It’s done, the stop motion is finally done, a week behind schedule but nevertheless done. After the ritual burning of the set I now have to face up to the stark reality that there is rather a lot of stuff to do in post so I’m bracing myself for another manic week but for now: let the good times roll and the explanation of what I’ve been up to this week.
So, apart from slowly going mad, what have I been up to? Well, I will show you, through the wonderful medium of video. Here are most of the test animations that we did before actually filming the shots that we needed, which is the main reason why it actually took so long to finish everything. I will also point out that some of them have very long pauses of nothingness on the end because stop motion pro won’t let you render anything off which is less than two seconds so I just added lots of blank frames to make up the time.
First up: the nodding duck chickens, which I touched on last week. This first test shows a very basic animation (animated by Charlotte and Ralph, I think, it’s been a long week), first on twos and then on ones. This was just to see what looked best and we all agreed that animation done on ones looked much better.
We then experimented with different ways of doing the ‘nod’, in the first bit of this test we tried to ease in and out of the movement and create a sort of pecking look. Ben then asked us if we could animate it so that the head came out when the neck went down and visa versa. I animated the duck on the left, moving the head as the neck went moved and Ralph animated the one on the right; only moving the head at the end of the nod. We decided to use my method but I think that Ralph’s duck had a bit more character to it but I suppose we needed them to look mechanical. The ducks also moved around quite a lot, so we glued them down afterwards. The floor is also animated in this test, we had actually done a test with this earlier but that was on the trail version of stop motion pro and is therefore lost in the depths of cyber land, waiting for Richard to come and rescue it.
With all of that figured out I then set about trying to animate the egg-cup, I tried this first test on both ones and twos, I couldn’t find the one I did on twos but we chose to animate it on ones anyway. In this test it is propped up on plaster-scene which looked ok, and gave a nice looking rotation effect to the whole thing but it wasn’t particularly sturdy so we put a bolt through it.
In this test, said bolt is in place and affixed to the set, we were going to glue it but we seem to have been using the most lame glue known to man and just held it and everything else in place with plaster-scene; the greatest invention ever. This test was nice and pretty and most importantly, sturdy.
Almost everything was set then loomed the dreaded egg, the bain of my life; which I spent three days trying to animate. I have only included the final test as the other two tests are just pitiful and the other countless attempts to lower it that are just to painful to recall. They involved me gluing the egg to a piece of dowel and lowering it frame by frame, via G clamp and a hole in the ceiling, into the eggcup. It all looked very jumpy and it was near impossible to lower it in a strait line. So Ben came up with the nifty idea of putting the dowel through the egg – genius. With the aid of strategically placed holes and a pin I could lower the egg like a dream.
And so we arrive at the finished product, and isn’t it just lovely, Ben stood in for Ralph and animated the duck on the right, Holley moved the floor, Charlotte yelled numbers at us and pushed a big button and I just hogged as much animation as possible and animated the duck on the left, the eggcup and the egg. The egg does come down a bit quickly but apart from that I think its ok.
Ralph and I have also shot a scene of the floor spinning to a stop and the candelabra things but due to time constraints we did no tests, which I know is very bad and wrong, as of yet there are no videos of these scenes as the people in post are working off of stills and I forgot to make a separate video for my blog but hopefully I can find time to do that tomorrow as well as talk about the lighting.
Friday, 5 December 2008
Friday, 28 November 2008
Stop Motion and How it is Slowely Driving me Mad
A bit hectic and frustrating this week; the stop-motion stuff doesn’t seem to be going anywhere fast - it was supposed to be done by today and we only started doing the tests yesterday. Ideally, I should have done the tests last week, but hindsight is a wonderful thing.
So onwards we go! As of yesterday, I am assistant/temporary stand-in animation producer or whatever you want to call it, which basically boils down to me running around like a headless chicken and complaining to anyone who will listen. We have got most of the animation tests done and approved – the best way to move the chickenducks we found has been to glue them too the set and stuff all the joints with plaster-scene to stop them moving. Its been decided that we are going to animate it on ones, as is the floor, as it looks a lot smoother. Ralph has also produced a nice chart, which breaks the head nods down into increments so that we can ease in and out of the movement, we have also decided to hold for a couple of frames at the end of the nod to break it all up a bit.
This morning Charlotte and I did some tests on the big eggcup, which I propped up with plaster-scene. Again it looks better on ones and where I was constantly pulling it about we have ended up with a cool little turning action – a happy accident. Since doing all of that, however, Ben, Ralph and myself have put a bolt through it – balancing the cup on a nut, hopefully allowing us smother and more controlled action, I certainly hope so as it is now rather permanently glued to the set. After me failing to produce a winch for the egg – I tried but it ended in disaster – we have glued a bit of dowel to it and plan to lower it in increments by clamping it to the set. I’m hoping to try and put the tests on here soon put I just ran out of time to do that today.
And to my role of Director of Photography…I have hopefully done all of the lighting tests – I have left them with Ben, so I hope there is something he likes otherwise its back to the drawing board, its all set up pretty much as it described last week but when things quieten down a bit I will write a special lighting blogg…ooooo, to walk you through it. I would put all of the pictures up but trust me, they are not very interesting, unless you are really scarily into lighting. The camera angle has also been approved but that didn’t take much work, as it stays stationary the whole time.
So onwards we go! As of yesterday, I am assistant/temporary stand-in animation producer or whatever you want to call it, which basically boils down to me running around like a headless chicken and complaining to anyone who will listen. We have got most of the animation tests done and approved – the best way to move the chickenducks we found has been to glue them too the set and stuff all the joints with plaster-scene to stop them moving. Its been decided that we are going to animate it on ones, as is the floor, as it looks a lot smoother. Ralph has also produced a nice chart, which breaks the head nods down into increments so that we can ease in and out of the movement, we have also decided to hold for a couple of frames at the end of the nod to break it all up a bit.
This morning Charlotte and I did some tests on the big eggcup, which I propped up with plaster-scene. Again it looks better on ones and where I was constantly pulling it about we have ended up with a cool little turning action – a happy accident. Since doing all of that, however, Ben, Ralph and myself have put a bolt through it – balancing the cup on a nut, hopefully allowing us smother and more controlled action, I certainly hope so as it is now rather permanently glued to the set. After me failing to produce a winch for the egg – I tried but it ended in disaster – we have glued a bit of dowel to it and plan to lower it in increments by clamping it to the set. I’m hoping to try and put the tests on here soon put I just ran out of time to do that today.
And to my role of Director of Photography…I have hopefully done all of the lighting tests – I have left them with Ben, so I hope there is something he likes otherwise its back to the drawing board, its all set up pretty much as it described last week but when things quieten down a bit I will write a special lighting blogg…ooooo, to walk you through it. I would put all of the pictures up but trust me, they are not very interesting, unless you are really scarily into lighting. The camera angle has also been approved but that didn’t take much work, as it stays stationary the whole time.
Friday, 21 November 2008
More lighting talk
So what can I tell you about this week, well I have had a play with the lights on the stop-motion set, aided by Ralph and we sort of have a rough idea of how things might work. As predicted everything I planned went out of the window, as we are restricted as to where we can put lights due to the design of the set and the fact that the animators are going to need space to get in and actually animate things.
That said we have a sort of three-point lighting set-up; with lamps and a reflector acting as the fill and back light, the computer software is really useful for controlling the brightness of each light so we can manipulate how they are used. We also have a couple of other lights picking out key details in the scene but I am a bit worried that they will create nasty cross-shadows, so it may require some tweaking. We are also using the aperture and shutter speed settings on Georg’s camera to control how bright everything is and Rosie has said that colour can be added to the light in post so that is something I don’t have to worry about but if I get the time I would like to try and find something to use as a gel just to ease the strain on the post department as they already have quite a lot of work to do on the stop motion stuff once it is filmed. I am hoping that I can do some more tests on Monday as well as working out where to put the camera.
Our pitch project now has a voiceover, provided by Ben and I have done most of the storyboarding and sketches for the animatic, which Rosie is going to start putting together over the weekend. I am hopefully going to finish of the storyboards as well as trying out some more ideas for the backgrounds and drafting out some stuff for the bible.
That said we have a sort of three-point lighting set-up; with lamps and a reflector acting as the fill and back light, the computer software is really useful for controlling the brightness of each light so we can manipulate how they are used. We also have a couple of other lights picking out key details in the scene but I am a bit worried that they will create nasty cross-shadows, so it may require some tweaking. We are also using the aperture and shutter speed settings on Georg’s camera to control how bright everything is and Rosie has said that colour can be added to the light in post so that is something I don’t have to worry about but if I get the time I would like to try and find something to use as a gel just to ease the strain on the post department as they already have quite a lot of work to do on the stop motion stuff once it is filmed. I am hoping that I can do some more tests on Monday as well as working out where to put the camera.
Our pitch project now has a voiceover, provided by Ben and I have done most of the storyboarding and sketches for the animatic, which Rosie is going to start putting together over the weekend. I am hopefully going to finish of the storyboards as well as trying out some more ideas for the backgrounds and drafting out some stuff for the bible.
