#animation2009

[animatedaf]

A random boy and his pet ghost I fancied animating.

OOOOoooooOOOOOooooOOO

[animatedaf]

Had a go a re-animating one of the Tea N’ Crumpets characters.

[animatedaf]

Bbentertainment has released a trailer on youtube of the documentary short film I produced animation for, which you can see above. 18 seconds in you'll see one of my scenes! The first screening is in Leeds this month, for friends/family and crew only mind. What I can tell you though is that the film has been entered for the Cannes Film Festival 2009 and Munich International Short Film Festival 2009, and will be entered into many UK festivals too. I really can't wait to see it. :)

[animatedaf]

All that paper, about 850 drawings in all, equals to about 2 minutes of animation that I have been working on. To say I got a little carried away with this project and have taken far too long on it would be a complete and utter understatement. Still, it's my first proper paid job for a client rather than a live project so I wanted to make it as good as I could, but let's just say I'm never inking every frame of an animation again, or least not for films any longer than 30 seconds!

The editing is done now but the film needs background art and colour yet before it's complete, so I won't be able to show you it for a little while but I’ll post a quick context-free preview soon!

[animatedaf]

Well this was a nice surprise! Walked into my local library the other day and in the youth section there were these pamphlets all over the place of Cool 2 Chil, with screenshots from the animation I did for them all over it along with a link to the youtube account where it can be viewed.

Not sure how long these has been about as I don't really visit the library often enough but cool nonetheless.

[animatedaf]

Cool 2 Chil Concept Art

Now that Cool 2 Chil is online for all to see, I can show some bits and bobs from the development of the film here!

The very first brainstorming sketches.

Experimented with a whole bunch of styles until I grew to like the character in the top right corner. At first I was going for a simplistic cut out look, but ended up with more organic, traditional characters instead. More after the break!

From here the sketches are more or less a lot like how the characters looking the final film. This was all before we had a final storyboard down, just tossing ideas around.

A colour chart for the main characters of the film. There was a bit of a mess up at first with the names of the two kids, so right up until the recording session they were known as Robert and Ralph.

The animation didn't come out quite as bouncy as these doodles but maybe that would have been too distracting anyway. I did keep the football idea though, not sure if it really works but it was fun to animate that bit.

[animatedaf]

Cool 2 Chil - A Young Carers Story (Animation and Launch Night)

A film I animated for Connexions here in Southend is now up on Youtube. You may of seen bits of this on my show-reel. I also did the voices for the two bullies, haha. Right at the end in the credits you'll see some of the pencil tests I did with my Playstation Eye while working on the film.

Speaking of which, tonight was the launch of the DVD of which the film has been released on. The disc is provided in a resource pack about young carers that is going to be sent out across schools all over the place, which is nice! More after the break!

The event was at the Focus Youth center just a walk away from me, and upon walking in these posters with a screen from the film where everywhere! A cuppa of tea, some cake and a chat later and we were called into a cinema room to watch the DVD! Cripes!

Before that there was some powerpoint nattering about the Young Carer's and the club and whatnot. A majority of the audience were from Schools and it was all about getting them aware of the needs of these young chaps that look after their disabled or ill parents. I found this re-working of my art on one of the slides particularly amusing..

Either way the film went down a treat and it's going to be spread about for many to see so I'm rather pleased! :)

[animatedaf]

The first Livestream last night went down a treat! It lagged quite a bit for some people, but I was presently surprised how many popped in to watch and we had a good laugh! Either way the animating I did was all made up as I went along and the three GIFs above are the result.

The one on the left was the first one I did, a bit cruddy as I was just warming up from not animating anything in Flash for a while. It was christened 'iBuySausage' by someone in the chat for some reason. The one to the right was next, of Vince from Rex the Runt because there's a toy of him by my desk. We had a laugh moving it to lip sync, which ended up with this insane moment: