Oliver Castle - BA(Hons) Computer Animation Arts

Here's some more thumbnails I did on the train for Zenobia. I'm mostly exploring ideas for the low angle shot, thinking about having the actual building part of the city be these massive clusters of bamboo buildings, all arranged like cones or maybe bamboo shoots. Obviously I still have to get the connecting walkways, bridges and stairs in there. There's also an attempt at thinking about the interior shot on the bottom left. It's supposed to be one of the tunnels that connects the many 'growth chambers', the water filled ex-mine pits that grow the bamboo. I like it quite a bit actually, since the light would be filtering through the bamboo poles and leaves down into the tunnel but because of the angle most of the tunnel would be rather dark. It might contrast well with the much brighter above ground shots.

Today was 6 hours of digital drawing. We had a little bit of infomation on composition, and how to use leading lines to draw the viewer in, so I sketched out a redo of one of my thumbnails. Once we were done with that I spent the rest of the day doing thumbnails/sketches for the final 3 shots. I'm trying to focus on the idea of where the bamboo comes from, how it's grown, farmed, etc.  So far I'm working under the idea that the people reuse the old zinc mines and grow the bamboo in the pooled water at the bottom. Like how many quarries are turned into lakes once they're used up.

Oops, it's been a while since I've actually posted anything. In my defence I was ill, but that's not really an excuse. At any rate, here are another load of thumbnails I've finished, along with more of my city notes. Leonia Moriana Phyllis Page 1 Sophronia Tamara Thekla Zenobia

Just a sample of my city notes. This one is for Thekla, I'll upload more as I make them. Today we were given a briefing on how the Context project will go, including infomation on how it relates to our Film Reviews. Last year I really wasn't feeling it but I'm really looking forward to the Context project this time, I think the group oriented structure and the way it leans heavily into building our research skills will help me a lot. My gang's research focus is on Film Noir, or at least The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari in relation to Film Noir. I picked up a few books out of the library to read tonight and tomorrow (Film Noir by William Luhr and Film Noir by Alain Silver and James Ursini.) in preparation for Thursday. Anyway, here's the thumbnails I've got so far. It's a mix of a few cities, these were the ones I did before I started making more detailed notes (see right) so they're only based of surface level ideas. I'll upload more as I fi...

These ones didn't actually turn out too bad. I rather like them. I'm still not great at drawing open mouths though, definitely something I need to work on.

Following up from last weeks session, continuing with the same kind of stuff except this time with a male model.

Friday afternoon was spent continuing work on our monstrous 80s designs (mine being the archetypal 'Princess') except this time we used it as a way to explore Adobe Illustrator, and more specifically the Pen Tool. While I've never really used the program before I'll certainly be using it in the future, I found the pen tool is a much easier and nicer looking way of 'tracing' a scanned in image, which I do quite a lot, over something like simply following the lines with a Photoshop brush. Anyway here is the scanned in character from last week re-done with the Illustrator Pen tool. And also a coloured version because I got bored and started exploring the other tools.

Much like last week we had another session of life drawing, starting of with a twenty minute pose. After that we moved on to a few more quick poses while being pushed towards simplifying our lines and choosing carefully what bits are really necessary to show a figure. I also took the oppotunity to try out something other than a 2B pencil this time which was nice.

Today we didn't actually touch the computers at all (we'll not strictly true but I'll get on to that), instead we had a session on Character Design. We started with looking at 80s movies (specifically teen movies, like the Breakfast Club and Stand by Me) and the particular character archetypes they often used. After pseudo randomly deciding the amount of arms, legs and eyes are characters would have we were given a 'Character Class' or Archetype from the 80s. I ended up with 'The Princess', obviously referring to 80s archetype, not the Disney-esc one. We were then told to draw up 8 simple designs that fitted our given archetypes in about 10 minutes, which meant we had to work fast and employ good use of simple, geometric shapes. Once we were done we toured the room, looking at everyone elses work and giving our opinions on which three were our most interesting designs. After narrowing it down we then did larger, slightly more detailed drawings o...

On Wednesday (yesterday), we had our first session doing Life Drawing which was interesting at the very least. I had a rough idea of what to expect going in having done a bit before but that sadly doesn't change the fact that I really don't like doing it. I'm not much of a 'drawer' really, I can do it fine when it comes to a couple of thumbnails a day on the train ride home but to put out such a consistent stream over the course of 2 hours just...isn't quite in my ability range. Perhaps one day I'll get to the point where I can finish without needing a break but for now at least I'll just have to take it slow. Anyway, here's what I ended up producing, unfortunately I couldn't quite remember the timings given for each drawing but I think I got most of them right. Roughly 20 Minutes Also 20 Minutes A mixture of times ranging from 5 - 1 minute(s)