I forgot what all happened in May, uhm, this gonna be hard…
Maybe to start off, I took some time to relax after the very busy Festival week and was very inspired and motivated to get back to working on my animation film, which is finally showing some much needed progress. A friend thankfully wanted to try out Tobias’ voice part and give their own take on the role and the story. It was a very good new experience for both of us and I got some valuable feedback on the story and world of this setting. It definitely helped me get more confidence with pulling through with the project. We’re currently looking for a way to clean up the recording conditions with their set-up before going into the final recordings.
Since I’m already talking about it, here’s some work-in-progress animations:
Hopping into the storyboard-phase, I came to really like the very sketchy feel of the silhouettes and figure details. It was a priority for me to finalize the story first before going on with the animatic. But as time pressed on and I kept stumbling back to tweaking things here and there, I knew it was an endless process and I forgot that I really started this project because I wanted to do some animation exercises. So as time went on, I grew looser with the animations and first few clips felt good in that simplistic style. It is all a question of balancing looks and available time. I don’t want to spend too much time and resources with it, but want a striking appeal to the images. Using silhouettes and working out the details later gives me a good incentive to make the movement and stills of each keyframe feel good and impactful. So far, I’m not sure whether movement should feel smooth or reserved. It will probably be a mix of these but I’ll only know for certain when I got to drawing lip synch parts.
There is so much work still to be done and I feel me struggling most so far with the management part – currently looking to cast a second voice for Zavi’s role – but it is a field that I feel contributes to me being more secure and initiative about tackling new challenges. So I’m confident that this project will be fruitful to me in one way or the other.
It also got quite warm for a few days here, which sparked my need to head out on a sunny day and draw some with ink and paper, so I ordered some utensils: quality brown paper and black and white ink pens, which were so much fun to try out. Sadly, only a small handful of days were sunny and dry and only one of those days was I free and able to go out and draw some. Which was very enjoyable to me. It felt liberating to free myself from everything electric, even music for once, which rarely if ever happens and enjoy the new medium. I hope the summer will bring more such days for me to work on my traditional handiwork, though I’m aware my style in that field demands some exercise.
And of course there was this:
![Fruit Hat [2024]](https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/49c692bd-b271-4b28-9c08-6f58d95353f2/dhgspx5-0dec7af9-d170-4b37-a823-605d0f58992a.png/v1/fit/w_375,h_528,q_70,strp/fruit_hat__2024__by_souvillaine_dhgspx5-375w.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9MTgwMyIsInBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcLzQ5YzY5MmJkLWIyNzEtNGIyOC05YzA4LTZmNThkOTUzNTNmMlwvZGhnc3B4NS0wZGVjN2FmOS1kMTcwLTRiMzctYTgyMy02MDVkMGY1ODk5MmEucG5nIiwid2lkdGgiOiI8PTEyODAifV1dLCJhdWQiOlsidXJuOnNlcnZpY2U6aW1hZ2Uub3BlcmF0aW9ucyJdfQ.r1QDR6VlrWPvZH7Oz0F91yS-nmWNP84BQJe40Lzd4Ik)
My annual tradition, the fruit hat piece! I must say it was a bit of a challange to do. Practically, everything went smooth, there were no major hiccups, no big questions about how to render this image, but progress was rather slow, probably due to my limited time available this month with all the school projects demanding attention and also of the sheer scale of this. It still feels like I should have been finished it sooner – the accumulated time window was about 3 weeks including sketch.
This has somethign special to it though, it was the first time I recorded my progress with ClipStudio and I noticed how methodical I went to work. At first it hindered me a bit, knowing every step is being recorded and sort-of exposed to the world. Mistakes felt more pressing, more breaks were made in between and I was less free in tackling each individual construction sight. I think it might have been better to paint the entire background more broadly and slowly ease in detail to where it’s needed rather than somewhat spread out entirely on the scene. Some fault to this was the idea to make this a very big poster and I felt my grogram and computer coming to their breaking point with each auto-save taking up to 2 minutes in the end… working on this just got very tedious and I should reconsider my approach to working on poster-sized illustrations with screen-capture enabled… which wasn’t real screen capture, which would be soemthing I’d prefer if I wasn’t so slow and considerate at times… editing a real screencapture would be a pain and I’d only consider it on speedpaintings.
And additionally, some merchandise designs got finished… not really as much as I had hoped for but I couldn’t really focus on them that much at all the last week. More will follow with less distractions, I’m sure.
Alright then, what else is there to say?
I worked on a couple of gift arts shortly before this reflection but I didn’t feel the need to upload them just yet, maybe I’ll do so tomorrow.
The upcoming month will be more of the same, with some tiny bit of vacation in the middle. I’m hoping to check-off my homework soon to focus more on my animation project, script class and other side thingies that ought to be done.
A resolution for me would be to finish the bases in the animation clips without lip-synch and hope to do the final recordings on either of the voicecast.
On my to-do list is also the con book illustration, which I will leave to mood and free time in the week. Looking very much going back to cyberpunk as a setting (oh gosh where did my Island go? TvT)
This should be it! I wish for a wonderful upcoming month, let rain retreat a bit and have bearable warmth to enjoy the outside some more!