Update on a holy day

 Despite what the title might say, I don't really consider myself a religious person, but that's not the point of this post. The point is that I'm gonna post an update on this blog once a week and for all intents and purposes, Sunday seems like an ideal day to do it.

So I mentioned in my first post that I was hoping to be a storyboard artist (for film or animation? it matters not) and that I'd put some examples of my storyboard panels up.

Title image, and yes I've already heard that it looks like something out of the Simpsons ]:(

 Wednesday's Child was a minute long animated short (written by the talented John Harkins and Freya Hotson) that focused on the character Daniel, a young boy whose family have recently moved house, something that Daniel isn't happy about.

 The short was part of our coursework in 3rd Year animation and was an exercise in character animation as well as group production. I found myself with the task of creating the storyboard (which for me is a visual version of the script) and how to make it flow correctly.

Rough Storyboard - Thumbnails of each shot in the short

This is usually how my storyboards start as

This was actually my first proper introduction with the rules behind storyboarding. I say that because when I originally did storyboards for animation, I kinda did them with little to no idea on how scenes were linked visually or the concept of "Crossing the line" (which caused a lot of headaches for my group members when we had prod meeting with our lecturer Wayne Thomas).

I did learn a lot from it and while I struggled with drawing Daniel for the longest time (I actually got so annoyed that when I took my frustration out in a drawing, I actually managed to draw him properly for once, the irony) I definitely enjoyed working on it and it encouraged me to become a better draftsmen if not push me on my way towards storyboarding.

The animation itself was based on the local beaches in the Fife area and as such we did some observational drawing as part of our research. Unfortunately unlike the final film it wasn't a particularly nice day.

While Freya and John did cite Calvin & Hobs as one of their major influences for this film, being a fan of the Peanuts Strips I couldn't help but draw this. Makes me wish I drew Charlie Brown and Snoopy more often.

 These were the next set of storyboards I did using watercolours. While they aren't the best example of my use with the medium, they did help in giving us an idea of how the characters would be coloured.

These storyboard panels were made during production and weren't used for the animatic (which was a mix of panels by all members of the group)

These were concept ideas for posters, the first one brought some raised eyebrows my way due to the Manga-esq style that it was drawn in, while the second managed to make it into the credits for the final film.

 

And the Final film itself:

Well that was Wednesday's Child, next time I'll show you boards from my last project but for now enjoy the rest of the pics.

The dawn of a new blog

 After much badgering from colleagues and noticing how many professional artists put their work onto sketchblogs, I felt it was time to do the same. First a quick introduction:

Apple juice FTW

 My name is Joseph McMahon (my friends call me Joe) and I'm a recent graduate student from Dundee University's animation course at Duncan of Jordanstone art college.

 I should point out that this isn't my first foray into the interwebs, as I've posted alot of my older stuff through my Deviant art account (which recently has been left to the wayside a little) http://aquilas.deviantart.com/

 And in order to give you a better understanding of the quality of work that was produced by this years graduates at DOJ, I present the link to the DOJ animation website where you can see all the graduate films
http://animation2011.com/

 I worked primarily on the 2D animation Mawkins Backfire, which you can watch here on youtube.

Also as part of our course, each of our films were to have a blog attached in order for people to have an inside look at how the films were made http://mawkinsbackfire.blogspot.com/

I'm pretty busy at the moment with a temporary job till I can earn enough to afford looking for more suitable work. I'm primarily looking into being a 2D animator, with a particular interest in storyboarding (which I'll upload examples of very soon).