More painting!

I managed to get some better pictures of the finished colour scheme here, all ready to be re-built.

It's got a very orangey-yellowy look to it, which I like. The yellow has really given it some depth as well.

I've spent about 4 or 5 hours painting the main set also, which has now halfway to being primary coated. There are a lot of white gaps, but these will be filled in with the second, watered down coat.

Hopefully more to come tomorrow too!

Painting the set

The smaller room set is almost painted, and just needs rebuilding now, those pictures will be shown soon. The larger set has had the wood fixed down to it, and has been gunked (artex) ready to be painted.

I started with a mix of the brown with a darker blue, which made a really dark brown, but it wouldn't go into the cracks, so we put a very watered down mix of the brown and left it over night. The next colour was straight from the bottle and was dry brushed on top, if you don't know, dry brushing is a technique where you take the majority of paint from the brush, the brush itself has no water on it, and then you stroke across, so it becomes a powdery sort of texture. The next colour to go on was a mix of a golden yellow and the brown, dry brushed lightly on top, then finally a dry brushed highlight of the yellow by itself.

The main set will be painted also in this method, and I will hopefully manage to finish the first coat today.

Character animation.

The character animation module has almost been completed. This means I have quite a lot to talk about.

The first thing I did after my last post, was create my animatic. This started with a collection of drawings I drew in photoshop, then edited in other software. I didn't actually add any sound, as I was still contemplating what sorts of sounds and music to use at the time.

After the animatic was completed, I set out to draw all the pieces I used to do the animation with. My main inspiration at the time was an episode of "Samurai Jack"

This episode was mostly just in black and white, and I loved the strong Good and Evil relations to the white and black, so I decided to use it in my animation. I used white card on top of black, and split apart the characters so I could move them, using blue tack. After a lot of work I finally managed to get it all done, and edited it with some strange musics, and some self-recorded sounds, to create my final animation.

There are a few things that I would have liked to change, but overall, I'm very pleased with my outcome.

P.S. Thanks to Dan Roberts for groaning like a zombie for me.

Set progression

I'm currently in the process of painting the set, starting with a dark brown, then a lighter brown, adding a little yellow, then a little more, and it's created an orange looking glow to the colour. This is good as it makes it look as if it is a cartoon style colorisation. Pictures will be added soon.

Lip Sync progression!

I've managed to finally finish my Lip syncing work, which I haven't posted much on, but after taking some recordings, I decided on taking a secret recording of my friend shane (I asked him if I could use it, don't worry!). After cutting down the clip, I made some quick sketches of a scottish character, to go with his accent.

After building a simple wire armature, I built on top of it with plasticine, the design changed a bit, and I decided I didn't need the feet or the back, as they wouldn't be seen.

The background is simply two pieces of card, one blue, one green, with a bit cut out to make it look like mountains. I wanted it to be simple so not to distract from the character.

So here is my final animation, enjoy:

Character Animation progression

I decided on two of my characters for this project quite early on, but not because they go well together, which in hindsight may have been a bad decision, but they have good characteristics on their own. They are both based on myself, good and bad characteristics of me.

For my good alter ego, I have Reginald, the British Genie. He originated from when I was helping someone do something. I thought to myself that I don't often help out, probably a bad thing, but then when I do help, I really try my best, so it's perhaps the quality you get from me, not the quantity. In which case you get a genie, who has the power to help people with magical powers, just exaggerating myself, and of course he had to be British, because I wanted him to be kind of posh, and pick and choose who he helps, sort of like how I am.

After we picked a character, we had a life model do some poses for us as a class, which I then took into Photoshop and drew the character over, and painted. There are still a few things I mean to change in the design though, as I think the waistcoat should be black. I'm also tempted to give him a bowler hat, just to exaggerate the British-ness of him.

The Dark-side character is a little more quirky. I was thinking about how long I spend in the shower, but don't even realise... a 5 minute shower easily turns into 15 minutes! And the amount of time I just stand there, like a zombie. Then I just got the thought in my head... shower zombie!

I wanted him to be tall and spangly, and wearing a shower curtain, but after some discussions with people, we decided that it looks too much like a dress, and it makes the character look like a grizzly old woman in a flowery dress, so I redesigned the character to just be a zombie in a towel, looking pretty confused.

This is my final design, and it looks much better. After this, I started to create my animatic.

Where things are going with the set.

Right, first of all I'll talk about the set I have been building.

The first thing I did, once I had the new measurements, was to make foam board walls to the correct scale. The scale was 50cm x 50cm x 55cm. These were then reinforced with wooden borders, knowing the foam board sometimes warps.

We decided that the easiest way to create the wooden texture of the cartoon, in our time-scale, was to do it with more shaped and carved foam board.

With the help of my classmates, we were able to create enough "wood" to cover the walls of the set, and I proceeded to blue tack it down, and then finally glue gun it down.

To then create a rougher texture, I then coated the set in "gunk" (Artex). The next thing to get done, is to spray it with a black paint, to give it a good undercoat for brown. I will most likely start with a dark brown, then dry-brush with a slightly lighter brown, then finally highlight with a lighter brown.

First post!

Right, since I've been feeling a little ill, I think it's time to start up this blog.

I am a student doing a degree in Stop-motion Animation and puppet-making, and I am in my second year. I currently have three major projects going on, and I'll explain what I've done, and where I'm going with them:

1. My first project is "Character Animation & Implementation."
The projects are based on an alter ego of myself, so after some small amounts of written ideas, I began drawing some light side, and dark side alter egos.
Some of the drawings are better than others, yet some of the ideas are better. I then began the task of narrowing it down to what I thought were the cream of the crop, better ideas.

2. My second project is based on "Audio Production & Lip Sync" where we have been learning how to create an animation which includes speech. In between classes we have been learning how to use software to edit the audio which we have collected.

3. The third project is "Model Making" where we are recreating an old Max Fleischer cartoon entitled "Cobweb Hotel," in stop-motion animation as a group. Right from the beginning, we split up into groups, with a piece of the set each, and went off and created some mock ups. I was given the room set to build, which is interesting, as we decided we would use the same room for every room in the set. 

This just shows a rough scale, and a basis for where everything is going to go within the set. After we looked at it, the set is going to be a little bit larger than this.