AmberDust : The Online Blog of Gemma Roberts

A Very Busy Year Indeed

2011-12-29T19:46:00.000Z

Activity on this blog has been pretty slow lately, reason being I'm on my final year of University and I'm now at the point of making a 3+ minute animated film which all of my time and work is going into. I have another blog on this account where I upload all of my progress, so if you wish to follow my film "Acorns" do have a look.

Acorns - Production Blog for a Short Film by Gemma Roberts

As 2011 draws to a close, I'm very excited to get into the production of my film. I'm just finishing pre-production now, so designs and story are still being tweaked until they are final for about mid-January. I'm animating, colouring and compositing by myself with assistance from a composer and my housemate who does sound mixing for the post-production soundtrack side of things. It's a lot of work so I'm anxious, but still excited!

So yeah, don't expect a lot here, but do see my other blog for production updates!

Apart from that, I had a fab 21st Birthday seeing the Zelda 25th Anniversary Symphony in London... utterly fantastic performance and atmosphere, I have the recorded performance too from the special edition of Skyward Sword which is incredible, but only 8 tracks! It was a great night and I highly anticipate their return next year!

A week after I visited home to catch up with family after my Birthday and to see Tori Amos in Manchester who was stunning, not everyone's cup of tea, but an amazing singer and she did lots of classic songs including Precious Things which my sister did a fantastic music video of in college last Spring.

Then in November, I saw Lee Evans in Cardiff followed by Alter Bridge a week after, which were two more great nights. Lee Evans was hilarious and it was my first time seeing him so it was a great experience. And Alter Bridge were supported by Theory of a Deadman and Black Stone Cherry so that was amazing goes without saying.

Things settled down late November/December as work picked up. I was creating a detailed production bible for my first deadline which was far more work than I realised. It's a collection of my art showcasing what my film and characters would look like and contained my latest animatic, synopsis, schedule, budget, storyboard and other information that would be necessary to make my film. Basically it should be enough information about your film (visual + written) that if you were not able to make it, the bible could be passed to someone else to finish, so it has to be really thorough.

Fortunately I got everything prepared for the deadline after two weeks of non-stop work and then spent the next 3-4 days writing 4000 words for my dissertation first draft, which I so wanted to start in November but kept favouring other work instead. My dissertation is about the portrayal of men and masculinity in animation with examples to Tangled and Beauty and the Beast. It's based on an article by Susan Jeffords called The Curse of Masculinity which spoke about Disney's Beauty and the Beast and how the story was about focusing on the Beast instead of Belle by making him childish and selfish instead of sophisticated but not actually taking responsibility to change himself. All very interesting but I won't delve into it now!

Now I'm home for Christmas and New Year which has been lovely and flying past much too quickly! I've recently rediscovered a love of watercolour that I've been using to paint friends and family personalised Christmas cards. These are my paintings! :)

These are characters from my friend's films, excluding the direwolf 'Snow' and the Moshi Monster 'Zommer'!

These are for my family, the animals are originals (the bunnies and the daschund are based off pets) then there's Link and Zelda from 'Skyward Sword', Cloud from 'Kingdom Hearts', a dragon-esque 'My Little Pony' and a homage to James Hance's 'Wookie the Chew' crossover.

I'm using watercolour now for some of my film's concept art, which I can't wait to upload and paint more of. I've done an expression sheet for my character Amber and she looks very cute coloured... it looks like it would make a sweet children's book, so I might see about putting it together if I ever have time!

I've so much to read at the moment too, I got lots of art books for Christmas... The Art of The Lion King (amazing! My Mum managed to find it on eBay), Harry Potter: Page to Screen (a massive, in-depth look behind the art of all 7-8 films), The Art of Kiki's Delivery Service, Watercolour Impressions of Nausicaä and then The Art of My Neighbour Totoro left over from my Birthday... they are the best inspiration I could ask for, I just hope I have time to read them all! My youngest sister got the art of Okami as well, which is the most luxuriously designed and presented book--utterly beautiful and may just have to get a copy myself! And on top of that, the Game of Thrones book series, so I'm set for the next year!

All in all it's been the best Christmas in a long time, it's been great to be home and I'm not really ready to go back to Uni yet! Hopefully I can get myself back into a working frame of mind soon!

Until then, have a great new year! Ta ta for now! :)
Love Gem xoxox

Alex's Birthday "Link" Drawing

2011-10-25T00:59:00.001+01:00

Below is a drawing I did for my boyfriend for his Birthday... got to see The Adventures of Tin-Tin: The Secret of the Unicorn in celebration tonight which was pretty cool--the animated transitions between sequences and storytelling/flashbacks in the film was fantastic. Still not too keen on the style, but I enjoyed the nod in the beginning to the original artist and style. It was very entertaining with some good laughs and action.

Tomorrow we are off to London to see The Legend of Zelda 25th Anniversary Symphony in celebration of my own Birthday (my boyfriend and I are one day and a year apart) which will be fantastic. It's going to be difficult to top this year's outing!

Anyway, here's the drawing of 'chibi' Link as he appears in Wind Waker playing an Ocarina in homage to the Ocarina of Time artwork, I thought it only appropriate and he liked it rather a lot. It's drawn with pen and colour pencils using reference. :3

How to Make a Scott Pilgrim "Plumtree" T-Shirt

2011-09-26T22:15:00.001+01:00

Hi all, here's a little tutorial for a shirt I customised for my boyfriend, Alex, to cosplay Scott Pilgrim for a party. Below is a step-by-step of how to make a "Plumtree" T-shirt like the one Scott Pilgrim wears in the movie, Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World!

You'll need:

1x blank Yellow T-Shirt
1x sheet of sturdy A4 card that can be printed on
A craft knife or scalpel
A mat or thick card to protect surfaces from the knife
Spray mount/spray adhesive
Red spray paint (for fabric)
Scrap newspaper to cover surfaces

I had most of the necessary equipment already, but the T-Shirt and red spray paint only cost £6 all together! Look in pound shops and cheap clothing places like Primark! Firstly, print off the Plumtree logo onto an A4 sheet of sturdy card. You can grab the image I used here courtesy of http://s18.photobucket.com/home/rpaterson

Once it's printed, use a craft knife and a mat or thick card to protect whatever surface you're using to carefully cut out each letter, removing the coloured letters and leaving the white card to create the stencil. This can also be done as a sticky stencil if you have the right materials, but this was all I had at the time!

Remember when cutting out to connect the inner sections of letters like "P" and "R" to the main stencil to make it easier. Or keep the bits you cut out to stick on the shirt later. When you're finished it should look like this:

Next, stick the stencil to your T-Shirt using adhesive spray on the back of it. Make sure it is securely stuck to the fabric, so that none of the spray paint will bleed through the lettering. Put some card or newspaper inside the shirt (beneath the stencil) so that the spray won't seep through to the back of the shirt.

Before you get spraying the paint around, cover nearby surfaces with some old newspaper to avoid ruining the carpet! Cover the rest of the T-Shirt too as the spray has a large radius!

Now you're ready to get started! Make sure you have a little practice spraying the paint on some scrap newspaper first to make sure it's not blotchy or dripping and to get a feel for spraying evenly. When you're confident enough, spray the shirt from several inches around and move quickly and evenly left and right to avoid blotchy coverage. Don't spray too thickly or the design might bleed through!

Slowly peel off the stencil and place to one side on some extra newspaper.

Ta-Dah! Not bad, though there is some bleed on the letter "P", which goes to show how careful you need to be to avoid messy mistakes like this! I didn't want to risk spraying the sleeves and collar red too, but you can give it a go yourself if you're up to it! Leave to dry and enjoy your new Scott Pilgrim shirt!

As a final note, depending on the spray paint you used, your design may come off in the wash, so definitely wash on low temperature between 15-30 degrees and don't mix with whites!

Enjoy! :3
Gemma xox

Abstract African Art

2011-09-10T00:36:00.001+01:00

New art up on DeviantArt tonight!

An 18x24 Acrylic painting I did as a 'thank you' present for my Nan and Grandad, for all of their support during my Uni years. <3

They love South Africa and their culture and fab animals and art, so I painted this inspired by African colours, designs and creatures (and the land mass itself) for their living room.

It was great to go back to real paints again, though it looked pretty awful to begin with and took many layers of paint to get the colour and shapes right! Just goes to show that I should have planned it more! XD There's a load of gold paint on it too, which looks a lot better in person, but hopefully you get the gist!

Abstract Africa by *AmberDust on deviant ART

Enjoy! :3
Gem xox

Anya's Ghost by Vera Brosgol

2011-09-06T23:42:00.000+01:00

A couple of my Uni animation friends recommended this fantastic graphic novel to me by storyboard artist, Vera Brosgol. I enjoyed it so much I had to write a quick 'nutshell' review and spread the word! :)

Vera Brosgol captures an engaging story with realistic characters (even despite one of them being a ghost from 70 years ago!) in her brilliant graphic novel debut. It tells a modern story of a Russian girl trying to fit in with American culture in high school, get noticed by her crush, lose weight, get popular and of course avoid daily embarrassments to retain the remaining shreds of her dignity, but all that changes when she literally stumbles upon a ghost whose been waiting for a rescuer for 70 years. The ghost, Emily, has the ability to change Anya's life as well as be the friend she always wanted! However, when Anya gets what she wants, she starts to realise that appearances can be deceiving...

Anya's Ghost is a mature story that doesn't patronise or talk down to the reader, (like some teen books do!) and is entertaining for any age, but particularly teen girls, like Anya, who may identify by their current or past experiences. The artwork is carefully rendered in a simple, but very expressive way which relates you to Vera's lovely characters even more.

It's an utter page turner from beginning to end, and I remember savoring the last pages, taking everything in slowly in my attempt to make the book last longer! I didn't want it to end and sincerely hope Brosgol has a sequel in the works!

I highly recommend this to graphic novel lovers and teenage girls/young women everywhere!! If you need further convincing, the book is available on Amazon.co.uk for £7.61 (and for $13.59 on Amazon.com in America) and you can check out Vera's amazing art and style on her blog here:

Verabee.com

And of course it comes highly praised by critically acclaimed writers, Neil Gaiman and Scott McCloud... need I say more??

Enjoy! :)
Gem xox

Sunset Colour Studies

2011-08-29T12:12:00.000+01:00

Here's a progression of a sunset outside my window yesterday, as a rough colour study. The first image took around 10 minutes in Photoshop and the following two took just over 5 minutes each to change colour, mood and make tweaks to the original painting.

I had to be very quick as the colours vanished in just a few minutes! Enjoy! :)
Gem xox

Final Film Idea 'Seedlings'

2011-08-28T00:08:00.000+01:00

Hey all, (not neglecting the bloggin's today, hurrah!)
So, as previously mentioned, I've been racking my brains ALL summer trying to come up with an idea for my Final Film for the third year at University. This has proved unimaginably difficult as it's got to be a story that..

A. Has entertaining characters and story
B. Has personal meaning to me
C. Is actually FUN to do, otherwise I'm spending a year developing and animating (at 24 drawings per second!) something I don't even like!
D. Makes a statement
E. And (hopefully) displays my abilities as a character animator, designer and storyteller so I can get some kind of employment after Uni

So I've been really stressed out about this, though it's not like I haven't been coming up with ideas, the problem is coming up with the right idea.

After writing a couple of shorts that would work well as storybook animatic videos (but not my final film) I came up with a short animation idea about the creation of Earth, but from the perspective of twin creation students (or Gods-in-training). One (sister) is creative and passionate, while the other (brother) is wise and logical, so, naturally, they bicker and everything goes wrong. I also dabbled with the prospect of them creating humanity too, but eventually I decided against this one as the characters just aren't involving enough. Perhaps I will reattempt it at a later date.

Fortunately, just the other night I was hit by a brainwave while trying to get to sleep (isn't that always the way?). I'd been watching a DVD of Pixar shorts with the Director commentary on which was really interesting. I wrote a list of what I thought each short was trying to say, for example, For the Birds is about bullying and peer pressure, but not condoning it of course! Later I wrote a list of messages that I would like to say, such as self-acceptance and the grass not always being greener on the other side.

Eventually it hit me: I'm a very sentimental person and nostalgia the loss of treasured possessions means a lot to me, which is why Pixar's Up, really gets to me! Thus, I wrote a story that centered around sentimentality. Without further ado, here is an image illustrating my three favourite ideas (some old, some new) I'll explain them below. Open the image to view it at a larger size if the text isn't readable enough.

1. The first, Princess-in-Waiting is all about a short-tempered Princess who is fed up of waiting for her Prince so she travels on her very own pet dragon to seek Mr. "Charming" for her revenge! She's a modern, arse-kicking girl who much prefers black glasses and leather jackets to her embroidered dress and tiara! It's a bit of a joke short as just when she thinks she gets what she wants (peace and quiet) suddenly there are Prince Charming's everywhere, all desperate for her hand in marriage!

So this is a fun short, but it's not particularly personal to me and a little too "Shrek-like" for my liking, so it's more of a back-up.

2. Second is an untitled film where I was thinking about self-acceptance through physically destroying your inner demons. This would take place in a surreal world, perhaps in this girl's mind, where she has trapped herself with her own thoughts and fears. I thought a series of trials would be interesting to see her tackle them in different ways until she at last realises the answer lies in eliminating the negative aspects of her personality, rather than killing the demons her mind has conjured around her.

Not a lot of development on this one, but might be interesting at some point to do a crazy Alice in Wonderland/Labyrinth style tale.

3. "Great Oaks From Little Acorns Grow" or "The Girl Who Won't Grow Up". This is my favourite story so far (not to create bias or anything...) as it's personal and has an emotional character arc. It's about a little girl, Amber, who grows up in and around this majestic oak tree, it's got a tree house, a swing and her friends would go there to play. We see snapshots of her life as she grows up, but she remains as childish as when she was young. It's gonna be all about growing up, letting go and moving on, but in an emotional and maybe touching/heartwarming way if done right.

There's a bit more to this story, which I'll cover in future posts, but for now, I hope you guys like what I've come up with, and if you don't please leave a comment with some constructive crits as any feedback will be appreciated!

Now I can relax and focus now I actually have some ideas! Many thanks, I'll be posting again soon!
Laters,
Gemma xox

Summer, Sonisphere and Stuff

2011-08-05T23:04:00.000+01:00

Hi all, and surprise, surprise, another massive gap between journals. I'm really gonna have to break out of this seeing as I'll need to keep an up to date blog for my next film!

So, last time I updated was April, when I was developing a group film at Uni: Dimensionality. Good news is, we just about finished the film and passed, bad news is, we handed in late and lost a lot of marks for it. Moral of the story? It's better to hand in unfinished work ON TIME than it is to let it get overdue to finish it.

Unfortunately the film isn't online yet as the effects are still being finished by one of the group members, but here's a compilation video of all the animation I did for it.

Here's a matte painting example of the look of each shot... hopefully the finished film will be online soon!

And here's the stack of paper I went through... 1277 sheets!

Fortunately the rest of my work went well, I got a high mark for my essay about Masculinity in The Incredibles (using Susan Jeffords' The Curse of Masculinity 1995 as my source), helped third years in making three films by doing 2D animation and even a voiceover (!) and designed some new business cards below!

I asked family and friends and members of DeviantArt to vote for their favourite, turned out the giraffes won, so that's what I printed at Moo.com for my cards, although I will probably redesign it again to correspond to my final film next year!

I also applied for work experience at Beryl Productions in Cardiff with Joanna Quinn where I enjoyed three days of animating, drawing matte lines (for colouring the muzzles and tummies of the Charmin bears!) and learning from the talented animators and clean-up artists there! I can't wait to work there again next term!

Here's a lil' frame from a walk cycle I animated with help from Joanna for a pre-commercial... I don't think I can put it anywhere until it is broadcast though, so enjoy this taster! ;)

Now my second year is over, I'm spending the summer to gear up for my third year, in which I'll be writing my dissertation (similar themes to my previously mentioned essay) and making a short animated film, solo, with some help from second and third years (with luck).

No plans for my final film just yet, I've been actively writing stories and getting back into painting, it should just be a case of sitting down and writing a film idea that I want to produce and is personal to me... I've been putting it off for far too long, so this month I'm going to have to write it before my next semester starts in September so I can present it! I'll be posting progress up of course, either on this blog or a new one which I will link to. All I really know so far is that it will be a 2D film, possibly to do with gender roles! (Like my dissertation!)

And in addition to this, I'm drawing comics with a director/writer I'm working for, doing an animatic about a short duck story for a friend of mine and attempting to do some personal work while I have the "time"!

Other than that, I've been to the Sonisphere Festival in Knebworth last month, camping with friends which was amazing... it was probably the biggest amount of people I'd ever seen in one place! I saw the Big 4 with Metallica, as well as Sum41, Airbourne, Weezer, Biffy Clyro and Bill Bailey... who were all awesome. I even got to high-five Rivers Cuomo--whooo! :D

Here's the four of us at the campsite! (I'm the short one!) :P

Apart from that, things have been fairly uneventful, I've been on the South Beach diet for a few weeks now and I've already lost a stone! I don't have much to lose, it's just a case of cutting back after having too many carbs at Uni! :P Will have to eat healthier this year! >.<

I've got some new artwork that went up on DeviantArt recently... here's the linkage! I submitted it to ImagineFX's 'Rising Stars 2011' competition, so wish me luck! :)

Guardian Spirit of the Forest by ~AmberDust on deviant ART

And I'm thinking of investing in a new iMac 21.5" for my work and Uni, particularly after my sister got one a few days ago... but still mulling it over... And of course there was the epic Harry Potter conclusion recently, which I've seen twice but that's me just about up to date for now... I'll be making myself update more regularly for the next year to get into the habit of doing so... it's quite therapeutic really! ^.^

I hope this update wasn't too overwhelming... I'll be posting something (shorter) again soon though! Ta ta for now! :)
Gemma xox

So-Called "Break"

2011-04-20T00:03:00.000+01:00

Hi all! Time for another infrequent update! I'm back home now for the Easter break, along with all of my Uni work of course! I actually hole-punched over 600 sheets of animation paper ten-at-a-time to begin animating my group project, (working title, Dimensionality) during the weeks "off". I've started some tests and will be moving onto completing rough animation later this week.

