Animation Pour Ida

Oh dear, oh dear, it’s been far too long since I updated all of my millions of readers about what the crack is!

So, I’ve graduated (whoop whoop), and with a grade to be proud of and a diploma in hand I set of to conquer the world! Of course, conquering the world is easier said than done, and I am currently held captive at 69 degrees north in a town called Tromsø.

I’ve been here for 4 months now, and I am getting restless. Tromsø isn’t really a Mecca for 2D animators, so jobs aren’t being thrown at my feet for every step I take.

The goal (for now) is to make my way down to Oslo, and conquer the world from there.

After Uni ended, my passion for animating has sparkled up once more and I’ve been practicing animating. To keep my skills fresh, and to get better, I have a little ‘project’ called Animation Pour Ida, where Ida gives me new scenarios to animate every week. I find this  to be very helpful, as she get’s very disappointed if I don’t keep to the deadlines, it pushes me to finish in time, and not slack of and think ‘I’ll finish it later’.

I haven’t got so much done so far. I did a flower to start with, but since Adobe Flash can be a bit of a pain, the file got corrupted and I lost all will to finish.

The second one was a bouncing teddy bear (apologies for the bad quality) 

And  the last, was Fishy. A little goldfish trapped in a fishbowl with nothing to entertain him but himself. Ida liked the design of him so much, so for now I’m going to focus my animating on him, and do whatever scenarios Ida sets up for him.

Stay tuned!

The Highlights of The Dark Descent

It is now the 2^nd of May, and yes May is such a lovely month, however, as we travel into this lovely ‘summer’ month we approach the deadline for our final major project rapidly. There is still a lot to be done before we can declare The Dark Descent complete, yet we are hopeful that it can be done in time!

As I have said earlier, I am head of colouring, and it is with joy and relief to say that the colouring department have now expanded. Earlier, I have been doing the grey/purple block colours for the old man, but now Emily and Darrien are onboard, and Emily has more or less taken over the role as the block colourer (and she is doing a great job I must add).

I on the other hand have finally moved on to the part I’ve been looking forward to the last few months: HIGHLIGHTING!

I love being in charge of the colouring. I find it relaxing and almost therapeutic when I work my way through the empty frames one by one, and there are few things as satisfying in the world of animation as to seeing the empty frames being filled with colours and brought even more to life.

And as fun block colouring is…It gets a bit repetitive over time. Highlighting is like a breath of fresh air now. Doing the highlights is so much more fun because you are not only following the lines given to you, but you get to use that blob behind your eyes to decide where the highlights go and how they will follow in the next frame to come.

So now my face has gone from this (^_^) when colouring to this:

Darrien, Luke (2^nd year) and Elliot (2^nd year) will be helping me with the highlights for the old man. The original plan was that I would handle them myself, but after going over the shot list, timing my work, and discussing with Tom and Miguel we’ve realized that help is needed if we are to have a chance at finishing them all in time.

The highlights for scene 3 are almost complete (just a few simple shots left) and I’ve set the boys to help me out with scene 5, as scene 5 is my favourite scene in the film (it’s just awesome and pretty) I don’t want the highlights to be rushed because we’re running out of time.

I’ve put together a little teaser of some of the completed highlighted shots so you can see the wonders a bit of light can do to an old plain gray man.

Enjoy.

The Dark Decent

The dissertation is finally handed in and the easter brake is here! That does not mean a break for team Decent though. The dream team (Me, Mig and Tom) are staying here for easter to work on the project, and even though I haven't updated the blog in a while, a lot has been done on The Dark Decent since the last update.
As I mentioned earlier I am responsible for the colouring, so what I've been doing is colouring in the shots given to me by Thomas and Miguel.
We've decided to do the colouring in two steps; first I colour in the main block colours, which for the old man is the greys, then when they're done I move on to the lighting.

Here you can see a screenshot of the workspace. We're using TVP for the colouring (Adobe Flash for the animating). We made a colour palette for the greys, which makes working more effective, as the brushes and colour are just a click away. The greys are coloured on a separate layer than the actual animation is, and by doing this we don't have to render the animation out without the white background. By choosing the blending mode in the layer which contains the lines, one can merge the colours and the lines together, but still be able to add a background behind it without the white.

Below you can see some of the grey-coloured blocks (we have put it all together but I don't have the file on me):

I Love You Maya

I got up at stupid o'clock this morning, ready to crack on to what I thought would be a very productive day!
So, I sit down with a cup of tea, and start up my computer - Today, texturing is on the menu!
I load up the flower scene I'm going to work on in Maya, and the UVs in Photoshop. All good so far... I've done about two of the flowers attached to the plant when I decide that yeah, I should check out what this looks like when rendered... Nothing happens. Awesome! Nothing works, and nor my helpful course mate or Autodesks help forum has anything that is working... And to put the cherry on top - now Photoshop wont let me re-save the Uvs I'm working on, and Maya wont reload the textures.

