Dark Descent: Dog Shots

Grethe gave me a few shots of the dog to block colour, which were really nice to do because it was something a bit different and you had to think about where the markings of the dog's fur would be. Tom put together a really helpful sheet on how to paint the fur markings, so following its guidelines I managed to complete the block colours for these two shots. The 1st one was nice and easy because I literally had to colour in one frame and hold it throughout the shot; the second one below was a bit trickier, but still good fun to do:

Shelves and Herb Pots

The pasty shop set walls were looking a tad bit bare inside, so I thought it would look at bit more homely to have a few shelves up so that we could put some bakery bits and bobs on them. To make up the main structure of the shelves, I sawed two long rectangular pieces of wood and also cut 4 small triangles to make up the wooden support under the shelves.

Once these pieces were cut, I glued them together with strong wood glue supported by gaffa tape, and left them over night to set. Once the wood glue had dried and the shelf structures were sturdy I painted them with a few coats of wood varnish, and also dry-brushed some brown umber paint here and there to make the shelves look a bit older and worn. Here are the finished results:

To go on the shelves, Andy found some tiny battery parts that looked a bit like small jars and he said they would look nice as little herb pots. So I painted them with a base coat of black acrylic, and them painted the 'tops' of the jars an assortment of colours. Whilst they were drying, I made some tiny labels by cutting out cartridge paper and painting a ochre wash over them to look a bit older. Once the wash was dry, I added a different herb name onto each label with black fine-liner and then stuck them straight onto the little dried pots with pritt stick. Here are some pictures of my progression, and also the finished results on the shelves I made earlier:

Trays and Shop Bell

We had some spare milliput lying around and we needed a few more baking trays for the pasty shop interior. So I mixed the two parts of milliput and quickly sculpted some trays on some baking paper to stop them sticking (once milliput sets it is rock hard and welds to any surface!) Once these were dry, I coated them with a layer of poly-filler to help the base coat of paint stick later on.

Whilst the milliput trays were drying, I remembered that we needed an old-fashioned door bell for the pasty shop set, to be glued next to the front door and add the sound effects in post as the puppets walk in and out of the shop. To make the bell, I looked up a picture of one on the internet, and sculpted the different sections that make up a bell out of black fimo clay, and baked these in the oven for about ten minutes. Once the fimo had set, I let it cool down and then glued the sections together with araldite glue.

Once the glue had set, I coated the fimo bell with a layer of poly-filler which dried really quickly because I only gave it a thin coat. I then sanded down both the baking trays and the bell with a small nail file (good for getting into small places!) and then painted them all with a base coat of black acrylic paint.
The bell looked a bit too 'perfect' with just the black undercoat, so I added a rusty metallic effect with both acrylic paint and also metal emulsion. I forgot to take a picture of the finished bell, so I'll put one up soon :)

Dark Descent: Old Man Shaking Shot

This shot took waaay longer than I expected because the old man only moves a tiny amount in each frame to create a 'shaking' effect so it became a bit fiddly after a while. I completely forgot that Tom said the colour could be repeated after frame 20 because the animation is looped, and I only remembered half way through. But Grethe showed me a way to copy frames and place them wherever they are repeated which saved me some time :) Here's the finished block-coloured shot:

Dark Descent: Trickier Shots!

These next few shots were a bit trickier to colour because they had quite a bit of movement going on. The shot where the old man is running out onto the boat deck and staggering about had a change in movement very other frame so I couldn't repeat coloured frames more than once, therefore these took me longer to complete than the last few shots. However they were good fun to do because the constant movement kept me on my toes, here are the two shots with blocked colour:

Dark Descent: Another Shot

This shot was nice to colour because there is minimal movement on the body  so the colours for the body and clothes could be held throughout the animation. It was only really the head and hair/beard that moved in this one so I managed to get it done pretty quickly:

Dark Descent Colouring: Quick Facial Shots

These videos show the next few shots that I block-coloured, they were nice and simple to do because I literally had to shade in the skin on the first frame, and then hold that colour for the whole shot... easy peasy!