The short film is all about the relationship between 2D and 3D and how one is always trying to be the other in modern films, when really they should celebrate their differences! The film is for a brief called Recoding Conventions, so we do actually have to bring something original to the table which we're doing by showing (without dialogue) that 2D and 3D are equals but could actually better themselves by simply learning from each other.

The concept got quite complicated, so we've gone headfirst into production to make sense of it all! I'm working with animator's Ben, Vikki and Rob, all very talented people! Everything's looking great so far, I'll be posting progress when I can.

In the meantime, you can check out our blog where our script and pre-production is getting updated every day!

Dimensionality @ Weebly.com

At the moment, I'm on a juggling act between getting something like 35 shots animated for this project and spending time with family and friends. It doesn't seem to be going too badly, but I'm really going to have to knuckle down with this work as soon as possible! I saw Rio today with some friends which was a very enjoyable film, cliché at times, but fun and bright and colourful and very funny! Jemaine Clement as the bird Nigel was fabulous and he even has a song! <3

Other news... I met amazing artist and animator Joanna Quinn a couple of weeks ago, and what an extraordinary lecture and meeting it was! She's based in Cardiff and is the creator of a wonderful character called Beryl and the bears on the old Charmin ads! She's an incredible person and with luck I may have some work experience at her studio in the summer, I simply cannot wait! :)

I finished a short piece of animation for a third year animating some birdies. It may look short and simple, but was actually a beast to put together because of all the layers! D:

And I completed a quick commission for a friend's University project where King Arthur returns to a post-apocalyptic London... that was 6-8 hours work.

King's Awakening by *AmberDust on deviant ART

I'm currently working on a collaboration with my friend Jess, drawing a lovely poster of Ariel from The Little Mermaid and Ponyo! Here's some progress...

It's very nearly done now and I'm hoping to get that online very soon!

Apart from that, things are busy and things are good! :)

Also, if you haven't checked out Feeder's new single, 'Side by Side', please watch this powerful and emotional music video of theirs of the recent events and if you like the song, please download it here as all proceeds go to help support the Japanese people during their time of need! http://itunes.apple.com/gb/album/side-by-side-single/id427857657

Ta ta for now! :)
Gem xox

P.S. So EXCITED for seeing the Winnie The Pooh movie this Friday! :DDD

Megamind and Summer Wars

2011-04-19T23:20:00.000+01:00

Having been short of some blog updates, I thought I'd post up some thoughts on two films I've been able to see in the past few days.

First up, Megamind (2010).

Since Dreamworks have begun producing original films instead of the usual franchise sequels and spin-offs, the quality of their animations have soared! Following 2009's How to Train Your Dragon, Megamind certainly had a lot to live up to, and while it doesn't have quite the same storytelling sparkle as Chris Sanders and Dean DeBlois, it certainly delivers.

The story doesn't come across very clearly in the trailer or promotional material. It's made out to be a standard good vs evil affair between Megamind and Metroman, but this conflict doesn't take up a big portion of the film and in fact twists and turns in several directions before reaching the final sequences. It's largely a romance genre with superhero films mixed in and even gets into a existential discussion when evil has nothing to fight against.

A top quality voice cast really shine with the film's quirky and hilarious script. Will Ferrell plays a unique but still comedic role as a blue criminal mastermind with a speaking disorder, and Brad Pitt, Tina Fey and Jonah Hill also perform some great lines without distracting from the characters with their personalities.

The music is incredibly prominent, but not in a bad way. It swaps from classic rock tracks like "Bad to The Bone" by George Thorogood & The Destroyers, and Guns N' Roses' "Welcome to the Jungle" to light-hearted "Mr. Blue Sky" from ELO and even "Lovin' You" by Minnie Riperton.

Hans Zimmer and Lorne Balfe compose the film's soundtrack which is of equal quality to the tracks they pick for particular story moments. The main theme is particularly catchy and gears you up for an exciting and entertaining film!

The cinematography is also stunning, some really great composition and camera angles bring the action to screen brilliantly, though my favourites are the slow camera tracks introducing the city, Roxanne and Metroman walking on water.

My only issue with the film was a decision to prevent the street-wise Roxanne Ritchie from becoming an intriguing story point and remaining the film's love interest. I feel that would have added interesting character development as well as raise certain gender issues and promote equality, like in Monster's Vs. Aliens in 2009. Instead, they have unfortunately perpetuated the 'damsel in distress' character that is still so common in modern films!

Anyway, rant over! Megamind is a fantastic flick full of playful humour, great animation and storytelling, definitely check it out if you haven't already! It's also very quotable, my sister's and I often greet each other with "Olo!", or "Minion, you fantastic fish, you!"--my favourite is Megamind's mispronunciation of melancholy into "mel-on-golly"!

On to the next film, Mamoru Hosoda's Summer Wars (2009).

This is the next film from the master behind The Girl Who Leapt Through Time (2006), which I somehow haven't been able to see until now! The DVD was only released in the UK last March, which my boyfriend, Alex, picked up and recommended to me, so that probably has something to with it! (Promote the industry folks!)

Summer Wars is all about the culmination of ancient Japan colliding with modern Japan, in the futuristic concept of a completely virtual world whee you can make your own avatar, play sports, play games, battle and communicate through an instantly translated dialogue system with anyone in the world. This world is called OZ, and everyone is a part of it.

Without giving too much away, the story starts with an introduction to OZ, which then translates into a modern Japan, where a young girl, Natsuki is searching for a boy (Kenji) to charade as her boyfriend as a summer job for her Grandmother's 90th birthday. Starting as what looks like a family drama of 30+ people it escalates as conflicts arise between characters and a vicious virus attacks the virtual world of OZ, wreaking havoc and flinging the Earth into chaos.

The film speaks volumes about the dangers of putting too much responsibility on technology, but it also has real family values that stay at the true heart of the story, filling it with charm and making it an emotional journey for you and the characters. Using a cast of over 30 main characters, it brings home these messages from every possible perspective.

There is pretty much nothing I can fault in this film. It truly speaks for our generation and is a vital watch for any anime fans, Internet users or those with family, basically I think everyone should see it! The animation is beautifully styled and drawn and combines 2D and 3D elements in OZ that brings to life this digital world where nothing actually exists.

The film's climax is emotional and dramatic, bringing together the disasters of technology with the importance of family. Music, characters, plot points, animation... everything, comes together to deliver this must-see film! I could not recommend it more...

Some comparisons have been made to Mamoru's Digimon: The Movie back in 2000, which is understandable as it's the same director, but Summer Wars brings something new to the themes raised and combines it with this old-fashioned family descended from a samurai clan. It brings it bang up to date with current technology such as iPhone's and DSi's and the futuristic technology behind OZ, which we are not far off ourselves!

Mamoru has stated that his next animation will probably be more orthodox and with less main characters... I look forward to what he will make, but a part of me wanders if he will be able to surpass this gem of a film! Go check it out! ^.^

End of Semester and Nutshell Reviews

2011-02-12T18:56:00.000Z

Hello again bloggers, it's that kind of post again where the sheer amount of work has taken my time away from blogging and I have to come up with some sort of apology.... Except this time there was such a swamping of work that I haven't prepared one! :P

Anyway, stuff for me has been good! My last deadline was on Wednesday so I've been free to draw and play Mass Effect 2 to my hearts desire!

In the space of a week after a semester's worth of work, I had to submit and present a: 1-2 minute soundscape project using sound and animation to make a statement (see below); a 2000 word essay about the holy grail of CG, the photo-realistic human; 4 cleaned-up character animations doing something specified in our brief using 2D techniques and After Effects/Flash/Photoshop/Illustrator post-production methods (see below); as well as Power Points documenting the entire process.

An external project I was working on last November really took it out of my work, so I was quite behind on the animation for this, but I think I've made up for it on the explanations/documentation of my 2D animations... We'll see in my feedback tutorials next week!

Soundscape

Danielle Rescues a Mouse (Trying to open an object that refuses to do so)

Hyacinth and Richard Try to Keep up Appearances (Dialogue between two characters)

Missing a Bus (A Groom tries to get the bus to his own wedding)

Lost and Found (A change from one emotion to another)

In addition to work I've been doing, I've seen a few new films recently, which I'll give some "in a nutshell" reviews on so as not to bore you, but really they deserve more!

TRON: Legacy

TRON: Legacy is the 28-year late sequel to the original Tron in 1982, but fortunately the story realises this and places it 20 years after the original film, starring oldies Jeff Bridges and Bruce Boxleitner, and newbies Garrett Hedlund and Olivia Wilde. It's an entertaining adventure with state-of-the-art visual effects and funky light suits that does a great job of bringing a film that hasn't aged particularly well to new audiences. Everything's been updated and the difference between the film's real world and digital world has been highlighted with the use of 3D. All real world events are shown in 2D, but everything in the digital world is in 3D, which really adds another level to this film and shows that the creators really thought about it!

The soundtrack is completely composed by French DJs, Daft Punk, who craft a intricately beautiful atmosphere to the entire film, but is still able to get into the beats and electronic feel of the world. So top marks for sound... and see if you can spot their cameo!

My only difficulty is the de-aged Jeff Bridges (Clu) who is is brought to the screen 20 years younger using CGI which hasn't quite shaken off the uncanny valley phenomenon yet. I actually wrote my CG essay on this subject, so that's quite enough about that right now, just go watch this film when it comes out on DVD (preferably with 3D capabilities) and see for yourself! And pump up the volume for those amazing tunes!

The King's Speech

I went into this film expecting a good film, but instead got a great one. It's no surprise it got so many nominations. It's engaging from start to finish and full of inspirational acting. It's a real feel-good film with honesty, character, humour and a wonderful message. It's based off of the true story of King George VI and was written by David Seidler who had to wait years to write his screenplay after the Queen Mother requested that it not be made before her death as the memories were too painful.

Colin Firth plays the king with Helena Bonham Carter as his wife and Geoffrey Rush as his Australian speech therapist. The acting, music and script are all superb and it's a truly beautiful film from start to finish. The speech itself was a wonderful moment, but I won't say anymore in case it spoils it! It's definitely worth a watch, if not at the cinema then definitely on DVD later in the year.

Tangled

Ok, so the second Disney movie on this list, but please bare with me! I finally saw this film last weekend after the long wait for UK releases... And. It. Was. Beautiful! I thought I'd seen most of what CGI had to offer, but this film blew me away! Ok, so the story is flimsy and loses a lot of darkness and intrigue from the original fairytale, but the characters are wonderful and Rapunzel is just too darn cute! I was so surprised how full of life the 3D models were, they moved just like 2D Disney classics and this was probably because of Glen Keane's involvement. I read in interviews with him that he literally drew over the 3D animation to get the animators to push poses and get the most life as possible out of the animation.

But it's not just the characters, it's the environments too! I was a little skeptical that they had pulled off the 'oil painting' look that they were originally going for, but the lushness of the scenery and all that hair (!!!) made me see otherwise. It was also nice to see the classic musical numbers make a comeback and the songs were lovely. It's a shame that Disney are going to think now that audiences want to see 3D movies and not their 2D stuff after The Princess and the Frog didn't make a very good profit last year, but it's mainly the marketing and feel of this film. The story may be weak, but it's fun! That's what makes this film good from my standpoint, and Rapunzel's little face! I'm obsessed with drawing her right now! Sqqquuuuueeeeeeee!!! [/fangirl]

Ahem. I've also started that classic sci-fi, "Firefly". I bought the box set cheaply as I heard it was good and I'd ironically already seen "Serenity". Fortunately it was a long time ago, so I don't remember how they wrapped up the prematurely canceled series. The pilot started poorly in my opinion, but the series has really got into it now and the character interaction is really engaging. I'm loving the unique sense of humour too! I can see Mass Effect got a lot of cues from it. I'm on episode 5 or something now, so more on that when I've finished it!

I'm nearly done on Mass Effect 2 as well, I've recruited all characters but for Legion and completed their character quests, so all is going well! I'm quite apprehensive for the suicide mission--I don't want to lose the characters! :(

Well that's all for now, hopefully my next update won't be so far away! I'll have to post my feedback for my animations when I get it next week! :)
Ciao!
Gem xxx

Merry Christmas Bloggers!

2010-12-27T00:08:00.001Z

Hello all, hope you're having a wonderful time over the holidays with friends and family!

Here in the UK, we're having some pretty cold temperatures, we have frozen frost on top of frost on top of snow and ice! But apart from permanently wearing slippers and woolly jumpers, Christmas has been good! I've had a great time with my family and enjoyed the usual seasonal television. The Doctor Who Christmas special was pretty good--Michael Gambon as the "scrooge" character was perfect and the story was very emotive... But even better was the upcoming Doctor Who teasers! There's going to be a Wild West episode and Matt Smith adopts a stetson! YES PLEASE! <3

I've got a lot on my plate the next two weeks--what with the pile of DVDs and games to get through! Not to mention my animation work and essay, mind! I'm looking forward to seeing Fantasia, Beauty and the Beast and Inception on Blu-Ray and I've already started my game of Epic Mickey, which is appropriately epic. I have heard some problems with controlling the camera however, and after some gamplay, I can see what they mean! It's quite sluggish and has a tendency to get stuck but it's otherwise very cool! Can't wait to play more!

I've also been having a jam on Rock Band 3 (unfortunately without the new keyboard attachment!) it's introduced some great new challenges and character customisation. It's odd not to have the tour campaign mode though. Also Bohemian Rhapsody and Power of Love for the win! <3

As a treat, I drew my sisters and my boyfriend some gift art for their Christmas cards... Alex got a speedpaint of the Elric Brothers from Full Metal Alchemist, Elly got herself and a "cow bunny" (her new obsession!) inspired from a photo on DeviantArt and Emi got a "Downtonified" version of herself, based off of Cora from Downton Abbey. Enjoy the artwork!

Speaking of Downton Abbey, Emi got me to watch the entire first season on DVD and I absolutely loved it. It's very intense and entertaining and yet so subtle... the slightest gesture or remark has such an impact on their world and it's wonderful seeing the character interaction. The last episode was so gripping--I didn't want it to end! I highly recommend it to any fans of Drama, early 1900's period pieces, and ITV television!

Anyway, for the next two weeks, I'll be working solidly to get an essay done, create a remixed soundtrack based on famous icons and old black and white films (it's going to be my first piece of music ever, so I have no idea how it will turn out!) for my soundscape animation and I'll be finishing my Hyacinth Bucket lip sync animation as well as two more animation exercises for Uni... and hopefully will be able to do plenty of movie watching and Epic Mickey and Assassin's Creed Brotherhood! :)

That's all from me, I'll sign off now with a very Merry Christmas to you all! :3
Love Gem xxx

Another Term Gone

2010-12-13T21:40:00.000Z

Well it's been a while bloggers, November was pretty silent for me, mostly because I had a very intense project deadline at the end of the month as well as my Uni coursework. Can't reveal anything of it yet, but I'll post it up when I can! It was a real relief to have finished it on time though, I can tell you! I was up until 3am working on it on the last day and awake again 6 hours later to finish it!

So that's my excuse for the lack of posts, after that I had to have a major de-stress and play lots of Assassin's Creed Brotherhood and the secret case on the first Phoenix Wright game (which I've now finished :D) and watch lots of movies to unwind!

Anyway, apart from that, Uni work has been going well. I am a bit behind due to the previously mentioned mystery project, with lots to do for 2D character animation, Soundscape and of course the glorious essay to write that is due at the end of January.

Here's a couple of things I've finished/working on now...

Whatchamacallit: a short audio/visual statement I made with Zara and Rob. It's not perfect, and was a bit long/complicated for the brief. I had some problems animating my section (the middle part) so resorted to doing some random animation in Flash... we learned a lot through this and I aim to do things a bit differently next time!

Danielle Rescues a Mouse [Rough] : my rough animation for a younger Danielle rescuing a mouse from the clutches of a younger Fred. It was originally going to be the final line, but after scanning, I realised there were a lot of messy issues that would need redrawing. The brief was to animate a character opening something that refuses to do so.

My next animation I'm drawing in pen, and it's a dialogue scene between Hyacinth and Richard Bucket from Keeping Up Appearances, but I've re-modelled them to look more like a visual representation of their personalities and more like my own characters. I chose this because I really wanted to animate some older characters, especially after seeing 90-year-old Sophie's delightful performance from Howl's Moving Castle again. :)

Here's the original scene, I'm just taking Hyacinth's dialogue from "Richard, did you see this?" to "Why should I wait?"

Here are my model sheets.

I've also recently given a 10 minute presentation on the effects of the "uncanny valley": a term used for when human-like androids cross the boundary of familiarity into a creepy and repulsive domain, except I was applying it instead to human CGI (see: Tom Hanks from The Polar Express).

I doubt you're interested in my Power Point or my notes, but it went well and the only thing I was really called up on was the relevance of "uncanny" to an image, when live action is technically a series of images anyway and at what point is something not "human" anymore? It was pretty terrifying though, everyone looked nervous talking about their subjects (usually the results of addiction/violence, or lack of, from video games) and it was very nerve-wracking! Glad to get it out of the way though and I was pleased to have taught something to the others too!

Anywhoodle, last weekend half of the household (3 of 6) housemates left here and it's suddenly feeling really sad and empty (although incredibly clean!) and so, so, so, so quiet! :( My first term of my second year at Uni has passed so quickly and it's going to be so sad to say goodbye to it all! :( But I'm rather looking forward to going home now and seeing the family! And I have all of my Christmas shopping sorted so I have 4 weeks to chill and catch up with work! :D

That's all from me for now, I'm off to play more Assassin's Creed Bortherhood before bed! :D
Love Gem

A New House, Birthdays and The Social Network

2010-10-26T22:56:00.000+01:00

Hello again bloggers,

I finally moved down to Newport a few weeks ago and so far I'm loving the new house along with living with my Uni friends. It can get complicated when it comes to cooking and cleaning, but we seem to be managing so far!

The place is really nice, it's on a brand new estate and really close to the new campus, so it'll be great when we don't have to take the bus to lessons!

