Thursday 4 December 2008

Walking (to) Work


Since of course in the War animation the men are part of an army they will mostly all be walking the same walk, nice and regimented, but that doesn't mean some of them mess it up from time to time, hence I have to draw a few more walk cycles... good practice!
I'm wondering if I will have this piece finished by the New Year as originally hoped (but not planned) certainly the sound will take time to do as I'll need to reacquaint myself with Logic.

Trunk are a lovely little animation company, and last Thursday as I was in London I stopped by their attic-based white washed studio and said hello to two of their directors Siri Melchior and Steve Smith. It is possible that they have a position for an intern and I will hopefully hear back soon, they are both lovely people and their studio space was delightful.

In other news: Bianca's moving over Sunday 14th and coming skiing with us!

Wednesday 26 November 2008

I'm popular in...

Istanbul! - I found out that my film was selected and shown last weekend at the Istanbul Animation Festival, Bianca's was also shown the day before, at least one person liked it and told me so on my DeviantArt page!

On 29th and 30th of November the Nottingham based BANG! short film festival will be showing my film at the Bangimation part of the event on the 30th.

*****************

I have also been doing a bit more work on my Fat Superheroes animation, this time Wolverine skipping, at the moment it's just the skeleton though, it needs a some tweaking and obviously the colouring added to it.



*****************

In other news:
  • I am going to see The Dark Knight again in IMAX with Jane.
  • I will be helping Bianca move to England and going skiing over Christmas.
  • I hope to finish my War animation before the January 2009.

Saturday 25 October 2008

3 Superheroes walk in to a bar...



It's not finished yet, I'll put some sound to it at some point and keep adding new animations to the three characters, hope you like them.

Wednesday 22 October 2008

The Gauld Movement


This is just a little preview of what I'm working on right now, hope you like the movement, more will be put up when it's ready but for now this is all I'm going to show you!

Friday 3 October 2008

Friday 22 August 2008

400 (the sequel to 300)...

4mations 400 badge

As you can see from this badge I have my work is some of the first up on the new 4mations.tv website set up to exclusively show animations, like YouTube with bouncers blocking sneezing pandas.

This is my page on the site, not much on at the moment but I'll add some more when I return from Scotland - http://www.4mations.tv/ChrisWright.

Tuesday 12 August 2008

Once more unto the breach!

A wondrous place of moving images and some slower pictures too.


*(also known as my website, featuring animations, illustrations and a few surprises).

Thursday 19 June 2008

What is this nonsense?

Well, I meant to draw swimmerman but it's been a while and this appeared instead...


...then I tried again and failed, so I thought I'd draw something to do with Lost, just as I started Hurley he morphed in to Jabba...


...come to the shows, the Playhouse in Norwich this Sunday night and next Wednesday for the NSAD Opening Night, then on the 8th July the London show (more details in lower posts).

Tuesday 10 June 2008

NSAD Animation Screenings

We are having three screenings/exhibitions around Norwich and one in London over the next month

THE LIBRARY RESTAURANT (upstairs)
(That is the old library on Guildhall Hill NOT the FORUM!!!)
Norwich
12th June - 4th July
6pm Opening Thursday 12th June

PLAYHOUSE SCREENING
Norwich
22nd June
8 - Midnight

NORWICH SCHOOL OF ART AND DESIGN: DEGREE SHOW
Second Floor, Guntons Building
25th June - 3rd July
6pm Opening 25th June

LONDON SHOW
CFC Framestore, 19-23 Wells Street
8th July
6 - 10pm

The End.

Or is it? Well, this project is done and dusted, my time at NSAD is drawing to a close and I'll be leaving Norwich at the end of July.

There are still a few things left to do of course;
- find a job
- think about an MA
- apply for an MTV thing
- start earning to pay back my student loan
- design and make a website to display my work
- play on my PS2 (I bought 4 for £10 today at GameStation!)
- spend time with Bianca when she visits and travel with her
- pack up all the stuff and throw half of it away to move out

...and probably a good number of other things to boot, but for now just chilling out, maxing, relaxing, all cool.

Wednesday 28 May 2008

Still. Not. Finished.



This is near enough the sum total of today's process...

Tuesday 27 May 2008

Swim in a deep sea of blankets.

