Monday, February 28, 2011

DCA Ident Animatic 02

I have update the DCA Ident animatic taking into account the ideas and direction Richard Morrions gave at the end of his workshop. I decided to go even further with the idea of giving each person a unique personality and silhouette in that each person entering shot and sitting down is a recognisable character from the history of cinema. Choosing the right characters was important for the ident. Only film characters who have a very distinct silhouette were going to work but I think I found the perfect 5.



The motion graphics for the logos could do with a rework but I am very happy with the idea as a whole, especially the first section.

Friday, February 25, 2011

Life Drawing 06





Monday, February 21, 2011

Creative Talent Network and Speaking of Animaton

A couple of quick links today to some interesting resources of people talking about the film and animation industry.

First is the Creative Talent Network page on Vimeo . All of the videos there are from the CTN Animation Expo. Lots of great guest speakers. Especially liked the Don Bluth and Garry Goldman talk about leaving Disney to set up on their own. Steve Hickners talk is just hilarious.

Second is a website called Speaking of Animation. It has an infrequent podcast but the quality more than makes up for the quantity. There is an interview with Richard Baneham who was animation director on Avatar that is particularly interesting as he discusses in depth the use of performance capture in the film.

Thursday, February 17, 2011

MWI Shot 12 Update Wee Two

I have started to receive the proper shots from Mike and Dan so I can start work on the animation. I have been assigned 3 shots to do. They are shots 10, 12 and 13. They run in a sequence which is quite good and should help with the flow between shots. I have decided to tackle shot 12 first as I think it will be the most complex to do as it contains all 4 characters moving either walking or moving down a hallway. First test of the character Wee Two is below.

Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Richard Morrison Workshop

The past few days we have been working with Richard Morrison to individually develop an ident for the DCA that would be shown before every screening in their cinema. The brief was quite brief but fairly open to interpretation. The only constraints were that it had the be about the cinema itself and not DCA as a whole and be between 5 - 30 seconds in length.

After a quick brainstorming session were I wrote down all the words that immediately came into my head when thinking about DCA and the cinema I had a fairly clear idea of what I wanted to do.

My keywords were:

DCA
Cinema
Films
Genres
Art House
Independent
Screen
Projectors
Light - Silhouettes
Cameras
Audience
Seats - Empty - Full
Sound - Audio

From those keywords I came up with the idea of playing with light and silhouettes and the relationship between the audience, the screen and the projector. The final piece would be shot using live action people with motion graphics used for the logos.
The first animatic is presented below.



We had the opportunity to pitch our ideas to Richard at the end of the workshop for feedback and advice on how it could be improved. The main area that he though I could improve is the start section. Mainly that I could and should push the playfulness of the silhouettes in that each person should each have their own personality and unique silhouette even if it doesn't make complete sense for the setting. Having a man with an open umbrella for example. I quite like this idea and will explore it further in a future update.

Saturday, February 12, 2011

Animation Development

A big part of this year for me is to leave with a showreel that shows my range in working in different styles of animation. So as part of my own practice and personal animation development I have chosen to work on a couple of undergraduate films as an animator. The first project is 'My Welcome Intruders' by Daniel Borg and Michael Wilbourn. A few days ago I received the first rig from Mike to do an animation test and to get to grips with the character High Five.

It was just a quick test to get accustomed to the rig so it lacks that final polish but I think it turned out quite well.

Thursday, February 10, 2011

The External World

I first found David OReilly's work a few months ago when I saw the trailer for The External World. Ever Since I have been waiting on it getting released. It is actually better than I thought it would be. I enjoyed everything about this film from the themes it conveys to the aesthetic choices in character design and animation. You can watch the trailer below or click here to watch the entire film.

The External World TRAILER from David OReilly on Vimeo.

Friday, February 04, 2011

Direction Workshop

All this week we have been working through the process of coming up with an idea, scripting, storyboarding to eventually producing a short film. At the start of the week everyone had to come up with an initial idea following a strict set of rules.

The rules are as follows:
The film had to be 1 minute in length.
It must feature 3 human characters.
Have a beginning a middle and an end.
Have a minimum of 7 shots and a maximum of 10 shots.
It must also have dialogue.

I found coming up with an idea quite difficult but was able to write out a script ready to pitch to the rest of the group. My idea was based round people being uncommunicative with others first thing in the morning and it is titled 'Too Early For Coffee' Click on the title to read the script.

My script was one of the two chosen to be made but I did not join the group that were to film it. Instead I was part of the group who worked on Tricia Anderson's script titled 'All Made Up' As well as Tricia who was the producer, James Bell was the director, Kaye Cao was editing and I was the director of photography setting up the lights, operating the camera and some sound recording.

Although it was a long week it went surprisingly well and we were all pleased with the final result.



If I can I will also post the other groups film as I find it quite interesting to see the differences between the original script and final film.

Tuesday, February 01, 2011

Motion Capture Research

I found this cool use of motion capture that was used in a short film called 40 Years.Using motion capture is something I have an interest in especially in how an animator can enhance the emotion and intent of the original performance.


'40 Years' (Dir. Russell Appleford) Motion capture transfer rig demonstration for shot #124. from Russell Appleford on Vimeo.

Seen at On Animation.com