Fun!

So I've been getting on with the animation phase of Grave Mistake, and I'm really getting into the swing of it. My current strategy is to go through it and focus on animating one character at a time, going through their shots chronologically. It's working well so far - I'm a third of the way through the shots featuring the Girl.

While making one of the longer shots today, I found a piece of animation that, if you reverse it, looks like dancing. It was funny, so I went ahead and made it.

I asked around at uni to see if anyone else was doing anything like this with their stuff. Apparently, it's not unusual.

Commission for someone who wanted a picture of themselves as a Pokemon trainer.

One-panel gag featuring a centaur character of mine that I've been drawing on-and-off since around 2008. He's part of a wider story that I have in mind, but this was just done as a one-off to entertain my DeviantArt followers.

So, I've finally got enough symbols together to start having test animation done to see how it looks. First results are fairly promising, and incredibly reminiscent of being at Sun and Moon.

Speaking of Sun and Moon, my updated CV is now available on the Work page to view and download. Once I'm into animating the actual shots of Grave Mistake, I'll probably update it again to reflect that, but until then, consider this one the most up-to-date one.

Today I've been working on symbols for the Girl character. Already got the three key angles done. I also have the same angles for Death too, so I should be getting some animation tests done with them soon and see how it's looking.

So, after the week working at Sun and Moon, I've returned to working on "Grave Mistake", firstly focusing on symbol creation for the character of Death. I've created an assortment of mouth shapes, arm shapes, hand shapes, etc, for him that should speed up the animation process and keep him looking consistent throughout the film.

I am quite keen to move quickly into the animation portion of production, so these symbols for Death and the other two main characters may well form a reference base to draw from and use when convenient, but I don't think I'll feel too badly about breaking off from the symbols for the sake of better animation.

Another thing I'm keen to get out of the way is the backgrounds, but that's more just because I don't particularly enjoy creating backgrounds so I want to get it out of the way as quickly as possible.

I had a really good time at Sun and Moon for the week and a bit I was there. I was able to animate using their Flash character assets and start to get a real feel for the atmosphere of the studio. I helped out on their current project for the BBC - a series of animated shorts helping to teach some basics of KS3 Maths. I look forward to the next opportunity I can get to work with them again.

As a bonus, while I was there, Sun and Moon was given some free tickets by Aardman to the Shaun the Sheep "Family and Friends" screening of the Shaun the Sheep movie at Cribbs Causeway, Bristol. I've never been up to Cribbs before, so even the journey there was an experience, but it was great sitting down to watch the best British stop-motion studio do what it does best. Having watched it, it's quite interesting to go back and look at previous Aardman films and see just how different the influence of Hollywood makes it. I think partnering with StudioCanal rather than an American firm helped them keep it very down-to-Earth and British, and to the best of my knowledge, nearly no CG animation at all. Definitely a fun film, and I highly recommend it to people who like stop-motion animation, cute things, and British comedy. And hey, maybe the kids'll enjoy it too!