FLIP Film Festival

It seems The Fraiser Werp was shown at the FLIP film festival without me knowing....

 

It's a shame that some kind of spell check seems to have changed the word creature into something else each time it was mentioned but I'm sure that just adds to the ambiguity of the whole thing.

See the trailer for said film here...

http://vimeo.com/51006181

also mentioned here:

http://stevenh690.wordpress.com/2012/11/02/flip-festival/

Fraiser Werp Trailer

Finally the long awaited and not so anticipated Fraiser Werp Trailer.

The Fraiser Werp - Trailer from madebymarshall on Vimeo.

I thought it wise to get something it out there while I'm trying to promote the actual animation.

THE VAN D'OR AWARDS

Well Mr Fraiser Werp didn't win at the Van d'Or Awards but I did come close to being lumbered with a very expensive jar of Barry Norman's pickled onions during the auction I'm sure.

Had a fun filled evening full of champagne, pizza and San Miguel all the same. 

The majority of the evening was focussed on film rather than animation. The winner of the animation category was Bertie the Crisp, http://bertiecrisp.co.uk which we didn't actually get to see, but to actually have The Fraiser Werp nominated as a runner up to an animation built by a 31 strong production team is nothing to be sniffed at. 

So I'd like to thank my production team for getting me there:

Andy Jenkinson 

For the quality voice over and additional sound effects 

Paul Smyth at Lab73 

For levelling out the audio tracks into something very close to perfection

my good self

for learning on the job and doing everything else, cheers.

.

Something that I was quite impressed with was the winner of the Motion Graphic category...

The Adventures of Tintin from James Curran on Vimeo.

A full list on winners and nominations can be found at this snappy little link:

http://www.cannesinavan.com/mobile-film-festival/the-van-dor-award-winners-2012/?utm_source=The+Van+d%27Or+Independent+Film+Awards+2012&utm_campaign=e8175ecee6-Van_d_Ors_2012_Invitation8_27_2012&utm_medium=email

A trailer of The Fraiser Werp will be be available to the public soon, or full version can be seen upon request....

madebymarshall@live.com

THE VAN D'OR AWARDS

Fraiser Werp News

I'll be heading to the Van d'or awards in London this friday as 'The Fraiser Werp has been shortlisted for this very award. Should it win anything then it shall transverse on tour to the Cannes Film Festival via Paris and be shown from the back of a van in the streets of Cannes for the film buff public to view.

That's a big if, but being nominated is funky enough, not to mention the free dinner and free booze, the ice-cream van and the potential of shaking Barry Norman's hand as he present the award.

It'll be a fun night out I'm sure.

The event

Barry Norman (who use to do what Jonanthan Ross now does with film reviews)

For those of you weirdos unfamiliar with Fraiser Werps

Star and Shadow

Well done to everyone at The Star and Shadow last Thurs you all did yourselves proud.

Witches Tuller

A little test demonstration I had to do for a potential job last week (in between the Star and Shadow shenanigans). They wanted to see if I could produce some animated kinetic typography (moving words) so I recorded myself asking my iphone questions it couldn't quite grasp. These were just a few of the answers but I'm sure it must have got the point across for them.

Interview with an iphone from madebymarshall on Vimeo.

SHOWREEL

Updated show reel with snippets of my Fraiser Werp animation.

Showreel from madebymarshall on Vimeo.

If you want to see The Fraiser Werp in full and plenty more exciting animation from this years Newcastle College Animation Foundation Degree then head to the Star and Shadow 19th July for fun, booze, music and animation.

http://www.starandshadow.org.uk/on/event/839

Printed Folio Book

I've set up re-designed my folio as a nice big printed hard backed book which I've now uploaded for print, it should be printed and back in my hands within 10 days. You can see an online version here:

click to see portfolio

(I've deleted the embedded flash preview of the book because it slows down the page too much.)

My next most urgent plan is to produce some business cards and promotional postcards over the weekend. Then look at generating some exhibition artwork for the final show.

Fraiser Werp hand-in complete...

