Nelly Luckett : BA (Hons) Computer Animation Arts, UCA Rochester

As part of our concept art syllabus, we were asked to create a "Who's who". This is basically outlining the work and style of a concept artist that we like the work of. I decided to choose Ryan Carlson, an experienced artist who has a beautiful style. Who's who - Ryan Carlson by Eleanor 'Nelly' Luckett on Scribd

The last two weeks in our Friday morning sessions with Simon, we have been working on character design and Adobe Illustrator. Although these aren't finished, I felt it was high time that some progress images went up on here. To start off we were told to write 3 numbers from 0-4 down, no repeates. So I chose 4, 3 and 2. This ended up as 4 eyes, 3 legs and 2 arms. I was also given an 80's goth steryotype to work with. This was very fun to generate ideas for. The first stage we went through was generating body shape designs. These were my initial drawings: We then had to choose three shapes that we really liked. I chose 1, 7 and 10. We were then asked to start to add features of the stereotype that we were given to our monsters, so here are those shapes with a bit of a Goth makeover:  Then we had to add detail to our final design. I ended up choosing the fly character. This is her after she was cleaned up in Illustrator: She will be gaining

Today in our animation we were focusing on the use of timing and spacing; easing out and in. This is the tools we use with accelerating objects. Whether this is due to gravity and/or an external force, these principles are some of the key basics of animation. This is an evenly spaced rolling "coin". This doesn't really work if you take physics into account. Here's how it should look: This version is eased and is much more representative of how objects move in real life. We then looked at Pendulums. There are two issues with this pendulum; it should be moving in an arc as most organic movements are performed in an arc movement. It is also an evenly spaced movement. First I addressed the issue of the missing arc of movement: So this was better, however the moment is not taking gravity into account at all, so I eased the movement too. This is a much more realistic movement, regardless of whether a reaction force or pepetual mo

So today I completed the first Maya tutorial after finally getting my laptop to accept Maya (that's another long story). Anyway, I actually found the tutorial a lot easier than expected. There were a few bits that I had to go back over as I slightly missed the steps, however I'm overall very happy with how I did. The egg cups aren't perfect, but I don't think they're bad for a first try. Here are my first attempts at proper Maya modelling techniques. Another Maya tutorial to come before the week is out!

Here are my life drawings from today's session. I was really happy with these and, although they are not perfect, I feel that I am really starting to develop a style, an interesting use of colour and an increasingly good idea of anatomy. I hope you enjoy them too. Any feedback would be appreciated.

Here are the first set of traditionally drawn thumbnails. I struggled a little initially with being too perfectionist about things like perspective and the lining, however I managed to loosen up a little and these less perfect are ultimately more successful that the "perfect ones". These initial thumbnails are based on Fedora (thumbnails 1- 15) These thumbnails are for Baucis (thumbnails 16-23) More to come in the next few days!

Here are the first set of my digital thumbnails for the Invisible cities project. The colour overlay on each thumbnail is the base colour pallet I would intend it to have. Thumbnails 1-8 are for Baucis, and 9-16 are for Diomira. More to come soon of the digital, more tonight of the traditional method :)

The Cabinet of Dr Caligari Film Review The Cabinet of Dr Caligari (1920) is a highly theatrical film. Many of the elements of the visual presentation are more what we would now associate with a theatre production than a large-scale movie franchise. The sets and makeup are highly graphical and lack any large amounts of detail, however it is easily one of the most influential films in progressing our cinema forward to the point at which we are now, and many of the concepts/methods used in this film are still highly applicable today. The sets strongly use famous works of art and/or artists to influence and give them direction. For example, Alan’s house is highly reminiscent of the Bedroom in Arles by Vincent van Gough. See Figure 1 and 2 below. Figure 1. Screenshot from opening of Dr Caligari (1920) Figure 2 . Bedroom in Arles (1888) Although the set for Alan’s bedroom is not an exact copy, there are clear similarities in the way that the room is arranged

Today was our first ever session using Autodesk Maya. This is a programme that is similar to some of the CAD/CAM programmes I used during GCSE Product Design. This helped me a little I think, but also somehow managed to confuse me a little. I think once I have got my brain around the actual interface I will be fine, I just have a feeling that getting used to, and remembering where everything is might challenge me for a little while. I may have to give myself a crib sheet. Here are the models that I created in today's introduction session with Simon: The house was the practise model in order to practise duplication, rotation and scaling. We also got the opportunity to have a play with the programme and just see what we could do. This is a bird type creature that I ended up creating by just fiddling with the tools.  More Maya to come soon! Very exciting things coming over the next couple of weeks. 

These are the final inspiration boards for the invisible cities project. Would love some feedback of what you guys think of the styling and/or my potential themes. Thank you!

Today was our first photoshop/digital drawing session with Jordan. The session was really useful, introducing some new ways of working, some new tools and a great workstation layout that allows ease of movement from tool to tool. We spent today's session doing a series of master studies in order to aid our understanding of how colour and saturation are controlled and also allow us to begin to identify and issues we have in the translation of perceived to actual colour. Here are my master studies. I slightly surprised myself with these, and appear to be quite comfortable using broader brush strokes; a finding that I had not expected as I am largely a bit of a perfectionist.

Here are the next group of inspiration boards. These are for the cities: Fedora, Isaura, Leonia and Moriana. More to come tomorrow.

Here are the inspiration boards for Baucis, Diomira, Ersilia and Esmerelda. I'm really enjoying producing these and I'm finding that ideas are coming thick and fast. Looking forward to really getting down to drawing these.