Filming interviews for NCC

In April, I spent a day filming at a special school in Nottinghamshire. This was followed by several weeks editing; the product of which was a series of 5 videos that capture the views of professionals, parents and students who have all been involved with trialling out the Wiki - technology that has been developed by the RIX centre at the University of East London, which enables multimedia advocacy amongst those with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND). The day went well, and we managed to find some good quiet spaces within the school to shoot the film.

The video below captures views from teachers who work with young people with SEND, providing their informed reviews of the Wiki, and the effect that it has had at the school. Other videos in the series reflect the views from students and parents. Additionally, there's a compilation video which features segments of everyone. These other videos can be viewed on Nottinghamshire's wiki pilot page here.

Animations for Nottinghamshire County Council

Just a quick update..

I've recently completed my second animation for Nottinghamshire County Council. This time, for the Children's Disability Service, explaining their Short Breaks and Personalisation service. This can be found on my website here. I'm pleased to say that it has gone really well and that I'm now working on the next animation for the Children's Disability Service.

Alongside this, I will be completing a couple of animations for Dr Clare Bale explaining a Pathway for children and young people with concerning behaviours. Furthermore, I was recently asked to film Nottinghamshire County Councils SEND Conference in February, so the next step for this will be editing and exporting as videos of keynote speakers and vox pop interviews. It's great to be busy!

Filming at the SEND Conference in Nottingham

I was recently invited up to the SEND Conference in Nottingham, by Nottinghamshire County Council to film some "vox pops" (voice of the populi - i.e. people expressing their thoughts and opinions) and keynote speakers.

The content of the conference was around the same topic my previous animation was based on, and it was really nice to see my animation being played at the conference to help delineate the new EHC plan.

The event presented me with some great experience in the area of filming. I found the vox pops looked the best, and I think a DSLR is well set out for this purpose. Since the conference I have put together 8 seperate videos (3 vox pops, 3 keynote speakers, key messages and a summary video.) The summary video was fun to make as it was an amalgamation of various cutaway shots taken thoughout the day with selected bits of the speakers and vox pops. So a nice mix!

Fin. "The Incomplete Activist" with CreativeConnection

My role

As it was a small creative team, my job was not restricted into one small area, but traversed many roles. I was bought in from the start, to collaboratively engage with what the client was after, brainstorm ideas and help put them into action by producing the first bits of stop motion animation with the team. From then on my job was to work remotely with all the stop motion footage they recorded.

The work involved animating, compositing, adding effects, creating smooth transitions, working to a voice over and editing. Whilst being given plenty of stop motion material, backgrounds and precise instructions to work with, I also had a fair amount of creative input in terms of applying some of my visions from an animation point of view to their ideas and visual output. In this respect the work was very symbiotic. Generally speaking I was very happy with my position in the project as I found it to be dynamic, diverse and interesting.

Teamwork

Throughout the production of the animation, I received constructive feedback after each EIP (Edit-In-Progress,) which allowed me to continuously improve on the work by making changes and bring about further cohesion. At these points they would also supply me with more stop motion material to fill in the gaps of the script. Throughout the course of the project and through applying their feedback, I have improved on my editing technique - more specifically, the art of joining together a voice over with text, sounds and visuals whilst maintaining a good pace and flow.

It has been a good learning process in terms of working with others. I have learned to respond to criticism constructively, to be flexible about changing things that are not working and to accept that not all my ideas will be implemented. On the other hand, it has been highly rewarding to receive very positive feedback and I have gained a huge sense of personal satisfaction on fulfilling what has been required of me. The CC team and the client have responded positively to my output so all in all it has gone very well.

There has been a high amount of creative input in this project from all involved and it has been great to work with such enthusiastic and skilled artists, as well as a talented writer (script) and actor (voice over.)

What is it about?

The film is designed to educate people and dispel the myths of what activism involves, how it comes about and what activists are like. It is full of interesting visual metaphors which takes us into the heart of the activist.

The client who commissioned it, is currently doing his PhD and writing a thesis on the subject. We listened, as he explained his thesis to us, following this, our mission was to condense the content of this thesis into some key bite-sized chunks of information that can be manifested and absorbed in animation form.

Purpose and audience

Hopefully, the film will resonate with audiences across the spectrum, enlighten them with knowledge which is otherwise not obvious or explicit and inspire discussion and debate. It will be shown to hundreds of communities across the U.K. and uploaded onto an intellectual virtual space as well as Youtube.