My course is going really well, I'm learning the CGI software, Maya, which is incredibly complicated, but I'm learning quite quickly. I'm specialising in 2D animation for my current semester in which I'll be doing more character performance animation (I should be bringing back Danielle and Fred for at least one exercise!) and a soundscape project, which is about merging sound and image but thinking primarily about the sounds.

So far I have a "pulling an object that refuses to budge" animation to do and 10 sounds to find and record.

I also have this short stop-motion exercise that I did with Zara to demonstrate moving inanimate objects with emotion... My object was the "excitable" scissors, her's were the "irritated" gloves and the scene is a murder! :O

And as the title suggests, there have been a couple of birthdays! My boyfriend Alex had his over the weekend--we went back home to enjoy the celebrations with family, it was a great trip! :) My birthday was just yesterday... 20 years old! Shocking, I know. :P

I got some great presents, including Mass Effect 2 (YAY!), The Beauty and the Beast art book, The UP art book, the Deathnote anime boxset, Pinocchio and The Fox and the Hound on DVD, Ashes to Ashes boxset (haven't seen it yet but loved Life on Mars!), Alter Bridge's "AB III", Professor Layton and the Lost Future and Final Fantasy: The 4 Heroes of Light! It's been a good year ha ha!

But getting older has got me thinking... On the train back to Newport I was listening to Metric's "Fantasies" album on the day of my birthday, "Sugar Mountain" comes on (I believe it's a cover of Neil Young??). And I'm sat listening to these lyrics:

Now you say you're leavin' home
'Cause you want to be alone.
Ain't it funny how you feel
When you're findin' out it's real?

Oh, to live on Sugar Mountain
With the barkers and the colored balloons,
You can't be twenty on Sugar Mountain
Though you're thinking that
you're leaving there too soon,
You're leaving there too soon.

I just thought at the time how strikingly appropriate it was for that to come on the day that I'm 20... it's sad not to be a teenager anymore and scary to think about growing up and leaving home... but at the same time it's something everyone goes through and at heart, you'll always be a teen really. I think it would be sad to lose that in yourself. It's a great song though, really strikes those chords in you!

So yeah, I guess I was feeling rather retrospective in that sense, but then I got here and there were balloons and streamers everywhere (they're still up actually) and I was given a beautiful hand drawn portrait of me by my friend Bryony and we all went out for dinner and a film and I got another awesome card drawn by Zara of Alex and I as Scott Pilgrim styled characters and we came back home for birthday cake I felt much better! :3

Ah well, save those thoughts for another time, huh?

Speaking of the film I saw, it was The Social Network if you hadn't guessed by the mysterious titling of my blogs.

So The Social Network... it's basically about the founders of Facebook, how it came about and such, I think it's based on a book that was based on the real story, so the film is probably pretty diluted or exaggerated by this point.

While it was an entertaining film, I'm not sure what all of the fuss was about. It was full of number and figures, legal battles and people arguing over who did what first... not that there's anything particularly wrong with that, but at times it almost became boring. That doesn't happen to me often in a cinema, and I think the main problem was to do with the characters.

First off, the main character, (the co-founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg played by Jesse Eisenberg) is an arse. This is established from the very beginning of the film; he's an immature, stuck-up genius who's bitter after a break up with his girlfriend (which was his fault in the first place) with a single friend to his name and constantly looks like this:

So I gave him a shot, I thought: "Ok, so he's not exactly a positive character, let's see how he develops throughout the film." But that was the problem, he didn't develop, he stayed the same and possibly even became worse. Perhaps this was the intention of the film makers; to make a film with an unlikeable main character or perhaps this was staying true to the original story or people... but how does that make an engaging film with character's people can relate to?

Zuckerberg was only occasionally funny (such as going to a business meeting in your dressing gown and pyjamas or creating a multi-billion dollar company just to have a business card that reads "I'm CEO, bitch!"), he talked too fast and was usually uninteresting. Nothing against Jesse Eisenberg (I thought he was great in Zombieland) or the original creator of course, my issues are with the actual screenplay.

From my perspective, the only likable characters were the two women in the film intelligent enough to tell Zuckerberg that he was an arse and his "best friend" Eduardo Saverin (played by future Spiderman, Andrew Garfield) who gets screwed over by him. Saverin was a far more likable character and he wasn't even the protagonist!

But complaining aside, there were definitely some good things about this movie. For a start, the music. Where can you go wrong with a soundtrack by Trent Reznor? It was atmospheric and intense and it had me thoroughly enjoying the first 30 minutes. The cinematography and casting was also pretty good. The shots were great visually (especially considering it was mostly people talking) and the acting was really good. I was particularly impressed by Justin Timberlake, he was very convincing as the paranoid, broke businessman, Sean Parker.

Having not read the original book, "The Accidental Billionaires" I don't know what the original intentions of the story were. It could just be one of those stories that sound great at first, but when put into a narrative based film, it just doesn't work. I wouldn't say it's a bad film, and it's certainly worth seeing, but I found it rather over-rated.

Anyway, enough of my ramblings. It's been a good day today and there's been enough negativity there! I had a really interesting workshop about sound this morning and spent the afternoon chilling and had a great home-made lasagne for dinner! I've also got my Mum and Sisters over this Thursday so really looking forward to that! :)

I'll be blogging again soon, but for now, ciao!
Love Gemma xxx

New Projects, Sherlock and MUSE!

2010-09-20T17:46:00.002+01:00

Hello again bloggers,

It's been a while! I keep saying I need to make these updates smaller and more frequent, but I've really been so busy! I have a brand new project on the horizon with some clients which should get some great exposure down the line. I can't talk about it just yet, but I'll post up my work for it when I can. It's all very exciting!

I'm currently working on a big piece inspired from one of my favourite songs from the alternative rock band, Blue October. It's a slow song for them and very emotive.

18th Floor Balcony by Blue October

My piece is a rather sad interpretation of it, but one that is very relaxing for me to paint, even though I'm really pushing myself in terms of lighting, colour, anatomy and detail. I'm making an effort to push boundaries and I really hope it shows in the final result!

Here is a special preview for my readers. :3

It's just a small crop of the full thing for now, as the other half still looks pretty horrifying! I'm open for comments/crits on it as it stands for now though!

In other news, I've just finished the BBC Sherlock series yesterday with my sisters. It's a fabulous piece of work, in writing, acting and cinematography.

Written by the writers of recent Doctor Who series, Sherlock is essentially the modern update of the original stories. Not having read them, I don't know how accurate of an update it is, but knowing the character of Sherlock Holmes, I can definitely say that Benedict Cumberbatch (yes that is his real name, brilliant isn't it?) does an incredible job of redefining the character in a modern setting.

The transition from Victorian London to present-day London is both huge and subtle, but works so well. Instead of a pipe, Sherlock uses nicotine patches on his arm to help him think, instead of Watson's journal he writes an internet blog: it's simple, but effective.

The series comprises of three 80-minute episodes and the second season will see its first broadcast Autumn 2011.

The writing and editing of the series is fast-paced, smart and oh so witty. The partnership between Holmes and Watson (Martin Freeman) is electric and the way they bicker like a married couple is entertaining and done in a really fresh way.

So if you haven't watched that, I recommend checking it out. It's on DVD in most shops now.

I'm a little late on talking about this, but a couple of weeks ago, I was privileged enough to go and see Muse perform live in Manchester with my boyfriend, courtesy of his parent's!

It was a stunning experience, supported by Pulled Apart by Horses, Band of Skulls and Editors! The first band weren't my thing, but Band of Skulls were a pleasant surprise and Editors were as fab live as they are on their album.

Muse really were something else though. I've never seen such a visually spectacular performance live on stage! They had a mini-stage rise above the crowds, streamers pop out at the audience during "Guided by Light", great costumes, giant eyeballs bounced across the stadium and great lighting effects! And the vocals and music was even better than the recorded tracks! Utterly flawless!

Easily one of the best gigs I've been to, it's up there with Radiohead 2 years ago and Peter Gabriel at hyde Park the year before that--wow! <3

Also got myself an awesome Muse hoodie! <3

Well, that's all from me for now. I'm moving into my lovely new house in Newport in a couple of weeks and have a weekend away at Alton Towers with my Mum and sisters, so can't wait for that! :3

Also just found out that the elusive The Lion King is finally seeing a DVD re-release in Autumn 2011 along with Bambi this Spring 2011! :D Cannot wait!! :D

Ta ta for now!
Love Gem xxx

P.S. My Mass Effect is working now! Got it cleaned up at Game for £5, yippee! :D

Burned Mass Effect and Scott Pilgrim vs The World

2010-08-28T22:13:00.001+01:00

Hi again all, it's been another long while, but I'm trying to make these updates more frequent!

I got pretty frustrated this morning, as it's the weekend, I thought I'd chill out on my game on Mass Effect. I recently acquired Dr. T'Soni and am doing some non-story related missions, it's my first playthrough (4 years late I know) so I'm enjoying the dialogue choice wheel and inventing my very own lead character. (Her name is Danielle Shepard, a hard-working commander with a 'don't mess with me' attitude, vivid red hair, high morals and a sometimes harsh sense of justice. She has a soft spot for Kaidan and Garrus. She is determined to bring Saren down!)

So I'm playing the game with no problems, when I accidentally knock the TV remote down the back of the radiator. It's the kind of obstacle that is too close to the wall to reach down, but far enough to allow a nice gap for items to fall down. In the struggle to get the remote free of this gap, I knock my Rock Band guitar over which in turn, knocks the Xbox 360. If you've ever had any experience with this, you'll know that when you knock or so much as walk past an Xbox when a disc is in use, the laser will burn a ring into it, rendering it unreadable. So now I have to take it into Game or wherever to get cleaned and it wasn't even mine. (Sorry Alex! T_____T)

After that, I decided I'd had the last straw with the messy state of the room, and literally spent the next four hours tidying up and putting aside old books and toys for charity (kinda ironic that I would do this after seeing Toy Story 3, but the stuff was more educational or cheap stuff anyway). Although the room is far from empty, it is considerably more organised and feels must less claustrophobic. *thumbs up.... collapses*

So aside from that, I recently saw the long-awaited Scott Pilgrim vs The World on the big screen. Unlike most fans, I haven't actually read the comics yet, but I was very excited to see the film.

Directed by Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz) and starring Michael Cera (Juno), Scott Pilgrim vs The World is a film adaptation of the best selling graphic novels by Canadian author and artist, Bryan Lee O'Malley. The black and white comics themselves have a pretty sweet art style and I look forward to reading them for myself soon!

But back to the movie. Scott Pilgrim vs the World is an awesome film. I went to see it with average expectations, but it really rose above them. This is a film made by geeks, for geeks. It is the most faithful film for gamers I've ever seen. The opening title includes a pixellated "sprite" Universal logo, complete with midi-type music and gaming references are everywhere: from Zelda music and sound effects, to gameplay mechanics (i.e. enemies burst into coins upon defeat).

So the story follows Scott Pilgrim, a 22-year-old "loser" who plays bass in the band "Sex-Bob-Omb", and is getting over a previous scarring relationship by dating a 17-year-old high-schooler (the adorable Knives Chau). And that's when Ramona Flowers enters his life. A mysterious young woman with brightly coloured hair who works for Amazon.ca who takes Scott's breath away. However, things get complicated when he discovers that to be with her, he must defeat her 7 evil ex's... that was unexpected!

As far as I know, the story is pretty similar to the source material (albeit a few changes), so it's difficult to critique the film without in turn critiquing the books, so I won't go into details there. Instead I'll turn to the visuals, which are pretty stunning. It's a prefect blend of beautiful cinematography composited with graphic illustration which represent the manga's sound effect writing (like D's coming from bass guitars and Batman-like Kapow!'s for punches). Although these aren't necessary for film, they are an interesting factor on screen and draw more attention to the sound aspect of the film, which is incredible.

I also very much enjoyed the opening credits animation which looked very reminiscent of Len Lye's "Swinging the Lambeth Walk". It was cool, flashy and colourful. I very much doubt it was a coincidence!

A lot of attention was paid to the film's sound design, there were lovely game-like sound effects everywhere: Young Neil playing Zelda on the Nintendo DS, the raising of an eyebrow was accompanied by a Window's 'beep' and of course the timing was right on the dot. The second superstar evil ex first appears along with the Universal introduction music, cricking his neck in time to the drums, which is hilarious.

The music is also ideal. The Sex Bob-Ombs have some great tunes, and so do the 'Clash at Demonhead', a very popular band in the film that play a song from the real band, Metric. I gotta say I love their song "Black Sheep". I've been addicted to it and the scene that it appears in... gives me shudders! I also love their special rendition of Zelda's "Fairy Fountain" theme in one of Scott's dream sequences, it has a real air of mystery to it and feels so ethereal.

Now down to the nitty gritty, I was very impressed by Michael Cera's acting in this film. He is a great actor and plays the character excellently but he has unfortunately been type-cast so badly in previous films, audiences find it difficult to take him seriously. This film changed my mind about him, but it can be off putting for others. My favourite character however, was Kimberly Pine (pictured above) for her blunt attitude and cheeky freckles!

I particularly liked the action sequences and editing of the film (I'm a big fan of Edgar Wright's "Spaced" so I'm pretty familiar with his style) and it brings a great artistic quality to the film that pushes the boundaries of live action, which is great! My favourite part of the film is when Matthew Patel bursts through the fabric of reality and challenges Scott to a duel to the death; suddenly the film is transformed and the amazing and fantastic imagery is left for you to decide whether it's really happening or in Scott's imagination. However, there are some areas in which there is more to be desired.

For a start, characters do not evolve well during the film and have little or no character arc. There is a progression to Scott's character, but it is only shown at the beginning and at the end and there isn't development throughout. Ramona also doesn't show a lot of change, and doesn't show a lot of feeling towards Scott. Does she even say that she lesbians--I mean... loves him? It didn't even feel like he resolved things properly with his last ex, Envy. Initially I thought this would be a massive development towards the end, but her storyline ends quite abruptly.

I also found the ending a tad weak (apart from the awesome last battle sequence, THAT'S awesome), but that's partly to do with the character development. Also, there isn't a lot of reason for Scott to start chasing Ramona Flowers when he's already with the equally lovely Knives Chau, but again, this is an element of the graphic novels, so I won't start ripping into it! :P

Sadly, Scott Pilgrim vs The World is bombing at the box office, it hasn't even made half of the money used to make this film back yet. And it's such a shame! I really hope this changes soon, it's a fantastic film and a wonderful adaptation. It shows the movie industry how comic films should be: creative, romantic, action-packed, visually stunning, hilarious and above all, fun!

Obviously the target audience are gamers of the 80s-90s, so if you don't fit into this category you won't get all of the jokes, but it's still a great film regardless of your gaming experience. I'm giving this film a definite 9/10, for being great, regardless of box office results!

Check out this review on why this film is flopping on That Guy With The Glasses.com, "Distressed Watcher" explains it much better than I could!

5 Reasons Why Scott Pilgrim Flopped

Now go and see Scott Pilgrim vs The World now and decide how wow-cool-fantastic-awesome-super-epica it is for yourself!! :3

That's all from me right now, I'll be back soon! Ciao!
Lesbians from, Gemma xxx

New artwork on DeviantArt

2010-08-28T18:24:00.000+01:00

Some of my latest digital artwork: a request of my boyfriend's Halo 3 character, a Piggy Portrait commission, and my tribute to Toy Story 3: Hay un amigo en mí!

Halo 3: Extermination by *AmberDust on deviant ART

Commission: Piggy Portrait by *AmberDust on deviant ART

El Buzzo y Jessie by *AmberDust on deviant ART

Summer Goings-On and Toy Story 3!

2010-07-25T00:21:00.001+01:00

Hello all, I must say, the lack of new posts from me has been abysmal, even by my standards! Apologies for this, Summer has been a surprisingly busy time, so here's a blast of what's been going on...

To begin, I have survived my first year of University unscathed and with grade A marks, apart from my last essay on feminism in animation which was only written in a week and received a B! XD I have thoroughly enjoyed my first year and made lots of friends, some of whom I've been able to meet over the holidays which has been great. All of my recent work can be seen on my Vimeo and Youtube pages.

One piece in particular I would like to highlight is an animatic (like a moving storyboard) that myself and Jess wrote and drew together. Only the music is not ours (from the How to Train Your Dragon and Up soundtracks). We have received some great feedback for it, so thought it would be good to share! We're hoping to have it fully animated one day!

Next up, to keep myself busy over the summer, I've completely redesigned my personal portfolio at AmberDust.co.uk which now sports an animated banner and some floral backgrounds. I've changed it in the hope of appealing more to visitors and being easier to browse! I'm also taking commissions for various art and animation needs, so spread the word! I've already got a couple, so grab a slot before they're gone! :P

AmberDust Studios - Online Portfolio of Gemma Roberts

And on the side I've been making a lot of changes around Final Fantasy World; embedded Wordpress into the main page for updating FF news complete with personal avatars for commenting; written a review for Final Fantasy XIII (a game with undelivered potential!); and made a Facebook and Twitter page to follow us!

It's been very sad to see so many brilliant Final Fantasy fan sites disappear in recent years, so I'm determined to keep FFWorld going!

Next week, I'm looking forward to "house-sitting" at my boyfriend's while his parents and sister are on holiday--will be nice to spend some time together! As Alex is a film maker, we're thinking of doing some proper script-writing, or perhaps recording a song (as he plays guitar) since he has been doing some great covers on his own recently!

I recently completed a 2-year-old painting that had been left to gather digital dust during the busy months of college, so that was nice to have it see the light of day! It's on DeviantArt now! :)

But now, onto the real thing that's been on my mind since finally seeing it this afternoon...

This is it, the end of Toy Story 3... it is the most funny, sweet, charming, honest, beautiful and heart-breaking films I have seen this year. But what do I expect; it's Pixar!

Growing up with the original two films, feels like they were preparing me for the finale, the day when Andy finally grows up and starts to forget his old toys. Faced with a lifetime stuck in the attic, being donated to a daycare centre or thrown out with the garbage is really the toughest moment for the toys so far and goes from bad to even worse.

