Lost and Found blog link

Just came across this great blog containing a lot of the Art production behind the BAFTA Award winning Childrens Film - Lost and Found...

Check it out to see the amount of artistic preperation required to produce an animated short film. It is very inspiring and visually tastey!

http://lostandfoundartblog.squarespace.com/

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How to make an Amblongus pie - My Illustrated book

Here is an Illustrated book I created in early 2009

Its based on a poem by Edward Lear called "How to make an Amblongus pie"

I rendered it out with gouache (using a couple of paint brushes and a sponge), pencils, pens, pastels, tape (to mask out the areas of white), marker pens and highlighters. It would take half the time to sketch it out then half the time to do the final Artwork. Some pages took around 30 hours to complete all together! It was a mission but I'm pleased with the outcome and would say that it was worth the effort. This shows my interests when it comes down to Animation may well be around pre-production - designing characters, concept art and storyboarding.

Take 4 pounds (say 4 1/2 pounds) of fresh Amblongusses...

And put them in a small Pipkin. Boil them for 8 hours Incessantly

Add 2 pints of new milk and boil for 4 hours

When you have ascertained that the Amblongusses are quite soft

Take them out and (flap opens: put them in a wide pan)

Grate some nutmeg over the surface, cover carefully with powdered gingerbread

(this half joins together with the last page - in book form you can open it out in a super wide format) curry-powder and a sufficient quantity of cayenne pepper

Shake the pan violently til...(flap opens: all the Amblongusses become a pale purple colour)

Then, having prepared a paste, insert the whole carefully

Adding a small pidgeon, 2 slices of beef, 4 cauliflowers and any number of oysters

Watch carefully till the crust begins to rise

Throw the whole out of the window as fast as possible (Flap opens showing a small Amblongus)

Flaps that open on pages 5, 8 and 12

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Charlie Walk Cycles

Here is my 2D walk cycle:



I think its fairly smooth and looks a bit like my walk.
It took all day with a 4 hour break (so probably around 3/4 hours altogether).

Here is my 3D Walk cycle:



I used the pose to pose technique as opposed to straight ahead.
I then layered up actions simultaneously across the different poses adding in
the occasional key pose to make it less robotic.

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Experimental Animation

Me and Al decided to have a go at some painting on plastic animations:

I found it to be an enjoyably process as it is hands on.. This kinda thing is great for metamorphosis.

Here is Als:



Here is mine:

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Bradford Animation Festival...

I found this trip to be very inspiring and enjoyable...

Highlights for me were:

Jonas Odell's retrospective:


I really enjoyed the diversity of his Animation/Motion graphics techniques and styles.. I thought the film 'Lies' was very successful both in content and look. 'Never like the first time' was good as well. This told four different stories about peoples 'first time'. I think these worked well because they were all based on real peoples stories.

He's also done several music videos and I think it would be fun to work in this area of Animation. His primary software tools he uses is After Effects.

I talked to him at the party and found out that he used to use a sketchbook but not so much anymore and that he hasn't got a degree but just knew the right people which put him onto the right track. He also said he doesn't know anyone who can fund their own work without going into commercials.

Pritt Parn:



Very nice work.. incredibly imaginative and totally his own. It was a lot to absorb. As soon as my attention began to fade something crazy would happen and re-engage me. Loose narratives and a humorous aspect to his work... I found it both funny and upsetting when one of the characters is convinced that 'Life is Nice' - as soon as he shouts this out to someone trying to commit suicide the beak of a bird impales him...Harsh!

I also found some of his character designs very fun like the walking carrot.. completly random but entertaining nonetheless.

The talk

I did a couple of workshops :

Character design workshop:

with Curtis Jobling who drew Bob the Builder.. He mainly told us his life story and how he got to where he is. After completing a HND in Illustration he managed to get unpaid work experience at Aardman this soon led to getting paid work on commercials with them. He was extremely pro-active, always drawing, visiting publishers and broadcasters consistently, keeping ongoing correspondence and making the connections. He was inspired by 'the Sandman' and illustrated a couple of his own childrens books - 'Frankensteins cat' before working on Bob the Builder. After his lecture he asked us to draw a few caricatures of eachother.