Visuals

As you can see there is a nice D.I.Y. feel about it - most of the elements were made by hand, and once they were sent to me I comped them together, adding animation and effects where necessary. A big part of the animation was creating smooth transitions which, with the help of a computer - one can be ridiculously perfectionist about! This is a big part of animations charm though so I feel it is worth the time.

I am proud to have been a part of this great project and I anticipate it's release into the world (this September/October.) This has been a different type of animation project to the kind CreativeConnection normally work on - so hopefully more like this will come, as I would love to work with them again!

Credits

Voice Over --- Philiph Bosworth
Script writer --- Dann Casswell

Director --- Ariadne Radi Cor
Producer & Co-Director --- Jessica Harvey

Illustrator --- Lara Popovic
Animator & Editor --- Charlie Minnion

Made by CreativeConnection : www.creativeconnection.co.uk

Fin. "Love Soldiers" @ the RCA - Screenshots & Learnings

Over the last few months I have been spending a couple of days a week helping out Chloe Feinberg on her 2D animation "Love Soldiers" at the RCA. I am pleased to say that the film is now complete and has screened at the RCA shows.

My job has mainly been scanning in the hand inked frames, colouring sequences in Photoshop and compositing in After Effects. More specifically the compositing involved putting in camera moves, time re-mapping, generating effects, creating the animated film grain, bringing together several seperate layers into one scene, and embellishing the look of it. Chloe had a very clear vision in her mind of what she was after, so my role was very much acting as a technical support and following her direction.

It has been a really interesting project to work on, and great to work with such a passionate and driven director. Chloe has worked tirelessly day in and out on the film, it has been a massive labour of love and I am happy to have contributed towards making her vision come to life.

Screenshots
As you can see - it has a really nice aesthetic quality to it - a great quality of drawing, line, colour and texture. The film itself is one that keeps the viewer engaged, curious and entertained. The style has captured a surreal dream-like essence which works symbiotically with the content and nature of the film.

Chloe's statement:

" I see animation as a way to re-invest in representations and impart them with something strange and intoxicating. It enables me to create narratives that weave a kind of personal mythology out of dreams, fantasies and memories. My degree show film explores images that are born out of excess, and the project is a synthesis of many personal interests, including; erotic comic artists of the 1970s and ’80s, surrealism, perfume segments on home shopping channels, male sex idols of the ’80s, and the work of artist/animator Suzan Pitt. "

Learnings

I have learned a few little things (some of which are thanks to some helpful RCA students - cheers chaps!)

Boiling

Learning a method for producing a boiling effect (i.e. making the lines wobble a bit - like in Rugrats.) This has been achieved by using a loop of 3 frames. So it goes 1,2,3,2 then this is on a loop. The frames have been hand drawn, with the intention to simply copy over the exact same line again - this produces a nice subtle boiling effect. Alternatively, a similar effect can be achieved with turbulent displacement though it seems much less effective.

Time remapping

Getting used to working in the time remapping graph to re-tweek the timing of a bit of animation. I was asked to replicate the timing of a bit of animation to match a reference film clip and was able to work it into a tee using time remapping.

Consistant frame rate

I have also learned that it is wise to keep things all at the same frame rate (i.e. if the lines are boiling on 2s then any other animation or effects should be in sync on 2s as well), otherwise you get a bit of a weird strobe-ing effect which isn't so good on the eyes.

Motion paths + natural camera movement

Working directly with motion paths seems to be the clearest and easiest way to manipulate the movement of a camera. Alternatively, you can parent the linear/bezier movement of a camera to a null, then use motion sketch to apply a subtle natural camera move by hand (ideally with a tablet) in real time.

Photoshop actions as an indispensible colouring aid

I have also learned how to colour a sequence in Photoshop quickly by utilising actions. This has had a significant impact on speeding up workflow.

Using Final Cut
I have now scratched the surface of this lovely and intuitive editing program, perhaps one day I'll get it myself but until then I will make do with my trusty Adobe Premiere.

Using a Mac

It has to be said - whilst I have used Macs on rare occasion before, my computer at home is a PC with Windows and this is what I have become used to, so I feel like I have got much more used to using a Mac - I'm now bi-computeral :-)

Interestingly, it has actually changed the way I use my PC. I have downloaded a plug in which allows me to colour my folders - I highly recommend this as it enables quicker navigation through windows explorer if you have a large amount of files and folders to navigate in one project. Also using a Mac with 16GB of ram has inspired me to start jumping between different apps on my computer with more confidence and efficiency - no longer strictly keeping one app open at a time but working more simultaneously across apps - unless it slows down my computer! So yes - next step is to upgrade my PC to 16gb ram which I hope to do imminently.

