Saturday 26 January 2013

Recycling animation complete


This was quite a nice little brief in the end, offered a collaboration with my tutor as a voice over, which was fun, and it was a nice break in style also.... I feel the timing is still a little of so I may change that later. But this will be a great way of working in the future especially on short commissions.




Here's the full film if you fancy a look


oh wait I need to animate to be an animator...right?

with all the rushing around, going here there and everywhere, as well as dissertation, website (oh yes we need a website this term) and show reel and maya training, i do still need to create a full piece of animation, better crack on with that then...

following on from some of the work I did over summer on photoshop, I decided to create a 1950's styled public health video, for the can recycling competition.





this is the style i'll be going for and it will be created on after effects, this will be quite a quick turn around as the hand in is looming...

a great time was had by...well me!


I was sent to manchester this term..no I didn't do anything bad. I was representing my course at a UCAS design your future fair. Manchester is a great city...there is so much to do and see, the music and cloths are partially great..vintage dress shops to rival any.

Jazz bar in the Northern quarter

Vintage shop of my dreams


But this trip was made insanely good by meeting an stop-motion animation god...know as Barry Purves. I think I held myself together rather well  despite melting inside. This visit was put together by a good friend of mine who had already previously met Mr. Purves at BAF film festival...It must be said that Barry Purves is an insanely lovely man, who shoed us around his studio gave us free reign to photograph and hold many of the puppet and props on his new children's TV series Toby's Traveling circus, which is stunning by the way!


however I don't think i'll ever live down the fact when asked if I wanted to know anything, I asked what the popcorn in the beautifully crafted old fashioned popper was made of and he replied "pop corn". doh!




But moving on from that, I managed a sneaky interview with him for my dissertation. He also signed my copy of his book 'the basic of stop-motion' which has been like my bible over the dissertation months of my life. This was a great visit, the city is perfection and there may be work there one day! and once again I REALLY NEED BUSINESS CARDS!

Stop-motion workshop by lil old me



I was asked earlier in this term to run a lecture / workshop in stop-motion through the wired arts society at Anglia Ruskin. I'd given a lecture last year on the ins and outs of stop-motion last year with a  friend that had a rather poor turn out...so I was expecting many attendees, maybe 5 ...ended up to be 25. I'd also lost my voice, i was a little underprepared, i turned up with a speech and a box of plastacine, but it worked out really well, everyone had fun. Hopefully more in the future. Below you can watch the video of all the attendees work in short showreel.

 

Stop -Trick Stop motion festival in Poland


Back in october I went to the international stop-trick festival in Poland, it was hosted in a small village just outside of Krakow, a fellow animator was having a screening over there so invited me to join.

The polish film circuit is crazy fun, there were some amazing animation playing there that were so inspiring and emotional, I spent one screening completely fixated, mouth wide open, they play with very intense subject matter so well. they don't steer away from anything. And they have a wicked sense of humour.

Made some great contacts other there....but i relay must get business cards, i was not prepared!

Back in the cupboared


first animation of term...

So this term we are developing are portfolio, its pretty much self directed, so my first animation this term is a lip sync exercise which will bookend my show reel eventually, using René (my mime puppet from last term).

which means I have been tackling x-sheet this week, which has been interesting...x-sheet or dope sheets  as the generally refereed to in this country, help creating accurate timing and are needed when creating detailed mouth movement for talking or singing.


my animation and thus showreel will be set to Louis Prima's "just a gigolo" this is a bit of an insiders joke with in my friendship group but it'll work and the words are quite clear, and suit the character very well.

LAIKA competition november.

I recently become aware of the Laika character design competition, so I designed this little guy for the Movember entry. He came 3rd and it was nice to get more model making work out there.