I took down the following notes :

Networking - being pro-active

Being at the right place at the right time

If designing a show/book avoid being Brit Centric i.e. using British roadsigns etc... because your work may need to be marketed internationally

Greetings Cards - Good way of networking

Develop different ideas simultaneously

When designing a set of Characters keep something consistent in all of them

Keep characters timeless don't set them in a particular time period as they may get old fashioned... (i.e. Poochie in The Simpsons)

Its your portfolio/showreel that matters

Have 100% belief if your idea

Keep doing life drawing (good for knowledge of anatomy)

Caricatures (good way to approach Character)



Sketchbooks are vital for:

Good practice & Discipline

Stockpiling ideas

Working through different Characters

Get constructive and helpful criticism from a trustworthy friend

Good to bounce ideas off other people and work collaboratively

Curtis saw some of my own work and was impressed with my illustrated book 'How to make an Amblonguss Pie' He said that it was excellent, well designed and that it's unique - he's never seen anything like it before.. I will post my Amblonguss Pie book up soon...

Scriptwriting workshop:

No one actually showed up for the Friday session so I ended up just having a 1:1 chat with him. He gave me a lot of advice on writing and pitching and told me what its like working as a writer. I asked him about 'Pinky and Perky' and he told me that it wasn't so successful due to physical gaps in production - ie. he writes the script in one country, it gets produced in another etc...

Shows must be a lot more cohesive when everyone working on them is in the same building (I'm not sure if this happens so much anymore with the internet.) He also told me that the reasons why The Simpsons is so successful is that they spend 9 months writing each episode. Writing then re-writing then writing again with everyone involved... Crazy!

He instructed that to be successful at pitching you must have energy, enthusiasm and good presentation. If you're presenting a TV series just show a 1/2 minute Pilot.. A lot of films start off with an early complication that the rest of the film has to go on (i.e. UP - Starts off with the tragedy of the Old Character losing his wife.) He also said how making films is a lot like making music.. He said how important characters roles are in films and you can pitch your idea through the characters perspectives - (ie. imagine you are this person.....)

My favourite films:

Professional: The Cat Piano, Liver Good Life
Student: Operatatatata, Bruce, Project: Alpha, Leitmotif
Commercials: Journey to the East, OXFAM: Face the music
Music Videos: Les grands chevaux
Tv series: Masha and the Bear "How they met"
Shorts shorts: Iran: a Nation of Bloggers, At Death's Door, The life of Death
Features: Fantastic Mr Fox, Coraline, UP (didn't see Mary and Max - noooooo!)
Panoramas: Txt island, Sapmi, Wolves, Photograph of Jesus, Little Puppet Boy
Lies, The Cable Car

Focusing on the favourites of my favourites:

Journey to the East:

Love the artwork behind this, the music and the animation. Amazin'!


At Death's door:

Good characterisation ... very short and very funny.


Fantastic Mr Fox:

Didn't see it at Bradford but in Falmouth... Thought it was really good and lived up to the legendary work of Roald Dahl. Good characters. The whole film worked together nicely and was consistantly entertaining. The Animation and sets were imaginatively created and executed. Liked the implicit meaning that 'Meditation is good.'


The Cable Car:

Looked visually appealing and was pretty funny. Admired his ability to cope in a high stress situation..

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Walk Cycles

I found "The Animators survival kit" a very useful reference for this.. After reading some info on Walk cycles I sketched out some thumbnails to work from then got down to it. It helped having seperate colours for the different limbs. For the second half I was able to copy the first half of drawings by just switching the colours of the limbs.




I enjoyed doing the 3D walk as I'm beginning to get used to the software. I found it easier to do then I expected. It helped doing the 2D walk beforehand to strengthen my knowledge of the different steps in a walk cycle.

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Experimental Cut-out Animation

Here is my work for the experimental cut-out Animation project:

I really enjoyed working on this as it is a quick way to get your ideas into an Animation..
In hind-sight I would have given more frames to the 2 skiers who look a bit confused at the scene going on in front of them.

