'Bear' Update 3/9

Apparently my last post was my 200th- wow! I had no idea until I happened to look at my stats this morning, but I guess that’s kind of something to celebrate. I suppose it is a fair landmark to have achieved. And so many words written!! Though I must state that I’m not trying to achieve landmarks with this blog or anything in terms of reading figures or number of posts- if I let those dictate me, I probably would have given up long ago or ended up writing things just to get clicks and/ or just for the sake of it. I think that’s why I don’t often promote my blog too much. It’s not that I don’t want people reading it (I do, and I like it when someone says that they read it), but I feel if I put an announcement with each post, then I feel I wouldn’t use the blog in the same way in which I do now. I use it as a way of tracking my progress, with a bit more detail (and somewhat a little more personal) than my Instagram posts.

I also like not restricting what I write about on here- and how it’s not specifically animation focussed- whereas my Instagram is. I mean it is largely animation focused, as that’s what I do mainly, but you know there’s football/ photography stuff, sewing, other creative ventures and just anything else I deem worthy of a blog post! It also makes me think about my work more in critical manner, which is something I feel essential if I want to keep progressing and learning (which I do). I sometimes look back over my archive and look at what I was doing several years ago and it’s interesting to see the ways I’ve improved, progressed and changed over the years. Also interesting to see what the constants are, too.

Reminiscing and analysis over, how is ‘Bear’ going? Oh yeah, first, I should give an update on my skateboarding injury for all those interested: it’s feeling a LOT better now (thankfully) and I feel almost ready to be able to go again. Though not before I’ve bought a helmet and some pads- injury is not something I’m willing to risk in future, especially as an animator.

OK, now I’m finally ready to speak about ‘Bear’! Like 4 paragraphs in on a post entitled ‘Bear Update’. But anyway, now here’s another landmark (and maybe one even more worthy of celebration): THE ACTUAL ANIMATION IS DONE!!! Done-diddly-un. I can’t believe it, I’ve almost made a film. What a journey. I still have sound design to finish and a few tweaks here and there in terms of tightening the edit etc, but everything that needs animating, has been animated! Wow.

The biggest hurdle this week was most definitely the crowd shot- one I had been dreading to be honest, due to amount of characters and the fact that I still had no reference footage for it. I had a few previous failed attempts at getting it, but this week my partner Ben and I went into the town centre on Wednesday morning and sat with my tripod for about half an hour and got everything I needed. And it came out really, really well. I couldn’t find a good piece of stock footage to use for it, so I knew filming it myself would get exactly the thing I had in mind. As the city where I live isn’t the busiest and there was never going to be a point where loads of people are walking in a big mass (or at least not at 9am which is the time we went), I had to animate each person separately and superimpose them in the TVPaint file. That was a fairly straightforward process, plus it meant I had more control and therefore could get more of a diverse range of characters- so mixing ages, genders and ethnicities. You can watch the clip below:

Other than that, I don’t think I have anymore ‘Bear’ related news. But watch this space as I’m going to make a mini teaser/ trailer type thing very soon. So stay tuned for that. And also the post where I finally announce it’s completion!!