Thursday, 13 November 2008
Lots of Fancy Words to do With Lighting
Some more developments on the pitch project this week; we are now moving away from the idea of using a collage as the background as it was too distracting from the main animation, which is quite simple. For the moment we are experimenting with random abstract shapes for the background, such as ink splats. I have produced a couple of designs, taking inspiration from Ralph Steadman’s work; especially pieces such as Old Blue Eye where he incorporates his drawings into the abstract shape of the splats. I also admire the way he uses colour; using bright, bold colours to emphasize certain areas of his work. I think I may have got a bit carried away though becoming more concerned with producing a finished piece of work rather than simple, abstract shapes and this may create the same problems that the collage did.
At the moment I am not doing an awful lot on the Exeter project as a lot of the stuff I need to do can not be done till next week. However, I am helping Sean to come up with ideas for how the Phoenix eye lighting up could work and I have had a quick think for a possible lighting set-up for the stop-motion. I have brushed up on my film theory and now know lots of big words: My plan is to use a single key light to act as the main light source, the sun, with gels or some improvised kind of filters to create the colours and patterns of the stained glass windows, although that may be able to be dealt with in post. Also, depending on the size of the set, I may need to block some of the light to stop unwanted shadows being cast. I’m also going to go up to the media store tomorrow to see if I can get my hands on some reflectors to provide the back and fill lighting, as it needs to look like there are no other light sources, to create the sense of a musty interior. It may all look too dark, in which case I will have use more lights to provide the back and fill but I would probably try to diffuse them somehow. Although I say all of this now it is most likely that it will all go out of the window on the actual day and I will just move things around till it looks good. My main worry at the moment is that the sun is behind the clock tower, which would silhouette everything that is going on the set and also have the light shining directly into the camera and would need quite a lot of fill lighting to correct (I think).
At the moment I am not doing an awful lot on the Exeter project as a lot of the stuff I need to do can not be done till next week. However, I am helping Sean to come up with ideas for how the Phoenix eye lighting up could work and I have had a quick think for a possible lighting set-up for the stop-motion. I have brushed up on my film theory and now know lots of big words: My plan is to use a single key light to act as the main light source, the sun, with gels or some improvised kind of filters to create the colours and patterns of the stained glass windows, although that may be able to be dealt with in post. Also, depending on the size of the set, I may need to block some of the light to stop unwanted shadows being cast. I’m also going to go up to the media store tomorrow to see if I can get my hands on some reflectors to provide the back and fill lighting, as it needs to look like there are no other light sources, to create the sense of a musty interior. It may all look too dark, in which case I will have use more lights to provide the back and fill but I would probably try to diffuse them somehow. Although I say all of this now it is most likely that it will all go out of the window on the actual day and I will just move things around till it looks good. My main worry at the moment is that the sun is behind the clock tower, which would silhouette everything that is going on the set and also have the light shining directly into the camera and would need quite a lot of fill lighting to correct (I think).
Thursday, 6 November 2008
Pitch Project Things and Stuff
Lots of happenings this week in terms of the pitch project; I am starting to come up various bits of artwork for the bible as well as working on some possible ideas for the presentation. Here are some more development drawings which wont make much sense without the script but they are more or less like the sketches I posted last week.
We are now moving away from the idea of using a history or note book as our background, instead we are going for a sort of scrapbook theme inspired by Jon Burgerman, in particular his Lickins Print, and the print on his Colour-Me Doodle wrapping paper, which use cardboard, post-it notes and other random stuff as a background and has characters drawn onto it. I have done one collage, which looks a bit rubbishy, but I tinkered with it in Photoshop and added some extra textures to spruce it up a bit and quickly stuck a bit of artwork on it to get a rough idea of how it may look. I’m planning to spend tomorrow trying out different layouts and styles and maybe doing a few more backgrounds. I have also experimented with some different textures on the characters but that looked a bit drab and unexciting.
For the presentation we are toying with the idea of animating our narrator, Professor Piddle, which may look good but animating ten minutes worth of lip-sync fills me with dread so I think he may have to be significantly simplified and possibly acquire a beard or something to conveniently covers his mouth. Ben was also thinking of turning him to some kind of rapper man thing that presents the material as a sort of rhyme. I am not quite sure how well this will work put I will have a play with the characters and see what happens.
Wednesday, 29 October 2008
The scanner is working!
I have finally got the scanner up and running so this week I have all the pictures that I promised plus a video!
Which brings me round nicely to the stop motion workshop as the video is of my attempt at lip sync that I talked about last week, although the sound dosn't seem to want to work. My character is the pink thing on the left. If I can I will try to get the video of the stuff that I did this week too, which were ‘head turns’ and ‘body bends’. I liked working with the armatures, although it is early days I am finding using these puppets the most enjoyable and rewarding form of animation that I have tried so far. The stuff I did this week was O.K. although I think I was more concerned with giving the armature character than actually getting realistic movement.
Mondays session has also rekindled my interest in my shelved stop motion project, I am yet to make any attempts at doing any new work for it but I am starting to mull over things again and I have included one of the few sketches that I was happy with, which is of the main character.
This week has also been spent attempting
to build the ‘spaceship’ that I designed over the summer. I decided that it might be a good idea to try and build it in Maya as it is quite a simple shape and it would be a right pain to animate in 2D. From what I have done so far things are going O.K., there are a couple of iffy bits, which I’m not too worried about as my plan is to export any animation to flash and draw over it but it would be quite nice to get it right. Next week I’ll try and put in some screen shots of it but for now you shall have to content yourself with a picture of my Bruce Willis inspired astronaut.
And finally, onto the pitch project: Ben is working on backgrounds and Rosie is bulking out the script, I have been working on some more ideas for how the whole thing could work, my new job is character design, I have done some sketches but the character designs are by no means finished and are constantly being tweaked so the final thing could look very different.
Which brings me round nicely to the stop motion workshop as the video is of my attempt at lip sync that I talked about last week, although the sound dosn't seem to want to work. My character is the pink thing on the left. If I can I will try to get the video of the stuff that I did this week too, which were ‘head turns’ and ‘body bends’. I liked working with the armatures, although it is early days I am finding using these puppets the most enjoyable and rewarding form of animation that I have tried so far. The stuff I did this week was O.K. although I think I was more concerned with giving the armature character than actually getting realistic movement.
Mondays session has also rekindled my interest in my shelved stop motion project, I am yet to make any attempts at doing any new work for it but I am starting to mull over things again and I have included one of the few sketches that I was happy with, which is of the main character.
This week has also been spent attempting
to build the ‘spaceship’ that I designed over the summer. I decided that it might be a good idea to try and build it in Maya as it is quite a simple shape and it would be a right pain to animate in 2D. From what I have done so far things are going O.K., there are a couple of iffy bits, which I’m not too worried about as my plan is to export any animation to flash and draw over it but it would be quite nice to get it right. Next week I’ll try and put in some screen shots of it but for now you shall have to content yourself with a picture of my Bruce Willis inspired astronaut.
And finally, onto the pitch project: Ben is working on backgrounds and Rosie is bulking out the script, I have been working on some more ideas for how the whole thing could work, my new job is character design, I have done some sketches but the character designs are by no means finished and are constantly being tweaked so the final thing could look very different.
Wednesday, 22 October 2008
Sorry I forgot to scan my summer stuff
Not an awful lot new has happened this week, so this may be a bit short… and I still have not scanned the stuff that I did over the summer, for which I apologies.
As I have said not much new has really happened, we are still trying to find a style to use on the pitch project. I have tried out a couple of ideas but they don’t seem quite right. That said we have been experimenting with different voiceover styles and the results of that have given me some ideas so I will see where that takes me.
I’m really enjoying the stop-motion stuff; we tried animating our characters to the chart things that we did last week. Mine was a bit out, which I think is because I am used to doing it on a computer where you can instantly see if it is right our wrong. It was also a bit strange animating without the sound track. The other problem I found was that where I was physically remodeling the head every time it moved as opposed to using an interchangeable mouth, I got a sort of ripple effect, which was a bit off-putting.
Well that’s about it really, I’m hoping that by next week I will have a better idea of what we are doing on the pitch project and I can tell you about that.
As I have said not much new has really happened, we are still trying to find a style to use on the pitch project. I have tried out a couple of ideas but they don’t seem quite right. That said we have been experimenting with different voiceover styles and the results of that have given me some ideas so I will see where that takes me.
I’m really enjoying the stop-motion stuff; we tried animating our characters to the chart things that we did last week. Mine was a bit out, which I think is because I am used to doing it on a computer where you can instantly see if it is right our wrong. It was also a bit strange animating without the sound track. The other problem I found was that where I was physically remodeling the head every time it moved as opposed to using an interchangeable mouth, I got a sort of ripple effect, which was a bit off-putting.
Well that’s about it really, I’m hoping that by next week I will have a better idea of what we are doing on the pitch project and I can tell you about that.
Thursday, 16 October 2008
Maya shall not beat me... again
Quite a lot has happened since last week, what with the start of the Exeter project and all the other workshops and what not.
First things first, the stop motion sessions, which I am really glad we are doing, although we have only done two sessions and am finding it very useful. At the moment I am still interpreting the audio track for lip sync, which hopefully shouldn’t be too much trouble as I did a fair bit of that last year. I am a bit worried about animating my model, as it’s not that movable and will probably just fall apart as I haven’t made any separate mouths, but we shall see.
The pitch project, which I am doing with Ben and Rosie, is going O.K.. We are using bloopers from student’s essays as our inspiration. I think if we approach it the right way we will be able to come up with something quite good but it’s a fine line between getting it wrong and right in terms of how we interpret the text so that the animation brings something extra to the mix.
