Paul Murphy - Animation student

A blog for my animation degree showing all my work and the journey I take in creating it. Enjoy

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TWISTED TUNNELS 3 from Paul Murphy on Vimeo.

Twisted Tunnels 3 - Saturday 8th July 2017. Williamson Tunnels. Liverpool.

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johnny test 1 from Paul Murphy on Vimeo.

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Steam-punk Santa

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On an On - "It's Not Over"

Caught this amazing video on Vimeo earlier. Well worth a couple of minutes of your time :-)

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Sirens Call

My final university project before I (hopefully) graduate :-) Marc Kenny very kindly lent me a track from his soon to be released new album. Sirens Call - Animated…

The finished film

Here is my finished film. It has been a lot of hard work and as usual I hit the odd creative block that dented my confidence. But to have finally finished this project, and a few others this year, I feel very proud of myself for once, It’s actually taken me bloody six years to get to this point. At the beginning of my journey I didn’t believe I could get this far, I’d tried to leave my access course before my tutor Susan Green convinced me to stay on and pull my finger out, so to actually be here a day away from finishing the degree for good is a very strange feeling. I’m both happy and sad :-) :-( Happy to be free of the drawn out drive down the M6, and sad that it’s all over and now I’ve gotta get paid somehow lol

For some reason I find it hard to show my work and not feel anxious about what others think. Most of the time I dislike my work and wish I could do things that others can do. But I really am proud to have made all the work I have and to have met some great friends and tutors along the way throughout my time studying. I’m always looking onto the next project but I’m going to gladly take some time to sit back and reflect on the last six years and enjoy the great moments I’ve had. God knows what I’ll be doing in the next few years but I’ll work hard and try and take any opportunities that may be on the horizon.

I hope you enjoy the video, it’s as crazy as my head was whilst trying to figure out why After Effects couldn’t locate files on a regular basis. So now it’s time for me to take in the English summer whilst it lasts.

Love and Peace

Paul Murphy :-)

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Final Major Project

My deadline is tomorrow for my final major project and the work on my video is complete. I met with the singer Marc a couple of weeks ago after I’d hit a bit of a creative block, and also to update him on what I’d done up till then, and after discussing some new ideas together I changed the opening sequence of the video and moved the work I’d already done further towards the end of the animation. I then had loads more ideas to work with and the creative block flew away :-).

All in all I like most of the final animation, although in hindsight I didn’t expect it to be as daunting as I’d found at times. The original ideas I had have worked well but working with the tempo of the song, which is rather upbeat, meant I had to come up with more and more ideas than I ever expected to. The beat carried fast throughout the song meaning the pace of the changes in the animation went really quickly, so I basically tried to keep up with it and did what I thought worked best with regards to timing. I will be finishing the film during this summer as i edited the song to finish after the second chorus to give myself a chance of completing it before the deadline. I will meet again with Marc in the near future and discuss some new ideas for the end and make any changes throughout if necessary.

The images above I’ve placed here to show the kind of work flow I had going on. As most of the work has taken place on the computer using Ae and Ps I think I’ve ran my computer into the ground. The desktop is nearly full, along with multiple folders full of images, adobe files and reference material. I’m looking forward to putting it all away one nice big folder out of my eye line :-)

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Assistant Animator Report Cont’d

Andy Bell approached me asking for assistant animator work quite late on in the production, there was still plenty to do and I asked Andy to come up with some cut out characters created by hand similar to Nanna’s work or just in Photoshop. Andy produced two characters for me that were great but unfortunately they didn’t end up being used in the animation. The reason for that was on my part, he’d created an elephant character which could have an animated trunk in several parts. I worked with it a little in After Effects but had to make the decision to not use it as it was very complicated and time consuming to animate all the moving parts. So I made the decision to leave it out unfortunately. Andy also made a gorilla figure wearing a suit, a design which I requested as I wanted a gorilla man to be pushing something on stage. Within a couple of days Andy had created and sent a wonderful character which was absolutely perfect for what I needed and was more than what I hoped I’d get. I used the character several times in the animation and it was a massive help.

Images of Andy’s work above

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Assistant Animator Report Cont’d

Saaleha Idrees is an alumni of Staffordshire University. She very kindly offered her services after I did some art work for her last year. I asked Saaleha if she could create some backgrounds involving cogs and pipes that could eventually be animated in After Effects. She produced some excellent work which she animated herself, saving me a hell of a lot of time :-). I added some grungy texture to the background with the pipes. The work really helped me a lot and it features several times in the video itself.

Images of Saaleha’s work above

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Assistant animator report cont’d

Also working on the animation with me was the multi-talented Nanna Nilsson Hallberg. I asked Nanna if she could produce a moving mermaid character using cut outs from magazines and newspapers. I wanted the mermaid to be holding a loud speaker to match the songs title Sirens Call. I had a vision of her communicating in some way through the loud speaker. I was quite open to what she’d eventually look like and having seen Nanna’s style and works I knew she’d create something that would fit in with the style I’d chose to work with on the video. The mermaid that she created was above what I had originally visioned and Nanna created a cut out figured that she had tied together in some way with string that looked to complicated for someone like me to do :-). She moved beautifully as well when I animated her, I could move the hair to flow like it was being blown a bit in the wind.

