Importing sound files - after effects

Best online tutorials for After Effects seem to be on Video Copilot website. Going to give this one a go to help with my sound file for the shoe taxonomy animation Im finishing. Fingers crossed!

Digital Media and Culture - Waking Life by R Linklater

Although I found this film extremely interesting I just felt that it went on for too long and therefore wether the content was interesting or not I began to stop absorbing what was being said -

The animation was good but it looks as though a lot of it is just traced images so not so amazing... Worth a watch, inspirational cleverly done and thought provoking but a bit too long.

D & AD Competition

Been trying to think of a character for the D&AD competition - Disney brief... have realised now how many subjects and characters Disney and Pixar have covered in the last 10 or so years, they have done just about everything.

So I have turned to some research in Myths, and legends for inspiration.

Disney storys often have messages and meaning entwined with a good measure of humour and wit... The brief specifies that the character must appeal to children aged 4 - 14 years. Thats a pretty wide audience but I figure if its to appeal to young ones it needs to be cute in some ways... and for the older kids it needs to be amusing and cool to keep them interested. Hmm...

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