James and the Giant Peach Animation tests

I'm just making a quick post to bookmark these videos for myself and everyone else.
I have watched them so many times over the past 3 years and keep loosing them in my bookmarks so what better way to keep track of them then to post them on my blog.

I highly recommend watching.
I will do a proper post soon about what going on with me. Hope all of you are doing well

Blast from the past

Well it has been a while since my last post, I really don't know where the time goes!

So a little update on what has been going on.

I cant remember if I have mentioned or not but last August I badly damaged my knee with supposed ligament tare and missed out on a few months of work experience on a stop motion commercial. I was not happy about that at all but one must keep smiling and carry on.
It took until January this year to get my knee scanned and that was only because it re-injured itself while putting on my trousers :S So I finally had surgery on it at the beginning of last month and It is healing away nicely now. I did have some super cool bruising which I named my "Nebula" as it resembled something that you would find in the deep depths of the universe.

So that is whats been going on the whole of last month. Lots of pain, being uncomfortable and sleepless nights. Fun times ey!

Anyway, I have been accepted into Animation Mentor and am scheduled to start at the end of September which will be amazing but I am not getting myself too excited yet as I am still in the process of sorting out loans and what not as there is no way in hell I can pay for it until I am in a very steady job. I'm keeping my fingers crossed an am just hoping for the best with that one.
I'm getting myself ready for if I don't get my loan accepted and cant start the course
then I will have plenty of resources to get on with.


I have done a few little character designy drawings just exploring a style more that I have been playing with for a while now.

Self portrait

My brother

A very quick one of my mother

Last night I was going through some of my old hard drives and stumbled upon all of my first ever animations. It really got me thinking about how much I have improved or even have I improved? I think I have improved a lot but not as much as I could of. It is quite encouraging I think.

So I thought I would share all these old animations on here. There is a load of 2d work and stop motion work so be prepared to laugh and cringe. I think all of them are from 2004 - 2005 then there is one from my very first couple of months at university. Enjoy :D

2d stuff:

 

Stop mo stuff

And this is the uni piece from 2007

I hope everyone is doing well.

Macho Man

I was saddened by the news of the death of Randall Mario Poffo AKA Macho man Randy Savage. He and all the other old school wrestlers were a big part of my childhood.
So here's to you Macho Man "Ooooooooh Yeaaaaaaaaaaaa" Rest In Paradise.

Click to view bigger

And here is yesterdays life drawing work

Click to view bigger

MADAME TUTLI-PUTLI

I'm posting this up for the people that might of missed it but 'MADAME TUTLI-PUTLI' is now online to watch. Not much more needs to be said than, if you haven't seen it, Watch it! If you have seen it, watch it again!

No matter how many times I have seen it I still manage to pick out something I didn't notice before.


DIRECT LINK


Behind the scenes:
Animating Madame Tutli-Putli


Animatic and film comparisons


There are plenty more videos on youtube.

Life Drawing 1

As I'm trying to advance with my animation skills I have decided to get back into to doing life drawing. I haven't done any since 2009 and I think I would most definitely benefit from doing as much as I can. My plan is to try and get a routine of doing it every morning for an hour or two.
My only trouble is not being able to afford to go to classes or having friends that would be up for posing for me, so I'm having to use something called VIRTUAL POSE which is a 4 part series consisting of loads of quicktime movies which you can rotate 360º around the model. It is not as good as the real thing but certainly better than nothing.  I have also got myself a timer so I can keep track of how long I'm spending on each drawing.

Here is yesterday and today's studies

Click to view them larger

Skinny skin skin

Well well well, what do we have here then! I'm currently making up a generic puppet to practice with. It is so I can do some basic principle shots to put on my showreel.

To start me off I have gone back to my head mold from an earlier post and carried on where I left off. I have also decided to leave my attempts at making a sophisticated head armature and am going to just make a very basic one with eyebrow and mouth movement.

I have an inner core for the mold so I can cast a skin in silicone. This was made with Polymorph ( I think it's called friendly plastic in the U.S)  I just whacked a load in to the mold and then clamped each half together. It only takes about 10 minutes to harden depending on the amount you use. It needed trim the excess plastic of which I had to do with a Dremel drill.  It's not as pretty looking as I have seen them made but this is all trial and error so it will do.

Then its time to cast the skin. I still have some Dragon Skin left from last year so I used that.  It is my favourite Silicone so far. Easy to use and only takes 30 - 40mins to set and de-mold. I also have some flesh colour pigment to tint it. I forgot how little you actually need of the pigment and went a bit overboard with it.

I'm not going to say this was a success as the casting has revealed loads of imperfections in my mold and also the original sculpture that I hadn't noticed.  Also there is a really thin part on the back of the head but I managed to patch that up with some of the excess silicone from seaming the head.
That was also another thing I'm not too happy with is my really poor seam job. Another thing,  I completely forgot to do when casting the skin was to set the actual eyes into the mold to save cutting back the silicone in the eyes which I have done a bad job of doing :S So lots of little things went wrong but like I say I'm not too fussed as its for a practice puppet. I learned a lot from the process of making the skin and it will still work out ok.

I have also made the skull that goes inside the skin. I made this by spreading a layer in on each side of the mold with Polymorph. I let them set and chopped them down and split up the the top of the skull and made a hole where some wire will attach to the eyebrows.

I have started the armature for the skull but I have got a little stuck with it at the moment and will figure it out while I am making the rest of the puppet.
So that's how far I have got with that.

As for my last post about Animation Mentor, I have sent in my application for it and am now waiting to hear their decision. This will take a few weeks. There is the chance I wont get excepted or will get refused the loan but I have my plans now so I feel I am kind of on the right track with where I am going.

Here's a newer version of my work in progress video. Now with added sound so you can hear just how awesome I am at voice acting ;)



So that's all for now. I hope everyone is well!

The Happy Haps!

Over the past few weeks I have kind of been stressing about how I want to get where I want to be in life, which mainly is a character animator. I think I have spent way too long bogging myself down with technicalities and not just getting down and doing it. This has led to my one decision. I am going to try and apply to the Animation Mentor character animation course. I always said to myself that if I cant improve my skills with my own learning disciplines then it will be time to seek help. Now is that time.

I love stop motion with all of my heart and can dream of doing nothing else but the fact is I also love CG and always have. After seeing 'Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs' I was in awe. Then 'Tangled' came along and slapped me in the face. As much as I want to be a stop motion animator I would also love to do CG and who says that you cant do both! There are plenty of people out there that have done the same. Justin Rasch has worked in games, Webster Colcord as a VFX animator and even the great Phil Dale has dabbled as animation supervisor on "Tales Of Despereaux'.

So I am going to give it a shot as I believe Animation Mentor could really help me with being an all round better animator for both CG and stop motion. Its all the same principles.
Getting myself into even more debt cant be all that bad...can it?

Anyway here is two shots from a little practice piece I am working on. There is still some polishing to do but I am happy enough with them.



I am still doing bits and bobs on my owl project. I have the armature built and padded out but am a bit stuck with how I am going to pad the wings out with and also how I am going to give the fella his feathers. I will post up some photos of that soon when it looks a little more respectable ;)

I have also been doing a lot of practice with digital painting. It has been nice to sit and actually try and paint something instead of it being super quick concept work.

A scene from Sweeny Todd.

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

Here is some screenshots to see the progress of it

And here is the second digi painting I did.

Quorra from 'Tron Legacy'

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

And a close up and some process shots to go with it.

I did start another one but as it took me around 13-14 hours each painting its going to have to be put on the back burner until I have some more spare time.

I hope everyone is doing well!

A big congrats to Justin on his awesome new venture !!!

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