My audio project is almost done, I just need to get it all into Audition and have a play. I haven’t really recorded the sound with a specific plot in mind but I have tried to record unusual noises and I’m going to try and distort them a bit so I will hopefully end up with a completely bonkers track.
Finally, the Exeter Project, which I think, I might not be doing for the time being as I have defected to the Maya stuff. That’s right Maya! Whilst not yet a complete convert I did try and be good and do the Internet tutorials over the summer and I am now determined not to let it beat me… again.
First things first, the stop motion sessions, which I am really glad we are doing, although we have only done two sessions and am finding it very useful. At the moment I am still interpreting the audio track for lip sync, which hopefully shouldn’t be too much trouble as I did a fair bit of that last year. I am a bit worried about animating my model, as it’s not that movable and will probably just fall apart as I haven’t made any separate mouths, but we shall see.
The pitch project, which I am doing with Ben and Rosie, is going O.K.. We are using bloopers from student’s essays as our inspiration. I think if we approach it the right way we will be able to come up with something quite good but it’s a fine line between getting it wrong and right in terms of how we interpret the text so that the animation brings something extra to the mix.
My audio project is almost done, I just need to get it all into Audition and have a play. I haven’t really recorded the sound with a specific plot in mind but I have tried to record unusual noises and I’m going to try and distort them a bit so I will hopefully end up with a completely bonkers track.
Finally, the Exeter Project, which I think, I might not be doing for the time being as I have defected to the Maya stuff. That’s right Maya! Whilst not yet a complete convert I did try and be good and do the Internet tutorials over the summer and I am now determined not to let it beat me… again.
Wednesday, 8 October 2008
My Summer
So once again I return to the good old blog, hurrah! Actually in a sort of strange way I have missed it over the summer, it’s like being reunited with an old friend.
Well then, what have I been up to over the summer?
Just after we broke up I was full of wonderful plans for my stop motion epic, which I am still not going to say what it is, and for a while that was chugging along nicely but as I was trying to adapt a book which had already been converted into a film I found it increasingly difficult to come up with anything original. Also, I think I was just a smidgen over ambitious; taking on an entire book. Anyway to cut a long story short I ran out of inspiration and chucked it all into a corner in disgust. That said, now I have had time to cool off I find myself wanting to return to it again so all may not be lost just quite yet.
My second little project was going to be a bit of a political rant about this year’s Olympics, featuring a character that is forced to leave his home for the big city after his house is crushed by a falling Olympic stadium (subtle). After that it descended into a range of bizarre drink inspired events featuring, among other things, evil rickshaw gangs and strange pointy things that sold handbags. This did not progress much further than a couple of sketches as the plot wasn’t going anywhere. Still, I would like to think that one or two ideas could be plucked out and used for other things.
My final project came to me on a whim when I was watching Armageddon, (which was painful to watch) and I thought what would happen if Bruce Willis and co had failed to blow up the big nasty asteroid, resulting in Earth being destroyed leaving the failed heroes floating around in space. So I came up with my Bruce Willis hybrid character who is stuck in a space ship when Earth is destroyed and left all on his lonesome. I haven’t quite worked out how the story will progress beyond this point but I do have a pretty finalised character design and I got a bit carried away designing his spaceship and have done cross-sections of it and other sad things like that. I haven’t got round to rigging up my scanner yet so next week I will try to post some pictures.
Well then, what have I been up to over the summer?
Just after we broke up I was full of wonderful plans for my stop motion epic, which I am still not going to say what it is, and for a while that was chugging along nicely but as I was trying to adapt a book which had already been converted into a film I found it increasingly difficult to come up with anything original. Also, I think I was just a smidgen over ambitious; taking on an entire book. Anyway to cut a long story short I ran out of inspiration and chucked it all into a corner in disgust. That said, now I have had time to cool off I find myself wanting to return to it again so all may not be lost just quite yet.
My second little project was going to be a bit of a political rant about this year’s Olympics, featuring a character that is forced to leave his home for the big city after his house is crushed by a falling Olympic stadium (subtle). After that it descended into a range of bizarre drink inspired events featuring, among other things, evil rickshaw gangs and strange pointy things that sold handbags. This did not progress much further than a couple of sketches as the plot wasn’t going anywhere. Still, I would like to think that one or two ideas could be plucked out and used for other things.
My final project came to me on a whim when I was watching Armageddon, (which was painful to watch) and I thought what would happen if Bruce Willis and co had failed to blow up the big nasty asteroid, resulting in Earth being destroyed leaving the failed heroes floating around in space. So I came up with my Bruce Willis hybrid character who is stuck in a space ship when Earth is destroyed and left all on his lonesome. I haven’t quite worked out how the story will progress beyond this point but I do have a pretty finalised character design and I got a bit carried away designing his spaceship and have done cross-sections of it and other sad things like that. I haven’t got round to rigging up my scanner yet so next week I will try to post some pictures.
Wednesday, 4 June 2008
DVD
Half way through the final week and the end is in sight (I hope). The DVD cover has taken a little longer than planned since it has been through numerous changes; it was originally quite simple and plain, which was ok, if not a little boring. After that it was tweaked a couple of times (bits and bobs such as the colour) and Monday afternoon it was completely changed to something which is a lot brighter. I am not to sure if the new design really fits the theme of the film and the ominous background clashes a bit with the bright figures in the foreground, that said most people seem happy with it and I have been doing nothing but stare at it for the last couple of days.
This week I have also been responsible for designing the DVD label, which is really simple and took about five minutes to do, I would have liked to have spent more time on it but I doubt I will get the time.With most of the design work done I’m sort of just clearing up loose ends, today I was taking pictures for the DVD, generally annoying everyone in the process and adding some stuff to the titles and credits with the help of Pete.
Friday, 30 May 2008
Dung Beetle
Finished animating the dung beetle this week; I am happy with the animation of the main character and I think that I got the lip-sync down fairly well. Initially I had over animated everything and the beetle was just a blur of arm movements and a mouth which seemed to have a mind of its own, but now I have simplified everything I think that it looks a lot better.
I deliberately did not put to much emphasis on the character in the background because I did not want it to distract the audience from the main character but I think that it came out looking a bit stiff and it defiantly does not add anything to the piece unlike the background action in Creature Comforts.
My finished animation is also a little bit different from the storyboard; originally the beetle was supposed to push a big ball of poo onto screen and turn to camera, I did animate this and cheated on the turn by putting in a close-up but it did not look right so I took it all out, which I think works better because the dialogue starts quite suddenly and any action before it looks a little bit strange.
So with the dung beetle out of the way I am now back on the library project designing a DVD cover which at the moment is a nice change as it is a little less intensive than the lip-sync as I am just pasting in various bits of artwork and stills and the overall design is closely related to the DVD menu which Dan has already designed. That said it is supposed to be done by to day so it may get a bit stressful mid afternoon. Once the cover is done I think I am being put onto comping which hopefully someone will show me how to do as I have no idea where to start.
I deliberately did not put to much emphasis on the character in the background because I did not want it to distract the audience from the main character but I think that it came out looking a bit stiff and it defiantly does not add anything to the piece unlike the background action in Creature Comforts.
My finished animation is also a little bit different from the storyboard; originally the beetle was supposed to push a big ball of poo onto screen and turn to camera, I did animate this and cheated on the turn by putting in a close-up but it did not look right so I took it all out, which I think works better because the dialogue starts quite suddenly and any action before it looks a little bit strange.
So with the dung beetle out of the way I am now back on the library project designing a DVD cover which at the moment is a nice change as it is a little less intensive than the lip-sync as I am just pasting in various bits of artwork and stills and the overall design is closely related to the DVD menu which Dan has already designed. That said it is supposed to be done by to day so it may get a bit stressful mid afternoon. Once the cover is done I think I am being put onto comping which hopefully someone will show me how to do as I have no idea where to start.
Thursday, 22 May 2008
Dung Beetle!
I was on the creature comforts project this week animating a dung beetle, which is more interesting than it sounds, honest. Apart from the really unbelievably crap quality of the audio it’s a really good project, although I have been working from Cherie’s design I have had a reasonable amount of freedom with what everything looks like, and I am starting to get stuck into the animation now that the lip-sync is out of the way. That said, today was a bit frustrating as Flash didn’t seem to want to behave, in the end I just left it to deal with tomorrow.
That just about exhausts my news for that project, so I shall conveniently move on to the results of the storyboarding and script project, which I will admit I found a little disappointing especially as I enjoyed it so much, never mind though, I think I know what I did wrong; mainly I was too ambitious. So I am now throwing myself into every storyboarding and film studies book I can find in a bid to better myself and cram my head with lots of itty bitty bits of storyboarding facts.
I have also managed to secure myself a project to do over the summer; a video for a friend’s band, who I did do something for last summer (a rather feeble attempt at stop-motion, I think I posted it on here sometime last term) but hopefully this new one will be better as I like to think I will know what I am doing this time round and may actually have something resembling animation software.
Right once again time for me to disappear, hopefully the dung beetle will be done this time next week and I will be able to discuss the joys of post-production.
That just about exhausts my news for that project, so I shall conveniently move on to the results of the storyboarding and script project, which I will admit I found a little disappointing especially as I enjoyed it so much, never mind though, I think I know what I did wrong; mainly I was too ambitious. So I am now throwing myself into every storyboarding and film studies book I can find in a bid to better myself and cram my head with lots of itty bitty bits of storyboarding facts.
