Jonimations :: CG Creature and Character Animator: October 2007

30 October 2007

26 October 2007

Location: Waterstones, Nottingham
Camera: Olympus C3000Z & Cannon S3 IS
Editing: Photoshop CS3 & Final Cut Pro
Music: Man or Astroman? - A Simple Text File
Time Taken: Just over 7 hours

Lego Mouse Animation...

Answer to the previous blog........... Charlie Chaplin - City Life

23 October 2007

Assignment: Example of Reflecting Into The Course

The assignment set today by Julius (cowboy who will make you dance!) was to reflect on work that we have done so far since starting the course. Well I can think of one example from the course, but also another reflection I had a few days ago that completely consumed me for almost the entire day.....

1. Narrative Stage 1 was a project I thought I would have many ideas for, when in fact my mind went blank. See unlike the first starter projects (beer can / whiteboard animation) we were given a medium to help prompt our ideas, such as the box getting over the tree. But we had to think for ourselves here, which I found to be a great challenge at first until we all started to "put our heads together".
However, we soon forgot the principle method for making a stop motion film.... take LOTS of images... something like 20 frames per second and ours was more like FOUR.
So on reflection I will not hesitate in future to make full use of the flash memory within a digital camera!

2. This has nothing to do with the course, or maybe it does, it depends on your perception of things, but here goes. See if you can work out what the film is :) ...
I was watching a film a few days back; written, directed and the main role was played by a very famous actor; a pioneer to the movie industry. In this film the story goes that he was stuck on a scene in the film that could not evolve unless he found a solution. The problem in the scene was this: How do you get a blind woman to believe that a tramp is really a millionanaire? The solution he came up with to this problem was in fact completely genius. In the film, as the tramp stands in front of the blind woman with the road to his back, a very rich man walks behind him and gets into his car and slams the door. The sound of the door slam leads her to believe that the car belongs to him (the tramp) - now this may not sound like a very clever soultion in today's world because everyone from Adam owns, has owned or knows somebody that owns a car (or three!). But this was written and filmed decades ago, almost a century ago when only the rich and wealthy could afford a car.
So to summarize I tried to think up ways of myself, making a blind woman think a tramp was a millionaire in today's society. I don't think I've come to any solution yet, but it's still there at the back of my mind.

This film will be revealed in the next issue of MY BLOG !!

Music: Art Bears - Maze

21 October 2007

Narrative Stage 1 (Part 1)

This has been put together very quickly because I'm not satisfied with the little amount of pictures we took, so I haven't spent that much time editing. But as a first try at this I don't think it's that important; at least I know for the future. The music is by Frederik Thordendal and it's called Dante's Wild Inferno.
High Speed Chair Race...

Update: A suggestion was made today by a friend of mine that I use FX to emphasize the movements of the chair, such as screeches from car wheels etc. This is a great idea and I will do this over the next week and upload it. : 23/10/07

Music: Jethro Tull - Songs For Jeffrey

Stop Motion Videos

Tonight I saw two interesting things. The first was this Sony Bravia video below during the rugby commercial at the Rose of England, while waiting for Black Carrot (myspace.com/theblackcarrot) and Kling Klang to play; the second interesting thing tonight.

Music: Black Carrot - Pocket Fruit Bowl

19 October 2007

Experimenting With Camera

Camera: Olympus C3000Z
Editing: None, they're straight off the camera
Location: The Recreational Forest, Nottingham
Time: Around midnight
Mood: Freezing me knackers orf
Purpose: To use the camera to its greatest ability and capture everything the way I want and see it.

Horses heads, or dancing women?

Music: Gentle Giant - On Reflection

15 October 2007

Inspiring Work

I just remembered this video. I found it a few months back on Diva Zappa's myspace and having heard OF Sleepytime Gorrilla Museum before I thought I should check it. It is really well done and full credit goes to Ri the guy who made the animation - plus the music is brilliant, but I don't need to state the obvious!

13 October 2007

Really funny video!