Pixar really could not have done a better job with this film. Everything we had come to expect and more was granted. If you watch this as a child, you can appreciate it for your own experiences with toys; as a teenager, you associate with the memories when you had to leave for college, give away your old toys and let things go; and as an adult you may remember the same experiences, but perhaps it is Andy's mother seeing her son's empty room and saying good bye to him that is what you take away from this film.

They is really something for everyone in Toy Story 3. If you like action and adventure, it's here, if you like comedy then this is probably Pixar's funniest film next to The Incredibles thanks to the hilarity of Buzz in "Spanish mode" (I don't think I've ever been in a cinema full of people laughing so much), if you like romance then there's a lovely subplot with Jessie and Buzz, if you like animation then there's plenty to see with expert character animation and an abundance of locations all gorgeously conceived by Daisuke Tsutsumi's brilliant art direction.

Even if you just like films is general, this is a film that must be seen. It's fantastic on the big screen and although it's great in 3D, it's not particularly necessary as they do not use it for gratuitous and "gimmicky" 3D effects and shoot it like a regular animated film anyway. So it's equally as good in 2D.

The opening is pure genius, giving the toys an epic 'runaway train' adventure through Andy's rather cinematic imagination and referencing the opening scene of the first film in such an original way. The traditional "short", Night & Day, was a marvelous piece of work that opened Toy Story 3 very appropriately. It was lovely to see 2D and 3D merge so seamlessly and work!

I thought that How to Train Your Dragon earlier this year would be a tough one to beat (being Dreamwork's best film thus far in my opinion!) but Toy Story 3 has really blown it out of the water. I loved the direction they took with the characters, even though there are fewer than the previous films (I was already sad at the beginning to find out that some memorable ones had been lost!) but it allowed them to concentrate on what mattered. It's consistently funny and witty throughout with some great lines from Mr Potato Head, Buzz Lightyear and even Barbie!

I also noticed that there was less dialogue for Slinky Dog and wondered whether this was out of respect for the death of Jim Varney, although he did have some lines voiced by Blake Clark.

With every year, Pixar seem to become better and better with their films, and the Toy Story series, I believe, is an example of this. Toy Story 3 shines out from the rest as screen-writing perfection. There is nothing I would change about the ending of this film, and will enjoy re-watching this series for years to come. IMBD has collectively given this a 9/10, but I have to go one step further and give it a 10/10 for concluding their story in such an emotionally satisfying way and giving these loveable characters the send-off that they deserve. You've outdone yourself Lee Unkrich.

That's all from me for now, but I'll probably be reporting again next week after seeing Inception (I've heard good things about it, but doubt it's ability to topple my view of Toy Story 3 which I'll definitely be seeing again soon!) so check back soon!

Bye for now! :)
Love Gemma

FFXIII Collector's Edition and First Impressions

2010-03-09T15:56:00.001Z

The long awaited Final Fantasy XIII for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 is out today in Europe, America and Australia. My collector's edition for the 360 arrived this morning and it is full of goodies! Here are some quick pictures I took of the collection, please excuse the bedsheets as the background and the mobile phone quality!

Along with the game, you receive a hardback art book of various character renders and screenshots ("The World of Final Fantasy XIII"), a ten song soundtrack including the fantastic battle theme "Blinded by Light" and notes on each song by the composer Masashi Hamauzu, three double-sided art prints of the party members and their Eidolons, and two stickers of the l'Cie mark. Overall it's a great buy and well worth the cash. The 360 and PS3 versions are virtually the same, but go for the PS3 if you have the funds as the visuals are noticeably different.

First Impressions
Having not played very far yet, I can't give too much information, but here are my first impressions of the game minus the spoilers!

Gameplay
First of all, this game plays like a dream, no matter what console you bought it for. Moving through locations is seamless and the addition of 'auto-jumping' through the scenery makes it very interactive too. Treasure chests have been replaced with Treasure Spheres and Save Points (which double as your shops now) are in plentiful supply so you won't have to replay great chunks of the game over again.

Healing between battles is gone now as your party are automatically regenerated after every battle, a nice feature but very different. You'll also notice there is no way of upgrading/leveling your characters in the beginning, but hold on for an hour or so as this changes later.

This time round your party members are left to their own devices to explore the terrain, and you don't have to worry about them keeping up with you as they appear with you when you enter a battle. You can also hear your characters talking among themselves at certain story points, which is also interesting to spot. You can read this dialogue too if you switch subtitles on.

Battle System
In FFXIII the battle system has been revamped almost beyond recognition. But don't worry, it retains a nice mixture of old turn-based RPG elements but with more action based visuals like in Kingdom Hearts and much, much faster gameplay.

At first, it's all so new and different you might find yourself feeling a little confused by the fast-paced action, but it quickly becomes such an immersive experience you'll feel like you've been playing it for years.

Instead of playing as all of your party members, you play as a single 'lead' character (think of Kingdom Hearts here) and your party support you as AI. You can control what role they take in battle by assigning them on the menu and customising a selection of different roles for your characters to switch between by using 'Paradigm Shift' during battle later in the game.

You select a string of attacks and commands to fill your 'ATB' gauge as a 'stack' of commands and pick a target to attack. Your character then inflicts all of these commands on the enemy in one smooth flow of combos. They then return to a neutral position and you can choose new commands while your ATB gauge refills. It's an extremely quick system for which you'll be thankful that you only have to play as one character!

Another nice touch is that Potions now effect all of your party instead of just one. But if you're lead character dies, then it's Game Over. If another member dies though, then they can easily be revived with a Phoenix Down.

A great leveling system is implemented a bit later in the game that allows you to earn points in battle and spend them on new upgrades. This is set up a bit like the Sphere Grid in FFX, which was a very enjoyable system and it's fantastic to see a similar one make a return. Each character has their own 'grid' and a separate grid for each available role. I'm looking forward to seeing this system develop!

Story
Being a Final Fantasy game, they are usually all about story. And thus far, Final Fantasy XIII does not disappoint. The introduction of the game itself is quite vast in scale and full of action. There is still plenty to be fleshed out, but the game's set up promises to be a full on epic with well-developed characters, we hope!

Visuals
The graphics go without saying, even from early screenshots this game was stunning and to play it for yourself is breath taking. The details in hair and clothes are amazing and the scenery and cut scenes are gorgeous. It really has to be seen first-hand!

The main in-game menu of this game is really beautiful. When you select a character to view their status etc, a short FMV quality clip plays of them as the background image before fading to black and white so you can see the text more clearly. It's a lovely addition that leaves me switching through the characters all the time just to see it!

Sound and Voice Overs
If you've seen any trailers for this game, you'll probably already know something of the music. My favourite track is already the glorious battle theme with the elegant but catchy flutes! Leona Lewis' 'My Hands' has yet to be heard however.

The English voice overs seem to be a very high standard so far. Some are already complaining about Vanille's character being annoying, but her New Zealand accent is quite cute and quirky and does start to grow on you. It depends on personal choice though!

Overall Final Fantasy XIII is shaping up really nicely and I can't wait to play more! I fear for my University projects, I really do! >.<

I hope you FF fans are enjoying this game as much as I am! ^.^

FINAL FANTASY XIII!!! :D

2010-03-08T19:35:00.000Z

My promotional copy of Final Fantasy XIII has arrived a whole day before official release!!! I am so excited I cannot believe it!!! I am off to play it now, so don't expect to hear from me for a week!!! :D

Loves!!! <3 <3 <3

Weekend Blast

2010-03-01T17:09:00.000Z

Just got back to Newport this morning from home, was up at 5am to get the train at 6:22, arrived at 9am, caught bus at 9:20 and somehow managed to be the second one in my lecture at 10am! It's been a hectic weekend!

I left last Saturday to surprise my sister as she was coming home from South Africa and boy was she surprised! It was great to catch up and hear all her amazing tales! She's had an amazing time, going on safari, Table Mountain, Cape Point, Robin island, visiting schools and even an orphanage! She had a great experience with lots of ups and downs, but overall I think it was good for her. :) Only trouble is, now she wants to go back!

Sadly it was just a flying visit for me at home and it felt like as soon as I had arrived, I was leaving again! So I didn't get to spend as much time with my family as I should have. :(

I'm looking forward to my Easter break so much as animation is becoming a handful! My latest animation is which Danielle is walking Fred the Hippo on a lead was left unfinished last week and I have to finish it tomorrow before I begin the next animation task. It's proving very difficult to churn out the exercises with no breaks, but our tutor insists that this is just like the industry, so we just have to put up with it. :/

I'll get there eventually, but for now, I am feeling emotionally and physically drained!!!

I do have some cool news though, last Wednesday I was contacted by the PR company for Square-Enix about the release of FFXIII and they wanted to publicise the event through my website! They said some lovely things about Final Fantasy World and I was happy to be a part of it! The event is at HMV in London on the 9th March in accordance with the release of Final Fantasy XIII and they even have some of the creators flying over from Japan especially! So it's all really cool!

You can check out all the details on Final Fantasy World if you're interested in going! :)

So that's been great and myself, Alex, Paul, Dale, Zara and Vikki are finalising the contract for renting a house next year which we are all looking forward to as on campus accommodation is getting everyone rather annoyed! Particularly with fire alarms going off at 5:30am! That's the worse one so far--and I had to get up at 7am to catch the train back home and I had a really late night due to parties going on until 3am!

It's been all over the place at the moment, hopefully I can focus on my work this week and spend the weekend relaxing and depleting my stress levels!

I'll be updating soon with more animations... :)

Gemma xxx

Narrative Strategies: Week 4

2010-03-01T16:45:00.000Z

Last Tuesday with Leonie, we were tasked with finding newspaper images to accompany our folk tales. Unfortunately I had not been able to do my own from the pressures of animating the week before, but I had a newspaper to find images in, which I have been able to do now!

Our lecture was about poetry this time. Leonie asked us what is involved in poetry; such as rhythm and/or rhyme, simile, metaphor and creating descriptive imagery in your words. Some people welcomed this topic while others were unexcited. I like reading and writing lyrics which are poetic in nature, so am looking forward to it myself.

We were introduced to the work of Patrick Caulfield who created flat coloured paintings with thick black outlines around the shapes. He accompanies them with a line from a poem which describes a scene, but the image he creates only shows an aspect of that scene and does not spell in out for you. Here are some examples...

Left: Ah! Storm clouds rushed from the Channel Coasts!

Right: You'll be sick if you spend all your time indoors.

Left: Thus she would come, half-dead to my door.

Right: All these confessions... (my personal favourite)

It's an interesting effect, at first I thought it there were just abstract shapes ("Thus she would come..." was the first that I saw) but then I saw what the pictures represented and I like how they are partnered with poetry that seems nearly irrelevant but actually is connected if you think about it.

We were then told about the story of Gilgamesh (one of the earliest recorded stories) from Mesopotamia in preparation for a Brothers Quay film. I had seen some of their stop motion work before and liked it, but "This Unnameable Little Broom" (1985) was a step too creepy for me. Normally I like dark and creepy things, but this was bizarre blend of disturbing imagery and ideas coupled with strange designs and music. Check it out if you're interested in that kind of thing/stop motion, but it's not for everyone!

We finished with some more talk on poetry forms and great poets before talking about homework for next week. Primarily writing a short and condensed poem of our folk tale in 3-5 lines. I'm feeling quite inspired by a very picturesque train journey this morning, so will be off to do that now! :)

Latest Character Animations

2010-02-19T22:19:00.001Z

Hello all, here are my animations for the first week which involved my human walk and run cycle and my animal walk and run cycle.

Danielle Walking

Danielle Running

Fred the Hippo Walking

Fred the Hippo Running

I received good feedback on them from friends. Sadly I didn't get to show my animations in the first critique (which lasted 4 hours because there are so many of us) but was able to the following day with everyone else who missed out.

Although there were a couple of problems such as my Hippo run cycle was two frames too slow and there were a few issues with Danielle's hands, Matthew said they were all really good and I working quite professionally on one of them by switching between animating on twos and ones! I was quite taken aback but very pleased! :3

So with my feedback in mind, I have spent this week animating the next task which is having one of my characters jumping from one area to another. I decided to use my hippo character, Fred,so that I could have some fun with stretching and squashing. :)

Fred the Hippo Fails at Jumping

And that's all for now! Next week we are animating our human characters taking our animals for a walk before being unexpectedly pulled by the lead! We have taken some pretty funny video reference for this so I'm looking forward to having fun with that! :)

Bye for now! :3
Gemma xxx

PONYO Review

2010-02-19T21:39:00.001Z

After a long delay between October and February, Ponyo has finally been released in the UK! And I highly recommend that any fans of animated films, Studio Ghibli or just films in general should definitely go see it.

When I originally heard about this film, I read that it was going to be a Miyazaki film aimed at young children, and while this is still true, it is still highly entertaining for any age. And I think this is what separates his films from that of Disney. While Princess and the Frog was a great piece, at times it may lose the attention of older audiences by including slapstick and immature characters and sidekicks to supposedly comedic effect.

Miyazaki however, does not rely on cheap comedy to appeal to youngsters. Instead, he delivers a totally heartwarming film with believable characters and the usual stunning visuals and music that is appropriate for the kiddies and certainly a joy to watch myself.

Sadly I missed the first few minutes (due to traffic in Cardiff) but I shall try to summarise the beginning. Ponyo is the story of a young boy, Sosuke, who stumbles across a tiny mermaid near his seaside home. He rescues her from her glass bottle prison and keeps 'Ponyo' in a green bucket. Slowly the girl's magic powers allow her to communicate with Sosuke and they form a friendship.

When Ponyo is captured back by her father (dubbed by the amazing Liam Neeson) she expresses the desire to become human and uses her magic to sprout legs and arms. She flees her father's underwater home now as a little girl on a wave of huge fish formed by her sisters to find Sosuke again.

The story takes a turn when their town is flooded by a huge storm and Sosuke and Ponyo leave to search for Sosuke's mother and keep Ponyo from turning into sea foam along the way! I love this little boat by the way!

The animation in Ponyo is typical Studio Ghibli class, consistently high quality the whole way through. But what particularly stands out in this film in the rendering of the water, which is practically a whole character by itself. That is how important water is here. It's the barrier between the water folk and humans, it is their livelihood and it physically separates the characters half way through the film. There is also a lot of it.

The water is animated in such a fluid and nearly tangible way. And everything in the shots move! Whether it's a foreground or background element. Sometimes even backdrops are animated. In an early short Sosuke in on a hill by his home and the pencil background has animated grass in the same pencil medium, which looks a lot more impressive than animating basic cell grass on top of the background.

There's so much going on in each shot, whether it's all of Ponyo's sisters, water effects, bubbles, swimming fish or tiny details in the background, so much has been painstakingly drawn to create hundreds of perfectly cinematic shots. Some of the shot composition causes you to wonder how it was even accomplished it can be so complicated. It's a very impressive sight that will probably leave your mouth wide open in awe if you are an animator like me!

Generally I find it difficult to fault Ghibli films anyway, but after Tales of Earthsea it is a relief to see one as good as Howl's Moving Castle. The dub was also very good standard. I would like to try the Japanese audio when the DVD comes out, but Liam Neeson was so good as Ponyo's father Fujimoto it will be difficult to switch the audio over!

All in all, a truly fantastic film that is worth watching at the cinema if you've never seen a Ghibli film on the big screen before! A deserving 9/10!

Narrative Strategies: Week 3

2010-02-18T01:13:00.000Z

This week was an interesting one, we started by watching a 70 minute French animation called Kirikou (1998) that is set in Africa. It had quite a unique style and an enjoyable story, though it was quite strange at times! It followed the story of a new born baby called Kirikou who is able to talk and walk from the day he was born and is very inquisitive in nature.

It was a really lovely film and it's great to see such quality from less mainstream movies. The style was really fresh and the backgrounds were full of texture and colour. It was very peculiar at times and also rather funny! It's nice that films like this may start to get more recognition, such as Persepolis (2007) another French film which was in every DVD shop when it came out.

After the film, we had a quick discussion about the film. Leonie explained that the future of UK animation would be more successful if it were to collaborate with European partners and do something unique, rather than try to be mainstream American animation. Then we went through our new handbooks for the session which explained what we would be doing and where.

It appears that this module will also include a 30 sec to 2 minute Narrative, Documentary or Abstract style animation for us to complete by the end of it. I hope that it does not collide with Matthew's character animation work!

When we had to move out of our lecture theatre, we met up again in E4 to discuss our folk tales that we had collected. Some of us read our folk tales out and then received feedback on the meaning behind the story, i.e. the moral and purpose.

I wanted to find a Welsh story, as I had heard some good ones in the past, and found one I had not heard of before, it was quite entertaining! I originally found it here: http://www.mysteriesofwales.com/storys.html

The Dragon of Denbigh

A Dragon once terrorized the town of Denbigh, Clwyd. It had taken over the ruined castle and was in the habit of darting out to attack and devour cattle and people.

The inhabitants of the town recruited the help of a local man called Sion Bodiau (Sir John of the Thumbs). This strange fellow had two thumbs on each hand, and so in the estimation of ordinary five
fingered folk he surely possessed the power to rid them of the dragon. Sir John was urged to approach the castle and tempt the dragon out.

He had little choice as he rode out towards it in full armour, lance at the ready. Behind him was a population that would have murdered him had he refused. Ahead was a fire-breathing dragon. Looking back at the faces of the women from the town he decided to take his chances with the dragon. This obliged by charging out of the castle and loomed down on Sion Bodiau.

But then the dragon halted short and stared down at the trembling hands, puzzling over the number of digits on display. The grateful knight saw his opportunity and plunged his lance into the dragon's
heart. He then drew his sword and chopped of the dragon's head. Sion was a hero, the people running through the town shouting `Dim Bych, Dim Bych` in celebration.

And to this day even though the town is called Denbigh in English, that name is a corruption of the Welsh Dinbych, pronounced `Dim bych locally (`no more dragon`).

