2015

So it's 2016, and I've gone about 8 months without blogging, so this post will be just a little (probably really long) update!

I'm only just realising how much of a blur 2015 was. I can remember a lot of stress? But after the stress, some of my coursemates/favourite people & I went to Annecy for their Animation festival! 

LOOK HOW PRETTY IT IS! ^_^ 

10 days in Annecy = 10 days of me Cheshire cat smiling with some of my favourites. 

 

Went to so many interesting talks (including Good Dinosaur/Sanjays Superteam/Zootopia/Genndy Tartakovsky) but the coolest thing I think I did was hold one of the Aardman puppets!

There's not point in me even attempting to do a proper review of the whole festival. All I can remember is:

•  The Good Dinosaur looks insanely impressive but eh, storyline a bit weak? Having now seen it, and cried, I still stand by my opinion. It's got nothing on Inside Out.
• Sanjays Super Team on the other hand is my new favourite Pixar Short. It was also probably one of the most interesting talks I went too! So interesting! 
• Zootopia is going to be insane. 
• Signe Baumane did such an amazing job of explaining her own personal story and her families battle with madness in a completely honest, yet entertaining way. 
• Adam Elliot's Ernie Biscuit was definitely my favourite short.
• There was another claymation short called 'Sexy Laundry' and its the most messed up/funniest short I've ever seen.

I was also lucky enough to meet the extremely talented Pernille ørum! (Who now has the most beauitful book!)

So in love with @pernilleoerum work ♡

A photo posted by Laura Jones (@fantanazz) on Jan 4, 2016 at 8:40am PST

And thats about all I can remember from Annecy. Here are some doodles. ^_^ 

 

After returning to the UK, I moved out of my uni house then a few days later was once again on my travels to Madeira/Lizard Island! Literally hours after seeing Taylor Swift with my sister; committed fan. 

 

 

Some more doodles! I'm pretty sure one of my favourite days of 2015 was spent drawing parrots. 

 

 

 

After three years I finally graduated with a 2:1. Fun. ^_^ 

 

Then once again left the UK to explore Brugge, Gent, Brussels (home of Tin Tin!), Ypres, Waterloo and the last stop at Chocques Military Cemetery where my Nan's Uncle, so my Great Great Uncle, was buried in 1915.

Below more snaps and doodles! Belgium is the perfect place for a drawing holiday. Just look at the architecture!

 
    

After all that, I went back to Animortal Studios to do two more weeks of work experience on Chuck Steel! Few months after that I attempted and failed at doing Inktober, but hey, I tried, and that's all that matters.

My reaction to Keith Lemon being involved in the BTTF Tribute show. Ugh.

 

Back to something animation related, I spent a night re-doing my showreel. Ta da :}

Showreel! from Laura Jones on Vimeo.

Below are two WIP. Which I keep starting, then forgetting which sketchbook they're in. So hopefully you'll see them finished at some point in 2016! ^_^

smafter effects

Removing two rigs from a 16 second animation was completely fine, but removing one teeny rig from a 2 second animation? Awful. So many teeny masks! 

I feel like I've learnt more about After Effects/Premiere/Photoshop more this week than the rest of the course. I was slightly rushed while animating the final performance, so I wanted to combined one of my tests which was only 9 frames with my final, and I somehow managed it easily! Also while animating this scene, I kept knocking the cake, even though it was stuck down it would still slightly move. So I gave up, and decided to edit it in afterwards. 

cake cake cake.

Backgrounds for this kinda slipped my mind, and my attempt of drawing something on photoshop failed miserably. I got this far and then just realised I was wasting my time. 

SO I asked my lovely friend/housemate Sydney Isaac if I could use her bakery environment as a background. I think they went quite well together. ^_^ 

I made a blackboard, and a little poster for my own attempts, so not to make it a complete waste of my time I decided to put them in. ^_^

For my rollercoaster animation, I filmed with the set floor and background green screened so I could easily edit the background video in, but that's the boring part. You might remember that in my sleepy state I named my website 'Laura on Toast'. Then while animating this animation, the word rollercoaster turned into rolla toaster! Toasterrrr! So I made a quick little logo for the rollercoaster stills.

I'm really really sleepy.

And that's it for After Effects folks!

So. Much. Rig. Removal.

I've spent the past two weeks animating, editing everything, while spending last week at work experience at the wonderful Trampires working on Chuck Steel, so yeah I'm totally cream crackered! 

I've spent so long on After Effect the last couple of weeks, I felt like I should at least one post about it. 

LOOK AT ALL THE MASKS!

Removing two rigs out of a 16 second animation. Ouch.

When the character falls off, I wanted the camera to shake. Honestly I couldn't explain how I did it, so yeah, here's a printscreen of it. All I can remember is that I had to type 'wiggle'. Proper coding like.