12 October 2007

New Song

Nothing to do tonight and i've still got this cursed cold/flu so I stay in, jam on my acoustic and record it. Go to My Myspace to hear it, it's called simply Acoustic Jam

If you like it you should look into Pat Metheny's album One Quiet Night, one of the greatest albums EVER recorded.

08 October 2007

Goose Fair

Photographs I took of the fair as it was right down the road from where I'm staying

Music: Mahavishnu Orchestra - Hymn To Him

2. Whiteboard Animation

The objective was to animate a box somehow getting over a tree so straight from the start the ideas my group had were beyond random. My drawings were the stick men at the beginning and my idea was the arse appearing from the left, which farts out the boulder but doesn't quite make in over the catcus, knocks into it and falls to the ground. :)

I also really liked the animation where they ate and then spat out the coconut, the one where it ended by the person eating the camera at the end and then the one where the rocket went into the earth while they flicked a bird and moved mountains! That one was really good.

Music: Miles Davis - Pharaoh's Dance

06 October 2007

1. Beer Can Pin Hole Camera

I took this photo on top of a flight of stairs the led up beside the Waverely building. I was looking around waiting for a tram to come and saw that I had a huge shadow with the sun behind me. Then I heard a tram coming so I turned back around and took the shot as soon as I could. It wasn't pointing where I thought it was because I caught some of the handrail too, but I like that bit

The camera:
A 440ml beer can with it's top cut off, replaced by a lid made of black card and black ductape is then punctured by a regular pin in the middle of the can for light to hit the photographic paper. A flap is also attached to the lid (the green thing) so all that you need to take a picture is to lift the flap

The negative:
This is the photographic paper once the flap on the lid has been lifted and it's exposed to the light.

Music: silence, too early in the morning

05 October 2007

Introduction to Multimedia

Wednesday and Thursday afternoons consisted of small activities to get us into the creative multimedia frame of mind. The first was to create a stop animation of 120 shots with a digital camera using only the a whiteboard and a marker pen. The second was to take a picture of anything you wanted using only a beer can and photographic paper.
Both my works will be uploaded here as soon as I can get hold of them.

Music: Captain Beefheart - I'm Gonna Booglarize You Baby

04 October 2007

The Start of Multimedia

What do I want to get out of the course, in addition to passing? I would like to continually be creative and innovative during the course and after when it's over. More than anything though, I want all of my ideas to be made reality whether I look back on them and think they were stupid or other think they are rediculous, I want them all to happen.

What did I get up to in your first week? I made a few friends, I caught freshers flu, I wrote two new songs, I spoke to my dad, I fell asleep with my lava lamp on watching What's Eating Gilbert Grape?, bought a new coat from Primark for the winter, joined a few societies and pitched some ideas to Fly FM. I don't drink a lot or smoke so there's not much I can do until I find my feet.

Music: Can - Spoon

03 October 2007

Animation

01 October 2007

IMAGE GALLERY

For more still photo work, please have a look at my carbonmade portfolio...

Carbonmade portfolio

3D Planet Desktop Background

You can now download these awesome backgrounds for your desktop for free by clicking on the links below. If you have any problems, let me know in the comments section or via e-mail.
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Character Designs

I love creating characters. I've been doing it for as long as I can remember but I have never taken it seriously or pushed it further than my other creative ambitions such as music or computer animation.

Now I want to concentrate on improving my work, develop my techniques and style and ultimately bring my characters to life.
I will update this as regularly as I can, adding new sketches when I have improved the characters and adding written work as I continually develop the character arcs.

Max and Wax
The story of finding enlightenment through two very unusual looking friends.
CLICK HERE TO SEE THE MOST RECENT WORK OF MAX AND WAX

Rupert Hasslehoff
The story of one brother who was left behind while the other brother caught the limelight and screen success. An adventure and action packed story that will take you to one momentous battle; the final battle of Pompeii.
CLICK HERE TO SEE THE MOST RECENT WORK OF RUPERT HASSLEHOFF