Hello and welcome to the first update of the new year, 2016. This is what I got up to between 27 December 2015 and 2 January 2016.

This week I ripped the hands off one of my characters and remade them. Pointy now has fingers instead of those weird brick mittens he’s been stuck with all this time. He also has IK/FK switching on his arms. Along with dangle mode and other stuff, Pointy’s rig is now feature complete and I can get back into layout – which I did!

And then I got stuck again. As usual, something I’m trying for the first time is harder than it looks.

I threw in something I thought was funny and then showed it to people and they didn’t laugh. Why not? Not sure. The nearest thing I could come up with was that it all kicks off too quickly and it’s better to ramp the silliness up more gradually so that people are more primed to laugh. Pacing problems, basically.

It also helps to know what universally relatable situation the characters are in. Part of comedy’s societal function as an art is about examining day-to-day annoyances in an entertaining way. Strange as it is to admit, I wasn’t consciously aware of that aspect of the film, but once I realised it was important to know, I sussed it out. This not only gives me a nice tight space to write gags within, but also a focus for the stuff I’m about to pore over and study. Stuff to look out for.

In the new year, I’m going In active pursuit of a broader palette of creativity than just the film. I’m hoping to mix it up this year with a bit of SculptJanuary, Do It In Ten and 11 Second Club (along with whatever other stuff I can do to fill in knowledge and skills gaps). Should be fun! So expect to see a lot of sculpting this month and a few bits of animation over the coming months.

This week I went and saw The Peanuts Movie on opening day. Normally I’m loath to spend nostalgia bucks but I’ve been excited to see this ever since the previews started. I loved that it looked and moved like nothing else – it evoked stop motion and hand drawn animation the most. I love that one of the main players in mainstream feature computer animation is branching out like that. It was also super-cute. I’ve got the making of book for the film too and it is superbly informative about how they managed to make it all work. Highly recommend both the film and the book for people who want to see an old-fashioned film realised with some really clever contemporary animation techniques.

The shoulder is improving but still occasionally iffy, especially in hot weather. So it goes.

That’s it for now. Thanks again for reading!