As I have little patience when it comes to technology failing on me, and even less patience for failing technology without any solution on how to fix the problem, I got angry.
So after punching the wall and trying and failing several times, I figured it was better to get my frustration out via Photoshop.



I would like to dedicate this drawing to Autodesk Maya, and the amount of times it has driven me to madness.



_{Faen ta deg}

To the millions of readers out there...

I just want to apologise for the extreme lack of 'blog-updating'!
I have been drowning myself in dissertation work, and neglecting my blog for far to long now.

Right, so what have I been doing other than working on my dissertation?
For the third year, I am currently working on three projects; Kernel, The Dark Decent, and Hole. Kernel is the only CG short film that made it through this year, so I thought 'better get in on that!' and The Dark Decent and Hole are both 2D animated shorts.

So, for Kernel I've been doing some concept art for the desk area, and for the dome. Here you have the concept art for the desk. (I can't find the one for the dome so stay tuned for that one)

And now as the project moves on I am working as a texture painter. Currently freshening up those old texture skills.
Look at this amazing suitcase, which has been unwrapped amazingly. YEAH!

For Hole, I am working as a line cleaner, so on that front not much has been done. I have just been practicing in specialising on Sian's style, so that when the linecleaning kicks off, it will be easier and faster to do the work needed.

For The Dark Decent, I am... responsible of all the colouring! Everything from backgrounds, filling in colour to the characters and so on is what I'm doing.
Did some style tests of the old man and the dog:

Speed Painting \o/

As this week is going a bit slow on the work front, I thought I'd freshen up my speed painting skills :p
30 min give/take a little pr drawing.

Pitchin' Escaping Reality

Escaping Reality
For my final year project I wanted to do a 2D short film about a girl named Heather who got too involved in videogames. Heather struggles with bills, an unrewarding job and lack of friends, and to cope with all of this she finds comfort in videogames.

I wanted to go for the more comic-looking style, but I was advised to make it more stylized.
So I went from this

To this

The changes aren't massive, but it was as much I was willing to change it without losing my own style completely. The last picture is done so you can see the contrast between her world in the real world contra the word inside the videogame.The pictures further down is just to show the style I was going for, and what Heather and her avatar would look like.

Swing Heil!

Tørken er over! Or the drought is over as you would say in english...

I haven't had any colouring to do for the crew assignment in ages.
I did colour one of the backgrounds over easter
Tadaaa!

But after a while, I got some frames to colour yaaaay \o/
One shot is when Marielle is looking around the door, and the other one is the bridge shoot.
I love work like this. I find colouring much more amusing than 'doing the actual animating'.
Kat has been an angel giving me a colour and brush panel to use, which is making my work go twice as fast. However, the brushes are a pit of a pain in the butt, because when you need to zoom in to do the details it's impossible to make it look clean. But I made it work.
So, here are what I'vwe done so far.

Post Production

The hand in for our post-production project was today, and we actually managed to finish it in time.

This project was a lot of fun to work on because it gave me the opportunity to learn some new stuff.
I got to make a rig, and yes, it is a really simple one, but it thaught me the 'basics' of how to do it.
I found rigging to be quite fun (even though I wanted to pull my hair out at times) and it's something I want to learn properly so I will be practicing to get better at it.

I also did some of the compositing.
For this part, I put a mask around the laptop, making it overlay Dave so it looks like he is behind it.
To make the coke dissapear as Dave sweeped over it I took one still from the real life footage in to Photoshop and edited out the coke. Then Miguel made the coke as a seperate layer, and in Composite I put a mask over the coke to make it look like Dave was sweeping it up.

I also worked on putting the footage together, and making it look 'real'. It was a bit hard to make it look right (I'm still not a 100% happy with it)
Because the P2 cameras are of excedingly poor quality Dave looked hyper-real compared to the real life footage.


And then, just for funsies, I put some sounds on it!
Enjoy \o/

Post Production wip

Allrighty!
For our post-production project I've been working on rigging Dave. Seeing that this is the first time I've rigged something, I'm a little bit proud to say he is now done.

I've made to different ones. I made one with an IK handle, and one without. Jake wanted to see if it would make it easier and faster for him to animate Dave with the Ik. I'm not sure if it'll look 'real' enough but we'll just have to try.


Here he is! The Dave text isnt up yet but that's no hurry. (Jake sorted out a nice texture for the nose)




Did a test just to see that it worked.

Swing Heil

I'm working on Swing Heil, wich is Gaz and Kat's third year project.
The story is about a young couple that sneaks out to go dancing in a a basement where there is a jazzy theme.
It's set in the late 30's in Hamburg, so dancing to jazzy music was a no no.

