E Sting for E4

OK i have just uploaded my final animation for the 10 second E Sting competition for E4!

It is called E-Smash and will be live on the E4 site over the next day or so i think once they have checked its content.

But here it is for my Blogends (Blog-Friends...see what i did there?):

Sketching Ideas

If i was worried about getting bored (as in previous posts), then i don't need to worry as i don't have just ONE new project to get working on, i now have two.

So the first one is something i have wanted to do for a while now. Although i haven't animated a lot at the moment, i have habits already. I get most of my inspiration from music, and can sometimes hear a particular song and really get into it, and picture an animation in my head. I guess the songs that work best for me are the ones that tell a story, obviously, because that's what animation (to me) is about fundamentally.

I always picture great things in my head, but always struggle to convey this in my work as my abilities are still a little limited. So i am going to take on board everything i have learned from the few animations i have already done, and hopefully it can be something really good. This new one will be a faster paced animation which for me will be a challenge because there will need to be a lot of action and fast paced movements to time it against the song words. The song is only 1 minute 29 seconds, so i have to fit a lot in and still make it look like a story.

There is a longer version of the song, but if there is one thing i have learned...it's not to make things more complicated than they need to be!

I have been rough sketching some ideas for one of the characters. There will be two. The story is about friendship and how important it is so i think two characters is enough to show this. It is a very simple story.

They are a little rough and just the first ideas that came to me. Surprisingly i just started drawing the shapes for the head and body and came up with him. For me that is a big step forward. I really have trouble with character design, but i have been reading quite a few books on drawing and character design and they seem to be having an effect.

I will post sketches as i go along and hopefully you can watch with me as my animation is put together :)

Walking Animation

I have only just managed to get this animation uploaded after many months and a lot of hassle with frame dropping and file size.

This was the first 2D module given to us last semester and it was my first EVER time using Flash, and first ever time animating.

The module was based around the Walk Cycle as it is supposed to be one of the most complicated things to crack....as i found out. Hours and hours of frame-by-frame animation, knowing that somehow there was an easier way to do it - I just didn't know how at this stage. I tried to show the walk from most angles and not just take the easy way out and show the side view. The most difficult view for me to animate was from the front. Foreshortening did not come easy to me. Especially as i am not too confident with my drawing abilities anyway.

So here it is, Chaz n Dave. Chaz is the boy....and he is on a mission :)
Please leave comments below and you can follow by blog, or subscribe to my YouTube channel if you like :)

New Projects

After handing in all of my work for this year and strangely not having to stress about meeting deadlines at the moment....I am on the hunt for some new projects to keep me from going insane (although i enjoy not having the huge workload at the moment, it HAS only been a matter of days and the novelty is slowly wearing thin and I don't mind admitting I am getting BORED - already).

I want to do some short animations, 30 seconds - 1 min, just to get some practice in and try different styles. I want a more fluid look to my animations and more of a sketched appearance rather than stiff cardboard like characters, so over the next few days I will be sketching from many different books I have, trying to understand the basics of character movement and timing. Then hopefully i will feel more confident to sketch WITHOUT looking in the books. I will post some sketches after i have done a few to let you see how i am getting on.

If anyone has any suggestions or ideas for any animated shorts, please feel free to leave a comment below :) The funnier the better. I want to experiment with voices and sounds rather than just animate to music - which is what i tend to automatically do.

Will keep you updated on my progress.

I may even get a ReviewFriday in tomorrow.....haven't done one of those for a LONG time!

Pencil test 2

This is my second pencil test. I know there seems to be a pattern going on with the 'cat' theme...but not intentional.

This test was taken from a frame of my storyboard for 'Cat & Caboodle' (which has not yet been produced), and turned into a pencil test animation. I used the traditional peg boards and a light box. I then scanned the images and took them into Premiere to make them into a .mov file.

Final Major Project

Hi everyone, i haven't posted for a while as i have been VERY busy completing my end of year work. But here is my final piece that i handed in on the theme of "The stuff that dreams are made of".

It was a personal one for me and quite a lengthy project. There is still a lot of room for improvement but i gave it my all and this was the one animation that i HAD to do. I had the idea over a year ago, even before i started my FdA, so it's just been waiting to come to life on screen.


Hope you like it, and please leave comments and feel free to suggest any areas that you feel could be improved :) thanks

Pencil Test

Thought that i would share my rough pencil test of the cat's walk/run cycle. After exporting it from Adobe Premiere, i realised that i should have put it on a loop because it just lasts a few seconds.

It was done with the traditional light box and peg boards, and drawing each sequential frame.

I did this in college yesterday and finally got around to exporting it today.

