Uncategorised – John's Learning Journal

My Influences and Reflections

It’s hard to talk about my influences, because I’ve been fascinated by animation since I can remember. Disney, Gerry Anderson, Thomas the Tank Engine, British Stop-Motion. I don’t remember being introduce to these things. They were just always there.

Th 1990s is a heavily romantized period in animation. One where fresh new voices where speaking up and new ideas being tried. Animation in America had been in a slump during the 70s. But across the 80s people started pushing the limits of the medium in both film and TV. By the time The Little Mermaid came out, one year before I was born, the medium was full of confidence. Over here in the UK, the successes of The Snowman and Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends had caused a huge upswing in the quantity and quality of small scale animation in TV and short film. Canada was edging into television, and Japanese stuff was starting to get English dubs. And I was on the receiving end of all this amazing stuff.

It was also there period where hand drawn animation was at it’s peak. The technology was the best it had ever been and the money and information was spread around so more people than ever could do it.

The 90s is also remembered as the time 3D took off. But I was born in a sweet spot where I was too young to find it surprising, but too early to for it to be the norm. I make no disguise about my loathing for how Pixar killed 2D animation basically singlehandedly. I don’t think Toy Story did anything of note accept be in 3D. But for whatever reason the people have spoken, and they refuse to watch 2D films. Killing off the medium almost the day the 2000s rolled around.

I also feel Pixar killed off real stakes in animation. Their films tend to be small scale and relaxed. Even ones that technically have stakes are slavered in humour and tangents so we all know nothing too bad is going to happen. The sense of scale and awe that movies like the Lion King had, or the no hold-bared darkness of the Land Before Time just isn’t there in 3D animation. Maybe it could be. But it’s not because in Pixar characters almost dying is considered really dark.

Wonder is also gone. Movies don’t try to take you to strange new worlds that feel like waking dreams. Everything has to be down to earth and mundane, lest we be accused of taking things too seriously. But maybe it’s just a problem with the medium. Humans never look good in 3d animations. They either look too realistic like in the motion capture films. Or too unreal. It doesn’t help that human skin looks like fudge in 3D. So maybe that’s why everything has to be bland and safe. Even when 3D films like Frozen try to capture the old wonder of the 2D films, the spark just isn’t there.

So yes. I am bitter. We traded dreamlands for mediocre comedies. But bitterness never built anything. I’m just making it clear there just isn’t going to be much past the 90s on this list.

England’s Channel 4 had been funding small, independent animations for sometime. And needless to say I loved these short, self contained, and rather mysterious films. I’ve talked about the ones that really captured my imagination many times. But we’ll go ever them later. I want to talk about where I got into animation.

I started pushing my boundaries when I was 18. Trying out serious dramas for a change. Trying to understand why adults liked them so much. It interested me, but didn’t quite click yet. But it got me interested in trying seeing what else I could do. This got me to make a list of some animations I wanted to try watching. I realised that what I thought I knew about animation was merely the tip of the iceberg.

I started collecting rare and obscure animations by single animators. Lotte Reiniger, Caroline Leaf, Jiri Trnka, Oskar Fischinger, Norman McLaren, and Yuri Norstein. I didn’t get to hear about these all at once. But the stories about people like this lit my mind on fire. But I didn’t quite want to animate yet.

Then one day, an idea popped into my head. I remembered a book I’d read some years ago. The Graphic Novel Flight. This is my first influence

Flight is a collection of short stories in comic book form, written and drawn by small authors who met on the internet. The artwork is gorgeous and each story is utterly unlike the others (While still being cohesive.). It feels like a strange little treasure box of odd ideas and adventures, each taking you to a new world. Strangely, the many different art styles and genres don’t clash, but seem to enhance each other. Like music. It may all be all be written by different authors, but it makes a whole. The individual stories make each-other stronger. And you couldn’t put the stories in the same order and have them as good.

And the book just has this sense of wonder and adventure to it. Whether the stories are set in fantasy worlds or the real world, things just feel new and exciting and interesting the way they do when you’re a child. It really does feel like a discovering a box of treasures. But there’s a little bit more.

The final story is a text piece by comic book critic Scott McCloud, called ‘The Year Comics Took Flight’. It’s set in the future. In it, the a narrator tells us that in his future comic writers have taken their influences and moved onwards into a a world were the medium has grown and taken flight, become more than the minor artistic backwater that largely only did the same few things into a creative movement where artists help each-other and work in harmony. It’s a lovely vision. Albeit one that seems rather naïve as of the internet today. We really didn’t see the big megacorps taking over and thought the internet would belong to entrepreneurs forever. But that’s life. Doesn’t mean the dream still doesn’t have value. And That is Flight. It’s not just a series of adventure stories. It’s a hope for world where artist can help each other grow and move on to greater things. This really struck a cord with me.

