Final 'What?!' Animation!

'What?!'... the finale

Hurrah! Our deadline for the 'what?' project is now over and we managed to get everything done in time, so we can all breath a sigh of relief! We are all really pleased with the animation because it works well and captures the cut-out look and style that we wanted to encorporate into the animation, and I adore the accordian in the background (good choice Insa!) Sasha deserves a HUGE pat on the back for being so patient with animating, and with the dreaded programme After Effects! But in the end it worked really well, especially the lighting effects that were added after animating. Once everything was completed, including our individual evaluations, Sasha put all our work onto a disc which was then handed in at the studio, and we uploaded our evaluations onto moodle. I've really enjoyed working on this project with Sasha and Insa, because its the style and technique of animating that I have always wanted to try out, and we have all worked really well together as a team. Cut-out animation is definetely a style that I would like to explore further, so I will try and do some experimental animating over the holidays :) Here is the original animatic for our animation, the storyboard, some stills from the story and also the final animation. Enjoy :)

Oops the last image didnt work so well! You can have a look at thr whole thing, just click on it :)

What!!!! its nearly over!

My goodness these last few weeks have flown by! My group (sasha, insa and myself) have been busy bees getting everything ready for the final 'What' animation, the deadline for everything to be completed by is tommorrow.. eep! but I think we have all done well in keeping to our weekly scedule, all we need to do is render the final animation and voila! We will be done :) This past week Insa has been busy gathering all the sounds we needed for the final animation (I had to be the voice for the 'whats'... my voice sounds really strange on the recorder!) Insa is also friends with a guy called Mike who plays the accordion, and she managed to get him to play a wicked little tune for the background of the animation, and it works really well with the cut out style. Sasha has been a saint and put the whole animation together on flash, where she completed all of the main animating and sound syncing. She has now loaded the animation into after effects to add some special lighting effects, and will render the finished animation in this programme seeing as some of the quality is often lost when rendering in flash. So far the animation works really well, and I think w are all pleased with how it has turned out :) This week I completed the titles and credits for the beginning and end of the animation, and I also had to make some more in-between cut out pieces to make the motion of the characters look more fluid (for example when the main girl character shuts the book in suprise.) Tonight I am going to gather up all of the concept art and cut-out pieces and scan them all into photoshop to touch them up for the deadline tomorrow. Here are the extra bits and bobs I made this week, and also a still shot from the animation. Take a gander and have a look :)

Week Cinco of Experimenting!!

I have chosen to focus on continous line drawings for my rule this week, which sounded fun initially, but I found it hard to get into the style. Therefore I do not like my drawings this week since I think they look pretty weak compared to my previous drawings in my experimental sketchbook. See what you think...

Animal Firm.. here we go!

Right, I completely admit that I haven't been as keen of this project than the other two, and I have been putting it off for a while because I couldn't think of a good idea and inspiration had run dry! I have been worrying too much about trying to think of a good story therefore I haven't got stuck into the project. But I have finally decided what I am going to do and I've got cracking on some character designs! My initial plot was going to be the cliche 'experiment gone wrong' through the process of cloning human and animal DNA, and I was going to have the creatures that were created from the cloning rebel against the scientists and start capturing human beings (therefore creating the 'Animal Firm') But this did not fit to the brief very well seeing as the characters had to have a British link. The brief also stated that we had to consider how the animal firm characters fitted into our British culture and their impact on our society. Therefore my story is still going to have the scientists create the 'Animal Firm' by merging animal and human genes and cloning the results, but the scientists let the animal firm loose into the city as an experiment to see how they fit into our society and how they live their lives differently.
So the past couple of weeks I have been designing characters that have specific characterisics and personalities to suit their 'animal side,' and this week i am going to work on some concept art that shows how their lives have turned out from living amongst humans. Here are some initial sketches and my characters so far! :)

Week Cuatro of Experimenting!

Okey dokey, this weeks rule is.... 1)Pick a different book every day. 2) Choose a page at random and read it. 3)Pick a sentence that stands out to you, and draw whatever image comes to your head.
I really liked doing this weeks rule, because it incorporates two of my favourite things in the world: Reading and Drawing, wahay! Some of the sketches I drew started out quite detailed, but by the end of the week I tried to be more loose with my drawing style therefore the final doodles are more basic. The books I chose were 'The Beach' by Alex Garland (one of my favourites) 'Chocolat' by Joanne Harris, 'The Russian Concubine' by Kate Furnivall, 'Jemima J' by Jane Green and also 'Tokyo' by Mo Hayder- this book is fantastic, but it gives me nightmares everytime I read it, scary stuff! Here are my drawings from this week :)

What what what??

