the phoenix

monkey fire

monkey cadillacs

lonely lovesick monkey

new lip sync maya practices

as you know i love to do lip syncs. i think it is a great way to progress and a good way to learn new software. i tried my hand at lip syncs in maya as we had hardlyany good maya lessons last year and im not having those first years overtaking us already lol! here are some examples

time is running out

we are running over our deadline for the ident. i think this could be the overall structuring of the project was a bit weak. also a factor could be because we have had to build two different phoenix's which has caused problems because the stop mo people couldnt start early enough and the overall atmosphere became very charged. also there was alot of pressure with us having our bbc pitches coming up, i think it was hard to decide which project we worked on at any one time.

having said that i still think everyone has done a great job to try and pull this all together and im sure it will turn out to be amazing

With the phoenix textured we had to animate it. I animated a scene where the phoenix jumped down off of a platform and through a hole in the floor. Then I had to separate the phoenix from the cogs and put them on separate files for stop motion to fit between them.

the BBC pitch!!!!!!!!

we had our bbc pitch on friday! i was sooo nervous because i had worked sooo hard on this project and i didnt awant this to go wrong. especially as our practice pitch ran over the ten mins. overall i think it went really well but was a bit annoyed that ralph didnt say his part properly. i know he must have been noervouos too but i sat down with him to make a que card that he could go away and learn but it didnt look like he had even read it or brought it to the pitch, so when he started to go blank he had nothing to jog his memory.

i think cherie has bee a great 3d producer because she has known what everyone has been doing and has done a great jo at overseeing this whole section. also she has been there to iron out any problems we have had along the way!

i think adam has done a great job overseeing the whole desing aspect of the ident project! he has also done alot of work for the 3d part aswell so i really admire the way he has taken on this role as a part of the team and not just someone that sits there barking orders at everyone!

aaaaargh!

grrrrr ralph! i know we all have 2 projects to do at the moment but the whole point of it is to show good time management. but he seems to be doint nothing! i dont understand, he seemed so enthusiastic about the whole OZ project but now its like he just wants to blagg it! this is not good time management and you cant get anywhere in real life with that sort of attitude so why is he like this now?! i feel that he doesnt really care about this project and that he is also slowing me down aswell because he leaves such a big gap that i dont have any choice but to fill it myself otherwise this whole project will fall apart and im not going to let that happen!

i will upload som pics of the textures and the pheonix as soon as i can move them.

texturing

after texturing the head of the pheonix i moved on to the body! it all went well and quite smoothly until i got to the wings! i found out that when adam moddled the body he had converted all the pollygons into subdivs which caused a massive problem which i had nooo idea what to do about it. thankfully cherie is a genious and was able to fix it. she also mapped out all the uv's so that i could get straight to the texturing. so the problem with the wings,........ the uv's for the rest of the body were fine so i started with the wing blades, the first was fine but when i tried to use the uv maps of the rest i found that they were broken and all over the place! this would cause a massive problem as i would have to work out where it was all supposed to goand which way round it was supposed to go! i would have had to do this with every blade! not good! again the genious came to he rescue and was able to duplicate what i had done whith the first wing blade and copy it to the rest. finally resulting in a finished pheonix that looks prety good!

grr oz

im gona get straight to the point! ralph is really stressing me out un this project.
i have had to ask him sooo many times to do the parts i need him to do but he just doesnt do it! he is really making me nervous as the pitch is very close and he just doesnt want to do anything and thinks that three landscapes is enough for five weeks work! also he is never actually in the studio so i can rarely see what he has actually done andwhen he is in i find he is still working on the same picture he was doing a week ago! i keep trying to talk to him about it and express my concerns but i just dont think he is listening!
i have done too much work and am too passionate about this project for him to just screw it up!

maya texturing

all i can say is thank god for cherie! cherie hasn been helping me sooo much! she must have been getting a bit frustrated by us asking for help so often!

maya pheonix

i have been given the task of modeling the pheonix's head!
i think i have done a pretty good job. i think the design i was given was weak! there was no real suggestion of anything and the 2 views didnt even match, it had no neck and gave no indication of how it was supposed to move and the wings were just lumpsw. it had no bloody feet!!!!!!!

ben

i think ben has been a very good and efficient producer so far.
he has effectively split us up into sections and appointed people to be producers of that section. he also does quite alot of the work himself so he is not just sitting there barking orders he is getting stuck in which i admire

exeter ident

i think bens idea was my favourite idea from the start. i am glad it got chosen so that i can work on it to.
i like how his idea involves many different types of media. i think this will give everyone a chance to try something new using a new technique.
i have started to model in maya. i am modelling the pheonix now.

