"aw, this is my favorite advert, its so funny!!!"

I was being sarcastic, i'm tired of adverts that use babys to entertain us....



with the evian one, you might want to read a previous post http://tommathieson.blogspot.com/2010/01/evian-roller-babies.html





even baby dogs seem to do the trick

Looking Back

Dont think i went into enough detail on this one.

This test animation (above) was really bad, but i didn't really say why. Maybe I didnt realize why it was bad, i just knew it looked awful (and by watching it, i can quess you'll think its bad too)

It looked good in theory, well on paper, but what I didn't do was take perspective into acount. His hands were suppose to come towards you as he stretched them out towards the camera, and get smaller as they stretched out backwards, but they stay the same size through out, which lead to the perspective frames looking like his arms got smaller.

Also, of coarse, it only had three frames.

Filter Flex

The net of a filter packets looking like its showing us its guns...the bends in the card look like veins as well!

The backs just as good, this ones got eyes (pretty big ones)

Kinetic | A talk with Rick

We booked a session with Rick from Moving Image. We wanted to run through are ideas which we had highlighted in the ideas storm brain tree.

The feed back we got from Rick was good.....meaning he didnt like all are ideas, so it narrowed are amount of ideas down to about two or three.

Here are some notes i took when Rick was with us, he gave us some suggestions of artists as well.

We narrowed are ideas down to, like i said, two or three ideas.

1. Gravity

2. footsteps.

3. somthing else that i can't think of right now!

we then brain tree'd idea spider thought are three ideas (which ill shall put on here as soon as i can) to think of why we wanted to do these things, why they relate to kinetic etc..


This was successful as we started to see which ideas had the most possibility and deeper meaning. also we came up with more ideas to make them even better, so it was a productive session!

kinetic | Recycling Old Posts | 1

 I forget when this was said in the briefing, but i know it was mentioned...The final thing we come up with doesn't have to be moving, just representing movement/kinetic. This made me think of an old post about an animator called Robert Clampett.....

Looking at the still imagery, you see a lot of movement...the screen grabs below are from John Kricfalusi blog.

Each one has so much going on, yet its only a screen grab.....maybe there's something in this!

Kinetic | What Does It Mean! (also some initial ideas)

 Such a broad brief, you can do a lot with the word 'Kinetic', you can go in soooo many different directions. But I think a good place to start would be to understand the word Kinetic.

Definition - 1. Relating to, or resulting from motion.
                   2. (of a work of art) Depending on movement for its effect.

that last bits quite nice 'depending on movement for its effect' it reminds me of chain reactions, Something moving leads to something else moving and so on and so on.....could be something in that?


 Helen said when they (the tutors) were reading the brief out, she immediately thought of lines/ arrows this lead to the idea of a journey, a literal journey? who knows, but I like it.
One idea which everyone took an interest in was about water. Water makes stuff move, like for example a message in a bottle, if it wasn't for the water it wouldn't move (unless very strong winds etc), this was linked to an idea Helen had about a journey.


Last night I wrote down an idea/ something i remember from the days in college. When visiting the Tate I sat in a room looking at something which someone had made....I took a picture of it....

What it was, was a load of mirrors attached to string (like a mobile....not the phone!) and then light shone on them, like a disco ball, and it made different light reflections on the white wall.  It relayed on movement and light to become a piece of art.

I was fascinated by this and I sat in there for a good 30 minuets (jack can clarify that!), but why did i sit there so long?
Well, it was always different. The light never reflected back in the same pattern ever again, which is why i never got bored of it.


 
When speaking in the group I talked about an idea of 'every movement is different' which started off in my head as walk cycles. taking a quote from 'The Animators Survival Kit'...

Thinking of 'every walk is different' I was also thinking about moods and how your walk changes depending on what mood your in....there's something in that as well.


This walk cycle idea lead to footsteps and how you never walk in the same place even if that's what your trying to do. Before we talked about the idea of footsteps, Bill joked about just presenting a room which we all just walk in and out, one after another, to show movement!....But why not! the idea of footsteps lends it self perfectly to this idea, because we can show (somehow) that even when doing the same thing, its always going to be different!

