Details are sketchy

Ok i'm back after over a month away D: Not good..

Uni was taking up most of my time in late november/early december and I've just done a weeks work at Sundown Advertureland, a kids theme park I worked at in the summer, so that money should go towards paying the overdraft off to start fresh again this semester :)

What have I been up to then.. stopped doing french for a couple of weeks and started up again yesterday now the christmas madness is over.

What else can I talk about other than new years resolutions..

By the end of this year i'm going to:

- Get good enough at 3DS Max to possibly be able to do some freelance work.
- Be able to hold a conversation in French.
- Improve my drawing skills.
- Get more contacts in the industry and figure out a plan if what to do after my course.

So these will hopefully provide me with a list of things I HAVE to do :P

Oh and

- Update blog more regularly :)

Soo i'm back and busy as ever.. really trying to work my ass off.

I've decided to start learning french really in depth. A kind of total language immersion thing. I'm watching my DVD's in french language with english subtitles, listening to some of my french music and doing french language lessons on mp3's along with Anki for learning the sentences/words and writing them. I'm really enjoying it and picking it up pretty quickly :)

Anyway I hope I can pick this up as I would love to know a second language..
Other than that i've got a hell of a lot of university work to keep up with, i'm still jobless (didn't get the job at HMV :( ) and just generally don't have enough time in the day.. but this weekend will be constructive and I hope to get things done pretty quickly.

By for now, I'll keep this blog updated on my progress :)

So as you can tell i've been working on this wiki thing. Batman: Best. Topic. Ever. :D
I'm quickly realising that I really like researching things, and not just for work I have to, I kind of want to work on some of my own things and go more into this Batman project.
I'm really busy at the moment with loads of stuff and I have loads more to do.. kind of don't know what to do first and arghh i'm really looking forward to getting uni things out of the way so I can start working on my own stuff again.

On the lazier, more awesome not i've got addicted to a lot of different tv shows recently, Supernatural, How I Met Your Mother (as per usual :P), Heroes, True Blood and will be getting into Fringe. That is, if I ever catch up with everything. Currently i'm overloading on caffeine and it's not too good so i'm thinking a few late nights and no time wasted then all will be awesome.

Well... other than all of this waffling on at crazy speeds, i've also got some french lessons in mp3's that I need to put on my ipod and start learning some of that too. For some reason i'm really enthusiastic and want to do loads of stuff :D:D:D Maybe that's just the caffeine.. but ah well back to the Bat :)

Back again :)

So i've been quite busy as usual.. last night I spent all night writing up research on Batman and the contexts it has fallen into over the years since he was created. That was fun and I met up with our tutor with my flatmate who's also working on this project with me and talked through all of the things we could do with it and the various paths we could take in this project. She also mentioned making it a bigger project and possibly getting it published for us which was great news :D She also asked us if we were interested in mentoring and first year students which I am excited about being that we were thought of first to do this.

Umm.. recorded the podcast I had to do.. was a painto get through but it's done and dusted. :D
Other than that I've just been working on some 3D modelling and animation skills for tomorrow's lesson which i'm really looking forward to again.

Before I got to the lesson I have an interview for a job at HMV at meadowhall at 11AM which I really hope I get.. i could really use the money. Talking about money.. I've also been asked to design a a website which promises good money.. I'm good enough along with the previously mentioned flatmate to design a great website we just need to learn the web designing program, Dreamweaver and we can work on it.

So lots going on and there's possibilities of lots more to come but just got to persevere.. and i've decided to take on a few more tv shows to watch which is difficult to fit in to my schedule :P but they're quite good so far (Fringe and True Blood).

Bye for now then.. oh and here's one of my 3D modelling attempts :) and more on here http://chrisw45.deviantart.com/

Ok. So i've been absent for a while.. partly as i've had loads of work to do and partly as i've been pretty lazy recently. But now i've decided I will keep this up and put more effort into wirtitng it.