Oooh, ahhh, that's how it always starts. Then later there's running and screaming.



Seriously I drink so much water that it's a danger to others.



Sentinel: Stand aside, I must apprehend that mutant.
Gambit: Hey! Apprehend this!
[charges a card]



Must be a spatio-temporal hyperlink.

Friday 25 April 2008

Logan and his hotdog.



Well, after trying to load this onto GoogleVideo and it seemingly failing despite it's assurances that it hadn't I decided to try to just load straight into Blogger, and that worked ~ woohoo!

Anyway, long time, no write, I know... I have been getting on with work mostly, today I recorded some sounds and learned a bit more about Logic (thanks to the lovely John) and last night I drew these guys...



initially it was just Fat/Batman, and then I figured Wolverine would be funny large and in his classic costume, then I needed a third one and since I didn't fancy drawing Spiderman's webbing on his costume I figured Superman would do for now. I might draw more, oh, and they were all done without sketching, just using the Wacom tablet entirely!

Look at me, paperless...

I've booked in to various rooms for more drawing and recording for the first half of next week, Tuesday's going to be VERY busy, with drawing/flash/crit/recording!!!

All in all, it's going well, I mean, clearly in my mind I have enough time to postulate on what superheroes would be like with a little less exercise in their regimes.

Friday 18 April 2008

Treeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!



This morning these are my efforts, I'm quite pleased with how it's gone, still need to add a reaction and also the hand pushing the tree top.

Thursday 17 April 2008

What if I say I'm not like the others?

Work? Yes, I have been doing work... but, I have also been spending time with a certain ladyfriend, continuing to get to grips with the wacom tablet and meeting a lovely man called Tim Hunkin who makes some fabulous coin-op machines that sometimes feature silly little stop-motion animation similar to my 'A Garden Called Panic' so hopefully I'll meet him again in the future.

This week though I have been doing a few more bits, including this ladder bit from the Heaven segment, what do you think?



Possibly too much movement on the horizon line of the sea I think, and I'm not sure about the birds yet either, but the movement on the swimmerman's climbing is decent enough.

Right, considering I meant to do a lot of work today but various things keep stopping me I'm heading home to use the wacom there as I think today it will be easier to do that (also persuaded the DV technicians that it made sense to have the wacom drivers permanently on these computers - thank goodness, see Bianca something good came of it all!!?)

Thursday 3 April 2008

Welcome to Jurassic Park : Norwich!

I wish.

Anyway... You all remember this fabulous illustration of things with legs and teeth that I did back in my 'traditional' days when ink was real, well today, using amber and DNA extraction technology we were able to reproduce it on an actual computer screen to roam about in the Photoshop Plains.

So, this morning I have been testing out the WACOM once more and experimenting with drawing the monster/dinosaurs that come out of one door in the Zoophobia segment.

As you can see from the first image I tried out a variety of line strengths and pixel widths all in the same composition so as to compare them easier.

I already knew that the 5px was too thick (Rowena said it was like Bang On The Door) a bit too graphic compared to my book work, particularly when coloured in.

The earlier test drawings I made had been using a line of 5px with 50% flow, but now I lowered it to 4px and varied the flow. I think that unfortunately the 3px line is too thin and will flicker when moving apparently, it's also quite pale even on 100% flow as it is here.

I think that I will stick with 4px from now on at about 100% flow, maybe a little less perhaps, but we'll see, now I just need to get on with it a bit more before term starts again.
Although, seeing them next to my original drawing on screen up there the 50% does look like it could also work... dammit... okay, let's just try it with 70% perhaps!!

(The colours are just a silly thing, and I don't think that I'd do it like that if I do end up using colour, so don't panic!)

Wednesday 2 April 2008

(April) showers of new work!

Here is a Photoshop sketch I made using the WACOM after I did some similar drawings in my sketchbook, to try and make some sort of vague model sheet and come across a bit professional.


This shows that roughly six heads are equal to his whole height, although I'm fairly sure that I won't stick to closely to that purely because of how I draw, but we'll see!

So, rather than to obviously continue this with animating Swimmerman I looked through my storyboards for something I fancied trying as I'm still kinda testing the WACOM and getting used to it again after being away skiing for a week.