Kinetic | The Team

Paul Underhill - Illustration
Tom Mathieson - Moving Image
Helen Porter - Graphics
Bill Morales - Graphics

Yer, I like my group, they all seem like really nice people. Spending most of Tuesday together we all seemed to get on well.......for now! nah, seriously, I have a good feeling about this.

Once we got the brief (after hours of waiting!) we all sat down and discussed. We did a mind map of 'what moves', now...we were all very jolly and talkative when making a tower for an egg, but all the team building exercises in the world cannot prepare you for coming up with ideas. when your on your own its hard enough, but to speak about an idea you have can be pretty tough. As well, to elabrate on other peoples ideas to come up with something cool also takes confidence and also quick thinking, or else your all just sat there.


This is the 'mind map', 'brain storm', 'ideas tree', 'political correct ideas board', what ever you want to call it, below.

The ones highlighted are ones which we thought were the strongest ideas...or ones we liked the most. We would talk to Ric (tutor) to hopefully get an idea of which ones he thought might have the most potential.

Thinking of ideas took us to the end of the day. For Friday we said we would research 'Kinetic' keeping in mind are initial ideas but also keep thinking of other ideas.

7x7 | Evaluation

 Although the Evaluations late, I felt I couldn't say all I wanted to say in the last few hours of hand in, I wanted to cram in everything I wanted to say, and I wouldn't have remembered it all in that short space of time. I also love to evaluate stuff in detail so I'm doing it anyway...

 At the start of this year we had to pick out things which we thought have improved from the first year....i wrote 'time management'. The time management on this brief went straight out the window, I would say this is because of the blend of personality within the group (me n luke)
Luke is a really laid back person, not always in a bad way, because I stress a lot (in my head...i don't think i show it) and in this brief I calmed down when thinking about how much time we have, but sometimes I did stress out which lead to being blind to what Luke had to offer, which I'll take about.
So I've gotta think about when it is time to stress and when to relax more, I got it wrong in this brief to an extent.

I still made lists of stuff to do, other wise I would be lost, which did help out for each day we were in, knowing what was left to do etc..
Also, like I said, i didn't panic as much but still had it in the back of my mind, for example, when thinking of Ideas with luke on shots to do, Luke came up with some really nice ideas, but i felt it may eat up time, so i suggested simpler ways to do it, which sometimes he was happy with, some times wasn't happy with. The snow for example, Luke wanted each snow drop to be, lack of a better word, 'unique' meaning they all move differently. I thought this was way to much work (keeping in mind everything else we had to do) so I suggested layers of snow which we tweened in after effects, Luke was apprehensive and thought it looked too 'wooden', but liked it in the end....then when it came to animating the snow, Luke came in (after the weekend) with an animated snow which looked f****g awesome, which made it look less wooden but kept simple.

This snow situation made me realize that Luke produces really good imagery, he also did some cracking stairs, but because he's so relaxed, I started to stress and as a result I did stuff myself so that everything stays on target. Maybe if I was less of a stress head i would have held out for more of what Luke had to offer.


 The Illustrators....They were nice guys, again, laid back about the project, they weren't to fussed what we did, in terms of, for example, if we were to show them something they wouldn't have got any constructive criticism. Maybe are work was so good it didn't need changing in their eyes.......I highly doubt that, but looking around when working, seeing other gropes illustrators come in to see how things are going made me think are illustrators had forgotten about us. Their was Oriana which her illustrator doing the animation together! then there was jack showing what he had done and getting told things which he should consider changing.

I might be being too harsh on the illustrators, maybe we (Me n' Luke) could have got in touch with them more often, saying "come and see what we have done so far" but because, as I wrote above, we got the impression that they weren't that bothered, we thought its best just leave it.
They gave us the freedom thought which was good!


