10 Reasons Why I Love Autumn - 05

Optional heat sources can be; radiator, warm water bottle, bon fire, fireplace, tea, boy/girlfriend, overheated laptop, etc.

Halfway through. Woop.

Time to Relax for a Sec

With Project 3 done (but not dusted) we are having a few days to sort of relax. We need to finish old projects and work on our dissertations. And meanwhile I am trying to take a step back and rest some before the preparation of graduation starts in earnest.

Whenever I can I try and sew some things. I enjoy the feel of fabric and the beautiful colors and patterns. Unfortunately I don't have much time to do large and complex things. With Halloween I sewed Chris' costume, which was Max from Where The Wild Things Are. We both are looking forward to the film and like the wolf costume of Max. I made it from two old ikea fleece blankets. The pattern I used came from cutting up a painter overall that Chris had. Chris made the crown from cardboard. It is incredibly comfortable, and warm, to wear. Like a big pyama. It still needs some touchups tho.

For myself I retouched my old home-made (American McGee's) Alice costume. I had thrown away the old apron, so I did that again and also whipped up an evil white bunny.

Today I made a simple cover for my lavender heat pillow. I bought the pillow a few days ago, but already it started to get dirty. I had several small scraps of beautiful fabric (which I also used for the Barry Purves animation) and decided to make a quick and easy cover. You can take the pillow out, and wash the cover seperately when needed. The white is fleece (also scrap piece bought from a tiny fabric shop in another town) and rests in your neck (or whereever!). MMM, lavender smells so nice..

Now it's time to get back to my Character of Place animation which will be color graded soon, and my Project 2 animation, which is in dire need of lipsync and some corrections :]

10 Reasons Why I Love Autumn - 04

This includes imaginary friends.

Titleless

Yesterday Naan from WijDoenDingen, the company I work for from The Netherlands, came and visited me in little ol' Beaconsfield. A friend of his, who is also a producer for Passion Pictures, also came along. I showed them around the school and we had a nice time catching up in the old pub of the town. It reminded me to look at what exactly Passion Pictures had been doing over the years, when I came across this wonderful thing they had recently done:



Ofcourse, pretty "old" now, but a sugar/animation rush to look at nonetheless. I suggest watching the high quality one here. Amazing!

Tomorrow we finish project 3, and then start preparing for graduation slowly. Exciting!

Shrubmonkeys

Man, it has been busy. Still is. Just thought I'd share this with you:

Love her comics, since they got some animation frustration in them. Check 'm out!

Autumn Interlude

Sorry about being behind on the autumn series, I hope to catch up again soon.

Until then I hope you are, like me, on the look out for one of my favorite things that come with autumn. With a Mameshiba face. Check those cute little things out on youtube.

Water soundtracks, the Lakes and Pink Elephants

Danny Boyle
Last week (I think it was anyways, hah) the epic director Danny Boyle came and visited us in the school. He gave us a wonderful masterclass, which was ever so useful. I stalked him for a few pictures and a little scribble in my notebook ofcourse. If you want to read more about it, go read it the school's news article.

Project 3
After the Cup&Chair exercise I posted about last time, we received our soundtracks. Mine is rather cool, being a water themed one. It starts off with lots of rain, then we go underwater, while we hear car whipers cleaning the window screen. It very nice. I was very scared to get an industrial soundtrack, but I got an organic one, which is comfortable. Now the trick is ofcourse to not use literally water scenes. Plus we have to base it on our own experiances and memories/feelings. So mine will probably be about the terrible holidays I used to go on in spain when I was young, and how that got me dislike heat and the combination of sun, beach, sea..

Dissertation
Slowly the whole organization around the dissertation I'm doing is shaping up. Apparently the school has never produced an installation so it has a lot of potential. Soon we will be submitting it as a personal project, but to do so we want to submit a strong pitch. Hence I have asked the help of producer Ali. I am very lucky he is very interested and likes to help us out! By mid-October we hope to have everything set to submit and with lots of luck we get green light!

The Lakes

(crappy panorama pic I made)

This weekend, as a break from all the chaos, me and Chris went to the Lake District. I can't tell you how much I love the Lake District. It's crazily beautiful, and it has a magic all of it's own. I love how the mountains gently, yet mightily, roll in such a compact manor, towering over the coolest lakes. The ice age had rounded off the mountain's harshness and when the ice melted it formed the deep lakes. These mountains have such a different aura to them then any other high top I've seen. The fact that red bushes lay like a blanket over them instead of the usual forests, make them quite unique. They seem bare like the human body, and their crags and caves are like all the creases skin has.

While we were having dinner in a restaurant Chris asked me a very good question:

If you could have worked on any Disney film before the Lion King,
which would you have liked to work on?

After long thought, I couldn't say a whole film, but I instantly named the following scene:

It's Disney on acid, how epic is that.

True Story

10 Reasons Why I Love Autumn - 03

Anyone who knows me should have seen this coming :]

10 Reasons Why I Love Autumn - 02

I hate sweating and sunburn. Particularly sunburn. Really badly.