leon

the scarecrow

i have been designing the characters of the story these are some pics of my process

these next posts are some of the origional material i have produced in the past when the idea first came to mind

i have realised that i have taken on quite a task so i have enroled the help of ralph in my project and will now be working with him to create this story

we're off to see the wizard?

our new design for animation projects have allowed me to start to design something i have been keen to do for a while now. i am re-designing the wizard of oz.
i will be working from the origional text and not the existing films because i think it is important to work from the textto get a fresh interpretation.
i think there are dark underlying themes in the story, themes that i dont think have been explored.
my version of the story is going to be a dark tale of drugs and selfishness, not something you origionally think of when you talk about the story but i thibk this could be a contemporary way of looking at this classic novel

listen

we were set a sound recording exercise to create a sound-scape.
the sound scape i chose to create was someone getting ready in the morning. i used a boom mic to record my sounds and i think that you can create alot of depth with a mic that has a vary narrow area of pic-up, also my housemates were playing computer games quite loud in another room and this mic helped to block out the noise.
i think my soundscape needs more of a story because i ended up finding it quite boring after listening to it loads. if it had an animation to go with it i think it would have been stronger but on its own i dont think it can hold its own

new maya

i think georg is doing a good job in the new maaya lessons.
i think starting from the begining is a great idea because whatever it was we learned last year left many stones unturned and i think revising the programme entirely will really help us in the future.
also i think i want my future career to be directed at maya, either modelling or animating.

my first stop frame animation

one of our new things this year is a new teacher, who specializes in stop frame.
for this work shop we were given a sound clip and had to mark the lip sync onto a time sheet.
i found this very useful as when it came round to animationg, stop motionpro wouldnt let us import the sound file, so making a detailed and accurate sound sheet enabled us to produce an animation that still synced up to the sound well, even though we did not have the sound to actually animate to.
this is the result of my one. i know the animation is a bit ropey around the word 'father' but this was trial and error and i think i tried to put too much into the lip sync.

the dark crystal

holiday project

we were set an optional holiday project at the end of term. soon after i watched a film called the dark crystal and thought this would be a great film to re-make for my project as the film feels very dated and lacks a solid story as is quite vague in places. so the next few posts will be to do with my ideas to bring this film into the 21st century

take on me

talking cameras

i found the start of this scene to be slow and frustrating because i was only given a rough sheet of paper with a few drawings on as my design brief. there was no hint at style or colour or a description of which camera said what. there was no technical descriptions either. the characters had to look around, blink and one had to sneeze or cough. ther was nothing to show what part of the camera made the blink but i guess that was down to my artistic licence blink i also had do design background for this scene which hindered my time to animate.
after i started though, things seemed to pick up and i finished the lip sync in a day. i was also able to create the foley sound for this project

forgetful fish

i was given a segment of the interview to lip sync. as i was the animator i was handed a design for the fish which was locked so i had to do it in that syle. i found this model a relitively easy one to use as it is very effective for its simplisity.
after i animated i found out that there was a storyboard to go with it, which i was not given. i found this frustrating.
however, the producer was happy with it so we kept it as it was.

student lip sync

for one week i have changed my role in the library project to animate some lip syncs for the student project.
the two lip syncs i chose to do were of a goldfish and two talking cameras.
for me i dont think the lip syncing was a problem but i found that the quality of the sound was quite bad so it was hard to actually hear it. this was not anyones fault that was working on the project as we had been given an already recorded interview which we had to work from and do our best with that.

Loving Adam Phillips

i relly like rthe way adam phillips work.
he has a way of working which he calls 'optimising his frames' which basically means he uses the same drawing for as long as he possibly can. he does this by stretching or squashing a current drawing and using it to lead on to the next shot. i.e instead of animating a look around shot, just squash the existing drawing on a later fram then suddenly jump to the new pose in the shot. this gives the illusion of movement with the minimal minipulation!

solution!!!!!!!!!

i think i have found a solution to my maya problem!

weight in maya

i have found it hard to create the sense of weight in maya. at the moment i dont feel like i am animating with this programme, i just feel like i am filling in the gaps! hopefully i will just click with this way of working!

