Dodgy lookin' Progress

Busy Bee

2011-11-13T21:37:00.001Z

i've been very busy with the film and thesis. Here's some stuff from the preproduction. Maybe more substantial film updates to come.

del model sheet

Ethil Model sheet

Final Penguin Design Doodle

Thumbnail storyboards

thanks

Ridin' low

2011-10-28T13:03:00.004+01:00

just a quick doodle of my good friends fast fingered fatricidal fiend doin' what he does

Extras

2011-10-26T20:02:00.002+01:00

just some background guys i was playing with

Penguin doodles

2011-10-26T19:59:00.001+01:00

not accurate but just feeling them out

Oh Noes!

2011-10-07T10:42:00.001+01:00

i may have hit a bit of writers block..

Del

2011-10-07T10:40:00.000+01:00

concept work for main character in my current film

current project

2011-10-05T18:44:00.000+01:00

im currently working on my film, im at an early stage now, just working up concept art and solving plot problems. Making a short film is hard, let alone making it well. Hopefully i can come out with something to be proud of, here's some doodles and research of the world, character development and ending with a concept sketch of how the film could look

bear doodles

2011-10-05T18:37:00.001+01:00

just a sketchbook scan, for character reference, thought of basing a character on a bear

Terminal Tim

2011-10-05T18:25:00.002+01:00

Astro Quest

2011-09-12T17:29:00.000+01:00

So here are some examples of work from my film "Astro Quest"

Coloured billy

ok so i was playing with flash and took this as a lesson to remind myself how buttons and such work. these are some smaller parts of my film astro quest, just hit the little play button man and you can see some keyed/half animated sections of my film

from humble beginnings, to intergalactic space hero to suffocation, Billy's been through it all!

as always thanks alot for taking the time to look at what im working on, cheers

Catch up post no. 1

2011-09-12T17:26:00.001+01:00

alright so here's some old work that hasn't surfaced before.

First off here's a small ad made for a fair trade project, in my feedback i was told being cruel to the little guy in my video wasn't the 'fair trade way' I used the project as a way to test out stuff in after effects, flash and premier. Green screen and compositing were fairly shameful, but i did my best, we had 3 weeks to do it and thats what i came out with. it rendered out wonky with some things showing that should have, but i was too rushed at the time to fix anything.

When clearing out my old harddrive i came across one of the stopmotion tests for an esting (for the channel e4) i was working on in second year. I spent 14 hours shooting only to scrap it all and quickly throw together a flash esting with a badly put together gorilla character

Ok so its sloppy but i thought i had destroyed it all, this was all that remains, i love stopmotion but i learned i really dislike using clay.. too bad i bought several kilos of the stuff, oh well..

i thought since im showing old work my next post will have a load of stuff from my unfinished film "Astro Quest"

i wanted to post the title card but it, with alot of other work was lost when in june or so my computers hard drive completely failed and my backup corrupted. (sucks eh?)

//edit.. found it

Its been a while..

2011-09-12T01:10:00.000+01:00

ok, i'll open with a bang, here's some more recent work. This is my first attempt at a showreel and i hope, come april/may i shall be able to take this down and link a better one from my vimeo account.

here is a link to my portfolio - also subject to renovation in the next 8 months or so

ok so over the coming week i hope to rejuvenate this blog. A more definite look should be sorted out along with a few posts. i have some sketches and that since last i posted.. ofcourse that would be expected given how long its been, in saying that its disappointing at how little i have to show for the gap.

i also found this site megaswf that hosts swf files. localhostr, which i used to use for this service only has download links now, so anyway, hopefully there shall be some more frequent updates from here on in.

thanks, i'll be back soon

My 2nd year (and first) film

2010-05-03T22:58:00.000+01:00

ok so here's the first film i have made. it look me 8 full days of solid work to make, and compared to the christmas e card i think there a steady increase in what ive been able to do in flash. im learning. the film isnt completely finished as ive had issues in different programs with exporting stuff etc, but i dont know how and dont really care to fix it.

i'll post again soon with a montage of second year work once i find a song for it.

here it is, as usual comments are greatly appreciated, thanks and enjoy

Update

2010-04-11T21:20:00.001+01:00

hello, its been a while yes i know but what can you do.

