Isobel Wilson’s Animation Blog

This week, I worked on editing my walk/run cycles from class with were critiqued last term. Alongside changing these, I also created some new ones too. Exploring the movement of new animals.

I wanted to try and animate a racoon because of the follow through on the tail and to create a more bouncy character. I did this in the evening after uni one night so didn’t want to take too much time overworking it.

Next, I would like to try to animate another walking character as well. I was thinking a red panda as they have an interesting body shape and again a fluffy tail I can try and work with. Or maybe I will try to animate a bird/flying character. I haven’t looked too much into how the dynamics of wings work which is something I should learn.

Last term I saw an open call for joining the associates. The associates is a student collective, a funded opportunity to share sights, sounds and stories from inside the College. I have been wanting a chance to create new short films and felt this would be the perfect opportunity to do that and to meet new people at UAL on different courses.

We had our first meeting last week and discussed all of our ideas for the term and the type of work we wanted to produce. I pitched my idea of a series of short films about living in London. it was well received and I was given the go ahead to create the film. Having this opportunity to create paid work that will be shown either at uni physically on screens or online on some social media channel is very exciting.

Threads of Connection – London.

Above is my pitch for the film. It’s only very short and simple but I was able to get my point across my easily. To continue my pre-production for my film, I need to create the script and interview my classmates and friends about living in London.

I am aiming to create a solid piece of work to showcase animation and stop motion techniques o a wider audience whilst also exploring a topic that isn’t widely talked about. It can be difficult as a student moving to a new country or area without your support network and having a lot of distance between yourself and them can put a strain on your mental health. I have spoken about this to some of my friends at university who have moved to London from another country who have felt this way.

In the run up to the release of this film before Christmas, I saw some of the promo material and was excited to see how the end product would look. I’m a big fan of any animation that uses ink textures whether it be traditional stop motion methods or digital techniques as seen in this film. I was interested in how they would translate the icon scenes from the book to an animated film.

My family and I sat down on Boxing Day to watch this film, stuffed with chocolate and baileys. it was a pleasantly sweet film that I could see becoming a Christmas classic. Overall I enjoyed the film, visually its stunning! I could not fault the animation at all, they animated each animal with a level of detail and precision that is extremely impressive. The cast was excellent as well, it was a really star studded cast of some of the best of British acting. I particularly enjoyed Idris Elba as the Fox.

However, I felt as though the film was just going through the motions and was spoon feeding audiences meaningful quote after meaningful quote. By the end you’re basically desensitised to all the emotion aspects of the film. I know they wanted to create a faithful adaption to the boo which has been super popular in the UK. It just felt to me that there was no emotional payoff by the end of the film because of this. Overall in spite of this, I still enjoyed the film and would watch it again even to just enjoy looking at the animation again.

Edit: In our clean up lecture we were able to meet Saffron, who worked as a clean up artist on the film for 7 months. They explain their process and explained the difficulties that came with the inking stage of the clean up. They have 7 different brushes to create the ears of the fox, the attention to detail is amazing. It was great to hear from someone who worked on the film and it kind of made the industry feel not so far away and unattainable once we’ve graduated.

Straight after we broke up for Winter break, I took a quick trip on the Eurostar to Paris. It was my first time visiting Paris and as it was a solo trip I was able to visit all the things I wanted to and really take my time enjoying them.

Sketching on the journey

I had a great time on the train and metro sketching people and buildings. It was a great exercise in observational drawing and working quickly. Here are some of the sketches I did.

My trip to the Louvre

My first stop in Paris was the Louvre, I spent the better half of a day in here and still didn’t see everything I wanted to. But did some sketches of paintings/statues and some of the people there too. Of course I had to get a quick video of the Mona Lisa even though I didn’t get too close in the end.

People watching whilst at Cafes

Paris is a city with a strong cafe culture. I wanted to relax between visiting so many galleries and exhibitions. I had a great time people watching whilst sitting outside drinking a nice hot chocolate. here are some of the sketches I did.