One day when I was out walking it just occurred to me that the many different art and narrative styles in Flight would make it great vehicle for showing all the different styles a techniques I was learning about. Cel animation, cut-out animation, supposition, rotoscoping, pixilation, hand drawn animation, painted on glass! Each story could stand for a new technique. It would be a celebration of animation and its many forms, and it would also be a promise of all the amazing things people would do in the future with animation. How the various fields of animation could come together and build a world where all the arts could work together in harmony!

My dream seems even sillier to me than McCloud’s does now. I knew nothing about how raw and bitter the history of art movements is, and how new movements are often spawned in objection to the old. Not only is uniting all the arts (through animation no less) an even loftier goal. Not only is the amount of pessimism, cynicism, anger, and distain in the arts huge. It would be wrong to supress those for my own vision of mutual-inclusivity, even if I hate it. And that very instinct for arts to clash against each-other and the habits of new artists to reject the old may be necessary for the arts to work at all. Maybe.

When I started slipping in education, my ideas about turning Flight into an animation started dying. I couldn’t make myself draw a storyboard. How would I ever make it into a feature film? I eventually gave up on it as a foolish child’s dream. How do I feel about it now? Well. Let’s put a pin in that. We’ll come back to it later.

My time in higher education was hard. I struggled to get the qualifications I needed to even get a foundation course. And the foundation course itself was a nightmare. Pure hell. I don’t know if I deserve to be here. But I made it.

Across my community college years and my foundation I was constantly asked (and pressured) to try out different art mediums. And I did find I took to some of them. Sculpture and painting are just fun. And have less pressure than animation. I wasn’t totally sure if I would return to animation or not. But a small exercise drawing a train pulling into a station (I swear I wasn’t consciously thinking about the first film ever shown, honest.) I knew animating could light a passion in me the others couldn’t.

When I first arrived here I was beaten and bruised. Life had not been kind to me. I couldn’t remember why I’d chosen animation, only that HAD chosen it. But I knew from the start I wanted to do it the old fashioned way, with paper and pencil. The past few years has been me testing my limits in this medium. Most can work faster than me. But I have a commitment to animating at a high framerate with smooth, continuous movement, as few shortcuts as possible. And looking realistic with weight and overlapping action. This stems from my second influence here. Richard Williams.

Like most animation students, I started off reading ‘The Animator’s Survival Kit’. I didn’t just find it useful. I found it mesmerising. I related to Williams’ dreams of ultra fluid 2D animation. I loved his stories of cranky old animators. And I fell in love with his unfinished film The Thief and the Cobbler

To this day I don’t think there’s been a more amazing work of animation production. I will never animate like this. It won’t stop me from trying.

Like me. Williams believed Animation could go into amazing untapped places. His vision is one I will always respect. And when I imagine animations in my head. I imagine them looking like Willaims’s animation.

If I ever do make that film of Flight. I want it to look like his stuff.

Reading Williams made me read ‘The Illusion of life’ by Thomas and Johnston . Which in turn got me to rewatch some of the old Disney movies with an animator’s eyes. Pinocchio had never meant much to me before. But now it blew my mind. So you can add classic Disney and Pinoccio in paticular as an influence

I struggled through. Honestly I feel I should have failed the course a few times. But for whatever reason, I’m still here.

I find It hard not to be bitter. Much Like Proust and Joseph Cornell, I find myself dreaming of a past who’s even bitterest memories seems to have a supernatural quality the the mediocrity of the modern world doesn’t have. Whether there is any truth to that is hard to say. Those two would have found my childhood every bit as gaudy as I find today with it’s smartphones and CGI. But it is what it is.

I felt only niche indi animation could be my future as no-one would want real hand-drawn animation again. Then Green Eggs and Ham dropped.

It did things I’d never even seen before, and with such ambition too. I was amazed anyone would make something like this, let alone today.

It got me interested to actually try doing hand-drawn animation with TV paint. And it saved my bacon later when I needed an animation in a hurry later. So I feel no shame on counting the animated Green Eggs and Ham as one of my influences. It’s given me hope for the future of the medium.

At the start of 2020 I had a very nast cycling accident (those who were there will know). It left me shaken and barely holding it together. I returned to uni. But I was mostly there in body alone.

For reasons I don’t really understand, we had to make comic books at the time. I couldn’t decide what to make mine about. But I remembered a line from one of my favourite cartoons. When Keyha the Gull has been talking about his lost love, Natasha, he’s asked by the rabbits to go on a recognisance mission he responds “Don’t know if Keyha can fly. Heart so heavy” (Timecode: 14:26)

That’s how I felt. Like my heart was too heavy to go on. But go on I had to. Then it hit me. I would make my comic about rabbits like the ones in Watership down.

The 90s Watership Down series remains my favourite show of all time. I can’t even explain why. But inspired me to take the danger and loneliness of the show and crank it up into a horror story which would allow me to explore my pain and disorientation. Linked below is the journal I wrote about it

https://johnhawkart.wordpress.com/2020/02/10/kamblamo-week-4/

Even the rabbits in it are somewhat based on the ones in the show. Ghost is a less confident and less quick-witted Hazel. Strype is Fiver with less cynicism and slightly better social skills. And White Tail is my favourite character in the series. The ever acidic and morose Hawkbit! (

Skip to 10:08 if the video doesn’t take you there already)

At the very end of this project we were asked to make a small comic on one piece of paper. I took my three rabbits and put them in light-hearted story where they find a parsnip and argue over if it’s a carrot or not. And here we are now.

