Freelance - 'A Teddy With An Opinion On #WhatMattersMost '

Huggable Commercial animation was the outcome of my new stop-frame animation showing 'Joe-Lew' the teddy Bear advertising the Newest logo for John Lewis for the new Digital Campaign to promote John Lewis Insurance calling on budding filmmakers to submit their own six-second stop-motion films on Vine, inspired by the brand's current TV campaign, which uses stop-motion.

Find out more about the Fantastic competition and how to enter Here!

Find Below the HD version of the Vine, making of below video.

                  
'A Teddy With An Opinion On #WhatMattersMost ' from Gareth Hirst on Vimeo.

Youtube version below -

Show And Tell.

 

Heres the initial concept for the character 'Joe-Lew' after many sketches this easily became my favourite and ticking all the boxes, appealing to a family audience, instantly looked forward to making the puppet and reflects well for the Brand.

Of course Here is more into the character with the design and look mainly wanting to get the palette for the body complete before moving on to the Expression sheets.

The Expression sheet above was done quickly on photoshop but i really like the roughness of each of them that kind of brings them more alive with personality and character.

Making the 'Yellow-Belly-Teddy' puppet

At first i went for using foil for the body one reason being that it would be light but found that instantly there was various problem and getting the right look would be difficult.

So next i worked with Cushion foam to create the effect that i wanted, while the centre piece has the armature inside the outside was lined out ready for getting rid of the excess foam to allow the look to take form.

To make a Teddy head i...

The idea was ready but was only in my head so various designs were made then the last one to use as a reference for when creating the head was as above and shows exactly how i went about creating each layer of the head. I believe the only thing that got changed was how i tackled the mouth and instead of using replacement mouths the teeth stayed in place using yellow plastercine to mould the mouth in-between expressions which worked smoothly.

Heres the wire frame thats inside the characters head, cut fingers were worth the result to have a strong frame to build around with the rest of the face layers. There were three different thicknesses of wire uses to hold everything together.

Here i am so busy couldn't miss every photo, painting behind the eyes, nose and the mouth with a new model brush which made the job easier.

 First Snap of the cuddly ol' chap fully foamed and ready for final adjustments, without mouth.

First undercoat using spray paint before painting the separate area, not forgetting to cover the areas not wanting painting.

First coat of the colour he's going to become, found that using thin coats and building it up didn't work so thinker coats of colour without leaving gaps was needed.

Fully coated including Yellow Belly! Only thing i didn't expect was for the paint to take so long to dry.

All Logo icons used as props for the animation fully made and cut. Lined out with the rightful colours and ready to be used.

Dope sheet (X-Sheet) for the 6 seconds planned out and cut up into sections ready to animate, with character sheets and storyboards to follow, planning the animation comes more important than doing it.

Animating!

Part way through a shot before the next logo was put in place and the character changes position, this animation including pre-production was done in record time as it was for a client everything had to be on point with that i created a new character to use as a marketing tool which was the 'Yellow Belly Teddy' and through learning throughout i'd do any project within reason to a better standard every time to a deadline.

Hope this was a good insight into my most recent animation and if you've enjoyed let me know there might be more into my way.

Thanks for reading - Gareth Hirst B.A Hons

"Enjoy What you do" GHAnimation

My Stop-Frame Graduation Show

Characters of Stop-Frame animators graduating 2012 (by Richard Whillock)

The show was a great success and many people turned up on the private show including Ian Mackinnon from Mackinnon and Saunders whom i spoke to about my work and found everyone enjoyed our stop-frame room for the hand made quality which everyone can relate and enjoy!

These are some photos of which show my work showcased in all its glory and in true cinema style had seats popcorn and surround sound showing all of our final graduate films.

Cabinet 

The stars of Street Act Ollie and Alvin kept in a neat cabinet.

First Characters made from sculpey on the left Canimation character and first mime character.

