It's the beginning of week 4 already; incredibly, that means there's 12 weeks (excluding Easter) until the end of semester 2. I'm not announcing this fact to put the cat of panic amongst the pigeons, but rather to warn against the dark arts of procrastination. As Benjamin Franklin said, "You may delay, but time will not".
Excitingly, there's lots of new creative development on the CGAA blogs as gears shift, wheels turn and juices flow. It's time then, for this week's PWTM...
JJ's dreamily idiosyncratic animated short continues to take shape, distinguished by her characteristic emphasis on trad textures and keeping the feel of Ivan's world storybookish, bespoke, and hand-crafted.
Leo's character design for his Tribe 17 transcription takes another evolutionary leap forward, as scrap-yard detritus assembles to resemble a range of extraordinary-looking tribesmen.
Over at Alpha/Omega, Bobby Sparks is working similarly to throw off stagnation and style-creep and generate fresh approaches to designing his Aztec-inspired game character - again, de-coding the aesthetic DNA of Aztec iconography before recombining it to create new variations, and working with Alchemy to uncover apposite patterns.
Sam moves into production for his animated short, road-testing the means by which he can bring the dusty, desaturated world of his concept art to Maya-induced life.
Shahbir takes Camille Saint-Saens' Elephants from his The Carnival of the Animals, and transcribes it as a drunkard's flight of fancy; taking inspiration from Disney's Dumbo and the rubber-hose style of early animation, his simply executed animatic has bags of innate charm and musicality.
Jack is busy readying his 'maitre d'hotel' and host for an anatomy exhibit at the Science Museum: a moving, talking anatomical illustration based upon the celebrated drawings in Gray's Anatomy.
Ruben's transcription of The Music of Erich Zann gets some professional polish in the form of a talk-track by pro voice-over artist, Robin Bowerman - and his character designs for the titular musician move toward their finalisation.
Meanwhile, Simon Watts contents himself with modelling an entire city, as he prepares his vision of New York post-global warming...
2nd year student, Alex (aka the 'dark duke of Estonia') is more than living up to his tutorphil-imposed nickname by dabbling in the complex magicks of Maya Fluid Effects as he readies a phantasmagoria of Special Effects for his transcription of H.P. Lovecraft's, The Evil Clergyman; below is the result of Alex working through Introduction to Maya Fluids Effects Volume One: Smoke and Flames by Wayne Hollingsworth. As Alex himself states on his blog: 'There is really only one way to learn how to do something and that is to do it'. (Amen to that!)
Earl ensures some BBC lustre for his proposed 'Journey Into A Computer' (in 3D, no less!), as voice-over artist, David Johnstone, kindly donates his Scottish burr to the talk-track.
Zak is transcribing Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes by Eleanor Coerr, and is designing two characters - Sadako and the crane - and has been looking at traditional Japanese art sources to guard against the aesthetic cul-de-sac otherwise known as manga; Zak's most recent designs are featured below and suggest a very lyrical style in-the-offing.
Last week, the PWTM featured Domantas's waiter character - and here is his place of work - concept art for an Alphonse Mucha-inspired restaurant.
Elsewhere, Jono gets to work on imagineering his 'superhero's cemetary' - the location for his Unit 4 one minute story idea.
Andriana is getting to grips with her pre-viz - combining some newly learned Maya pyrotechnics and the 2012 Olympic stadium that is the setting for her one minute story, Flaming Rivalry.
Nearing the end now, so here's a further reminder to all CGAA students in regard to the importance of taking part in the Student Surveys 2011. Go here for the original notice - and don't delay. This stuff actually matters!
And finally, a few more perfect words on the subject of procrastination:
'There are a million ways to lose a work day, but not even a single way to get one back'
Tom DeMarco, Timothy Lister
'To think too long about doing a thing often becomes its undoing'
Eva Young
'Don't fool yourself that important things can be put off till tomorrow; they can be put off forever, or not at all'
Mignon McLaughlin.
Have a great week. Be amazing!
I have done the Student Survey.
ReplyDelete