I have finally finsihed all of the cut-out out pieces for our 'What?!' animation, hurrah! They were really fun to make and I thoroughly enjoyed getting stuck into the designs and cut-out style of our final animation, but I must admit after making over 60 separate cut-out body parts and features it does get a bit tedious! But I am really pleased with the final outcome of the characters, and the backgrounds that Insa has made look fab! :D For the past week Sasha has worked on scanning and cutting out all of the separate character body parts in photoshop, and is currently bringing the animation to life! So far it looks really good and I love the style that Sasha has managed to capture in the movement of the characters, she deserves a medal! Once the main animating is complete, we are going to try and add the finishing details (e.g lighting, text, etc) in After effects, since flash can sometimes render movie clips in quite a poor quality. So hopefully After effects will avoid losing the detail within the character and background designs. I will post some piccies of the backgrounds soon, and hopefully some still from the animation so you can see how it is going to look :)

Week Tres of Experimenting!

It is now the third week of our experimental sketchbook project, and the rule for the last 6 days has been: draw music lyrics! We had to listen to a variety of songs that had particularly inspiring lyrics, and either draw what was going on in the lyrics or draw whatever came to our mind when we listened to that song. The songs I chose were 'Im a Lady' by Santogold, 'Maria' by Blondie, 'Either Way' by the Twang, 'Paper Planes' by M.I.A, 'Boats and Birds' by Gregory and the Hawk and finally 'Tamacun' by Rodrigo Y Gabriela. This has definetly been my favourite rule so far! We got to listen to awesome music and doodle.. what more could you want?!
Here are the images that came to my mind when I listened to my chosen songs...

What? Que? Che?

Well we are now well and truly on our way with our 'what' project, and so far I am really enjoying working on our idea! For the past week my group has been working on the pre- production side to our animation, and we have all been given certain roles with specific tasks that we have to complete by the end of the week to ensure that all aspects of our animation's pre-production are covered. Insa has been working on the visual layout and main background for the animtion, which looks amazing! Sasha has completed the storyboard, presented our idea and put together an animatic on flash which maps out how our animation will hopefully look once completed! This week I have been focusing on making the cut out characters for the final animation which we will then scan and load into whatever programme we decide to use (we are still unsure about whether to use flash or after effects.) I really enjoyed making the cut out characters because it gave me the freedom to be a bit more creative! I used cardboard, paints and brown paper to make up the shapes of the characters, and then added fabric patterns and fineliner to give the features more detail. I am happy with how the characters have turned out, as I was a bit nervous about making them before hand since I've never done any cut out animation! I tried to give the characters an almost 'homemade' look, and I think I have managed to do this. So far I think we are on track with our work scedule, so hopefully we can get cracking on the animating in the next couple of days. Here are a couple of piccies of the cut out characters I made this week! :)

Here are more of my drawings from week 2 of our experimental sketchbook project! :D

Experimental Sketchbook... Rules apply!

Well this week has gone in a flash once again! It is pretty scary how quick these days are going, before we know it all our deadlines will creep up and start nipping our ankles... gulp! For the past week we have all been juggling our time between the various projects (some, admittedly, have been more successful than others) so time management is a bit of an issue since we have to divide it by three! But I'm feeling strong about our 'What' project, I really like the idea and the style that my group and I have put together, and we seemed to get a good response when we pitched the idea to our course mates and tutors. So its all go go go on that project! This week I have just been continuing working on my character designs, and I have also made a good start on our experimental sketchbook project for Kathy. I really like the brief we have been given for this project because it has gives us a complete sense of freedom to explore whatever style or theme we want, but it also has small guidelines to stop us drawing a complete blank at the prospect of having no boundaries! Each week we have to get into small groups and think of a rule, (be it draw a certain item or different emotion, sketch a specific word or action etc) and the group has to draw this 'rule' every day of the week in a creative and original manner. Last week I sketched a map of the university campus and drew a grid map over the top. I would then think of a grid ref, look where it was on the map and go to that location on campus to find interesting things to draw. It was particularly pleasant seeing as we were blessed with sunshine that week, and I could go and soak up the rays with my sketchbook and pencils at hand :D This week our group decided to write down 7 random words on pieces of paper and put them all in a pile scrunched up. We then had to pick 7 random pieces of the paper, and draw one of the words that we had been given every day of this week. The words that I got were: Sad, Breasts, Stones, Animals, Hairy, Banana and Ice cream.. this weeks drawings are gonna be pretty interesting! :p Here are some of the drawings I have done so far out of my sketchbook, I will continue to update my dear blog with more piccies soon. Toodle ooo!