In terms of research and sketchbook work, I think I didn't do as mush....much (sketchbook) as I normally do, still did a fair bit. Research wise, didn't look that far into stuff as I think we could have done.
But, recording the collaboration, i think, was well recorded. Looking at each day in depth and speaking truthfully about what happened as I did it as it was fresh in my mind. 


 Overall I enjoyed the brief and we have ended up with something which we're prowd of (I'll speak for my self)
One thing which I'm personally prowd of, was the animation of the hands in two of the shots. I did a lot of work over the summer to improve my animation skills, and also did lots of drawings and focused in on hands, because I find them hard to draw (i have a sketchbook full of them!...weird)
But yer, its nice to see my skills working well in a real situations.

"Bye Bye Edward Foster"

7x7 | Tuesday 5th October 2010

Nutshell - animated frame by frame a cycle of hands moving and put ABSOLUTLY everything into aftereffects....except two or three things.

(click on pictures and my head will explode)

This text is from the above scans...

Got in & started putting the fall sequence together, I had to animate arms trying to balance the protagonist which took about an hour and a half. After that I had to scan them in & make them into a silhouette, then wacked them into after effects ready to animate. ***to make the movement of the protaganist trying to ballance him self, over the weekend, i recorded my self doing just that.....enjoy below***

While I was doing that, Luke showed me the stairs he'd done over the weekend, they were awesome, except we needed snow on them, so he added that, then wacked that into aftereffects. 

During the afternoon we got everything together in aftreeffects & got everything at the right time frame.....then started animating!

Animating him walk up stairs was quite stressful and took along time to do (frame by frame is sooooooo much easier) but somthing is done which we're happy with.

We also did some more of the movement needed, it all just needs to be finished off & we need to add the snow and a dead guy plus sounds.....and we're done!

God days work but starteing to panic!

Also no sign of the illustrators, they seem to have left us to it.

_______________________________________________________________________

 What i do at the weekends...

The above videos helped me animate the arms....this is how they turned out (below)...I had to animate his hand coming from his waist which would then go into the circular motion, but that firs frame wouldn't be needed again as it would just constantly go round and round, so the one labeled '7-2' is the one that will like the seventh frame (the last one) to the second one (which is the start of the loop/ circular motion) 

These (below) are the neat copys

7x7 | Friday 1st October 2010

Nutshell - Started putting everything into aftereffects.

(if you click on the pictures and scans, the more stressful the brief gets)  

This text is from the above scans...

Started to put everything together in aftereffects, I made Imported all the files for the fallshot (the arms & man) & also started to animat him. I will be able to move the animation to the right time once all the other shots start getting imported.
I also made the three silhouettes needed for the animation in three different positions for each shot.

Luke made one of the backgrounds, the one needed for the last shot, it looked really good but once he gave it me to put onto after effects we realized about the snow and that in the animation its snowing, meaning we need snow on the top of the backgrounds (its a skyline) so snow needs to be on the top of the buildings. I did that quickly & it made it look really Christmasy, awwwwwwww....

Any way, next tueasdy, just going to keep on animating & making backgrounds....and also keep thiking of sonds which we might start testing. Luke also said he'd do some of the stairs over the weekend, so hopfully we might have some more stuff to animate straight away on the tueaday!
I's going to do somthing towards the fall...the shot before it, where he trys to balance himself.  

 __________________________________________________________________________

 These are the silhouettes which I drew then scanned in and added a pattern from the patterns we got the other day from the wallpaper store...

Then this is them with the pattern... the one on the right has been flipped because it worked better for the shot...

Look...

this (above) is are 'final' storyboard, he's walking, on the first frame, with the camera on his right shoulder, then on the third shot its on his left hand side....not good, never cross the imaginary line. That's why I changed it.

7x7 | Tuesday 28th September 2010

Nutshell - Made a test of the character falling, didnt like it so worked harder. Luke made a list of sounds and recorded some cereal for snow.

(click to make it larger....the scans and pictures)

This text is from the above scans...

