Barn owl

Just another quick upload of a concept sketch and an exploration sketch of barn owls. I have gotten a bit stuck with my head armature so I'm giving it a little rest and working on something that i have wanted to do for a while now, which is making an owl puppet.

Truth be told that I used to be a very big birdwatcher and I still have a great interest in them I just don't get the time to do it anymore. My Grandad got me into it when I was about 11-12 and when he passed away in 2007 I always wanted to do something with birds in memory of him.
So I am going to do a few puppet tests with owls to explore their characteristics and just in general I wanted to build a new puppet to play with :D But I am hoping with this exploration that a story will follow while I am just having some fun playing around.

I also chose the barn owl as it has the best reference footage I can find. I would like to do my own but I don't think we will have many in the middle of the city ;)

So here is my concept piece, more of a colour script I suppose

--Please click the thumbnails to view them bigger--

And here is just a play around trying to familiar with drawing the barn owl

Some closer shots of them individually

Sketchy sketch

Just a quick bit of character design. I'm trying to get back into drawing in my sketch book instead of on the computer. I still cant help having a quick play with it afterwards though :D

Chris Bowden

Yesterday morning I went to a stupidly inspiring talk with Chris Bowden, the executive producer at Mackinnon and Saunders. This was so amazing.

He went through the process of Mars Attacks, Corpse Bride and Fantastic Mr Fox. Being the obsessive stop motionist that I am, I felt really geeky in that I already knew a lot of what he was talking about and seen what he was showing but the best thing was some of the production photos and videos shown were never before seen to the public, this included A few test shots they did with the Mars attacks puppets which they got Phil Dale in to animate after the project went all CG and they wanted to see what it would of looked like. It was AWESOME!

He also brought along some of his little friends

I wanted to take some more photos but I ended up waiting around to have a good chat to him but I never really got to. By the time I was about to get my chance to talk his ear of the owners of the venue came in and made everyone leave and Chris had to quickly pack away all the puppets. Major sad face :(
I have asked a couple of people to email me the photos they took so I will post up a few if I get them.

Mold making

I finally got the time time to make the mold for the head I posted previously. I wanted to try making the mold slightly different as the way I did it before is a little tedious with taping copious amounts of cardboard around it so this time I thought I'd try out a way I had seen in a few videos on you tube.

Instead of cardboard for the mold walls I used small sheets of perspex and sealed the corners with a glue gun.

This actually worked out great! I would like to make a mold properly, like how Ron Cole does his or how Kathi Zung shows you how to do it on her Dvd but I really don't have the space to get that messy. So this way will have to do for the moment.

I also would really like to try out a different material like the same material that Mackinnon & Saunders use. But i will have to do a bit more research on that to try and find out what it is they actually use as nobody seems to know.

Anyway, The first half of the mold came out great and I was super chuffed at how clean I  managed to get it. Now the second half didn't come out as well which I think could of been for two reasons
1. Too much plaster in the mix or 2. Not enough petroleum jelly for mold release

This resulted in some of the mold breaking inside and cementing to the other half of the mold. This was not too much of a problem as the mold still closes nice and tight and also the other half is the most important as it is the face of the head.

So all in all not a bad few hours work, it could of been better but could of been a hell of a lot worse. One bonus was that the head came out of the mold without too much damage which means I can strip the face off and reuse it.

I also thought I would do a wee timelapse of the process, just for laughs.

Busy times

Well things have gotten really busy round here at the moment so I thought I would post up the head sculpt I was last working on.

Click to view large

There is still a little bit of work to do on him. I need to trim the back of his head and his jawline so I can give him a neck. Then there is just general clean up before making the mold but I have not got a clue when I will get to finish him due to currents projects and work going on.

I always find it funny that I'm really happy with a sculpt until I take a photo of it and put it on here!

The next blog post will probably about the camera dolly my Dad is helping me build at the moment.
 I found some designs and threads about camera rigs on stopmotionanimation.com and just passed the research to my dad any he's planned it all up. One requirement I have is that it needs to be for stop motion and for live action so we are trying to figure a way that i can detach the thread from the main truck part of the dolly when its needed for live shoots.
Anyway here is a few photos of all the basic parts minus the threaded rod.

