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;

The Secret Circus - Tilly says Goodbye.

Tilly leaving the circus has been animated. I wanted to gain quite a magical atmosphere, so created a lot of stars in photoshop, both normal and some with more of a 50's vibe to them. when animating them, I made some move faster than others, I tried to make all of them move at a varying pace. I kept to quite a simple pastel colour scheme of blues, yellows and pinks. The clouds I created with a paper texture and gingham fabric merged and overlayed on each other. I tried to animate the cloud swirl in Flash, however I felt it wasn't working (I didn't keep a copy of this). I felt the clouds in CelAction worked better, I got some critique from Elliot, Phoebe and Lauren. Lauren thought the clouds needed slowing down, as did Phoebe. Elliot felt they gave more of a sleepy feel especially as she was leaving to go back to bed. I worked with what they said to create this piece. I also used After Effects to create some light, simple stars which float in the background, just to add a bit more to the piece. I still need to add in the 'pop' of smoke as Tilly is whisked home.

The Crowd - The Secret Circus

The Crowd for The Secret Circus. Only a short shot as I felt it didn't need much, however I wanted to create an exciting atmosphere. I created each character by making one individal model, then in CelAction, I created it so the model could change their hair/clothing easily.

By layering up the clothing and the hair in Photoshop, it meant in CelAction I could easily scroll through a variety of hairstyles and clothing to create a variety of characters. I changed the skin tone in Photoshop, creating 3 Actors in CelAction and repeating the process. I then animated the moving characters in different files to gain a variety of movements, then exported them all as PNG sequences and exported some static characters as PNGs before putting it together in After Effects. I haven't given the characters legs, as this will be hidden by the Circus Ring.



The first render without the background.



The Crowd rendered with a quick background.

Eye for an Appetite - Fox and Rabbit

Working on Eye for an Appetite, the Fox and Rabbit scene is done. The scene is to illustrate how when a prey increases, the predators will also increase too. As prey decreaes, population of predators will also decrease.


Here's the animation I produced for this;
Created in Flash and After Effects.

The Secret Circus - Final Scenes & WIP's

The Secret Circus is currently underway, a lot of shots have been finished by myself and Alice Holmes. The second years I have working on the project are also producing a lot of work too. Despite this there's still a lot of work to be done. I feel though my animation has improved and my knowledge of CelAction has vastly increased. Although there's still lots to do, I am feeling positive about this project.

This is the shot list at the moment;



These are some final scenes;







WIP's;



There's still a fair few scenes to do. Hopefully I can get most of the edited together to finally see how it will look together. The one major part I am concerned about is making the Circus spin. At the moment I am thinking of maybe changing this and instead using a variety of After Effects pre-made illusions to render or maybe making my own sparkles to mix with. I'm going to try a few different techniques and try and make the circus spin itself. However if I feel this isn't working, I will begin to work on something different.

Eye for an Appetite - Head of the Food Chain (The Fox)

Finished Animation for the Marine & Natural History Photography project 'Eye for an Appetite'. Illustrating the Fox as the head of the food chain, sat upon a pile of rabbit skulls.

Skwigly Article - The Art of Short Films 1

My first Skwigly article, a review of the book The Art of Short Films 1. Co-written with Thomas Coleman. (http://www.tc.genozo.com/)


You can find the Skwigly Article here,

http://www.skwigly.co.uk/book-review-the-art-of-short-films-1/