I created the background for the mermaid to be on as I had originally intended to green screen it and add the background at a later date. Due to complications with the colours I couldn’t green screen it and put together some textured paper for the background, which I feel was successful. I also used old broken watch parts which I animated spinning as part of the trees in the background.

Images of Nanna’s work above

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Assistant animator report.

I had the pleasure of three second year students working with me on Sirens Call. An ex-student Saaleha Idrees also helped me out immensely creating animated backgrounds for me. Mathew Burbidge came up with some great hand drawn character designs which fitted nicely into the animation. Using his drawings I worked a little further into them in Photoshop adding colours and textures. They fitted into the whole style of the animation brilliantly.

Stills of Mathew’s drawings in the images above.

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Update - After weeks and weeks of procrastination and banging my head against a wall I finally settled on a style of animation I wanted to work with. The results are looking great although my desktop now is cluttered, I have had the unfortunate memories of moving things around and then finding out After Effects can no longer locate certain footage so I’m leaving it like this until I know for certain I’m happy with the animation. I’ll wait until the day everything is exported and in working order. Most of the imagery and characters are created in Photoshop and then animated in After Effects, but I do intend to have some stop motion work in some places. My young daughter has also been animating some fish made from old broken watch parts, so I’m hoping to fit them in in an underwater scene.

I had lots of ideas at the beginning, some worked out and some didn’t, but I’ve found as I’ve worked to the beat and timing of the song I’m animating to that I’m going to need a lot more. I’ve also had the go ahead from my tutor to cut the song to around two minutes so the workload has been reduced massively.

The point I’m out now I’m feeling quite calm. Although there many sleepless nights ahead I’m well over half way and going strong.

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Work in progress Quite a successful afternoons animating. I've been working stop motion style with a lovely paper model made by nanna aurora. I had intended to greenscreen it but I hadn't thought it through properly, upon keying the green out I lost a lot of the scales on the mermaid. So I quickly created a background from some paper textures I had to hand and the result looks really nice. I also drew some trees in the background and animated some old watch parts spinning on the branches. Very happy with the result. I'll post up a video later on

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Sirens Call - Music video poster

I created this poster for my latest animation, which is my Final Major Project. I’m nearing my hand in date but I’ve still got plenty of work to do before I finally finish it and my degree is over.

I’ll be posting more imagery and screen shots from my animation work over the next week or so.

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Johanna Freytag - UOL application

My final external brief was for Johanna Freytag. She wanted me to produce an animation for her application for the University of Leeds. Johanna wanted a whiteboard style animation producing and she sent me a written copy of what she would be saying in the voice over. I set about drawing up ideas for what she asked for and she then sent me the audio files to work the animation to. I hand drew all the images then scanned them in. Using Adobe Illustrator I image traced them so they had a good solid line and colour, I took those file into After Effects and combined masks with stroke effects to have the drawings revealing over time. I took pictures of my own hands holding pens and doing different poses and imported them into AE. Following the drawings as they were revealed I key framed the position of the hand to make it look like the hand was drawing the images.

Ultimately I feel the animation looks great in most parts but having only had a limited time to produce such a long video I feel dissatisfied. I had to rush towards the end and I think it shows as there are some areas which run out of sync. Despite this I still take pride in the work as it was the first time I’d worked in this style and I know given another chance I could produce a cleaner finished video.

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Staffordshire Dog Project 2015 -Sting

A sting I quickly put together for the Staffordshire Dog Project

Another external brief I worked on was for The Staffordshire Dog Project 2015. We animation students were invited to take part and produce a sting for the project. I kept it simple and created a dog walk cycle and had the dog walk in on a plain white background. The camera pans out revealing the name of the project with an outline fading in of the dog sitting down. All the work was done using scanned drawings done by hand, Photoshop and After Effects. I added a nice soundtrack over the top for good measure :-)

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Work on The Belgian Boy taking place in the Stop Motion room at Staffs University

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Blog Update:

Having been working hard over the last few months I’ve finally got a window where I can write up on the projects I’ve been working on.

The Belgian Boy

The Belgian Boy was an external brief I worked on as part of a team with Naomi Blakeway and Tracy Dunn. Stoke based company Junction 15 had approached our University looking for animation students to work with them on World War 1 related poems by Staffordshire Poet Laureate Tom Wyre. Our team produced a motion scrap (comic) book with a mixture of 2D and Stop Motion based animation. I was responsible for the 2D work and putting together the Motion Scrap book together in Adobe After Effects.

I drew most of the 2D imagery on paper and scanned in the images and worked further into them using Photoshop and AE. The motion book work proved a harder task but the end result I feel very happy with. Naomi, who also provided the sound effects, puppet and prop making, and Tracy did a superb job with the Stop Motion work they did and it all blended together beautifully. The end result was well received by Junction 15 and Stoke City Council, who will be showcasing all the work done for the poems in June this summer.

The release of the animation is to be held till June after it’s presented by the Staffordshire Council