Finally! 3D animation!

we started animation in maya,. we had don some 3d moddeling before but havn't had the oportunity to actually animate in maya!
for our first task we had to animate 3 different balls bouncing. a football, a bowling ball and a ping pong ball!there were some pretty basic animation principles involved such as stretch and squash but i find it hard to apply these principles whilst animating in maya. i dont know why i have this problem but for some reason i find it hard to get my head around the framig system in maya! i think it has something to do with the way the computer seems to fill in the gaps for me! i dont feel like i have complete control!

don hertsveldt? rejected!

we were shown this in class one day and i really enjoyed it.
especially when he starts using the actual paper he has drawn on as a medium of working when he starts to screw the paper up kind of using the paper as a tool like you would using the pencil that you drew each frame with.

script writing!

in our course we have been focusing on film grammar, now, i have never been much good at writing creatively but i think i have quite alot of ideas knocking around in my head. we had to come up with a script for a 90 second film. i found it hard to just sit down and write a script so i had to go away and try something else to try and generate ideas.
i started by just doing some very basic brain storms to try and come up with some frame work for a story to be built on. i settled on a robbery to take place at some point. but couldnt come up with the specifics, later on i just started doodling in a notebook with the script in mind and i soon came up with some characters. i found this to help as i think i am quite a visual learner i think it was good to have something visual to picture while i tried to form the story in words

more animated flash!

i think i have become quite proficient at lip syncing in flash and have wanted to do something a bit more challenging. i have found more sound clips from 'pirates' and have put much more fluid motion into it. for the moment i have just been drawing simple figures to animate with in order to just sugest the body language. they are nothing more than just stick figures but i think it is still good to map out any scene first in order to see how the movements will look in context with the sound!

nice! METAL!

haha i just found this on you tube!
i think there is some good use of articulation and motion tweens in this which gives it a slight cut out look!

a blunt captain!

yep you guessed it!
this one is a sound clip from 'serenity'
wicked movie!

bad ass santa!

so again with the lip syncs!
i like to practice, you never know when it might be useful!
for this animation i found a sound clip from the movie 'bad santa'.
thought it sounded funny so i gave it a go..... why not?!

CAPTAIN, jack sparrow if you please, sir!

lol i got a bit carried away with the whole lip syncing thing and i did 2 more sparrows! i used the exactly same layout for them both, same symbols, same articulation and so on. the difference between the two was as i finished the first i had a brain wave! during the first animation i went through a painstaking process of moving the mouth symbols to line up in the right place on the face. this was annoying! i had moved the body before i started the lip syncing so every frame i went along the mouth would seem sto jump out of place and so i had to match them up in every frame and it took ages! i also had this problem with the eyelids. the moment of genius came at the beginning of the second animation! i realised that once i had drawn the head and made it a symbol, if i then go into that symbol i cam animate the lip sync on a stil head, but thats not all, when i come back out of the symbol into the main scene i can move the head around as much as i want and it wont lose its position on the face! this way was soooooooooooo much easier and quicker. it seemed like such a simple problem to solve, but there we are, lesson learned! sorry about the sound quality! enjoy!

jack sparrow!

some months ago i found a royalty free wav file from the internet. the file was a sound clip from 'pirates of the carribean', as i am a big fan of the movie i was excited to animate to it. i was new to flash and also not used to a wacom tablet, at first i found it hard to co-ordinate myself accurately so i wasnt expecting to do a masterpiece. i started by drawing out a simple picture of jack but left out his mouth and fore arms and drew these as seperate symbols. i did this bbecause i thought it would be cool to have a little arm movement in there some where to gesture some body language. i then drew all the different mouth shapes i would need as seperate symbols to as this would be easyier for me to animate at this stage. like i said i was new to the wacom tablets so i wastnt confident enough to draw the mouth frame by frame, instead i would just drag the apropriate symbolonto his face.
at the end i just gave him a quick arm movement to give him some character!

in october we were introduced to pixelation. its like stop motion but instead of using small maquetts we used ourselves. i think this is an effective form of animation as all the tools we need our already with us. we can also show real people doing things that are really imposible like walking through a pane of glass without breaking it. we tried our hand at this for the first time. we called it 'frankenbox' as it is about a guy putting several pieces of clothing into a box and creating people from within the box!

jokes!!

i found this video on you tube! it is a cg lip sync of the joker. i have become fascinated by lip syncing. i like watching how other people interpret the audio and how they create subtle gestures that give the lip sync its character. the back ground is simple, just a scratchy brown backdrop, but, this is also effective! it doesn't distract us from the lip sync but subtly sends a tone across to the viewer that there is a dark cloud around this character giving him a quite menacing persona.
i think the lip sync is very accurate and the timing is bang on! there is also strong anticipation for the words to seem spoken, especially when he says 'jack'.
i think it is these small simple gestures that has helped to create such an effective lip sync.

mark bagley

mark bagley is my favorite marvel illustrator

adam phillips is really good!!!!

this is called little foot. a cool little film with som very origional characters! i also love the way he creates such depth in his scenary. i think this is done on toon boom, a programme i would like to learn!
enjoy!

love spiderman!

i think spiderman is such an animated character!
i think the formation of his character with his spider-like agility and strength really allows the illustrator to push the limits of human anatomy.
i think this is the reason why i like to draw spiderman so much, i think it allows me to see how much i can exagerate the human figure witout it looking wrong

very old walk cycle

casting my mind way back to november '07 we had a pre production task where we had to create character in a storyline together. my character was called Mac. i decided as research into his character i would animate his walk cycle. this was my first ever walk cycle and dispite the mistakes i am proud of it!

