The Lighter Dark - The Inner Circle

The Inner Circle of the Lighter Dark Project setting up all the final renders for the Animatic Screening on the 29th of November. And I've got to say, frame render time really stressed them out, 8 hours a frame, 1 frame a computer, god knows how many computers later.... and I turn up at 8:30 am to save them all, and shove them so un-dramatically into the animatic. *sigh*

And then Drinks because, now, its done. 

  

The Lighter Dark - The day I almost cried

 

so today, I turned up at uni at 8:30 am to save all the renders for the projects first milestone screening, and this is what I turned up to. I almost cried, out Animatic was a travesty, and the frames were meant to save us. We were all stressing out. I held an emergency group call to '56' and they all said they would be in before 9 to help sort it out. Sadly the majority of the computers had completely crashed and we were forced to turn them all off at the mains. Thankfully everything was referenced in so any issues that may have occurred in such a shut down were averted. And thankfully, pushing the group so hard, we were ahead of the milestone requirements, and all the other groups, so we really did have nothing to worry about (though the group were a little miffed I had pushed them so hard)

PARK SKY

October - 11 Second Club - Take 3

its getting there. I will lip Sync. it will happen. I will have time.

October - 11 Second Club - Take 2

Honestly, I promise I'm trying...

October - 11 Second Club - Take 1

so the sketchy keyframes are kind of done, theres no lipsyncing yet, and i made sure to avoid as much lipsyncing as possible...

still deciding on a style to colour this in with and the backgrounds but the ideas are finally flowing

:) 

Pick n Mix Project (Instalment no. 6 - we bear bears)

SO

i started with character designs after the animatic went horrifically wrong... but before the final animatic... if you can be bothered to watch them.. youll see his character changes half way through one of them and stays that way from then on... So basically... i went for three designs after trolling through google images for what felt like an hour, looking for some inspiration. 

bear no.1 was a design from the teddybears made during the art nouveau period (kind of fluffy, moving joints, human like stature, beer belly, glass eyes)

bear no.2  bear no. 2 is kind of a take of from Disney's Brave, but smother with fur, short arms and big claws, which i though could be funny, animating him scraping claw marks into the panel desk or cutting through the back drop...

and  bear no.3  was a mix between the two but with pointier ears, shorter less promenant muzzle, shorter arms, mid chubbiness, and shorter rounder claws

i think no. 3 won... and i continued to use him for the animatic. he seems smoothest, curlier, and i thought could draw him in photoshop in like 20% opacity and under animation have a texture background so when he moved the pattern changed, if you get that idea.. Ill probably do a text animation if i get a chance from the other impending projects.

Pick n Mix Project (Instalment no. 5 - the animatics.....)

Pick n Mix Project (Installment no. 2)

So yesterday i posted about all my issues with the Pick n Mix project I'm currently doing and Ive gotta be honest, getting all that doubt and anger with myself out on paper... kind of.. really helped. I continued my night doing this basic storyboard for an intro.. hopefully explaining my story for the series I am to complete.. So... S1 E1 of Snowball Snowdown - and yes ill probably change that... because its corny af.

So this is the basic intro sequence on the left and to the right theres the basic shots ill need for the episode as any one person speaks.

So the premise is, its a game show.. kind of like... QI meets James Corden meets Mock the Week...  Basically, Snowball the ceramic Cat is like the Stephen Fry of the Animated world, he knows all, though he doesn't have a sidekick. Ted the Teddybear (all names are subject to change because clearly I can't be trusted to name anything... Hell i named my dog bossy and my plant oxygen.. ) and Bobo the Bronze Owl are regular Characters on the show, and team leaders who each have a guest on each episode as their team member. 

the shots I planned to use were al close up to mid shots of individuals or their pairs and the occasional  longshot to display the whole set for things like scores. I was playing with the ideas of panning shots for movement of characters so that the character can be on a walk cycle loop as the background moves as its meant to be animated in 2D. 