The only reason i'm updating this right now is because im avoiding more work i have to do now, i may have an end of year film in a few weeks, i hope.. and possibly 2 more animation projects.

Here are 2 animation principle projects which aren't very good by any means but i still learned alot from them, the first project is unfinished but some unfortunate things came up around the deadline which meant i lost a bit of time on it

fat jump

fat skip

here's an esting that we made as a digital project, i foolishly decided to make mine in plasticine and after a day of failed filming i made this in a few minutes with the little sausage gorilla i had made last year. i should have made millions of monkeys so it made more sense but i did it at like 2 am.. i'll revisit it at some point im sure. enjoy

im not really proud of any of these projects, but sure, i'll learn from them all, comments are appreciated

Snow update

2010-01-10T22:33:00.000Z

hello, we've had quite a bit of snow here, its given me an extended break and its eating away at the last week of my current time table, which i'm bloody sick of so happy days. Im happy to say i'll be starting puppetry for 3 weeks next week. i cannot wait. but knowing me i'll end up disliking it for some silly reason.

anyway, because of the snow i decided to post something different, here is the result of 2 hours of messing in the snow at about 1 am. hope ye like

my friend Gerard helped me to make this, i would have refined it more but i didnt want to come off as a nazi so i tried not to control everything ha

enjoy. as always, comments are greatly appreciated

Merry Christmas

2009-12-11T18:02:00.000Z

hi everyone, this was my first proper flash project outside of bouncing a ball. another festive one, hope you like it. today was my last day in college before the holidays so now i'll enjoy doing nothing until my next endeavour which should be fun. please comment and enjoy! happy holidays and all that

for now i have to link the youtube version because i dont know how to put a play button on the flv file haha, sorry for the auto play up until now

santa post

2009-12-02T21:21:00.000Z

ok, so a handful of projects have now been submitted. i have one left. the main one. it shall be a loong weekend. so who wants to see a dodgey slidey santa? keep in mind its my first go at 3d max and i'm well aware that he slides as he walks. we walked our characters on the spot then auto keyed them forward so he's sliding away and i couldn't seem to edit him after i built my scene. oh well. anyway, here ye go. comments are appreciated. its appropriate since its december i suppose.

i'll be back with the last project when its finished.. as usual comments are welcome.

after effects project

2009-11-27T18:34:00.000Z

ok so here's my after effects project, i used a super extra bonus party song everything flows. we had to use between 20 and 30 seconds of audio and sync some abstract animation to it as an intro to after effects, so here's what i did. there was a problem with the ram preview in after effects in college that we only noticed when rendering so all of our projects were out of sync, i adjusted it but its still a little off, but meh, dont care at this point. enjoy

update

2009-11-27T17:56:00.000Z

ok so i've been very busy lately so sorry for not posting, although my blog's only read by about 2 people (sorry comrades)

i've been doing mainly digital work lately. I am currently working on 3d max, after effects and flash projects among other things. I have never used after effects or 3d max before. 2 of these projects are christmas themed. i'll post things when they are complete.

also, for the past 2 weeks we had John Canemaker over from NewYork, an oscar winning animator who also teaches in NewYork. We had a week long program on acting in animation and a second week on storyboarding and staging. a big eye opener.

anyway. for now here is an early screen grab of my blocked out santa. i'll add the character design too. please keep in mind that this is not a modeling project, just an intro to max.

also i'll leave you with a little video summary of bits and bobs from last year

as always please comment

Kim possible

2009-10-07T20:36:00.000+01:00

right, so i started second year a few weeks ago and got thrown into principles. we had to do a sneak cycle and a side step using the character kim possible. We also had to keep the animation similar to the characters style.. like no looney toons like movements or anything. well here are some prelim sketches of the character first of all:

here are some early thumbnails of the keys in the sneak

and.. here are just some rough sketches to get used to kim

here are the sneak and side step animations, they were graded the other day and i did well. im well aware that the settle in the side step and her face are both off model and dodgey, but otherwise she's reasonably on model and the animation is there.

oh, and yes i know part of my hands is in one of the sneak frames.. who cares. pencil test :-P

side step

sneak

if for some reason its not clear enough just say and i can link to a bigger one or email it. thanks to anyone who reads my blog/post, as always comments are much appreciated and if ye want any information leave a comment or email and i'll respond. i don't post often but i'm on often

