The Plaster Scene

So we didn't have an animation to do this week which was useful considering Mass Effect 2 came out on friday, however we did have to make 3 identical plastercine heads with a different expression for each one. This helped me think about exaggeration in 3 dimensions, i also didn't realise how freakin' hard these things would be to replicate.

Anyways these are my horrific creations,

I had loads of fun makin' these, we pretty much got started right away so there wasn't time to design a face but I think that was part of the challenge for me. After the first one I had to go home and try to work out how else to manipulate this face to fit other expressions. Looking forward to getting stuck in to the major project a lot more now I think.

Experi Mental

So It was apparently time for some good old "outside the box thinking", you know just like the endless stream of adverts around at the mo that use some "amazing!!!" stop frame techniques that they saw some dude in China do on you tube and have totally ripped off. The one that i can most recently remember was for Orange or some shit where loads of young hip, groovy people eventually turn from a skinny white moron into a fat black idiot.
This uses the technique of 'pixilation' which is the use of humans within a stop-motion animation, this is what my group decided to do but in the form of a video game. And yes before you mention it i do realize that our video mainly consists of young, hip, groovy idiots turning into each other.
This is the first test making sure the menu and basic movement look okay,



We decided that the people need to move slightly quicker and the menu arrow needs to move slower, from then on we would move the characters every frame but move the arrow every four frames. We thought both moving at the same time would be quite distracting but decided that it looks more natural and with the sound effects it should be fine.
This was a quick test of a rotation, an essential part of any character creation menu,



Pretty tasty huh, we now had the timing sorted for all the movements, all we had to do then was work out which order they appear in, what they are wearing and what should happen at the start and the end. This was a special kind of planning that included us all getting random clothes from home and deciding which would be the most bloody hilarious. After that we went home to shoot the rest and pretty much made it up on the spot. That's the magic of the movies kids.



Well a huge thanks to Chrissy who edited the crap outta this and put these awesome sound effects in (the game boy noise for the Xbox is inaccurate yet inspired). We all pulled together really well for this project i think, everyone was willing to put forward ideas but were also willing to let some go, everyone put the hours in, this made for a good time and what i think is a pretty great final film.

Yella' Belly!

As usual once we did what was asked of us we decided to ditch replacement animation and get our straight forward stop-frame on. This is when I quickly discovered the most difficult part of working in a group is that everyone else is lame, ha jus' playin'. Easily the hardest part of group work was deciding on something that we all thought would look good, push our abilities and not take 16 years to complete, between 5 people it gets a little difficult to agree. It's kinda like all of us going to blockbuster and trying to pick something several completely different people would wanna watch. Anyway In the end we decided to go for the Animation Vs Animator theme but make it so you didn't know what was going on until half way through.
Av' a butchers.



We were extremely happy with this, i mean it pretty damn awesome right? It required me to spend a lot of time crawling on the floor for reference, especially when he rolls over onto his front. Also waiting for silver pen to show up for the claw marks and a special shout to Paul who had to hold his hand there for an uncomfortable amount of time.
The main thing i took away from this project was the importance of the point of contact, what sells this video to me is how he doesn't just float along the floor, his hands and feet stay where they should be and he actually pushes himself along.

They call him Mellow Yellow

As the age of stop-frame begins the first thing we have to master is replacement animation, this is where you don't actually move the model but you have a different one for each movement the character makes and you just swop them out. This technique was used to create our frosty friend 'Pingu', one of the biggest pimps of our time.
Firstly we were working in groups and had to create a walk cycle out of five different models, one of the biggest challenges of this project was to actually do it and not just keep putting them in various sexual positions however around 5 hours later, once that novelty had worn off, we got to work.
Heres the first attempt



We weren't too pleased with the legs and his head moves like something out of 'Jacob's Ladder'. We kept focused on keeping the head straight but also using the rules we had learnt by looking at all out walks such as one leg is always straight and obviously the arms must do the opposite action to the legs.
Checks the nexts



We all agreed that this was an improvement but it looked like he was limping quite a lot, we came to the conclusion that because we were using five frames to do two steps one was always gunna hang for longer than the other, we went back and tweaked the feet a little and only used four models



This was definitely the second best we came up with, i say second best coz after this one we made a few more adjustments, filmed it again and it looked slightly better however once we had packed up left the room and decided to reflect on our work we found out the last video had corrupted. I just wanna be honest with ya.
I really enjoyed this exercise because of the nature of the beast i guess, the fact that we could keep going back and changing little things to try and improve it, something that would be a pain in the arse for drawn animation and probably impossible for normal stop-frame. G-night everybody!

A jolly look back at our first term of animation theory. Part 1.

Mr. George Melier (sorry George and France I don't know how to do accents on here yet)

As we can see in this lovely piece of Futurama fan art Bender is plunging a bottle into a seemingly random theme park mascot. Of course all of us find this freakin hilarious but not many can put there finger on exactly why, this image has been used countless times in comedies and has been referenced over and over again, but why? I hear you cry.

Everyone is familiar with the still of the rocket lodged in the moons face but it's not until they see "Le Voyage Dans La Lune" (voyage to the moon) a short film by George Melier that they go "Ohhh i knew i recognized that shit!".

'Voyage to the moon' was filmed over 100 years ago in 1902 and was just one of many films Melier can be credited for, all of which were so important to modern film especially in current times where the vast majority of hollywood blockbuster films rely so heavily on the use of special effects. The art of tricking the audience using film was practically invented by Melier, so much so that he was usually known as a magician in his time not a film maker. Probably a good thing for him, magicians got all the babes back then.

