Heelo. Messed with Maya today and got a little more familiar with it. Some day soon im gunna sit down n get all tangled up in Maya and hopefully come out a better 3d animator for it, probably slightly more nerdy too. Bloody maths!
So yeeeaah that's that.
In other news, watched this pretty decent documentary last night about Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg & William Burroghs. It documents how the beat generation began & helped somewhat revolve into the hippy movement. It's on the uni library stream service if you wanna check it out, 'The Source' it's called. Johnny Depp, Dennis Hopper & John Turtorro star.
This isn't a clip from it but it's pretty damn cool.
Yo. I've been doin' a bunch of research this week, tonight and last night reading up on the cartoons of Tex Avery, Chuck Jones & Bob Clampett and their 'Termite terrace'. I find it interesting as a parallel to disney. When it comes to writing for animation and differentiating on what's been before, it's quite a tricky area... you create what you know. But those guys did something very different from Disney & it's gone on to be just as enforced. However, I find it still sits within the 'velvet glove';
"animation is important because the ideological force of its meanings can function precisely as an iron fist in the velvet glove of gags and sentimentality."
There's an interesting documentary up on Moodle about Chuck Jones where I heard Spielberg (I believe it was..) say that the following is the Citizen Cane of animation. I thought this was a brilliant cartoon, really enjoyed it and genuinely laughed, but it's going to take me some time and understanding before I can concur with that point. Anywho here it is, 'One Froggy Evening'
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So, besides animation and the hard life of being a student, what have I bin up to. My girlfriend came down for the weekend and it was brill having not seen her for a few weeks. She bought me a camera which takes four photographs in sequence over the space of a second, and it is absolutely brilliant.. and completely relevant too. So, here's some 'animated photographs' I guess you could call 'em! I wasted a whole film in five days, whoops.
So that's about it. Time to do some more research... in other words, watching cartoons, nostalgin' & drawing... 15 years of education and it's back to being a five year old... isnt it great?
Hellooo again. Tonight i've been filling me brain with all tiddly bits of research and more importantly and correctly, inspiration. I've been reading through Anne's weekly readings and checking out some of the animations mentioned.
It's a shame about the connotations to black culture, and the representation of black people being these one-dimensional jolly dancers - But I really enjoy the style of alot of the typical 'black face' cartoons.. that old animated, fun, jazzy style. I've been checking some out such as..
"SUNBEAM"
"COAL BLACK AND DE SEBBEN DWARFS'"
I really liked Sunbeam because I have an inkling for animations set to music. It's very well done. I liked the immediacy of the storytelling moreso in Coal Black.
And finally here's something a little different, I got linked to this earlier, a little bit of experimental animation. Makes you marvel at the time the guy must have spent putting it together, but in reality, I doubt it was much longer than many other more traditional animations of the same length out there.
Wow that's a surprise, I never remembered I ever created a blog on this here blogger but there ya go I guess I did, and it was booming back in the day clearly, 1 post - 0 replies, Whoar!
So here it is reborn, and will contain all animation work, drawings, films, tiddly-bits of inspiration and whatever else is to grace it during my time at university.
To start off here's the first bit-of animation i've created since being here in Falmouth. I call it "A Smile not to disimillar to Dwight Yorke's", CLICK HERE to watch.
I've started using watercolours lately and am really liking them, usually i'd do a drawing, with my biro or nib-end, chewed up HB pencil; and once it's done, its nice but there's no where else to go. Watercolours add to that as I can get in there and simply make it alot better, It's good for shading and colour depth. So this is my fourth watercolour i've done, it's of my sister.
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That's all for now, expect more posts soon. Ta-ra!
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