The Mysterious Traveller

Well I guess this is the first blog post of my new 'out of Uni' life. And boy does it feel weird. I haven't quite comprehended this stage even though it has been confirmed with the final presentation last week; this went rather well considering I was the last student of the day and spent 20 minutes waiting in the corridor freaking out! So yes, life goes on... and I have got several priorities that I need to address. This means I do have to finally tidy up my show reel and CV. It also gave me the opportunity to go through other smaller tasks I kept forgetting to finish, such as business cards. I had feedback from last semester about how business cards should be kept plain and simple... counting mainly on the personal touch on introduction more than the quality of a piece of card. I still wanted to have a nice picture on my one however: This is the back of the business card. You can't see the outline very well but it is literally is my logo against the white...

Well we are now finished. The Money Tree production has finally come to a close and the four of us can now sit back and watch it all upload online. It has been a hectic few weeks to put the animation together, and considering the final day of animating was saturday 21st May (deadline being 24th!!) it was rather a close call. I had been editing throughout the weeks anyway, so the last few days when we all viewed the rough cut were not as pressing as we once thought. I had shown May what I had edited together, after exporting all the files from Stop Motion Pro 7, and we all agreed that the layout (which was still very close to the original animatic) was just what we wanted. I used my own Magix Movie Edit Pro software to edit the animation together as all the exported files were saved as WMV files. It still exported the final film in the format we wanted and kept the quality also. Rig removal was a new technique we used in this animation. I went through each i...

It has been far too long since my last post. And I also realised how I have barely mentioned the insanity of my amazing dreams. They have mostly been inspired by the various horror films I have recently been watching such as Channel 5's The Dentist and new release Insidious. I am pretty terrible with horror films due to my tendancy to jump at any moment, even if it was a knock on the door or a slightly louder 'hello'. This is besides the point ofcourse... because I must talk about the animating I have been doing these past few weeks. And the reason for lack of blogging is because of this: it's been 9-5 most weeks. I am not a primary animator, however, but still have been doing alot of test animations with Alex Young, whilst Jon and May get on with the main animation with the Fox and Barney. The extract below is part of the 'bonus features' we shall include alongside the final Money Tree film. This partilcular video is more of an appreciation film for the pr...

This is an example of the blue screen technique used when animating the 2D leaf. The chroma key tool was then used to mask out the blue area around the leaf so that an image of the forest could be inserted in the background.

It's been a very strange couple of weeks, where the only thing to do is actually animate this story. However the Easter holidays and the upcoming Royal Wedding (masses of bank holidays) has thrown everything up in the air like they just don't care. What I mean is, the studio seems to be open on very random days of the week and alot of our group have dispanded for the time being. There are three days this week where we are able to animate in the studio so hopefully we can really crack on with Barney as he discovers the Money Tree. For the time being, as I couldn't do much back at home, I decided to make the most of the good weather and go a bit old school; sketching in the park. The drawing above started out as Hanley Park (Stoke-on-Trent) but my imagination got the better of me and thought it needed a bit more wildlife in the foreground.

The time has finally come. It's the beginning of the filming stage! Animation for The Money Tree project started today and it went quite well for a first shoot. The walk cycle was a little dubious because of the puppet and his lack of cooperation, however, May managed to have a good few hours to try him out and got some really good sequences to use. As I knew May was going to be animating my puppet from this day forth... I borrowed him for a quick session before so as to animate a minor scene in the now finished Living Room Set. It ties in with the storyline but may not be part of the final animation. There is a specific reference to a certain television show... something we may all have to get familiar with if we don't find a job after graduation!

The last week or so have been dedicated to the props of Barney's front room. The four of us divided up the various belongings that the main character would own (before and after the introduction of the Money Tree). My list included a new CD player, shelves, tables, old television and lamp. I also added a few other objects to the list such as a new pair of trainers and plug sockets for the walls.  An old sofa for the Woods - subtle hint that Barney wasn't the only victim A range of eyebrows, eye lids and pupils that can be attached to the face using vaselline