Eddomation

So yeah hi

Administrator — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 12:25:58 +0000

Hey there, just a quick message to let you know how it’s all going down.
I haven’t recieved my mark back for the Video & BSound elective so no news on that front. But i have begun my next ACTUAL animation project!
For our professional practice class we have to create an ident for MTV2, using a competion they had a few years ago. Basically 15 seconds of music themed animation, which personally i thought sounded amazing. So i immedietley asked Ken Ashcorp if i could use his recent song ‘I wish there were still Dinosaurs’ and he was pretty over the moon about it and gav e me a special 15 second clip of the chorus. After producng an animatic, i thought the idea wasn’t looking very ‘MTV2′, which was unfortunate as i really enjoyed the animatic. So as a back up i created a second idea in case. Luckily for me, they liked the dinosaur ident and so now production has started on it!

You can click the image below to check out the ident (as bad as it is)

Doesn't Kenny just LOOK like he wishes there were more dinosaurs today?

Oh and we have started learning some basic after effects and this is one of my first ventures into it (mixed with the ventures of another two students from my class)

Video & Sound elective

Administrator — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 16:52:08 +0000

For my second year Elective i chose Video & Sound, and basically what this means is i get to experience another course for 5 weeks or so and create a short film.
For my short film, i decided to go for a simple idea, which is basically an everyday task with bizarre sound effects. After creating this and using weird sound effects it seemed too slapstick and i decided to try a more musical approach to the whole thing:

If i were to attempt this again, i would rather have edited the video to fit the music, instead than editing the music to fit around the video, because as you can hear, in some points the instruments are out of synch of each other. Although, one teacher in the crit session apparently like the fact it wasn’t in synch. They also liked Ross’s acting (the chap in the video) I was quite pleased with the visuals as i don’t always get to direct live footage so it was an intresting change

Krapp’s last tape

Administrator — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 21:35:01 +0000

Finally finished a 9 week long group project using stopframe and flash animation. We all wanted to try something we don’t usually, so me and Ross did the stop frame and made the character, while Sophie and Laura did the flash animation. And Matt worked with them to make the set as well as the titles. (although i had to help with some parts towards the end due to a deadline)
I also directed this with Ross, making the storyboard and animatic. It had to be based on the short play ‘Krapp’s last tape’ by Sam Becket but couldn’t be a litereal translation, we had to take our own unique twist. Ours being the fact the old man in the story is actually this ragged puppet, who tries to repair himself but only winds up getting caught in the tape and ultimately being destroyed by being caught in it.
The project itself was very difficult due to a lack of communication between us all, and the fact we had split down the middle to do the seperate tasks didn’t help either.
Overall i found the unit to actually be a very dull idea for a project, but was fun to try stopmotion for once. So here is the animation, i hope you enjoy it – keep in mind there is no music for the title sequcne due to the fact we didnt have any prepared, because we didnt know what Matt was doing for the titles until he had finished it on the last week.

Matt sucks.

New project

Administrator — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 23:07:50 +0000

Our new project, set by our new lecturer Lizzie Oxby, is all about mixing stop-motion with flash to produce a 2-minute film based around Sam Beckett’s “Krapp’s Last Tape”
I am working in a group with my classmates Matt, Ross, Laura and Sophie. For this project i have decided to try the stop motion side of things rather than relying on the flash aspects. So myself and Ross have agreed to do the stop motion together.
After looking over the text, which you can read here, our group first took a very litereal approach to the story, which after first presenting it changed it dramatically so it was less litereal and more about the heart of the story.
I shall hopefully have some production stills and an animatic on here before the end of the week.

Results and throwing tests :D

Administrator — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 21:39:07 +0000

Well i successfully passed my first year with 70%, Huzzah! Meaning i am succesfully continuing my course into the second year!
Now as a summer project we were assigned to animate soomeone throwing a ball, and were asked to make it as realistic as we could, my video is as follows:

I did two different throws, the first is they type of throw i imagine people doing usually, and see in most films and a typical overam throw, although i thought the ball would not travel very far like that – so after studying how a friend threw a ball, i decided to attempt it again, thistime more similar to how he threw.

Synthesis: Part one

Administrator — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 17:58:36 +0000

In the last project we had, the assignment has been split into two. The first of which was to create an ident or sting for the Animaidstone animation festival along with a suitable logo to match. The ident had to be related to the university or the surrounding town of Maidstone and have a duration of 8-11 seconds.
For my ident, i decided to go for a Medievel style and appearance, as well as setting. So i had a character from the Bayeux tapestry interact with a modern object, as if the character had arrived from the past and is in a modern day Maidstone.

In the final ident, the aspect was changed to widescreen and it had a banner fall from the sky with a fan fare, i hope to upload the final version soon. Hope you enjoy!

Web Design elective

Administrator — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 13:03:58 +0000

For the past few weeks we have not been doing our usualy Animation course and instead have been doing another course for a number of weeks.
The elective i chose was web design, being that i know quite a fair bit about it and would like to learn more. The course as of now has been largely tutorials about using Fireworks, Dreamweaver and Flash – the latter of which i know particulary well already. What we are aiming to have by the end of the short project is a website with at least 5 pages using at least one hybrid, as the topic for the electives this year is ‘Hybrids/Hybridity’.
I shall post some screenshots of the website once i have them.

Group Project finished!

Administrator — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 13:00:53 +0000

Although i am rather late at puttin it up on here, my group project with Matt and Joe was finished and presented over a week ago and here it is!

The final presentation went pretty well, other than the fact the music didn’t suit it greatly and it all seemed rather bundled together – meaning we need to of planned it more.
If we had planned it all at the start we could of all had similar parts, as Matt’s and mine were a similar idea, actually physically making the animation, where as Joe’s was more abstract. However, Matt changed his idea half way through production so we didn’t know it what it was going to be about until Joe had finished his part, and therefore unable to completely start from scratch.

There were a lot of problems when we were compileing all three clips together, but that allowed Matt to be able to fonish his just in the nick of time as we burnt it all to DVD, which Joe foolishly refused Matt to test on the big screen as it worked on his laptop, and therefore didnt work on the television the next day at the presentation.
In the end i think Joe was better than Matt when it came to organising how he planned and completed his work and he actually stuck with the production plan he produced for us all, as did i (roughly). But if we were to do this project again i would not do a similar idea, i would rather do a more linear storyline, as aplitting it into three made it difficult for people to tell what was going on.

Final Drawing Workshop

Administrator — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 18:32:38 +0000

…of this semester at least , haha.

To start the lesson off, we had to draw the figures using only simple angular lines to represent the bodies. And then eventually we could add on to the simple lines.

Then for this next part of the lesson we had to draw the figures but with our eyes closed or not looking at the paper or with our opposite hand.

The after those we had to drawn the figure uside down and then draw the figure of a person walking around the room, but with the different stages – then we had to do the same task but so the figure has changed emotions.

Here we had to continue our emotive walks and skips, then we had to draw the figure but by only using the shadows cast by a lamp and finally had to draw the same pose but using a different kind of line to show anger, optimism and confusion.

Same task as before with the various kinds of lines, but with a different model and different emotions, followed then by a storyboard using either of the models we had done.

Lip Synching Workshop

Administrator — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 15:30:56 +0000

This is a compilation of short clips of lip synch i made with George in Lydia’s Lip Synch Workshop last tuesday.
We were given a small sound clip from a larger one (or in our case too very small clips) which we then animated and put into a whole sequence.

I found it very fun to cut out and put the parts into action, and the synching on the Drago program was not very hard to pick up at all. I will most defenitly be attempting something like this again sometime!