Worst holidays ever

Hello hello hello, well my friends, family and strangers this has had to have been the worst holidays I've ever had... and I'm hoping WILL ever have... just to fill you in to my sad story - cue smallest violin in the world...

It started with my car being backed into whilst trying to get into Crowes Nest car park... although I do feel really sorry for the poor girl who put her car into reverse instead of drive (hence the crash), I then fell down the stairs fracturing my foot to be put in a space boot for the next 6 weeks, I then get the flu (thanks Al) then THEN a pimple on my cheek got infected, and now I have no car because its in the shop (have you ever been on crutches going up hills for 40 minutes... I can't feel my hands) no more holidays and no more money because I can't work... ok the last part is a bit of a stretch but the whining sounds better in threes : )

Any way now that I've had a bit of a cry, on to the good stuff : ) in positive news I have now finished all my rough animation for my major work and have about half cleaned up, I'm hoping to be done on the clean up by the end of the week so that I can start scanning and colouring.

With any luck this will only take three weeks, so I'll be finished in plenty of time for the opening and have time to work on my book, thats if all goes to plan and I don't run into any other... complications ; )

Included in this entry is a more colour and texture tests - let me know what you think and stay tuned for some animation

In the meantime - hope your having more luck than me!

Stairs are dangerous!

hey there faithful bloggers and those checking for the first time in a while... don't worry your just as lazy as me. I guess I have an excuse this time though... I fractured my foot, yep things have pretty much come to a stand still the last week... ok thats a lie, I didn't do anything for the first couple of days while they were figuring out what was wrong with me (yes I was waiting for three days for the them to tell me I'd fractured it).

Any way apart from that (and the cold I just got from my sister) things have been ok, I had a bit of a brainwave for my major work - don't worry I'm not changing the idea, just the look of it, I'm going back to what I had in mind at the beginning, that kind of 50's style when Gerald McBoing boing came on the scene... It's just a really nice look and will be a lot easier to colour as skin colour doesn't exist - I did this little colour mock up in the waiting room of the hospital today (had to get my foot checked to make sure the fracture hasn't moved)

Hope you like it, and stay tuned for some more animation soon... just as soon as I get my hands on Animo : p

update...finally : )

Ok guys, here it is, the latest dump

things have been going well, I finished my 1st semester for the year so finally getting some quality sleep in, I even managed to do some solid drawing this afternoon, started at about 2 and didn't stop till now, can't wait to do more when I come back from ballet : )
I've also included my latest animation for Lotti learns...I would put the leica reel up too but its waaay to big and I don't really want to sit here all night waiting for it to upload
any way, hope all those in cyber space are doing well... I'll be at Supa Nova this weekend if any one else is going give me a buzz and we can meet up... the geek in me is completely spazing out with excitement...I'm thinking of going as a brown coat (from firefly)
see you round - and remember comment if you can : )

LOTTI LEARNS:


IMAGES FROM TONIGHT

its all coming along

Just thought I'd update the old blog with my latest picture, I saw this picture of Calvin and hobs on the net and thought it would be cool if I could put lotti in there instead. So I re-drew it. As for how my major work is going, I'll say not bad for now - ask me again after the weekend when I only have 2 more days to complete my leica reel!! I'd love to be able to get it all coloured by wednesday but I'm doubtful whether that will be possible.

Having said that, I'm pretty happy with my progress so far, I'd love to be able to finish the animation by the end of the coming holidays, this way I can spend all next semester finishing of the shows bible (hopefully that will include a storyboard of the first episode) and a book of character and concept designs : ) Hence why I chose Digital Composite as we have to make a book at the end (perfect)

I've also decided how it will all be done, I'm going to do all the character animation by hand then use animo to put it all together, do the background morphs in flash as I can cheat a little and use tweening and finally use After effects to combine the two. This means I'll have to pay close attention to timing so they go together well : ) I way to combat this will be to do the flash stuff after I've finished all the character animations.

I also have to get a group of kids together to sing the title sequence, I was going to do it but I think kids will make it sound a lot cuter, a little Dora the Explorer combined with Sesame street, they'll have to be young kids so I'll need to source some of my baby-sitting gigs

Well thats all from me for now

Catch you all later

some more animation...

I'm back, and in serious need for sleep

Well its been over a month, but things have been coming along, not only have I now got the song down but I've started making the storyboard into key frames, hopefully by the end of this week I'll be able to have a lieca reel ready for the site, for now I'll leave you with an animation and an image

don't worry I'm not dead..yet

Ok I'd firstly like to apologise for my extreme laziness, and now I'd like to thank you for your patience with sketches, (yay!) that was me imagining your reaction...ok maybe it was uttered with less enthusiasm, but I'll just move on.
Its been pretty busy, major work wise, after going through roughly 10 new ideas...I've come to see I can be an incredibly indecisive person...I've finally rested on something I'm really excited about! I know what your thinking, "Lesley you've been excited about ALL your ideas, why is this different?" well my answer to that is..I don't know...my fingers are crossed.

any way, I'm now doing a title sequence for a show I made up called "Lotti Learns" its about a little girl that loves finding out answers with her imaginary friends - Fin, Seeby, Sno, Berit and Har. The designs are below, and later I'll add a few other things I've been working on.

I also went to Semi Permanent last weekend which was FANTASTIC, there were people from all backgrounds in the creative industry and from all over the world! one of my favs was a type artist from Spain, firstly his accent was really cute, (he kept rolling his r's) but the best thing was he stood up there really humble and excited to be invited, you could tell he'd put a lot of effort into his presentation, we sat and watched not really knowing what to expect and were ALL completely floored by his work, at one stage everyone just burst into spontaneous applause, not that applause that you do as habit (a left over high school habit) but genuine appreciation. PIXAR was also there, Andrew of course having had experience with a crowd had plenty to say, then again just a picture from PIXAR shuts us up pretty quickly : )

Other than that I've just been keeping my head down and butt up, trying to keep on top of my assignments, I have about 5 due next week so I'm concentrating on getting them all up to scratch, then I'll have 6 weeks to get the others done.

until next time guys, hope you like the sketches
and remember comment welcome!