I had a great day today. I think it is a wonderful way of ending this month.
My mom and I went to the zoo in Stuttgart after two years again, the weather was nice and while I missed some animals, the experience was really enjoyable overall. Took some photos too mainly for memories than animal references because I think I have gathered enough of those in my last trips there.
And yeah, while I’m pretty tired, I’m writing this reflection to milk my good mood and to have some more time for something else tomorrow.
The last couple days were spent with a lot of thinking; especially re-thinking things. Video games have taken in a lot of time in the past months and I want to prohibit me from too much distraction from work. It should also help me getting more sleep and a healthier routine. YouTube too has been a major influence as to how much time I spent not doing something productive. So I dug out my second account and filled it with either something to watch for inspiration, advice and tutorials to not have two clashing mind sets between mindless enjoyment and drawing, because I want to bring back the enjoyment into my drawings and grow through them.
I felt more and more like I was hitting blockade after blockade this year without really realizing it. I hope this change in perspective will help me to see clearer again. Another update to this is that I felt really grown-up doing so. You have to figure out if changes in your life are necessary and I think it will work much better if you are the one making this change.
Now let’s get to what I have been doing this month as I wasn’t as obviously unproductive…
Artworks
Axel’s Origin – Storyboard Excerpts
At the end of last month, I made the decision to finally purchase the upgrade to CSP to be able to create full-fledged animation projects and – while hating the pay wall – it felt liberating to not be limited to 24 frames per project. And I celebrated this liberty with some animation tests as well as diving into my storyboard project right away.
And doing this was like following a roadmap of projects… like a never-ending sketch.
And despite my predictions, I wasn’t able to be even close to finishing this project this month. For one, I wasn’t very focused on the whole planning-things-out-first -part and my script had some noticeable flaws that I couldn’t just convert into sketches. Sometimes, a sentence was manageable with two sketches, sometimes it would be 7 or 8. Sometimes
what I had in mind was just hard to put in perspective. And once I have stumbled into a plothole that needed some back and forth with planning things and the future of the script. And now i am at a part where I am left without script because I can’t figure out what comes next.
These problems are what I expected to run in to, honestly. And that’s okay because it gives me the chance to handle them and work something out.
As of now, I have about 50 scenes worked out with more than 3 times the sketches, none of them are refined. So it is safe to
say that – with the vision I have for this storyboard – this is my biggest project yet and it undoubtedly will be crushing me with work if I won’t do something in between to keep my spirits and motivation up.
But I am happy to say that, what keeps me driving, is seeing this thing in motion. Especially the few parts that are animated in more frames per scene, that really come to live when replaying them, helps me to push through with this and I think there is a nice story in there… I just have to figure out a way to convey this story to you. Who knows, maybe I will go back to my initial story board idea, where the script is worked out already and which seems a lot shorter than this one here.
Zavi – No Perspective
As aforementioned, the storyboard project was very tiring and I wanted to step away from it a bit after finishing the second page of my script. This initially was an attempt at bringing my first animated project in forever to you. It would have been an ambient scene about Zavi, spending time in her apartment long after the vents that led her to this place.
At first, I was too ambitious and I quickly lost my grasp for this.
Here, I am trying to recreate my process of throughput during the planning phase:
“Should I portray the entirety of her apartment? Too wide? Design too complicated? Character out of Focus, zoom in!
How much activity is possible at the window? -> Show thinking process. Multiple poses of her looking around… too boring! How to tackle? -> Add backstory! Thinking about someone… not able to portray. Was shot, tending wound.
Animation too much work, only minimal changes like winking, background lights.
Still too much work! You have a storyboard to finish! Also, you don’t know if background will carry this scene.
Fine, make it a traditional piece…”
So you catch my drift; animating this piece just was not possible with my limitations, even though I would have like it still.
Giving this piece my honest self criticism: On first glance, I am not convinced by the overall colour scheme, it is almost all over the place. Upon closer inspection, I spot the details and Zavi’s posture, and am satisfied with the composition. The only thing that’s off here is the colour variation, but how to approach this issue while having to portray a city scape?
Maybe some more research on settings like in blade runner could have helped.
But I’m satisfied with the overall thing, it’s just not leaning to flawlessness like other artworks from this year have been.
Upcoming stuff and preplanning:
I have made a difficult decision: While I still need to finish my storyboard (or at least work either of them out more) my highest priority now is to be active on Art Fight. I enjoyed it very much last year but I think this time I can use it to sharpen my skills more. I’ll try to move more into a stylised portrayal of characters of all species, not just anthros, so I can be more confident with new themes.
There’s still one character I’d really like to introduce and there is place in another direction of cast to work out. i also promised to work on a reference sheet for someone(s).
Let’s see what July will bring us…
Sincerely,
~Souvillaine~