I'm working as a digital painter/colour artist, so my job is to fill in the characters and paint the backgrounds
 (and if other stuff needs painting I do that too)
So far I've done some posters to go on the bridge and inside the basement.
It took me a while to get the style right, cus they want it to be in art deco style, wich I find hard to paint.
 But it's a challenge, so it's all fun and games.

I also did a quick practise painting the characters.
Making them look like the ones Kat made is harder than you think...

Here's some of the sketches I did. The three last ones are the final posters.

Post Production

Righty Tighty!
Time for a work related post me thinks...

For our post-production project we have to add something to real life footage.
I'm working with Jake and Miguel on this project, and we've decided to do a piece including a cute desktop hoover. We are not going for the original Henry the Hoover though, we are making our own 'Dave the coke-sweeper'.

We thought about making him sweep up some breadcrumbs that the man leaves, but we decided that a man doing coke would be much more interesting(?)

Here you have the storyboard for it:

And here is a quick one of our beloved Dave
Ill put the animatic up here asap. Need to change it because the current one is witch bread instead of coke.

Speed Painting

Since I'm working as a Digital painter/colourist for Gareth Sharples 3rd year project I thought it'll be a good idea to fresh up on my photoshop skills.
My desktop is finally up and running again, so I did a speed painting.
(Used a picture of my friend Holly Bagder as refrence)

Norwegian Awesomeness

Allrighty!
Haven't posted in ages now. Not that much to talk about at the moment.
So while we wait for something to happen I thought I'd post some norwegian awesomeness.

The first one is about one of the stylists in Norway who has a secret identity.
Its very simple made, but I still find it hilarious because this is how the person is in real life :D (almost) They make fun of all the celebrities in Norway
It's in norwegian, so sorry to all you non-norwegian-speaking people who can't understand what they're saying.



The other one is actually one of my all time favorites. Wich I'm sure most of you have seen before.
It's the music video for Aha - Take on me. (Directed by Steve Barron in 1985)
Just brilliant work combinig rotoscoping and real life-action. Say what you want about the song (Wich is brilliant!) but the video is AWESOME!

Experimental Project

After being told that it would be smart to change my experimental project I decided to go a complete different way with my animation.
I'd almost finished the ballerina one so if I was to change everything I think she would fall apart.
She doesn't have that many hours of animation left in her.
It did make me a bit upset, because I was quite happy with what I'd done so far.
But I don't feel that all the hours I put into it is wasted, because I've learned a lot about stop motion, and I have a lot more respect for the people who do it. I do not have the pations for stop motion at all. I was not enjoying doing it...

So the second one I did is a simple cardboard animation. I had some coins laying around so I thought I'd use them too.
I saw this really cool animation on youtube where they make money explode, and that's what inspired me to use the money as ammo.

I made my own dopesheet and planned out the scenes, and I managed to get it doen in time.
I'd say it's got a bit of a childish look, but I'm happy with the result.
(I'll post some of the drawings and stuff later today.)

11 Second Club

Allrighty!
My 11 Second project is finally done! (Weeee)
Used the blake rig for the two dudes talking to eachother. I found that rig to be the best one to animate with.
Then I modeled the rest of the objects in the scene.
I'm really happy with the genie. I like the way he looks. He's got that "ghosty" look over him.

It's been a lot of work (believe it or not) but I managed to get it done in time, and I'm quite happy with how it turned out.

Enjoy!

Experimental Update

Allrighty,
I've started animating my doll, and for a teaser I'm posting one of the tests I did.
It all went pretty well, untill the right arm fell off...
I did manage to get some seconds of footage tho. Because the arm fell of I decided to do the part where the leafs and flowers grow over her.
Hopefully when I continue today (I fixed the arm) I can make the flowers look a bit simmilar to how they where.

11 seconds...

Right...
Last week I wanted to upload a playblast of what I had done so far, but that didn't work. And it still doesnt. I have almost finished it now, and as soon as I can get this blog to accept my uploads I will put it up here! (%&¤%&%"¤)


I made it yaay!

Experimental update

Finally, my ballerina doll is done!
Hair made out of cotton, with a band of silk around it to make her look more like a ballerina.
And I just drew the face on with filt tip pens. However, I did use white nailpolish for the eyes so it gives it a bit of a wet look.


It wasn't suppose to take this long, but when I first painted her body, the paint I used turned into a horrible alien-green colour when it started to dry. So I had to wait for the paint to dry before I could paint over it with a more blueish colour.
I used oilpaint for the colours. I was planning on just using normal watercolours, but the oilpaint made it look more even and nicer.


I'm glad she's finally done, cus now I can start making her move!

Russel Howard's Good News

I think the title sequence for RHGN is brilliant.
When you think about it it's quite easily made, put I think that's what makes it so great.
I would love to try to do something like this one day.