Jamie Hewlett is my favourite artists and designer. He is most famous for his work in the comic book Tank Girl and in the virtual band, Gorillaz (which he co-created with Damon Albarn).For my work in animation I want to establish my own drawing style, one that is conveniently quick but also unique and aesthetically pleasing. I look up to Jamie Hewlett as a I admire the way his art style ticks all of these boxes
I enjoy emulating his style as I like how much detail he manages to squeeze into a single image. As a result of this, he is able to develop a character and communicate their personality or situation, just through their clothes, possessions, body language and companions.
Through looking at his work on Gorillaz, I have learned not to be afraid to let go of the 'boring' and 'normal' in character design. It took me a while to develop my instinctive decisions away from the usual, 'jeans, t-shirt, skinny frame, brown hair' trap that I always used to fall into that meant my characters often looked too similar, and character development then rested upon their actions alone.
This is my own sketch of one of Jamie Hewlett's characters, I find the best way to learn his techniques is to emulate them, and although I don't intend to copy and adopt his style completely as 'my' style, I may take some techniques that i have learned along the way.
The Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford displays an enormous collection of Artifacts from a vast variety of cultures over many time periods. I have visited the museum twice with my Graphic Design group at college, and with good reason.
The museum is a haven for creative inspiration and is recognised by many as just this.
On my trip to this museum, I learned that the costume design for Star Wars' Darth Vader was heavily influenced by the shape and appearance of the armor worn by ancient samurais, and that the idea for the shop 'Borgin and Burke's' in the Harry Potter film, came from the glass cabinets of the museum itself, which were stacked and stuffed with countless old collected items of interest.
On my visits I understood the significance of the place, being the basis of so many creative successes and I always find inspiration here from simply wondering around, reading and making sketches, here are a selection of photographs I took from my visits.
This drop-in session also provided me with the freedom to work and engage with other students. I was even called upon for help by my classmate Olli, who asked me to show him how to animated jointed characters in After Effects.
This was our last working session at the BFI Academy, giving us all the chance to finish up our animated scenes ready for the final screening, I took this opportunity to enhance my raw animation using After Effects. Here is the final result compared with the original footage
This session saw my first step into production of my the animation I have been working on since joining BFI. I had previously discussed with my mentor about the techniques I was planning to use, deciding finally on multi-plane 2D stop motion knowing that my time would be short in this session I made unnecessary preparations in the week leading up to it.
I made sure to work as efficiently and organised as possible, and soon got into the process of production. I made a few slip ups and was critical of my work, making decisions to do over some parts that were compromised in quality.
The final result
Time spent: 2 hours
These were the sessions I have enjoyed the most so far. I went to the drop-in sessions during my half term and we were able to work freely on our projects and were given access to facilities such as the sound recording room and the green screen/motion capture room.
I think that on a creative course like this, while it is valuable and exciting to learn new skills
Today's session was focused on documentary techniques and delivered by Don Adamson. We had a group discussion about facts and how they are recorded, and looked at documentary examples such as "Ella: A Meerkat's Tale". Later we worked in groups to brainstorm ideas about World War II and The London Olympics. With the topics we had gathered we then coined together ideas for documentaries that could be made.
I learned that an important part of documentary techniques is about picking and choosing the material to use, as this can change the tone of the film. I also learned that documentary does not always have to be film, sometimes audio, still images and reconstructions can be used, and often are more effective.