These are the mouths used for Street Act for Ollie and alvin to show expression (sculpey) and plastercine for the speech in Street Act the Extras.

Presentation Boards

One Board includes an overall look at my red bull animation No Bull, a look into the success of Street Act and Acting out scenes from Street Act to photos of the animating process.

Redbull Canimation No Bull

Success of Street Act 

The animating in progress

Nametag for the show and a quick overview

Some of the frames from Street Act the Extras put in a reel for the show nicely above the drinks

Ollie and Alvin kindly welcoming guests

On screen Ollie next to cabinet ollie (same puppet)

The Street Act set Corporation St. was on show 

Hope everyone who came enjoyed the work that was on display and has opened their eyes to the art of Stop-motion animation and for those didn't make it the photos are also available on the Facebook page . 

Biad Awards Trevor Awards 2 - Stop motion Category 

(Myself)Gareth Hirst ,Ian Mackinnon ,Richard Whillock

Congratulation to Richard Whillock WINNING with his animation Being Dead

Nominees- Claire Hanson,Richard Whillock,Gareth Hirst

Graduation Show cut down Showreel from successful scenes

Long time without a post, its been a busy time submitting my student film for marking and presenting to my tutors but most currently working on the end of year graduation show which will be open to the public from next monday and the private show will be on the wednesday.

Above is a cut down of my most favourite and proud scenes which i've worked on for Canimation and street act with music accompaniment from a soundtrack for City lights conducted by Carl Davis whom i met back in The Symphony Hall through winning the Silent Movie Animation Challenge.

Ss2-Animating has Began after much pre-production

Animating STREET ACT first film of Ss2

Quick collage from animating today in the greenroom in uni using the milo for my opening shot and end sequence of the animation,this is for the silent film brief that i've taken of for the first part of specialist study 2 currently doing exactly my favourite part Animating,whilst learning many new things for lighting, set design, character design,motion capture and working under a tight deadline without compromising quality.

Ss2- Character face design

Character face sheets

thin mask like face very defined facial features,much the serious character

These two sheets are what the two puppet heads I've recently done are based on, their overall personality in a sense and the bright nature the character brings off, obviously they can't be the same and what separates then ones the brain (above) and ones the brawn (below) but less brawn more of a silly side.

two characters posing together

Second character much the silly easy going much like stan laurels character.

Ss2-Character Development 2

Daily Blog Update

temporary mouth as testing

 Yesterdays caricature familiar in some way, still really like this one in particular today was spent testing out ways of being able to show lip syncing but for the emotion/expression reason. Simply this was the first idea was to block the whole area and change the block for each change.

the cover for PJs season 1

The other was to place the mouth pieces on separately like they did on The PJs series from Eddie Murphy, the idea was greatly used with every character many things that have worked replacement wise with The PJs may be used eyebrows,eyelids,mouths.

cling film to stop the mouth from sticking

 Character 2 My wednesday character

starting off basic

 Had trouble with the oversized nose at the start then when sculpting more found how it should look more of a sharp nose than the shapely nose from the first character, also finding where the cheek bone should be and how the face should fall from the cheek to the jaw which was different to the character before.

layering at the start no smoothing down yet

found the nose,cheek bone and the forehead were important  to match

Solved the problem with the oversized nose by taking the sculpey off the nose and taking off some layers of foil to create the shape i wanted which was a pointy nose an thin nostrils.

long face

expression already seems even before much done for it

decided to go straight in for placing the mouths on

less matrix more serious food critic from Ratatouille 

still more smoothing off to be done with ears and hair

Close up

From this photo you can see the difference in nose more closely

Temporary because i haven't decided wether to go for plastercine instead
Only reason not is because of the weight.

Sketchbook

Working on style and getting into more of how the texture and look in going to be,thinking throughout a gritty texture with realistic look to it with time some props may have to be made in card if they aren't being used as main props only background props.

The texture for the wall perhaps but more wood to it

the dry texture for the background if outside