Here is a faster version:





I love the Mighty Boosh animations and am fairly sure that they use the same technique. They are always very inventive - and seem to follow a stream of consciousness (from the minds of Julian Barrett and Noel Fielding). The animations contain great characters, are full of colour and always contribute to the story.

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2D and 3D animation exercises complete!

2D Animation:

I feel confident that I have grasped the main principles of Timing, Squash and stretch, Anticipation and Over lapse, Exaggeration and Emotion. I timed myself doing a jump before hand to help with the timing.




3D Animation:

I feel happy with the character that I gave to Cubey.. he definitely looks sad then happy. In future I will be more aware about keeping the volume the same to increase the realism of it.




We have seen some more interesting Animations in the last couple of weeks.

"Sita sings the blues" was very good artistically with great use of colour and creative character designs. It told the Indian story of Rama through different characters. You can watch it all for free at the website...

http://www.sitasingstheblues.com/

"The Hand" by Jiri Trnka is a short yet very powerful and engaging stop motion Animation reflecting on how Artists are recruited to spread propaganda.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xf5sakekBqI

Publish Post

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3d Cubey

I have just completed the 3d Cubey character. It took me a couple of days. I payed some attention to the timing and getting the key frames in the right places.. I think I gave it quite a bit of character and realism...




We watched Waltz with Bashir early last week - I enjoyed this film and found it to be very artistic in the way it was animated. It also had quite an interesting and absorbing story as we follow the film makers attempt at regaining his memory of the massacres commited in the Lebanon war.

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"The Traveller Returns" - My Art Foundation Animation inspired by my travels in Asia

Here is a link to my final Art foundation project.

Its an animation inspired by a 4 month trip me and my mate went on through China and south-east Asia. It took me 6 weeks - mainly using the pixellation technique. If you watch it have the volume on as the music took me a week to do as well !

The Traveller Returns - Final major project

It was fun making this. I would spend the week preparing drawings then have them photographed and animated every Friday. 

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This week I have started work on the principles of Animation. We learned how to apply Timing, Weight and Stretch & squash. I applied these principles to some 2d Animation - animating a ball, then a 'cubey character.'




Looking back at this I definetely think it could be improved by adding several more frames. Its a bit too quick and lacks realism...

I took more time to produce more frames for my bouncy cubey character:



I'm much happier with this :-)

After completing these 2d exercises I had a shot at using Maya to do the bouncy ball thing. I'm glad to say that I feel fairly confident with using this software but obviously a long way to go before getting to pixar levels...





We also started some life drawing this week which I really enjoyed. We did some quick blind drawings then using circles to show the figure. After this we learned about the basic shapes that the body is made up of, I found learning this useful to keep in mind whilst drawing figures.

Next week I look forward to experimenting with Pixellation. I enjoyed watching the videos that Derek showed us - "Roof Sex" by PES - a very funny portrayal of Sofas having sex on a roof. The bedwetter was really good as well - showing a man still in bed but travelling around a lot. Theres some clever scene change bits...

The Bedwetter: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uc0m74dsLTw

Roof Sex: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1aodpb3vFU0&feature=PlayList&p=8DF92209E38C3A26&index=0&playnext=1

Enjoy!

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Circle Animation complete...

I have completed my circle animation now and am pleased with the result. The line testing was fairly straightforward. I've also done a few quick Maya tutorials - they have helped me get used to the interface and I look forward to developing my skills with it.

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First week

After completing a year on the Illustration BA course at Falmouth I have decided I want to make the pictures move and I am much more inspired by films/cartoons so thought it wise to start fresh on the Digital Animation BA course here at Falmouth.

Its been an interesting week. I used a lightbox for the first time on Wednesday. I found this an enjoyable process that wasn't as hard as I thought it might be. Having said that I still need to line test it to make sure it runs smoothly. I am also looking forward to experimenting with Maya.

I enjoyed learning a bit about the history of Animation and how its roots lie in the "business of illusion." It seems like an exciting media to work with as it seems as though anything can be achieved with it.

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