The Secret Circus - Work in Progress!

Exciting developments for The Secret Circus. The film has been completly animated now, so the only thing left is sound editing. I rendered the whole film as TIF sequences the other day, and created several quick rough-cuts using Quicktimes to give a feel for the film. Final editing in progress;





I designed the DVD cover and disc earlier too;

Good Knight Bears - The Bears Wake Up.

I animated a scene for Alice Holme's production, Good Knight Bears in CelAction. This scene is just after the girl has fallen asleep, and the bears come to life. I did several renders of this shot to show my development. I really enjoyed animating this scene, especially working on making the bears stand up which was really fun to experiment with. I feel animating this scene has helped me improve on my timing and weight in animation. As I animated the bears getting up, I had to remember and think about the weight of the characters and how the legs would move for each character. As well, each character had to be individual, it was nice being able to experiment with giving them a personality even though there was no dialouge.



The first take I did, I felt Oaf yawning was a nice touch, however he didn't convey any weight at all and practically slid back on the matress.



The second take I did, this time with both Oaf and Nerdy bear getting up, I feel I worked better on the weight and timing here. I took critique from Phoebe Herring who also noticed the weight and gave advice on making the bear seem much heavier and stop sliding.



Third take, this time I added in movement to Leader bear, in making his ear twitch a bit as well as twitching his muzzle further on. Nerdy also looks around a bit more at the start, before turning his head towards Oaf. I also added in Oaf falling asleep I felt to add a bit more character to the piece before Leader nudges him to wake him up. Adding in Leader who brushes his tunic down as he gets up.



Fourth take, same animation, a few tweaks; I removed a mouth which appears and falls off Oaf's muzzle, as well as adjusting a few paws etc. The bears now wake up and look towards the edge of the bed to initiate the next sequence in which they jump off the bed.



Final scene, another few adjustments. I moved Oafs leg as he stands so he seems much more stable, as well as making Nerdy face towards the edge of the bed.

The Secret Circus - Tilly jumps into the Circus

One of the most important shots for The Secret Circus is when Tilly jumps into the circus. This scene needs to be magical and really engaging to the audience. My initial idea was to make the circus spin along with sparkling at the same time. However due to time, I decided not to make the circus spin, instead, I made the circus sparkle, both by using preset animations in After Effects and creating my own sparkles in CelAction (I re-used the previous sparkles from Tilly leaving the circus scene) Although I am quite dissapointed I couldn't make the circus spin, I felt the sparkles were much better and worked with the storyline instead, especially as Tilly leaves the circus in a cloud of glitter. Here are the WIPs and development shots of Tilly's bedroom scene;


First scene;

This scene involves Tilly jumping, a first development shot without the darkness of the bedroom. As well the stars I rendered in After Effects were red at this point, which I ended up changing through to yellow.



The second take on, this time now with the night-time background. However the stars remained the same in this one. This was to show how the night-time background would work.

With crit from Derek, Kathy & Niki, this scene then developed further. I changed the stars to white at this point, as well this part is critical, the jump needed to be slower and the whole point of Tilly jumping into the circus needed to be emphasised. Kathy, Derek and Niki suggested a close-up and a pan to aid the viewer when watching the film. As this is aimed at young children making sure they understand what is going on is crucial. Adding in the close-up has really emphasised the scene and made it much clearer to the viewer of what's going on. I also added some stars around Tilly too which I feel completes the atmosphere and makes a really interesting and magical setting.





To show the WIP;




This scene was animated by Alice Holmes.

Dear Nana - Shot 37 - Rough Line

Iv'e began doing some shots for Lydia Foster's project 'Dear Nana'. I did the rough line animation for Shot 37 of Marion and Charlotte in the van together.



The rough line was really fun to animate, I've taken on some more animation, however I feel my Flash and hand-drawn animation has really improved and I hope to improve even more with the extra shots I've taken on.

Eye for an Appetite - Final Animations.

I created Four animations for the project 'Eye for an Appetite' One is still underway, however this is being animated by myself and Phoebe Herring. The four I have done myself are complete. I had a few tweaks to a few and there. The Fox and Rabbit animation now loops;




I also created 'The Death of the Fox'. This sequence illustrates how once an animal has deceased, bacteria and micro organisms will begin to break down the solid material. The remains of the animal will decompose naturally and fertilise the soil, thus allowing more life to grow. I chatted to the director who suggested a 'wave' of bacteria. I did this in Flash, to get a more realistic motion of water, rather than using CelAction. The Wave Animation started out as a simple blue animation, from there I exported the piece as a PNG sequence which I then bought into Photoshop. I painted each frame, using the same colour pallet, however I varied the brushes from frame to frame. I added in small green dots as well to illustrate the bacteria. Here's the animation of the basic wave and the final painted wave;




From there, I animated the fox. I used the same fox as in the previous animation 'Head of the Food Chain'. After the fox gets destroyed by the bacteria, I created an underground background, in which the fox's skeleton lies until it fades out, illustrating the decomposition process. The camera then pans up to a background above ground, in which fresh flowers grow. Thus illustrating the process of decomposition and how the remains of the fox help fertilise the soil. This is the animation I completed;



However, upon review from the Director, he felt it needed to end with the Fox's remains lying on the fertilised soil. This I then changed as so;



The final animationis that of a Beetle, explaining how energy transfer works. The grass the Beetle eats has 100% energy, the beetle eats the grass, however only received 10% of that energy. The other 90% of the energy is given away to reporoduction, movement, growth etc.



This still needs a bit of work, just to extend the animation.

Good Knight Bear - Faces & Stop-Motion Props

I've been helping on the project 'Good Knight Bear' directed by Alice Holmes. I've been mostly helping create faces for the Leader bear puppets in Photoshop as well as props for the Stop-Motion background.

I mostly worked on changing the muzzles, noses, mouth shapes and eyebrows. Some faces can be re-used luckily.




The props I created were mostly simple items. I created a lot of books as well as a fairy wand. I also created a pair of fairy wings and a clock, in which the hands move independantly. Here are a few of the props, more photos to follow soon;