Advice: its for wimps

So here I am again back to the blog, yayyy! And I don’t even have to be doing it. What is going on?

Well dear readers I thought to my self that since at some point I am supposed to write about the ‘thought process’ behind my work, it maid sense to make a start at it now whilst I’m actually doing the work rather than trying to remember/make-up what I did six months from now. So now you know, knowledge is power!

So what have I been doing? Well, I have tried to make a start on the final project work which is starting to gain a bit of momentum now but I fear it could all be in vain as I have sort of accidentally on purpose chosen to ignore the advice I was given in regards to it. You may recall that I submitted three ideas; the space one, something arty and pretentious and the happy cheerful story about a crazy old lady who throws puppies in rivers (guess which was my favourite).

Sorry I am really crap with names so I have renamed the advice panel thing as follows: ‘script man’, ‘Andy’s wife’ and of course Andy himself. They seemed to like the space idea the most because it had a narrative or at least potential for a narrative but the truth is that I haven’t really looked at that idea for almost twelve months and have gone off it a bit and don’t think that its worth me trying to work on something that I no longer have any passion for.

So taking the panel’s advice into account I am happily waltzing through the big gate marked: DANGER! DO NOT ENTER OR YOU WILL DIE HORRIBLY! And combining the two ideas that got an icy reception whilst at the same time trying to avoid a momentous cock-up and come out smelling of roses and more importantly alive and sane. Some of the advice has got through my thick skull and I will attempt to get some sort of narrative going so hopefully I don’t compliantly alienate the audience but at the moment I have a collection of random ideas that need stringing together somehow.

Well, there you have it: a mission statement!

On an unrelated note, here is a nice cheerful video, with what i think is some greenscreen stuff, I am rather proud that i found it:

Portfolio

Last Blog o the term. Whoop! The main purpose of this weeks entry is to explain the extra stuff that is in my portfolio but first I shall give a brief update on Talking Dog.

This week I have got a couple more scenes done, progress has been a bit slow as I had some problems with the rig holding the hoverbike (georg built me a new one). That did eventually get done but it looks a bit stiff. I am finding at the moment I am somewhat lacking in sticking power on this project, I tend to fizzle out around lunchtime and then just mope around in the afternoon. I am hoping that a decent rest over the weekend will leave me feeling refreshed and ready to tackle next weeks dose of robots with a bit more enthusiasm.

Now! On to the stuff in my portfolio:

Jesus Just Left Chicago
This was a bit of an extension on Kathy’s storyboarding project; she suggested I turn my idea into an animatic, so I did. It was cobbled together a bit quickly so the flow is a bit iffy and none of the drawings fit to screen but I do think that it reads a lot better than the storyboard.

Glasney Vs. Tremough
An idea which I started to develop over the summer but really got into in my free time the last couple of terms. It is about a cosmonaught, Glasney (it sounded vaguely Russian) who has a mundane little job in a communications satellite… until the world is destroyed and he is the only person left alive, or so he thinks. He eventually bumps into another survivor, Tremough, an American, at first things are hunky-dory until the characters start to fight over mundane little things which eventually descends into an all out war to conquer each others spaceships in the name of their now destroyed countries.
I really got into designing Glasney’s spaceship, disturbingly so, and even started to try and build it in Maya, but those files were on my data stick that went missing (and foolishly were not backed up).

Requiem for a Dream
A pretentious working title that I stole from an article that I read as part of my research for this project. This is the thing I was banging on about when I got back after summer. It is an adaptation of Anthony Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange although I have gone off it a bit since I started doing stopmotion as it would be so hard to do but I am warming to the idea of just using the book as a starting point and then create something completely different, a bit like the Quays.

Some stuff

Once again I must apologize for the complete lack of blog stuff over the last couple of weeks, hopefully things will be back on track next week. I did have some videos of all the stuff I have been doing on talking dog but once again blogger is not letting me upload them so I will talk about something else instead.

So, fist of all I think I shall discuss my dissertation, as that is pretty fresh in my mind. I think that I am going to do something on themes of childhood in the work of the Quay brothers, although I am still not that sure how I am going to be approaching the subject. I was hoping that doing my dissertation proposal would have helped me get my head round it but I ended up cobbling that together a bit a producing a load of pretentious crap that didn’t really explain anything. I do know that I want to read into psychological theory so I am hoping that when I do that things will start to fit into place and I will have a better idea of what to do.

Kathy’s drawing project was also a bit of a disappointment; I really wanted to make a good job of it but I had to rush to get it done and except some character designs I didn’t really do any sketchbook work for it, bar a bit of life drawing stuff I stole from one of last years sketchbooks, which was the whole point, so I am not expecting great feedback.
What I did submit is here for your viewing pleasure (although blogger is bringing them in the wrong way up and refusing to let me upload the sketches) and was inspired by some weird and wonderful ideas I had after watching too much Quay brother’s stuff. I can’t really explain what is going on because I am not sure myself; I just drew random ideas that came into my head. But the main theme is of a character thrown into this strange yet familiar world, much like some of the Quay’s films.
I am toying with the idea of using it as inspiration for the project next year but it will need a lot of refining to get it away from something that looks like a purely Quay Brother’s inspired piece, which it is at the moment.

