Photoshop introduction

At the end of our Photoshop introduction today, we were set a quick task to raid Google images and create a collage of what we're doing this weekend to ensure we'd taken everything on board and were comfortable using the selection tools we'd been shown. I present the fruits of my labour...

On Saturday I'm going to Guildford for shopping and excitement! On Sunday, I'll be saving the world and probably phoning my mum. When I'm around, party time is all the time.

See below for notes from today if you're interested in that kind of thing!

Fourth walk cycle attempt (now with arms)

Bit gutted with how this one turned out — the arms almost-kind-of-work, but there's a weird kink in the front arm as he steps forward. I don't think I had his arms swinging far enough away from his body, leaving me with the same problem of not having enough space to fit the inbetweens in correctly so they're a bit jumpy.

I have to admit that I'm quite pleased with the legs though. I still need a lot more practice but I feel like I've learned quite a lot already!

Fourth walk cycle attempt

Yet another new version, correcting most of the proportion problems from the previous attempts. I paid a lot more attention to keeping the size of the legs consistent, and while it's not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, I think it's a vast improvement!

Next up, a whole new set of problems — the arms...

Third walk cycle attempt

I was much more careful with numbering the frames this time around, making sure I only circled the keyframes so that it was easier to backtrack if I made a mistake.



I fixed a lot of mistakes in the original keyframes which made the inbetweening process much easier. I realised that he didn't drop low enough on the 'down' position which was why I struggled with the inbetweens so much — there simply wasn't enough space between each keyframe to allow for any inbetweens!

There are still masses of problems with this. I should have paid more attention to proportions. The legs and feet, in particular, keep changing size. There are so many moving parts that it's difficult to keep track of how things are moving. Still no arms at this stage, once again I wanted to try and ensure the legs moved correctly before anything else.

Factual research: Arthur Rackham

Arthur Rackham, the 4th of 12 children, was born in London on 19 September 1867. From 1879 he attended the City of London school. Popular amongst his peers and teachers, Arthur was otherwise academically unremarkable — he demonstrated something of a talent for drawing and won a number of prizes from Herbett Dicksee, the school drawing master.

During 1884 Arthur spent 4 months in Australia where he became inspired by his surroundings, producing many watercolour paintings and sketches of the landscapes. Upon returning to England, he enrolled at the Lambeth School of Art as an evening student. He sought work during the day to help fund his education and in 1885 began a job clerking at the Westminster Fire Office.

Fig A: 'A Fact,' Scraps Magazine, 1884

During his time at the office, Rackham continued to produce many drawings and watercolours, one of which was publicly exhibited in 1888 at the Royal Academe. He frequently contributed drawings to local magazines and newspapers, the first of which was published in Scraps magazine in 1884 (Fig A). Though this (admittedly rather crude) drawing lacked anything of the charm for which Rackham's later illustrations would become renowned, he was already beginning to demonstrate a keen eye for line and form.

Fig B: 'How a Bank was Robbed,' Westminster Budget, 1893

Fig C: 'The Dolly Dialogues,' 1894

Through Rackham's regular contributions to local magazines, he was able leave the fire office in 1892 after securing a position as graphic journalist for the Westminster Budget. Rackham provided many illustrations for articles and ran a frequent column in which he would caricature public figures. The demand for photorealistic and 'straight line' technical drawings was high, given the nature of the position, but Rackham was granted opportunities to deviate and work in a far looser, more whimsical manner for which he would later become renowned.

Rackham received a large number of commercial commissions during the last decade of the century, with many drawings published in travel brochures, newspapers and even several books — including an illustrated edition of The Dolly Dialogues (a feature previously run in the Westminster Gazette) in 1894.

Aside from his distaste of the field in general (he found the paper's deadlines too constraining for the sort of meticulous detail his work often demanded), Rackham's eventual departure from journalism was forced by means of practical necessity. The role of the artist in journalism was threatened to become obsolete with the impending introduction of the camera.

He hit the height of his fame at the turn of the new century — shortly following his marriage to fellow artist Edyth Starkie in 1903, 99 of his illustrations were published in Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm to great success. The final revised edition, published in 1909, contained an astonishing 40 coloured illustrations and 55 line drawings. By the time of his death in 1939, Rackham had illustrated more than 60 children's books, including Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Aesop's Fables, The Night Before Christmas, Cinderella and American classic Rip van Winkle. Rackham's final book, the Wind in the Willows, was published posthumously in 1940.

Sources:

Gettings, F., 1975. Arthur Rackham. London: Macmillan.
Hudson, D., 1960. Arthur Rackham: His Life and Work. 2nd ed. London: William Heinemann Ltd.
Arthur Rackham. 2011. Arthur Rackham. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.bpib.com/illustrat/rackham.htm. [Accessed 25 September 2011].
Arthur Rackham Biography. 2011. Arthur Rackham Biography. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.fairyworx.net/Arthur_Rackham.html. [Accessed 25 September 2011].

Reflecting on research methods

I've noticed, especially these past couple of days, that my research work is becoming more and more of a struggle. I seem to be scouring books and websites for hours on end without really coming back with anything to show for it, and I think it's because I'm unfocused. I'm worrying too much about what I think I should be reading or writing down. Rather than working as I normally would I'm very aware of the fact that people will be looking at it and constantly asking myself if it's what they want to see, or if it's "right." It is, of course, hugely important to consider things like assessment criteria and presentation, but it's getting to the point where I'm too afraid to write anything down in case it's "wrong" — which is totally counterproductive!

I've decided to try and re-evaluate the way I carry out my research and development work by creating a basic research template for myself and highlighting key bits of information I should be looking for. It's easy to get lost in a sea of sources when you don't really know what it is you're supposed to be looking for — worrying which bits I should and shouldn't be looking at, wondering whether this is important or that's important — but by reminding myself of exactly what I need to pick out, I should be able to carry out research much more efficiently.

What I really need to know is —

who I'm looking at
what they did
why and how they did it

What key dates are there in the artist's history? What years were they active? What are their notable publications?  What exhibitions have they been in?

It all sounds tremendously obvious and probably just fundamental skills I should know already, but I often find myself feeling very overwhelmed by the amount of information available. A lot of it is often influenced by the author's own opinions so it can sometimes be difficult to pick out the important and factual information. A lot of things are simply made to sound important because they've moved the author in some way, meaning I tend to 'not get it' and worry that maybe I've missed something.

I'm not intending to imply that opinions should always be disregarded — they are of course extremely valuable — but in cases like this I think it's better to initially start off as cleanly as possible so that you can better evaluate an artist on your own terms.

Second walk cycle attempt (scrapped)

Made some really stupid mistakes on this one! I wasn't careful enough with numbering my frames. I circled each frame number and completely lost track of which ones were keyframes. Sounds like a minor thing but it meant that when I made a mistake on an inbetween, I couldn't remember which were keyframes and which were the ones I'd messed up.

This doesn't look good at all. It's very jerky and he slides back and forth where I didn't take enough care in checking the position of the feet. I also noticed that there wasn't enough height difference between poses to accommodate enough inbetweens, which I think may also be why I struggled so much. Next time I'll be more careful to check he's dropping low and rising high enough to give me enough space for extra frames.

Somehow, probably as a result of my sloppy numbering, I also managed to get the inbetweens in the wrong places — ending up with too many on one side and not enough on the other. Subsequently it got to the point where it would have been more hassle than it was worth to fix all the mistakes, so I decided to just scrap it and try again... Next time, I'll be more vigilant in my frame numbering antics!