Gromit Unleashed

From my previous post you would have seen my Gromit Design. This was then created and auctioned off in Bristol for £15,000. This has been an amazing experience and I'm over the moon with it. I hope you like.

Gromit Unleashed Design

In May I did a design for the Gromit Unleashed and it's going to be produced. Sadly I forgot to scan my final painting but this photoshop file is more or less the same, depicting my favourite place, lytham.

Animation Effects

Another technical effect was the car crashing. Before working on this animation I did a short sample with the crash and used red Plastercine to hold up the car wile it rolled. The same technique was used for the final animation. The plastercine will be edited out in After effects.

Sample Crash

Final Crash

One of the shots I did was tracking shot of the car driving along. Normally a dolly is used, but because this was on a curved road I had to make my own contraption for the camera.

I tried putting marks down, but when I looked at the shot the car was good but the background was jumping around all over the place. Then I tried using a curved train track but because the lens was so heavy the camera kept tipping over. In the end I got a strip of plastic that lined up with the edge of the road, which is shown below.

Helicopter Animation

When animating in stop frame things like flying are much more difficult than any other animation. So I knew the helicopter would be the most challenging. So in the end I animated on a Blue screen and will edit it in later.

At first a set up the green screen. But I did a quick test and realised that when I got rid of the green, some of the yellow went as well. So I tried blue fabric instead which didn't effect the helicopter.

I originally wanted to use a wire rip from above. But the helicopter kept swinging and would have ended up jumping all over the place. Luckily there was a hole underneath and I used a coat hanger to hold it in the air.

Animating the helicopter flying on the spot was easy, landing it was much tricker. The thick wire was sturdy but it wasn't easy to bend. So after trying different things I found a lamp which had bendable mechanism and painted it blue to blend in with the background. I was very happy with the animation.

Animation Process

This is the first time I've animated on the floor, as I'm use to using big puppets on tables. So this caused some new challenges, which involved the characters, camera and my position.

The first challenge was the characters. They are very small and had habits of falling over. Because the characters didn't have bendable parts I decided to do a more comical walk, making the characters shuffle, which worked really well. This technique was used with the sheep as well.

The other challenge was working on the floor. I normally use a full size tripod, but had to use a tiny tripod or even just popping the camera on the floor.

The Making

Some of the things in the scene had to be made, but resemble what a 6 year old would make. I made the school and Hospital from a cardboard box. In Toy Story at the very beginning there is a town scene and the buildings there were made from boxes.

I used crayons to give it colour and paper straws for the windows.

Another thing I made was the stretcher. I used toothpicks for the poles, and glued fabric and card together to form the base. This was a bit tricky whilst animating because I had to glue gun the handles to the medics hands. In the end this worked out.

Studio

I used my bedroom as the animation studio, as I needed floorboards and a cream/white background.

Storyboard

Set

The road was made from black card with white crayon lines.

I created a child like room with items of clothes, teddies, crayons, marbles and building blocks. Three of the teddies were donated by the North West Air ambulance, which have their logo on.

North West Air Ambulance

For the past 2 weeks I've been animating the stop frame animation for the North West Air Ambulance. The theme of the story is a child telling his experience he had with the North West Air Ambulance through the use of his toys. The style will be similar to 'A Town called Panic' or 'Cravendale Advert', which use plastic toy figures.

These are some of the characters I used.

Driver

Dad and Son

North West Air Ambulance Pilots

MC2

Hello again.

I'm happy to say that I am working at a company called MC2 in the TV department. For the past 4 weeks I've been working on two ideas.

New Website

Hello again,

A few months ago a made a website that was incomplete. I've finally made a new website which includes all the pictures of making my Sand Troll film and other artwork. Hope you like it.

www.jomotion.co.uk

Finished film

It has been a while since I last posted. With the last 2 weeks of my work, things got very busy and I was unable to post anything.

But now it is complete and you can now watch it on:
https://vimeo.com/44040152

I am also in the process of doing the final touches of my website, which you can visit on:
www.jomotion.co.uk

In other news I got 1st class for my degree and got best in show. Now I am in the process of finding work.

I won't be going on here as much, but I will post for when I do more animation. You can also follow me on Twitter.

Animation Fish

For my rock pool shot I still needed to animate the fish. So I made the fish out of foam with a wire running through it so it could bend and twist it. As for the tail, I used a wire mesh. I covered it all in tights and sewed it up.

I did a bit of research in to rock pool fish, but they all seemed very dull and I pictured something more silver and pretty.

Rock pool fish

Fish I pictured

So I painted my fish silver and added silver glitter to resemble little scales. In this shot I had to animate the fish on a green screen and then I can layer it over the top of the rock pool I did before. I animated it so it was swimming on the spot on a rod.

Animation Shot 38 - 44

This scene is after the cave scene. Sophie runs out of the cave, to the voice of her Dad. I used the camera trolly to pan across as she runs towards her Dad.

After that Sophie shows her Dad the compass and the day she has had with the Sand Troll.

The Dad pretends that he believes her but to Sophie's disappointment she turns round to see the door and the Sand Troll gone.

The Dad picks her up and Sophie sees the Sand Troll waving goodbye, as her and her Dad go back to the lighthouse.

In post production I'm going to add the lighthouse in the background.

C.V Research

I've finished my first draft of my action plan which is two pages long, so now I'm moving on to my c.v. I went on to the Futures website and watch two online workshop videos on how to do write a good c.v http://www.uclan.ac.uk/information/services/futures/students/cv_help.php. They also have template examples and online booklets on what to write for each section.

Also, while I was working for the NHS I did a c.v workshop last summer on 'How to write an effective c.v'. I've still got the paper work. It's really good, it gives you a list of useful words for the personal profile, and gives you a c.v example of how not to do it and how to do it.

Once I've finished my first draft I'm going to go in to futures and have them check it over to make sure it is right.

Animation Sand Dune Shot

After they make the sand castle, the Sand Troll takes Sophie to his Cave which is disguise as a sand dune.

I finished making my sand dune, using PVA and sand.

Here we have them walking up to the sand dune

When finished in post production it will look like he is drawing a line in to the sand, forming a door that opens. The Sand Troll could just about reach, if he went on one foot. This was a bit tricky this shot because of him having to reposition quite a bit to reach.

Animation Crab Shot

In this shot they are walking along the beach and Sophie spots a shell and picks it up to her surprise the Sand Troll turns it in to a crab.

I used one of the shells I found on the beach and glued wire for the legs and paper mached them.

I also did a bit of research in to crabs.

This is what it looked like in the end when I painted it.

I was really worried about how I was going to animate it because it is so small. I went online to see if I could research how they walked.

In the end it worked out really well. They way I animated walking was by squishing together and squishing it flat, making the legs stretch out and close in.