Reflection #52 – May 22

Alright, this time I’m pretty sure someone robbed me of one or two weeks at least, I feel like I wasn’t doing much throughout the month… and then I remember; I actually did quite a lot.

To start off, I’ve been doing a little side job as assistant in an animation team. While not doing real animating at all, I’ve been tasked to lay down audio tracks and sound effects for a bunch of small animations, which was tough at first but eventually worked out fine that I feel rather confident producing with sound in mind now that I know what goes into it. Aside from that, some mornings and evenings were spent to finish and refine the short story. I’m still getting feedback on it to work it over a little bit more but all in all, I can say it’s finished and I’m happy with the result… if it was worth the multiple months that I spent working on it… caaan’t really say, but it sure has been a good exercise in coming up with a functioning story and multiple layers and arcs for my characters. What I’m struggling with the most is still to come up with things to properly connect and explain the story beats without being too much on the nose and with my sentence, structuring not starting to feel repetitive. Though I reckon, these are things that will improve over time with more experience.

What else? Oh yah, I’ve worked on a filmmaking set for the first time (behind the camera) and it was fun! Mostly! Though there are so many intricacies to keep in mind, so much planning, managing the equipment and in the end you can’t even say if the shot was really what you wanted out of the whole ordeal. As the process of filmmaking is now much more apparent and my appreciation for the craft has risen a little bit more, working in animation is still a tad bit more my alley though.

I want to see more movies, apart from buying some from my watchlist instead of waiting for them to be free to stream someday, I started just going randomly into the cinema and watch movies I was looking forward to without trying to find an appropriate time for when my friends all have time to get there. And it is a very nice experience, especially in smaller scale cinemas. Watching ‘The Northman’ for example has been very intriguing but it wasn’t really the movie my friends would watch, so I got out of it all the more for myself and I’ll try to continue to have such experiences. Right now, I’m re-watching the last airbender but I’m also waiting for Evil Dead, The Patriot, The Batman, The Framing of Roger Rabbit and Troy to arrive. I’d like to spent some time just enjoying movies again instead of having to think about what I should be working on instead.

So respecting this, it doesn’t feel as ‘unproductive’ still with the projects I actually worked on.

Firstly, we had the annual fruit hat piece to take care of. The idea of the hat dissolving in water has been around since early this year, that I first wanted to do regardless but somehow blocked it out until it was time to do it anyway. Aaaand it is pretty much how I first imagined it, I’m actually pretty proud of that. While I’m not sure if the floating fruit is turned out that noticable, the composition and colours more than make up for it in my opinion. Also the colour management wasn’t that hard despite there being every single one in the spectrum, what I usually try to avoid at any cost. Maybe the yellows make it feel a bit unbalanced now that I think of it. Anyway, the water was fun and this depiction of my sona is nicely accurate and appealing to me.

Then, there’s another depiction, this time in a very different setting:

I originally didn’t want to have two Souvillaine portraits releasing right next to each other but I had no choice as I wanted to have this nice little challenge done asap to be more flexible with future projects.

I also had to finish it before we would’ve started shooting hence it isn’t as thorougly painted and the linework still shines through quite a bit. For what it is though, I’d say it’s very solid and it was fun to actually be doing some clothing again ;P

There’s one nice upside to having this so close to the fruit hat piece and that’s to compare them for their colour variety and how much the balancing influences the mood and feel of an artwork.

I only wish designing this signature would’ve worked out sooner, I spent way too long with it t be any fun >v<

And this should be it for this month.

In June, the first deadlines will creep up and I’ll have to see how to manage them efficiently with all the other things around. I’m gonna visit family for a little bit and goin on a concert again after 3 or so years (phew). And for projects: A commission is being done currently, another following shortly after probably. The rest is – yet again – open. Maybe I’ll do something to contribute the story, maybe I’ll finally work out a new design, maybe it will be none of that, we’ll see 😛

Have a nice June! Try not to let time slip by!

~Souvillaine