Corgi Pops Animations

UCLan Animation Blog.

[corgipopsanimation]

WEEK STARTING: 8/ 5/ 17

Monday: I put sound and such into my film, was very relieved to find that the music example that Lauren Simm had sent me a long time ago worked really well with my film. I had to use the original she had sent me as Lauren had been very unwell and even went to the hospital, so I told her to rest but asked if I could still use the original and she gave me her permission.

Tuesday: Had to fix the sound as the sound effects were all really loud, I fixed them the night before and then they were too quiet so Mario gave me speakers to help me as I was doing all my sound editing with headphones and that was a terrible idea as evidence that I had to fix the sound 3 times.

After lunch I made my show reel and timed it to one of my favourite theme songs of all time, the Dragon ball theme as it was catchy and I timed my show reel to fit it. I used a lot from my one second animations from 1st and 2nd year, and a lot from my 3rd year and 2nd year films as well I have used a lot of the animation that I was very happy with, I hope it gets a good reception.

Wednesday: Drew out my poster idea on paper, scanned it and went over it in Photoshop making it an A2 size  and once that was done I shrunk it down for DVD cover to save myself a lot of time which I did.

Thursday: Got my poster and DVD poster printed out and now I’m updating my blog for the last time. It feels odd to finish all the stuff for my final year, with a day still left to go.

Friday: well, that’s it, just need to put my a menu on my DVD and submit it all the work I’ve done this week. Probably cry and hug everyone before I go home and see my new puppy Jasper :).

[corgipopsanimation]

WEEK STARTING: 1/5/17

Monday: Animated a few quick shots and remembered that I had an essay and action plan to write! and a CV to finish by the 4th of May! Essay was done over the weekend ad so was the rest of the action plan, I wrote about CPL animate, Kilogramme animation and Cosgrove Hall Fitzpatrick Entertainment and Factory.

Tuesday: Finishing off the CV Adding another page with contact details, Mario has told me to get rig of the splodge system and I fully agree, giving myself a high rating may make who ever I want to work for think I could do stuff that they don't even know how to do, when I am not an expert by any means, so to add a bit of colour I added little images of the main characters from my 3 films that I’ve made whilst at university. As I enjoyed making the characters the most to be honest. It was so much fun to draw Bunny commando (my 1st year film) and Hazel (from my second year film) again, it also showed me how much I had improved since then! For contact details I added my email, phone number and address.

Thursday: Got my CV printed out and ready to submit, time to do everything for the animation that I can and hopefully finish it all by next Monday at this point I am on 138.4 seconds (2 mins, 18 seconds) So I feel that I ca get the rest of the seconds done over Friday - Sunday.

Friday to sunday: Friday I got to a total of 151 seconds done,I did 11 more seconds and sunday I did the final two shots and got to a total of 176.4 seconds I am very proud with myself for getting it done a good few days before the final deadline of the 12th of May1

[corgipopsanimation]

WEEK STARTING: 24/4/17

Monday: I got another 15 seconds done today, super proud of myself as I cannot usually concentrate at home but I believe the support of parents is helping a lot! Also now Tumblr will not let me upload any more gifs to this post.....

Tuesday: Back to the flat and did a couple of backgrounds for shots, simple sketches set to multiply with colour and airbrushing underneath, hopefully it will give the film a more atmosphere and make the characters stand out more.

Wednesday: Today I have counted up how many seconds I’ve done and I've done 103.4 seconds so about a minute and 40 seconds, I’m already over my estimated target and I couldn't be happier I’ll keep going to further bring those numbers up!

Thursday - Saturday: Pretty much the same as the first half as the week, animate, eat, sleep and repeat, having a rest day on Sunday though, give me a little time to recover and sleep.

[corgipopsanimation]

WEEK STARTING 10/4/17

Monday: Aright time to get this animation finished! It’s the most important thing after all, I’ve planned to do at least 2-3 shots a day that should get me well and truly close to the mark when the Easter holidays end. I’ll make sure to save as many as I can as Gifs before they get to large for me to do so.

Tuesday: Got myself one of the small animation rooms as my flatmate who also is on this course has gone home for the two weeks. I plan to go home for Easter but at the moment, work is much too important, in a slight panic at the moment but I will keep my head down and work.

Wednesday: Couple more shots done with the Patchwork man’s first victim. The shot of him turning quickly was quite tricky but overall I am pretty happy with it as I think his expression shows shock very well. Dropping working on the Essay and the other stuff till after the holidays as I am on a roll with the animation at the moment.

Thursday: Big Wheel keep on turning.... I’m getting there though motivation seems to be dropping quite a bit, which is very bad maybe I should take more small breaks away from the computer?  If I do too much in one day it’ll just make it worse I think. Anyway I have to return my key early today as Good Friday is tomorrow and the hub will be closed.

Sunday: Easter Sunday and Parents have gone to check on our new puppy! Time to animate,  I got about 13 seconds done today! I plan to be atleast half way through the animation by the times the holidays are over.

