Twisted Films

And whilst in the area of the blog, 

I was also informed a couple of weeks ago that ...

The Fraiser Werp is the winner of the 'Twisted Films' showcase.!!

it was something that was advertised on a BBC web page a while back and so I thought, ideal.

http://www.twistedshowcase.com

I'm just dwelling upon whether to let them show whole thing on their site yet or whether I'm being too precious about it. 

Meanwhile in Cuckoo Land I've actually been earning money and working my bingo wings off over the last few months on freelance stuff. It's most agreeable when a plan comes together.

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.

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.

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.

Fraiser Werp Update

I've realised I've been so busy working that I've not updated my blog with my progress. Here's some snap shots from my current Fraiser Work production in progress. Work placement at Mere Mortals has had a bit of a knock on effect to my work flow as would be expected but I'm trying to churn through things as fast as possible.

Scene 2: Part 1: Flicking through Charles Darwin's notebook

Scene 2: Part 2: The Fraiser Werp pops up from the page and hops off

Scene 3: part 3: inner workings of the human brain processing Frasier Werps, (unfinished)

Scene 4: part 1: spinning newspaper (unfinished - completion relies on footage in the background, motion tracked from Scene 3 Part 4)

Scene 4: part 2: Steam Powered TV in study

Scene 4: part 3: Scientists try to anaylise a Fraiser Werp interacting with a Steam Television.

I've not achieved as much as I wanted to to date but considering I've only been producing artwork and animated scenes for 3 weeks then it's not going too badly.

By the end of tomorrow I want to have all of Scene 2 in the bag which means creating a pop up of the Fraiser Werp from Charles Darwin's book which hops off the page onto the table.

Next week will be dedicated to UV mapping and painting up the 3D model of the Fraiser Werp which I haven't touched since November I think. That will entail much research and online tutorial time.

Showreel

Due to potential work placement prospects I've felt it wise to bash together an up to date showreel featuring current and past work...