Bulbio part 3

As part of the D&AD competition with Disney, i was required to enter a 30-60 second animation showing how my character would move, interact and generally come to life.. however.. i am not an animator.. i instead created a rough story board and mocked up my animation using that..

the story goes: My bulb character, wakes up in the bin...after having various pages of rejected ideas thrown towards it...*could be cut to save time*....he realises where he is and promptly escapes.. as he lands on the floor of the room he loses his balance and falls over. regaining his balance he walks out further into the room.. there we gain a sense of scale of the bulb and his surroundings.. but also he spots that one of the lightbulbs is out and the artist (human character) is busy working away.. so the bulb has the idea of replacing the broken bulb thus helping the artist. he makes his way over to the bookcase which he has seen is his only way of gettin to the height of the light fitting. once at the bookcase he again marvels at the scale of what he has to overcome but begins his ascent of the books and obstacles on the shelves....

*this next bit might get cut*... climbing over some books he arrives at a particularly large one and has to launch himself onto it.. which topples it like a domino and throws the character into a box. as he checks himself and regains his composure.. he realises in this box there are 2 spare bulbs, he checks to see if they are alive but it looks as if he is the only bulb alive (with personality)... he continues with his journey climbing to the next shelf where he finds a rubber band and some paper clips (in the background we see the artist stressing as he hangs his head and throws more paper away).. the bulb looks up to gauge the last stretch of his climb..

as he hauls himself up to the top of the bookcase and rolls onto it.. he catches his breathe.. gets up.. and heads over to the odd gathering of bits on the top shelf.. there he fashions a grappling hook. returning to the end of the top shelf which is closest to the light fitting... he places his rope on the floor and launches the paperclip end towards the light fitting. it lodges into a hole in the back of one of the lights and the bulb no weighs up what he's about to do.. looking over the edge and psyching himself up.. he lets fly and swings to underneath the light fitting. as he starts to climb, the paperclip gives a little and he slips down to the bottom of the rope.. as he hangs there.. the artist suddenly gets his bright idea and it scares the bulb into lighting up.. (but we view it as if the bulb is hanging above the artists head)...

he has now become the bulb of inspiration rather than a basic bulb.. he was an idea that refused to go away, crawled his way out of the bin and back to life! :) I like the idea that the bulb has no mouth.. he doenst need to talk after all.. but i kept trying to think of how i could animate him.. and what style i could draw it in..

everyone thought i was being a little adventurous with choosing an animation brief (which is partially true).. but I always thought of drawing out my elements.. say a body for the bulb and various faces or arms that could be moved with each frame.. this would keep some of the animation rather jumpy and somewhat flat/2D but i've seen it done rather well with Bob Shea's work...







the only problem is the sheer amount of time it takes to actually animate :s i've tried it before..

Monkey Truck!

Whilst researching ideas for a character in my competition entry I stumbled upon this via Drawn blog,

Monkey Truck from Michael Slack on Vimeo.

The initial premise of a monkey crossed with a truck is exactly the fresh and unique idea I'd love to create. The fact the monkey truck then goes around the jungle helping out the other animals ticks the 'heart and optimism' box, but the scenario of a lizard about to be stomped on or building a little hut and transporting coconuts shows how Michael Slack has not only conjured up this mad combination of an animal and a vehicle but also considered how it would exist and move about in it's world. Admittedly, the animation isn't as glossy and smooth as many people may come to expect but it is also part of it's charm, the timing and focus allows for the story to be delivered in a way that emphasizes the situation without labouring over fancy computer generated graphics.

7x7xdeath

Hopefully I have seen the back of this project now! Don't get me wrong, it's been great to have real world experience of creating a piece of art, passing it on to a design team who then come back with alterations and then chatting with the printers who need to receive the artwork in a specific format but thank **** it's done!

Starting with my own work, I was already happy with my main image but it was the spot illustration that didnt quite sit right on a page or look like part of a set. I think having the summer away from the piece of work definitely helped, as sometimes you can be sat so close to an image that you cant see whats wrong until you step back. Luckily, I feel I have made the spot image more dynamic and I'm actually prefer it when compared to the main one as it holds more character in my opinion. Originally I was using the halftone screen printing technique as a way of holding the two images together and using the same colours in hopes that people would just assume they belong together but now I hope the audience will see a relationship not only between the characters in the story but also between my images.

Main Image:


Spot Illustration:


Because I am looking at character as a theme within my work, I'm happy (for the time being) with how the images work. The story I was given to illustrate didn't focus on character descriptions too much - we are told certain aspects such as the female character has red hair and the male is wearing a shirt, shoes etc - and so I had to make sure I wasn't trying to create specific or generic characters. I have suggested the female character by using elements such as her hair, hand and lips to form a seductive womanly image. Similarly I have used the shoes, a shirt and tie, the chesterfield chair, and the large eye to form the male character who is sat watching her perform. There are then other little details which I feel add to each character, such as the tears showing the womans emotions with the situation, the frilly cuff/clevage to again emphasize a seductive and sexual side to the her and the shape of the hand/glove not only forms her face but I altered the length of it for a curvier shape to hint at the natural shape of a womans bosom and hips as well as using it for a long slender neck.

