Merry Christmas!!!

oooohh my, where has the time gone?!

Okay so firstly, CTN was mega! I got to hang out with Ted Ty (our boss) and Sergio Pablos, he's such an awesome bloke, and daaaamn good. We got to meet Andrew Chesworth, such a lovely guy! Eeeek so many awesome people. A lot of the crew from Ballerina were there too, it was so great to run around with those guys soaking up all the inspiration. It's such a wonderful weekend to meet new people and soak up all that knowledge. I really enjoyed going to the story and storyboarding lectures, they were so insightful. Oh and to top it off, I won a raffle ticket to the Disney screening on the last evening and got to see sneaky peeks of Pickle and Peanut, Zootopia and Moana!

Secondly, Ballerina is coming into the home straight now, I can't believe how fast the last year has gone, I don't want it to end!

Thirdly, I never announced the opening up of the Cat and Moth site! It's finally live and I've been preparing some juicy goodies for any followers. Cat and Moth is also on twitter, facebook and instagram, so please give it a like or follow to follow our progress :D

 

Fourthly, MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!!

Bits of Things - Eyes 2

Heellloooo,

I just got back from CTN and it was AWESOME!!! Very inspired, and I'll write a post of the awesome stuff I found and people I met.

BUT for today, I've been researching eyes again, and looking at when and why the pupils dilate for my current close up shot, so I thought I would share a couple of articles I found that proved to be useful :)

The Eye Pupil

How we use our eyes to give away what we are thinking

Eyes are just tooo coool.

Back and books.

RIGHT!

Soo however quiet I have been, I have actually somehow kept up my drawing, and I'm neglecting "Bits of Things" - I'd like to take up where I left off, so watch this space for some hand stuff coming your way!

Also, I'd like to draw (no pun intended) you to these pre-order books I've been stacking up in my wishlist, as they look aaaamazing!

Before Ever After: The Lost Lectures of Walt Disney's Animation Studio in Hardcover by Don Hahn and Tracey Miller-Zarneke

This title is up for pre-order coming out October 20th 2015 and I was sold at "Lost Lectures of Walt Disney". I'm so intrigued by Disney at the time of Snow White, and if you would like to find out more about how they discovered everything they did, then you have to pre-order this book NOW.

Another book of Disney hiding stuff ;)

They Drew as They Pleased: The Hidden Art of Disney's Golden Age: The 1930s

At a snatch for only $19 (USD) and hardcover too, this is a hard book not to notice. Written by Didier Ghez and Intro by Pete Docter, it looks to be a great complimentary read to the above "Lost Lectures" book.  Here I hope we can learn and see their source of inspiration. Pre-order for the 8th September 2015.

I think this is probably my biggest want of the bunch

Funny!: Twenty-Five Years in the Pixar Story Room (The Art of....)

I'm just so intrigued by what gags make it, and why, and what gags don't! Plus, I love to laugh, who doesn't! November 17th 2015 for this one, hardcover, and only $14-15 big one's too! (USD)

The next on my pre-order hit list, is this beaut...

The Nine Old Men: Lessons, Techniques, and Inspiration from Disney's Great Animators

I'm sold by this sentence "Deja gives special attention to each animator and provides a thoughtful analysis on their techniques that include figure drawing, acting, story structure, and execution". Looks to be another $19 at pre-order price, and doesn't seem to have a release date just yet.

And finally, but by no means leastly

An Animator's Gallery: Eric Goldberg Draws the Disney Characters

Jeff Williams pointed this one out on his twitter, and strongly recommended by him too. How could I resist not adding this to the list?

And for this week's book order, I bought this (for a bit of fun!), I'll let you know how I get on :)

What books have you got on your wish-list?

As far as I can tell, all these books seem available vai amazon.co.uk, .com and .ca

L'Atelier Animation and iAnimate

Look at this pretty bunch of animator's 

We are over half way now on Ballerina, and iAnimate wanted to show a picture of us ex-students that are on the project. This is about a third of our animator crew, and everyone is sooo good. It's very inspiring every day. 

