Kirin Short Film Competition

http://www.kirinfirstcut.co.uk/competition-info.html

Thought this might be worth looking at if there's anyone out there that's got something to enter by the 30th June 2011 then get in there! 
Oh yeah, what ever you enter has to be based on the theme "First Press".

1st Prize £3000! I'd be quite happy with 4th prize, a years supply of Kirin beer.

This Way Up...

Having discovered this animation by Smith & Foulkes I can see an example of how my own 3D character might well end up looking! I have been in two minds about whether the whole thing should be in black and white or simply dis-coloured/de-saturated perhaps in the same way as this animation. The texturing of the faces would work well with my own character.

AD108 Plan for the week...

First week back after the Pictoplasma conference in Berlin for which I will update my impressions and the way it will influence me will be tackled shortly..

Back to reality and full of inspiration I've just sat down to evaluate what I'll need to work on for my character and story to be complete. Things that need to be tackled are:

• Facial expressions - build the inside of the mouth and set up all the morph tags, these will be important as the character will be talking to a camera.

• Hand movements - set up the morph tags, these are not so important for the story but some movement is necessary

• Eye movements - set up the eye controllers and eyelids

• Hair - Although I have built 'solid' hair, there is still an opportunity to mess around with the hair effects available in C4D.

• Cloak - I've gathered reference to Ming the Merciless I just need to build his evil garment

• Scenery - There are two important scenes: 

1. Inside the shed, this involves creating a planet earth globe, laser cannon, stars and a couple of buttons.

2. Shed exterior, this would be a simple side on cut out drawn environment silhouetted at night

Then there are two supporting scenes of the characters broadcast on large screens around the world, such as Piccadilly Circus and Time Square. These would be manipulated using cut out photography in a distorted manner that will look like a different style again.

This week then....

MON

I would like to have the hand movements set up and maybe the eyes

TUES

Build the mouth interior and set up expressions and mouth movements

WED

The facial expressions may take a couple of days, I want to be working on the alternative hair by now.

THUR

Complete the hair

FRI

Start working on the cloak

SAT/SUN

Having the cloak completed by this weekend will mean my character will be ready to start animating. I also want to re-write/update my script and storyboard so I am clear of what I am going to be doing and what elements are needed for the scenery. Pictoplasma has actually inspired me to create a fictitious foreign language for my character which will then need subtitles.

Hyungkoo Lee - Disney Skeleton Sculptures

While we are in the middle of rigging our characters for the current module and essentially adding the bones to them I thought it was a good time to post reference to the South Korean artist Hyungkoo Lee. I stumbled across this fantastic set of sculptures completely by chance a few weeks ago. I think it's great that the artist has seriously considered how a series of fictitious cartoon character's bone structure would look like in order for the characters to move around, (forgetting for a minute that the character's movements and antics generally involve a serious lack of bones). Bugs Bunny is great, big teeth and no ears, and the poses are set to mimic the actions of the characters rather than simply being motionless.

Bugs Bunny

Donald Duck

Road Runner

Wile E. Coyote

NOT SO CUTE NOW ARE YOU!

http://www.michaelspornanimation.com/splog/?p=1570

http://www.hyungkoolee.net/animatus/animatus.html

AD108 End of week 2 report...

Well, this creating a head business takes some time. It's coming along OK though, I'm in the middle of working on the hair now then the inside of the mouth. This isn't the texture I'll be using but I quite like sculpting it out of stone...

3D Character modeling update

I'm pretty chuffed with todays results, so chuffed in fact that I'm going to post todays progress on here. I think I've managed to create a reasonably cool looking hand, will certainly do for what I need it to do, which isn't much really and I could have got by with a far simpler hand but there would be no technical challenge involved in that.

What I also found pretty cool is that if you simplify the nurbs right down to their basic levels then you get to see the model pretty much as I modeled it, it's actually quite a nice style in its self...

Anyway, I've begun the daunting task of modeling the head, It's taken a while to get started and I wasn't too sure whether to continue modeling using the box construction technique but have decided to build it up polygon by polygon instead. Once the initial template was traced things have started to speed up, it's quite enjoyable seeing the chin and nose slowly evolve into existence...

Some 3D Character research that I quite like...

Last week we were shown a few animations, there is one in particular that I have seen before which I quite admire in so much as the style of the artwork produced. Although the animation is very much in generated in 3D the visual illustrative style looks hand painted. If you freeze the animation at any point you will be viewing what appears to be an individually painted scene. I love it.

Meet Buck from TeamCerf on Vimeo.