[corgipopsanimation]

WEEK STARTING 3/ 4/ 17

Tuesday: Spent more today doing my CV trying to get it out of the way whilst also seeking tutors advice, the first piece was that the paint splodges that I had used were much too small and made the page look empty so I increased the size. I also debated changing the style of the graffiti to make it more stylised but when I looked over a few examples of alphabets and realised that my own bubble writing might be easier to read and also show off a bit more of my style. I used splodges as a rating system as I was going off of different examples that Mario had shown us, I think splodges would work better than say stars because it would fit in more with the theme of the CV.

Thursday: Animated another shot of the Patchwork man walking out of his home, I plan to draw all the backgrounds in Photoshop and pop them into After effects along with the image sequences from every shot, this is a very similar Manner in which I did my 2nd year film, but this time I plan to save different aspects of the background as separate PNGs so that it’ll make my life much easier when compositing it all.

I also did some research about Mackinnon and Saunders, they have done a lot of work like Tim Burton’s The Corpse Bride, Fantastic Mr Fox and Bob the builder. As they Are mostly a stop motion based company I was a bit hesitant to look into to them in hopes of working there but there are still many fields I could go into! I have been having a think about that thinking I would also suit being a character designer or even just an animator as  I feel I’m pretty capable at that.

[corgipopsanimation]

WEEK STARTING 27/03/17

Tuesday: Started animating more of the movie, and have doe a couple of shots, I am slightly annoyed that I haven't started earlier as it will take me a long time to animate but I also need to sort out other parts of work too like the CV, essay, action plan, show reel. It feels like a mountain f work really but if I just stick to my guns I should be ok.

Thursday:  Animated a couple more shots, slowly getting there, I have about 46 shots in total last time I checked and I've done 4, dear lord. I'm gonna do as much as I can during the Easter holidays which are coming up soon!  I just wish I actually spent more time on focusing on my film when I was in class and did everything else while I was at home.

[corgipopsanimation]

WEEK STARTING: 20/03/17

Tuesday: Started the process of creating my creative CV, making a list of stuff that I like so I could base the design aspects around that particular interest. As much as I would have liked to base it off of an anime and manga theme I feel like it would have seemed unprofessional so I decided to so for a more arty and graffiti feel. I think I can put enough of my personality across with a theme like that. I also wrote about Barry Purves today, learning more about another animator that I have known about since I started university, it was fun going through his animations and learning more about the stop motion animator.

Thursday:  I started drawing a version of myself in a cartoon style to put on my CV. I tired to get it as accurate as I could, I was tempted to draw a design on the t-shirt but I felt like a plain t-shirt suited me more, however I put on my bumblebee ear rings for a bit of extra personality. I’m going to use a technique. I used a method I had learned recently that gives the picture a softer line making it a warmer feeling picture. I also started testing the layout for my CV after finished the cartoon portrait of myself. Overall I’m really happy with it! Though if I have time after finishing everything else that needs to be done before the deadline which is the 5th May, so I should have plenty of time.

[corgipopsanimation]

WEEK STARTING 13/3/17

Tuesday: Today I started on stuff for my Essay and Action plan per Pete’s instructions, I chose to talk about Ray Harryhausen first as he was an animator I did not know about until I went to the Manchester Animation festival. When researching I found out that Harryhausen had invented the art of Dynamation, an art which involves doing stop motion behind multiple glass plains so that it is easier to composite as each one will have different parts of the background painted on it. Next I picked was Barry Purves.

Thursday: The music students came in! There wasn't an awful lot of them but I presented my animatic anyway in hopes someone would take it on. I pretty much got an immediate response from a girl called Lauren Natalie Simm, she seemed really enthusiastic about working on my project. Later on she sent me an email with an example of her music and it really fit the feel of my film really well! So I told Lauren that I wanted to work with her. I cant wait to see what she makes.

Friday: Vernon building for a Lecture with Candy Guard, I think I’ve seen her at least once every unit year since starting here. However I don't mind that at all since she is a funny and delightful person. I took plenty of notes even though I most likely wont be writing about her in my essay as she gives great advice for setting up your own little animation/publishing business

[corgipopsanimation]

Final re worked animatic! Now it makes more sense!

[corgipopsanimation]

WEEK STARTING: 6/03/17

Tuesday: After Some feedback from Pete I have been advised to fix my animatic, make the story more plausible because at the moment the ending makes no sense, I re did most of the shots today as we have some music students coming in on Thursday to hopefully come work on the music for our animations.  Changes to the story are the fact that the Patchwork man now lives in a sewer instead of a house in the forest, I felt like this would be more mysterious and more fitting for a man who doesn't like human society.

Thursday: Finished the rest of the new shots off for the animatic and put it into the animatic to show the Music students. I’ll upload the animatic in the next post.

