
This is a collection of work ranging from college work right up to current projects.
Tuesday, 22 June 2010
Monday, 21 June 2010
Thursday, 27 May 2010
Shitty Little Hipster movie
Wednesday, 26 May 2010
Evaluation of Project: Narative
Well for this project I had to create an animatic, that is a moving story board with sound, that told a story for either; a public information short, a product for sale or something else, I decided to create a public information piece on the topic of rail safety.
After doing some research I decided to narrow this topic down from a complete overview on railway safety to the dangers of level crossing. One of the plot’s I considered was the idea of an alien coming down to earth and having a bunch of children try to explain the dangers of the level crossings, but after testing my character designs out on my younger cousins, I re-approached the plot and altered it to a more friendly looking character.
The next character I created was a cartoon/ manga stylized cat. I again used my cousins as test subjects, and the over all opinion was that they loved the character and found it “cute”.
The next stage of this project was a little harder, as my normal style of working is to create the characters after I have the more than a general overview of the plot, but after sitting down with the family and finding out what, if anything, they knew of the dangers of level crossings the, I worked out a first draft. After a number of rewrites I settled on a finished story.
The general overview of this story followed the main character of the cat as it was taken on a car trip by it’s owner, a Sunday drive if you like, that took it over a set of level crossing points in the country side, as a demonic looking train races down to try and catch the car as it crosses the points.
As I aimed the story at an age group of 5 – 11 year olds I decided not to have the train crash into the car, as this would be to graphic for the younger end of the age range, but would still show a live action still of what happens when a something is hit by a train.
Evaluation of Project: Extended Practices
For this project I had to create a number of short animations; a 2D walk cycle, a 2D perspective walk, a 3D walk and run cycle and have a lamp interact with an object, kind of like the ‘Pixar Lamp’.
The 2D cycles where fairly easy to do as I was using some existing characters, and had video an life drawing reference for different types of walk; runs, shuffles etc.
The 3D work was a bit more challenging as I had to learn a new program, Maya, but thanks to the tutorials in the help menu and the taught sessions, I was able to learn this program.
The walk and run cycles for the 3D section of the work involved using a generic blue character, that had no life or easy moving parts to it which I came to hate, but the lamp, or lampie as I came to call it was more fun to use.
From the tutorials in the help menu I created a Greek styled temple. I then did a short thumb nail story board to work out how to have the lamp would enter the temple and exit the temple again.
Overall I fell that this project was useful, and I would like to do another project in Maya, mainly for my show real, as I felt it lends it’s self well to the genra of animation I like the most, science fiction.
Wednesday, 19 May 2010
Evaluation of Project: Comunication and Media

To start with on this project I was going to use a human character based off one of my existing characters, Jon Andrews, after he survives the explosion of his ship, the SS Phoenix, but after quite a bit of development work, I decided to keep the story line for this project but alter the character to a more alien looking, so I changed the character to a new one called Mars Andrews.
To start with on this project I first created a storyboard completely digitally with photo shop and comic life, but after a number of thumbnails and development sketches I created a storyboard that was 45 panels long.

In order to create my new character I looked at a number of 1990’s cartoons, from Chip n Dale rescue rangers to Bucky O’Hear, and the Toad Wars. As the original version of the storyboard involved a flash back to before the ship exploded I had to edit the ending so that the main character in the story was rescued as not to leave it open ended.
What did I find interesting in this project?
The must challenging element I found while I was working on this project was learning to use Flash, and I thought learning Maya was hard to learn, but I feel that I have managed to create something that is ok, but as this is the first major piece of animation that I have done, it even has lip syncing in major achievement for me as I missed it last year. I have also added a simple sound track created using a heartbeat, downloaded from http://www.findsounds.com/ISAPI/search.dll, even though the effect was only three seconds I edited and extended it usingAudacity so that it was five times longer than I needed it.
One thing I would like to do on this project if I could repeat this project is to create it like a traditional piece of Anime, all hand drawn and coloured using markers or pencil, to give it a more realistic effect, or maybe go back to my original concept of a human character.
The video can be found here Space Dog Video.