Sorry for my silence, it's been so busy and crazy, I've neglected my favourite outlet. I shall be less silent, and more posty.

Check out the rest of iAnimate's newsletter here

This project feels like it's going by in a blink, but we still have 4 months of goodness to suck up into our brains. On Friday we had a reference/improv lecture from Ted, and it was exactly what we needed to loosen up in the ref room. What do you guys do to loosen up?

Hands off!

Okkkaay, so I always knew this month was going to be crazy, what with running a little Marathon in London town next week, but what the hey!

So I apologise for the lightness of postage. BUT I did get a little time to start studying the innards of the hands.

It's really strange drawing the carpals, it looks like a little bag of bones. With a quick Google search though, it's very apparent of their function

"....the main role of the carpus is to facilitate effective positioning of the hand and powerful use of the extensors and flexors of the forearm, but the mobility of individual carpal bones increase the freedom of movements at the wrist."1

I liked these two images too (below), as they are just super clear on where the carpal bones are placed and how the ligaments are entwined. I think it's important to study these ligaments, because it helps you know what's going on underneath when you are drawing, and that makes such a difference, I can't even explain.

Now, further search led me to this image (see below), which I think is a really important thing to note when studying underneath, and knowing how the skin lays out on top. Also, the rest of that page is a GEM! Check it out here. It has a ton of stuff on proportions and range of motion, hella useful for drawing and animation alike.

 I also found this really easy to follow video about fingers, thumb and wrist movement
 

And here are some of my studies from X-rays, skeletons and diagrams

Do you have any cool hand references? Or some cool art?  As long as it's hand related, it can be anything at all, just post the links in the comments, or email me, and maybe I'll include it in my next post.

Hand it over.

Phew, what a week!

I've been out sick most of this week, so the start of the Hands topic has been a little light on content, e.g. none.

Sooo in light of this, I'm hitting you up with my PLAN! I really enjoyed May's topic, but felt the lack of structure meant I didn't really focus at all. I like playing it by ear, but I think it needs some roughness to the idea. So for this month's topic, hands, I'd like to look at the following things:

- Anatomy
- Poses
- Gestures and Body language
- Movement

And I'd like to try and explore these by using

- Drawing
- Painting
- Sculpture

So we shall see if I can touch all of this sub-topics in some way, as I think they would be useful to getting a rounded knowledge into hands.

Also, do you guys have any great references, facts or information you'd like to share? Or drawings, stories, poetry or paintings? Then do so in the comments or email them my way, and I might mention you in the next post! :D

indiabarnardo@gmail.com

Eye see what you did there...

Oohh gosh! March is over already AND I still have loads I want to explore, but alas, a new topic is upon us, starting tomorrow in fact!

So without further-a-do, here is my last eye based post for Bits of Things, I hope they have been useful to you in some form or another.

To start with, a couple of cool pictures I found.

I really liked this drawing that I came across on Pinterest, whilst searching for eyes, which, subsequently, lead me to this cool pin-up art site

by Justin Ridge

I also saw this awesome colourful piece and just had to share it with you.

by Francisco Flores

Some cool illustrations showing how the muscles surrounding the eye work, really useful for drawing and animating fo' shhhhaaaw.

Not the prettiest diagram ever but another, simple, view of the muscles surrounding the eyes

Then to finish things off, here are my studies from the month. I would have liked to have had the time to explore the patterns of the eyes more and try out some paintings using those awesome macros pictures of the iris'. Maybe I'll catch up on this at some point.

This bunch of studies came from varies links I posted in previous posts, some exploration and studying on pixelovely, and looking at some Tangled poses.

And lastly, all the links I didn't get round to mentioning, that I thought were useful too!

LINK DUMP

Crazy faces

Mini eye colouring tutorial

Some cool eye drawings

...and some more

Face Patterns by Brandon McKinney

Expressions - reference for artsists

Eye fan art for Young Mike from Monsters University

Another image of muscles around the eyes

...and another


Drum-roll please...... the Bits of Things subject for April is going to be.... HANDS! As suggested by our reader Becky, awesome suggestion, thank you!

See you in April!