My first music video! + summer update..

In a nutshell this summer I spent 8 weeks travelling and working in Europe with my friend Carl. Our trip took us through France, Italy, Croatia, Slovenia, Hungary, Austria, Czech Republic and Germany..

This included staying 2 weeks on a pretty new agey eco farm in Croatia where amongst other things, I helped construct a drain pipe to carry rainwater into a container. This resulted in quite a dr seuss style creation. I was quite inspired by the guy who owned and ran the place he was an eccentric cheerful motivated guy to say the least. It was all about living in harmony with nature and being thankful for the planet. This led to me coming up with ideas for an Animation series based on the guy who
ran this place and led to the creation of leaf dude. There will be more of my sketches and ideas on this at a later date..

When I returned to the UK I had a week back in my home town - Brighton and Hove and managed to create a music video with my mate Nathan (he also created the sound track as music is his passion). Low quality as I used my digital camera but nevertheless very fun! We did it all in one evening/night. After Brighton I went to Bestival which was awesome - Jonsi of Sigur Ros had some great animation that really helped build a mind blowing atmosphere. The Flaming Lips also had really good visuals and animation accompanying their music.

Anyways without further ado here is the music vid:

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Will And The People - Mr Sketchy - Official Music Video - Uncut

This is a very cool Music Video my friend Jack directed.. A nice idea
carried out effectively with really good bits of 2d animation. Its a cool
example of combining live action and Animation. The track is really good
as well. Jack graduated last year from an Animation degree at Southampton Uni.



Track: Mr Sketchy by Will and The People

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Blake Evans

Just a blog post to say that we had a lecture by Blake Evans. I found some of his work to be quite inspiring and I liked the way he combined 2d, 3d, live action and pixellation. Amongst his work my favourite things were the music video for flutter by bonobo and his e4 stings. These contain inventive use of 3d and a creative and illustrative drawing style with Flash.

He seemed fairly laid back and puts down a lot of his professional success to having a bit of luck - knowing the right people etc.. His work is impressive and I liked his creative 2d style. He mainly uses Flash, After Effects and Maya.

He currently works with a couple of other guys who cover more of the business side of things -

dealing with clients etc.. and are also knowledgeable with Maya. Check out their website for their professional work... (inc. Bonobo music video)

This myspace page has many of his own videos that cannot be found on the above link 

(inc. e4 stings.)

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Paper plane flight animation

I had this idea (while I was bored) of a piece of paper turning itself into a paper plane and flying off... Then over the next 2 days made it happen!

In the process I developed my understanding of using photoshop, flash and premiere and compositing animation with live action. I mainly worked at just getting the plane flying along although I did also use stop motion photography to make the paper turn itself into a plane but havn't included this in the animation.

Here is several hours of work (and me risking my life running down stairs holding a camera) all for your enjoyment...

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The Catsters Paradise Design Bible complete extravaganza!

Presenting.....

The complete design bible for the Animal Firm project. This was really fun at times. In particular I enjoyed coming up with the characters, writing about them and designing the family trees of how they are connected..

I learned about how important characters are when it comes to creating a show or film. Once you have a good idea of the characters the next step of developing a narrative/story becomes much easier.. In the development stage some characters looked really human just with animal heads (this was pointed out to me by my girlfriend Nina.) I took inspiration from Puss In Boots in Shrek for the character of Jazz Jules.

I did not have much spare much time for creating the animal world in which they lived and could only fit in a few single panels of situations. I think if I had another week I would have been able to come up with more situations, gags and better ideas for the world in which they inhabit. One idea I had was to base a night club underneath a pier but didn't have time to do it..

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Beijing Olympics Monkey Animation 2008..

I've always loved this. Everything about it is amazing. The character designs, concept, animation, music and background art.

I would really like to learn the method they used for making it. I'm guessing the background has been done in 3d with painted textures. The animation looks 2D yet they move quite nicely in a 3d space so maybe they're actually done in 3d but made to look more

cartoony then a typical Maya character.. Maybe the characters are a mixture of 2d and 3d...if anyone has a better idea of the production process behind this please let me know !

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Parkour Animation

This is really cool.. Quite original, fun to watch, clever and drawn very well !

Parkour Motion Reel from Saggy Armpit on Vimeo

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