Snake? Snake...?! SNAAAAAAAAAAKKKKKKKKEEEEEE?!??!!???!!!!!!*



*let's see how geeky some people are then... where's that from?

Friday 21 March 2008

WACOM-derful!!



Well, look at that then... doesn't seem to be much difference between using a pen, scanning it in, lining it all up, cleaning the images, putting it into AFX, and then you get the same result as using a tablet in about half the time.

Oh, and it's environmentally friendly too, cause this method is gonna save me a whole lot of money in paper, and you can make more mistakes cause it's all pixels anyway!

Right, well I'm at homehome now and going skiing from Sunday for a week, so no broken bones pending I will be back to work, with a planned purchase of a WACOM tablet (not a table like I've been using!) to continue my final project. In less than three weeks Bianca is coming over for a week which will be fantastic and together we will work on our FMPs and maybe record some more sounds together like we did at St Joost.

Monday 17 March 2008

More speeeeeeeed!!!!



More tablet practice, this time with Bianca's character, the illustrious Mr. Tophat, and seeing as I'm skiing next week, I thought he might enjoy it too!

My God... it's huge!! (UPDATED)



It's not much, but this is my first attempt at getting used to pressure sensitivity with a tablet pen, the early attempts are in the middle with the left and right edges being the latter tries, which I was getting a bit more pleased with, and I appear to have to work in Photoshop at about 200-300% to make it feel right. Now I will attempt to animate a little something, see how it all goes - wish me luck!

UPDATE: So, a little ten minute sketch, my second attempt at using the WACOM today!

Wednesday 12 March 2008

...shouldn't you be doing proper work?

Well, I have been, but this evening (after 5pm when most people had gone home) I went to the DV workshop and put together a little animation of some of the drawings from the recording picture... enjoy!



(I have also recorded a lot of sounds using my own voice, and also a fair bit of water too, so that's going well... oh, and John enthused me to use Logic instead of the evil Soundtrack Pro!)

Testing, testing... 1, 2, 3...

I recorded some sounds today.

Mostly watery sounds.

It was wet.

Tuesday 11 March 2008

What? Seriously... will the madness never cease?!??

No, clearly it will not, and this is another animatic that I actually did last night but the YouTube link seemed to be up the spout but now, having just checked BEFORE uploading it again at college I found it to be alive and well...



Phew! That was a long one, huh? Now, don't get TOO excited, as I have spoken to Suzie and she pointed out it goes painfully slowly in places and that he shouldn't see or hear the angels while he is having fun and so just ignore them when you rewatch this animatic over and over again after you've finished reading this thrilling blog post.

We had a group crit/discussion thingy this afternoon which went quickly because Suzie is busy with top secret governmental animations (or not...) and had to leave sooner than she thought, but we saw some peoples work, including a rather swish fly through intro sequence by Simon and some words spoken about poor Hannah's dead computer.

So, that is all for the moment, but wait there will be MORE!!! I bet you can't wait, and so I tell you keep a beady eye on my YouTube page for "Insect Animatic" which is currently processing as I type this... I will endeavour to post a direct link of it later tonight.

Monday 10 March 2008

Quick! Nurse... he's working again!!

As if you weren't amazed already by one animatic, lo and indeed behold, here is ANOTHER animatic, this time for the Dendrophobia (fear of trees/forests) segment.



I spoke to Suzie today which was useful, and she likes what I'm doing now, simply encouraging it to continue in this consistent fashion... tonight I will do the animatic for the third storyboarded phobia - Uranophobia (fear of heaven), with lots of little angels and a very long ladder!

Sunday 9 March 2008

Behold!

The Animatic of Wonder (or the Zoophobia animatic I made today)!! Well, I'm finally progressing a bit with this FMP lark, and have created something that gives you an idea of timing and stuff... sorry it's in two parts, it was just how I made it and it was faster to upload like that too.

Part 1 (21sec)


Part 2 (34sec)


Oh, and the sound for the Breda/Norwich animation I worked on with Bianca is done and put on to the video, so here it is... hold on to your ears for the mindblowing awesomeness...



That was an audio extravaganza... don't you think??!? What do you mean... it's amateurish??! We just don't like sound that much, that's all, and we had fun and that counts for something surely!

Right, well, I still have another animatic to do soon for the tree phobia that I did the storyboard for ages ago now. Hope you liked these videos... until next time!