I proudly claim the 1999 Watership Down series as an influence on this piece. Not just on the characters. But the look of the backgrounds, the designs of the characters, the way they’re mostly like real rabbits, but humanised in a subtle ways. The dialogue-based humour, and I’ve even tried to recapture some of the rhyms of the show’s animation. But with more fluid animation.

When this year came I decided to aim for something big, but not too big. Animating my rabbits and their parsnip was the only thing.

I considered doing it in TV paint. But really I wouldn’t forgive myself if I didn’t do this the old fashioned way. But how? I didn’t have the time to do it with cells and inks. Well. Anyone who knows me knows I have softspot for hand-drawn animation all done with coloured pencils. Not only does it really hit me in the nostalgic part of my mind. But I feel it is the rawist and realiest form of animation there is.

it was the many short animations that came out in the UK during the short film movement that introduced me to this style.

The Snowman was the one that started this trend

But the others are closer to my heart and influenced my interests more.

Grandpa Was made by the same People. The Illuminated Film Company

As was Father Christmas

But the one closest to me, The Angel and the Soldier Boy, was made by Alison De Vere. One of england’s best independent animators

I dream of making animations like this. Something that might enchant another small child the way I was by them.

Many years later, when I was really discovering the world of independent animators that I found to my delight there was an animator who not only worked in this style, but pushed it to its limits, and did it on his own too.

That man was Frederic Back

I had to give it a shot in this style. Nothing could make me happier.

I could go into so many things that influence me. It’s not a short list. Hitchcock, Shakespeare, Hubert Selby Jr, Clive Barker, Chagall, Video Games, The Bible, Samuel Palmer, Fairy Tales, C S Lewis, The Simpsons, Francis Hodgson Benette, REM, Marvel comics, Stephen King, Tolstoy, Sonic the Hedgehog. But I wanted to talk about stuff that was at least somewhat related to this. Talking about all the things that influence me in some way or another would take forever.

To summarise: The big influences that got me here are, but not limited to

The independent animation scene. From Lotte Reiniger to Alexander Petrov
Flight Volume 1
Richard Williams
Classic Disney
English Picture books
Watership Down. The 1999 series in particular
The work of the Illuminated Film Company and Alison De Vere
and Frederic Back

I didn’t take me long to figure out what is has I wanted to do. Doing it would be easy. All I needed was a light box and some pencils. Only the background might give me trouble. Specially when I found out frosted cels (What The Illuminated Film Company used to make their classics) were no longer being made. But Owen agreed to help me with the BG via computer.

I had a script ready when I arrived. Most of the autumn term was spent doing prep work. Thumbnails, storyboarding, Designing the background, and some basic character design. It’s all covered in this journal

https://johnhawkart.wordpress.com/2021/11/01/where-i-am-now-and-my-future-fears/

Then I refined the character designs

A Terrifying Crash Course in Character design.

I’m amazed I pulled this off. It feels like someone else did it. It’s been years since I pushed myself with drawing from imagination like this. I remember how thinking I couldn’t draw a storyboard broke me back in 2016. And here I was doing so much more! I think raw fear pushed me forwards. I was too scared of failing to be scared of screwing it up.

Later, with some help, I got a soundtrack and an animatic

I’ve made an Animatic

This meant all I had to do, was get started.

When I came back in the new year I was hit with the worst case of agoraphobia I’ve had in years. Possibly tied with the worst one ever. I didn’t go out at all in January and had trouble staying out doors even for an hour for most of February and March. But against all odds, I turned it around. Re-reading my thoughts at the time it feels like someone else’s words. I can’t believe I could turn something like that around. But somehow I did.

Here’s what I wrote about it

Getting back in

After I had all my keys drawn, things just started falling into place.

Turns out the raw animating part of animation just works for me. Eventually, I was staying in till six and longer again. Here are the updates I made

First Animation

Making Progress

Two seconds

Be vewy, vewy quiet. I’m dwawing wabbits!

Help

That last one I made as the end was nearing and I was often working into the night. All rabbits and no rest make Uncle Jack a dull boy.

This is the workstation I did my timing ant editing at

Here are three of the X-sheets I used to keep track of my timing while drawing

This is the lightbox I used. Ready for drawing

And here’s an image of me losing my mind drawing bloody rabbits

This huge pile of paper…

… Is my entire movie. Just think of that. A whole film in a pile of paper!

And these are some (Not all) of the pencils I sharpened down so much they became unusable.

Sanity is for the weak!!!!!

Can’t lie. I’m glad it’s over. I wish I could have coloured it all in and made a truly complete film. But I have a complete story that’s fully animated. And that’s amazing. I hope I get to really finish it someday soon.

Now I’d like to go back to an earlier point.

