The Creativities of a Brook.

To make the final animation easier to edit I wanted the background to be editable as well. So I made it all in CG 3D. Here is a quick rundown of the stages of building it... The Models... I only need geometry for the trees and the grass, and the tree will be an image mapped onto a simple plane. The Materials... Again, very simple. A slight fractal bump on the ground, some bump on the tree and, obviously, a clipping/alpha map to make it tree shaped. Oh, and a specular map on the floor will catch the highlights from the sun, but you don't notice that in an image without any specular highlights. The Mood... 3 Lights: Sun light behind A second sunlight from the front, only for the trees which otherwise receive no light from the sun at the back. Sky light... In this case a simple spot light from the front with an image of clouds that will be animated in the final animation along with the sky in the back. The Textures... To add colour and realism to the scene. Animation test... I'll

Teenage Tantrums of the T-Rex How scientists cracked the puzzle of the Falklands wolf

If you steal a few photos from google images: A Sky, a field and a tree... Arrange them like so... And add the characters from my story... You get the basic idea of how my storyboard started out.

No updates, I need my scanner... Can't believe I left it at Uni-home. Anyway, I'll use my camera to take some photos tomorrow... That'll suffice.

As my newspaper project progressed I changed from Rosemary Bennett from the Times to Steve Connor from the Independent... And I plan to illustrate 8 articles over Christmas. Maybe a little far-fetched but here's hoping. Anyway, two of the first drafts I've done... Unlock the secret of your genes - for £31,000 Sales boost for the physics book found in Tiger's car

Next to do was to create a storyboard for my animation. And, for a story board, I knew I'd need a nice selection of character poses from each character... I didn't mind too much about using the same pose twice, so I needed just enough to make the story followable, so that you can tell what the character is doing in each cell Anyway, once I'd drawn a few poses I scanned them in and cut them out so they had a nice transparent background, so I could arrange them on the storyboard. With this nice little collection I thought I'd put a small scene together. Here's what I made first... Then once I finished drawing the bunnies and foxes, I made this one... Click the image for a bigger version... I think. Maybe a little too cluttered, but as an after thought I quite like it.

I never did a final design for this one as I'd already decided to change columnist by the time I'd got to this stage in this illustration... Half of secondary school girls considering cosmetic surgery, Guides study finds.

The whole story starts off kinda as a generic cat-and-mouse between the fox and the rabbit. By day , the rabbit is outside frolicking in the field. By evening, the fox comes out and chases the rabbit. By night, the hungry fox finds other, less substantial food. A few days in , faces appear on the sun and moon as they rise. The sun starts to enjoy the company of the rabbit. The moon takes the fox to be his companion. The moon begins to feel sorry for the hungry fox, and gives him tips to catch the rabbit. The sun finds out about this and warns the rabbit... Whom doesn't understand / believe / care, and so just carries on as usual. A few days later a trap has been set. The rabbit falls prey but escapes relatively easily. A new trap is set again. Same outcome. Soon after , fox begins not to chase the rabbit, instead is seen collecting sticks and twine. The moon has an evil grin. The sun looks more and more nervous. The rabbit seems unscathed / happy not to be chased. The moon te

A quick rundown of the project for those who didn't read the first post. But this is the last time. I'm doing newspaper illustrations for articles by the same writer once a week. I started off doing them for the times' Rosemary Bennett (as the two illustrations on this page are from) but I've moved onto one Steve Connor who writes for the Independent, as I found his writing to be much more in-line with my interests. Anyway, here are the two I did on Rosemary Ben nett , along with the final roughs... We're too busy pushing pens to save children, say social workers Condoms catch up with pills as safe sex message gets through.

Starting with the animation project I'm thinking it'll make sense to try to alternate between talking about the projects, so from now on I won't talk about both in one post, unless I have an interesting comparison/contrast or something, to try to try keep the blog clear. I type too much of what I think... I need to try dumb that down a little. Anyway, my animation project is about... The Sun and Rabbit... By day these are the characters you'll be watching. The sun keeping a watchful eye on the rabbit. The rabbit, mindless and care free as he is, kinda needs the sun to look after him... Even if he's taken for granted and not appreciated. The Moon and Fox... And then as it reaches evening, the Moon and fox step into the scene. The fox as mindless as the rabbit, just looking to get himself a meal, but generally ending the evening hungry and hunting lesser foods by night, when the fox has hidden in his hole. More appreciative, the moon begins to help the fox wit

And here's mine... My first few posts will be (should be) much more full than than later posts because it'll be catchup to try get the gist of what's already been done, (albeit not very much.) Anyway, this will mostly be me displaying work, sketches and goings on in my University work which is, and will be until sometime in February, two projects. The first , and main project, is an animation project. I'm not setting to do a finished animation, as it turns out, as it is far too ambitious. Nope, instead I'm setting out to create a good quality storyboard, enough to get the story across, and a shot animation including a couple of shots from, what would be, the finished animation. The second , lesser project, will be illustration and I'll be writing a report on it. Basically I'm choosing a newspaper columnist and I want to illustrate their articles, pretending I'm the actual illustrator for the column. I will then try to contact the writer of the ar