2009-10-07T20:12:00.000+01:00

hello, its been a while since my last post but oh well. erm here's a video of just playing with mala (plasticine), its not great, and theres no effort in it, but it was to test a new camera i got, and just play with mala, ah well. also the kirby stuff probably wont surface for a good while

i made this few weeks before the kirby post btw, from this point on i'll be posting second year stuff. hopefully it'll show improvement

Current Life Drawing

2009-05-18T00:53:00.000+01:00

here are some examples of my life drawing from this year, none of these works were longer than fifteen minutes but i think the qualities better than previous work

life drawing is so important, and i've tried to show variety in the work shown in this and the last post

comments questions and feedback are always welcome.

thanks

Life Drawing Old

2009-05-17T23:04:00.000+01:00

here is a small collection of some life drawing from last year in BCFE. Its not great but as usual.. feedback is welcome

Coming soon...

2009-05-17T01:29:00.000+01:00

ok so i've finished college and although there are loose ends to tye up im still finished so i will eventually get around to uploading the remnants of other projects. but when thats on i want to start getting into some other things this summer.

so hopefully in the coming weeks i will be able to explore some (terrible) claymation and model animation. I am also planning to post another resource post on stop motion, for lighting and possibly set building, but primarily it will be on armature design. again this is just what i hope to do. here's a shot of who i shall be working with soon

as its my own project work i decided i'd use kirby, simple and round.. i hope

also i can say what i WILL be uploading is some examples of this years, and maybe last years life drawing. and at the very least a quick example of plasticine manipulation i made to test my new camera. thanks, hopefully one of these posts will be soon.

and as always if anyone who actually reads this has any questions or anything post away, i like to know people read it ha

Walk Cycles

2009-04-30T01:40:00.000+01:00

ok here's a slightly better post than the last, here's another look back to old work, just like the bouncing ball here's a flashback of last year when i was impatient and first tried toon boom, from the limited knowledge i had i tried to animate a walk cycle, and to be honest despite how dodgey it is i like it..

anyway, the rest of the video contains my current work on the pink panther, side and front walk cycles

here are external somewhat higher quality links to movs of each pink panther walk cycle:

pink panther side walk

pink panther front walk

anyway, i hope you enjoy, and as always please comment, its greatly appreciated,

thanks.

an inbetween post

2009-04-29T23:49:00.000+01:00

few.. right i've been behind, and ugh i dunno the film has proved to be bigger than i thought, i meant to say that i bit off more than i can chew, not that the film itself will be any better, if anything it will be weaker, you should see it some time in the coming month me thinks, for now i shall post a few pencil test projects from throughout the year that i didn't have filmed here.

here is my balloon ball project, its dodgey because my home pvr cant focus on the page well at the start so i had to put my hand in to focus it, i caught it in a few frames

this is the worst project i have done withe the least effort so please dont judge too much

here we see the old sack again, he's back, and i had such a hard time finding a comfortable way to draw him. i dont know why haha

Bouncing ball... again

2009-03-24T20:02:00.000Z

i know i'm not posting much, but i've been busy, sigh. Erm i have a handful of traditional projects to go up up but at the moment they're pretty terrible and not fit for viewing, right now i'll show you my progress in flash, and general animation i suppose, some time soon i will be adding another video like this about walk cycles ha, enjoy

preproduction

2009-02-17T13:27:00.000Z

well anyway, im currently working on my animatic and if there's any feedback i'd appreciate it and may or may not upload more on the film

4TH DOWN

2009-02-17T13:19:00.001Z

ok, i know its been a while, sorry to anyone who actually reads this blog, and also thanks very much if you do, i've been very busy, but i do have more little videos to put up but i have decided to wait considering the large amount of work i have at the moment.