Dark Descent Colouring: First Shot

Alongside my work for 'Pasty Child,' I have also been helping out with colouring a few scenes for Miguel's 2D film 'The Dark Descent.' The film follows the story of an old man that is spending his final years on board his boat with his dog as his only companion. But a series of events causes the old man to experience traumatic flashbacks of memories that he would prefer to forget, and these flashbacks eventually overtake him completely. 

My (very) shortened version of the story doesn't do the film justice because the concept is fantastic and I'm really excited to see what the finished results will be like! Grethe is the head colourist on the film, and I would be working alongside her by helping out with some of the block-colouring of the animation that Tom is working on. Once the block colours are done, Grethe adds highlights to create more depth, and once the animation colouring is complete it is put together with the backgrounds that Miguel is putting together. So far it's all looking brilliant!

This is the first shot that Grethe handed over to me to work on. I had never used TVP before so she sat down with me and showed me which buttons and tools to use, and also gave me a special palette that had different colours for the skin and clothes of the old man. Once I felt a bit more confident Grethe let me have a go at the block colouring, and here is the first shot that I completed. I'm pretty happy with the result (although some bit do look a bit messy :s) but it feels good to have a go at something new :)

Bedroom Done and Dusted!

I am happy to say that the filming of the bedroom is complete, hurrah! All of the props, the set and the pasty child puppet have been completed, and Andy and George have been working like troopers these past few weeks getting the animation done and dusted for this set. I am really impressed by the animation they have done so far, it's great to see everything coming to life and the puppet looks great against the set and props. Whilst the guys are filming I have been working away in the background getting on with making props and doing bits and bobs for the corridor and shop sets, so e have a good system going on at the moment. Here are some piccies of the pasty child in the finished bedroom set:

Pasty Shop Hanging Sign

The pasty shop set is going to have a main sign stuck onto the top half of the centre wall, but we also thought it would look really nice to have a shop sign hanging from a pole stuck straight onto the shop, to make the set look more believable and add extra detail to the shop walls. I started making this prop by sawing off a small rectangular piece of thin wood to make up the main base of the shop sign. Once I had filed down the edges, I cut some wooden coffee stirrers (these have been really helpful!) into small pieces and glued them around the edges of the rectangular piece of wood to make a 3D edging. Whilst the glue was drying, I cut a measured piece of aluminium metal tubing to make up the pole that the sign would eventually hang from. Once the edging had dried onto the sign base, I covered the whole thing with a layer of poly-filler and sanded it down once dry, to cover up any cracks and disguise the wood grain:

In the meantime whilst the poly-filler was setting, I glued squares of wood I cut into shape onto both ends of the metal tube pole, one square larger than the others on one end for bigger surface area to glue onto the shop set. I also glued a plastic ball that I cut off the end of a pin, and glued it onto the smaller square end as decoration. Once this was dry, I covered the entire pole with a layer of poly-filler and sanded it down, to help paint stick later on:

To allow the sign to hang from the pole, I made two holes on either side of the top of the sign using sharp tool. Once these holes were deep enough, I glued two sections of aluminium wire into the holes to make 'loops,' so that chain could be attached later on. Now that the main structure pieces were complete, I sprayed the main sections of the pole with metallic paint. I then painted the edging around the sign and also the wooden squares stuck onto the pole with the same green paint used on the outside shop walls. Once this was dry, I painted the middle section of the sign black, and then added the text 'Mr and Mrs Leg Pasties' onto the surface with a thin brush and white acrylic paint. Now that the painting was complete, I attached some thin gold chain onto the aluminium hoops using a small pair of pliers, and then linked up the chains with small jump rings so that they could be hung from either corner of the sign:

Here are a few photos of the sign finished and hanging from the shop:

1890 Character Turn-Arounds

Oo I completely forgot to post these! Here are the character turn-arounds I completed for Insa's BMX film 1890. Insa wanted some 2D character animation in her film and needed to know how the characters she designed looked from certain angles to help with the animation. Insa gave me a few sketches on how she wanted two characters to look: one was a big muscly guy and the other a angry-looking little panda, both of which fitted really nicely with her film style. From these sketches, I had a go at drawing up some simple turn-arounds for each character in a few poses; it was quite tricky trying to think of how the big muscly guy looked from a side angle but I think they turned out ok. In comparison, the panda was such easier to draw in different angles, and I shaded in the darker areas on the character's fur in Photoshop (at some point I will colour in the muscly guy in Photoshop as well, but for the time being I left him as plain lines as I was unsure as to how he should be coloured.) Here are the results:

Crisp Stand

Lauren-Prior Smith from the second year of our course made us some fantastic props to go in the pasty shop set, including lots of teeny tiny packets of crisps. To display the crisps, we thought it would be a good idea to make a stand for them to sit in just like real bakeries have. So this was the next prop I got started on... and I am very glad it's done now because it was a tad bit tricky to make! The first section I made was the main 'stand,' which was pretty easy to construct. I simply glued a few wooden lolly sticks together and cut them into a square once they had dried to make the base. I then glued a taller piece of metal tubing onto one of the sides of the wooden square to make the main stand. It was a bit fiddly trying to fix the tube onto the wooden base because the araldite glue I was using was being stubborn and not setting. So to make the structure sturdier and add extra surface area for glueing, i glued a piece of aluminium wire across the tubing and bade to ensure that it was secure and sturdy enough to hold the crisps in the end:

I wasn't sure how to go about attaching the crisps to the stand, and initially thought it would be a good idea to bend a long piece of aluminium wire into little baskets for the crisps to sit in. This however turned out to be easier said than done, because the wire was difficult to push into place and the baskets ended up looking really messy and clumsy. So I ended up scrapping these first attempts and tried a different approach by glueing separate sections of wire to make a similar basket shape. However once again the araldite glue was misbehaving and not setting properly (I don't think I mixed it correctly and once the glue did finally set, the sections of wire easily snapped away from each other. After some torrents of foul language I gave up on the baskets and sulked over a cup of tea.

Once I had calmed down (tea is very soothing) I decided to forget about the wire baskets and instead attach a series of shelves, one on top of the other with a bit of space in between, all the way up the middle aluminium tubing stand. To do this, I followed the same process of making the wooden base by sticking together lolly sticks and cutting three equal squares to make up the shelves. The crisps would fall off the shelves without some sort of restraints, so I thought it would be good to attach a railing around each shelf. To do this, I bore a hole into the corners of each shelf using a sharp tool. This was fiddly because the wood started to splinter if you pushed too hard, so I secured the shelves with a layer of masking tape to hold their shape. Once the holes were wide enough, I cut and bent small pieces of thin aluminium wire, and carefully inserted each end of a section into the holes and secured them with superglue:

Now that the shelves were complete, I could attach them to the main stand. To do this, I glued each shelf on individually with a piece of wire behind it like I did with the base using araldite glue once again (this time I learnt my lesson and made sure I stablised it with gaffa tape and left it to dry.)I repeated the same process for each of the shelves and also attached a small piece of wood onto the top of the stand as a sign.

We thought the stand would look nice if it looked all 'metal' so I sprayed it with an initial grey undercoat and then sprayed a layer of metallic paint over the surface. However it didn't look quite right when it was all metallic, So I painted the lolly stick shelves and base a light beige colour and then brushed wood varnish over the surface to bring back the wood effect again. I left the wire a metallic colour, but painted the wooden sign the same green as the outside shop walls and added the text 'crisps' onto the surface with a thin brush and white acrylic paint.

At last the structure was finally complete, so I glued the crisp packets straight onto the shelves so that they wouldn't move during filming. Here is the finished result... phew!:

Open/Close Sign

To make the shop front look a bit more authentic, we thought it would be good to have a little open/close sign hanging from the door. It was a pretty easy prop to make, I just sculpted the basic shape out of milliput by flattening out a rectangular and adding detail around its edges with a thinly-rolled piece. Whilst the milliput was still wet, I poked the ends of a section of aluminium wire into the top corners of the sign to make the hanging part, and once the milliput dried the wire was fully set into the sign. I then coated the dried sign with a thin layer of poly-filler to ensure that the paint would stick:

Once the poly-filler had dried, I filed it into shape with a small nail file and then painted over the filler with a base coat of acrylic paint. For the finishing touches, I used a teeny tiny brush and painted the words open and close onto either side with white acrylic paint: