Storyboarding Blues.

Just a quick pointer, while I think of it. If you're ever storyboarding, start as small as you can and with a crappy sheet of paper. And use a pen. You just want to get your basic idea of what's happening on the screen and work from that. Sketch it out, so to speak.

This Is What Happens When You Try To Recreate That ONE Drawing.

P.S. Sorry for not blogging too much lately. I've been working hard on my film. As soon as my Pre Production Notebook is done I'll blog loads of stuff I've done. 

My Workspace.

Frustration.

I'm starting to lose sight of my thesis as I imagine an Alzheimer's victim loses their grasp of reality. Every day I find it a little harder to outline what it is that I want to say my thesis, and also that my thesis is about "saying" something. I mean, am I to pose a question and then answer it? Explore an idea? Discuss a trend? What annoys me is that I had all of the answers just a few months back and now they've seemingly disappeared. I was so enthusiastic about this at the beginning, and I promise that I have not lost my passion for the subject. I just think that now, when it actually comes time to start writing, that I'm finally stuck for words. Here's what I remember:

I want to talk about the social effect of social networking. In this case when I say social networking I mean the technological side of things. I essentially want to discuss how we all communicate and live our social lives, at least in part, through the internet. We all have a Facebook account which we fill with information. We deem our smallest of thoughts to be Tweet worthy, and suddenly a picture simply isn't worth taking unless it can be uploaded and tagged within twenty four hours. You're not officially in a relationship unless Facebook says so. You're not attractive unless you have at least two hundred followers on Twitter. None of this existed ten years ago and now we're all running out to buy Androids and iPhones just so we can feel slightly more connected to the network and thus feel more connected to all of our friends.

That's what I want to talk about. But I have completely lost sight of how I'm supposed to approach it.

Showreel.

I figure I better get this bad boy up now before it's outdated. Some of the work goes back about four years or so and some of it is as recent as May. So . . . yeah.

Fairtrade (Failtrade).

So this was my first real animation project in IADT. Fairtrade came in looking for a short animation to use as an informational piece. We were told it'd want to be around the twenty/thirty second mark and could be done whichever way we wanted to do it. I decided to go with Flash as it turned out that was the main animation tool in IADT and I figured I needed to learn it fast. I got about two weeks into the project and then some personal stuff got in the way and I needed to abandon ship for a few months. When I got back to it I simplified the idea slightly and got my little nephew Andy.

I actually ended up getting a fairly decent grade for this and most of the people I've shown have been fairly happy with it. I know it's really simple and a little robotic but it was my first real attempt at Flash and I learned quite a bit doing it. My nephew also loves it and had a great time recording the voice.

Life Drawings.

I've always had something of a love/hate relationship with life drawing. When I relax and get into it, I really like what I come out with, but if my head's not in it, it's all fucked. This year was also a bit of a challenge for me in regards to life drawing because it was a big change. When I was in my previous college, Cólaiste Dhúlaigh, the task was to examine the space and shapes and recreate what we see on our page. We would pay particular attention to tone and proportion. So after two years I'd led myself to believe I had gotten pretty decent at it. I had also led myself to believe that was the approach in IADT too. I was wrong. I start drawing in IADT and I see that I'm getting no love. Drawings that are just a few squiggles with a piece of charcoal are apparently "fucking beautiful", pieces that appear genderless are now "outstanding". My new teachers are apparently more into the more abstract side of things. Now, to be clear, this is fine, I have no beef with this. I just find myself having to re-learn everything. Because of this I'm not really that impressed with my own life drawing over the past year. I got a chance to do loads of experimenting but the actual window was way too short and I never really found a style that suited me. Really I just preferred the way I did things before. Hopefully next year I'll get a little time to work on this further. Anyways. Here's some of my life drawing from my Dhúlaigh days.

Pro Tip: Always listen to your iPod when you're doing some life drawing. It makes it easier to sink into your own world and prevents distraction.

A Predicament.

I find myself in something of a tough spot. We have just started the summer you see and I have quite a lot to get done. I decided very early on that I am going to try and knock out a draft of my thesis for next year during the summer. It shouldn't take more than two months really but it's no small task either. In a perfect world I'd also like to have all the pre-production for my fourth year film done as well. The two of these things could easily occupy me for the entire summer. However, I now also want to complete my third year film. It's the first film I've made that I've been truly proud of and I really want to see it to the end. There's a good minute and a half of animation left to be done on it.

To get these three things done in one summer is not going to be easy at all. The real kicker about the whole thing is that I start a new job on Monday. Forty hours per week with a good hour of commuting each way. So, let's do this.

New Beginnings.

So. Hello there *waves*. I'm Graham. I am very new to this blogging business. So I guess I'll start at the start. I'm an animation student, studying at IADT Dun Laoghaire. This is where I'm going to be posting and writing about most of my projects. I'm also gonna throw in any drawings or photos I've taken if I deem them worthy to be viewed by any visitors. So, there you go. Thanks for swinging by.