So.. 'Why is the script not included Tasha?' i hear you ask. Well.. ITS REALITY TV WHICH MEANS I DONT HAVE TO WRITE A SCRIPT!

best thing ever about reality tv with this project is, I can write questions and answers on cards and give it to the person who's going to be voicing Snowball and then give random answers to the other 4 voice actors some of the answers to be correct and others not.. but they won't know... and basically, sit everyone down. get people to just have a chat around the questions and then make jokes as they go... 20 minute episode with around 5 questions in total... simple... then all I would have to do is edit the sound track together, film the voice actors as they go as reference footage for movements, as well as lip-syncing. 

Christmas Art Nouveau Advert (and a rant on the side)

So, Uni Pt2. has begun.
I think the class has learnt to stay in the studio longer this year. We got assignments on day one... two assignments.  The Tv students were thrust upon us Animators and dealt to deal with them and work with them on a christmas episode. Not only did I never even meet the Tv students, but I don't recall them actually contributing to the project. Angry to say the least.  I wrote the script for the advert on day one, so my part was complete until the final stage which was the presentation powerpoint which I was meant to work on with Maj, Lucie organised and had final say as both Producer and Director. She was nice, hearing out everyones opinions before her final decision, Harriet Mira and Sam did art work and storyboarding then Amid edited... the tv students... found the track Sam chose and... took Amids footage of the meetings to make a documentary... which we never saw -.-

the thing was decent... i cried with laughter when I saw it for the first time put together, not the intended response but maybe thats because it was cringy and embarrassing more than anything else, have a look:

The second project, was less of a stress to do, but more a pain to find time to complete. Its Thursday today, and that means Class at the Poly all day tomorrow, so no time to animate before my parents come to visit at 7pm. I mean there is about 3 hours if it doesn't over-run, but then dinner and travel time, not really worth it in my opinion. This means that on Monday I have until 1pm to get it done from the time it takes me to wake up. Ill show you the problem this causes this is the piece I am meant to me Imitating:

and this is what's happened so far:

day 1 

 

day 2 (today)

so you see... its going to take longer than (9am-1pm = 4hours) 4 hrs to complete when i spent 5 hrs today and 3 the day before on this. and before anyone messages me saying 'do it at home' i can't afford to pay for adobe software.. and its pretty impossible to torrent a Mac version of Photoshop without the Adobe Suit mucking everything up so I don't even try. 

all in all. i like the advert, i do, I just wish i could have contributed more to the animatic, and as for the Art nouveau piece i need to copy... well Ill keep you updated on its progress next week. 

:) 

100th post special

since this is my 100th post and the day of the deadline for the majority of my Uni work, I have decided to upload as much as possible in one post :) that includes development work to final hand ins. the lot :)


Stopmotion
so the 20 second experimental pieces I had to make turned out pretty well.. the only problem was, i made too many and couldn't upload them all to be graded as the limit was only 2. too bad really but here is all the 'stop motion' shorts I've created:

Multimedia 90 second Experimental Project

So this is my final Experimental piece. Its obviously going to be personal as it is a self portrait piece and my voice may be completely monotone in it but with the help of my fiancé, I mixed together two 

songs that I quite liked to back up some live action which he, for the most part, filmed. 

Ranger Rick Audio Files - Stage 3

While my Uni friends aren't the best voice actors in the world, or even cornwall, but the point was to film them in order to lip-sync the characters eventually.

Special Thanks to
Alex Garbould - Non-Student as Ranger Rick
Ben Topham-taylor - Film Student - Britt the Spirit Bear
Daniel Shering - Journalism Student - as Boomer Badger
Cat Branagan - English Lit and Creative Writing Student as Scarlet Fox
Chris Vickery -  Sustainable Product Design Student as Sammy Squirrel.
and
Elliot Padfield - Games student who let me use his equipment for filming.

Stage 1 was the original Post it Notes
Stage 2 was the Preliminary Background ideas
stage 3 is the Audio Files and video for eventual lip-syncing
Stage 4 will consist of the audio synced with the post-it notes,
Stage 5 will include more in-betweens with some sound effects (hand in at stage 5)
Stage 6 will  be hopefully fully animated, if i get that far and have enough spare time.

the Ranger Rick Page 

Ranger Rick Project - Stage 1

the Ranger Rick Page