Just a quicky

Once again apologies for how late this entry is and for the complete lack of videos that I promised last week, hopefully now that Talking Dog is out of the way I will be able to get my act together a bit.

Yes Talking Dog is over! We didn’t even get close to finishing but then again we have said that we wouldn’t from pretty early on and I think we achieved what we set out to achieve; which is something that looks good for our portfolios. Our intention is to finish it in all, since we have put so much work into it but for the time being my priority is to deal with the backlog of work that I have pretty much ignored since Easter.

In terms of technical animation stuff to do with Talking Dog I don’t have much more to offer other than what I said last week, although Andy did point out that some of my stuff was lacking in anticipation, so I am going to try and brush up on my animation theory and then go back and re-shoot some scenes. Rosie is now hard at work doing in the special effects and stuff on the animation that I have done and it is looking really nice. I predict that in about six months it might all be done.

Miracle please!

First off apologies for such a crappy entry last week and the rather late offering this week; things have been getting a tad hectic with the talking dog project as of late and I have had very little, if any time to do anything else.

Now, talking dog: once, again Ben has done a smashing job on the sets, he is this project really, I just do what I’m told in respects to the set and character build. Where I get a chance to shine (in theory) is the animation where Ben becomes my assistant. We have done some nice tests, mainly focusing on walks, as this is a good way to get character across. I think they are finally nailed. Ed hook’s books have really helped for this. Karl has got his cool guy swagger, which is very much lead by his hips, the rest of the body is nice and loose and just follows them around. Jim, who I imagine as being a bit more heavy set, has a nice clompy walk with lots of exaggerated steps, which are lead by the torso. I will pop some videos on at some time in the near future when I have the time.

Tim was a big help on the lighting and I think we have a really nice looking set up that brings out the textures on the set and the characters. The set is lit mainly from the side, with the odd fill but the main emphasis is on the characters who are mainly lit from below by a tungsten light which gives them a nice orange hue on camera, which is in contrast to the LED’s on the rest of the set. I also used a little bit of fill and backlighting on the characters to get rid of excess shadows and set them apart from the background. Again you will get to see this on when I get a chance to upload some videos.

Have you started animating then?!?! You ask. And the answer is sort of. Ben and I shot the first scene on Friday evening on bright florescent orange screen but we are not sure if the whole keying thing can work effectively as there is quite a lot of shadow, so that may have to be redone. I tried to do some more stuff on Saturday, which was going quite well and till half way through the first shot Jim’s ankles decided to snap off rendering my days work useless. I did glue Jim back together, or at least tried, I will have to wait till Tuesday to see if they have stuck effectively and are still strong enough to animate with. If they aren’t we will have to put him on a rig which will be a right pain as Karl is already on one and the rigs wont be able to pass in front of the characters as that would make painting them out near impossible. Quite frankly this was a delay that this project could ill afford, what little chance we had of finishing on time is now completely gone.

Shorty Mc Short

Right, just a quicky this week as I want to go see Sir, Allen fire some knob, but I feel I need to do something productive as I have spent the last hour trying to do my film review and have come away with little more than a paragraph; the whole writing thing aint happening today.

So, work. Robots is coming along nicely. I must admit that I spend days wondering if we will ever get it done but I am having a good day at the moment. This is mainly due to Ben’s superb puppets which look like they will be a joy to animate, so maximum kudos to you mr.dennett. We are onto set building tomorrow which we are going to try and keep as simple as possible to save on time.

See, I wasn’t lying, it is very short

Byyyyeeeeeeeeeee

Set Design!!

Easter is over and here I am bright-eyed, bushy-tailed and ready to learn! (supposedly) Yay!! What glories tales of my exploits do I have to tell you all then? Well, I have become an avid watcher of Timmy Time (here’s the intro) and have successfully lowered my mental age to single digits as a result. I try to convince myself that I watch it to study the animation, which is very good by the way, but it is actually quite entertaining, although Timmy does come across as a bit of a smart arse at times. I also did a bit of work when the fancy took me.

Robots! My tasks over Easter was to finalise the set design and shoot some reference stuff for the animation. So here I have oodles and oodles of concept work of the sets and some screenshots of 3D models that I made of them. In total there are three sets that we are using; the Sarge’s office, outside the shopping mall and the shopping mall itself. We may also need to produce some simple backgrounds for the intro but were not 100% what’s going on with that yet.
As I have mentioned the past the overall look we want for the sets is a futuristic but tacky 60’s/70’s kind of vibe with a very drab colour palette. I deliberately designed the Sarge’s office so that it got narrower at one end, making the Sarge look bigger. I also envisage this set being quite small and cramped.
I have designed the exterior of the mall to be quite simple to save on build time; most of it will consist of textured boards and a backdrop.
In the interior I want the Mars Travel Agency to be the main focus so I have made that a nice orange to stand out against the bluey gray of the rest of the set. I have also tried to leave quite a lot of scope for visual gags in the store front and billboards.
Well that’s all for now…until next week!