Started off the day by showing Luke a test I'd done at the weekend, of the shot where Edward Foster is falling down the stair case.
I knew I didnt like it because the arms were not animated well at all, but i wanted his oppinion on how mant frames it should be (I had done three) Luke thought it needed to be smoother and also animated again, i totally agreed, so thats what i did for most of the day.

Luke put a list of sounds we may need for the animation together and tried to start recording them. He had the idea of the foot in snow being the sound of crunching cereal (Kellogg's crunchy nut) but it sounded too glassy. I suggested crushing the 'crunchy nut' to a fine consistency then trying that. That sounded better.

We were hoping for (off the illustrators) backgrounds and stuff, we got e-mailed some patterns off one of them (nuttall) and one came in and gave us a photoshop file of a watch we needed (which would, at some point be animated ticking round) so that was helpful, but we were hoping for stairs and backgrounds skylines as well, which we didn't get. Luke put aside the sound making and started on making the backgrounds/skylines.

I'd done a much smoother and better animated fall sequence which we were happy with, and once we had the patterns off the illustrators i started colouring the character with those patterns.
Lastly we thought the amount of patterns weren't enough (we got two) so we went to the wallpaper shop and got some patterns from there, which we then scanned in. from that we got some better patterns and an idea for the blood stain at the end of the sequence ***It was Lukes idea to get more patterns which wored out very well for us***

Next Friday, get animation shots on the go and get the final set peaces done. And just carry on like that till the end. also thinking of sounds as well!

______________________________________________________________________

This is the crap fall test, it wasn't thought out well enough...

This one is much better, and I'm pretty proud of it.....all my work over the summer, practising animation and its principles is paying off...

 Here's some Kellogg's crunchy nut

 
This is what we got off the illustrators....we were hoping to get stairs and backgrounds remember...

These were made by Luke which we really wanted (the top isnt meant to be gray, it is transparent at the moment)...

7x7 | Friday 24th September 2010

Nutshell- ill most of the day.....all day.....so not much was done, talked to chris and changed some of the storyboard. went to buy some snow and did a test, but ending up doing it on the computer. Nothing off the illustrators. that is all.

(the more you click on the images and scans the runnier my nose will get)

This text is from the above scans...

Not alot was accomplished today (being ill didnt help). we had asked the illustrators to give us anything they do before the next time we meet up, which would be tuesday, hust so we could start doing stuff, but we got nothing.
So we carried on doing tests and drew out a neat storyboard of what we think is are final one ***it turns out it was***

Befor Luke got in, I had talked to chris about how things were going, so i showed her the animatic which we'd done. from this we came up with two changes...

1. we had kept going from sillouhett to detaled shot of the character, chris thought it might be a good idea to keep the character sillouhetted untill the fall, then show his face.
2. still keeping with the 'sillouhett to detailed character problem', a shot was thought up of having him coming up the stairs as a sillouhett then fading into a detailed illustration as he starts to fall.
it was a good idea, but I was thinking of time and how little we had, so i made a desission to leave it out. Luke arrived after this.

We'd gone and bought cotton wool for snow (it snows in are animation/story) we were going to green screen it then put it over the top of the animation in after effects.
the tests were awful, but extremely entertaining to do. Still, we had to find a way of making snow as the cotton wool didnt work (too heavy and blurred)

I was thinking of layers and having snow closer to thw screen falling fast, and also bigger, and snow in the bacground falling slowly and much smaller. So we tried somthing out in photoshop and wacked it inot after effects and tweened it to make snow!

I thought it looked good, Luke was a bit apprehensive and thought it looked a bit wooden. We have kept with it for now tough.

Next tuesday we will 'hopefully' have all the stuff we need off the illustrators and we will do somthing are selves, then start animating!

__________________________________________________________________________

 This is are neat storyboard with the changes which I talked about with Chris...

This is a flash animatic with the new shot in...

This is the cotton wool...

After the cotton wool didn't work (we lost the footage of the test, which is a shame) we did this test on the computer, it looks really good, but obviously were have given in to the computer :(

These (below) are later snow animations, ones we used for the final animation, which luke did...