It is only rough though and just an experiment as i haven't done this type of animation before. It was really good actually but made me realise that the really old traditional animations would have taken years!
This short test of mine consisted of 20 drawn frames, and this only lasts a few seconds. So hundreds and hundreds of images would be needed to produce an animation of just a few minutes. Wow.

Review Friday: 'The Animators Survival Kit - Richard Williams'

If you ever find yourself stuck on an 'Animators' desert island this is the one book you MUST take with you. It has got to be the most invaluable book that I own. 

 

I have the expanded edition and bought it mainly because it was recommended to me by a friend, and at the time I was doing a project based on the walk cycle. I cannot tell you how many times I used this book as reference, every type of walk cycle you need, human and animal, a run or a slow walk, a sneak or a tip-toe, and so many more…..

(Illustration from The Animator's Survival Kit, p.142)

It has a good section on ‘pressures and weight’ and how to draw your characters in positions that are realistic to their action. It shows you how the body holds itself whilst carrying objects, how the body moves while throwing, punching etc.

(p.257)

There are lots of pages on facial expressions, lip-synching techniques, the timings needed and how the mouth looks whilst saying each sound and letter. Although I haven’t needed to use these YET, I have spent a lot of time looking at the information and it is fascinating.

(p307)

(p309)

This book will help you a great deal with frame-by-frame animation and the timings of animation. Whether traditional or digital it really covers everything.

The illustrations are brilliant and the annotations are really informative. There is so much more than what I have described but hopefully it gives you a small insight to the book, and whether it may be right for you to buy for yourself.

382 pages…’A Manual of Methods, Principles and Formulas’……’For Classical, Computer Games, Stop Motion and Internet Animations’, Richard Williams.

This is my first review for Review Friday,  so please don’t be shy and leave comments to let me know how I did and if it was helpful at all, let me know where I need to improve my reviews too,  Thanks :)

Here is the direct link to Amazon .com, but UK blog readers can click here or on the large image at the top of the post to be directed to Amazon UK.

Reviews

I will be starting a regular feature on my blog soon reviewing books, mainly, that I have used or am using to help me with my animation course.
I want to try and help anyone else who is not sure about what books or resources to buy. I have already spoken briefly about 'The Art of Wallace and Gromit' on an earlier blog entry, and cannot recommend it highly enough to anyone interested in animation or just fascinated with Wallace and Gromit. I just find it fascinating to see the original sketches and how the films were put together.

So from now on I will have a Review Friday section on my blog which is where I will review books, YouTube videos, films, and any other resources that I have used that I think would benefit anyone else, or just to tell you what I think :)

So keep posted and check back regularly, and you can follow me here or on Twitter and subscribe to my YouTube channel to see my most recent work.

New upload

I have just uploaded another video to YouTube. This was a group project including myself and two others from my class. This was our first project given to us at the beginning of the first semester, and it was definately something I had never done before. I was behind the camera and did a lot of the post production work. I think it's kind of cool for the first attempt :)

Research

One of my latest projects is to research an artist or animator and I have chosen to write about Nick Park.
I got this book the other day and it is really interesting. It shows original sketches from Nick's sketchbook as a student, of some well loved characters, and some that didn't quite make it into any films.

The Art of Wallace and Gromit (Wallace & Gromit)

It is a really interesting read if you are into animation or even if you just love the characters.

I never knew that Gromit was originally going to be a cat!

Animation Link

http://www.youtube.com/user/MichDeeh?feature=mhum
This is the link to my YouTube page to see some of my work in progress.

These are the two at the moment, my 3D animation and my Stop Motion film.
The Stop Motion was quite a test for me as it was supposed to be a group project but I ended up working alone as my partner was ill. I hadn't used the editing software very much before but really enjoyed finding audio and putting it all together in the end. The planning for the Stop Motion was very intense. Still haven't come to grips with it!

Sketches

OK, so here are a couple of sketches that I did last week. They took me ages and I copied them from an art book....which is my daughters!



Haha.......it doesn't matter that it was a kids book, they were BLOOMIN difficult to draw!

 

I want to take them into Photoshop and redraw them and colour them at some point. But at the moment they are just taking place in my portfolio.










 These next sketches I did a couple of days ago....just practicing my animal drawings.

I erased some of the print in Photoshop as it was very dark and grey....you can probably see some areas that I missed!










These are all being added to my ongoing portfolio...
I need to build it up for my end of year hand in.


I copied the pictures from a book called 'Animation 1' with Preston Blair. It shows step by step images how to draw different characters.

It's a great help for me as I am still trying to gain confidence with my drawing skills.