---

Again, I didn't get an opportunity to tell my story, but the others had very interesting folk tales. We were then given our next assignment. We are to take our folk tale and skim through a newspaper, picking out relevant pictures for our story. Leonie demonstrated this with Little Red Riding Hood, by finding pictures of little school girls in red jumpers, red berries, and the skeleton of a crocodile to represent the wolf, all in the same paper.

The purpose is to be a little far-fetched and not to find pictures that perfectly describe your story (from say, the Internet) so that we can abstract our ideas a little. I shall be looking forward to next week, now all I need is a newspaper! :)

Narrative Strategies: Week 2

2010-02-18T00:35:00.000Z

On Tuesday 9th, our second lecture with Leonie covered creation myths. First some of us presented the myths that we had researched throughout the week. There were myths from Africa, North America (Iroquois), Asia and more! I had collected some myths that I enjoyed.

This myth from Japan (accessed here: http://www.cs.williams.edu/~lindsey/myths/myths_17.html) was one that I had looked at but was presented by another student during the lecture.

Japanese Creation Myth

Long ago all the elements were mixed together with one germ of life. This germ began to mix things around and around until the heavier part sank and the lighter part rose. A muddy sea that covered the entire earth was created. From this ocean grew a green shoot. It grew and grew until it reached the clouds and there it was transformed into a god. Soon this god grew lonely and it began to create other gods. The last two gods it made, Izanagi anf Izanami, were the most remarkable.

One day as they were walking along they looked down on the ocean and wondered what was beneath it. Izanagi thrust his staff into the waters and as he pulled it back up some clumps of mud fell back into the sea. They began to harden and grow until they became the islands of Japan.
The two descended to these islands and began to explore, each going in different directions. They created all kinds of plants. When they met again they decided to marry and have children to inhabit the land.

The first child Izanami bore was a girl of radiant beauty. The gods decided she was too beautiful to live in Japan, so they put her up in the sky and she became the sun. Their second daughter, Tsuki-yami, became the moon and their third and unruly son, Sosano-wo, was sentenced to the sea, where he creates storms.

Later, their first child, Amaterasu, bore a son who became the emperor of Japan and all the emperors since then have claimed descent from him.

From my notes, here is some information on creation myths...

Creation Myths were created by early human cultures to explain unknown phenomenons of the Universe. Despite great distances between civilisations at the time, most myths share similarities:

They begin with Birth and Reproduction.
A supreme being is present in nearly all myths.
Some cultures believe that life began above or below the Earth, in others, humans and animals once lived in harmony but were separated by the sin of humans.
Innocence may be taken by a God.
Symbolism is often present through eggs or water (birth)

After this, we watched The Story of Little John Bailey by Paul Driessen (1970) which demonstrated a typical fairytale story structure as well as abstract imagery that was understood as real things through a Narrator. I liked the blunt nature of the voice over, even though it said much more than was really needed, it was quite comedic in a way.

We also saw 3 Misses by the same animator (1998) which you can watch here: (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVKMLppNSgE) it was a wonderful little parody of a modern tale, a Western story and a Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs fairytale. It's full of quirky humour and funny (if a bit grim) violence. This also showed a fairytale structure (three sections being a big factor, except in this case the story is split up and shown in little parts) and how it can be used in a new new a different way.

Our next task is to find a folk tale that we enjoy to use in activities for future sessions, so we have to make sure it's a good one! :)

Character Development

2010-02-09T00:16:00.002Z

After a long week of designing, I have come up with my human character and animal character to begin animating this week! Here are my final model sheets for both, followed by my rough sketchbook designs to see the process and development! :)

Danielle is a 26-year-old mother to 3-year-old Justin and is married to a musician named Mark. She is quirky, fun-loving, off the wall and considerate of others, but she is also quite clumsy and can be prone to jealousy and laziness! Her passion is writing, whether it is novels or scripts and she enjoys listening to Kate Bush.

This is my Hippo character. As of yet, his or her's gender is ambiguous (partly because I haven't decided yet!) but he/she is rather effeminate. I'm interested in playing with contrasts between the Hippo and Danielle, perhaps making him/her extremely energetic and trying to be a graceful dancer which proves difficult because of their sheer weight! I rather like the 3/4 pose here.

Here are my first sketchbook drawings of Danielle and my Hippo, enjoy! =]

So far, I am quite happy with my design, but I'm going back to the drawing board a bit with Danielle. After speaking with Matthew, he found my woman to have almost too perfect proportions, which will either make animating very difficult or very boring. The problem is also coming up with an original style, which has already become necessary! So I'm trying to make her have more of a droopy 'sack-like' body like I tend to do in my life drawings to see if that's more interesting to animate. I may also try new mediums--we shall see!

The next week I will be spending doing a walk and run cycle for Danielle and a walk and run cycle of my Hippo! Wish me luck! =]

Gemma xxx

Narrative Strategies: Week 1

2010-02-09T00:01:00.000Z

As a part of my course, I am doing Narrative Strategies with our lecturer Leonie which will involve posting up my progress every week as homework. This is my report from week one! (2/2/2010)

This week we had a really interested unorthodox lecture about Creation Myths--the stories that early cultures invented to explain the unknown phenomenon's of the Universe (how did we get here? What is our purpose? etc...) through observation.

We were split into four groups, each one becoming four unique "worlds". My group, consisting of Bryony, Claire, Jess, Vikki and Zara chose the red world. This turned out to be a desert world where it was burning hot in the day and freezing in the night. Meteors rained down every generation, wiping out any people on the surface, but later crystallises the sand into glittering crystals. Lizards provided food and the crystals created an underground lake to provide water.

Our people were "beamed" down onto this planet with no knowledge of anything else and it was our task to figure out how to survive, come up with a belief system, why we were there and finally to write a short paragraph on a person within our world that overcame a great difficulty and was proclaimed a 'hero/heroine'.

Between us we came up with this...

Our world is called Crand, we live in an underground lake the provides us with shelter and water. Lizards on the surface are hunted by our warriors during the day for food by using sharpened crystals. We believe that the great rocks that rain down on us from the stars in the sky are judgment from the "Sun God" that rid us of evil people. Those of us left behind are blessed with crystals from the "Moon Goddess".

We breed lizards to carry sleighs (husky lizards!) and to be ridden by warriors. Their iridescent skins are used for clothing and protection from the sun.

We use crystals for everything, weapons, tools, carving on the walls of our home, and later instruments and jewelry. But there is one crystal that is of particular importance and that is our sacred crystal carved into the shape of a snowflake. This signifies a moment of clarity from our heroine, Briane. A long time ago, a great grey blanket covered the sky, the meteors stopped falling, our supply of crystals declined and our lake dried up. The Sun God and the Moon Goddess were hidden from us. Our people were worried about staying underground where there was no water or food or traveling the surface where it was too hot by day and too cold at night.

After many days, white flakes fell from the grey sky and our people panicked, surely it was further judgment from the Gods! The white flakes were very strange to us and our people decided they must leave. But one of us, young Briane, saw that the flakes would melt into water and convinced the people that this "snow" was a good thing. Sure enough, it all melted, replenishing the lake and allowing the lizards to return. Thus, our people could continue living in Crand, thanks to Briane. She carved a snowflake out of a crystal to commemorate the moment.

---

After discussing our stories and ideas, we were permitted to 'explore' the other worlds. Claire (our scribe) was to stay behind to tell our story to any passers by. My fellow Crand people and I, traveled to the Blue planet where a hero named Dave with long golden locks saved a island from a volcano by riding a flying fish using his hair as a bridle. We traded husky lizards for miracle water and fish; a Purple planet where they live in a strange poisonous jungle and eat hallucinogenic pears (we traded husky lizards and crystals for some, as well as centipede armor to protect us from the sun); and the Red planet where a man with a large nose harnessed the warmth of fire by bringing it back to their frozen hometown where none and managed before.

During this time, the Red planet declared war on us to steal our sacred items and the Blue planet by playing rock, scissors and paper. We both lost and they took our sacred snowflake and the Blue's loc of golden hair! Bryone fought back to regain our artifact, but she lost also.

Beaten, we used the hallucinogenic pears to get over our loss and rebuild our home anew!

All in all, a very fun session that definitely taught us how easy it can be to write an interesting story from just an outline of a world, or basic idea and make it richer by bouncing ideas off of one another. I found it very enjoyable and hope to have more sessions like it! :)

- Gemma

Catching Up!

2010-02-05T23:15:00.001Z

Ok, so it's been a long time since my last blog and I don't have a lot of time to keep it up to date, so I'm gonna have to speed through what I've been up to, hold on tight!

1. Back at Uni now! Had a chilled week with friends watching movies, playing games, etc, etc. Finally getting back into the swing of things but I'm already spending too much money! Cinema trips are just so expensive!

2. Watched Sherlock Holmes with my sister at the cinema. Awesome movie and although it's got lots of action and pretty dark plot, I've been told it's actually very accurate to the book, which makes me want to read it... But the film had great acting especially the interaction between Holmes and Watson, the English accents were pretty good, the story was interesting and surprisingly intelligent and it was overall entertaining and laugh out loud hilarious.

3. Completed Assassin's Creed II!!! All I can say is that this game is epic. Ezio starts a bit of a loser but then everything changes when his family is victim to a rather nasty conspiracy and your character grows into one hot badass! Ok, so I'm a little biased, but it was a great game with many improvements from the first (I completed this one 100% which I'm quite proud of! =] ) and I absolutely cannot wait until the next game! The ending (without spoiling it) was immense! I've heard they will be making it a trilogy, which I will be happy with, but they can do A LOT more with the storyline and I'm looking forward to seeing it unfold. I'd love to see a female assassin for the next game! :D

4. Received the project for my next animation brief and it is so much more exciting then my last one! I have to design an original character and a four-legged animal to use to animate a series of exercises over the next 12 weeks. I'm really enjoying creating my character at the moment, (her name is Danielle) and there will be development artwork coming soon for her and her "pet"! ^__^
We have to use the same character for every exercise so everyone is working hard on creating somebody that we will want to animate and love to draw. More on this on the weekend!

Only issue is the tight deadlines; we are gonna be worked to the bone this semester, but it will be so worth it!

5. Princess and the Frog!!! Finally saw this film today after months of waiting and was blown away! The art and animation was top-notch and was accompanied by a lovely story and excellent music. This is worth seeing at the cinema if just for the sound, which was incredible. The power of the songs was spine-tingling--well done again Randy Newman! I was a little disappointed with the design of Princess Tiana as a frog, it was pretty weak in comparison to Prince Naveen's frog design, and similarities to the Swan Princess was somewhat distracting at times.
Nevertheless, this is a superb film and will hopefully mark the return of 2D animation in feature films, which was sorely missed on my part. The production quality was excellent throughout, I believe that it proves itself at least as equal as 3D counterparts! With luck, other animation studios will think likewise!

6. Had an awesome time last night at a Comedy Central night in my Uni. I wasn't expecting anything hugely fantastic, but was pretty entertained by the first comedian who presented everyone. The second was good, but a bit of a Noel Fielding knock-off and had a tendency to lose audiences on long and rambling jokes. But the last... WOW! We had the absolutely fabulous Mitch Benn who came on with a little guitar and Thin Lizzy shirt and brought us all to tears with laughter. He interacted with (read as; make fun of) the crowd, made Star Wars sound effects, sang songs about killing James Blunt and a love song translation of men's dirty habits.
He was so good, Rob, Paul, Dale, Alex and I chipped in to buy one of his CDs afterwards. I have yet to listen to it yet, but will be burning it tomorrow! :D

7. Almost forgot! Got my grades and assessment back with good marks! I basically got the equivalent of an A minus for everything that I did last semester. Yay! ^__^
I had one of the best lectures ever the other morning too, I'll update with what happened another day as it will be a part of my homework to update my progress from the lessons!

So, yes! Having a great time, but don't expect to be hearing from me very often! This animation work is going to be occupying a lot of my time, but I'll post up my progress every now and then. =]
I also got FFIV for the DS to play at last, I've heard good things about it so looking forward to playing it!

Ta-Ta for now!
Love Gemma xxx

End of the Holidays

2010-01-16T20:53:00.001Z

Well, it's been a lovely month back at home, not that I've got much done mind! Mostly relaxing, spending time with family and friends and playing video games of course!

I completed Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days on the DS last week, the end wasn't particularly difficult, although the gameplay was a lot longer than expected. I clocked up almost 30 hours just playing the story mode. Although this may be because I tackled every mission on every day (you don't actually have to play 358 days though, some are skipped!) as sometimes you are given a few optional ones instead of just doing what needs to be completed to progress.

Overall, very enjoyable; nice story with a lovely yet sad ending that gave a bit more perspective to Roxas's story; great gameplay and levels; cool additions to the battle system and leveling system making customisation very easy and fun.

Unfortunately missions do get repetitive and you find yourself revisiting worlds more times than you'd like. Agrabah and Wonderland were frequented much too often for my liking, especially when there are lots of other awesome worlds you could be going that weren't included in the game. Tarzan and Mulan's worlds, for instance. And this is without considering the 'Challenges' you can unlock with the normal missions which give you more difficult versions of the levels. Through completing Challenges, you are rewarded 'Sigils' which earn you items at the Moogle shop.

In my case, I didn't feel they were particularly worth doing. I collected about 30 Sigils (you can get a maximum of 3 for completing a challenge) and finished the game over level 50, which was more than enough to beat the last bosses. And even then they were not as difficult as the boss at Beast's Castle or Halloween Town.

All in all, good game, but be prepared to play it a lot. I haven't tried the multiplayer yet, but looking forward to doing so with my friend Paul at Uni!

I also completed Assassin's Creed in late preparation for the new sequel (yes, I have been productive!). Great, great, great game. I loved the story, loved the gameplay, loved the visuals and Altair is badass indeed!

But like Kingdom Hearts, this game also became repetitive in nature and it would have been nice to have some more variety. Finding flags is pretty tedious and only for the satisfaction of an Xbox Achievement, and of course the whole thing about not being able to run anywhere without being up to something... Fortunately the sequel does correct this among other things.

I'm currently playing Assassin's Creed II and I'm about 70% finished judging by my in-game statistics. I really like what they added to it, it doesn't have the same feel as the first, but I love how full of historical references it is. It makes the story so much more immersive and plausible, it really makes you think again about what we know about history. So far I've been reading every little factoid that pops up in the game, even if it disrupts gameplay, just because it's so interesting!

I could go on listing everything that's different, but will stop there and leave the rest for when I review it after completion!

Apart from games, I saw a great Japanese film called Kamikaze Girls. It's about two teenage girls in a total style collision. The first loves the Rococo style where girls are delicate, feminine and wear lovely frilly dresses; the other, a 'Yanki' girl who wears baggy clothes, rides a customised scooter and is rude, violent and inappropriate.

I don't want to spoil it, so I'll just finish by saying it's brilliantly off the wall, wild and wacky, absolutely hilarious, very sweet and moving at times and has one of the best endings I have ever seen in a film! Definitely worth a watch!

I've also taken up an old digital painting I started last year and am making good progress despite being out of practice! Here's a preview...

Next week I'm heading back to Uni. I have a storyboard project to do which shouldn't take long and an assessment and then we begin character performance! I am really looking forward to expressing emotions, personality and even doing the lip-synching! (A lot of animators dread this!) The walk cycles should be fun too!

That's all from me for now, tomorrow I'll be seeing the new Sherlock Holmes film with my sisters, so bye for now!

Love Gemma xxx

Avatar (A Review)

2009-12-19T15:36:00.001Z

14 years in the making and the largest budget of a film ever, estimated at $230,000,000 and boasting the greatest CGI effects and animation of all time, does James Cameron's first film in 12 years, 'Avatar' meet our expectations?

My short answer, would be 'yes', but the film has received mixed reviews...

There is absolutely no doubt that the visuals are the best seen in just about any film. And it was worth the wait. It is clear how much our ability to create believable graphics and computer-generated characters has increased ten-fold. I say 'believable' simply because the content is of course fictional and I am leaving doubt as to whether perfectly photo-realistic graphics can actually exist or be accomplished. Certainly, Avatar does a very convincing job, but at the beginning it is obvious the imagery is a complex hybrid of live-action on green screen, matte painting, motion capture, computer-generated imagery and animation.

But saying that, as soon as you see the 'Na'vi' creatures in action, you are immediately drawn in. I was spellbound by how they looked and the way they moved. Seeing the likeness in a Sigourney Weaver Na'vi was particularly stunning. They have real expressions too! Unlike previous realistic computer-generated films such as Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children, where characters have stiff movement and blank expression a lot of the time.

Some argue the opposite of course, but I don't see why this level of detail would be ignored so easily. Of course, nothing like this could perfectly duplicate human life, but the characters are a different species altogether and this is the best example of computer graphics I've ever seen. The lighting and texture is so real and fleshed-out, far better than previous attempts that just look flat, rigid and completely "artificial". The claim that the public won't be able to tell the difference, is far-fetched, but you do read them as real characters as the film progresses and not just puppets. You forget that they are digital.

It's not just the characters however, but also the backgrounds, creatures and effects. The environments in long shots are epic and the glowing scenery at night time is absolutely beautiful. Watching this in 3D is a must, by the way. It has come a long way since those red and green plastic glasses!!

As has been highlighted by many reviewers, with all this money going into visuals, will the story hold it's ground? Thankfully, it does. Though the storyline has been told dozens of times before, (similarities can be drawn even to Disney's Pochontas!) Cameron brings fresh originality to the setting and characters that keeps you gripped for the whole 162 minutes (that's two and a half hours) with fast and punchy pacing that slows down in all the right places.

Like any film of this quality, certain sacrifices have to be made to make it 'safe' so that it will make a profit. And Avatar has a big profit to make! Thus, the story has a tendency to be predictable just before important plot points. Thankfully, these aren't too obvious from the beginning and there is plenty of guessing throughout the film. I do congratulate Cameron for telling this story so expertly so as to keep your attention for the full time, personally I have a tendency to 'space out' on shorter 2 hour films, but this had me for the entire time, whether it was the character interaction, the beautiful visuals/animation or the impact of a particular event in the story; I was gripped.

I loved this film, I consider it the best one I've seen all year and must-see for anyone with an interest in film, animation, Sci-fi and storytelling full of action, suspense and even a little romance and comedy.