7x7 | Tuesday 21st September 2010

Nutshell - Made an animatic in flash during weekend, showed it to Luke and Rick on the Tuesday and changed it accordingly. Showed new animatic to the illustrators in the afternoon and they liked it. we got the combined character of them......but it wasn't combined.

(clicking on the images and scans makes it bigger!)

This text is from the above scans...

We were going to be showing the illustrators are storyboards, but on Sunday 19th, I was imagining are storyboards in a 20 second clip& thought that the amount of shots we had would mean that on average each shot would get, like, two seconds and seems as thought some shot need more time. others might get half a second!
So on Sunday night i made an animatic on flash, and from that we could see if shots may need taking out if some shots don't work.

Back to Tuesday, I showed Luke n' he liked it, we thought that maybe it would work as a peice of moving image. but after speaking to rick we thought that maybe we were trying to tell too much of the story in such a little amount of time.
so we cut out some shots (ones which were happy with!) and seems as thought we took shots out, we made the remaining shots last longer making the speed of the piece much slower which is  more in keeping with the atmosphere of the story

The illustrators liked the storyboards and animatics, (the slow one with less shots).........then we got to see what they had done, which was going to be the character which appears in the 20 second clip. they said they would combine their two styles to make one character, but what they did was assign themselves different parts of the body to draw in their own style, which we now have to work with (reluctantly)

One of the shots we got rid of, to make more time for more relevant shots was one which we talked about in the least meeting (the first one) and it was going to involve a walk cycle so the character the illustrators gave us were cut up into limbs so that we could animate it. Now we don't need the walk cycle and other shots are needed of the protagonist we asked them if we could draw the rest of the character in the shots we needed. They were ok with this, which meant that we could get rid of bits we didn't like! ***we started on drawing the character in the new positions we needed in their style***

One last thing about the animatics we showed them which were made in flash was that we could easily show what background shots we would need of them, so that helped to communicate  what we needed with out having to try and explain thorough still images

We're hoping for some of the stuff off the illustrators before next Thursday Tuesday or on the day.
On Friday we're going to green screen some snow! we got the snow from the £1 shop today!

_______________________________________________________________________



This is the flash animation I showed Luke, then rick...we worked off this and made it better and more solid...

This (below) has alot of shots missing which is after Me, Luke and Rick had a talk and decided not to tell the whole story and make the more relevant shots last longer...

After showing the illustrators are animatics they showed us their Character design...

The first lot are Dan Hodgkinson's...

These's are Stephen Nuttall...

This one below, has notes and suggestions for future reference & also a new shot which gets rid of the close up of the dreaded boot.....!

Lastly here are my drawing of the protagonist which I did after we asked them if it was ok to copy their style for other shots...

On the bottom one, you can see me trying to plan out how to animate the guys hands while falling.

Colour Exploration

When it come to colouring stuff in, like a drawing, I'm awful. I don't mean I draw outside the lines! I mean the colours I choose are shit, they don't mix/ work well together which, as a result, makes the whole drawing look crap.

I wanted to do something about it, so I'm starting to mess around more with colour, doing quick stuff which might help me learn more about what works well etc...

I wanted to just draw stuff of Google with nice colours in them, because usually you see stuff on there or in book like 'the art of whatever' or in films you see colours which work well together and i say to myself either "there nice colours I'll remember that" or "that's easy to do"...........
No Tom, its not easy to do and you won't remember, when it comes to your own work it ends up looking like shit because you haven't thought it through.

So what has nice colours? I thought clouds do. There's loads of different kinds and they come in different colours, some are red when the suns setting, some are dark gray with a 'silver lining', theres all sorts and also the sky changes colour which is nice as you have a different background to work with each time which blends well with the colour of the clouds.
So i typed 'clouds' into google and grabbed ones i liked and put them into photoshop, then opened a new document and by taking the colours off the cloud image I was able to see what the colours where which made them look so good.

Heres three i did...