I might not be Richard Williams. But I clearly do have what it takes to be an animator. Maybe even an animator artist.

So, with all that in mind. Have I still given up on Flight? On the dream that started this all?

Well I know I’m not the sort of genius who could master every animation style. Let alone do any of it quickly. At most I could only direct others with most of it. But I’m feeling like cautiously putting it back on the table. I could animate a few bits of it myself. Some bits I feel would be best done in some form of hand drawn animation. I already have some ideas….

Call it a long-term goal. For now though, I want to try my hand at painted on glass animation. It’s something else I’d like in the film. And I can think of some stuff I want to do in to medium for its own sake. I’d like to make an abstract or two. That sounds like fun. Might also help me get noticed in the animation scene too.

Kudos.

My MA Proposal

For my MA animation I want to make a homage to the colour blue. Blue is the strangest, most magical and changeable of colours.

Megaman was made blue because it was the colour with the most shades on the Nintendo Entertainment System. In the book ‘River Boy’ a painting of a river, all in blue, hides a secret second image. Yves Klein painted over 200 blue paintings. He felt blue represented the immaterial, space, and the infinite, and I can see why.

In my own work I’ve found blue is the only colour other than grey that looks like a natural bridge between black and white. In fact, in painting in grey I’ve found something interesting. Most of the time grey looks like either brown or blue; and brown isn’t even on the colour wheel. It’s a very strange colour.

For my Masters, I would like to make a film that shows the malleability and strangeness of blue paint. Specifically watercolour. How it varies, strays and changes as you paint with it, and I want to make an animation out of it. Ever since I became interested in being an animator I’ve wanted to make a painted animation; like those of Petrov, Norstien, Leaf, and Orlova. To work in the realest and most beautiful form of animation I feel there is.

I would use this year to make my first real animation. Something that could be shown in festivals and art shows. Something to show my love for slow, intricate animations where colours are allowed to change, flicker and wave and speak. And to show just how much blue can do it. How mystical it feels. And how illuminating it is. Even at its darkest.

The film would be three minutes long. Showing forms of different shades of blue slowly moving and changing. I hope it will be deliberate and entrancing. That a viewer could get caught up in individual little movements. Like seeing different pieces fit together in a game of tetris. As the film comes to an end the shades of blue come together to make a peaceful visual silence.

I hope to use music in this piece. Something to give it a feeling of transcendence and to make it easier for people to get into. I want a classical piece. All piano. Relaxing and gentle. But also mystical and inviting, and maybe a little scary. But all subdued Something between Patrick Hawes and Tangerine Dream. I would like the piece to be composed for animation. Timed to the piece if possible, so it all feels like one.

I feel the advent of digital animation has made us lose something. I wish we could have had an extra hundred or two-hundred years with the camera but without the computer. But it is what it is it is and I’m not going to become an artistic shut in pining for the past. I do want to show that the limits of what analogue art and animation can do haven’t been fully tapped yet. Especially in asphetitics and precision. If I am tasked to write an essay for this, I would make it about all the strange experiments animation did before digital homogenised everything and how there is still more that could be done.

I don’t want to fall into bitterness. Trying to pull history back. That would be fruitless. History never goes back. But This is path that excites me, and I want to see where it goes.

Help

So what do think Marge?

All I need is a title.

I was thinkin’ along the lines of “No TV and No Beer make Homer something, something.

don’t mind if I do

Be vewy, vewy quiet. I’m dwawing wabbits!

Well. I don’t know If I’m doing well or badly. Probably both.

I want to get more done. I feel like I can’t get the amount done per day that I need. It hurt because I’ve really got my groove back. The one that lets me work for hours at a time. Granted I’m probably not at my peak. But I’m making strides. Often getting two seconds or more of footage a day. This from a guy who back in February was struggling to come in for an hour or do even one drawing! If only I had two more months this would be a snap! It’s not fair. I’m going to try to get an extension with mitigating circumstancing. Given for a month I could barely go outside, I think it’s fair. But I still don’t know id that’ll be enough. But I’m not going to give up. One way or another, I’m seeing this through to the end. But if I fail. It’s going to hurt. A lot.

I think my animation is really improving. Like leaps and bounds. This feels like the work of a real animator. It’s crazy. Just look it at!

This is better than it has any right to be.

Getting back in

It’s been hard.

No. hard barely covers it.

I started writing this journal back in the beginning of February. if that doesn’t tell you how hard this year has been. I don’t know what will.

My first two weeks weren’t good at all. I’d been feeling a massive amount of winter blues over the holidays. When I arrived I was kinda out of it. Tired all the time and not wanting to do anything at all, let alone go out. Sometimes, if I’m feeling down or agoraphobic I take one day off, to breath. I didn’t go in four for days straight. Not good. On Friday I went in for an hour. I didn’t even do anything. It was hard enough just getting there.

The next week I went in without doing any work a twice. Maybe three times. I might have done a bit of sketchbook drawing. I’m not sure. Everything about those weeks was a blur.

