This is a design for the main character in a story based on Lewis Carols "Jabberwocky" I'm thinking Maya or stop mo, going into shadow puppet style, The basic story boards are in development, as well as concept backdrops. this is more long term while the Helvis project is also developing, ill post the character design and some enviroment concepts, cathy suggested more work on lighting to create dramatic effect, so ill have that in mind for the next series of concepts based on a paradise island in hell. Helo Heloha!

The Basic armature you see here is a toy with plastic ball joints, cheap and light but limited in movement somewhat.
I stuck foam "muscles" to the basic skeleton to flesh it out and even added some plastercine in places. extra foam is cut away with scissors. I was inspired by Ray Harryhausen's book on stop motion which details how various puppets are made, I thought this way was best as I dont have the latex or plaster mould and sculpting equipment yet and this way is less messy. Hands are plastercine over a wire armature but when cold plastercine tends to crack so I may have to rethink this. another problem that might arise is the hooves that are made from fimo with small magnets embedded in them, these may not be strong enough for the figure to stand so hole's may have to be drilled for tie downs.
Finally the costume, the 70's Jumpsuit is white and gold and covered in gems and decoration featuring eagles and the like, will include a few skulls and a dragon, the white should work nicely with the reds and yellows of the backgrounds, ill try and post some background concepts soon.

Animating the Ants

This seemed simple enough yet for some reason it became a chore. A bit like painting by numbers. I had forgotten the process of working in Flash and my mind kept wandering from the task. because the different animated elements are stored seperatly it proved difficult to get a good performance.The end result is a bit wooden but after slogging through lip sync I developed another character for the second voice and limited movement to head nodding and hand wagging as well as a salute every now and then. Elements began to float and I got frustrated and never got to grips with the project as a whole. Not sure why this happend as other flash projects seemed to go alright. Now slightly deflated and releaved its done and hoping foley will be more fun.

OSTN ident and helvis walk cycle

so I have finally figured out how to get some moving images up here, the finished ident and a very rough walk cycle for the helvis character i'm developing,had some trouble with this at first but after a bit more anticipation to really get a feel for the weight, it began to work. he's a big guy after all, should be fun trying to convert all of this for stop motion, still trying to work out a good technique for the lip sync.

end of term project begins

the initial ideas and concepts for the T shirt designs seemed to go down well, a few of my story boards were a bit obscure but I always enjoy the design element to these things. the can jumping from the bin after being thrown away was entirely dictated from the client and so became fairly simple to do. I am also toying with incorporating the logo in other graphics and some other ideas but the initial reaction to the ones I had done was positive.Now to start lip sync on the military ant. great idea for the audio so should work well if i keep it simple, will see!
Helvis has begun the transformation into stop motion with a puppet that is being made, i will post some shots of the various stages and a very rough 2d walk cycle. Also initial stages on 2 other stop motion ideas.

Maya animation

It took me a while to grasp the concept that each element should me animated individualy and then can be repeated to other locations to get the basic movements up and running.Going through it with someone was a lot of help as the tutorials were hard to follow. I then tweaked the graphs to try and create a bit of character, producing a slight limp and smoothing out any timing mistakes. I think the landing could do with possibly a few less bounces but i've been looking at it for so long I cant be sure! the ping pong ball and football also seem to speed up at the end but this could also be fried brain syndrome.Looking at a real football really helped for timing and squash of which there is none unless its slightly deflated but I suppose these thing are slightly exaggerated in animation to make it belivable even if it isnt true. Overall not bad for a first effort.