Finshed Animatic.

Animal Firm, Concept.

Just some starting concepts.

This character is my protagonist, hes your classic hard boiled detective.



I thought a hyena was the best animal to portray the chav culture.



This character was created on the play on words "police are pigs". I plan on this character to be a bent cop.



This one is just for fun.

Half Done Animatic.

Just wanted to post this. I Took Rozi's awsome cut out story board and trace bitmapped it in flash. Then converting the arms or whatever moved into symbols i was able to create some of the animatic.

Pencil to Paper.

Heres some drawings i've recently done, I thought I may as well post them to make it look like a lot of work. We've alos been given a drawing assignment called Animal Firm, where its up to us to come up with characters and concepts. I've included 1 photoshop sketch to do with animal firm, the rest are just sketchs. cheeeeeers.

Team!!!

Our group project consisting of me, Rozi and Alice, is a title sequence for a project called formation. Its about flies carrying a killer virus, which wipes out most of the world, apart from a few survivors. We assigned ourselves roles to take in production. since its a fairly small group we share the majority of the roles. For jobs we couldn't decide on we pulled names out of hats. Which landed me the role of producer. From this I started a blog http://flyformation.blogspot.com/ in which everyone in the group can update and check the schedule. Alice cracked on with the fly, making sure it would work (i.e appear to fly). Rozi started on the storyboard. We all tried different styles from cut out to art deco. I made a mood board which tried to capture the essence of the art deco silhouette style we are going after.



We then came together making a rough story board for Rozi to do in neat and make changes if needed.





I started working on silhouettes and how to capture the right style of a person with out going into to much detail. I had the idea of dying the silhouettes black to emphasis death in a euphemistic way.





I also tried a stylized scenery composition but it turned out too child-like. The paper background idea was Alice's, its great to help give it more of a "gritty" real, textured look.

Virgin Red Room Ident

So the last task of the term involved making an Ident for Virgins new online music site Red Room. My first idea involved an amp cable coming out of the screen and plugging into the viewer. but the idea lacked structure so i closed the books on that one and came up with the idea of a music gremlin. running havoc on a record player. From that idea I managed to whittle down a 10 second ident idea. which involved a gremil like creature running on a record player whihc plays classical music, then starts to run which causes the music to speed up into more indie music, and since he would be running so fast he would fly off the record, hit a wall and his body would spell out Vrigin Red Room. So I started with an animatic I made in FLash.



This animatic helped me to plan out how long the music would be on for, and when to move the character. From the start I wanted to use stop motion as I have never done it 'properly' before. I bought myself an idustrial amount of plasticine and set off making my character. I started my design based off my concepts.





However, the clay man was too heavy and had to lose the arms, as well as have a skeleton made out of foil. But i was much more pleased with the final result.



So onto the stop motion! With the help of a friend and his fancy red record player, we hit the studio's common room. I first modelled the character walking, which turned out fine, however when trying to make him run, he coulsn't support his own weight and it just looked odd. so i decided to turn the speed up on the walking to making it look like hes running. we tried other shots such as a front angle but it looked odd aswell. I also photoshopped the photos to get rid of the cracks the clay make had developed and shot were my hand is holding the character up. Heres some of the photos from the shoot, as well as and angle version of the character, which we didn't use at it would have been distracting.






So I edited it all together along with the sound and effects. However I could not get it in the proper resolution, but still pleased with the final result, take a look, hope you enjoy it.



Also as a side note the band that did the music was a local band known as InColour
http://www.myspace.com/officialincolour

Live @ Five

Working as part of a team of five, consisting of myself, Luke, Nigel, Andy and Sasha, and alongside the Broadcast Journalism students, we set out to complete a set of tasks set by the Broadcast Journalism students. Luke, nominated as the team leader, met with the broadcast journalism leader, who gave him a series of tasks to be completed, each with their own deadline. These tasks included: Title Straps, Weather Map, Football Table and Surf Report. We each were assigned a task to complete. Sasha and Andy were in charge of the Title Straps, Luke was to complete the league table and surf report, and Nigel and I were set the task of the weather map. Both us of, working to a two-thirty deadline, broke the weather map down into two sections, the map and the Icons. Nigel, having more Photoshop experience than I do opted for the icons, so I set out to find a weather map. Taking a screen shot from a Free 3D Earth website that covered all of Cornwall, I started by cutting the photo out in Photoshop.

I also blurred the top of the map where Devon starts, as it was not needed and also gave the map a more professional look and changed the colour in the curves. I then went onto label the map. Looking at the script for the weather that was given to us, I made notes of what places, if any were needed and mentioned in the script. I then went onto look at the BBC weather map for suggestions.

I noticed that the map had a few key places, however it did not use symbols as we were planning. So I decided to Keep 6 key places: Falmouth, St. Ives, Penzance, St. Austell, Newquay and Bodmin.
After Nigel had completed his sequential icons for the weather map he sent them across to me, as well as some weather directions and temperature gauges. However, I found out that After Effects might not be capable of playing the icons, so I used Premier to put the icons in the right order and then play them. I then saved them and exported them into After Effects, and from there I duplicated them until they last around 30 seconds. Since I did not know how long it would take the Broadcast journalism students to do the weather, I decided to break the script down into two halves, as it appeared on the form. So I split the two halves, I animated the first half of the weather, and for the second half I used static icons, so they could cut the footage to size or hold the last frame.
A problem I encountered other than the icons sequencing, was when we transferred the images into After Effects, it cut the top off the clouds. As I wanted to get the map done for the deadline, I decided to place the rain clouds under the town names, which resolved the issue. After watching the weather in the news room I realised that since I was working so close to the screen the font seemed ok, but when watching from a normal distance I realised the font should have been bigger as well as the symbols.
Another decision I made was not to include all the symbols Nigel had made, for instance the weather sock, it would have been a great feature if the map was going to be used full screen but since the presenter was going to be on the other side it would have made the map cluttered. Also, on the weather script, it gave a wind direction for the first day, but no direction for the second day, so I decided to include the temperature symbol Nigel made instead.
Finally I rendered the map to the correct resolution and ratio and gave it to the Broadcast Journalism student in time for the deadline set.
Since we all had finished early, except for a few 'disappointing' changes that had to be made to the title straps, such as making them static, because the Broadcast journalism students ran out of time. We were given some tasks to complete for World Today. My task was to simply place two pictures side by side in Photoshop, and make them fit, be clear and be the right resolution for widescreen television.
Overall I really enjoyed the day. It gave us the sense of working to deadlines on the day we are given the tasks. as well as working as a team and tackling a problem. Since we didn't know Live @ Five's house style we all decided to work to our own blue house style. One part in particular I liked was even though we were set our own tasks, we still bounced ideas off one another, tried different backgrounds etc, and ultimately made decisions as a team.