 

 

I will do a more detailed post when it's all finished.
Well back to working on this animation about planets ;)

I hope everyone is doing well!!!

Shelved...again

I was involved in another project over the past few months that has unfortunately been put on hold while the client gets the funding for the project. It also has to be timed just right as it is music video and needs to be released at the right time so trying to balance the making of it and the time it needs to be released is quite a hard task.

Either way it was a cool project to work on and I am happy I can at least share some of my concept work for it.

I also keep promising to post up some photos of the head sculpt I'm doing at the moment but I keep getting side tracked when trying to finish it. All I need to do is decide whether I'm going to sculpt eyebrows on it, or when its finally cast in silicone, to punch hair in. I also needs a neck sculpting on it but that shouldn't take all of 30mins then it's on to making the mold!

Click the images to view them bigger

Robots

Here is a sneak peek at a future project that has been put on the shelf for the moment while I work on current and more important jobs.

I am looking forward to getting back to work on it as it should turn out to be super cool. The idea of making these designs for stop motion really gets me pumping plus it's robots, who doesn't love robots?

Click the images to view them bigger

supercalifragilisticexpialidocious

Well what a cool week its been so far! First off I get an email from my old tutor to tell me my film is being entered in to the national RTS awards as it one the midlands award. That's pretty damn cool. I'm really not bothered about winning but it would be super cool if the film gets shown to the audience as there will be quite a few big names there.
He also emailed me today to let me know that I have been featured on the university's news page

You can see it here

Secondly over the weekend I got a message from the awesome chap that is Marc Spess to let me know he had put up a wee post about me on animateclay which is pretty damn awesome! I was super stoked with that news. Many thanks Marc for putting a big smile on my face for the weekend!

 You can see it here

I will have some photos to post up in a few days of a head I'm sculpting at the moment so i can test out making some new head armatures.

Practice & tests

A couple of months ago I put together the set from 'till death do us part' and had a little practice with the puppet from it. The first shot I just did without anything in mind. For the 2nd shot I wanted to try some follow through on the hair as I didn't really get a chance to test it on the film. The 3rd shot I wanted to animate something elegant.
Another reason for doing this was to test my set up at home to see if there would be any problems shooting my own projects.I am also a portrait photographer and have recently acquired a 600w light it also has a 200w modeling light which I wanted to see if it was powerful enough to shoot stop mo with. The main problem I thought would arise was flicker and it did but I soon solved that by changing the shutter speed on my camera. So its pretty cool that I can use my light for photography and also stop motion. Another bonus is that it came with barn doors and a honeycomb grid so I can shape the light quite effectively.

Youtube link

I also wanted to test out my tripod head to see if I can do some manual camera moves.  I have a Manfrotto 128RC Micro fluid head.

It is very very sturdy for shooting film with so I wanted to see if it was up for the job of stop motion. I found that is is very suitable for the job the only thing I need to do is to make some plates with markers on so I can tell how far it I need to move it. Awesome!!!
These moves are quite fast as I only had a short time to do them.

Youtube link

Forgetful

I was having a look through my illustration files earlier and found a couple of drawings that I had forgotten about. I quite like them so I thought I would share them with you

Click the thumbnails to view large

Inspiring words

Compare your life to Pixar.

I found this video to be very inspiring. I think it applies to all in the creative field and not just animation. It will be a video to turn to when all feels lost.

2011

Well there goes another year. It had some very bad lows but also some very good highs. I wish you all the best for 2011 and hope you had a great Christmas and new year!

I haven't blogged in a while about my own work due to not really having much to talk about. First off is that me and my chum are trying to start a small animation/film studio. We are currently negotiating our first job which will be a stop motion music video for a band. If all goes well It will be a really great job but I'm not going to get my hopes up as over the past few months things haven't gone to plan.
With that in mind I am going to continue with a few personnel projects. One is a short film that I will talk about at a later date. The next is to explore and expand my skills in puppet making. I am going to work on head armatures and replacement facial features.

I also need to make a practice puppet so I can animate a few basic principles for a new showreel.
For this I have sculpted a head which is pretty much finished apart from needing surgery due to knocking it over resulting in a bludgeoned eyebrow and chunks of hair missing.