I think I was actually quite lucky with my choice of colours... We had initially planned for the whole book to be printed in colour, meaning everyones images would've looked exactly how they created them but disjointed. Now I know the stories featuring in the 7x7 book arent linked, nor continuations, but due to the limited budget the choice to print in Black with a single spot colour was made. As I said, I was lucky in that I had already limited my colour range and so it wasnt as big a problem altering my images to using black and blue (the colour we decided on) and I had already been looking at screenprinting my work just for my own benefit... but I now actually prefer the spot colour versions more than the coloured ones I created earlier.

7x7 cover teaser


7x7 teaser


Another part of the 7x7 project involves working with a 2nd year Moving Image student to create a short 10-15 second animation. I often admit that I like things done my own way, and I often do them myself so that I know they are done properly but i also like relinquishing control as i usually prefer what someone else makes with an idea than my own interpretation. (i sometimes try too hard to make things look 'Cool' and appealing to everyone). but basically... my initial ideas of a Mad Men/Catch me if you can or animated comic styled piece of work went out the window when I was introduced to Kirsty Newman (i'd add her blog or site.. if i knew it). She really liked the halftone pattern work in my images so I was tasked to create some images for her to use and animate with... Now I must stress... I have been rubbish. It took me ages to actually get the image to her, I was busy editing other peoples artworks ready for printing and separating the layers, but she's been an absolute star with delay after delay as well as putting up with me in general. Anyway, providing this one image was actually harder than i thought purely because of the sheer size it needed to be in order for her to zoom into it!



but as I said, she's a star and has sorted it along with compositing some live action dancing to represent the female character. I know very little of After Effects and Premiere so I have given her free reign over it, but through not giving her the image she needed early enough, Ive put her under a bit of stress to meet her deadline for this friday :( sorry Kirsty. I already told her that I wasn't exactly impressed with my own efforts, nor happy with the image I supplied to her but she actually has it on camera where I say that it's all my fault, I've been useless and that I hate babies... but theres a possibility of us working together again in the future on a couple of side projects... (one being liked to my old figure animation I had planned... Characters and Backgrounds)

I'm an Animator now!

This is my first "proper" animation made in After Effects, thanks to some tuition by Ian Macklin of the http://www.goodiescorp.co.uk/ who was kind enough to spend some time with us and teach us the basics. Although Flash looks to have some advantages over AE, you cant knock the simplicity of it and the familiar workspace but this isnt the animation I had planned. Originally I had ideas of grandeur featuring 8 different characters and scenes... but i greatly under estimated the ammount of time it would take jsut to try animate a character that could simply walk across a screen.

characters:


backgrounds:


I spent the whole 3 weeks dedicated to this project designing the characters and creating a story behind them, to link them all together, i changed my mind tonnes of times on how they should look and feel until I realised they didnt have character/personality with nothing unique or distinguishable between them. Finally though I settled on the designs above, created in Photoshop but made to look like Illustrator (I just work faster in photoshop) and now I just need to get them all walking... it's just a little more difficult than I first imagined. I wasn't even going to do this, I was looking at animated comics like I posted previously but my story lacked any real interest apparently. I can't remember if I've already said this but I love comics and everybody assumes I want to draw comics for a living, but because I love them so much I wouldnt want a job in that area as it could destroy my passion for them... similarly I have avoided animation. I love cartoons... at 23 year old I am often criticised (by friends and family) for STILL watching cartoons before work and uni, from early Warner Bros and Hanna Barbera to modern Cartoon Network shows, and for this reason I feel I would lose any sort of passion for them... but still I've not looked at the positive... maybe because I love cartoons so much, I'd REALLY love making them and creating something fun.... hmmm....

Ian showed us all a piece of work by animator Carolina Melis ( http://www.carolinamelis.com/ ) who through subtle movements and nuances creates a wonderfully alive characters... in particular we saw her video for the song 'Go go ninja dinosaur' by Four Tet involving a colourful dino going for a walk across a changing background of patterns and shapes.... in fact... here, watch it...



The way the dino bobs up and down, coupled with the timing of the legs, their subtle raising and falling and the moment when a foot hits the floor gives him a bumbling/ambling along kinda feel and personality. Something so simple can have such a huge effect, and its these little details I often miss in my work, but this is why my epic animation is taking so long as I try to bring my cast to life. (check out the 7th animation on her website... 'Walk this Way' for Animal Planet, which features a menagerie of animals mimicing each others movements... but note the lion right near the end with his jointed legs and paws... such a simple idea but executed perfectly and precisely)... I have found an interview with her on the Computer Arts website, but am yet to read through it and extract what I need.

Melis' and my own idea for an animation actually reminded me of old school side scrolling video games, none of this fancy 3D environments :P, but more specifically Sonic the Hedgehog and the limitations of 16-bit computer graphics... but also the patterns in Green Hill Zone's landscape....