Another animation I really like for the style and technique is Codehunters, not necessarily for the story, but the use of light and texture creates a really dramatic effect along with a kind of hand drawn outline style used with almost super real/unreal textures. Strange stuff.

CodeHunters from Dustin Bozovich on Vimeo.

And in a very different way I love the stylisation of this crazy animation by David OReilly call Wolf 2106, The style of the scenery is very graphic, stylised and simple, I'm wondering whether to combine by 3D character into something similar.

WOFL 2106 (HD) from David OReilly on Vimeo.

Wallace & Gromit come to Newcastle 16th April - 30th Oct

Whether you like them or not it probably makes sense to check these pair out when it comes to the Life Science Centre next month...

http://www.life.org.uk/whats-on/events/wallace-gromit-present-a-world-of-cracking-ideas

http://www.crackingideas.com/exhibition/ 

Roald Dahl's Twisted Tales...

Yesterday evening I went to see the live stage performance of Roald Dahl's Twisted Tales at the Northern Stage.
It's on until 26th March if you are interested.

Now, it's obviously not directly linked to animation and I'm not going to sit here and give it a review, but it did involve two relevant ingredients:
1. It consisted of 5 short stories.
2. The stories were told in very bare surroundings with very few props.

The performance was good and some of the short stories were less predictable, grueling, nasty or interesting than others, but the key point from the evening is that if a story is clever enough or gripping enough or unpredictable enough then no amount of trimmings or detail can make it any better. I you have a sound story then yes I believe it can be embellished upon, and the overall style in which it is presented can then become just as important or iconic as the story itself.

If you fancy a short (it's only about 80 minutes long) and relatively bizarre night out then I'd recommend it, but don't go expecting James and the Giant Peach. (Especially the scene where one guy bets his little finger being chopped off for a chance to win another guys Cadillac).

Ever felt the need for someone to warm your toilet seat for you?

No they're not singing, they're about to chop off a finger for a bet.

http://www.thecrackmagazine.com/index.php?section=1&category=12&page=2915

My 3D character model so far..

I thought I'd show where I am at with the creation of my 3D character in Cinema 4D.

It too a while to get re-familiarised with the software and so the foot took a while to create but became a way of learning the processes needed to box model my character. I've worked my way up the leg, using the symmetry tool to create the other. As I got to the torso I was torn as to whether create it from a sphere or to continue with the symmetry, the symmetry technique won in the end and the whole process is speeding up as I get used to the tools and techniques.

 The character does look a little like a pregnant women but you need to remember an old man's head will be poking out from the from of the chest and the whole figure will be hunched over when rigged.

It just dawned on me...

Not exactly a new animation for Coke but it just occurred to me..

How did the guy get the cap off the bottle at the end? Coke is dispensed with a screw top not a cap, otherwise everyone would need to carry around a bottle opener!

I found this today...

Attack of the BearDuck

This caught my attention today with regards to the style of characters and the overall look and technique used in the animation. It has a strange 3/4 view 2D 3D style, i love the way the characters move and stretch as they bounce around. Not to mention it's just plain weird.

It's part of a nice overall concept where a series of artists are supposidly continuing a story or theme from where the previous animator left off. This is producing a unique selection of styles and techniques for one narrative (no matter how tenuous that narrative is becoming as it evolves).

Animation Tag Attack - Episode 11 - The Attack of the BearDuck from Animation Tag Attack on Vimeo.

I love the feel of this stuff too, it's not 3D character based but I like the fact that characters have been constructed differently from odd shapes to tell a story, the style and feel and sound is also great...

Giant Episode 1 Army from Benedi yann on Vimeo.

Celine and Yann do a few other nice looking animations, check them out.

CatShitOne

We've all just watched a bit of CatShitOne.

I haven't found a direct link to the whole episode but here's a trailer:

It's pretty bizarre, cuddly fluffy bunnies with big furry feet running around blasting the brains out of camel-like baddies. It has the over all feel of computer game COD style graphics but with the weird twist of the characters. It's interesting that I think intrigue in the animation solely stems from the conflicting elements of the characters and situation. Bunnies should be in a field eating carrots not in the Middle East firing guns.

The bits that I fixated on more than anything were the way the big feet worked on the characters and the twitching bunny tails. I know from my first animated loop with the clown and the big shoes just how odd it is to animate a character walking with big feet.

Strange Stuff

I saw this and thought it was funny, simple and bizarre

1991 from Vladimir Tomin on Vimeo.

My E4 Sting 10 second animation...

This is my E Sting animation completed, all I need now is for the competition to open!
Feel free to comment, is it too big, too round, does it bounce upon the ground?

E4 Berry Sting from marshall on Vimeo.