For another spoiler-free view of this film that explains it much better than I ever could, please check out this video! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PxhL_Ru-Yqs

Bye for now! =)

Where The Wild Things Are (A Review)

2009-12-19T14:46:00.001Z

Where The Wild Things Are is a brand new film directed by Spike Jonze, based on the popular 30-page children's book of the same name by Maurice Sendak. But don't be mistaken by assuming this is a film for kids. Spike Jonze (Director of 'Being John Malkovich' and various music videos) does not patronise the audience and creates a much darker and spookier film like the original book suggests.

We are introduced to a young boy named Max. His world is full of imagination and creativity and he wants nothing more than to live his childhood to the full, but sadly he has no one to share it with. His sister ignores him and his mother has other things to worry about. Sounds typical? But no, the way this subject has been tackled is totally real and unique. The way the characters are filmed, their emotions and what they say is unlike anything I've seen in the beginning of a film before.

An interesting note... The very first shot shows Max chasing his dog around in his 'wolf' costume. I didn't realise this when watching but my friends told me later that he was actually chasing the dog with a fork and you don't see the unfortunate animal in the film after this scene... Hmm...

After falling out with his sister when he is trapped in his own igloo and hurt by her friends, and getting into a row with his mother and biting her in front of her new boyfriend, troubled Max runs away and into the forest. Here he discovers a boat which he sails to the world of the 'Wild Things'. The Wild Things accept him as their 'king' and Max finally has friends to play games with.

The film does not have a specific storyline, if anything it's just a sequence of random events past this point. The characters are set up perfectly, but once we reach the other world, it's all about the characters and their development. Each Wild Thing represents a different part of Max, although the outcast girl creature, KW, represents his relationship with his sister and mother.

This creates fascinating tensions between characters as, in a sense, Max is building friendships and/or rivalries with different aspects of himself and you can see this develop throughout the film. The roles of Carol, Judith, KW and Alexander are particularly important to Max's self-realisation.

Visually the film is beautiful. All of the creatures are played by real people in costumes with some digital effects on the faces to enhance emotions. When these guys cry, you feel sadness with them, and when they are angry and rampaging they are very scary indeed! The film uses wonderful earthy colours and it has a traditional grainy look to it which stays true to the original artwork.

I didn't particularly like how the Wild Things first appeared, I don't know how they were shown in the book, but I prefer how we first see Carol in the trailer, as opposed to the film where they are not left very ambiguous. Speaking of the trailer, the use of music is amazing. The original trailer music, 'Wake Up' by 'Arcade Fire' is a glorious and uplifting song which fits the themes of this film perfectly and has such an independent feel to it. We don't see this song in the film, but the original music orchestrated for it reflects the feelings in this song and is just as superbly written, if not quite as good.

Overall, if you love to see a film with something different to offer with great characters and development, then definitely see Where The Wild Things Are. For a film adapted from such a short book, taking away nothing yet adding so much more, Spike Jonze has done a superb job. I would not recommend it for young viewers as it can be quite scary and upsetting at times, but neither is it adult. It's a lovely feel-good piece that definitely grows on you.

Welcome Home... Paramore!

2009-12-19T13:56:00.000Z

Got back last Wednesday to spend my holidays at home. I should have a whole month off Uni as my course has an extra two weeks with nothing timetabled until the 25th. Unlike my unfortunate boyfriend who has to return on the 11th. :(

I do however, have a 2500 word essay to write about animation to hand in on the 13th. But I can send this to my friend Rob to hand in for me as he is returning early with his fiance. So all is good!

I came back a little earlier than everyone else to go to Paramore's concert in Manchester. It was epic! I didn't see what all the fuss was about for the last support act, 'You Me At Six'; they sounded completely generic and not memorable whatsoever. Fortunately Paramore were incredible and played most of their hits including, 'Emergency', 'That's What You Get', 'Crushcrushcrush', 'I Caught Myself' a lot of tracks from their new album: 'Ignorance', 'The Only Exception' 'Careful' and followed up with an incredible three-song encore: 'Misguided Ghosts', 'Misery Business' and 'Brick by Boring Brick'.

I missed hearing 'All I Wanted' from their line-up, as it is my favourite from their new album and I would have loved to hear Hayley hit those incredibly high notes live that she does in the song. Overall, great crowd interaction, fantastic performances and improvisation and very lively with a good atmosphere! My sister and I bought a T-Shirt each that were very cool also. =)

If you haven't heard their new album, 'Brand New Eyes', I would suggest you do so as they have definitely come back with a bang!

Since getting back, I have been relaxing and still recovering from my mad week of Uni work! I have a lot planned over the holidays in terms of meeting friends and family, going ice skating, going to the zoo, cinema etc... So I'll only be updating now and again with odd updates and stuff.

Until then, I am about to follow up with journal with two short reviews for 'Where The Wild Things Are' and 'Avatar', so stay tuned!
Love Gemma xxx

A Hectic Week of "Torture" and a "Drug-Laced Salad"

2009-12-11T15:30:00.001Z

Apologies for not updating too frequently the past few weeks. What was once supposedly a 4-5 week project suddenly became just two weeks and everyone has been working so hard this week to complete our Manifesto project.

The premise is to take an art manifesto/movement, look at it's purpose and intentions and create a 30-60 second animation inspired by those ideas. I went with the surrealist manifesto by Andre Bréton and created a surreal poem from newspaper clippings and re-assembled them in a completely random order to connote a sense of humour and being illogical. The results were quite interesting, it was funny and random but also had thought-provoking messages within it. The title is inspired by one of the lines that appeared in the poem: "Disneyland, you're a drug laced salad".

This took just a few days to complete, but it involved very intense working hours! Monday I came up with my final idea after realising that I could do my animation around the text of the poem, rather than just thinking of visuals inspired by it. Tuesday morning I recorded the voices in the soundbooth at Uni. Tuesday afternoon I did all the under the camera animation, using photocopied sheets of the newspaper poem, splattering paint on glass over it, scrunching it up all sorts. I spent about 4-5 hours doing this alone and finished it with a very bad back indeed. It was enjoyable though as I haven't done any animation with paint before and I hadn't used colour in a Uni animation until now.

Wednesday was spent editing. This literally took all afternoon and all night. I animated the 3D text that flies past the screen in After Effects using a tutorial by Andrew Kramer (http://www.videocopilot.net) which helped enormously. I then took everything into Adobe Premiere and started putting my audio to the animation from yesterday.

Editing all the voices took far longer than I expected, as I alternated voice every word or couple of words. It reminded me a lot of Radiohead's "Fitter. Happier." (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8EoukRWQ-ec) and was partly inspired by it, but I only realised the similarities afterwards.

Wednesday evening I started exporting--oh the exporting!!! My least favourite part of any project has the potential to take the longest. I have a bad history with exports going wrong (random errors, wrong aspect ratio, no sound or picture, poor quality etc...) and that night was no exception. I hadn't even had any dinner and I was there trying to get an MOV and AVI version of my film from around 6pm until 11pm when I was finally happy with my export! It's madness!

I was up until the early hours making a power point for a presentation on 'The Prestige' the next day, so very little sleep this week also.

Thursday morning I had a good lecture with Caroline and Emily on the second part of Post-Modernism and Post-Humanism which was fascinating. We also got to see a whole episode of SPACED (The episode, "Pain") which was hilarious and I had been looking forward to it for a long time! =]

Thursday afternoon I spent completing my sketchbook for submission today, writing evaluations, finishing my power point and helping Rob and Vikki with their projects. Had an earlier night too which was fortunate.

Zara, Rob and I were also supposed to have our film presentation that afternoon at 4pm, but we had it moved to today (Friday) at 10am in E4. We were just giving the presentation to Caroline, so thank goodness there wasn't a lot of pressure! Just to clarify, everyone has to do a group presentation on a film, I am doing mine earlier as I am going home the day before everyone else is arranged to have theirs!

So it went really well! We basically just talked about The Prestige for half an hour and went really in-depth and we were all really relaxed and talkative (despite being extremely tired--Rob had only had two hours sleep that morning!), we didn't even get told off for going over ten minutes! =D

After that was over, I worked up until 12pm finishing all of my work for submission and burning it to CDs. Rob and I actually submitted our work at the desk several minutes after the deadline, but got away with it as there were a few people submitting on the hour. I am so happy that is over and done with now though, it has been a very stressful week for everyone!

I was going to go to the cinema today with everyone to celebrate, but we've moved it to next Tuesday to give everyone a rest and hardly anyone could go anyway! "Where The Wild Things Are" shall have to wait! XD

And a recap on previous news, I went back home last weekend for my Mum's birthday and to see my very poorly guinea pig, Truffles. But sadly my guinea passed away on the Sunday, aged 6 and a half, so she had a very good life though it was a sad day for all. =[

Well, that's all for now, I'm off to have a weekend of well-deserved sleep and recovery and I'll blog again soon with thoughts on "Where The Wild Things Are". I am also going back home on Wednesday to see Paramore in Manchester--gonna be goooood!!! ^^

Until then, bye-bye!
Love Gemma xxx

Last Life Drawing

2009-12-11T14:27:00.000Z

A week last Monday was my last Life Drawing session in the studio at Newport. Late report, I know, but the workload this past two weeks has been phenomenal and blogging was rendered impossible.

Being our last session, Elfyn let us experiment with our own mediums for once. We warmed up as usual with some blind self-portraits, though I haven't been able to scan these properly yet. So I'll skip ahead to show you my contour drawing of Juliet along with a half-hour pencil tone study and another half-hour colour paint study...

As normal, please click on the thumbnails to enlarge... I feel these were very successful drawings. The contour drawing is the best one I've done in that style I think and the tone and colour studies are nice and communicate well but would have liked more time on them!

I have my life drawing presentation next Monday, which is just a power point of my favourite work thus far... Should be good, though always a little nervous about talking about my own work...

Next post: my last animation for this semester and general updates!

And Another Thing...

2009-11-25T15:36:00.002Z

My friend Paul got this awesome Ezio figurine with Assassin's Creed II and it's so beautifully crafted and painted I had to do a spontaneous photo shoot with my mobile phone camera.

These are heavily touched up and re-coloured in Photoshop, but hopefully still preserve the beauty of this model! Thanks Paul! :D

Enjoy some of favourite pictures...

Ok, bye-bye for real this time! :D
Love Gemma xxx

Life Drawing in Cardiff Take 2

2009-11-25T15:25:00.001Z

This week, the intention was to arrive at Winter Wonderland in Cardiff at 12pm to draw the ice skaters there. But as usual, the Welsh weather spoiled our plan and the rink was instead a shallow pool. Plan B was to visit the art museum next door, naturally, the museum was not open on a Monday, so we reverted to the city centre and drawing at St. David's shopping centre again.

It was a good session this time though, Zara and I did some good work outside drawing people with umbrellas and all huddled up and gloomy from the cold. Inside, we found Matthew at these nice circular sofas overlooking an escalator, so that was a fantastic place to draw. My results can be seen below, experimenting with pencil, pen and a little charcoal, though this wasn't too successful.

Please click to enlarge the pictures as always. :) I think these are starting to improve again after two slightly disappointing classes. Here are my results from the previous trek to Cardiff Bay (see previous post).

I may upload my last indoor drawing session, only that I did it on two A3 pieces of paper taped together, which would mean scanning each piece four times and stitching it together--not fun!

Anyway, I spoke to Matthew on the "good" Cardiff session last Monday and he gave me a printout of my life drawing feedback which was very complimentary! Basically it's all great--I can carry on as I'm doing but concentrate on looking ahead to where I'm going. As in, introducing more experimentation and colour, doing some animal studies and thinking about my characters to use to get closer to my goals and dream career (Character animator / Character concept artist / Storyboard artist etc for Video Games or Movies... so obviously believable characters and storytelling are my near-goals).

We also talked about where I could go for work experience next year and where my work could take me. Pixar has been mentioned a few times, which makes me very happy and excited!

In other news, my friend Rob from animation is now engaged to his girlfriend, Charlotte, so congratulations to them both! They make a lovely couple. :)

I saw "The Men Who Stare At Goats" at the cinema with my boyfriend Alex last weekend, which was really nice. The film itself was pretty good, certainly entertaining and thought-provoking. I don't think it was great for the big screen, it was quite short and seemed like a small scale film, the kind better suited to TV or DVD really. Peculiar, considering the star actors in the cast.

With such an amazing collection of actors, the performance could only be brilliant. The script is good, if a bit random. But overall pretty funny with some extraordinary facts and is very relevant to today.

My next animation project, "Manifesto" was introduced to us yesterday, but to be honest, it's awfully confusing! We have to do a presentation in pairs next Tuesday morning and nobody knows whether we are analysing and presenting an image that we like, or researching an art movement (e.g. Cubism, Dadaism) that we like or agree with it's intentions and talking about that. The lecture itself was rather confusing also, it tailed off into the realms of what art actually is, and lost everybody in its complexity.

We haven't even decided partners yet! Never mind, we'll get something together in time.

Anyway, I'll keep you all posted, apologies for not posting last week, I am busy with a commission outside of Uni and it's pretty time-consuming. Almost done now though. I will post a link if and when I am allowed to publish it.

Can't wait for Christmas break! I'm also coming back a couple of days early to see Paramore in Manchester with my sis, Emily and Alex----excited!!! Their new album 'Brand New Eyes' is stunning. :D

But for now, cheerio!
Love Gemma xxx

Abstract Animation, Weekend Wonder, Christmas Carol and Cardiff Fail

2009-11-09T18:39:00.001Z

Unlike the title, this post will be documenting the mentioned topics in reverse order, because I am currently in sleep deprivation mode.

Today was supposed to involve life drawing in Cardiff Bay from 10am-1pm, but after a 20 minutes walk from the train station and a wander around, we concluded that the entire area was deserted. It was a little unexpected as normally it is supposed to be absolutely packed. But I took some nice pictures of the buildings and the bay and various Doctor Who signs in the area.

It was worth seeing the place, but after returning to Cardiff and having an unproductive session drawing shoppers in the St. Davids shopping centre, I couldn't wait to get home! At first some officials came up to us asking what we were doing and we got the impression that we were not permitted to draw random people walking past (which I find utterly ridiculous considering that it is impossible to capture any detail of a person they are gone so quickly!) however it turned out we were allowed to sketch them, but we couldn't sit down--not even out of the way!

I assume that was due to obstruction, despite being nowhere near anyone walking past. Ah well.

It was certainly a relief getting back home, I caught up on some sleep and warmed up and then my flatmates and I blitzed the kitchen--it was in need of a very good clean! It looks quite nice though, but could still do with curtains to make it more homely.

OK, a little rewind now. My sister, Emily came over for the weekend taking to train straight from her college, which was pretty convenient! I made dinner for her, Jess and Vikki who came over Friday night to eat and watch movies in celebration of finishing out animations (I will come to this later). We saw Goldmember and Dudley Doright and had a great night, later joined by Dale and Alex.

Saturday was a bit of a chillout 'nothing' day. 'Cause apart from washing towels, we pretty much did nothing! On Sunday we went all out. We visited the Roman Amphitheater in Newport which I haven't been to before. It was actually really cool and looks like a great spot for picnics when it's sunny.

After that, we took a bus and train to Cardiff for shopping! We went to the relocated Disney shop and bought 'Up' pins and badges! It was an awesome find, so awesome in fact, that I went back and bought two more pins for £3 each for Jess and Vikki too! Emily got a lovely soft new scarf and we had a big explore of most of the shops.

In hindsight, we probably should have gone on Saturday, as everywhere shuts early on a Sunday and it's difficult to get buses. There was also lots I hadn't looked into properly, so we didn't have a very well planned out weekend! Emily wants an itinerary next time!

After shopping we went to the cinema to see '9', (Em had not seen it yet) but there were no showings at the time, so we saw 'A Christmas Carol' by Robert Zemeckis and starring Jim Carrey instead. I had rather mixed feelings about it and have much to discuss, but shall try to be brief!

The first point, which has been said by many already, is of course the decision to remake a story that has already been adapted to death. This makes it difficult to really stand out as a unique and creative version and avoid copying previous films. I felt that 'A Christmas Carol' fails to do this.

Once again, high tech graphics and the pursuit of photo realistic animation left little room for story development. The film starts promising and a lot of attention is put into showing exactly how cruel and cold-hearted Scrooge is, but his character is lost somewhere in the middle only to be redeemed for five minutes at the end with some great acting and dialogue by Jim Carrey, who gives an excellent performance. But it's really not enough, and instead we are given pointless action sequences in which Scrooge attempts to escape the clutches of the final spirit.

It was mildly entertaining but didn't particularly deliver what Zemeckis was trying to hype up about this film. His previous work shows such expert storytelling, ('Back to the Future' being a classic example) but he appears to have put that skill aside in favour of 'real life' computer animation. And yet, for most of the film, I found it completely unconvincing! Perhaps it is different in 3D (I saw it in 2D) and perhaps I have a different perspective being able to spot CGI a mile off, but the movement often felt rigid, textures were sometimes flat and the lighting looked incredibly artificial (this being true, it's not supposed to be quite so obvious).

While there are some lovely shots and the camera movements had an interesting style (though it's refusal to 'cut' to another shot was a little annoying) and Jim Carrey's likeness is quite scary, I didn't find it enough, though certainly a good attempt. Also, did anyone else notice how long it took for Scrooge to realise it was him who had passed away in the future? He even sees his own dead body under a sheet in his bed, but has to see his name on a gravestone before he actually twigs. Why couldn't they just go straight to the gravestone like in 'The Muppet Christmas Carol'? Personally I consider the latter a much better adaptation that did a better adaptation, though the Muppet's are definitely difficult to beat!

Nevermind, I think I've had enough of a rant now. It was a good attempt, but very disappointing Zemeckis. I would have loved to see more of Jim Carrey's hilarious dialogue and performance throughout as there were some fantastic moments with his character development! Ah well...

Finally my sister and I got back home, had dinner and had an awesome night of gaming at Alex's flat before hitting the hay. I had to get up very early today however, to see Em off to the train back to college and to catch my own train to Cardiff...