Friday 7 March 2008

Do NOT Feed The Drawings!

Today I went in fairly early intending to do lots of work but ended up talking to Catherine and Zainal about my work and holiday, helping Jane with her dissertation binding and getting filled in on the latest developments in our show's location.

I decided to work on better designs for the animals that Swimming Man encounters in the Zoophobia episode, as seen in yesterday's storyboard, and here is the LION based more on an earlier drawing in my sketchbook and more in keeping with my style than the one in the storyboard.


The next obvious one to do was the SNAKE and he was a little tricky to figure out how his mouth would possibly open/work if indeed it will open and he won't simply hiss and poke his forked tongue out.


I also did a quick drawing of the monsters/dinosaurs/dangerous creatures he discovers in the last opening of the door...

Thursday 6 March 2008

Back to work...

...but with Easter coming up fast and school shutting for some time over that time I realise how my time is being eaten into without me even trying, so, that sucks.

Since, I don't have a lightbox or a DAR for filming AND the holidays are THREE WEEKS?!?!! I don't WANT that much time off, argh!!

Anyway, I went to a talk with Max Hattler (Collision, Drift, Everything Turns) and he gave me a bit of a tutorial afterwards as well, I showed him my sketchbook and he liked the style and suggested that maybe I should try to draw directly in to the computer, and after last week when Bianca taught me how good and easy TV-Paint is to basically do what you can with paper animating with a lot LESS hassle in the long run... which means maybe I should think about investing in a WACOM tablet, which would mean I wouldn't have to rely on college being open and could test animation over weekends and evenings.


***(As promised (to Suzie and Zainal) here is a storyboard for Zoophobia, it's not as clear as I think it could be, but hopefully you can follow it...)***

TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES have been sorted out...



Thursday 21 February 2008

And like that, he's gone...

...or at least I will be come Sunday 24th, after handing in my dissertation, making and wearing another awesome homemade costume to our End Of Dissertation party and going out with Jane and Joseph for a goodbye drink or something then I will be getting a taxi/train/plane to Schipol Airport and for the first time I think someone will be waiting for me!



So there it is, two hard bound copies, a soft copy and FIVE abstracts!! I also have a CD with it on, it's more bits than an 'In Rainbows' boxset. But of course I think I've used too much on the Letraset white lettering and have only done one spine so far, the other one will be all in capitals!

Meanwhile, I have got back the results for assessment and I got a high 2:2, which was a bit of a shock and will act as a boot up the backside upon my return on the 5th of March. I have storyboarded the Dendrophobia scene and talked with the sound guys at college about underwater mics and recording splashes.

Oh, and I am now 22... I naturally got some (Indiana Jones) LEGO!! and a LEGO Star Wars T-Shirt, as well as two posters, some Pixar DVDs and live collection CDs.

Breda, here I come! x

Sunday 17 February 2008

Nearly over...

...then normal work patterns can resume.


Dissertation (as seen above!) is due in this Friday (22nd) and so at the moment that is the main focus, although if I can fit in an animatic of one scene (Dendrophobia - which I have storyboarded!!) before I leave for Holland on the 24th then that would be a bonus.

We also have the continued organisation of the dissertation party AND final show, which is going slowly but surely, so that's all good.

In other news: I saw 'I Am Legend' last night which was pretty good, with amazing CG and
a few jumpy moments!! and I have the next episode of Lost (4.3) to watch later on as well!!

Oh, and it's my birthday on Tuesday which I'm unsure as to what I will do what with dissertation dominating most of my time unfortunately.

Listening to: Interpol - Slow Hands (Eden Sessions)

Monday 4 February 2008

Done and dusted!

The DVD is in, the drinks are waiting and the clothes look great... it can only mean one thing - a whole lot of first AND third years are going to the SU/PONANAs/Waterfront/Mustard/etc to celebrate.


Yesterday I thought about playing with my LEGO and made a swimmer man and later on a bee, so naturally I animated him a little bit, it took a while because I was already getting bored trying to find enough white bricks by this point, but maybe I'll use him again in the future.



PARTY!!!

Monday 28 January 2008

Faces!!! (Updated)



So, when I am not doing proper FMP or dissertation work I'll add a couple of different swimmer men!

