Life Drawings All Up In Here

Life drawings have been a blast. Despite the multitude of mistakes that I've made, I've learnt a whole lot more about anatomy and really began to appreciate it.

The models have been fantastic, ranging from full-figured to skinny, male to female and young to old. Although I have to say that the older, more experienced models were much more fun to draw, since they weren't afraid of committing to more dynamic poses.

I've also developed something of a subconscious awareness regarding anatomy now, being able to pick out errors much more easily than I was once able to.

Two 3D Constructs

Little petals cut out and stuck together one by one, to make a little 3D effect. The little fish was made as a focal point for the flower. The petals were coloured with watercolour pencils and simply stuck together with glue.

To make it pop a little more I coloured the fish in and added a little leaf to its head.

Stark shadows and a well-placed light also made a pretty impressive difference.


Now here's  a little 3D Typography - carved out of Styrofoam, which took quite a while considering it's awkward handling. Colouring it was much more difficult, however, considering it was coated in melted Jelly Babies. I had to spread it on with a knife and hope to god that it wouldn't slip off.

Career Report

Creative Inquiry Report

Career Researched – Animator

Type/s of Work Involved –

The drawing of multiple frames to achieve smooth animation is required. Adequate experience with computer programs (Photoshop, Illustrator) is also necessary to correct and manipulate the animation to maximum effect. Painting backgrounds for the motion and colouring scenes and characters is also involved.

Working Conditions –

Animators usually work within a studio to combine their efforts, inspire one another and check on each other’s progress. However it is possible to freelance as an animator (although it takes much more effort) and work from home.

Personal Qualities and Skills Required –

An animator must be a skilled artist/sketcher with traditional hand-drawing skills. Along with this they should have a good understanding of anatomy, since they will likely be drawing different characters in motion. Due to the trial and error nature of animation, they must also have a patient personality and be prepared to overcome mistakes.  To clean up their drawings and review their animations, they will need a basic understanding of computers programs such as Photoshop and Illustrator. For their animation as a whole, they will need a good sense of timing and composition and an understanding of motion, ratios and perspective. The large amount of work that goes into an animation needs multiple talents, so an animator must be able to work with a team. They must also hold a high standard to their work, while being able to meet deadlines.

Employment Opportunities/Career Path Potential –

The potential career pathways for an animator has quite a large range, with notable companies such as Pixar and Disney being renowned for their animated movies and shorts. With the numerous cartoon series’ in production, many are reaching out to animators to help them get started. The entertainment industry has use for animators, with many movies that are live-action still preferring to spice things up with some animation. Stylised commercials can also implement animations, as well as game design.

Education & Training Requirements–

The best thing an animator can have is an impressive portfolio, which flaunts various skills and techniques of art experience. Animation skills can also be improved with a Bachelor’s Degree, Associate’s Degree or certificate in animation or a related field.

Courses –

A Certificate 4 in Visual Art is usually accepted as a start to further refine animation skills. Animation courses at RMIT also provide such benefits.

Specialisations within chosen career –

An In-between Artist will take care of the animation frames between the keys and possibly extremes; this job is usually given to animators that are just starting out, since ‘in-between’ frames are the least noticed of all the frames of animation. A Character Designer is responsible to creating concepts of what could be the final product of the characters within the animation. Many concepts are created to review all the options of what they want the character to look like, to how they want the character to move. A Storyboard Artist creates a rough set of drawings and sketches of how the animation will progress. When showing the storyboard to the other animators, ideas and concepts are usually tossed around if improvement is needed. A Layout Artist will take care of the scene in which the animation takes place, usually painting backgrounds or buildings.

Out of all the specialisations, the Character Designer appeals to me the most. Being able to create numerous characters, concepts and being able to experiment with shapes and figures would very welcome.

Resources-

Creativeskillset.org/animation/careers                       www.myfuture.edu.au

Animation.about.com

Skitty-Bo-Bitty

For our Art Practice lesson we have to follow a creative brief about 'Ten Tiny Treasures' and produce a series of works that revolve around these items. To be honest, I don't have many treasures that small and anything really valuable has been discouraged - it's all about emotional value and imagination!

Naturally my first tiny item was an itty-bitty figurine of Skitty, my favourite Pokemon. Yup. To show you how tiny it is, here's a pic of it in my hand:

Yup - pretty darling, isn't it?

To follow up we have to create a small visual diary to accompany these items and fill it up with little artworks as a supporting work.

The rest of the items are as follows, granted I borrowed some that belonged to the teacher because I just don't have that many teeny things:

The Same-Sex Marriage badges were bought at the Melbourne Equal Rights rally last year and the year before. If you don't have anything going on the day that it's active, I really do urge you to join in the march. It's got a wonderful, friendly atmosphere as well as singing and some comedians performing!

I ate a bit of my work...

Finishing up our orientation week at NCAT we celebrated by decorating flat sponge cakes with icing. That's really it. I could go on about how vibrant the colours of the icing were and how I created the four little monster cakes in the middle which are a vampire and zombie couple (the zombies are a lovely pair of boyfriends who met after becoming infected on a romantic cruise which was bombed by a virus), but I won't. Or did I?

Fall in love with their chocolate gaze and despair.

Also notice the blue rainbow square in the far left? Another student tried to make a Rainbow Dash cake and ultimately failed - attempting his best to cover it up with a tiny boat. Legend tells that if you press your ear up to the screen, you may hear it shrieking...

Introducing -

- my new blog! Created as a requirement for NCAT(Northland College of Arts and Technology), this blog of mine will feature artwork, inspirations and what could be some random existentialism if I find myself bored enough.

So let's enjoy.