taxonomy-Shoe project

Have started again with the animation using after effects this time. Has taken me all morning but I'm finally there with all the content and layers. Just need to tidy it up and add my sound file now. Can play with the effects a bit more for the images that appear. Would be good to practice using a different effect for each images that scrolls across the top of the animation.

BAF 2010

This years Bradford Animation Film Festival was the second one I have attended and I have to say, I shall be looking forward to next year especially if they have any speakers similar to Paul Mendoza from Pixar... that was certainly the hi-light for me. The talk he gave was inspiring, how he works, how the studio works, simple little details such as how they all get to animate one or two scenes in a movie... and how he prepares for a scene or character. Also to remember that we are not quite ready for realism in our animations, especially with human characters.

I've heard this before and it seems a bit like the theory Im working on for my character archetypes book project, - for example you could see the dog from the 'lady and the tramp' movie on TV and we all recognise it as a dog. However if we were to see it walking down our street outside we would clearly be thinking... thats a very strange looking dog!

Amazing! Anyhow I managed the following notes; Key things to remember -

• Subtlety / meaningful change,
• Physicality,
• Planning, Posing - situations,
• Develop + maint original ideas,
• character study.

I liked the idea that they watch programmes such as Seinfield for influence with animated characters like Cosmo Kramer. He also discussed how characters should have contrasting personalities. So the main character could be really animated and the surrounding ones would have contrasting personalities, so not much movement.

Here are some of the people that Paul mentioned to keep an eye on regarding their work in the industry;

• Simon Varela (Concept artist) realism but with character 'Finding Nemo'.

• Doug Sweetland from 'Toy Story 2'
• Andrew Stanton 'Wall-E' Director

Ps - I was thinking that Wall-e reminded me of Johnny number 5! (Short circuit) showing my age ;) but I was pleased I got it.

dragon sketch

Dinnertime doodle

Playing in AlChemy...

First time using this... its more difficult than I thought it might be to get a decent random image!

McLuhan Tshirt design

The T Shirt design I created influenced by McLuhan and his famous quotation 'the media is the message' changed quite a bit once I started experimenting. The text is not in a straight line as his message is not always clear for people to understand and so I decided to have the words at different angles... As its a T Shirt design I decided visually it needed to be a very simple and recognisable design that was suitable for all ages!

The mosaic theme I mentioned in my last post has been adopted for my characature of McLuhan. McLuhan states that he has no single opinion and does not always agree with everything he says, so I though a 3d cube structure would be more appropriate to represent him. I put his image on each face using black and white photographs which I cut up into a mosaic on each side of the cube so that the image would be difficult to make out. Like trying to understand McLuhan, I have made it difficult to view him in any one direction.

McLuhan project

Reading about McLuhan, one of the most difficult aspects of reading his work is that his books do not make sense when read from front to back, they make more sense when you look at the information as an overall subject.

Author Mark Frederman mentions that McLuhans books are are pieced together in a mosaic style and structure, no real beginning or end. Therefore I have decided to adopt a similar theme for my T Shirt design creating a mosaic of images in no particular order. Another idea was to use an old fashioned etch-a-sketch image with the phrase 'the media is the message' written across the front.

After effects slide show

First lesson in after effects, just playing around with creating compilations from imported images and transforming, changing opacity and so on... to build a slide show.

This will be ideal for me to put into practice for my shoe animation as flash is doing some funny things with my hand drawn images!

Alien model - progress 04-11-10

Here's where Im at to date. Working on the foot and head now and its a bit tricky but as you can see its getting there so Im quite pleased with myself.

Alien model - progress

So Ive started modelling and after creating my Kung fu Panda character over the summer hols as a practice model Im feeling a lot more positive about creating my character. Its going well!

Stop motion animation workshop - Dean Clough Art Gallery

Assisted at my first workshop on Saturday as part of the 12 wires group. The venue was Dean Clough Art Gallery in Halifax and the event was an introductory horror themed stop motion workshop for children / adults using plasticine and lego.

http://vimeo.com/twelvewires

Lots of fun :)