I have also managed to secure myself a project to do over the summer; a video for a friend’s band, who I did do something for last summer (a rather feeble attempt at stop-motion, I think I posted it on here sometime last term) but hopefully this new one will be better as I like to think I will know what I am doing this time round and may actually have something resembling animation software.
Right once again time for me to disappear, hopefully the dung beetle will be done this time next week and I will be able to discuss the joys of post-production.
Thursday, 15 May 2008
Library
An interesting week this one; it’s flown by but I hav
e produced a pleasing little mound of work which various people now have to go off and interpret. My role has mainly been to come-up with a design for the set; a library and any props which are going to be modelled in 3D. I have also been responsible for the ‘look’ of the film in terms of the colour palette that is being used and I have had a little bit of input on lighting as well. I think Pete has done well in getting the best out of all of us which in many ways is down to him giving us free range over our own little segments which I think has avoided a lot of potential clashes.
The sequence I was responsible for was supposed to represent the whole DVD/video aspect of a library. I originally planned an epic escapade into the world of film which I dropped before I even drew up a proper storyboard because it just wasn’t working. My second idea made a lot more subtle references to particular films and I was quite happy with it but I think it was too much for an audience to take in in the thirty seconds that I had to play with. Instead we decided (I can’t remember exactly who) that it was best to stick to one film reference which was Hitchcock’s North by Northwest. This gave me a lot less creative input but I wasn’t too fussed as I had so much else to be doing.
I owe my inspiration of the library mainly to the good old Ikea catalogue, all be it in a somewhat obscure way (a lampshade inspired a pillar for example). I also went with a circular theme – the bookshelves are constructed around a circle, formed by the windows, and other props such as the telly are constructed out of circular shapes. I did have a look at some Disney backgrounds to try and get some inspiration but I have never really liked Disney films so I don’t think that I took too much of it in.
The colour scheme came mainly from Pete’s brief, which was alon
g the lines of: something that was warm and inviting but not distracting. I have used yellow/brown/grey pastille type colours and tried to avoid using harsh shadows in my artwork which I think was quite important as a lot of the props are quite imposing. For areas that needed that bit more warmth, like the lamp on the information desk I mainly used the colour palette that we had agreed to use on the librarian. The sign above the desk was supposed to be like a beacon so I wanted to emphasize it, I made it blue because this is a universal colour for information signs and it stood out against the warm tones of the library, I just hope that it is not too cold.
That just about concludes this week’s blog, next week I’m moving onto the creature comforts project to do some animation which I chose to do because I thought it might allow me more freedom than some of the other projects then i’m back to the library for post.
e produced a pleasing little mound of work which various people now have to go off and interpret. My role has mainly been to come-up with a design for the set; a library and any props which are going to be modelled in 3D. I have also been responsible for the ‘look’ of the film in terms of the colour palette that is being used and I have had a little bit of input on lighting as well. I think Pete has done well in getting the best out of all of us which in many ways is down to him giving us free range over our own little segments which I think has avoided a lot of potential clashes.The sequence I was responsible for was supposed to represent the whole DVD/video aspect of a library. I originally planned an epic escapade into the world of film which I dropped before I even drew up a proper storyboard because it just wasn’t working. My second idea made a lot more subtle references to particular films and I was quite happy with it but I think it was too much for an audience to take in in the thirty seconds that I had to play with. Instead we decided (I can’t remember exactly who) that it was best to stick to one film reference which was Hitchcock’s North by Northwest. This gave me a lot less creative input but I wasn’t too fussed as I had so much else to be doing.
I owe my inspiration of the library mainly to the good old Ikea catalogue, all be it in a somewhat obscure way (a lampshade inspired a pillar for example). I also went with a circular theme – the bookshelves are constructed around a circle, formed by the windows, and other props such as the telly are constructed out of circular shapes. I did have a look at some Disney backgrounds to try and get some inspiration but I have never really liked Disney films so I don’t think that I took too much of it in.
The colour scheme came mainly from Pete’s brief, which was alon
g the lines of: something that was warm and inviting but not distracting. I have used yellow/brown/grey pastille type colours and tried to avoid using harsh shadows in my artwork which I think was quite important as a lot of the props are quite imposing. For areas that needed that bit more warmth, like the lamp on the information desk I mainly used the colour palette that we had agreed to use on the librarian. The sign above the desk was supposed to be like a beacon so I wanted to emphasize it, I made it blue because this is a universal colour for information signs and it stood out against the warm tones of the library, I just hope that it is not too cold.That just about concludes this week’s blog, next week I’m moving onto the creature comforts project to do some animation which I chose to do because I thought it might allow me more freedom than some of the other projects then i’m back to the library for post.
Friday, 9 May 2008
Still no I-dent (sorry)
It only seems like five minutes ago that I was last doing this; the week has flown by, so apologies if I am a little vague this week.
After my little rant last week I have had time to sit back and reflect and have come to the conclusion that I still hate Maya and wouldn’t want to touch it with a barge pole. That said the fact that it has effectively beaten me is constantly at the back of my mind so I might end up doing the tutorials again when I get some free time.
I really like the new project(s), and think we have a good group for the library brief, despite the odd clash of egos. Pete has come up with a really good idea of giving us all our own little bit to come up with, which allows us some degree of creative freedom and will hopefully give the finished film an interesting feel as it changes between the different styles, although we will have to be careful that these changes don’t confuse the audience. I am also responsible for designing the environment; which I am trying to keep as simple as possible, to fit the overall feel of the film as well as making the 3D modelling of it as quick and simple as possible. I am also coming up with lighting schemes, which I haven’t really thought about and am advising on the camera angles, although I think everyone else’s ideas on that front are better than mine.
And finally, my little pet project, which I am still not going to say what it is about, except it is going to be stop motion, is tottering along nicely. I have read Peter Lord’s and Brian Sibley’s Cracking Animation, which is really useful, I have some very rough character designs and a sript(ish) as well as recruiting some 3D design people to help build sets and props and a textiles person to make little miniature clothes. However, this is likely to ground to a halt during this project and probably wont be resurrected till next year.
After my little rant last week I have had time to sit back and reflect and have come to the conclusion that I still hate Maya and wouldn’t want to touch it with a barge pole. That said the fact that it has effectively beaten me is constantly at the back of my mind so I might end up doing the tutorials again when I get some free time.
I really like the new project(s), and think we have a good group for the library brief, despite the odd clash of egos. Pete has come up with a really good idea of giving us all our own little bit to come up with, which allows us some degree of creative freedom and will hopefully give the finished film an interesting feel as it changes between the different styles, although we will have to be careful that these changes don’t confuse the audience. I am also responsible for designing the environment; which I am trying to keep as simple as possible, to fit the overall feel of the film as well as making the 3D modelling of it as quick and simple as possible. I am also coming up with lighting schemes, which I haven’t really thought about and am advising on the camera angles, although I think everyone else’s ideas on that front are better than mine.
And finally, my little pet project, which I am still not going to say what it is about, except it is going to be stop motion, is tottering along nicely. I have read Peter Lord’s and Brian Sibley’s Cracking Animation, which is really useful, I have some very rough character designs and a sript(ish) as well as recruiting some 3D design people to help build sets and props and a textiles person to make little miniature clothes. However, this is likely to ground to a halt during this project and probably wont be resurrected till next year.
Friday, 2 May 2008
Maya Has Broken Me
I think that it would be very easy for me to just slag of Maya for the entirety of this entry but I shall try to restrain myself and be a little bit constructive. Right, as you may have guessed, I have not got on particularly well with Maya this week, just as the ole’ flour sack thing seemed to be chugging along smoothly and I was on the verge of becoming a convert, a huge great dirty spanner was thrown in the works and completely buggered up everything as the anchor point things suddenly decided to go forth and multiply. After wasting a day bodging everything back together I encountered another little gem; for some reason whenever I move something to animate it, everything that has already been animated moves too, despite it being keyed. At this stage I don’t know if I these problems are a result of something that I have done or something that Maya has done. So to cut a long story short I have thrown the towel in and given up – Maya has broken me.
What have I learnt, well, apart from the fact that I never want to animate in Maya again and fail to see why anyone else would (I salute anyone who can though). It can be a surprisingly amusing programme to use whilst half drunk, although the chances of producing anything worthwhile are slim. Also, in the right hands (clearly not mine) I grudgingly acknowledge that you can do some interesting camera work and the like, but I am still not overly keen on the whole 3D environment that you can create.
Where from here then…bring on stop motion I cry! I have started work on my little pet project (sketches and so on and so forth) and plan to raid the library tomorrow to learn how to do things. Updates next week.
And finally, to conclude, my little review of A Scanner Darkly, mentioned last week. In terms of plot the film was OK if a tad curfuzzeling but it normally takes me a couple of attempts to understand most things. The rotoscoping was interesting, highlighting for me actions that animation can’t or doesn’t capture and also showing what animation can bring to a storey. At first I didn’t see what the rotoscoping brought to the storey but Rosie (correct me if I’m wrong Rosie) pointed out that the way that the characters ‘floated’ about (which I put down to dodgy rotoscoping) was meant to enhance the whole stoner mindset in the film.
Next week I will revisit Maya when I have had time to cool off and have a better look at my experience with it.
