D&AD Superkid Character

Rolly polly - movement illustration

DandAD competition - test animation

character in scene test, 3ds max

Tried out one of the scene artwork pieces with the character basic model in 3ds max to get a feel for what my animation is going to look like. Quite excited about this project.

falling snowflakes 3d particle animation

leaf particle animation

Have started tests in 3d max for the leaf particle animation as I would like leaves to fall throughout the movie.

Here are some screen shots of the test animations so far... they include a particle system with 2d plane geometry and also a gravity pull and wind force.

Test Autumn animation

Testing how my character may move in short flash animations as part of my story boards and concept work for the 3D animation I am going to try to create...

Time project - photograph animation 1

For the stopmotion animations I was creating an animation with a story based on time and the butterfly effect, however, I have been thinking about the camera work and a friend emailed me a link to a really interesting site which contains photography with moving elements in it...

http://fromme-toyou.tumblr.com/tagged/gif

I realised that this kind of animated still would make a really interesting experiment for the time project, capturing a moment in time and yet with special effect creates an animated part of the image which is really interesting. As I use a lot of photo manipulation in my work I was keen to give it a go.

I had to think about layout for my image. I needed a scene which captured a moment in time, perhaps a person doing something to enhance the fact that it was a still image. (an image of some inanimate objects would be no good on their own) Yet the image needed to be simple enough that I could select part of it for editing without changing other parts of the photo that I wanted to stay the same.

After a few experiments I started with a still shot using a tripod for positioning of someone sat in a windowsill. Without moving anything I re-set the camera to film for a few seconds. Then importing the clips into photoshop I laid the still photo on the top layer and cutout a part of the window so that the clips would be shown beneath of the trees moving in the background.

It worked but the movement was not great and it would not loop without a jump as the trees did not rest in the position they started in the first frame. Whatever was animated in the shot would need to be in a rest position for the start and end frame to match and continue a smooth loop animation. I decided a flickering candle might be a better solution as it would rest in the same position, flicker and then rest again back in the original position meaning I can loop the animation as much as I like. On with test 2!!...

Test 1;

little character painting