Tintin Exhibition

On my last afternoon in Paris, I was able to go and watch the Tintin exhibition before it closed. As someone who grew up reading the books and enjoying the film. It was amazing to me to see these iconic drawings come to live in a way that felt very genuine to the style Tintin is drawn. I highly recommend it for any Tintin fans.

As I was only there for a couple of days, there is still so much I have yet to see. Id love to go back and visit more galleries and museums.

So it’s a couple of days before the end of term now and I’ve submitted all my work for the term. These past 10-11 weeks have really flown by but I’ve enjoyed it so much! I feel like I have really improved in my animation work but also in my understanding of drawing, movement and in my time management too.

I’ve managed to complete a lot of my goals for the term too, mostly being visiting lots of galleries and museums and fully putting myself out there for collaborations. With more exciting news of have a job at the UAL Not Just A Shop and also joining The Associates next term to make content for the university.

For next term I would like to work on more collaborations and also continue to push my animation knowledge further by continuing to practice the animation principles.

This week we moved onto our hardest exercise yet! It was made better by the appearance of three very cute and well behaved dogs, who modelled for us throughout the day on Monday. We were able to sketch them and also get reference footage for our work later on too.

I found seeing the dogs in person was very helpful to my understanding of their hind legs in particular but also their movement in general. Each dog was also unique in size, stature and temperament. Below I have attached some of my sketches of the dog but also of my own pets which I found pics and videos of later on.

I planned to create a run and walk cycles featuring my own pets. I enjoy drawing my pets often anyway so it should be fun to animate them for this exercise. I used my dog Oscar as the reference for my run cycle.

From the feedback I received on this 1st sketch I need to work on the ears and tail to make it a bit cleaner.

Ralph walk loop – 1st Test

From the feedback I reviewed, I need to work on the head movement a bit more

This term I was lucky enough to collaborate with a friend of mine who’s on the MA Material Futures course. She’s creating an amazing project around the idea of bioifical flowers and bioplastics to help the environment. When she asked me if I’d help her create some animated visuals for her presentation and project, of course I said yes!

We started off with some initial sketches and traded ideas and I sent her some of my previous work to see if the vibe would work with what she had in mind.

Once we had that locked down, I begin to mock up some quick designs in Photoshop and then finally animated a couple of simple gifs to demonstrate how her bioifical flowers would work with wildlife and the environment itself.

This was such a fun little project to work on alongside my other course work and I hope that I will be able to do something similar next term too!

I finally finished all my sheets for Anne’s design! I will submit these for the formative assessment next week. I am enjoying furthering her design and creating more lore about her. I already have plans to create more work featuring her over the winter break.

Below you can see the sheets I made to show her design.

I think some of the designs are still a bit rough and need some refinement but I really enjoy drawing her so hopefully I will also get a chance to animate her too.

This afternoon I visited the grant museum of zoology after work. It had been on my list to visit for quite a long time (since visiting the natural history of museum in summer time).

There was a plan for people to visit the museum as a group but sadly I couldn’t attend with everyone because I was at work.

Though I gave myself an hour for a quick visit before it shut and really enjoyed myself. I definitely found it useful to understand the bones and structure of a cat or pet dog. And I also enjoyed sketching some of the skulls they had on show too.

Id like to visit more museums like this in the future 🙂

I went to see the My Neighbour Totoro musical at the Barbican last night and absolutely loved it. The puppetry for Totoro and his friends was excellent and the puppeteers really moved them in a way that felt so real.

It felt quite emotional to see the show and hear the soundtrack in real life. Totoro was one of the first films I watched when I was teenager discovering international cinema and what animation looked like outside the realm of British/American mainstream stuff. Studio Ghibli films do hold a special place in my heart, especially the soundtracks to the films as they are so iconic. So seeing it all come together and being surrounded by people who were just as awed and engaged with the show was amazing. I’d love to see it again but I think its sold out 🙁