You Will Bow Down Before Me! So Long As There's Room.

Boy those Phantom Zone square thingies don't look big enough for one person, let alone three!

DOCTOR WHO 50th: The Doctors

Yes gentle viewers, this is the month that started the longest running Science Fiction show ever (and it's British!)

Yes on 23rd November, Doctor Who will be 50 years old. But you all know that, unless you've been living under a rock. 

To celebrate the anniversary of one of my favourite shows of all time, I thought I will celebrate the history of the show. No I'm not going to produce a celebratory animation, but instead I shall take a subject over the next three weeks and produce a bundle of illustrations to celebrate. First of, the reason we watch the show… THE DOCTOR(s)!

Character Designs

For me character is the most important aspect of a narrative, since the audience has to spend the duration of the plot with them. For the audience to believe in them, so must the creator. I do this by drawing the character a bajillion times in order to get a grasp of them. What follows are my theories for Dr. Maniaco:

This is an expressions chart. These were taken from a meme on DeviantArt. There were some which I knew the Doc would never use (such as silly), but it was helpful to draw anyway. I recommend it for everyone interested in drawing as helps grasp emotions.

This is the science for Dr. Maniaco. 1/4 head turns are a real 

-bleep-ing -bleep-stard to do, but it helps when you are animating. I realise, now, that Dr.Maniaco's body is more of an '8' than egg timer. 

The top/second row is an animation breakdown of a normal walk.

Third row is a tip-toe, which is how I thought Dr. Maniaco would walk, but when I animated it just looked like someone was tip-toeing… you know what I mean!

PHEW!

Have I been busy. Throughout the half term I have been helping out my brother's cub scout group prepare for the Rye Bonfire Night. The theme was 'Pirates'. I made up 30 swords and Parrots and had to re-dress the dragon they used last year and turn it into a sea serpent. I took every detail off the body and head and changed it to feel more like a muppet.

Reflective Process Unit: Pterodactyl

For my Reflective Process Unit, I am practicing character animation. The question I am asking myself is, can I define the character through the acting in my animation? I hope so, because that is my job as an animator. Animation is basically acting... with pencils. 

It occurred to me that the way in which I demonstrate this is by animating different characters. You have already seen the Dr. Maniaco animation, today I went a different route. I decided to animate a pterodactyl. Why? First of all it is an animal, so it cannot have the same emotions as a human. Not only is it an animal, but it is an extinct animal. Nobody has seen one alive, so I have to invent a way for the it to move, whilst using reference of animals today. Another interesting note is that it is a flying creature, which gives me a break from animating walk cycles and... actually, no that's about it.

So here are the pencil cels for my pterodactyl. I used this Eadweard Muybridge photo for a cockatiel flying as reference, having to tweak it slightly because the wings of a pterodactyl is a different shape to a bird's wing.