What have I learnt, well, apart from the fact that I never want to animate in Maya again and fail to see why anyone else would (I salute anyone who can though). It can be a surprisingly amusing programme to use whilst half drunk, although the chances of producing anything worthwhile are slim. Also, in the right hands (clearly not mine) I grudgingly acknowledge that you can do some interesting camera work and the like, but I am still not overly keen on the whole 3D environment that you can create.
Where from here then…bring on stop motion I cry! I have started work on my little pet project (sketches and so on and so forth) and plan to raid the library tomorrow to learn how to do things. Updates next week.
And finally, to conclude, my little review of A Scanner Darkly, mentioned last week. In terms of plot the film was OK if a tad curfuzzeling but it normally takes me a couple of attempts to understand most things. The rotoscoping was interesting, highlighting for me actions that animation can’t or doesn’t capture and also showing what animation can bring to a storey. At first I didn’t see what the rotoscoping brought to the storey but Rosie (correct me if I’m wrong Rosie) pointed out that the way that the characters ‘floated’ about (which I put down to dodgy rotoscoping) was meant to enhance the whole stoner mindset in the film.
Next week I will revisit Maya when I have had time to cool off and have a better look at my experience with it.
Thursday, 24 April 2008
Learning to Love Maya (slowely)
Once again I have completely forgotten to post the I-dent so apologies for that, not exactly sure what to write this week as all I have been doing is the Maya stuff so I will try and wing it and see what happens.
I suppose the logical place to start is Maya, which I have a sort of love hate relationship with, mostly hate. However, the tutorials have really helped and I can sort of get my head round the graph editor now, which when you know how, I will grudgingly admit, is quite useful. I have spent most of this week on the bowling ball which I am quite happy with. Peter Bailey’s talk was very useful in getting a lot of the movement right. I started the table tennis ball but wasn’t really trying so it looks a bit crap; the rotation is all wrong, which in turn messes up the stretch and squash and I can not for the life of me work out how to put locators on. That said, unless you watch it on wire frame you can not actually tell that it is rotating that much, if I have time tomorrow or Saturday I will try and fix it but through some perverse need to punish myself I have decided to try and model a football tomorrow so it may have to stay as it is. I am quite looking forward to the character animation, mainly because it is a bit more interesting than a ball, although I can see it getting stupidly complicated very quickly.
That’s just about the extent of anything remotely interesting that I had to say, so I am off to go watch Richard Linklater’s A Scanner Darkly (2006) I don’t know if its any good but it looks like it has all been rotoscoped, so I shall update you next week sports fans!
I suppose the logical place to start is Maya, which I have a sort of love hate relationship with, mostly hate. However, the tutorials have really helped and I can sort of get my head round the graph editor now, which when you know how, I will grudgingly admit, is quite useful. I have spent most of this week on the bowling ball which I am quite happy with. Peter Bailey’s talk was very useful in getting a lot of the movement right. I started the table tennis ball but wasn’t really trying so it looks a bit crap; the rotation is all wrong, which in turn messes up the stretch and squash and I can not for the life of me work out how to put locators on. That said, unless you watch it on wire frame you can not actually tell that it is rotating that much, if I have time tomorrow or Saturday I will try and fix it but through some perverse need to punish myself I have decided to try and model a football tomorrow so it may have to stay as it is. I am quite looking forward to the character animation, mainly because it is a bit more interesting than a ball, although I can see it getting stupidly complicated very quickly.
That’s just about the extent of anything remotely interesting that I had to say, so I am off to go watch Richard Linklater’s A Scanner Darkly (2006) I don’t know if its any good but it looks like it has all been rotoscoped, so I shall update you next week sports fans!
Thursday, 17 April 2008
Easter stooff
First blog since Easter so it might take me a while to get back into the swing of things. I still have not posted the I-dent but I suppose that’s a bit irrelevant now.
Will kick things off by talking about this week and returning to my most favourite thing in the whole wide world, Maya; to say I found animating the ball frustrating would be a bit of an understatement, but I have gone through some of the tutorials since then and I have found those really useful so hopefully I will have more success with the other tasks in future. I’m hoping I can get my head round it, especially the modelling side of it as I think having a 3D environment to work in lends itself better to my ideas as it is easier to work out things like camera angles and lighting. I’m not overly keen on the whole 3D finish though, so I might look into how the giant was textured in Iron Giant, where cell shading was used to make the character look like it was 2D.
I found the Easter project really good fun, I did keep putting off the script though as I had never done something like that and was a bit wary of it but once I started it I really liked it. For the storyboard I really tried to bring something else to the script by tweaking the odd bit here and there and utilising what I have learned about cinematography. How successful that has been and weather or not I would be aloud to do that in a professional situation, I do not know. The script was heavily influenced by Roman Klochkov’s Administrators, (I can’t find a version of it on the internet so this is just a link to his myspace) and Terry Gilliam’s Brazil. I also recycled quite a lot of research that I did for a project last year, it is mostly newspaper cuttings which where really useful for getting inspiration as well as some sketches of some stuff I got given in a police station, although my script dose not deal with this police equipment the memories evoked by the sketches and the odd scribbled note, reminded me of how hard it was to get the stuff and what happened while I was there, which also served as inspiration.
Will kick things off by talking about this week and returning to my most favourite thing in the whole wide world, Maya; to say I found animating the ball frustrating would be a bit of an understatement, but I have gone through some of the tutorials since then and I have found those really useful so hopefully I will have more success with the other tasks in future. I’m hoping I can get my head round it, especially the modelling side of it as I think having a 3D environment to work in lends itself better to my ideas as it is easier to work out things like camera angles and lighting. I’m not overly keen on the whole 3D finish though, so I might look into how the giant was textured in Iron Giant, where cell shading was used to make the character look like it was 2D.
I found the Easter project really good fun, I did keep putting off the script though as I had never done something like that and was a bit wary of it but once I started it I really liked it. For the storyboard I really tried to bring something else to the script by tweaking the odd bit here and there and utilising what I have learned about cinematography. How successful that has been and weather or not I would be aloud to do that in a professional situation, I do not know. The script was heavily influenced by Roman Klochkov’s Administrators, (I can’t find a version of it on the internet so this is just a link to his myspace) and Terry Gilliam’s Brazil. I also recycled quite a lot of research that I did for a project last year, it is mostly newspaper cuttings which where really useful for getting inspiration as well as some sketches of some stuff I got given in a police station, although my script dose not deal with this police equipment the memories evoked by the sketches and the odd scribbled note, reminded me of how hard it was to get the stuff and what happened while I was there, which also served as inspiration.
Wednesday, 12 March 2008
Uber blog (I went a bit overboard this week)
First of all, apologies for not putting my I-dent up, it completely slipped my mind, if I remember I will put it up tomorrow when I am in the studio. I also completely forgot about Andy’s comment last week so I shall try and write about that this week as I think it will offer some more insight into my I-dent.
To start though I thought I might talk about our new project which looks really good. The whole script writing thing has been something that I have been looking forward to for a while and the brief has got my creative juices flowing, I have gone into geek mode and started researching it already. I am a bit apprehensive as I have never written a script before, everything I have done in the past has gone straight to storyboards and they where never particularly clear as I was working by myself and knew what I wanted to do, I have also never attempted anything with dialogue (I know we don’t have to do that for this project but I think I should stop putting it off), so I hope it will be an interesting experience.
I have also started to get some ideas for the storyboard project and I am hoping that I can put some of the theories that I have learnt from Herbert Zettl’s Sight Sound Motion, Applied Media Aesthetics to good use but I think I will need to re-read my notes from that first.
Right, another quick bit on the I-dent:
Although I used Flash to animate the I-dent so that I could use puppets, making everything a bit easier and less time consuming to animate (which it was) I found that the stuff I drew by hand looked the most effective and fluid. This doesn’t mean that I want to stop using Flash but I think I need to look into using some of the tools in it more subtly, and mixing them with the traditional animation function.
This all brings me conveniently round to an article that I read in the March 2008 issue of Animation Magazine; Watch Out For That Tree…Again! George of the Jungle swings back into action. By Ryan Ball, which talks about the remake of Jay Ward’s 1967 animation series George of the Jungle by Bullwinkle Studios and Studio B Productions, in which Even Baily of Classic Media (Bullwinkle studios) states that despite the series being animated in Flash it was “…important that the new George didn’t come off looking like a Flash Show… great Flash animation looks like great traditional animation…”
Having said all of that I think Harold’s moonwalk looked quite good and that was animated using a puppet; there where a lot of messy edges and the animation was a tad jerky but I think that was more down to my own mistakes than anything else and with a bit more time I probably could have cleaned up that sequence.
As I mentioned last week I think my main fault was that I was too ambitious in a lot of areas; in terms of what I was capable of producing, what could be conveyed in the time restrictions of the I-dent and the limitations of Flash. Despite this I think that the editing helped to bring together the bits that did work and with a bit of re-jigging in the order and repeating other bits I hope I was able to make something that was understandable. Editing was something that I found quite fun and is another area that I want to look into in the future.
To start though I thought I might talk about our new project which looks really good. The whole script writing thing has been something that I have been looking forward to for a while and the brief has got my creative juices flowing, I have gone into geek mode and started researching it already. I am a bit apprehensive as I have never written a script before, everything I have done in the past has gone straight to storyboards and they where never particularly clear as I was working by myself and knew what I wanted to do, I have also never attempted anything with dialogue (I know we don’t have to do that for this project but I think I should stop putting it off), so I hope it will be an interesting experience.
