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weekly update - 22/05/23

We have a significant amount of progress this week, wow! 

Unfortunately I’ve spent most of my time in Eldon and the library, so my brain has effectively been rendered to mush. I’m also going to New York City/Canada for a week and a half this week, so while my work will slow down for a little bit I’m hoping to go to some really nice places and museums and such! 

I finally have my final designs for both JJ and Jamie, which I’m just super proud of. 

While I would like to add some alternate outfits, such as JJ’s spacesuit and maybe a more casual outfit for each of them, these are most of it! I’d also like to give them both a proper ‘character sheet’, with some expressions and other elements on them. 

I also got back into boarding, woo!

I started off with the scene in which Jamie and JJ meet, and kind of just boarded ahead, with not much thought to anything?

I quickly realised, this was pretty pants! I didn’t like it! The movement was okay, and it was something, but it wasn’t something I’d be happy to go over to clean up. 

Instead I gave myself just under an hour to write a small script, and just let myself see where that could take me:

While JJ doesn’t actually appear in this script, and I didn’t even really finish it, it certainly gave me a good place to continue.

I did what I normally do, which is set myself another time limit and use my traditional board template to assist before I plunge myself into Storyboard Pro.

Since I had a lot of dialogue, I didn’t want to write it all down, nor spend a bunch of time annotating my script. I hadn’t boarded in ages, I just wanted to draw!

And draw I did - for more than a weekend! 

I am so incredibly proud of this, even if it is a minute over what I wanted each scene to be, and doesn’t include one of my main characters! I think I did a pretty good job with everything! 

While this is still a rough draft, I think before I go away I’d like to put the .pdf file on Speakerdeck, so I can start building up the Storyboarding section of my portfolio website! 

I also want to try and board/draw/make a film(?) while I’m away, to try and challenge myself in a way! 

#tag later

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weekly update #5 - 09/05/23

We’re back with the weekly updates! There’s not a lot of work here, but a lot of deconstruction. Basically, I want to take a look at everything I’ve done so far, and use that to build myself up and get my project done!

To do this, let’s establish what I actually want to hand in for my project:

Portfolio Website

This will house everything to do with my project, which includes:

TSTSU Storyboards Other Storyboards (Most likely using audio from a podcast) Illustration Work (Personal, Editorial, Commissions etc) TSTSU Project Page (Which is a pseudo-pitch bible of sorts)

My website is essentially a base of operations for everything else, so having that mostly sorted is essential. Luckily, I do! I haven’t really got any storyboards on there yet, but it’s one less thing to worry about later. 

I don’t want to say exactly how many storyboards I’ll do, or exactly what my pitch bible will look like here, as that’s not what this post is about. 

To sort of flip-flop, let’s now examine the work I produced at the start of the year, before I decided to pivot more towards storyboarding. 

Initially, The Sword that Splits Us was going to be solely a concept art project, so the design work took precedent. Unfortunately, I wasn’t that good! I don’t mean that in a deprecating way, just generally. But we get better! 

All of this work, while fine, is severely lacking. I knew this at the time, too. As a result, I was lucky to be able to get some feedback from a friend of mine who works in the industry! He also gave me the confidence to pursue storyboarding, so really he’s the backbone of my entire project. 

I started off making annotated moodboards, for different parts of my environment, mostly being Pluto, but also the Prosperina Research Station, which is based on it.

I haven’t looked at these moodboards in quite a while, so it’s really nice to see how detailed I was. Even if I don’t plan on doing a lot of visual development from now, compared to my storyboards, this is work that I don’t have to complete as it’s already done! 

I then used these moodboards to make a few more pieces of artwork, still basically being all landscapes. 

These are so much better, and I still really like them! However I didn’t do a lot after this, as it was about this time when I decided to pivot towards storyboarding.

Now that I’m looking at this work, it’s actually becoming quite inspiring once more. While I do think I was definitely biting off more than I could chew with thinking I could design a planet’s surface, as well as a whole research station, including individual sections and an observatory - I do now think I could produce some sketches/rough visdev aspects for my portfolio, as well as making it easier when I storyboard some more. 

Even if this work isn’t going on my portfolio, it’s still an integral part of my development, and it’s going to go here! 

I feel my train of thought running out, so I’ll stop here before this post gets far too long. To summarise, I have a lot of work! It’s okay for me to take a step back. I can use what I already have to build on my subsequent work, for all aspects of my portfolio. I’m excited to see what I do next! 