Luckily I took some photos of it before the accident.











I have gone for quite a stylized look for this chap and am quite happy with how he has turned out. I'm looking at doing replacement beards for lip sync and cast the rest of the head out of silicone to get nice subtle translucent skin with movable eyebrows.

The rest of the body will also be quite stylized. I still need to do some concept work for that as with the head I started out with the shape of the head in clay then did a super quick drawing of what was in my mind



So hopefully by the end of the week I will have the rest of the concept work done and perform surgery on the head. I will try and keep everyone up to date with the process.

Gerald's Last Day on DVD

Justin and Shel's amazing 'Gerald's last day' is now available on DVD. I can not highly recommend this enough. Please do the right thing and go and buy yourself a copy. You can get it from their blog HERE

Here is a sneak peek of the behind the scenes that they have included on the DVD. Justin and Shel have worked so hard and you can see every last drop of it in the film,behind the scenes and even on their blog.


I always give them a shout out and I will continue to do so for as long as they do what their doing.

Now go and check them out and support some REAL talent! Gooooooooooooooo get the the chopperrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!!

Royal television society awards

Last Thursday I attended the Royal television society midlands awards as I was nominated for best student animation. I spent the whole night with the very strong opinion that I would not win, but boy was I gobsmacked when they announced I had!

Many many thanks to everyone in the stop mo community as without you I would not of been able to make the film. A heartfelt thank you to you all.

Here it is

Well its been a while since I posted anything on here so here is a pretty mega post!! I am proud to share with everyone my final grad film. I worked super hard on this film and even though it could be 10 times better and whenever I watch it, I pick it apart like a hawk, BUT I am happy with it. Also I have been working on my website which is also finished and online. http://www.stopmotionben.com

I do have some other news to tell everyone about but I am going to wait until I have something to show for when I announce it.

Oh and I am super happy to find out that my blog is included on the accompanying dvd in Ken Priebe's 'The Advanced Art of Stop-Motion Animation'.
I was also even more stoked to find my name in a thanks list in the front of the book. It's things like this that really keep me going. A big big thanks to Ken and also a huge congratulations to him for releasing a fantastic book. Go buy it now!!!!!

So here is the vimeo link to my film. Leave me a comment or or something and let me know what you think. I hope you enjoy it



Watch on Vimeo

Here is a youtube link in case vimeo doesn't want to work for you Clicky Here

Trailer and update

Well that took me long enough to get round to doing! So it's not really much of a trailer but more of a few of my favourite scenes. I found it quite hard to make a trailer for something that is so short.

Click HERE to view it bigger at Vimeo

Click HERE to view on Youtube

Also I've been trying to get some inspiration for a new puppet but I am really drained for ideas at the moment so I am going to make some thing I have wanted to try out for a while now and was reminded when I did this illustration the other, It not the most exciting drawing but I'm getting closer to the look I want to achieve.

The wee Owl

(Click thumbnail to view larger)

I have to decide whether I am going to try and make the wings on it fold down or if its is going to be a flying only puppet. I would prefer to be able to fold them in, maybe have interchangeable wings. I am thinking it's going to be a stylized design rather than realistic so I can have fun with materials, also I wont need molds and what not.

A super quick concept and armature sketch

Oh and this is Pip, another practice sketch working on texture with brushes.

Hopefully I will have more to report on soon. Hope everyone is doing well.
P.s I finished and passed animation degree with flying colours. First class honours!!!

Oh and it's my birthday, I don't want to be 27 I want to be peterpan!!!!!

Día de los Muertos

While taking a break for the past few days, I decided to do a bit of illustration. I have been meaning to try out a Día de los Muertos themed character for a while so that's what I did and I can feel it wont be the last.

As for my film I am going to make a trailer for it so all you peeps can get a glimpse. The scenes I didn't get to shoot will be done mid July and if there is time a couple of re-shoots. I really want to show people but I have to keep it off the internet if I'm going to enter it into festivals. I think I'll just have to see how it goes.

Fun times

So here are a few production photos from the past few weeks. I have a had a great time. I LOVE STOP MOTION!!!!!!

These photos are courtesy of Matt Cusworth















And then a couple from me. Many thanks to all that have helped on this project, love you all xx