Narrative Strategies: Week 2

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

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

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!

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

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)

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)

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!

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"

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

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!