And at long last, my animation! Apologies for the long rant! Here it is, all finished and complete with sound!

It was quite a task to complete, I was in my animation room all Thursday morning, afternoon and night to get it finished. I think it was worth it and I actually did something that was quite abstract I think. I used a lot of charcoal though, (thanks Vikki for the extra ones!) and only managed 25 seconds of pure animation out of the intended 30, but got it to 37 seconds with some editing and 'atmospheric' black screens. We have a presentation tomorrow to show our animations to our class and to talk a bit about it as well, here comes some on the spot improvisation!

Also, here is a video that my sister made at college for an anti drink and drive advert competition, her group came through as winners in their county and are through to the nationals next I think!

There Is No Reset Button from Emily Roberts on Vimeo.

That's all from me now methinks, time for some food and digital Disney drawing with Jess tonight, ciao!

Love Gemma xxx

Birthday Weekend and Cinema Double-Whammy

2009-10-29T17:22:00.000Z

Last weekend (23-25th) I traveled back home on the train for my birthday as well as my boyfriend's. It was a good journey with no changes on the train and it was quite cheap! It was lovely to see my family again and not have to cook!

I received some fab pressies as well, including the book of Simon's Cat from my younger sister, the new Kingdom Hearts game for the DS from my middle sister, several Disney DVDs and animated films, the Quentin Tarantino boxset from Alex, Resistance by Muse, Rebuilt by Humans by Newton Faulkner and Nation by Terry Pratchett from my parents. There was a duplicate of Kingdom Hearts DS, but I changed it the other day for Pokemon Diamond Version which I can't wait to play!

Monday morning however, the break came to an abrupt end as Alex and I had to get up at 5am to catch a train at 6:20am to get back to Newport for 9am so I could go to life drawing for 10am! It was a very barmy morning. >.<

When I got back to my flat, I entered the kitchen to discover posters from Fast Cars and Max Power all over the walls. In other words, half-naked girls and cars are now all over the walls. Hmm... I suspected in was the only guy in my flat that put them up, and I was right! >.<

My flatmates did make it up by coming into my room singing happy birthday with a chocolate muffin cake with a candle in it and a bar of Milka chocolate--yum! I also received a lovely gift from my animation friends, Jess, Bry, Vikki and Rob--an Eeyore bowl and a little Stitch toy! It was really nice of them. :)

I've also polished up my idea for our current 'Manifesto' project in which we must express a doing word using abstract imagery and sound without drawing ANYTHING figuratively. For example, one of my choices is playing the piano, meaning that I wouldn't be able to animate a piano, a person, the keys, pedals, or the hands. But I COULD have piano music going over it.

I didn't choose that option however, as I thought it too obvious. Instead, my keyword is to look through a keyhole. I will post some works in progress of it sometime this week. Basically I am expressing it through black pastel and trying to create an atmospheric piece that focuses on sound after a talk with Matthew. I'm going to be recording some sound for it today and tomorrow and begin animating as well!

But I digress. As my title implies I went to the cinema yesterday for two films back-to-back. "Fantastic Mr. Fox" and "9". They were both very different and very interesting in their own way.

The models, costumes and set-design in "Fantastic Mr. Fox" were astounding. The screenshot above might give some idea of the level of detail that went into them. The animation, although very good, was quite stiff at times. This was probably affected somewhat by the more old school approach to the entire process. Very few digital effects (if any) seemed to have been used. Effects like smoke are done with grey cotton wool and the fire looked like little flickering cut-outs.

This clearly lent itself to the very quirky style of the film, so it all fit in together somewhere. The voice acting was great and the script had some really lovely moments and character interaction. I think it is by far one of the most interesting Roald Dahl adaptations, although they had to add a lot of 'filler' into the story as the original book was quite short.

On the other hand, "9" was perhaps the opposite. It was far darker than any Western animation in recent years (even surpassing Coraline) and is actually rated a 12a, which is a first as far as I know (excluding anime of course!).

I liked this for not aiming itself at children and trying to show that animation can be enjoyable for older audiences as well. Set in a post-apocalyptic environment where mankind have been wiped out by their own technological advancements, only a group of 'sock puppets' brought to life by a scientist remain on Earth.

The story wasn't especially unexpected, but the art direction was very unique and different with cute canvas puppets and creepy-looking skeletal robots. It was actually based on a short student film by Shane Ackner in 2005 which Tim Burton saw and approached to make a feature film out of it. The film is on Youtube below...

The original is fantastic for a student film, and the feature definitely pushes it further, yet keeping it short and sweet at only 79 minutes long. It also continues the message that many previous films have established before in that should technology pursue artificial life and intelligence? Probably a bad idea says "9"!

Anyway, another day gone and I still haven't begun animating! Though I did see an interesting documentary on Walt Disney which could be summarised with this amazing quote: "as a producer and a filmmaker, Walt was brilliant, on the other hand, he was a son of a b*tch.". There was some pretty shocking stuff surrounding his success! Ah well, it hasn't tainted my enjoyment of his films too much I hope! >.<

Spaghetti bolognese tonight, work, maybe a film, then bed! Til next time, ciao! :)
Love Gemma xxx

Life Drawing with Martin

2009-10-29T15:33:00.001Z

Life drawing from another session on Monday 26th, I had just got back from visiting my family on the weekend of my birthday and was absolutely exhausted. Still, I just about managed to draw our first male nude model this year, Martin.

First, here's the homework that I did for the session. The first, 20-30 gesture drawings of people (at a train station) and a 4-6 hour self-portrait. The self-portrait in fact took about 4 hours using pencil on A3 paper with some photographic reference and a mirror.

My life drawing tutor, Elfyn, liked my self-portrait and wants me to do some contour tracings of it using pencil and biro for the next session in three weeks. I think the outcome wasn't too bad!

Here are the drawings in session, we did fewer pictures but spent far longer on each one.

The drawing above is another "blind" self-portrait as a warm-up (using right hand to draw, left hand to feel my face as a guide and not looking at the page). We spent about 20 minutes on these. I think it's an improvement from my first one... Sort of... (pencil and biro)

A contour drawing, 30 minutes, pencil.

This was a large one on two sheets of A3, stitched clumsily together in Photoshop. Pencil, one hour. After finishing the bottom half, my tutor told me to draw the ceiling on the page above too.

Overall, a good session! :)

Life Drawing at Cardiff

2009-10-20T20:11:00.000+01:00

Yesterday my group were scheduled to meet at the Cardiff train station at 10am for life drawing with Matthew. This was a bit of a mission as it meant getting up at 6:50am, showering, getting ready, catching the 8:15am bus to Newport, stopping off at Zara's in Opal, and heading to Newport's train station at around 9am to catch a 9:30am train to Cardiff. AND, when we got there, Zara and I couldn't use our student railcards because you can only use them after 10am!!!

But fortunately, Zara, Claire and I did get to Cardiff on time and met with Matthew and only 3 out of 12 other students for life drawing. As we walked over to where our drawing would take place (Bute Park), several students were ringing Matthew saying they were lost etc, and we found three more classmates at the entrance to the park. In the end, there were about 9 of us, but it wasn't a very good turn-out.

Although it was quite a trek to the park, it was absolutely HUGE. It must have taken us 30-40 minutes to walk from one end to the other, and even then we didn't go to the very end of the park! It was a really lovely location however, the autumn leaves were falling off the trees and there were loads of wildlife in the river. There was some sunshine and it wasn't too cold either.

So in the end it was definitely worth all the trouble to get there on time and the drawing experience was very rewarding! (Especially since we got to draw and feed the horseys!) =)

Next week I have to do a 4-6 hour self-portrait and a whole bunch of small gesture drawings like the sketches above. It's quite a lot of work considering everything else we have to do, which brings me to our next animation project.

Today our lecture with James involved splitting into pairs and showing/discussing each other's images that we collected over the past week. I was up all last night doing a power point for my pictures, so it was a relief that I got to show and talk about them to Rob. It was a pretty in-depth talk!

After this we were each given a different set of keywords for our next animation, which is not allowed to be figurative and has to show something in more of an abstract sense. We were given these cards to choose from which in turn had several words or phrases on them, most of them 'doing' words.

My card contained the following...

Looking through a keyhole
Wringing out a cloth
Playing the piano

Obviously, the piano one would be the easiest of the three to express without actually drawing the action, particularly as you can use piano music to help. I'm feeling quite drawn to the keyhole option though, simply because I think I could be quite creative with it. I have until next week to come up with and start my idea (the actual deadline for this being in two weeks from now) so we'll see how it goes!

Apart from that, today has been rather grim and it hasn't stopped pouring it down. Now I'm going to be off for dinner and a movie!
Ta ta for now!
Love Gemma xxx

Cardiff Extravaganza

2009-10-18T15:23:00.000+01:00

Yesterday myself and the animation girlies (Jess, Bryony and Vikki) all went into Cardiff for some Disney shopping! (We are somewhat obsessed!)
This was sparked from the need to check out the new merchandise for Up.

Originally, my boyfriend and friends, Dale and Paul were supposed to join us, but they went later to go to the cinema to see The Invention of Lying.

So anyway, we checked out the Forbidden Planet shop in Cardiff which was INCREDIBLE. It was full of any Marvel, DC comic, figurine and manga you could think of and had a good range of posters, T-shirts and books. Just browsing the two floors of goodness could take days! Unfortunately, it was hideously over-priced! Most of the items there could be bought for half as much online, so we didn't buy anything. :(

Next stop, lunch! Jess had recommended this Japanese-style restaurant called Wagamama, and it was stunning. It was in this beautiful glass library and was so clean and stylish. There were rows of tables and you get chopsticks! Most of the food was the usual ramen soup, noodles and rice dishes, but the portions are really generous and it was absolutely scrummy!

We took pictures of our 'victory poses' as the food was so much it was quite a task to eat it all! It was a really awesome meal until I managed to pour a whole glass of water onto my tights because we were taking pictures through glasses at one point. Sod's law that I should pick up the glass with water in it!

So after a really nice and not too expensive meal, it was off to find the Disney store! It was a little tricky to find as we hadn't explored the area before but we got there eventually and took pictures outside (we must have looked like really crazy tourists). It was AWESOME! It was about the same size as the one back home in Chester but seemed to have even more goodies!

I bought an adorable Stitch pin, (apparently Disney pins are a big collecting craze, especially in America!) a Lady magnet and a fluffy Eeyore plushie (because I love him and haven't had a cuddly toy of him before!). There were some Up toys there too, but the range wasn't great and the cuddly toys didn't seem very well made (the Kevin toys got the colouring all wrong!). There were some lovely magnets and I wanted one of Doug but sadly they were marked and dirty. :( You could get an Up pin there, but you needed to present a Vue ticket to prove that you've seen Up at the cinema and we saw it at Cineworld--NOOOOO!!!!

So in the end, we dropped in at The Works on the way back and I bought a great hardback A3 sketchpad with 80 pages for life drawing and it was only £4.99! I also found the most adorable Up storybook with full colour illustrations and a lovely squishy hardback cover. It was supposed to be £9.99, but I bought it here for £2.99! Bargain!!! <3

After an awesome girly day out, we got back at about 7:30pm after a train and taxi back, absolutely exhausted. I got back to my flat to discover one of my flatmates was having friends over and that it would be "noisy". A couple of hours later, music is blaring out and people keep accidentally stumbling into my room thinking it was the bathroom (until I locked the door).

I went out for a snack after they left to go drinking in Newport and the kitchen was trashed. It wasn't just beer bottles and cans and tops everywhere, but food on the floor, spilled drinks on the table and playing cards and sweet wrappers all over the place. Yuck!!!

So I stayed at my boyfriend, Alex's for the night 'cause I didn't want to wake up to that in the morning! Fortunately they have tidied up a bit today and I have been told by Rachael that they will clean up properly later *fingerscrossed*!

Anywho, I have some work to do for next week and we have curry night to prepare for today, although it will only be Alex, Dale, Paul and I as everyone else went back to Wrexham for the weekend! Next Friday I'll be heading home with Alex for our birthdays, which I'm really looking forward to! :)
Love Gemma xxx

Life Drawing

2009-10-14T23:02:00.000+01:00

Yesterday I managed to get into the Library to scan in my life drawings from my past two sessions, so here they are! Please click on the images to read more about them as I wrote text on them to explain what some of them are about. :)

Session One: Outdoor observational drawing in Newport 5-10-09

I received good feedback for these from my lecturer, Matthew, and look forward to the next session! It was interesting because the older and fatter people were far more interesting to draw than anyone else. This sparked some humorous comments among my classmates! :P

Session Two: Indoor life drawing at Barnabus House, Newport

My second session of life drawing was a little frustrating as we had to keep changing between using our left and right hands to draw. Also, the time we were given for each pose was a little random. Some drawings are as little as two minutes while others were more like ten. I often found that I wanted to stop working on a drawing as I work quite quickly and I was concerned that I would "kill it".

Our other life drawing tutor, Elfyn, is a little more intense than Matthew and he was constantly telling us to keep our eyes on the model and off of the paper which was incredibly difficult at times. Nevertheless, it was an interesting class and I felt there was some improvement in my work and Matthew said so as well so I must have been doing something right!

I saw Up again today, it's still so emotional! It was just as beautiful the second time round. :)

Tomorrow morning is our weekly lecture with Caroline and then the rest of the week is free for my own work! Hurrah! I think I will be doing a collaboration of some sort with Jess tomorrow evening, we are very eager to do some drawing together!

Until next time, bubye!

Love Gemma xxx

Up, Up, Up! [Edited]

2009-10-12T00:35:00.002+01:00

I finally saw it! Pixar's latest animated classic, "Up"! I really can't understand why it took so long to get a UK release over here, but in some ways the wait was worth it. Quite simply, this film is beautiful. I could not believe it. Ten minutes in and I was crying my eyes out with my two friends from animation, Jess and Vikki.

A lot of it is using simple montage and very little dialogue to piece together the protagonist's (Carl Fredricksen) life with his wife, Ellie. But the imagery used is so powerful and the events so tear-jerking that you become emotionally attached in less than ten minutes. By the end of it, I was reduced to a blubbering mess, and the film had barely started.

The rest of the film of course contained laugh out loud comedy, gorgeous animation, a gripping story and all of the charm that we have come to expect from Pixar. I dare not describe the story as I would probably get so caught up I would spoil most of this amazing feature. So I will exclude the synopsis and just say that this is a must-see!

I was so touched by this film, I have never seen anything at a cinema that has made me both laugh and cry in one sitting. It was equally as enjoyable as "WALL-E" last year! And I'm definitely going to see it again next Wednesday. Memories from "Up" have been replaying in my mind since I came out of the cinema, it is full of nostalgia and sentimental value, regardless of whether you are young or old (young children in the cinema were even getting upset) or if you have a significant other or not. If you haven't seen this film, I insist you buy yourself a ticket as soon as physically possible.

Other than this there is nothing to report here! I had a fajita night with about seven other people just now and had a really good time cooking and talking. I think we are going to make a weekly thing of it, which will be really nice.

Tomorrow is another session of life drawing. I'll be inside drawing the nude model this time! Looking forward to it (but not in a wrong way of course!) when will us artists be understood???

UPDATE

My friend Zara has just uploaded her Metamorphosis animation to Youtube, please check it out as she is a wonderful artist and animator!

Love Gemma xxx

Final Animation

2009-10-09T16:05:00.000+01:00

After a week of toiling over page after page and doing nothing to help reduce tree consumption, myself and my group have finished our metamorphosis...es?

Here is my final animation running at 11 seconds long!

I have also found one of my fellow classmates on Youtube, here is Jess' animation as well!

I'm really excited for tonight as well, I have my animation friendies over for some digital drawing and then we're going to Rob's for another pizza and Xbox 360 gaming session, gonna be awesome!

I went out for a lovely meal last night with my boyfriend, Alex and his Dad, it was really nice and it was great to have a proper dinner for once!

Also, I believe I have forgotten to mention that Alex has been upgraded here at Uni. Originally he applied for the Film & Video course but his interview didn't go well and he was offered foundation instead. Of course, at college he made an amazing film (which you can watch below) and achieved the best grade at National Diploma level! So, he recently got speaking to the Uni about the problem, met the leader of the Film course, showed the leader his final film and he was so impressed he got a place! I am very happy and proud for him!!! :)

Here is his fabulous film! (Starring the amazing Ally Goodman and Eduardo Evers-Swindell!)

Here's to another great week! :D
Missing everyone back home and really looking forward to my visit!
Love Gemma xxx

Metamorphosis Animation Test

2009-10-06T18:37:00.001+01:00

Hello all, my animation project is going really well so far, I've done 68 keyframes and a load of in-betweens yesterday and today. I used our line tester, Ernest last night to see how my keyframes were looking and it came out pretty well I think. You can check it out on Youtube.com below.

Note that because it's only a line test, it will look a bit jumpy. I did another version today with some extra frames and it's looking much better. I will upload the finished version at the end of the week!

This morning I had a really good lecture with James Manning about "How do we know it's good?" in reference to animation. He had some really interesting points to make about what animation is, its' purpose and what it can do for us etc. We also watched some awesome short animated films and an excerpt from FFVII: Advent Children (Yay!) as examples of 2D, computer animation and the gap between expressing the individual and satisfying the corporate industry.

The animated clips that we watched are embedded below...

I hope you enjoy these as much as we did!

Other than that, I have a nasty cold right now and have been a little off food. It's also been really wet, really grey, really cold and generally just horrid today.

Hopefully tomorrow will get better!
Love Gemma xxx

Triplets and a Bride

2009-10-04T14:50:00.001+01:00

Hello all, after another lie in, I thought I would update the Internet with the rest of my week so far. Last Tuesday I watched Belleville Rendez-Vous or Les Triplettes de Belleville for the first time, which is a French animated film by Sylvain Chomet. It was an incredible film, full of surreal characters and settings and a gripping story. It was very touching and a joy to watch, even just for the animation and background paintings which combine to make literally every frame a work of art.