[corgipopsanimation]

Week Starting 28/02/17

Tuedsay: After doing my introduction on my Action plan last week, I started to look up animation studios around the UK, I found quite a few, one of the most that stuck out to me is based in both the UK and France, I Can Fly Group. Their style really spoke out to me as it is very similar to my own and the premise of their shows, my favourite of which is called Ovalon, they make sport series, something I love watching anime or western wise. My personal favourites of these being Galactik Football (a show that used to be aired on Jetix) and Kuroko No Basuke (a basketball anime). 

I then looked up Cartoon network as they have a studio down in London, Now I have loved Cartoon Network shows since I was very young, watching shows like; The Powerpuff girls, Dexter’s Laboratory and Cow and Chicken, Samurai Jack, I could go on forever with how many shows I’ve watched that were broadcasted from Cartoon Network ad I would love to work for them one day!

Thrusday: I Started to animate the first shot of my animation today, The Patchwork man waking up the revelation in his dream.

Friday: Lecture from the Brothers MCLeod, Greg and Myles, they seemed like really nice people and they’ve done really well for themselves considering that they had not studied animation at all. They’ve won many awards and eve worked for Disney XD making some thanksgiving animations which are very Roadrunner and coyote inspired in my opinion.

[corgipopsanimation]

WEEK STARTING 20/2/17

Been having major computer problems at the moment :(. My laptop has been constantly crashing and is making it pretty much impossible to work from home which from this point I desperately need to start doing!. However I have now started my essay and action plan at least so that’s something good!

[corgipopsanimation]

WEEK STARTING 13/2/16

Not a lot done this week unfortunately  however I have been working on some shots and backgrounds for my films as well as doing a little animation practice as you can see from the GIF above. Not a lot to say about this week other than I’ve been a bit busy sorting out stuff at home as my mum wants to move house and move to Huddersfield.

Oh! yes the Wednesday I attended the RTS Students awards with the university as a few of the students had been nominated for the Animation award and one was nominated for the short film awards. He was a student in my year as he submitted his two minute film and he won! It was amazing! 

One the Friday of this week I attended a lecture from my Lecturer Pete Bishop, I learned a lot about his career even that he did a degree in law before going into animation! Goes to show you don't always have to go into what you study.

[corgipopsanimation]

WEEK STARTING 6/2/17

Monday: Was not feeling too well...that is all

Tuesday: I practiced some animation! I wanted to see if the creature I had designed was easy enough to move, overall it was pretty simple and fun to do, I do need to practice more though because that animation knackered me. While taking little breaks I also worked on some backgrounds.

Wednesday: I TURNED 21! It was a good day :).

Thursday: Hardly dot any sleep but still started on backgrounds and suck, trying to work out how 3 point perspective worked and such. Perspective is hard.... but I did a pretty good brick wall!

Friday: Blog!

[corgipopsanimation]

WEEK STARTING 30/1/17

Monday- Not a lot of work done as I arrived back from a weekend at home quite late in the day.

Tuesday: I started the turnaround for the Patchwork Man in the morning by working on the sketch, I then lined it after lunch and stayed behind a bit to start colouring. I am overall very happy with the design of the character.  I also started to draw out dome backgrounds such as the area around the Patchwork Man’s house, I really like how this background looks.

Wednesday: Nothing done, well if I did anything I don't particularly remember :(

Thursday: Sketched out the turnaround for the creature in the morning and ploughed throw and finished it around half 3, so I'm rather happy I got it done that quickly, debating whether or not I need to do turnarounds of the other characters though, I'll have to ask Mario or the Petes.

Friday: Updated blog as per usual :)

[corgipopsanimation]

WEEK STARTING 23/01/17

Monday: Arrived back at the flat from seeing Black Sabbath in Manchester the night before (which was pretty awesome!) was a bit too tired to do any work though, however I did pan what background I was going to do first, the medieval village.

Tuesday: Class time, I started to gather reference images for medieval villages in media, video games etc. to help me out when it comes to drawing out backgrounds later on.  I also gathered some imagery of characters which I found quite unsettling to either look at or the way that they moved and so on. Finally I gathered some pictures of cloaks and stuff considering the Patchwork man wears a type of cloak for most of the film.

Wednesday: Went in to talk to Pete about the Patchwork Man’s design since I was still uncertain on it as it the style I had drawn him in previously now did not match the other characters that I had drawn for the film. Pete was quite busy so I went about practicing some perspective as I am pretty weak in that field, I also had forgotten to bring a ruler with me so I used a video box that was in the room.

Thursday: finally got a design for the patchwork man that I like! I just need to add some other features like define his mouth more and give him some glowing eyes to give off more of an eerie vibe. I have lined the character shown above I will work on colouring the lines tomorrow.

Friday: alrighty that’s the blog updates and the colouring of the patchwork man done! WOO!

[corgipopsanimation]

Found a way to upload my animatic onto my blog, this is the first draft of the animation and I already feel the need to make some changes due to the feedback I received.  The Patchwork needs a bit more motivation and i really need to turn the sound up! It’s too quiet!

I think the reason that happened was because I edited the sound on a very loud volume... well i know not to do that for next time now.

(26/01/17)