Conclusion

I really enjoyed my time working with Chloe and Filip (Fil inked all the frames) at the RCA and feel like I got a lot out of it. At times, there was a lot of pressure on and things could get a little stressful, but equally there were also some great moments where we were all "in the zone" and it was a laugh. Alongside Chloe and Fil, I also had the privilege of working with other artists on the project and I was chuffed to be part of the RCA scene. Meeting other animators on the course and attending a couple of fascinating lectures. One from animator Michael Dudok de Wit who has won a BAFTA for his film "Father and Daughter" and another from Ed Cooke - an expert on memory and imagination. Good times :-)

Royal College of Art animation project - Love Soldiers

Love Soldiers directed by Chloe Feinberg

Recently, I have been asked to offer some assistance on a project being created at the Royal College of Art on the MA Animation course. Love Soldiers is a hand drawn 2D animation, which draws inspiration from the likes of David Lynch. Chloe described it to me as "a surreal dreamlike fantasy with 80's male sex symbols set on a luxury yacht. A lot of it is reconfigured pieces from films of the 80's (usually with macho cop guys.)" Having watched the animatic a couple of times I can safely say that it is quite interesting, unusual and unconventional to say the least! Here are a few images that give some idea of the look/content of the project. The top right image is how Chloe intends the final film to look like.

So far, I have helped out with a bit of animating, producing and compositing. As there are only a handful of us working on the project, the nature of my role crosses different areas which keeps things interesting. Having said this, I believe compositing will be the main area I will be working in, as I have a good knowledge of After Effects and Chloe is keen to get the majority of the hand drawn animation done herself. Below are a couple of stills from two shots that I have animated.

The workflow goes like this -

1) Filming or sourcing reference
2) Drawing a style frame to get the sketch and shading right
3) Rotoscoped hand drawn animation, (just the lines)
4) Inking the lines
5) Batch scanning
5) Colouring in Photoshop
6) Comping in After Effects + layering on some actual film textures
7) Editing / Sound

More recently, I have been compositing. Putting together several different layers of hand drawn animation. The technical hitch was that the paper used for animating on had it's peg bar holes punched in slightly different places which meant once I had batch scanned all the work in, the animation wobbled constantly from frame to frame which is not how Chloe intended! To get around this issue, I drew 2 little crosses in the same place on every frame and voila! - a bit of position/rotation stabilising in After Effects led to a much smoother playback of the animation, as it was intended. It was quite satisfying letting the computer sort it out rather then trying to manually adjust each frame in After Effects.

The experimental nature of this project makes it a joy to work on. It's great to be back in a small team again collaborating on a short film, and quite a novelty to be at the RCA. 

Title sequence - workflow and screenshots.

This took around 3 days. I shot the timelapses and footage; created the sound (utilising a 120 bpm house loop by "afleetingspeck" off Freesound) then worked between Premiere and After Effects (using the Adobe Dynamic Link) to edit it together and add effects. The timing and visual/audio synchronicity seems to be key in maintaining a steady pace and flow to the sequence. As you can see below, the shots change precisely on cue with the drum beats.

The additive dissolve makes for quite a nice transition between shots. To further visually convey the pulse of the soundtrack I added a blue moving line effect in sync with the drum beats. It's simple but effective! I will upload the movie here when the video is up on Kickstarter.

Kickstarter campaign progress

Just a quick post this week. I have been quite busy spending time seeing my sister this week so I will be aiming to get this project complete for next Friday. This week, I have worked on adding text to imitate the look of the british rail LED screen type - this is timed perfectly with the words as they are spoken. I found this type off Dafont. It is called LCD Dot, made by Omer Kose.

 I also spent half a day going into town and recording some timelapse footage for the news title sequence. This looks great. The next step is creating a soundtrack to go with them - there's some great stuff on Soundcloud but I could run into copyright issues by using it, so instead I have found a good house loop off Freesound and will work on the track myself.

Train LED style text

Timelapse stills

"Sparkle Mouse" in the making...

This is a personal project that I have been chipping away at for a while. The basic idea stems from a simple and effective technique that I came up with when I was juggling glowing balls. "Sparkle mouse" is a working title - I'm open to suggestions!

The basic idea

Here I am, juggling (such is the life of a creative ey?) -

+ some After Effects trickery =

Pretty cool! What if the ball had a bit of character -

                                                             Introducing... a background!