#tag later

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These are some scans of some fact cards I picked up from a charity shop a little while ago. They’re originally part of a set provided by Brooke Bond Tea, that would also come with a book to place the cards into. Both the cards and the book have a lot of interesting facts about space and mankind’s ventures into space in them. I also think the art is absolutely gorgeous! I think they would be really good to use for studies too. 

#tag later

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Scans of my small zine, Journeys for the Eye

#tag later

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a reflection of artistic pursuits #1 - 27/04/23

I’ve been meaning to talk about all the art I’ve been doing in uni for a while now, so now I’m going to do it in a big post, and hopefully this won’t be the only one! 

I’ve been very fortunate to get to work with a variety of mediums since coming back to do my Masters, and even if I don’t use some of these methods in my project, I definitely don’t want to stop using them full-stop! 

Back in February, we had a bookbinding workshop, in which we all made ourselves a concertina-styled book. I feel like I’ll be repeating myself quite often, but it was very fun to try something I hadn’t done before! 

I still have the book empty, and I have a bit of a fear of doing anything with it, as I’m not entirely sure what I want to fill it with yet! The only slightly off-putting thing was how bad the glue smelled, really stank up the living room. 

The following week we were all inducted into the EPC (I think they’ve changed the name - but I can’t remember what it is) - having a look at woodworking and 3D printing. I had a go at using SketchUp with the 3D printers. I used them to make a couple of storyboarding templates. The first one turned out quite big, and I mainly use it for larger illustration thumbnails. But the smaller ones have been pretty good! 

I think I’d like to try SketchUp again, and hopefully give them a lid of sorts? To try and make it easier to hold, because they can be a bit slippery. 

We also got to visit Ankle Deep Studios at Portsmouth’s Historic Dockyard to do some lino prints, which overall was a fantastic trip! I’ve never actually been down to the dockyards before, so while we couldn’t go into any of the actual buildings, just walking around was very insightful. 

I used some of the emblems I saw around the dockyards as inspiration for my lino cut, and also the podcast The Magnus Archives, as at the time I was still extremely obsessed with it. 

I really liked my final result, and think I did quite well to make it look like an emblem, while also incorporating elements from the show, such as the eyes and the panopticon in the middle. While I could’ve cut the logo more, I do like the fact that we still have texture from the shallower cuts in the final prints. Again, just doing something I hadn’t before was really really fun. I love the tactile feeling of printing and things like lino, and wish I’d done it before!

I really do like the final results, and I think I may actually use lino again for a side piece for my major project. I’ve wanted to design logo/insignias for some of the organisations in TSTSU, and I think this would be a fun way to make it more physical! 

Another new artistic method was riso printing, again during one of our timetabled days. Riso had always confused me a little bit, but Ceri did a fantastic job of explaining everything to us, and making the overall experience super enjoyable. 

I once again used a podcast as my inspiration, but this time I chose the Lovecraftian horror podcast ‘Malevolent’ by Harlan Guthrie. I found the idea of layering things quite interesting and different, and I was also happy with the results of these! 

While I could've lined up the right print a bit better, I think what I mostly wanted to achieve worked, and was definitely pleased with how the print on the left turned out. I definitely want to try riso a bit more before I have to leave the university! 

While they’re quite small in the picture above, we also had a small go at badge making, with the badge press in the Illustration studio. I’m a sucker for things like stickers and badges, so I’ll definitely be coming back to make badges of my characters, or just anything really!

This was a bit of a long one, and definitely won’t be the last I do with these methods, but I’m glad to have finally put it all together for my blog! 

#tag later

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general update 27/04/23

It’s been a month, one hell of a month. 

I could wax poetic about how hard it’s all been and whatever, but I don’t want to do that, so I won’t! Time is passing anyway, it’s all about what I’ve been doing and more importantly, what I’ll be doing going forward.

I haven’t really done any storyboarding this month, which I want to get back to, for obvious reasons. I’ve been listening to a lot more podcasts, so if I find myself struggling with my project, I’m going to try and clip a few scenes from them to hopefully help with motivation! 

I’ve been working on my website and revamping some of my social media stuff, just trying to get it all together. 

I’ve also started some Domestika courses, around visdev and character design, to give me more to fall back on should other things get a bit harder. I don’t feel bad about my work at all, I know I have time. I just want to feel like I did at the start of the year motivation wise. 

#tag later

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weekly update #5 - 22/03/23

Bit late with this one, so I’m hoping next week’s can kind of make up for it!