I have also started to get some ideas for the storyboard project and I am hoping that I can put some of the theories that I have learnt from Herbert Zettl’s Sight Sound Motion, Applied Media Aesthetics to good use but I think I will need to re-read my notes from that first.
Right, another quick bit on the I-dent:
Although I used Flash to animate the I-dent so that I could use puppets, making everything a bit easier and less time consuming to animate (which it was) I found that the stuff I drew by hand looked the most effective and fluid. This doesn’t mean that I want to stop using Flash but I think I need to look into using some of the tools in it more subtly, and mixing them with the traditional animation function.
This all brings me conveniently round to an article that I read in the March 2008 issue of Animation Magazine; Watch Out For That Tree…Again! George of the Jungle swings back into action. By Ryan Ball, which talks about the remake of Jay Ward’s 1967 animation series George of the Jungle by Bullwinkle Studios and Studio B Productions, in which Even Baily of Classic Media (Bullwinkle studios) states that despite the series being animated in Flash it was “…important that the new George didn’t come off looking like a Flash Show… great Flash animation looks like great traditional animation…”
Having said all of that I think Harold’s moonwalk looked quite good and that was animated using a puppet; there where a lot of messy edges and the animation was a tad jerky but I think that was more down to my own mistakes than anything else and with a bit more time I probably could have cleaned up that sequence.
As I mentioned last week I think my main fault was that I was too ambitious in a lot of areas; in terms of what I was capable of producing, what could be conveyed in the time restrictions of the I-dent and the limitations of Flash. Despite this I think that the editing helped to bring together the bits that did work and with a bit of re-jigging in the order and repeating other bits I hope I was able to make something that was understandable. Editing was something that I found quite fun and is another area that I want to look into in the future.
Friday, 7 March 2008
Bells whistles and shiny sparkley bits!
This week I thought that I would try and talk through my thought process behind my I-dent as I have only really covered the style that I used (I would have a copy of my final version here but I forgot to render it out in the correct format so I will stick it in next week). My original idea for the I-dent was inspired by various characters and ideas that I had before the project which where adapted to suit the brief. The characters, Dorice, Harold and Cheesy Dave,(pictured) where inspired by a range of sources, chief amongst them were Monty Python’s Pepperpot sketches and I had planned to produce a similar sort of sketch for my I-dent.
However, as the project progressed and I started to do line tests the story changed to Harold’s dance which at the time I thought would be more manageable then a full blown sketch due to there being fewer characters and no dialogue. Cheesy Dave was dropped and for a short period of time Harold’s pigeons where going to make an appearance but they where later dropped. As I started to pursue this idea I wanted to use a ‘funk/hip-hop’ style soundtrack and looked at a lot of videos for inspiration, I ended up taking a lot of Harold’s dance moves from them .The most useful where Run DMC’s It’s Like That and Soul Sonic Force’s Renegades of Funk, the Rage Against the Machine cover was also useful. This theme was later replaced by a sort of technoish type track, as it seemed to fit better with what I had in mind, which I got off one of Andy’s CDs (Kids R Cool – which I think says it all).
When storyboarding I think I was a bit too ambitious in terms of what I was capable of achieving in the time constraints and what Flash could do. Several scenes where never actually animated because I ran out of time, others had to be animated traditionally by hand and then bought into Flash and I had to cut others because the illusion of camera movement that I wanted to create just did not work. It turns out that this was a blessing in disguise because the I-dent ran over by three or so seconds even with out the deleted scenes. This problem was solved by making rapid cuts from one scene to the next which I do not think would have worked had the I-dent been slower paced but I think the music supports the plot do a degree that the audience still know what is going on.
Wednesday, 27 February 2008
The ole I-dent has not gone terribly well this week, I just haven’t been able to get into the swing of things, it did pick up a bit this afternoon but I still have not decided for definite on a style for the whole thing which means that I still do not have a design bible, instead I have a verity of different styles that I have tried out and animation tests, a lot of which are half complete because I decided I did not like them and stopped doing them. So far my favourite style is inspired by the German animator Koto Ezawa who uses simple blocks of colour to reconstruct film and news segments. I have messed about with this a bit to try and make it a bit more original but I am still not sure that I have done enough to set my work apart from his.
I also still need to decide how I am going to animate everything, my plan was to use Flash but I tried to do some stuff in it yesterday but it was just too complicated. Today I redid it by hand and my plan is to scan that into Photoshop so that I can neaten it up and paint over it. From their I might put it into Flash because there are still some bits that I think I can animate using puppets or just do everything by hand and render it out in After-effects.
The green-screen workshop today was interesting, I did not really do too much on it because I wanted to get on with the I-dent but I do have some ideas for stuff that I want to try out when I get the time.
I also still need to decide how I am going to animate everything, my plan was to use Flash but I tried to do some stuff in it yesterday but it was just too complicated. Today I redid it by hand and my plan is to scan that into Photoshop so that I can neaten it up and paint over it. From their I might put it into Flash because there are still some bits that I think I can animate using puppets or just do everything by hand and render it out in After-effects.
The green-screen workshop today was interesting, I did not really do too much on it because I wanted to get on with the I-dent but I do have some ideas for stuff that I want to try out when I get the time.
Thursday, 21 February 2008
More on the I-dent
This week has pretty much been spent working on the I-dent project; my idea for it has completely changed from the one I had this time last week and I now have something which I think is a bit more feasible. The mood boards where a really useful way of getting my ideas down and I think had a big influence on the direction that I took this project in as well as some input from Ben who has been really good to bounce ideas off of. I’ve just got to find a style that I like for it now, my plan was to spend today doing that but I have been having a day where I have lost the ability to draw and this afternoon it was a case of taking one step forwards and two back, so I think I need to go off and do something else for a bit and come back to it fresh tomorrow.
Kathy did suggest that I animate the I-dent first and then choose the style but as far as I know I can not do this easily in Flash, which is the programme I want to use. That said I am beginning to wonder if it would be better if I animated everything on paper or acetate as I think I could get a bit more fluidity but I also like the jerky puppet effect that you can get in flash and think I could use that to the I-dents advantage. Having the extra week to work on it is a big help as I can now afford to spend a bit of time experimenting with these ideas.
The Live@5 project on Monday was good fun, I do not think that news graphics is something that I want to do in future but it was a good experience and I did get a nice smug feeling seeing my sports tables in the gallery. Unlike my previous experience doing the weather graphics, this week went fairly smoothly, mainly thanks to the various request sheets that Pete produced for the broadcasting students to put what they wanted on which caused fewer misunderstandings and false assumptions being made. I think I also went into it expecting the day to be a constant barrage of impossible requests from news people, so it was all generally a pleasant surprise.
However, despite this my weather maps where still able to rear their ugly heads and wreak havoc, firstly we discovered that instead of the maps being onscreen with the presenter and off to the left, they where in fact on there own and needed to be centred, which in the time I had left was not possible to do, leaving a big nasty space where the presenter should have been. Then for some reason the graphics would not render out of Flash, after my umpteenth attempt at doing this it finally worked (I still don’t know what was wrong). We then discovered that what ever programme the broadcasting students put all the weather in didn’t like the QuickTime files the maps where in and where painfully slow and jumpy to watch. My little rant aside, it was a good day and I think that Justin did a good job at keeping us all in check, and dealing with my argument with the computer.
Kathy did suggest that I animate the I-dent first and then choose the style but as far as I know I can not do this easily in Flash, which is the programme I want to use. That said I am beginning to wonder if it would be better if I animated everything on paper or acetate as I think I could get a bit more fluidity but I also like the jerky puppet effect that you can get in flash and think I could use that to the I-dents advantage. Having the extra week to work on it is a big help as I can now afford to spend a bit of time experimenting with these ideas.
The Live@5 project on Monday was good fun, I do not think that news graphics is something that I want to do in future but it was a good experience and I did get a nice smug feeling seeing my sports tables in the gallery. Unlike my previous experience doing the weather graphics, this week went fairly smoothly, mainly thanks to the various request sheets that Pete produced for the broadcasting students to put what they wanted on which caused fewer misunderstandings and false assumptions being made. I think I also went into it expecting the day to be a constant barrage of impossible requests from news people, so it was all generally a pleasant surprise.
However, despite this my weather maps where still able to rear their ugly heads and wreak havoc, firstly we discovered that instead of the maps being onscreen with the presenter and off to the left, they where in fact on there own and needed to be centred, which in the time I had left was not possible to do, leaving a big nasty space where the presenter should have been. Then for some reason the graphics would not render out of Flash, after my umpteenth attempt at doing this it finally worked (I still don’t know what was wrong). We then discovered that what ever programme the broadcasting students put all the weather in didn’t like the QuickTime files the maps where in and where painfully slow and jumpy to watch. My little rant aside, it was a good day and I think that Justin did a good job at keeping us all in check, and dealing with my argument with the computer.
Wednesday, 13 February 2008
I-dent project
A quick note to begin with, I forgot to mention Andy’s picks last week, Dirdy Birdy by John Dilworth, I thought was really good, I especially liked the use of music in the short and the character’s exaggerated body language. I want to try to incorporate this into my own work, although, so far I have not progressed much further than acting things out in front of the mirror.