A big part of special effects these days and a century ago is down to animation. The technique of stopping the camera, moving an object then starting the camera again was also discovered by Melier, probably why so many people in the film and animation industry enjoy parodying his work. Also it probably makes you feel pretty smug doesn't it.

The next bit i had to tackle was up to when the camera cuts to a wide shot, I knew i wanted to have him scratching his chin (and not just so i didn't have to lip sync it) so heres the first attempt at up until he slams his fist. This was realy hard mainly because of how much both the arms change position and i had some trouble drawing the fist in his palm at first.

This is also the first time i had tried matching the sound.

I thought the audio went really well with the first few seconds but it's slightly out at the end, i wasn't too happy with the face scratch either so i changed the loop and went back to add more frames.

I noticed aswel that he doesn't look at Johnny for anywhere near long enough when he says his name, i went back and added a blink which also seemed to help with the anticipation.

Ha, it worked, was not expecting that. Have only lip synced the first part so far but it looked pretty good and it stays in time up until the camera cut. Now because it's getting closer to deadline the animation room is not as barren as it once was, this makes for not many line tests which is why i had to dive in with last few seconds however when it's synced with the audio properly it should look good. Am now adding more frames to the "Got Something!" line and lip syncing the rest.

Long Time No Blog

So i've been out of action for a while on the whole blog front, we have so much to catch up on! Is it okay if I go first?

A few days after i filmed the acting videos I actually sat down and tried to animate this little bastard, spent most of the first day sketching ideas for the key frames and getting used to drawing the characters on animation paper.

I filmed this quick 4 frame animatic just to make sure the setup looked okay and the exaggerated poses were working.

I was happy with these frames but was a hell of a long way off finishing and I was still not sure if I could actually link them together whilst keeping the volumes of the characters.

This next clip was another loose short one but would give me an idea of wether the characters were moving okay.

Well I absolutely hated the start, even though it was just key frames the rummaging around at the bottom of the screen looked awful, also there wasn't enough time before the sound kicks in to have too much activity. I did however really like how it looks so far when he pulls Johnny towards him.

Heres where I was trying to get the first third down to single frames and get the movement exactly how i wanted it.

I remember falling in love with his right hand when he sweeps it across, that was one of those moments where I realised it may not be a complete pile of arse as long as I kept at it.

There were a lot of mistakes in this bit though, the movement is so choppy when he rises and when his arm comes down over Johnny, also his eyes jumped all over the place. This was definitely a job for a few more frames.

Heres the updated version.

I remember being very excited by this one, it came to 3 seconds so I was pretty sure it was gunna fit with the first piece of dialogue and i was happy with the movement, especially the slight anticipation before he brings his arm down. Now all I had to do was the next 7 seconds, easy.

Now There's A Face For Radio

I've been having trouble with deciding which poses my main guy is gunna hit during this fateful 11 seconds. I now pretty much know how the story is going and the type of shots I'm gunna use but I wanted help with the expressions and how long he would hold them for.

Here's the part where I realise I blates should of been an actor, prepare to be blown away.

So what i learnt from this, apart from the fact that i need to take the bin out and clean the fridge, is that so many of the actions in this video only last a fraction of a second, it's gunna be tough to fit these in and have it still look good but i think it's do-able. Will have to be very careful with the timing.

Anyways here's number 2, this was to help with the lip syncing and the eye/eyebrow movements. Sorry it's a bit close, you may wanna sit back a little.

What I noticed in this is how much my eyes move around, i was changing what i was looking at every second or so. Must remember to not get lazy on the old peepers, have him keep looking at the object, at Johnny and to the floor if he's thinking for example.

Well that's the fun parts over guys, catch you later when I'm slowly dying inside.

Check My Squirrels

Well seen as though my last project was rabbits I thought I should go in a completely different direction with this one, but then i thought f**k that and did squirrels. I think I've managed to make a relevant idea for the clip but even if not heres my designs for the main character and Johnny.

With this first set i just wanted to get the main characters style close to what i wanted and make sure it could be divided into simple shapes, i really like the design i've come up with so far, it's gunna be hard to animate but i do have a few weeks. Will clean it up and do the other angles when i do the character sheets.

Seen as though this guy ain't gunna be moving i wanted a character that would be funny just by blinking or maybe chewing on nothing. This was easier to think of coz I just used the template of the main character and just made him stupider/cuter/more naive.

Look Guys, Another Project Thing.

Right next mission time, we each took an 11 second audio clip that had been taken from random films and we've gotta do an animation that syncs with it.

This is gunna be freakin' awesome if I get it right, this is exactly the kinda project i wanted and coz we've got a month to do it I wanna do all the planning and prelim work properly for a change. I know the biggest challenge for me is gunna be getting myself to actually do the work on schedule as I'm a lazy bastard and we're being left alone for a fair bit.

Heres the clip I've ran face first into. Quick explanation first though, i don't know how to put just sound clips on here so I've had to put some highly relevant footage with it, hope it ain't too distracting.

I chose this one firstly coz It's pretty funny but It's also quite ambiguous so it was hard coming up with a final idea when so many would of fitted. I like the seriousness in the voice and the fact that there is another character mentioned without a speaking part so i would have complete freedom with him.

I think I've decided on a final idea and I'm just doin' the character designs at the mo, will try an get em' up shortly.