I’ve found the past few weeks pretty difficult ADHD-wise, everything feels like it’s not quite concrete. But I’m slowly working through it! Trying to tell myself that at least I am doing work, and that is something. Some progress is better than none! 

I did some studies in Storyboard Pro from Puss in Boots: The Last Wish - couldn’t figure out how to embed it on tumblr, but it can be found here!

I set myself a 3 minute timer for each one, and only traced the first study, because after that I realised this wouldn’t be quite accurate to how I work. It was a fun little exercise, and was nice to try and deconstruct the amazing composition used in the film, as well as practice my shorthand. 

Spent last week doing some worldbuilding, though! Which was very long overdue. 

While this isn’t quite ‘story’ things, it feels like much much more of a solid foundation to start thinking about my scenes on, and did give me an idea for a small scene I’d like to try and board this week!

Also had a go at some rough designs for JJ’s ship - The Excalibur. I’d love to do some isometric/more detailed drawings of the ship, and will try to if I get the time. 

And some very, very rough sketches, with the bottom being what I hope to be the start of the rest of the crew on Proserpina!

I don’t like saying I’m not ‘proud’ of what I’ve done in a certain week, especially if I haven’t felt great. But I do love my project, and just want to do a bit more! So I’m going to try and do so for the rest of my week, with my updates resuming their normal Monday scheduling on the 27th! 

#ma illustration #illustration major project #weekly updates #storyboards #the sword that splits us

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more science museum pictures!

#ma illustration #illustration major project

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had the opportunity to visit the science museum last week! hoping that looking back over these pictures will instil a bit more motivation in me!

#ma illustration #illustration major project

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weekly update #4 - 13/03/23

So it’s been a couple of weeks! A couple of long, slow weeks. And unfortunately I don’t have a lot to show. Going home for Consolidation Week meant I was being a bit more of a parent than I anticipated, but I’m still going to show off the few things I did do!

I started off with some designs for Jamie and JJ’s parents, who are both top-level physicists working on the Excalibur Project. I’d like to do some colour keys/change things up a little bit, as I need to remember that the more I refine an idea, the more I’ll like it! 

I also started another podcast - called Wolf 359. It’s set aboard the fictional USS Hephaestus, orbiting the titular red dwarf. It starts off like the Golden-Age of radio shows, but evolves into more of a thriller when there’s a glimpse of potential extraterrestrial contact. After listening to a lot of horror-themed media, something that was science fiction but still has the same level of narrative enthusiasm was really fun, and it prompted me to do a few character studies! It made me want to pinch some of these designs for TSTSU, so I might just do that. 

I managed a few little sketches/notes of potential characters, and I think I’m going to need to set a bit of a limit, especially because I don’t want to spend a lot of time developing characters who won’t appear at all in my storyboards.

I only boarded something small, to try and shake off the dust that tries to settle on my brain. I used a character belonging to a friend of mine, just to get over any perfectionism I’m still feeling using Jamie and JJ. I spent about an hour and a half on this, and was pretty happy with the result!

Finally, during Consolidation Week I attended a short Zine Workshop at Wadham College at Oxford University. It was run by Imperfect Bound, an Oxford-based queer zine collective, and it was both something different and something fun! With it only being an hour and a half I had to work pretty quickly, so I cut my pages down by binding (no pun intended) my zine with some fabric I’d found!

While not really anything to do with TSTSU, this is another example of experimenting with different types of media, and I intend to make another blog post about what I’ve been getting up to! 

This isn’t a lot of work for two weeks, so I’m hoping being back at uni will instil that routine in me once again, and I’m looking forward to what I come up with!

#ma illustration #illustration major project #the sword that splits us #weekly updates

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weekly update #3 - 27/02/23

A surprisingly productive week! Ended up with what I think was an ear infection, and that made me feel incredibly dizzy for most of the week! By the time it cleared up mostly it was the weekend, and I didn’t want to make myself feel worse by staring at a screen for ages.

I did want to do some more character designs for Jamie and JJ, more specifically outfit variations, but I didn’t really get around to that. 

I did board, though, something a lot more polished than I’ve done before! Feboardary is coming to an end and while I do wish I’d taken part a bit more I’m very proud of the growth I’ve had over this last month. 

There were a few goals I had in mind with my next ‘scene’ - I wanted to polish it, so Jamie and JJ would be recognisable as themselves and not just weird abstractions - I also gave myself a time limit of 20 seconds, to make this polishing easier to accomplish. I picked the prompt ‘Confrontation’ as I felt this was a pretty apt word that fit into my story. 

