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.

script writing

Writing somthing that would fit in to the 90 seconds was tricky. All the ideas I had already developed for an animated film were going to be far to long, I remembered a nursery rhym from when i was a kid about a rabbit beating up mice and so I have tried to adapt it. The song really sets the pace for the animation which is a good basis to work from. It became difficult to write the script in the right format but Story- boarding it really helped and most of the desriptive narative could be thrown out. the only problem now is to work out a decent twist at the end. the mice could have their revenge or perhaps somthing totally unforseen should happen , not sure yet but will tinker with it some more.

The final characters are posted above and are definatly more appropriate for our animation , Rosie designed them and took some time to put the 3d effect on them which works really well and gives them some weight, the arms and legs were done by me in Flash and added later in after effects, its proving difficult to post the final animation for some reason but ill try and get it on the blog soon.

The first run of ideas fearured a series of windows in an apartment where the blinds would come down as a cat walks past and the letters are printed on the blinds, also a reel of film from a projector. We eventually settled on turning the logo into 4 seperate characters which we developed along with some background ideas. i wanted to try somthing abstract and looked at Picasso and Miro for inspiration for some reason the ocean kept poping up as a theme.
The animatic was produced and it became clear that our original idea was'nt going to work in the time alloted. it was scrapped and we went for somthing a lot simpler that works as just as well.
I thought it would be good to try a bit of stop motion regarding the characters but this was a little over ambitious, as the project developed the simplest designs prevailed and seemed to work best against the busy backdrop.
The sound track was recorded by my freind rob, an amazing gargeling talent and Rosie did her thing in bringing in the other audio and making it all fit in to place, All the animated elements are their but many were not used in the final as it becomes really crowded. amazing how fast ten seconds seems when your not thinking about it.
we kept elements to a bare minimum and had enough time to sort out the pre production side of things. I have posted a few concepts of the characters above which were rejected in favour of simpler designs soon to be posted!

Ok... well in to the OSTN ident and just thought Id post a few images to show a train of thought, wanted to keep it very simple and our original plans and story have been discarded, they just didnt work in the alloted time frame of 10 seconds.
the look is inspired by the art of joan Miro the spanish artist and trys to evoke a n abstract underwater feel that will hopefully set of the characters.