Somewhere in the second week I was talking to someone on Discord who was wheelchair bound due to cerebral-palsy. He used to travel all over the world. Now that’s mostly over. It made me feel so sad. I felt like I couldn’t go outdoors. But he genuinely couldn’t. It seemed so wrong to me. The world isn’t meant to be box that you can’t escape from. It got me to take a walk. Just a short walk. But it was a step out.

I really thought I was going to crash out and burn again. That I just wouldn’t get anything done and drop out. But I told myself. “The hardest line is always the first. Do that. Just do one line, and you’re doing something.” So that’s how it started. The first key was the hardest drawing I’ve ever done. But a lot of that was just how much pressure I felt was on it. This was the first key. If I couldn’t get this right, I wouldn’t be able to do the thing at all. I felt I had to get this perfect. But I told myself to just make something passable. That was hard enough. and hard to stomach.

I think it took two days. Maybe three. But I did it. And it was indeed passable. Good passable even.

Things weren’t easy. I started going in once a day for just an hour. Doing what little I could. After a while I was doing one drawing a day. These were hard drawings. Keys. I had to make these look good. But I did drawing that were okay. Not perfect, and not totally like the character sheet. But I worked hard to make the poses like the ones on the storyboard. I couldn’t just copy them. The poses had to be adjusted to make them more real and give them more weight. They also had to be moved around to fit the finished background. And making the expressions right was hard. Not as blazingly hard as it has been in the past (mostly) but it was tiring.

I started pushing myself after a bit. Granted I was spending a lot of time just walking around. Maybe reading comic books. Making myself do anything was hard. But after a while I was doing 2 and half drawings a day. I started feeling something strange, hope. Though I was still retreating into myself when I got home. Not able to go out even for food. And I was still skipping most Mondays.

Then an end started to come in sight. I saw I was getting close to the number of keys I needed. It was unbelievable I was doing something. I vowed when I only had a few drawings left I’d go in and stay in till the last key was done. I stayed in till 14:30. I was exhausted. But I did it. I never thought I’d get that far. But I did.

Talking to Morgan I found he would rather I’d done keys with a “Shape character sheet”. Like a basic character sheet but with all the characters reduced down to simple shapes. Once again, I’m sure he’s completely correct. But I’m very glad I did it this way. Going over the most intimidating obstacle in the whole thing, doing the character expressions, has given me a huge confidence boost. I now feel like I can do this! Granted I’m not sure I will get it done. Time is not on my side. But I’m going to try. I now at least believe I have the capacity to do this. I’ve also been coming in for longer too. Frequinely in till 2 in the afternoon. But sometimes I’ve even stayed in till 4:00. I will need to start staying in longer if I want to get anywhere close to finishing this though.

With all that done Owen and Morgan asked me to film all the keys to see how they read. I wasn’t sure why. But I did as they asked and I think it came out alright. Had a bit of an early Disney look to it. With Owen and Morgan giving me the green light. i could now make real animation. But First I had to make a shape character sheet. But that proved easy enough.

Slipping back into animation felt nice. Like a nice bath after a long day. This is where I feel most comfortable. Working with timing and spacing.

I’ve made little samples. I think I have a few seconds of footage. I hope to show it and my drawings soon on this blog. But right now finding the things I need to do that isn’t easy.

I must say though. I really like the pieces of animation I’ve made recently. For the first time recently. I really feel like an animator. Like the differnce I feel between these and my old ones are like night and day. I feels like they were made by a different person.

I think I have some idea of what might have changed but I need to talk about my home life first.

Like I said. I was in a bad place mentally when the year started. I thought I was going to have another meltdown. Talking to the guy in the wheelchair gave me the first real desire to go out for what felt like the first time in years. At one point several of my online acquittances told me that some of my online habits weren’t healthy and I needed to go out and meet some people in the real world. A sort of impromptu intervention. Well. Not exactly easy. I needed to think about a reason to go out. Not a need like food. Or an existential understanding of a good, like how I know it would be good for me to take more walks to exercise and get fresh air. I needed a project. Something tangible. Then I remembered something. Last year I’d watched a very good movie called ‘Beyond the Gates’ about a horror themed board game. Anyone who knows me knows I love horror. And horror themed board games are something I haven’t tried and would need to meet other people to do it. I looked around online and found something promising ‘Betrayal at House on the Hill’.

A game steeped in horror imagery and themes.

I remembered there was a cafe in Oxford that had open nights for people who played board games. I had been there one or twice, and found it rather expensive. but now I have an object, purpose to follow.

I looked around. And I’ve found some places that could help in this goal. And how boy was that an adventure. At one point I took a walk to try and find it on my own. I had a merry walk around the south of the town, and found a nice looking Greek Orthodox church. I hope I can go to a service there some day.

