell me is there at least one you like. Please! Peasepleaseplease!

Design shmesign

To help us to get a good idea how does the scarecrow should look like I've made a small model of a scarecrow.

At this point we have finished with rough character designs, storyboards and animatic of the film, of which the first scene is uploaded on Alex's blog. 

It is a little annoying that we have to put the film on hold as a showreel is on the way now. So I'm of to shmesign some logos and character shmesigns for the showreel. 

Website

Alex has uploaded our little website for the film:

ReapWhatYouSew

Farm backgrounds

We've been story-boarding today. We are more than halfway through and so far we have about 50 different shots. Which means its about 50 A3 size backgrounds to make. It makes me feel a little bit sick.

Here are some ideas for the backgrounds:

Scarecrows

Making cut out scarecrows out of magazines is probably one of the most pleasing things to do. They can be really messy, their scruffy outfit doesn't have to match. I was going through girly magazines looking for some nice textures and fabrics to dress up the scarecrows. I'm not a very big fan of girly magazines, although I do get Vogue or Elle occasionally for some good references. I was quite amazed how some of the catwalk models actually look very similar to scarecrows...

My Farm

Today is the handing in of written and illustrated proposal day for which we had two weeks to complete.

Me and Alex, besides finishing and handing in our dissertations, also were drawing possible character designs, backgrounds, some action poses of the characters, designing the poster for the film, writing the proposal, character descriptions and even our biographies.

We have also split some of the work - Alex did most of the writing, I did lots of illustrations.

Finally it was all put into so called animation bible, which was edited as a magazine. We called it "My Farm". Here is a front cover for it (layout was made by Alex, pictures by me, we have also argued couple of hours about fonts and colours of the cover till finally I took his favorite mug again and promised to break it if he won't agree with what I say):

Final Major Project

Round two weeks we have started our Final major project for Animation&Design course at University of Sunderland.

It is me and Alex working together on a film for which idea came few months ago.

Last summer I was on the bus going to visit my friend in other town. The bus trip took about 3 boring hours so I had loads of time to look through the window at flat Lithuanian landscapes, small country houses and yellow fields of wheat as it was beginning of August. I thought then that it would be nice to make a little story about farmer and a scarecrow.

Some time later I told about this to Alex and he loved it. As we are two grownups we have realized that two of us can make slightly longer, more developed and visually stronger film so instead of working one by one we've decided to work together (actually, I have stolen Alex's favorite "Finding Nemo" mug and said I'll break it if he won't work with me. He gave up).