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.