Obviously the confrontation would be between Jamie and JJ, but I did tweak how this played out a few times. 

In last week’s update post I showed this sketch as a part of a bunch of doodles I’d done, and I thought this would be a good foundation for my ‘confrontation’ - Set not long after JJ crashes and is most likely pulled from some rubble by Jamie and brought back to the research station. 

Initially I thought about having some dialogue, with some snippets of it shown above. I quickly abandoned this idea to make sure I didn’t spend all my time worrying about a script instead of boarding. 

There were a few dialogue snippets in my first round of boards, in which I had JJ waking up after the crash, but I felt this would already make it span long past 20 seconds, and that’s not what I wanted. 

I did start to board this iteration, too, but again - it was just too long! If I made the frames shorter it would be far too choppy, however I was determined to keep it at 20 seconds. 

Back to the drawing board I went:

I thought I might try and attempt some action, with JJ catching Jamie off guard, since they’d definitely feel threatened after being locked up without any clue as to what’s going on - but honestly I just don’t think I’m at the level to do this yet! I also didn’t know how to make it not feel so clunky, my time constraint looming over me more than anything else.

Bonus Storyboard Pro warm-up doodles! 

But I boarded! My roughs took me around two and a half hours, with the cleans taking over six. 

I really like my roughs, as I think my confidence is peaking through a lot more now that I’m getting more and more used to how Storyboard Pro functions. I do think my movements were a bit repetitive, with Jamie moving his head around a fair amount, and I didn’t incorporate any camera action this time around but that was to not overcomplicate things for myself further down the line. 

And here’s my final animatic! 20 seconds long, coloured in mostly greyscale to give it more depth, and with Jamie and JJ actually being present! This took so, so long. I realised halfway through that I wasn’t liking the brush I’d switched over to, and should’ve just used the same brush I used for my roughs. I also started to feel myself getting too neat with my strokes? Sure, these had to be cleaner than the last, but I still thin I could’ve saved a lot of time remembering to not be so neat. 

While I didn’t get around to focusing on more outfits or other character design aspects for Jamie and JJ, I do want to spend the upcoming week expanding the world of The Sword that Splits Us, so maybe I can smush the two together!

#ma illustration #illustration major project #jamie stallard #jj ashford #storyboards #weekly updates #the sword that splits us

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weekly update #2 - 20/02/23

This week has been a bit of a shift, into more character design stuff! I’m starting to feel more confident with my ability in Storyboard Pro, but wanted to revisit Jamie and JJ’s designs a little bit (especially Jamie’s) so I wasn’t feeling uncertain when it comes around to polishing any work I do.

I wanted to both do character stuff and board this week, but the character stuff did take up a bit more time and effort than I initially anticipated - and that’s okay! Work is work, and I’ve made more progress than if I’d spent all my time panicking about what I hadn’t yet done.

Sketching on paper is pretty fun, doesn’t feel as intense as using a sketchbook? I think I still feel the need to have a ‘pretty’ sketchbook when that’s really not the case. But Jamie and JJ both have full names now, which is nice!

I flipped between sketchbook work and digital work, honestly gravitating towards whatever appealed to me most in the moment.

The issue I had for a while (aside from not feeling like I understood Jamie well enough) was that he looked pretty kid-like! I want both Jamie and JJ to be around mid-late 20′s - essentially not kids. 

I’d sketched Jamie late last year, when I was still prioritising concept art over storyboarding, and he definitely looked a lot older here, although I wanted him to be a bit more stylised. I also thought his hair could do with some more shaping, instead of just being a bit messy, keeping the consistency would help with boarding a lot. 

While I really liked how some of these poses had personality to them, it was kind of the same problem! He looked like a kid! 

So - I tried to marry everything I’d done so far.

I’m pretty happy with how this turned out! I don’t feel like I had to change much to age Jamie up, making his build a bit stockier and keeping a bit of facial hair ended up doing a lot of the heavy lifting here. 

I didn’t end up boarding anything, and I don’t think I opened Storyboard Pro once last week. Obviously overloading myself every week won’t be good for sustainability, but I don’t want to fall too far behind with any one thing throughout my work. 

This week I want to have a more polished character sheet for both Jamie and JJ, and some outfit alterations. These won’t be portfolio-ready, but set up a bit nicer and have colour and the like. I also want to board! Feboardary has a week left, and so I want to use the ‘Confrontation’ prompt with the little environment sketch I did in the second picture on this blog post. In-between work I’ve been thinking about some story elements I’ll have to start developing soon, so this will be a nice entry point. These boards will also be more polished! I’m capping myself at around 20 seconds, but I want to actually have Jamie and JJ express and move! No more vague noodle people.