The plan (aka pre-production) and production

Brief: To create a short visually interesting and entertaining animation, using the above technique.

Here is a rough plan of my idea. The ball interacts and navigates itself around the environment. At one point the ball transports from inside the laundry basket to above the bongo. The numbers on the plan have helped with the editing as this was not all managed in one take. It took me around 7 hours to dress the set, photograph some stop motion animation of the furniture and film myself in the dark moving the glowing ball around.

Post production

This has been the lengthy part of the process. It took me another day to edit the ball into one cohesive sequence. (I recorded about 8 seperate takes as the moving-a-ball-around process was a bit fiddley.) With the help of Maya and a handy tutorial, I animated a cool 3D sphere cracking effect for the transportation bit. This took about half a day.

Most of the work has involved cleaning up areas using masks where there are discrepancies between the environment and the ball. It has taken several days to go through this process. The moral is - use a good tripod!

Half way through, I thought "hey wouldn't it be cool if I kept the effect of the bounce light caused by the ball on the environment" so that added another few days of After Effects work! In the process I have learned better ways of organising my AE comps. Firstly, using colour coding for layers makes things much easier. Secondarily, rendering out pre-comps as you are going along helps a heavy composition become much faster to work with. Here is a screenshot of my work organisation in AE.

At the moment Sparkle Mouse is nearing the end of the clean up phase, and will enter a final edit, possibly with the addition of sound and a title before final delivery. WATCH THIS SPACE :-)

Promo film for Kickstarter

Hi everyone, so it has been quite a while since I last blogged. Sorry folks! From now on I intend to do regular blog posts to keep people in the know of what I'm up to. Since compositing a couple of shots on the independent feature film "The Otherworld" I have realised that I would be much better suited to work on short form productions which offer a higher degree of creative input and a greater variety of work. One of the things I have been working on recently is a promo film for my friend and aspiring alternative therapy business entrepreneur - Saskia.

Promotional film for a Kickstarter project

Saskia has a plan to set up an alternative therapy business and needs the video to act as an essential part of her kickstarter page. I had designed some business cards for her previously, which have proved successful. I believe she is aiming to raise around $10,000 so the video promo is definitely a worthy challenge! The basic idea for her promo is to create a news themed "special report" featuring Saskia as both reporter and massage therapist. Some clear and simple motion graphics, that sit with the live action recording will help delineate her ideas. So far we have done the shooting and now I'm working on the post production. I used my Sony NEX5 to record the footage in HD, and coupled this with sound recorded into a clip on mic.

Business card

Video Promo - still

The shooting took place in my flat, with Saskia filmed against a cream coloured wall. It took me a couple of days to create a clearly defined matte of Saskia which has enabled me to cut her out and place her into a news broadcasting themed environment. I have learned from Ron Brinkmann's book "The art and science of digital compositing" that the most efficient way to rotoscope is to use several mattes - not just one. So here, I have pulled mattes for her body and hair seperately, then combined the two. I have also used a light wrapping technique which creates a subtle effect of the background colours lighting up her outline. The images below show the work in progress:

For my own future reference, and for those of you who are curious - here are the effects I applied to pull a matte of her hair at a part of the video where it swings to the side. These effects are applied to a pre-comped garbage matte so the dynamic range is concentrated to the section of hair being cut out. The still shows the garbage mask and the subsequent matte along with the effects. I pushed everything into the green channel as this provides the best contrast between hair and no hair.

Next, I will be working on integrating some motion graphics with the next scene which shows Saskia as a massage therapist explaining her idea. Here is a still of that shot:

"The Otherworld" - compositing work experience

I am currently busy doing some work experience for independent feature film "The Otherworld." It's good to get some experience and fun to be part of the project. My role so far has been to key out a green screen shot and create "magic mist" that surrounds the character. The shot I'm on now involves a bit of rotoscoping and match moving to line up a moving camera shot of a character in front of a matte painting backdrop. It's nice to refresh my skills previously learned as well as develop my knowledge. Unfortuantly, I cannot put up any stills/movies of my work until the film gets released.

Animation, vfx and self-promotion work

Since moving to London in September, I have actively been seeking work in animation and visual effects. Alongside this I have been developing the look of my website, creating a visual identity and two new showreels - one for my general moving image/animation work and the other - more specifically for my compositing work. Here are the shots I have been working on:

Unidentified sea creature - 2D animation

A 2D animation created using Flash, textured in Photoshop and composited in After Effects. This was sparked by a quick doodle I did of a Fish/Robot hybrid that breathes fire. No fire breathing in the animation yet but perhaps this is something I will come back to in the future!