Since i've been gone. We've had a lot of animation-related work to submit and thankfully that's over with and we've started with some stuff that's a bit more fun and I can focus my efforts on.
One of the things we have to do is a wiki on Batman :D What else could I ask for? i get to delve into a character that i've always liked and look at his character more and how it has developed over the last 70 years and why it has changed. Great project, I think it should go well as i also get to share the workload with Basil ( http://theinflamedtime.blogspot.com/ ).

We've also finally been given a teacher who wants to teach us :D He's great at getting the basics of the program (3DS Max) across to us, at the same time letting us practice and just kind of play around with the software, which sounds like we're not doing work but we are and i've learnt more yesterday than I have probabably all last year on the program and i'm really looking forward to next weeks seminar.

So i'll be practicing 3D modelling and animation all day today, looking at possiblilties for a project for this subject, Man and Machine. Should be an awesome topic and i've already got ideas running around my head so i'll work on them asap.

Aside from work, i've been trying to practice drawing whenever I can and doing the general stuff like watching DVD's, especially trying to catch up with Supernatural, which is now one of my all time favourite shows. And i'm annoyed to hear FOX has cancelled yet ANOTHER awesome show, Dollhouse which i've found to have a real following and i'm surprised at this.

Oh i've also recently bought Dragon Age: Origins. Made by Bioware, it's pretty awesome and i've tried not to compare it to Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic as that's one of my favourite games of all time and although it does carry some of the same elements, as it is a medieval/fantasy style game it also definitely has some elements from games such as Fable 2 and Oblivion. Which of course is great as I also love these two games. It seems you need to dedicate a lot of time ot this game as there is a rich storyline and a lot of backstory to get through, all with some great action and Bioware's trademark system of allignments, this time not of good and evil but how friendly you are with each playable character, much like KOTOR 2. Overall this is a great game and once I get enough time i'll play my way through it :)

A random review there. Maybe I should make my blog a review blog :P

Oh and not to forget I got an interview at HMV on thursday, can't wait I might actually be able to earn some money :D

Well that's all from me I think i'll try to get on tomorrow to tell you what thrilling things happened to me today... Bye :)

Well today was in some ways productive and some down right lazy.


I've been practicing drawing all day drawing and shading X-Men characters :D.
Caught up with watching some of my many purchased DVD's and started on dollhouse, which I might add is AWESOME :) I don't know why people have been grilling Whedon about it. It's written well and has some incredible acting in it, especially from Eliza Dushku.
Anyways, i've also done some more drawings for my 3D Animation and plan to complete the animation tomorrow hopefully :D

Here's one of my drawings from last night/finished this morning. Hope you like it :) Night people.





Emma Frost from the X-Men :P

Soooo not updated for a few days :P but here we go.

I've been really busy getting all my uni work done. A podcast, presentation and 3D modelling work.
So yeah a fair bit. We're doing a presentation on Commodity Culture and the Simpsons. Sound fun.. well it isn't it's boring as hell and two lines were missing from the top of each page in the reading we were given for it.. so quite difficult to read.
That's tomorrow and i'm nervous as I always am before presentations :( I've known the people i'm presenting to for a year now and likeliness is i'll still be a babbling fool when i get up there.
Then we have the podcast.. I hate doing these normally but this one went down fine.. second recording and i'm happy with it :D Just got to hand that in tomorrow woop!
But the thing i'm really excited about is my progress on 3DS Max. It seems like a pretty intimidating program but once you get used to it it's pretty awesome. I'm currently animating a fight scene between two characters. It's an assessed exercise to help us develop natural movements and i'm really enjoying it.
Um... I've not spent to much but acquired loads of DVD's in the past few days and some would probably say a weird mixture but I like them :D

Dogma, Mallrats, My Neighbour Totoro, Hocus Pocus, Beetlejuice, Karate Kid 1,2 and 3 (In a badass tin XD), Butterfly Effect and The Craft.

