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.
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. So the animatic for this year's first animation project is done! Xinyi Guo is working on the backgrounds at the moment, and me, Lewis Rogers, and Lie Yandi Leonard are working on various symbols. Ok, so the website for mine, Lewis', and Yandi's film, currently working titled "Is Your Fridge Running?", is up and running. At the moment the About Us page is still a work-in-progress, but now the blog's ready where you'll be able to follow the production more in-depth than I'll be posting here.
If you're curious to see the bare bones of a site that's there at the moment, head on over here. We've yet to dole out specific jobs between us - with the exception of symbol building and storyboarding (Lewis on symboling, me on storyboarding) - so that probably goes to show just how early days it is at the moment, but I'm fairly confident we can come out of this with something worth watching. At the very least, we'll get some new animation for our respective showreels. So, the new uni year starts Monday, and in the first 5 or 6 weeks, we'll be tasked with putting together a one-minute short. I'm teamed up with Lewis Rogers for our film (title pending, working title: "Is Your Fridge Running?"), and to give us a little head start on the time we have, I'm starting to put together the storyboard/animatic for it now.
The story follows a runner who discovers that the energy drink he bought has brought his fridge to life, and must chase it down through the city to get back his precious drink and the fridge that contains it. We're aiming to try and have it symbol-based, as that's what we've been told to expect from the industry (doesn't explain why all the CalArts films are still frame-by-framed, but still), which'll help speed up animation and keep things as consistent as possible. Experience on "Under the Weather" tells me that the head/face symbols will be the most important ones to get consistent. 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.
"Under the Weather", the 90 second short I made with Rainy Days Productions last October-December time, is now available on YouTube for everyone to watch, so go ahead and share this on Facebook, Twitter, or your preferred hipster social media site. Hell, even tell people in real life about it, if you like it enough. In any case, here it is: So for this month, I decided to enter the Show Me the Animation's "Do it in Ten" competition, which had the theme of Fire. I decided to take quite an "asdfmovie" approach to it with a short bit of wacky humour that I know plays well among my DeviantArt followers. It may not play as well among the judges, but I feel like I was trying to just get this done in as short a time as possible, and is just a little something to keep me in practice. Just a little piece of animation to keep me somewhat in practice over the summer here, of my Doctor Chaotic character doing a little dance. It makes a nice looping GIF.
I managed to get my hands on After Effects and have finally finished my work on the BBC Listening Project short! Apparently, I'm the first to do so, so we'll see how this goes with other participants. But all going well, it should be online sometime around October. Here's a little sneak peak of it: So I recently updated my showreel with a couple small bits from the BBC Listening Project - replacing some old first year exercise stuff, and some stuff that was there because I didn't have anything else. I decided to just go ahead and have the music play at a constant volume throughout, as I wasn't sure whether or not showing the sound that the lips were syncing to was particularly necessary - especially now that there's animation from something that's technically actual work that hasn't yet been released.
On top of this, I've also been doodling some little pieces of animation recently, one of which was done before I tweaked the showreel and so actually made it in, but a couple others - one of which (despite gaining nearly 800 views) I don't think would be particularly useful, and another that simply wasn't made before I did the tweaking. Could make it into my next revision though. I'm definitely quite pleased with it. So I finally completed all the animation involved in the BBC Listening Project short! At this point, I now need to get some photography and some After Effects done to get the final done-on-a-whiteboard idea I'm aiming for across.
I'm planning on getting a photo of a whiteboard outside somewhere - probably in Castle Park, and transposing the animation over the top of it, and using After Effects to zoom in and out of it, as per the start and end of the animatic. Should be good! I'm now past the 80% mark with the BBC Listening Project animation, thanks to a particularly busy evening. It's felt pretty damn good watching my production chart light up green as I've been getting through it, and with 164/200 seconds of animation done, I'm gonna be trying to give this one final push to complete it by the end of the month. Come 1st July, I'm aiming to have the entirety of this chart greened out, and if I'm particularly productive, then also have worked out the After Effects portion of production and be completely finished and ready to send off to my contact at the BBC.
I'm in London on Saturday, so that's one less day to work on this and more reason to get going with it. As a part of the push to finish this, I've also put on hold my work for Justine's project. My next meeting with her will be on the 15th, so that's plenty of time to have finished this up and be ready to move on. The project I did some storyboard revisions for had it's big premiere on the Millenium Square here in Bristol, and is now available to watch online! It changed quite a bit after I left the project to work on the BBC Listening Project and "Dead and Breakfast", but I think the hard work everyone put into it shows through. Just for a side-by-side comparison for how much has changed, here's the storyboard/animatic that I helped put together: In the time since the last update, I've received my grades for the final two modules on the second year of my course! I got a 2:1 in Professional Practice and a First in Developing Practice, so good times all-round!
I've also reached the half-way mark in the animation phase of the BBC Listening Project! It's progressing really well and looking really good so far. The transition from animatic to animation's been pretty smooth and I'm certain that the beeb'll be happy with it once I've finished so long as I keep the quality level up. On top of that, I've now signed up to do a storyboarding exercise/project with Justine Saint-Lo, an MA student at uni, where I will be taking her early beat-boards and turn them into a proper storyboard that can be turned into an animatic to hopefully pitch the project for further production. Exciting stuff and I'm looking forward to getting my teeth into it. And on a final note, I've started thumbnailing out a possible comic book. It would be a short one-shot comic, likely below 25 pages, but enough that I feel it would be worth getting printed as a zine and putting up for sale. I'm looking at the potential of getting a table at the Bristol Comic and Zine Fair in October, and maybe the Bristol Comic Expo next May, and this would be a good start for material for both of those events. The story revolves around a cutesy love story between a fox and a werewolf, and I reckon would attract a fair amount of interest. I'm also going to be turning the existing Sprakle animatics into proper animations soon, as well as producing more - but likely when some of these projects are a little more finished and off my plate. It's gonna be a busy summer! I'm continuing to make progress on the BBC Listening Project film, but I'm having to put it on hold in order to deal with some more immediate demands of my university course. I need to put together a 20-page module journal and a 10-page research document, as well as a feasible pitch for a 60 second film to be made in the first 6 weeks of next semester. Hopefully I'll be able to get the uni paperwork done and out of the way and then I'll be free to continue putting my time and effort into the Listening Project.
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