Currently im working on my first year film, "4th down" and as the title suggests its about american football, i will post the film as soon as its done, that should be in early april. Just keep in mind that it wont be spectacular, or probably any good as it is my first whack at it, for now here are the model sheets for my characters. i hope you like them.. im going to put them in my next post because whenever i post pictures they and up on top of all my text and im too lazy to work out how to fix it

Animation Resources

2008-12-18T00:36:00.000Z

Alright, here's a slightly updated resource blog with links and so on for various things

Storyboards:

if you storyboard your animation well, that is half the battle, here are the basic templates for thumbnails and full size allowing you to map out your film before you hit the desk

basic six panel template

Full size storyboard template

X-sheets/Dope sheets:

dope sheets are used to keep track of your frames and coordinate actions and sync with sound, these are basic templates you can use to help keep your work in order

dope sheet, 24 fps pdf

alternative dope sheet jpg

Animation Desk

not completely necessary but useful, if you want to go the classic route an animation desk can bought for various prices, thankfully even the cheap end of the spectrum are quite good, and if you are obsessive and out of range or money like myself you CAN make your own.

For those of us in or near the uk, good portable animation desks can be bought from chromacolour, like this one here

if however you feel the need to make your own here are some references from other bloggers who did the same

Brock's DIY animation desk

my own diy animation desk

here's the animation desk gallery for design ideas

there's another one that i just cant think of, i'll add when i do

here is another basic diagram from Preston Blairs' Cartoon animation

side

3/4 view

With regards to supplies Chromacolour is the most useful. but animations can still be made with normal paper, and a hole punch.

Shooting Animation:

For shooting the animation after the pain of drawing it up is done there are different options,

the first and most painful choice is to simply scan all of your artwork and import into your stopmotion or animation program but it takes forever.

one can use webcam with any basic program (examples below) and construct any sort of stand, or tripod with enough distance from your work to shoot, or simply mount your work on the wall

finally if your very into it you could get your hands on a copystand, and mount a dv camera onto it, leave pegbars at the bottom and edit directly into your stopmotion program, i use this as its clear and easy and as i am a mac user the dv camera works through firewire and was just simpler for me. it also means you have a permanent set up

here is a diagram of my copystand, they cost around 100 euro and specific lights can be bought with them, i just use different desk lamps, so you can judge the quality by my shorts

Software:

Okey dokey, There are lots of options for animation software out there. It all depends on what you want to do and how much money you have.

Digital

(a tablet will be useful here - i use a wacom bamboo fun) Adobe Flash and ToonBoom are pretty standard for the home user, they're vector based animation tools.

The other side of that you've got adobe Photoshop (cs4 onwards) and TvPaint for raster based animation software.

Traditional/Linetesters

Ok, so here we have software that can be used for stopmotion and traditional animation.

If you have a fancy dslr Dragonframe is the way to go. I would go with dragon myself.

For Linux, Mac and Windows there's Pencil, its simple to use and free

all of the above have multiplatform support

below are 2 options for Pc and Mac respectively

For the PC user there is a great pencil test software called monkey jam best part about it is its free

For mac users the most useful software, i have found is Istopmotion which starts from €50 or so. Its better than nothing and can be used with dv cameras and webcams, useful for pencil tests and multi camera stop motion.

basically all you need for these programs is a webcam.

For scriptwriting with a storyboard component try Celtx also free

Useful Books:

these are just some useful books for reference and inspiration.

Reference:

The Animators Survival Kit - Richard Williams

possibly the most useful reference book on principals you will ever read

Cartoon Animation - Preston Blair

this is an equally useful reference to any animator

The art of Layout and Storyboarding - Mark T. Byrne

If you are lucky enough to live in ireland you can find a copy of this somewhere. It is one of the most comprehensive books on the subject of layout and storyboarding that you will keep going back to

Dreamworlds - Hans Bacher

another excellent book on staging, storyboarding and art direction

Force Dynamic Life Drawing For Animators - Mike Matessi

Drawn to Life: 20 Golden Years of Disney Master Classes: Volumes 1 and 2 - Walt stanchfield

click one and 2 for links to each

Other inspirational books i would advise reading:

The Art of Walt Disney - Christopher Finch

That's All Folks The Art of Warner Bros. Animation - Steve Schneider

The Illusion of Life Disney Animation - Frank Thomas, Ollie Johnson

Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies: A Complete Illustrated Guide to the Warner Bros. Cartoons - Jerry Beck, Will Friedwald

in the sidebar to the right there there're links to useful sites that have helped me out endlessly, i hope some of this is useful

Aaand here are some simple tutorials for anyone who's curious and just wants to give it a go

Bouncing Ball

walk cycle

also, this is a bit shameless but feel free to check out the rest of my blog, enjoy!