The last couple of days have been spent trying to think up something for the OSTN I-dent, I can’t really think of anything “up-beat, electric, cool and hip” as my ideas tend to be completely the opposite. The fact that I am quite anti-American dose not help and I am fighting off the urge to start including subliminal messages. So I have decided to run with an idea for a storey that I have had floating around in my head since Christmas, quite how it will relate to the brief in anyway is a bit beyond me at the moment, plus I have done no research for it, its all just materialized and the characters have developed in my head so they have not changed much now that I have drawn them. I also have a horrible feeling that I’m going to end up with something that will offend most groups and few people apart from myself will understand. This would not be too bad but I have started to design characters, sets etc., which will make it quite hard for me to let go of it if the need arises. I’m hoping that tomorrow’s session will provide me with some inspiration to link it back to the brief, if not I will have to be firm with myself and lay it to rest.
Herbert Zettl’s Sight Sound Motion, Applied Media Asthetics is still sat in my room and I think I can safely say that it’s the first text book that I can not put down, I find the whole idea of lighting and camera angles fascinating; both are playing a big part in my ideas for the I-dent as well as a section on colour theory which I am hoping to put into practice on Friday. I think at the moment Flash is my programme of choice, although it might be a bit hard to achieve some of the effects I want I think that the animation on After Effects looks a bit wooden, although I do like the range of lighting and camera tools on it, and I don’t know where to start animating stuff on Maya.
The last couple of days have been spent trying to think up something for the OSTN I-dent, I can’t really think of anything “up-beat, electric, cool and hip” as my ideas tend to be completely the opposite. The fact that I am quite anti-American dose not help and I am fighting off the urge to start including subliminal messages. So I have decided to run with an idea for a storey that I have had floating around in my head since Christmas, quite how it will relate to the brief in anyway is a bit beyond me at the moment, plus I have done no research for it, its all just materialized and the characters have developed in my head so they have not changed much now that I have drawn them. I also have a horrible feeling that I’m going to end up with something that will offend most groups and few people apart from myself will understand. This would not be too bad but I have started to design characters, sets etc., which will make it quite hard for me to let go of it if the need arises. I’m hoping that tomorrow’s session will provide me with some inspiration to link it back to the brief, if not I will have to be firm with myself and lay it to rest.
Herbert Zettl’s Sight Sound Motion, Applied Media Asthetics is still sat in my room and I think I can safely say that it’s the first text book that I can not put down, I find the whole idea of lighting and camera angles fascinating; both are playing a big part in my ideas for the I-dent as well as a section on colour theory which I am hoping to put into practice on Friday. I think at the moment Flash is my programme of choice, although it might be a bit hard to achieve some of the effects I want I think that the animation on After Effects looks a bit wooden, although I do like the range of lighting and camera tools on it, and I don’t know where to start animating stuff on Maya.
Wednesday, 6 February 2008
Shameless Self Promotion
A bit of a hectic, yet productive week; started with my baffling decision to volunteer myself to do the weather on live at five, everything seemed to be going ok until I had to work out the timings for it, which involved me having to sit in front of a monitor showing the run-through and count in my head how long it would take till the maps had to change and then adding the appropriate amount of frames in flash. This resulted in layers being all mashed up into a confusing mess which was made worse when I was presented with last minute changes to the script. Anyway, broadcasting ended up with some jpegs, but I did manage to eventually get it sorted, just not in time for the programme. At least now I know a bit more about what I’m doing and it will hopefully go a bit more smoothly when my group does it.
Despite Monday’s hiccup I am enjoying using flash and whilst the stuff I am producing on it is by no means brilliant I think I am starting to get the hang of it and want to try and start applying some of the theories that I have learnt from Herbert Zettl’s Sight Sound Motion, Applied Media Aesthetics, which I am finding really interesting and I hope will prove to be useful. I have had some experience with basic camera work and lighting in my final project from my foundation course last year and a film I did for a friend (spot the blue tack and cereal boxes), filmed in my loft. The first is a montage of a couple of shorts, edited in Photoshop, each trying out a different style; the first is Svankmajer inspired, the second is a rip-off of Frank Miller’s Sin City, the third was just an excuse to hack up some Barbies, and the final one is done with hand puppets and was inspired by a visit I had to the police station. The second film is a sort of music video but I did not pay any attention to the audio so it dose not really fit and there’s some improvised sound editing at the end because the music was not long enough (actually I think its better without sound). In both films I taught myself everything as I went along so it’s all a bit basic; the lighting in both is provided by a daylight bulb I popped in my bedside lamp.
After that bit of self promotion, back to Zettl’s book, it has shown my just how little I know but I am really looking forward to trying out what I have learned. A lot of the areas, such as lighting and camera work will be different in flash as I would have to draw everything as I wanted it, so I think it might be easier to try using a programme like Maya, where I can control lighting etc. much like you can in the real world.
Despite Monday’s hiccup I am enjoying using flash and whilst the stuff I am producing on it is by no means brilliant I think I am starting to get the hang of it and want to try and start applying some of the theories that I have learnt from Herbert Zettl’s Sight Sound Motion, Applied Media Aesthetics, which I am finding really interesting and I hope will prove to be useful. I have had some experience with basic camera work and lighting in my final project from my foundation course last year and a film I did for a friend (spot the blue tack and cereal boxes), filmed in my loft. The first is a montage of a couple of shorts, edited in Photoshop, each trying out a different style; the first is Svankmajer inspired, the second is a rip-off of Frank Miller’s Sin City, the third was just an excuse to hack up some Barbies, and the final one is done with hand puppets and was inspired by a visit I had to the police station. The second film is a sort of music video but I did not pay any attention to the audio so it dose not really fit and there’s some improvised sound editing at the end because the music was not long enough (actually I think its better without sound). In both films I taught myself everything as I went along so it’s all a bit basic; the lighting in both is provided by a daylight bulb I popped in my bedside lamp.
After that bit of self promotion, back to Zettl’s book, it has shown my just how little I know but I am really looking forward to trying out what I have learned. A lot of the areas, such as lighting and camera work will be different in flash as I would have to draw everything as I wanted it, so I think it might be easier to try using a programme like Maya, where I can control lighting etc. much like you can in the real world.
Wednesday, 30 January 2008
Starting to understand stuff
A good week this week in terms of getting to grips with things; messing around on Flash and After-effects for live at five has helped me gain a better understanding of the programmes, and I am now happier with my weather graphics although they still need cleaning up and I fear that this could mean having to start the whole thing again, although now I know what I am doing it hopefully will not take as long.
Anyway this all helped in yesterdays workshop as I could focus more on getting the lip syncing right instead of trying to remember how everything works. I think I got the lip sync about right on my self portrait but as Andy pointed out the animation dose not really fit the mood of the sound recording. Hopefully I can go back and re-record my characters quote or change round the animation to fix this, paying more attention to the character’s emotions.
This conveniently brings me onto today’s screening; I thought that the emotions conveyed in lot of the films were really effective and well animated, for me this especially stood out in Pencil Test which showed how much could be achieved despite having a very basic character to work with. I also thought that Geri’s Game was really good; the character’s walk and movements, I thought, where very well done, creating a feeling of frailty. I also liked the use of quick cuts between camera angles to condense time and make it seem as if there where two characters playing each other.
I mentioned last week that I was becoming interested in cinematography so this week I have got myself Hebert Zettl’s Sight Sound Motion, Applied Media Aesthetics, which looks big and complicated. I have not actually started to read it yet but that’s this afternoon’s job.
Anyway this all helped in yesterdays workshop as I could focus more on getting the lip syncing right instead of trying to remember how everything works. I think I got the lip sync about right on my self portrait but as Andy pointed out the animation dose not really fit the mood of the sound recording. Hopefully I can go back and re-record my characters quote or change round the animation to fix this, paying more attention to the character’s emotions.
This conveniently brings me onto today’s screening; I thought that the emotions conveyed in lot of the films were really effective and well animated, for me this especially stood out in Pencil Test which showed how much could be achieved despite having a very basic character to work with. I also thought that Geri’s Game was really good; the character’s walk and movements, I thought, where very well done, creating a feeling of frailty. I also liked the use of quick cuts between camera angles to condense time and make it seem as if there where two characters playing each other.
I mentioned last week that I was becoming interested in cinematography so this week I have got myself Hebert Zettl’s Sight Sound Motion, Applied Media Aesthetics, which looks big and complicated. I have not actually started to read it yet but that’s this afternoon’s job.
Saturday, 26 January 2008
After-effects and other computer based fun
Sorry that this is a bit later than usual; it has been one of those weeks. Will start by saying that I thought the After-effects session with Pete was really good, having the instructions in front of me was really helpful as it allowed me to work through it at my own pace and the Photoshop tutorial was a good re-cap and got me more familiar with the functions on this version. I would not say that I am exactly skilled in either, which was more than confirmed yesterday but its early days and I am hoping it is something that I can get my head round.
The essay was an interesting experience; I was comparing Stanley Kubrick’s films to The Iron Giant and Spirited Away. Having written this epic on Friday night, which was way over the word limit, I read it Saturday, did not like it and started again. I tried to keep this new version much more to the point and in the end I only talked about one of the ten or so points that I made in the original one. Despite all of this and making some pretty stupid mistakes, such as misplacing my notes on Dr. Strangelove and subsequently forgetting to include it in my essay and writing a page about Artificial Intelligence A.I. and then discovering it was released after Spirited Away, writing the essay has got me really interested in cinematography and I want to try and start reading up on the subject.