Speeding along...


A (rather fast) walk cycle I did this morning, he bounces a bit and loops perfectly I think, not too bad for about 15 frames.

Thursday 24 January 2008

Working hard...

Yesterday I had a fairly busy day, with recording sound in the morning for the Breda project (making goose noises!!) with the help of Phil the technician.

I also did some 3D work on the model of Swimming Man again, fixed his feet and made some fingers, tweaked other bits here and there, then went back again later in the evening to learn how to skin him.



In between doing 3D I did another line-test that was for climbing out of a pool, it was meant to be an island but the way you walk out on a slope wasn't as interesting to draw, so I thought to make it more as if it was a swimming pool instead.


(apologies for it being really faded and bleached out)

I have a dissertation meeting today at 4pm and will take along what I've written so far (three chapters and the introduction) but I'll try and do more before then, might go in to college to do another line test too (maybe the walk out of water).

Tuesday 22 January 2008

There's my axe!!



This is a bit of animation I've done today after the crit. session we had, I have also done more on the actual axe-swinging bit from the earlier post.

To put off doing animating I also did another couple of lines of different faces too.

Monday 21 January 2008

A (Swimming) Man of Many Faces


I might fill up one page in my sketchbook of these... I already have two lines (this is a chopped up version).

Put on 3D glasses NOW!



Well, starting last week I have been modelling in Silo in the Games Design room at NSAD a 3D Swimming Man, partly to remind myself of how to use it and hopefully learn a bit more to hold me in good stead for the future in the "real" world.



^Click on this picture to watch it animate (it's a gif but I don't know why it's not playing here).

This is a 7 frame test that I did today (having woken up at 12.30pm!?!?! I mean.... what the heck?!??) so, I'll wake up EARLY tomorrow and do lots more on it, he's lifting his axe to chop down a tree he's noticed pop out of the ground.

Monday 14 January 2008

Favourite Phobias (....so far)

This is a potential list of the 9 phobias that I will use in the final film, meaning that I can focus on them straight away rather than meandering about all 26 letters.

A - Arachnophobia (spiders).
D - Dendrophobia (trees).
E - Ecclesiophobia (churches) and Entomophobia (insects).
F - Felinophobia (cats).
I - Isolophobia (being alone).
M - Melissophobia (bees) and Melophobia (music).
Z - Zoophobia (animals).

Although I do love my drawings of angels that I did for Uranophobia (heaven) so could always end up with him dying only to start screaming as he's carried aloft by angels who drop him back in the water at the very end of the animation.

So, now (along with dissertation) I can start further work on the preproduction side of things... animation tests/animatics/storyboards (in no particular order!).

A is for Arachnophobia




An idea and consequent storyboard that could become the opening to my Phobia animation.
It starts out by showing the Swimmer Man in his natural home, swimming, happy until a shark's fin appears and he swims to an island where the shark can't reach him.
The island is covered in sharp black rocks which SM walks through slowly as little spiders creep about hidden from his view, but not ours, the shark meanwhile goes away bored... (or he can burst out and scare SM into knocking into a rock).
He looks round one rock and comes face to face with a little spider, he steps back startled and knocks into a rock where lots of spiders crawl all over him making him dance about trying to get rid of them... he eventually gets rid of all of them and dives into the water again.

I sketched out a rock-crab/spider thing that could wake up after he's gone or maybe make it more spider like and less like a shell of a crab though if I'm to use it.

Tuesday 8 January 2008

Room of books!



Just fill the rest in with your mind...

Christmas is over... but the phobias are just beginning!



Expect an animation test or two and lots more drawings over the coming weeks!

Miaow...

Saturday 5 January 2008

Year of the Swimmer



So, I know I haven't done a whole lot of blogging and for that matter not so much FMP work either, but that is partly due to relaxing over the holiday but also because I have been working on my dissertation in the hopes that doing that now will free up term time for FMP work instead.

Well this is a bunch of expressions for the swimmer man, I have storyboarded a couple of ideas for the phobias too, very rough at the moment, and now that I have a camera will do some stop motion shorts as well that I may use for FMP too.
I'm still unsure about making the mouth open like it's been cut out of a sphere, I guess it makes sense really so I'll probably stick to it, if he does open his mouth much at all!