The Fraiser Werp animation has been animated from beginning to end. All that remains is to work on the sound effects and music over the next few weeks, certainly by the 25th I'd like to have a basic sound track finished if not with the real music.

There's not much I'd change within the animation, it demonstrates a broad range of mixed up techniques that I've seen, liked, been inspired by and worked on over the last couple of years.

The animation was rendered at 1024x576 for the hand in but I've been creating most scenes in 1280x720 when possible as I have every intention of entering the animation into competitions who will no doubt desire a better quality. 

Blog continuation

So I like to feel I'll keep this blog updated past the end of the course and into my future projects as they arise (although maybe not in such depth from now on). We'll see wont we. 

The release of The Fraiser Werp animation 

The release of The Fraiser Werp animation online isn't going to happen until I'm happy with the sound and have added the credits. So my mass of 10 followers on this blog (one of which is somehow me and at least 2 others are dead ends) will have to wait in suspense until the up and coming Final Show or the Star and Shadow showing on the 19th July, or when I launch it on Vimeo.

What next:

Sound effects for the Fraiser Werp

Graphics for the Final Show

Business Cards/Postcard designs

Transfer and edit folio into a nice printed book using Blurb

But right now I intend to do nothing for a day or two, absolutely way too much continuous staring at a screen has been happening over the last 2 - months, well 2 years in fact, beer, cinema, sleep.

Final bit of stop motion...

Today I'm generating the last piece of stop motion, after today I will have all the raw animations completed, these last scenes will need the sea adding over the next couple of days and and there are a few post productions tweaks needed on the rest of the animation, but it's all coming together it seems.

I've added in some rigging that can be seen as the ship spins around, this was from a photograph I took in Hartlepool a few months ago. (Forward panning at it's very best!)

The next scene set up mid animation with cat fur cannon smoke!

How things look at the moment with the sky and rigging dropped into the background.

And then:

The next couple of scenes relied on an armada of ships in bottles sailing across the screen:

Tediously edging each ship along why rocking at the same time, they're raised up on boxes to get a nice low angle from the camera.

I'm now working on dropping them into the classic old animated sea scene, something I've wanted to have a go at ever seeing The Tale of How at the beginning of the course.

Today I have blasted through another freakish 5 second scene using my stop motion/green screen skills, these scenes are supposed to be along the same lines and pace as the Pic Pic Andre style animations i researched last year, although with just a fraction on the time spent on the characters as I'm simply using what I've sourced over the last few months. This weekend is when all that planning and ordering of pirates and ships in bottles from Ebay several months ago all comes together.

The British Navy on a peaceful day out

the original green screen pre-magic

I may still add in and indicate some rigging and masts as the camera spins around.

Tomorrow it's the Combined Spanish/French fleet's turn. I've been drawing faces on the crew's models today especially.

Progress

I have chosen to turn this week just passed and next week on it's head. I've spent most of this week rendering, editing and tweaking scene done so far rather than the stop motion I had pencilled in to my plan. Which will leave next week free from all that editing and tweaking.

The logic being, it would give me a better sense of what might need changing tweaking, adding and developing timing wise and help me delegate the right amount of time to what else needs doing. The logic has worked quite well and given me better time to condense and prepare what is needed in the final set of stop motion scenes after which everything will be complete!

It has also given me an opportunity to re-evaluate the way the ending is visualised and I've ended the animation by combining a couple of new ideas which work better over the narration (considering I don't have a multi-million dollar corporation working behind me to visualise my originally intended scenes!.

I cant's stress enough that Rebusfarm.com is an absolute life saver with regards to time spent rendering. I just uploaded the very last scene today, 155 frames (the very last scene in the animation not the last bit of work to do) and it was rendered and downloaded back on my mac again within 10 minutes. It takes me at least 7 minutes to render these particular frames on my mac!

So today I've been editing and tweaking in After Effects but here's some other stuff going on:

I worked very hard trying to de-tune a digital TV to get some wavy lines and film them, in these current digital days the TV normally goes blue instantly so I had to comp the three seconds together in after effects from about 20 separate frame sequences.

