Today I dedicated some of my time to working on a scene from one of the third year films, Big Top. It was only a short scene, but it's important to get it looking as professional as possible. Below is a playblast of what I achieved. I found it took some time to get my head around how to make the arms work around his large body, though I think I did a good job at this as well as with making his secondary animation look natural.

Self Portrait

I have finally finished my self portrait project, creating and editing all of my scenes before adding music for the final product.

After getting all of the bits and pieces like my photographs I needed together, I was able to shoot all of my stop motion footage. I came to the conclusion that I enjoyed the idea of looking back on my memories the most so would use photographs in a big part of my animation. Alongside these, I wanted to include a few of my belongings like badges or drawings that present a little more about who I am. I'm happy with the overall result, although I think that some of the stopmotion could have been a bit slower with more frames as the photos are quite hard to see at times. 

The editing I did in Aftereffects was quite time consuming. I encountered the issue of having some of my files in the wrong frame rate, and it took extra work to sort this out; I have learned from this mistake though. I could also have improved some of my masking effects, although I did try hard to add other effects like shadows to give it some depth.

I have added foley and music to my 3D animation of Conan and the Dragon. Since the last time I posted, I added some length to the close up scene of the man, showing the change in his attitude with his expression as he decides to face the dragon. I pitched down the roars we created so that they had more of a rumble like a dragon would, and tried to make the footsteps sound heavier. I think I'll be changing the music as I'm not fond of how it sounds currently.

Self Portrait Animation

This week I've finally been making progress on my self portrait. So far I have a few little bits to fit together, and the main body of the animation will be done in TVPaint which I haven't really had the chance to use this semester. I'm quite happy with the style, although I still need to add little things like blinks and make sure all movements are smooth, like with the umbrella.

I still want to include some stop motion animation, with sand and other objects, which I will be creating later this week.

More Animation Tidbits

This week some very intersting animated videos have been released by the famous band Gorillaz. They've always had some great animation ideas, with their own style and creative characters, and I love seeing some new work. 

From the very beginning you can see some good use of parallax, something we've been looking into this semester in our 2D background project. I am much more fond of the 2D animation in this video in comparison to the 3D with the clean lines and shading.

From here, I've been able to look more into Passion Pictures, the producers of this particular video. I am able to recognise some of their other work too, so it really shows what a diverse range of different projects that can be taken on. When looking through the work presented on their website, I found a piece called Once Upon a Line. It only uses two colours yet halfway, things become very busy. It's simple yet clever.

http://www.passion-pictures.com/uk/animation-studios/project/once-upon-a-line/

Title Sequence Updates

For our group project we've worked more on the final animations and the videos ahead are the parts I've worked on or helped with. For the hand, I drew the final outline and coloured, although it still needs some editing to become a final product. The cup needs to blend with some stopmotion footage we have shot, but I created the 2D animation to link to the next scene. I was present for the stopmotion to help, giving opinions and using Dragonframe to try and get the best shot.

I've worked more on my final 3D animation, and I've now surpassed the required number of seconds. I changed my mind about what was happening a few times throughout the process, and there may still be some work to do with the shots/camera, but I'm overall quite happy with this. The animation will still need some work over the coming few weeks to make things smoother and fill in some gaps, although I've tried to keep both characters moving whenever they are in the shot. One problem I have is how the dragons wings or claws fall through the floor on occasion. It's not always noticable, but it's something I can change.