HMV having a sale.. means a much more awesome October :D

Anyway bye for now should be back soon.

Sooo.. today.. well it's not today anymore but you know what I mean :P

It was a pretty cool day. Me and my flat/coursemate were meant to be going to that life drawing class this morning but we got there to find it wasn't as cheap as we'd hoped so maybe when we hae more money it'd be a good idea.

We went back to the flat and after a few hours of aimlessly surfing the net (not doing work like we should've been), we headed back out to a shopping centre to meet some of our friends.
Went to Pizza Hut and had a chicken and red onion pizza, garlic bread and a Diet Pepsi.. all for £4 :D was happy with that especially with limited funds atm.
Afterwards we went to see the new Heath Ledger movie The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus. A little surreal but well worth a watch.. but then again I love the surreal :P

Was an overall good day :D Not very constructive work-wise but eh need a day off once in a while.

Ooo also, not to forget i'm quickly getting addicted to Amanda Palmer.. my flatmate's given me her album and a Dresden Dolls album too :D She's so awesome.

So the last few days have some strange ones. I've been ill but also been probably more productive when it comes to my future than ever before. After spending half the day in bed yesterday with some sort of cold/flu and missing two lessons because of it, I decided to get something done.
First task was to contact some people in the Animation industry. I've been worrying about exactly where I wanted to go with my degree (once i've finished) ever since our tutor mentioned it to us. So I typed up 5 emails to various different people and sent them out, eagerly waiting on the relpies for hours after that.

One to a 3D Animator in the US who had worked on some big titles including the Bioshock videogame. He was focused on cinematic animation for films and game trailers/cutscenes and this has recently been something i've been looking into and likely the career path i'd like to follow.
Another to Square Enix, the video game company who most famously develop the Final Fantasy game series and many other.
One to a UK-based 3D animator who has worked on quite a few well known advertisements and character animation projects.
And lastly, on to Blur studio, a Visual Effect studio that have worked on shows such as Heroes and one to one of their 3D animators that had particularly interested me.

I'd pretty much given up hope on getting any advice when the emails started coming in.

Firstly I heard from the guy who worked on Bioshock, Ryan. He was really helpful and had spent his time on a long letter detailing all the things I would have to know and what areas I would have to work on to make it in his area of the industry. I learnt a lot in the way of requirements and this also opened up a connection into the industry, which I was so pleased by! :)

Then I was sent an email from Square Enix which, although it was a generic sort of letter that was not so personal, it did highlight the requirements for working in their company, which was great to know.

Following this, I got some great advice from Sandra, the UK based animator, who told me the essentials for her area of animation and she said she would also like to keep in contact. Also, after seeing some of my portfolio, she said i'd make a great character designer XD which really made my day.

I'm still waiting on replies from the other two but still, 3/5 isn't bad :P

That was yesterday.. today was not so constructive.

I got up late, feeling ill again. After a morning trying to recover somewhat, I went to Uni and worked on my 3D animation project, which was going really well and I was pleased with.. but then 3DS Max.. that hellish program closed itself. It was like an oven in that room and I was too annoyed to stay so I came back and sulked if i'm honest :P

Better now and going to go to bed now as I have a life drawing class in the morning which should be good :) But that's me caught up.

I also watched the pilot episode for Dollhouse and it was awesome so I might have to get the DVD boxset tomorrow :) and not forgetting I watched the awesome fiom that is Beetlejuice which was bought the other day :D Burton's the man.

Hey my name's Chris and after reading my friends and tutors blogs i've finally decided to make one myself.

This will follow me through university while I study Animation and show how my traditional, digital and 3D work improves over my years here. I'll blog as much as possible on what i'm working on and will hopefully get myself out there in the world of CGI.. which I can now see is not the easiest task...

Anyway, this is the start of a long running and frequently updated blog I hope..

So here it is :)