Proud of this scene, finally getting back to my routes by animating some graphics!

 And this little scene featuring Werpy's Column (watch the animation and you'll understand)

Crows Nest Scene and the magic of Green Screen

Today I worked on my mini green screen studio. I downloaded Dragonframe a few months ago specially for this part of the animation although waited until now to install it as it's only a months free trial (tho you annoyingly only get to animate 50 frames in project so have to set up new projects every 2 seconds)

I've hardly got a professional set up other than the digital SLR and so cobbled things together with a gorilla camera tripod on a pile of books with three dining room chairs, 3 house hold lamps and a broomstick.

The results of my first stop motion scene are satisfying enough though.

Shot in-front of green screen

Green keyed out in After Effects, background added and lighting/colouring of the scene tweaked.

There will be more to come over the next week.

The boat scene:

I think I'm now happy with the introduction of the Battle of trafalgar scene, I've added the sky, switched off the books on the table as the camera spins, added some collapsing masts, whacked in some cannon fire smoke and funked up the wood textures for the ships. Don't get me wrong, I've spent a lot of time on it but not as much as it probably looks, the wood texture looks so great but it's simply the panels of my dining table coloured up dark or light depending on whether the ships are the goodies or the baddies. They're not supposed to look like real ships, just a freaky map scene where little wooden sailing ships mimmic the battle (very briefly) Chuffed with the outcome though.

The render has been set up with various ships spread out over 5 different buffers so I'll have alphas to play with and add some more smoke in after effects later.

Today has really been a tidying up loose ends day, I've really worked on tidying up the narration, chopping it into bits, and sorting the levels, compression, clipping the ends of each part so they don't pop and fitting it nicely to the animation I've put together so far.


Oh as another recent development I was looking to add a little reflection into the sea/map and have found this cool water effect...

The reflection will be key-framed so it increases from zero as the camera comes down to sea level.

Who needs fancy green screens?

I set up my own little green screen at home, you don't need to go out and buy an extremely pricey £100 green screen when you can order a large sheet of green fabric from the internet for about £5.

The sheet is much bigger than is shown, so it should be fine for what I need. I've just started working out the movements and filmed myself going through the movements to get a sense of timing, will start animating this proper tomorrow.

Cute Monsters T-Shirt Competition

I don't think I mentioned this, I entered this dude into a Cute Monsters T-Shirt competition through Deviant Art a month or so ago. Don't think I've won though, a bit weird for them maybe. Got some appreciative comments though.

Well, I'd wear it.

Erm, the Charles Darwin Scene

Yes I know, if you were expecting me to have produced something similar to the Charles Darwin from the new Pirates animation by Aardman, then you should also question how I developed a script involving sailing ships, things stored in beards and Charles Darwin while sitting in the sunshine last summer only to find Aardman have developed something entirely different at exactly the same time.

My Charles Darwin:

Aardman's Charles Darwin

Now it's obvious who portrays the more realistic representation of the character! I'm sure.

Another Scene completed.

Another Scene Cracked

This 2D malarky is a piece of piddle,  If I'd chosen this route throughout the animation would have been finished a couple of weeks ago and I'd be sitting on a beach somewhere instead, or something.

A frame from the Sun Eating scene. (doesn't look very interesting but I don't want to give the game away).

Meet Professor Armitage Shanks

Some days a one day scene takes two days but today I'm pleased to experience a two day scene taking one day. Professor Armitage Shanks is in the bag.

Now to tackle a scene I hadn't planned on, a scene where a tree eats the sun, of course. There also may be cause to film the front of a fire station.

That's the interesting thing about what I'm doing, as I'm going along, I'm re-interpreting the animation. This also resulted in asking the guy who did the narration to add three more bits a couple of weeks ago, this in return then highlights other possibilities when it's all put together.