I eventually found the place I was looking for. It was actually about a stone’s throw away from the castle. They didn’t have open nights. But the guy there was very nice. Set me up with a single player friendly game as a test and even told me how to play it. He also told me about another place nearby that did have open events. I checked it out. it’s not as cool as the first place, but I’ll give it a shot. I hung out there for a bit and even met some people who were having a mini convention. They seemed to like me enough. At least i don’t think they disliked me. But it did make me think I can’t just talk to people who are only into nerd stuff. It would be too intellectually limiting for me. I need to be around people I can talk to about higher minded things. Art and literature and religion and philosophy. I’ll atrophy without being able to talk about these bigger ideas. I fear I’m not smart enough to talk such things. But I’ve got to try. Maybe there’s something around the museum that can help me with this goal?

Feeling like I have a project is the most dramatic shift in my agoraphobia in a while. But it is also tiring. I don’t think I’ll be able to commit to this quest full time.

Another thing that I think helped was over the winter I spent some time looking over the video that scarred me so in Paris. After a while, it’s just become another thing I’ve seen. An unpleasant thing, but just a thing. There’s even a few bits about it I like about it now. I did hope I might warm up to it and find something far more interesting. But It’s just a shock video for all I can relate to it. Nothing more. Getting over this big even in my life probably also helped me build some confidence.

I’ve even gone to play mini-golf with someone I sorta know. That was something new.

But i think the biggest thing that happened over the end of winter was I wrote two short stories. Nothing amazing. But they felt like real stories. Not just collections of words pretending to be a story. I don’t know if anyone else thinks they’re any good or not. But I think they’re good. My old drawing teacher once asked me what i thought it would feel like to do a drawing as a real artist. I gave a rather ignorant answer. He told me, “You want to do another one”. And that’s how I feel about these stories now. I want to do more of them. I want to create whole worlds of stories. I love making these!… But animation and drawing must come first. I think with a bit of effort, I’ll feel I”l have the same attitude about them too.

I’ve been full of memories of my love for art and walking and nature and creativity. There’s so much of my old life I’d love to get back to. I’m not sure I deserve to be this happy.

But I do have to start working to make sure I stay on this upswing. Rather than just crashing while I’m high. Next week I start giving this my all.

Getting back in wasn’t easy. and I still haven’t exactly gotten my life back. Maybe just back to where it was around October of last year. But considering I was sure I was going to crash and burn again, getting back in instead feels amazing. I feel like that video meme of Mr Incredible becoming Canny

There’s still work to be done. More therapy I need to iron out some deep seated issues. But I think I’m beginning to understand those too. There’s relationships to think about. Some can’t be repaired. But as a wise space marine once said, the good thing about friends is, you can always make more of them.

I think what really allowed me to get back in was to take things piece by piece. Letting myself be honest about how weak I felt. Taking the hardest part of the whole thing bit by bit.

I think a lot about a story by the Reverend Wilbert Awdry from the Railway series. That’s Thomas the Tank Engine if you only know the TV adaptation. The story is called Edward’s Exploit. In it Edward, the oldest engine on the railway has to pull a train of tourists to the centre of the island. Only to struggle to start. The other engines mock him and say he should give up and be preserved in museum. The tourists have a nice day out. But on the way back heavy rain hits the island. Edward’s sanding geer fails. His driver drops sand on the rail by hand to try and keep the train going. Then Edward’s side rods break. Causing the train to stop completely. His crew inspect the damage.They have to take his broken side rods off. Leaving him effectively a “single”. An type of engine that was old fashioned when he was new. His driver asks him if he can get the passengers home. Edward tries. But it’s too heavy and he can’t get a grip. Then his diver has an idea. He semi-detaches each coach. Letting him pick them up one at a time. It’s still a huge effort. But Edward finally gets the train moving, then finally flying along. The Fat Controller is cross. But all the passengers Cheer Edward and his crew. And when he finally gets home “Battered, weary, but unbeaten” the other engines are respectfully silent. Here’s the TV adaptation of it.

This gave me some motivation during those dark days. And i think it descibs me well. Battered. Weary. But unbeaten.

I have this strange sense that no matter how week and small I feel, There’s some part of me that’s never been beaten. And I can grow it. Start seeing a meaning in my life again.

Here’s to hoping!

Where I am now and my future fears

This year has been odd so far. I’ve been doing better than I thought I would. But I still feel really behind.

Over the summer I made some basic character designs in pencil

Wrote a script for a simpler story

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1PvSgTMCauYfRGV6z3CASfE4wXicQV9RgUao6xG2KLXA/edit?usp=sharing

But I eventually fizzled out. What work I did do ended up being in trying to resore my broken health. Which is still a priority. For nearly two years now I’ve been trying to recover my health. But always running into stumbling blocks. I’m hoping I’m finally beginning to make progress. But I’ll write a full journal about that some other time.

When I got back to Cardiff my first decision was that I couldn’t let the computer become part of my routine. I’m fairly sure the computer killed my chances of getting anything done last year. I don’t remember making art. Just staring at the computer all day. So this time It had to go. I would draw and do nothing else. I did bring a large book of old Marvel comics for when I got tired though. Which happens far more than I want to admit.

