I thought, seems as though i've done so little animation recently I'd try out something which i thought might work...

I always do frame by frame in flash and it takes too long...I literately do every frame, and there's always too much to think about. I'm all for cutting corners where necessary so long as it works.

This one is only 19 frames and lasts 10 seconds...looks a bit rough, but I personally think it works well, you know, it still has the principals in there etc and it took less than a day to do, which means I can move on and maybe add some more colour to it...


*UPDATE* Here it is in colour...

Work Experience at LOVE Creative

 As well as writing about the work experience, I'll have to write about the project I got from Uni over the summer(Self Initiated), as it all mixes into one....like a cake.

 SOOO, from 31st May till 24th June I was commuting to and from Manchester every Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday to a studio called LOVE Creative. I was there with three other people from Stockport College; Helen Porter (Graphic Design), Dominique Byron (Illustration) and Jack Maguire (Moving Image).Me and Jack are working on a short animation (and have been doing since September last year) so that's what we were working on whilst in the studio. As well as working on this short animation, we were also given some after effects work to do at some points.

Starting from the end...me and jack helped out Dominique bring one of her illustrations to life, this was nice for two reasons; firstly it meant it could put our after effects skills to the test and secondly it was nice to use someone elses work which looked really cool.
We failed at putting our after effects skills to the test as something that should have taken a few hours to do ended up taking....3 days (well not all of the day...more like 3 hours each day) never the less, I had fun helping out where I could. Here's Dom's animation...



A third thing that's nice about working with an illustrators work is that they know how to use colour and composition well, which is something I have been looking into for the Self Initiated project from Uni.


 So, to start thinking more about colour, my aim was to get started on a colour script for mine and jack's animation. To give a brief out line to what the vision is, we want to get across the feelings of two characters in a relationship, by using the seasons, for example; the animation will start in spring as spring is known as the season of new life etc also, we go through eight seasons all together and as the relationship turns sour, the seasons should mimic this.
 These are two which I did whilst at LOVE creative, both autumn...but as the relationship changes over time, when we go back to autumn the next time round and its much bleaker...

I hope the above makes seance. As well as this going towards a side project, its also helping me on my self initiated.

Because I'm new to all this, my first lot of colours are always very unambitious, but its only till you TRY another set of colours, then you realize how bad the first set were. So one thing I learnt was to not be satisfied with the first outcome.

Also use of the 'Hue and Saturation' tool in Photoshop helped out a lot, you can take the colours your happy with and make then really vibrant or really saturated in an instant. (that how i got the really vibrant orangey/red on the first autumn) 

In terms of moving image stuff done at LOVE Creative, I did 2 seconds worth (I could well be exaggerating) but yer...here's the reference footage of Jack and me trying to sit down on a sofa....

I think I ended up using some refrence footage I did at home, but i can't find it, here's the test...

 Also, my after effects skills also got a lot better from having some briefs of the LOVE creative team...but I can't talk or even show them. So i could just be lying to you, but I'm not...honest. 

 Lastly, I never thought of having twitter, it seemed too complicated and never really interested me. But from talking to jack, dom and the people at LOVE creative, everyone said its a really good way of getting your work seen and also a nice way to keep in touch. So me, and also Helen, joined up. It seems like a good way to promote your stuff....follow me, please

I also joined LinkedIn and Behance Network.


 To sum up, its been really good working at LOVE Creative, did some nice collaborative work, learning more about colour, got more work done on the short animation and got more connected by signing up to loads of websites.

    Some Pictures from our time at LOVE Creative...

(Link to LOVE Creative's Blog post about this cake)