Getting the work done for motion studies has also got me really into character design; I took a lot of inspiration from an interview I saw with Quentin Tarantino a while ago, I can not remember if it was on Friday Night With Jonathon Ross or The Culture Show, where he talked about how he came up with characters and plots for his films, explaining how I tries to get into the mindset of the characters so that the film writes itself.
The essay was an interesting experience; I was comparing Stanley Kubrick’s films to The Iron Giant and Spirited Away. Having written this epic on Friday night, which was way over the word limit, I read it Saturday, did not like it and started again. I tried to keep this new version much more to the point and in the end I only talked about one of the ten or so points that I made in the original one. Despite all of this and making some pretty stupid mistakes, such as misplacing my notes on Dr. Strangelove and subsequently forgetting to include it in my essay and writing a page about Artificial Intelligence A.I. and then discovering it was released after Spirited Away, writing the essay has got me really interested in cinematography and I want to try and start reading up on the subject.
Getting the work done for motion studies has also got me really into character design; I took a lot of inspiration from an interview I saw with Quentin Tarantino a while ago, I can not remember if it was on Friday Night With Jonathon Ross or The Culture Show, where he talked about how he came up with characters and plots for his films, explaining how I tries to get into the mindset of the characters so that the film writes itself.
Thursday, 17 January 2008
It's 11:32 and i'm writing an blog :P
Shot and sweet this week as it’s late, I am ill and I am half-way though this essay, which is rapidly becoming too long. Will start off by answering Andy’s comment from last week; I spent my holidays watching way to many Bond films and that rubbed off on me and I ended up creating my Bond villain chair, complete with secret-agent, incompetent henchmen and unfaithful mistress disposal buttons, plus five more for any unexpected situations. I think I scribbled this somewhere in my notes and I even ended up doing some observation sketches from the films, glorified scribbles really. Last week I referred to ‘dodgy bits’ on my chair, this is an extremely technical term and basically means that there are some bits on the chair which I could have probably done better if I had taken my time; this was mainly in areas such as the piping on the cushions, which suddenly gets a bit thick or distorted in places, I think a hole appeared somewhere at some point on the back but I hid it by bashing random buttons and swearing a lot, and if you put the model in wire frame mode there is a mysterious collection of lines on the bottom of the chair, don’t know how they got there but you can’t really see it so I did not worry about it. Somehow I don’t think I am cut out for 3D modelling.
Quick note on this week; I really like Flash, which is a relief as I have been struggling to find something I can actually do. The animation I did on it was dire even by my standards but I wasn’t trying that hard and it was the first time I have used it. I like using the graphics tablets though. The old essay is coming along ok, a bit too well, as it is a monster of a thing and nowhere near done so it will need hacking up a bit to meet the word limit. Also, spending a week being fuelled solely by coffee, pasta, Nurofen and Stanley Kubrick films has done strange things to my head so I have babbled on a bit for a couple of pages about capitalism in Spirited Away, which I am not even sure exists. Anyway, Sergi Esenstein’s The Film Sense has once again proved to be useful when talking about camera angles, montage and the like, which is just as well because it is the only book on the reading list I have finished, I am still attempting to read Richard William’s The Animator’s Survival Kit, Timing for Animation and Anatomy for the Artist all at the same time, as well as reading Brian May’s biography, no relevance to anything I know.
Oh, quick note for Andy, I but the film titles in last weeks blog in italics but when I transferred it from word the computer took it off and I forgot to put it back, just though I would mention it as its something we get marked on.
Quick note on this week; I really like Flash, which is a relief as I have been struggling to find something I can actually do. The animation I did on it was dire even by my standards but I wasn’t trying that hard and it was the first time I have used it. I like using the graphics tablets though. The old essay is coming along ok, a bit too well, as it is a monster of a thing and nowhere near done so it will need hacking up a bit to meet the word limit. Also, spending a week being fuelled solely by coffee, pasta, Nurofen and Stanley Kubrick films has done strange things to my head so I have babbled on a bit for a couple of pages about capitalism in Spirited Away, which I am not even sure exists. Anyway, Sergi Esenstein’s The Film Sense has once again proved to be useful when talking about camera angles, montage and the like, which is just as well because it is the only book on the reading list I have finished, I am still attempting to read Richard William’s The Animator’s Survival Kit, Timing for Animation and Anatomy for the Artist all at the same time, as well as reading Brian May’s biography, no relevance to anything I know.
Oh, quick note for Andy, I but the film titles in last weeks blog in italics but when I transferred it from word the computer took it off and I forgot to put it back, just though I would mention it as its something we get marked on.
Thursday, 10 January 2008
A Bit About Everything
First week back and I am finding it surprisingly easy to get back into the swing of things; got the Maya project done although I think I might have rushed it a bit as there are some bits where the piping went a bit dodgy so I will probably get marked down for neatness but all in all I am farley pleased with it. Once this essay is out of the way I hope to spend some more time on Maya trying to learn everything and just having a general play.
My character for motion studies has been completely revamped and I can actually draw him reasonably quickly now. Here is the video i talked about last time:
I have done some Photoshop pictures of him over Christmas too and I have tried to continue doing that since I got back but the version of Photoshop that’s on the studio computers is a lot more up-to-date than the one I had at home and all the buttons are in different places, so I will have to sit down one day and figure all of that out. I am really starting to get into the storey for this character and have started to jot down some ideas for scenes and I am finding that going through ideas with Rosie, my partner for this project, is producing some good ideas, although I am a bit worried that I tend to take over on projects like this.
Ideas for the essay are coming thick and fast too; I read Ted Hughes’ The Iron Man the other day and I think I could just write the essay on its relationship with The Iron Giant. I have also watched Porco Rosso and The Incredibals which have helped me to establish some recurring themes and trends in The Iron Giant and Spirited Away, if I have the time I want to try and watch some more of Miyazaki’s films mainly because I have never really been into anime and I am finding the differences between this and western styles really interesting. I have also found some really useful stuff on the internet, including interviews with Bird and Miyazaki, below is a list of them:
http://www.onlineghibli.com/spirited_away/
http://nausicaa.net/miyazaki/sen/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hayao_Miyazaki
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0594503/
http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/people.php?id=51
http://www.midnighteye.com/interviews/hayao_miyazaki.shtml
http://film.guardian.co.uk/interview/interviewpages/0,6737,1569689,00.html
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0083348/
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0129167/
http://www.timeout.com/film/chicago/features/show-feature/3073/cartoon-crusader.html
http://movies.nytimes.com/person/81910/Brad-Bird/filmography
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/features/film/e3i653608aa3a0ea3bba6ec63fa98301e01
http://www.usatoday.com/life/people/2004-11-02-bird-secret-identity_x.htm
http://www.slate.com/id/2169280/
http://uk.dvd.ign.com/articles/594/594806p1.html
http://www.collider.com/entertainment/interviews/article.asp/aid/5920/tcid/1
http://www2.warnerbros.com/corpcomm/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warner_Bros._Animation
http://www.animationusa.com/wbmore2.html
http://www.xsibase.com/articles.php?detail=67
So now I think I need to go through all the stuff that I have found and see what is the best angle to approach the essay from.
My character for motion studies has been completely revamped and I can actually draw him reasonably quickly now. Here is the video i talked about last time:
I have done some Photoshop pictures of him over Christmas too and I have tried to continue doing that since I got back but the version of Photoshop that’s on the studio computers is a lot more up-to-date than the one I had at home and all the buttons are in different places, so I will have to sit down one day and figure all of that out. I am really starting to get into the storey for this character and have started to jot down some ideas for scenes and I am finding that going through ideas with Rosie, my partner for this project, is producing some good ideas, although I am a bit worried that I tend to take over on projects like this.
Ideas for the essay are coming thick and fast too; I read Ted Hughes’ The Iron Man the other day and I think I could just write the essay on its relationship with The Iron Giant. I have also watched Porco Rosso and The Incredibals which have helped me to establish some recurring themes and trends in The Iron Giant and Spirited Away, if I have the time I want to try and watch some more of Miyazaki’s films mainly because I have never really been into anime and I am finding the differences between this and western styles really interesting. I have also found some really useful stuff on the internet, including interviews with Bird and Miyazaki, below is a list of them:
http://www.onlineghibli.com/spirited_away/
http://nausicaa.net/miyazaki/sen/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hayao_Miyazaki
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0594503/
http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/people.php?id=51
http://www.midnighteye.com/interviews/hayao_miyazaki.shtml
http://film.guardian.co.uk/interview/interviewpages/0,6737,1569689,00.html
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0083348/
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0129167/
http://www.timeout.com/film/chicago/features/show-feature/3073/cartoon-crusader.html
http://movies.nytimes.com/person/81910/Brad-Bird/filmography
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/features/film/e3i653608aa3a0ea3bba6ec63fa98301e01
http://www.usatoday.com/life/people/2004-11-02-bird-secret-identity_x.htm
http://www.slate.com/id/2169280/
http://uk.dvd.ign.com/articles/594/594806p1.html
http://www.collider.com/entertainment/interviews/article.asp/aid/5920/tcid/1
http://www2.warnerbros.com/corpcomm/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warner_Bros._Animation
http://www.animationusa.com/wbmore2.html
http://www.xsibase.com/articles.php?detail=67
So now I think I need to go through all the stuff that I have found and see what is the best angle to approach the essay from.
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