But the plan was built on solid ground. I started just making thumbnail drawings. to figure out what would be needed for a a storyboard

At Morgan’s suggestion I did some head studies to figure out what my rabbits really looked like. This was some of the hardest and most painful drawing I’ve ever done. But I did it. The front on drawings aren’t very good. They look more like donkeys than rabbits to me

This is what scares me. The idea of putting all my effort into into something only for it to turn and terrible. And the feeling it won’t get any better. But that’s also a subject for another journal. The three quaters drawings were better. A lot better

I used them a lot when making the storyboard. (You can tell Ghost took longer due to the heavier line work)

The story board wasn’t easy to make. I now respect people who do this for a living. But It was finished before I thought it would be.

First I had to get the size and shapes right. Then focused on making templates for the background

With that done I could just copy the background over and over again using a lightbox until I had enough drawings. When in the later drawings the turnip was being held up I simply didn’t trace the turnip from the BG! With all that done I had what I needed to start adding in the rabbits. With my script, thumbnails, character designs, and even an image of a real rabbit to work with, I was ready to go!

I found tracing certain poses, or even just feet positions with the lightbox also helped.

I’d hoped like with my comic book project drawing faces and expressions would get easier over time. And I think I’ve remembered some of it. But it didn’t get easier. The last few actually got a lot harder. I guess progress isn’t always one one way. But here’s some of the things I have.

I then wrote a letter for the RWCMD telling them about my project. Now I am hoping to get some voices for my characters. This is nerve wracking as I’ve never recorded voice-over before and have no idea how to mix it and stuff. But I hope someone will help me.

The next thing I have to do once this journal is up is to finalise my character designs and make character sheets. This terrifies me.

Trying to get drawings of characters with faces perfect is the hardest thing for me. It’s where I totally fell apart last year. I had a full day on Friday where I could have done it. But I really didn’t want to. So I decided to do a little test. I set the things up so could start working on the character design. But I turned on the computer so I could write that letter to the RWCMD, which needed doing. I also opened TVPaint to do a little bit of abstract animation I was doing on the side. Even set up a little hand drawn animation I’d like to do.

The one thing I didn’t let anywhere near me was headphones with which I could listen to youtube. One that was involved, it would be game over. I don’t know what this means in terms of when I have to put together the audio of the thing. Let alone animate it. But I hope something will come to me. But sure enough. I drifted from one occupation to another. I did eventually get through the letter to RWCMD. But then I just started on I needed to send to an old tutour. And when the day was done I hadn’t done one line of the character sheets. The conclusion is clear. If I’m ever going to get through the hard parts I’m going to need to go cold turkey with the computer while I’m on campus. It’s the only way. Please wish me luck with the trials ahead.

Lockdown Term

This is dumb

Why I’m I being forced to do this? I’m struggling as is without being asked to do a mandatory joural in one day.

So. How has this term been?

I’ve hated it. No point being coy.

If it seems like I’ve been doing less work it’s only because I have. Self orgonising and self motivating has never been a strong point for me. And in this term it’s been hard. I’ve been trying to re-engage with what got my fire going in the last term. But it all seems to backfire.

Towards the end of last academic year I was multitasking. Trying to learn many things. And it felt great. I was drawing, animating, writing, reading, exercising, and even doing a little poetry. But I still got stuff done.

But my attempt to bring multitasking back has gone horribly wrong. The extra stuff has grown into a sort of cancer. Taking over my work. First it was my animation experiments. Taking up more and more time. I’ve written several journals about how they went. And in the end it ended up comming in handy when I needed to make an animation for Constellation quickly. And somehow there I was able to get my momentum up to speed in no time. After four days of solid work I had wh I needed. I hoped then I would be done with TV Paint. Didn’t stop me from making two more little experiments next week.

I do like them. But I didn’t need to do them. Just an excuse to try a boil line again.

Despite hoping i could channel the passion I’d had for the Changing Cross animation into my main work now. I found instead it was all going into my writing instead. Into a story the wasn’t even uni work no less!

I think the issue is this. There are many states of working. but the simplest is work that takes no or little hard thought. Were you can just go with it. Like stenciling. My animation work can be like that. Specially is I’m just doing the inbetweens and not worrying about the timing. Even storywriting can be like that if I know everything that has to happen. But above that is a higher geer where to have to think hard about what to do next. A lot of mental walls between you and work. Raw hard thinking. I tend to really get caught in this geer when designing or drawing complicated stuff.

I know I can push through this state were it gets easier. And the drawing and the designing start to become one. But I’ve been scared of this effort. And once again. Scared of trying to get there and failing. My attempts at drawing have been hard and lackluster. Only doing a few lines at a time. Feeling dispirited. And on many days doin no drawing at all. I’m sorry.

So as a result I’m very behind schedule. Still haven’t finished the character designs. No progress on my test painted animation. And haven’t even started my storyboards. (And to Owen’s shagrin, no photographs of my drawings.)

I don’t know what to do. But I’m going to haveto change my tactics so I can get the stuff that matters done.

I’m open for suggestions.

Merry Christmas everyone.

Still experimenting. Need to get some momentum going.

I really need to get in gear.

