The Ident project for Exeter was to create a short 30 second animatic to celebrate the 10th aniversary of the festival,I had an idea initialy about a cuckoo clock and this was developed within our group into something that would encorporate many different techniques in animation and some motifs that would allude to the 10th aniversary and the Phoenix building itself, hopefully it will apeal to the Exeter audience who are described as being "a funny bunch". I story-boarded the scenes and produced some Concept designs to help communicate the idea. When it came to the animatic the first scene didnt work for me, it was a dolly in to the round window from the establishing shot, while this allowed the audience to see the various mechanical trumpets and such come out it also meant that the Egg on top which was to slowly rotate and desend became lost and obscure. I decided that a cut to the top of the tower (when we see the egg descend) was needed, then a pan down the tower and zoom through the window. we lose the trumpets but seeing the egg travel down inside the tower is more important. Rosie put the boards together in after-effects and it bagan to come together. Having the cogs move around and floor boards and the little wooden ducks really helped sell the idea, I dont think still images would have done it. Mike did some work on the sound track, the original idea was to have a slow build up of sounds based on the initail "tick tock" sound but this did'nt happen. I think trying to find the right sound effects took longer then expected.

So here are the stop mo models, not sure what happened with the colour of the last images! looks like its in reverse. I am going to try some stopmotion with the armatures before I start on helvis (If there is time), I seem to be focusing on what things look like and neglecting the actual animating which is something I did'nt want to fall in to. If I can manage to animate Helvis to the sound recordings I got then i will be very pleased.

The king is back!

Helvis is progressing as a stop mo model and as a result looks a little different to the 2D designs, as it happens I kind of prefer the new look. more work on the head is needed as well as the addition of a cape. I have posted the designs as well as a little bit of flat graphic work i did to get a feel of the concept as a whole. I will include these in the design bible when I eventually get around to it. I will post a picy of the stop mo model soon. I have also found some old ELVIS LPS I want to record and try some lipsync to! hopefully the new head wont melt.

Stop-Mo

my attemts at lip-sync were hindered by hot lights and melting plastercine which became very shiny. my original plan was to replace pre made mouth parts as different sounds are created, this was impossible due to the sticky plastercine losing its original shape. the results are very rough , next step is to recreate the whole face and seperate jaw using fimo. plastercine can be used to smooth out the join but thats all. Moving the armature itself was a bit better but I still need lots of practice before anything descent will happen.

the start of everything

Summer 08

This Summer I had an opportunity to produce some story-boards for a short educational animation on how Tin is formed. Starting with the Big bang and including proto-planetary solar systems, the Earth cooling and continents colliding. The trick, I found was to create a flow to the direction moving from one point to the other as the narration dictates. Once this was done colour keys and a bit of concept work was required for the clock. These will hopefully act as a guide and give an idea as to what it all should look like, drawing squiggely lines for the storyboard is fine, but more info is required for a decent animatic.

Final thoughts

Initial Ideas and the Conceptual stage of this project I enjoyed but when It came to animating other peoples concepts it became hard work, I had really thought Id be able to get to grips with this but it wasnt the case, Im aware now that I only really like working on my own ideas, This does'nt bode well for employment in the industry (unless its preproduction) and worried me slightly but to be honest It helps me understand how I can direct my porfolio to suit a certain area of expertise. Above is an idea based on the tshirt design logo but I got the impression the client thought it was a bit off! no pleasing some people, Panda with a hard on though? fine.