Basically as I go along and produce a test render for each scene, I then drop it into (or over) the relevant part in the Animatic in a very crude form without effects, transitions or cropping shots. What this has done is to allow me to see the overall picture and feel of the animation, a bit like being handed a bunch of rushes I guess. It's also inspired me into thinking about the sound track which, for the first time, until now I couldn't get into my head and I've prepped an old band member with ideas with which we'll deal with at the end of the month.

Prof. Shanks exits his laboratory to spell things out to you

It's coming together, but only if I don't stop.

Fraiser Werp Spotted in Eldon Square...

Mere Mortals

For the last four weeks I've been popping into Mere Mortals a couple of days a week, just as an update here's a few screen shots of some of the 3D modeling I've been doing for them. It's a great friendly post production and animation studio to have been hanging around in although it's probably not the best time for me to be dedicating time to a placement at such a crucial point in the course.

Yes it's not the most creative of work but technically it's been at least challenging and helping me to become more proficient in finding efficient ways to construct shapes within Cinema 4D. The files will ultimately be exported as FBX files from C4D to be opened in 3D Studio Max for some kind of alarm system installation animation sequence.

And it's not over yet!

Other than this I began the first week or so rotoscoping around a passenger on an inflight Emirates Airline safety movie (or an Emirates sister airline, no entirely sure to be honest). Basically cutting out the deep shadowy parts that can't be automatically cut out from green screen movie footage. This was done in Mocha so was a new experience and linked through After Effects. No screen grabs of this as of yet.

Update over. Bed time.

Freaky Fraiser Werp Rotoscope Sequence

I've created a bunch of these, what are these? Well this is one of many matts I've had to draw out in order to mask out bits of camera tracking I don't want tracked by PFHoe (I've actually spent 12 hours today without successfully tracking this particular shot so far, it doesn't like it, but I have high hopes before midnight).

I'm posting this because I think I might end up using some of this for my Fraiser werp credit sequence. It's cool stuff, a very simplified rotoscoped busy high street. Just needs a simplified Fraiser Werp and some text.

I know it doesn't look like much at the moment but believe me it's the best thing I've produced in the last 48 hours.

FW on the Metro

Here's a test render from one of the camera tracked scenes for the Fraiser werp animation. Still needs the shadows, and motion tweaking slightly but looking good otherwise

Nice little animation by Belle and Sebastian

Nice little animation for Belle and Sebastian, lovely bit of messing around with time and camera tracking

Fraiser Werp Progress

Well, it's only a somewhat week since I started rigging and weight painting the Fraiser Werp, blimey. But I have it in a state where I have actually been able to start animating it. I've had to scrap all ideas about hair and fancy pants textures due to render times. But the painted skin does about 90% of the work anyhow.

In my planner I had scheduled the stop motion to start this week, but I decided to re-jig the plan, it seemed more productive to blast on with the 3D character, get it animated for the the first scene. Then start applying the animated to camera tracked footage I filmed last week while I'm whizzing along in 3D mode.
I'm a bit pissed off that I can no longer get the flipper flapping with the jiggle object, I know exactly how to apply it and it works on anything else but I thing the standard rig that comes with C4D somehow screws it up buy telling the skin it's not actually moving so there aren't any forces applying themselves to it. or something else entirely.

The stop motion stuff will be started on the first week after the easter holiday. It gives me more time to thing about and create the environment.

Fraiser Werp Painting

Until this week I last had this 3D model open and on my screen in November! But now, I have finally just about finished painting up the 3D character in the way God intended.

It's basically been done by selecting various separate areas such as the belly, back, neck etc and using the set selection to create about 14 UV meshes which are set up in Bodypaint UV Edit within C4D. I exported these as photoshop files with the mesh on a separate layer and then tediously painted the dude up in separate parts using blurred edged alpha channels to blend the sections together.

He's now awaiting his fur, then I can get on with the morphs for the eye lids that I accidentally deleted from the model. The whole thing needs rigging from scratch again and made animatable by the end of the weekend or I'll fall behind my schedule.

Today I also spent a few hours filming footage around the toon for him to be potentially bouncing around it.