I’ve been procrastinating a lot. Mostly doing experiments in TVPaint.

And it has been fun. I think I am starting to get the hang of this program. Maybe even animating well in it. But I find I am mostly jumping from one minor project to another and getting very little done.

I decided to do one more swing animation. One that would change from green to blue to purple then back again. I was very careful with the timing and spacing. And as a result I think this is the best swing I’ve done yet.

Back to doing bouncing balls. I deced to add in a background for this one. I went for a blue ball against a blue background. It looks nice. I used vauge pose to pose animamation. Which sadly made the ball very floaty.

For the next one I tried to make a nice background with some artistic merit to it. And I do rather like it.

I made the ball yell this time. And took more time with the timing and spacing this time. Using a more structured form of pose to pose. I like it.

Feeling ambitious. I decided to try a walk cycle. I did this entirely in straight ahead animation. And forgive me. But i rather like it.

I think it has energy to it. I even managed to put in a background that looked like a nice sunny day.

My ambition climbing I made a brown, hazy background inspired my the Silent Hill series. I used pose to pose animation. And tried to make the character change colour as he walked. I even figured out how to loop the animation!

It is technically a lot stronger than the last one. But for some reason, I like it less.

Maybe it’s just a bit to fast.

I put everything I learned recently into one more walk cycle. Made a nice background, a strong definition between the ground and the sky, and used a mixture of pose to pose and straight ahead animation. I think there’s more charm and character to it. Even if it doesn’t loop all that well.

It’s nice.

I thought I’d just been wasting my time doing all this, and I was. I should have been making my character designs and storyboards. And I really should get back to that as quickly as possible. But out of the blue it suddenly all became useful.

I was tasked with making another animation for my Constellation work. It was a big deal. I had to make something quickly. But now I knew exactly how to make a digital animation quickly. Far quicker than I could on paper!

I decided to do a morphing cross animation. I would take different crosses from differnt eras and places, and show them change from one to the other. Morphing from form to form. All pose to pose animation. Very carefully planned out. Using careful timing and lightboxing techniques I’d learned in the past few weeks.

I worked flat out for three days straight. Not slacking at all. I didn’t think I could switch into high gear so quickly.

When it came out the timing was a little disappointing. I’s put the main posing on 1s to make them stand out more. And it kinda works. But backwards. They go by too quickly and feel like the less important pics.

I went back the next day. Put the main posses in 3s like the morphing poses. It doesn’t have the old emphasis. But it looks better. It has the serene atmosphere I wanted.

I’m glad my procrastinating ended up paying off. But I need to get this passion into my other work. Get a real momentum going. But I do at least feel closer to being able to do this as a job.

Emptiness to think about the right things

It seems to me I make the same mistakes every year.

I get obsessed with something outside my university work. The first two years it was the online art groups I was part of and the commissions I was getting there. This year it was a faith crisis as to if Christianity is right for me, what i might have to give up, and if there is a denomination right for me (It’s been intense). And then I find I have no energy for my work and I’m doing next to nothing.

Forgive me if this sounds zen (I have been reading a lot religious writings) but I need to empty my mind first. It’s okay to have reading and viewing to unwind to. Even serious religious stuff. But when I am effectively studying it that is only bad for my art. I should be careful how I use my free time so it revialises me rather than drains me. i think fiction is a little better than non fiction here. But it’s not an absolute. And I think a little serious stuff can be good for keeping me feeling ground in my interests and happy, IF I don’t over do it. But it would also probably help a lot if I looked at more stuff, both fiction and non-fiction, that motivates, inspires, and most importantly, focases me on my artwork. As long as I don’t overdo it.

I feel a bit bad about dropping my heavy religious reading in the middle of a crisis. But I’ll have to live with it. I hope I can enjoy the lighter stuff.

One day I’ll get this balancing act right. I hope

I made a thing

To try to get my groove back I started doodling in TVPaint. Even though I’ve no idea what to do.

I had no digipen. I had to use a mouse. Meaning the linework would be very shoddy indeed. So I decided to run with it and have fun.

Rebelling against tradition, I decided to make a bouncing triangle rather than a bouncing ball. I think the result is funny.

Having actual done something I decided do a pendulum swing. An exercise I should get the hang of. Should have learned years ago. I’d forgotten almost everything I’d once known about TV paint. So I just ran with it. It maybe be the ugliest thing I’ve ever made. But I don’t mind.

I wanted to see if I could get better results using my finger (I’m using a touchscreen) and tried to make a heavy, bowling-type ball. The linework is nicer, and I think the animation is a little better, but making it was harder.

You judge if it’s any good.

I contacted Morgan. He wants me to do a run cycle. I felt I couldn’t do it with the mouse or my finger. I asked if I could get a digipen. He said I could borrow one from upstairs. I’d been working straight-ahead so far (Which I do prefer even if it’s considered flawed.) But I decided to refresh my understanding of Pose-to-pose in TVPaint. So I did another pendulum. This one is better. But I think it’s a bit too sharp if that makes sense

Wish me luck with that walk cycle.