Extra cut out stuff

2008-12-08T00:10:00.001Z

i actually have allot to post at the moment but i'll try to spread the posts out for evenly after this. I'll show you two cut out clips i was playing with, the bear one was made to try put something to sound, and also to try and slow things down as my fly cut out animation is all over the place. The other is the test of a footballer project for class, that i shoved some sound effects onto it, (amazing effects by yours truely), there are bits i like and bits i don't but oh well. Also the characters in the animation are the same, the footballer is based on the bear. anyway... does anyone read this? comments are appreciated

been busy

2008-12-07T23:55:00.000Z

ugh.. so much work, but its over now, just one more week and its midterm break. i've learned allot since my last post, but haven't really improved, here's some old and new quick pencil tests in chronological order. i've added sound so they're less boring. enjoy

pendulums' a tickin

2008-11-04T14:49:00.000Z

well i haven't put anything up in a while, busy busy, this is the only other college project i have finished at the moment. Hopefully tonight i'll have my balloon project in some sort of finished order. we'll see. On a separate note, any messing or pointless videos unrelated to college can be found here

This is also the first video (on my blog) shot with my brand new copy stand. it came a few days ago. I'm blogging right now to avoid the balloon.. so irritating,

cut out fly

2008-10-21T21:29:00.000+01:00

Ah, a very long day. I only had one class, the afternoon one was cancelled and yet i was still in till about 7. I'm wrecked. This is the only thing really i have to show for it. Our second cut out project (so much easier and more fun that current classic work.. too many balls). We were basically just told have a fly come in screen, interact with the face and leave. they face had to have elements of manipulation and substitution. Its not great but was fun and i like some parts. I know i've left things in the frame etc, like replacements but our whole class use the pvr, the girl before me took an hour and a half and i didn't wanna hold up anyone else. Ah i liked it

First cut out project: falling leaf

2008-10-17T18:41:00.000+01:00

my first go at cut out animation. im just going to regularly update this with animation tests from class. i love abstract animation class, its a lot of fun. i know its not very fluid, the ending jitters on purpose, its just my timings bad

First animation

2008-10-14T23:32:00.000+01:00

i did a cat running across the screen first first but the o'le bouncing ball is my first real go at animation. just to show you that my desk works ok. its short and sweet and far from perfect but it'll do for now

DIY animation desk

2008-10-14T19:14:00.000+01:00

Well. I'll Break in my blog. During the summer i got accepted into an animation course. This pushed me to build an animation table. There aren't a lot of examples of how to build one online, except for brock-o-rama's great one, upon which mine is based, so i know its been done before but i thought i'd put another one online for people to reference. Also its handy for those of us in the uk.

For the desk i actually just modified a desk i bought in a b'n'q for 50 euro. Its a simple computer desk. I liked the shelf on top.

I ordered a 12 field milky perspex disk from chromacolour for 30 odd pounds.

After getting the disk i was able to measure it and make a template on cardboard. After that i went to a lumber place and bought 12 euro of mdf. Which is about 4 foot by 5 foot. Its really cheap.

I marked out the circle and left it slightly off centre for some arm room. Its 54 cm high by 70 cm wide.

I used a wood router to cut a perfect circle out. Its what Brock used. I never knew, but my dad filled me in. We cut about 5 mm deep, 1cm wide all the way round to make a shelf for the plastic disk. then just cut out the middle. if you misjudge the hole at all you can just alter it afterwards with a wood chisel, just be gentle. (You dont need a woodworker to do it but its probably better. My dad and i did everything in a day) It was 30 euro to rent. They are 100 euro to buy

A second equal piece of mdf of equal dimensions was used for the base. The two pieces were attached by piano hinges. A simple solution.

It is propped up by wooden arms on either side of the disk at the back attached by hinges. Pieces of wood are placed on the base to give height options. This is an alternative method to using wedges.

We bought a circular tube light, built a wooden shelf for it and fixed it inside. It was the most expensive thing, and its easiest to find in a light specialist shop. Its not necessary though.

I bought a switch and added that for convenience.

Also, varnish or coat your mdf if your using it as it reeks of cat wee and I'm sure its not healthy.

I hope you'll see what i mean from the pictures, just ask and i'll try answer any specifics.