I'm now at a point where 70% of the animation for "Grave Mistake" is complete - and all of the Guardian's appearances have been completed. My aim is to complete the remaining shots for the two other main characters by the 25th so I can enjoy the Easter break and still have time after it to complete the shots involving extras and complete the remaining backgrounds.
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.
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! From tomorrow until the 30th, I'll be working at Sun & Moon Studios here in Bristol! Considering their recent awards success, it's genuinely an honour to be working for them, and I've never been more excited and terrified by anything related to my animation before. This'll be a real challenge - one that I'm looking forwards to tackling head on. So in the last week, I've been paid to create a short animated loop for the unicorn character belonging to an online client. Weebly's being weird about animated GIFs, so if you're on mobile or tablet, my apologies if this doesn't play/load. So, to kick off the New Year with a creative twist, I decided to get myself back into the swing of animation after the holiday by animating the second TiN of 2015. Seeing as how my site can't seem to handle a simple GIF image, check out the animation here instead!
Finally decided to dust off my CV and give it a revamp, given that I'm hoping to get some kind of studio-based work experience in the next semester, it's probably best to have that little document ready to go to easily e-mail it off to them. I'm really hoping I can get into a local studio here in Bristol that focuses mainly on good quality Flash animation - I feel like that's where I'd be able to play to my strengths the best. If you're interested at all, you can download it here:
It's finally out! The film I did for BBC Radio 4 is now live on their website! It won't be getting a publicity push from the Beeb until sometime in the new year, but it's live and ready to watch now, so go check it out!
Finally got round to making the second Sprakle short!
With uni winding down for the term, my aim is to get two more of these done before the New Year, so fingers crossed! After all this time, I've finally managed to find the time to animate the first of the two Sprakle shorts I had planned way back in the summer! There's also a Redbubble account with Sprakle merch now! Ok, so there's a lot going on to talk about at the moment! Firstly, quick note, "This is Normal" is still updating on schedule, so the most recent comic went up yesterday. Go check that out! Onto the main stuff, I have here a small gallery of sketches done in preparation for "Is Your Fridge Running?" that were done over the summer and in September, leading into the production of the film. So the "Is Your Fridge Running?" short should be finished by the end of the week - and depending on how the search for a music track goes, we could be done well before then. My hope is that it'll get done by either tomorrow or Thursday so we can post it online ahead of the Monday deadline.
Keep your eyes peeled for it! So I've been working on the Fridge film for the past few weeks, and am at a point now where I just have one more of the shots assigned to me left to do. Maybe I'll take on other shots to help speed things along, but it's not clear at this point. We'll basically play it by ear to see how it goes. Here's one of the five shots I've done so far: So yeh, awesome background by Xinyi Guo, fridge symbols by Lie Yandi Leonard, runner symbols by Lewis Rogers, animation by me. A truly collaborative shot right here. On top of this, a doodle animation I did while working on this has been expanded and submitted to The Sketch Collab 2014 on Newgrounds, so that should be pretty great when it comes out. As well as those, I've been brainstorming ideas for my major project this year. The main one that seems to be winning out is an idea about the grim reaper accidentally reaping someone he shouldn't, and having to go into the afterlife to bring them back to life. I've already started some warm-up doodle animations to work out how I want the film to look. I want it to be straight ahead animated, but I know that with limited time and resources, that may not be entirely practical. I'd still love to give it a shot, make something that really feels fluid and alive. Ironic, considering it's about death.
I completed some animation today that I'm happy with, which means I now have enough new material to justify a new showreel! The new content in this one is the run cycle in the second clip, a clip from my September "Do it In Ten" entry and the animation of my character, Sophia hitting her bear on the back.
I'm wondering how exactly storyboard artists go about presenting a summarisation of their portfolio, considering I'm at a point now where I think I've got enough work behind me to put one together. It's worth looking into. Once again, I've entered Show Me the Animation's "Do It In Ten" competition, this time on the theme of Space. One of my friends, Lewis Rogers, mentioned that he planned to think outside the box for his entry (not yet finished), so I decided to do the same. As you can see by the preview image, it's based around Tetris blocks, rather than the typical astronaut/spaceman theme that's run through all the other entries so far. So that should give it an edge this month. But we'll see.
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