Confectionary project. pos cleaned up.

Here is an update to the pos which i did for the choo choo bar and this is the final version showing without so many glitches and complete background having re-worked each shot in photoshop to get a better final look and much more clean sequence.
Full final animation will be updated tomorow when final editing in finished. Using every minute to improve our animation cutting it right down to the last day of hours before the show.

Slides for Pre-Production in specialist study.

Point of sale for the choo choo bar re-visited.

Point of sale shot with the bandits hand coming into shot to steal a choo choo bar revisited with colour and a floor of choo bars,still needs some tweeks in photoshop here and there but i thought id post what im doing at the moment regarding the choo project even though the deadline is over the show is coming closer and closer jun 1st so final preparations.

Armature update and guide to budget armature.

My two work stations the top one in my uni place basically put together quick boards in green and held the floor peice up by dvds and then i could put the magnet underneath then lighting above and my tripod which just so happen to have the camera on but thats one work station.

Then below my work station from back home in wales where i was at my early stages with my model making process to putting things together and seeing what works.

These are three of the most up to date armatures the first took the quickest time because the other two i learnt from then the second is using the bolt technique to hold the armature up right and then the last one was my first to put togther and has bulky foam because i was eventually going to cloth him but too much handling eventually he broke.

Close up of the third armature from above showing where and how he stood up.

 Quickly some images to show how i put together my newest armature

Budget material suply wire,stretch fabric,mili putty and two small magnets.

Kolb cycle and shedule for AOP and Pre-Production

Shedule for Area of Practice and Pre-Production

My own Kolb cycle

Parapalegic Animatic.

This is the final animatic taken from images which we used to put each scene together and get how long each scene was to last, the animatic changed various times but the biggest change was the end with re-iterating the same point over and over again about his state, to get the viewer annoyed to get the feeling that he gets everyday. 

Behind the scenes Karina's animation in production

First we realised that there would be two people animating their scenes while one person is putting together the scenes to be done ready to animate.Lucky to have two rostums to use to hold to camera while animating.Here shows an image of myself animating with the camera above and the clicker to take each shot but always making sure the shadows don't come into play. I really enjoyed this type of animating withe the materials and style always having to think of how the end shot is going to look to measure how many frames between much like when animating in 2d.

These two shots are richard posing for my hand moving the spoon in the shot to reference.

A shot from the view from the camera

All together discussing how Karina wants the shots and sorting how long for each scene while looking at the storyboards.

The process of drawing over then taking the picture which is done over and over for 12 frames a second.

 Clare animating a bird scene in siluettes.

One of the storyboard sheets which we used to animate from and reference to get how the shots were going to look.

The shots before animating 

Then coming down to another scene which Richard was animating skydiving again the same as the bird we decide it would look best if it was done in the siluette style. Referencing for the shot this is a pose for how the skydiver would look for the angle just rotated.

Research into the William Kendridge approach.

The third year that i have worked with has chosen to use this approach for her final animation mainly because of the story type being dark anyway it suits this media very well and as there were various problems when coming to production and because of the nature of the technique myself,Richard and Clare  helped to animate scenes to put together having our third year Karina as our director.

   The approach to using the charcoal to the paper the rubbing off what your are going to animate to change the position has interested be before because of the natural look of the final animation and so i was happy to help and learn along the way while being in a team helped to discuss how each scene was going to look and move using tests and poses along the way.

First a beautiful piece by William Kendridge i particually like the detail in the movement of the paper at the start.

Work by south african artist William Kentrigde from 1994. Kentrigde uses charcoal and pastels for his drawings in which he erases and redraws parts to create stop motion style animations.

also this isn't William Kendridge but its using the same style of draw and rubb out, the piece is keeping it simple by just focusing of the face but it works really well because it shows is life in ageing and shows this style at it's best.

Music icons like Mick Jagger also use animation in their music videos showing a likeness to the technique in this video but they seem to re draw where there was something you'll understand when you watch.

improving rotoscope P.O.S scene.

colaboration project coming to an end final touches and editing also looking back when i discovered the point of sale wasn't clear enough i thought best to go back and zoom in on the shot of the bandit picking up the choo bar. And so the video below is after i learnt were i was going wrong with the first which is at the bottom. first lesson was to change software to one which would help keep the shots clear and to keep without glitches that im sick of getting with flash.

Very happy with the above clip but need colour in the hand and where the bar comes from.

This one was trial and error with rotoscoping in flash found it was like all the work without the reward so i changed to photoshop with the above clip using more tools too get a better result. main thing was when recording the images at the start for the bottom clip i did them too far apart.

AOP with my side project

A look of whats to come, currently going back to my side projects to also use in my AOP project but has also been my side project creating and learning new processes in stop-motion with armature tests to see what works and trial and error where i need to dive in to be able to start creating more and more short films.

 This armature above i've started back on and realised who the character was going to be at the stage of being able to choose of course, over the last couple of days its been on my mind where to take this armature and thought how can i use as many principles and easily add a quick story which will work and can learn loads.           Basketball player! everything principle wise also giving myself creative challenges along the way. Was mainly thinking typical look or harlem globe trotter look below.

The armature will be kept simple throughout to be able to work on animating and story as my key aspects but that doesn't mean the armature won't look good just that the movement should only be in the places i need and where the audiences will be seeing otherwise its wasted to have extra movement where not needed.

A little inspiration of the kind of thing i mean when i want to add a bit of comedy to it also keep it simple.

                          

Slides for confectionary project

Slide background specifically chosen for choo choo audience only.

Colaboration Project Evaluation

BA Animation             Colaboration Project Evaluation       By GarethHirst

The collaboration project from hearing this line I assumed it was going to many people which generates the problem of too many opinions and disagreement which I why I prefer to work on my own because if there are any problems along the line I have myself to blame. 

  Then when it came down to being in groups and placed out of comfort zones working with new people is always a challenge but when I saw who out of the animator’s that id be working with was a relief  to see passionate people  that I know work hard which I couldn’t say for those who were illustrators and advertising students of course because I didn’t know then.

    Coming in to work with the group at first was awkward hoping that everyone would come out of their own and show what they had to offer took some weeks more that id of hoped and so as there wasn’t much of a start we took a trip to the sweet shop.   

  From the sweet shop I had a clear idea from leaving uni that we had to all pick up a sweet to take back something new and would be fun for advertise with lovable characters from there I choose the choo choo bar  and not for the bar itself but more for the playful characters that made me choose it.

      From there once us animators saw that we were the driving force we set tasks for the illustrators not having what we asked for back In the standard that we talked about so we began to go back to do these things before beginning animating.    

 When animating came we worked really well in a group selecting jobs easily and taking everyone’s point of view before moving on.

Background ideas/tests for choo choo bar animation.

Quick clips showing background tests trying to incorpirate with the colours and likeness of the choo choo bar. still undisive to which were going to use because of many reasons with colour shade and most fitting.

dessert clip showing more orange colour palette which goes with the train colours.

basic background to make he loop more synced 

next clip used a background which was done by steve and i edited the cactus also this has the old train design which didn't work also this was done before i realised other ways of moving the background instead of the train.

Confectionary project.acting bandit scene

Reletive to the choo choo project im working on with two other animator steve and jon. We assigned parts each for example i created the choo train,jon did characters and background and steve is doing the bandits.   Here im talking quickly about steve's bandits at first steve had a few problems putting the squash and stretch together on flash when they are controlling their cart and with that decided to rotoscope the whole scene from mine and johns acting.

Rotoscoped from the clip below

Then for the scene where the bandit grabs the choo choo bar and gets squirted in the face by the elephant we re shot the scene and now using the clip below.