#ma illustration #illustration major project #jamie stallard #jj ashford #weekly updates #the sword that splits us

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15/02/23 - life drawing #2

i have absolutely no idea what's going on with my second ten minute pose, dont ask. foreshortening hurts!

the sequences were really really fun, though! having to draw quickly and still seeing movement in my weird little lines is very satisfying

#ma illustration #other art

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15/02/23 - life drawing #1

i almost always prefer the warm ups, just because when i have to think more i get sloppy

#ma illustration #other art

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weekly update #1 - 13/02/23

From now on I’ll be posting a weekly update to basically hold myself accountable and to also keep on top of my work!

This week I basically just wanted to storyboard, that’s mostly it. The more I do something, the better I’ll get, so I just wanted to do it!

On Twitter there’s an event called ‘Feboardary’, which has been organised by Storyboard Artist Abigail Lee, and I’ve tried to have a go myself.

I wanted to have a go at using one of the prompts, and picked ‘morning routine’, with the idea of spending a week doing Jamie’s and then JJ’s to both explore the characters through their routines and see what I do with a brief of sorts. 

Initially I did some boards on paper, to give myself a bit of a limit both in how much I could do, as well as be forced to commit to my art, without the safety blanket of an undo button.

They’re extremely loose, but get the job done well enough! I wasn’t thinking too much about exact camera angles or shot types, but I still wanted everything to flow well into each other. 

Afterwards I just dropped myself into Storyboard Pro! 

I started to use SBP’s perspective tools, which I found extremely helpful, although I’ll admit to being maybe a bit too neat with my drawings at the start. I also started to experiment with the built-in camera SBP provides, which I quickly became a huge fan of.

This took around 4 hours of work, for the most part. I tried to work in 45 min - 1 hour chunks as I felt like that was more sustainable than having a work binge. I really do like the end result, as it’s just something! While I don’t think Jamie’s character comes through too much as 99% of the ‘character’ is a faceless individual, (more facial expressions are something I immediately identified as a point to improve upon) I just like how this looks! 

This work didn’t take as long as I thought, so I wanted to go back and revisit my previous boards from episode 104 of The Magnus Archives

Comparing the two, this is a substantial improvement, and I need to remember this going forward. I’m already more comfortable with SBP and it’s features, even if I’m not there completely (which I won’t be! I’m basically just starting out!). This took me around 3 hours, but much of that was spent again, using the perspective tool and then trying to not be so reliant on it.

Not only that, but I took the transcript and instead of doing sketched boards on paper, I annotated my work:

This was a slightly different approach compared to boarding on paper, and I do think I would’ve saved myself a bit of time if I did also board on paper, but I did use my previous work as a reference. It felt nice to have a bit of experimentation between methodology, and I do want to work on this a little bit more when I get the time!

So I do think I had a rather successful week! I got what I wanted to do done, and I need to remember it’s not always going to turn out exactly, either in execution or final product. 

For this upcoming week I want to take a bit of a step back and try and familiarise myself with Jamie and JJ, to really feel like I can draw them and start putting them and their personalities in my subsequent boards. I want to be really loose in my sketches, and maybe board something else with them both? But familiarity is my priority here. 

#ma illustration #illustration major project #weekly updates #storyboards #jamie stallard #the sword that splits us

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post proposal update

i dont want to pretend to be a Proper Adult so i’m not using proper capitalisation in this post.

a lot of things have happened in the past week! 

passed my driving test! took me 6 years, but i did it! i can drive now!

and now ive got to start my project. which is proving to be a bit of a struggle. granted, i said i’d give myself an easier week, so i shouldnt beat myself up too much. but still! feboardary is happening over twitter, which i definitely want to take part in. i guess i just have to remember to set myself little goals each week? it’ll all lead up to my project. time will continue forward regardless, so chipping away at it bit by bit will be more than suitable. 

so! this week! i’d like to board around 20 seconds of jamie’s morning routine - because he hasnt been getting a lot of love! and he deserves it! 

thought id have more to write here but uhh apparently not! oh well, i’ll definitely be posting more here soon! 

#ma illustration #general blog posts

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finally got the hang of storyboard pro! (for the most part anyway)

this was more to break the ice with it than anything else

spoilers for the magnus archives 104

#ma illustration #proposal for illustration #storyboards #other art