nervous me!

our first creative lip sync where we had to design a character that represented ourselves... seems so long ago....(sorry)! anyway, i created this emo kid thing which seemed to look like me so i went with it. we also had to create some foley sounds that introduced ourselvves so there was something to animate to... so there i was in this quiet little room making a complete tit of myself trying to record something to animate to, needless to say, i was a bit nervous. so i decided that thats what i would say! easy!
as i was nervouse in the recording i animated a simple body to help communicate this through the body language, so i animated my character shyly rubbing his arm. and to give him something to be nervous about i put a greazy little cheap brothel in the beckground.....use your imagination!

lip sync lola

as a first excercise in flash andy gave us an old model he had used before. just so we can get familiar with flash. the model was a bitchy little dog named lola with a wierd mans voice. i think this voice gave lola a sleazy personality and also gestured at very obvious and exagerated mouth movements which made it easier to pick the correct symbol. i think this exercise helped me alot as i went on to do many more lip syncs as it became something i rather enjoyed! i think this exercise helped us to get to grips with the phonetic shapes that our mouth makes rather than how it is spelled. very useful....nice!

flash............aaaahhhh aaaahhhh!

lets step back in time.............we were introduced to flash . a nice simple 2d programme to create some simple yet effective animations with a light hearted tone!
we were shown a clip from an animator called adam phillips called 'the yuyu'.
i think this opened my once sceptical eyes to the world of flash animation.
after searching youtube, i think adam phillips' animations have thier own distinct character with an origional bunch of characters and his deep scenary that seemed to entice me further into the story.

check out 'THE YU YU'
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9QHEbU0cWY&feature=related

concept layout for OSTN Ident - Busker

OSTN Ident - Busker

the brief for this project was to create an ident for a student television network. to brainstorm ideas i started to draw images which i thought would relate to student conditions such as sports, music, living conditions and being broke. we spoke to our client o ask some clarifying questions which i found helpfull because it allowed me to define the borders in which we were expected to keep.
i chose to go along the theme of music and had an idea of a busker which also ties in with the theme of money.
i new from the start that i wanted to animate this piece by hand and that i wanted the style to be quite loose and scratchy so as the image seems to be alive and will move of its own accord.
when i started story boarding the idea i found that it was hard to come up with anything resolute in 10 seconds so an animatic was a great tool to see if my storyboards would work.
once i finished my animatic i started to think of how to do the animation. before i started i needed to record the sound of a guitar in order to get the cues for the motion in my animation. i set up one of my flatmates with a guitar in a sound recording studio and recorded a light up beat accoustic track using three key notes. after refining the sound i then researched the hand positions in all of the notes. i took photos of his hand in all of the positions from both a front view and a birds eye view in order to get the right shape in both of the camera angles i was to use in my animation. i then drew a detailed picture of each position to become more familiar with the shapes of the hands.
to come up with the design of the buskers appearence i drew from various photographs of guitarists to become familiar with the shape and position of the body when holding a guitar whilst sitting on the floor.
i then animated to the dope sheet i produced whilst analysing my sound track frame by frame giving me my cues. this procedure was helpfull and very effective as it allowed me to map out my animaiton to create convinsing movements in time with the sound. i animated the front view (or shot 1) up to 5 seconds. then i switched to a birds eye view of the buskers legs and his collection blanket. this was made from several frames that were repeated to create 2 boils, to give a base for the zoom in to the OSTN logo. between the two boils i animated a coin falling from behind the camera into the collection blanket. this was the end of my hand drawn process.
i then scanned in my drawings according to the dope sheet and sequenced them in after effects. i then created my background/foreground. i chose to put my background infront of my animation so i could use the boils i created and still be able to zoom in on the OSTN logo without spilling over the background and created a much claener edge. this was a simple process, i just created an alpha channel where my animation would be and this was all i needed to do to create the illusion that the animation was in front of the background.
to finish the animation i made a fade out to the official OSTN logo and recorded sound effects to fit the actions taken in the animation such as dropping a coin into a pile of coins and blowing across a microphone to create a 'woosh' effect for my fade in. i also used a sound effect of a busy street off of a CD to give the animation a sense of place. to finish i adjusted the sequence so fit neatly into the 10 second slot and recorded a voice over saying 'You're watching OSTN' to finish off the fade in.
i think that this piece is a successful piece of animation which i found demanding as i didnt have the digital luxuries of a software programme to create my animation until it came to editing. i think after effects was a good tool to use when sequencing because of the user friendly interface which was clear and precice and was a relief to end up with a piece that i am proud of.