It follows the story of a young boy who lives with his grandmother and trains as a cyclist to enter the Tour de France, but he his kidnapped during the race by the mafia and his grandmother and dog set out across oceans and cities to rescue him. Although a little dark in atmosphere at times, it also has a great sense of humour and an amazing musical score. There is even a scene where the characters make a song out of a newspaper, a fridge shelf, a vacuum cleaner and a bicycle wheel. Now that's inventive.

Although often devoid of dialogue (there is next to none) this allows the characters to truly express themselves with their motion and body language and even their character design (vulnerable characters are small and the mafia are large and square). Full of imagination and creativity, I highly recommend it to anyone!

My second set of films for this post are two volumes that I have somehow managed to not see until now. This is of course Kill Bill Volumes I and II by Quentin Tarantino which I watched back-to-back last night. They have left me speechless.

Although full of very bloody violence I could not help but love these films. From the very first shot you are drawn directly into the story. The quirky combination of stop start action and highly contrasting music created the most bizarre atmosphere that you could only admire. The performances given by every actor was incredible and swung dramatically from serious moments to comedic deaths and jokes in moments.

Quentin Tarantino gives you carefully crafted expectations of what will happen next before completely twisting it around and leaving you emotionally and morally confused, a feeling I have little experienced in cinema. Only in looking back at the entirety of the two films can you piece together where you were fooled.

And of course, what masterpiece can go without a good ending? Kill Bill Volume II does it with ease, leading you on an emotional roller coaster even more intense than the first. I cannot say anything more without spoiling the end, so I will leave it up to you to watch this beautiful film if you haven't already. In one night this went from unknown to easily one of my favourite films/one of the best films I've ever seen.

There is also a gorgeous animated sequence by Production I.G. but bear in mind that this and the two films are rated 18 for a reason, although I think the second one could have got away with a 15 if it wasn't for the mental exhaustion you get from what the characters go through.

But enough of films (even if they are amazing). Yesterday I finally decided what I am going to animate for my next project which is due in next Friday (9th). I had some storyboards for a previous idea, but I wasn't connecting to it, so I went back to the drawing board and redrew a new idea with the help of some great advice from family and my lecturer.

I decided to go along a musical theme to represent my love of musical sound and playing bass along with the graceful playfulness of a mermaid (I'm sure I'm obsessed with them).You can see the original sketches and storyboards for it below, along with an example of how many keyframes I have drawn (and how badly I need a proper camera) so far (46 out of 125 and counting).

The rest of my afternoon will be spent finishing my keyframes and tomorrow I will test the timing on Ernest (our linetester) to see if it's too long or short for 10 seconds! I feel that this animation is far more personal than the random abstract images I had before (it will not be uploaded!) and I look forward to finishing it and showing everyone when I have a copy on film.

Last Thursday was an awesome poster sale at Uni, and I had to go and buy myself some new posters for my room, 'cause one: it was looking too bare and two: the posters were so cool! I took a picture of them (from left to right, Radiohead, art by Daniel Conway and The Nightmare Before Christmas).

And finally, Rob, Zara, Alex, Jess, Bryony and a couple of others from animation and I are setting up a Movie Society here at Newport. We'll be watching diverse and obscure films and animation every Tuesday night to broaden the horizons for the Animation, Film and Computer Games Design courses. I'm really looking forward to it! I made the poster for it yesterday.

(Please click on the image to full view it, there's a lot of detail in the header that I slaved over! See how many movies you can spot! :P)

Anyway, that's me done for now, I have to sort out my washing and finish my animation! Until next time, TTFN!

Love Gemma xxx

Week One: Induction Task

2009-09-29T15:56:00.000+01:00

Apologies for not posting in a few days, my induction task was in dire need of attention for today. I worked on it all weekend and most of last night, printing, cutting, sticking it down and drawing. My printer also ran out of ink after only two or three pages so I had to use the Uni printers for the rest of it (and there was a lot) which came to about £6 worth of printer credit plus the £2.50 you get to begin with. Fortunately it was all finished last night however, and ready for presenting this morning!

I wasn't too nervous when the rest of Group B were showing us their sketchbooks and talking about it, but as soon as it was my turn, the butterflies came along and I'm sure I was shaking slightly (I hope nobody noticed!). Fortunately, my lecturer Matthew Gravelle liked my work and the range of interests and fantasy work. The purpose was to come up with a defining image to represent yourself though, and it was quickly apparent that this would be difficult.

The image you come up with is for our next brief, which is where you take the logo for the course and meta-morph it into your image and then back to the logo in the space of ten seconds. This will require 250 drawings if animating on "ones" (exactly 24 drawings in a second), or 125 frames when animating on "twos" (only 12 drawings in a second). Most will opt for 125 frames as this halves the workload and we only have three weeks to complete it.

I spoke to Matthew about what my animation could be, and he suggested going for an abstract representation of myself as it's something I'm curious but also terrified about, so it will get me out of my comfort zone. While this will be a good exercise for me, I have no idea what to do and will have to do a lot of research and tests this weekend.

Other than that, there has been no extra homework and lessons are going well! My other animator friends, Rob, Vicky and I were experimenting with a line test program called Ernest and we animated our hands scrunching up paper and drawing an eye with huge lashes opening and closing which was cool.

And seeing as I haven't updated in a while, the party the other day was a bit odd as there was hardly anyone from Animation first year there and the computer games lot were on the Gamecube (not Rock Band *sad*) playing Mario Kart and Wario party so it wasn't that great. Rob, Zara and Bryony came at the end so I got to speak with them. Rob suggested a gaming session on the Xbox back at his that evening, so Alex, Dale and I went to his with his friend Paul and we had a great evening on Halo 3 and ODST. Dominoes Pizza was ordered in as well so it was a pretty awesome night after the so-so party.

I've finally had the chance to watch some more films in my spare time and broaden my horizons etc. So far I've seen Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (very weird), Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang (pretty cool), Kung Pow: Enter the Fist (still hilarious), Twin Town (grim but very entertaining) and tonight I'll be watching the animated film, Belleville Rendez-Vous (I believe it's French) with Alex as a treat for finishing my sketchbook. =)

Other than that, I've done my first washing machine cycle and have been enjoying Uni immensely!
Missing everyone back home! Until next time, bye-bye!
Love Gemma

Cinema, Shopping and a Bath Mat

2009-09-25T13:54:00.001+01:00

Wednesday morning was the first treasured lie-in all week as there were no set lessons or lectures and I only had to work on the sketchbook project. In the afternoon, my Animation course had an optional trip planned to the Cineworld at "Spytty" retail park. It's a fairly tiresome journey though. First there's the free shuttle to Newport city center, then a 15 or so minute bus to Spytty park (about £2.60 for a return) and a long walk right across the retail park as Cineworld is right at the back.

It was also tricky getting back, as the buses started running less frequently and we missed the free shuttle back to campus so had to share a taxi again. We found a cheap cab though that's only £7.50 for up to 6-7 people so it's only about a pound each! And we got a card for a special discount. :)

The film we went to see was "Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs" by Sony Animation. It's about a young man (Flint) who dreams of becoming a great inventor, but sadly his inventions usually end in disaster. One day he creates a machine that can turn water into food but it is too powerful and rockets into the sky. Humiliated in front of his town, Flint hides at the docks, only to find that his machine actually does work when cheeseburgers fall from the sky!

If you've seen the trailers for this film, don't be put off. They do the film no justice as it was a real treat to watch. It was funny, entertaining, creative and very unique (it is based on the book of the same name by Judi Barrett) and full of hilarious twists and turns leaving you wondering what's about to happen next. Highly recommended and very appetising!

But enough about awesome films. Today, I received my first Tesco shopping order and it was even delivered to my flat! Definitely worthwhile, I'll have a proper meal tonight! I also had my IT induction this morning and collected a parcel from my parents at the post room. I now have a bath mat for my en-suite! Yay! ^.^

This afternoon the Animation group are having a party at 2pm, so that will be a nice treat this afternoon. I think there will be some Rock Band gaming too! Apart from that, I have lots of work for my project to be getting on with!

Thanks for reading, until next time, bye!

Love Gemma

First Day (of Inductions)

2009-09-22T15:19:00.000+01:00

Monday morning I had my first induction for Art and Design Media, this took place in the Sports Hall where every art and design student was lectured by the Dean of Newport, Derek Lawther, along with many other staff. After this, Dale approached one of the admin staff about changing rooms (he has no hot water, nightmare flatmates and someone tried to break in through his window the previous night) and Alex asked about upgrading his course to BA Hons Film & Video. Both outcomes were hopeful!

Next, I had an induction for animation after lunch given by Matthew Gravelle (I keep thinking it's Broderick though, Lol!). We met the other animation leaders too, but I really liked Matt, he was really friendly and didn't talk down to us. He also studied at Newport on the course we are on and he's going to show us his work soon. It was very inspiring and I met lots of interesting people. There are 30 students in my year that are split into two groups (A & B) and it is very balanced between male and female, which surprised me. There was also a girl named Zara who was in the year above me at Yale College, she had taken a gap year before coming to Newport, so it was great to meet a fellow college graduate on my course! (Every other Yale student ended up doing Film & Video).

I have also befriended three other girls: Claire, Bryony and Jess. Who all have very similar interests and are great to talk to! (They loved the badges on my bag!). Inductions took us quite late into the afternoon, so I then met with Alex and Dale for dinner (omelet, yum!) and found that our college friends, Andy and Lara, were on the guest list of a gig in Cardiff that night and we were invited to go! We were also joined by Anwar's flatmate, Glen and a friend of his. It was much easier (and cheaper) than I expected! We got the last free shuttle into Newport, got a group booking for the train (£2.70 each return) spent £6 on the entry fee to Barfly and shared a taxi from the train station to the campus (£3 each). The gig itself featured Don Broco and Fei Comodo, hardcore rock-type bands. The first two supporting acts weren't great, but I really enjoyed the headliners. So overall, good night!

We did run into one hitch on the way back however. The gig ended at about 11pm and the next train was at 11.20pm. By the time we had walked back to the station the train had been and gone and we were getting a bit worried. We were told at Newport that the last train was 12.30am, but we couldn't see it on any boards! Eventually we found someone who told us that this was still true so we waited around for an hour at the station before we could get back! It was almost 2am when I got back to my flat! But it was an adventure. :)

This morning I had yet another induction, but today it was with James Manning. He was like-able and interesting to listen to, but I've heard from my classmates that he was very harsh during the interviews and he admits it himself, so his standards are VERY high and it sounds like he pushes you a lot (usually out of your comfort zone). I think he's not too bad, but I will probably be incredibly nervous when I show my work to him next week!

Speaking of which, the project task! This Fresher's week my course have to fill an A4 sketchbook each with images and visuals and bits 'n pieces of everything that defines us. I can think of plenty of things to put in it, but James wants it finished within a week and he doesn't want us to use just one source (i.e. Internet) so that will make it difficult. I also think he wants us to do abstract drawings of ourselves or things about us and look into it psychologically as well! I find this interesting but very daunting for myself, as it reveals a lot about you and I'm worried about being criticised! I'll have to think long and hard about this one...

I now have the first few hours to myself in a while (it's been so hectic!) so I'm just relaxing in my room to some good tunes. I have my enrollment tonight at 6 till 7pm (an odd time) but until then I've got some paperwork to read through. Until next time, take care!

Love Gemma xxx

End of the Weekend [Revised]

2009-09-21T10:42:00.001+01:00

[Revised for errors!]

My first day over, I got up early to get ready for the day and spent a long time in the kitchen sorting out my inventory papers and reading books and leaflets (none of my flatmates had awoken after almost two hours of this) and checking that everything in the kitchen, hall and my bedroom was ok. Turns out that the window latch, shelf unit above my bed and the shelves above my desk all had screws very loose or missing! So later, I reported it to the Accommodation Office who sorted it out later that day, but I have now figured out that I cannot move the shelf unit once the wooden shelf is secured to the bracket (I wanted to move them a bit lower as they are too high for my little arms!) so will need to get a screwdriver anyway to adjust them.

Sunday morning, Alex, Dale and I walked into Caerleon to look around and I bought some kitchen supplies from Spar. Dale was then determined to check out the city center of Newport so our initial plan was to catch the free shuttle into Newport but it doesn't run on the weekends (d'oh!) thus, we walked through Caerleon and most of the way to Newport before getting lost on a roundabout (Newport was signposted to go onto a motorway). So we had to get the public bus anyway! The conclusion: the distance IS walkable but you need to know the way by going on the bus first AND you must wear comfortable footwear! (I now sport a blister on my right foot).

The city itself is very nice (Dale described it as a cleaner and bigger version of Wrexham) with plenty of shops, a bus and train station, cool bridges, the Riverfront theatre, cool fountains statues and odd structures (one of which looked like the Triforce from Zelda) and of course, the new site for another Newport University campus (a £40 million project due in 2010).

We had lunch at Subway and explored before taking the bus back for a health & safety lecture at 5pm. The lecture was pretty rubbish in all honesty and the lecturers sounded like they had no sympathy or empathy towards us students and basically said you're responsible for everything. You kind of are, but it wasn't said very kindly. Oh, and there was a terrible fire awareness video students had made which was abysmal. The new Film & Video students were very ashamed...

After this, Alex and I met with some more of our former college students (Anwar and Laura) and met a really cool guy named Glen who was funny and very talkative. We queued at the BBQ that evening and had burgers for tea, though we had to wait half an hour for them! (It was still light when we joined the line, it was dark when we got the burgers). We joined Dale at Anwar and Glen's flat, where we ate, messed about with balloons and then left to go to the Pub Quiz. On the balcony outside, a guy named Tom below us was looking for a drunk girl whom he feared was in danger of walking into roads. And so ensued Romeo and Juliet-themed dialogue, it was quite odd. He did find the girl moments later as we were walking up to the main building. She was very drunk.

The pub quiz itself wasn't really worth it, the themed questions were Cocktails, Sport, Music, General and some Family Fortunes thing. I only got a few of the general ones and the music questions just seemed random! I don't think it was aimed at a student's level of knowledge!

After this, Dale had already gone back to his flat with a bad stomach, Anwar, Laura and Glen had vanished, so Alex and I went back to mine to watch the Secret of NIMH, which is still an amazing classic of a film!

Today, every student has the first Newport induction at 11am, so I had better pack my bag for it! I shall post again with details of my course later today if there's time! :)

In a nutshell: having a good time but missing family and friends! Looking forward to seeing you all on my birthday. :)

Love Gemma xx

The Journey [Updated Further]

2009-09-19T08:16:00.002+01:00

This morning will be the last few hours spent at my home of nearly 19 years, at least until I come back for my birthday! I feel a lot of apprehension and packing has been stressful, though some excitement still remains. Speaking of packing, I never knew I had so many things! I'm probably not even that bad compared to some in terms of being materialistic, but I've basically emptied my room into suitcases and there's still loads of stuff in my room! At least it's almost over now.

There's still about a 3 hour drive down to Newport though. That'll be fun.

Hopefully Internet access will be available soon after I get there, but there are no guarantees even though I'm paying for it! Until then, there may not be any updates for a couple of days or even longer, which is why I'm taking the opportunity now.

I'm looking forward to seeing my old college friends there and meeting my new flatmates. I have a ton of artistic posters to cover the walls (and everything else) of my new room along with other personalised bits and pieces, so I think it will be my little home away from home. I'm sure I will get a bit homesick though.

I may update further with details of "The Journey".

UPDATE
After a long, arduous trip (it took four hours to get here) I am now at the University of Wales, Newport. I have Internet and an awesome room and all is well. However, I am absolutely shattered and will be going to hit the hay. Will update with further details when I am conscious and feeling human again. Ciao!

UPDATED AGAIN
So, first day of Freshers went very well, met some of my (drunk) college friends at the Student Union (SU) Bar and watched a film at Dale's before turning in for the night. My flatmates are all media students, Steph and Rachael in Fashion and Ashton (I think) is in Photography. They are all very nice and welcoming and will have to spend some more time with them soon!

I decorated my room after some dinner and got my boyfriend, Alex, and our friend Dale to help out. My room is now plastered with posters--yay! Now that the place feels more like home (though still a bit messy) we went back to Alex's and watched a movie. That night was ok, a bit lonely but I slept well.

My cup of tea is beginning to get cold, so I should probably drink it now, I will post again soon!
Love Gemma xxx

A New Beginning

2009-09-15T01:55:00.000+01:00

After a fleeting summer I am now about to start three years of University next Saturday (19th) which is an exciting but nerve-wracking thought. But I should probably introduce myself. My name is Gemma, I've been an artist all my life but have now taken to animation as my choice of study. I was home educated for the first 16 years of my life before taking an Interactive Media course in 2007. I completed that course last July with top grades and got into my University of choice, University of Wales, Newport.

Currently 18 years of age, I am keen to learn and work with others and adore family-orientated films and animation (but don't mind the more adult themes every once in a while). My music taste is particularly eclectic, but if I were to narrow to a genre, I would choose Progressive and Alternative Rock. I enjoy Japanese and Western animation and designing websites. Oh, and I'm currently in a relationship. :)

After that brief life story, I think it's time to get to business--not that this is a corporate blog, quite the opposite in fact. Here at "AmberDust Studios" I plan to upload short posts on what's going on in my life along with pictures, artwork, animation, sketches and the ugly works in progress that I have yet to turn into swans. Why AmberDust? Short answer: "Gemma" originates from "precious stone" and I decided to come up with a nickname that was also a name of a precious stone. In the end, a friend of mine suggested "Amber" and it stuck. As a username or title, it needed something extra to make it unique, which was how "AmberDust" was born. (In other words: my bedroom is typically coated in dust).

Now that it is getting rather late I should be getting some rest (oh, the joys of jet lag are still haunting me) but I hope that you enjoy my random little updates and stay tuned for more!

My next post will be at the start of my Fresher's Fortnight (yes, FORTNIGHT) where I will hopefully have Internet access fairly soon (I applied quite late for it...) and I'll probably have several tales to tell about flatmates, my course, my room, getting a job, and of course, drunken students! So until then, adios!

To my friends and family: I'll going to miss you all so much while I'm away, but hopefully I'll be able to post frequently enough to make it seem like I never left! (Really, you'll be sick of me eventually!)

Love, Gemma