'Harry' the crab - Match moved

I initially created this crab in 2010 using Maya to model and texture it. I always wanted to place it into a real world environment striking a pose! Back in Cornwall I filmed a bit of it's potential environment and last month I finally got round to stabilising the footage then placing the crab into this environment using Match Mover and Maya. Following this, I added a touch of colour in after effects. This is best viewed in HD. To do so - click this link, turn on HD and scrub to 00:54.

Vfx breakdown - Placing a house onto Bodmin Moor

Here is an image I used in an earlier post. I have uploaded this image here again in order to precede the matte painting breakdown of this shot that I completed a week ago. Breakdowns are always a fun way to display the amount of work that has gone into a shot. This shot was created for a MA student film project entitled 'Gone.'

  

These shots have been included on my Moving Image and Compositing showreels respectively. This week I am going to continue applying to jobs and learning new things!  

VFX shots

Just before completing Uni I hired out the portable green screen and shot some footage. Here is a shot I composited of my housemate Olly, complete with a breakdown.



I have also been asked to help out on a MA Film project entitled 'Gone'. I have spent around a week compositing a 2 minute shot, my goal was to make it look like there was no grass or plant life and to deteriorate the rollercoaster. The purpose of this was to emphasise the apocalyptic feel of the film. I used Photoshop for matte painting, Mocha for tracking and After Effects for compositing. Below is a 6 second segment of the shot complete with a breakdown.



Here is another shot I worked on for 'Gone'. In this case my job was to place a house onto Bodmin Moor. I learned a lot from doing this in terms of using perspective, matching the lighting and matte painting.

Here is the final shot - I added some binoculars on top, linked the still plate to the camera movement which accompanied the initial shot of Bodmin and applied a bit of blur and scaling to show the binoculars coming into focus.

Showreel 2012

My latest showreel, marking the end of my Digital Animation degree. A selection of shots from throughout the last few years which focus on compositing but also demonstrates my skills in animation and 3D. The first two shots are from our 3rd year final major project: Kernal. A CG animated film I worked on as part of a team of 17 which we have now completed and anticipate entering it into festivals.

Dissertation and Kernel progress

Dissertation

Here is my dissertation. In it I relate art to modern forms of commercial animation and digital media. My argument is that audio visual areas of commercial digital media and animation could allow for the most 'artistic freedom'.

Art, Animation and the Audio Visual: An exploration of art and its relationship with commercial media forms

I enjoyed writing this. I found it interesting learning about and applying the fundamental attributes of art to contemporary and commercial animation/digital media.

Some of the music videos I referred to in my dissertation are the following:

Everytime (2009) by Oi Va Voi. Directed by Kijek and Adamski.

So So So (2011) by Rone. Directed by Studio Funf.

Frozen (1998) by Madonna. Directed by Chris Cunningam.

Joga (1997) by Bjork. Directed by Michel Gondry.

Yes I Know (2011) by Memory Tapes. Directed by Eric Epstein.

There is also this great web page which documents in detail the making of Jonsi's live show visuals: 59 productions.

Kernel progress

Things are getting pretty busy at the moment as we have less then 3 weeks left to complete our final major project. Kernel - our CG animated film which is looking fantastic. My role on this currently consists of overseeing the compositing and editing. Below are a few finished stills - Its an exciting time!

                                   

32 bit colour implications
Heres a little 32-bit colour related compositing mystery I recently stumbled on whilst analysing the final awesome touches Olly added to the first city shot shown above. This may look pretty boring but it was quite intriguing from my point of view!

Other stuff

I'm currently working on a website, aiming to promote myself and my skill set (a mixture of concept art, storyboarding, compositing and animation.) Here is a screenshot of the current layout.

Furthermore, I'm hoping to create a business card, C.V. and up-to-date showreel all in time for the Annecy animation festival which I'm greatly looking forward to! Woop :-D

Progress!

I have been very busy since my last blog (hence the lack of blog posts.) I am currently working solely for Kernel which is the main 3D animated film being produced in our year. Since completing a lot of concept design work I have also created the new storyboard for Kernel. From this, I have been able to develop an animatic that has progressed through 6 stages (from an epic 6 mins 38 secs down to a more realistic 4 mins 11 secs.) In the process of refining the animatic, I have kept the essential story information, cut out whats not needed and maintained a good sense of pace and rhythm.

From the animatic, Olly and Hugh have been creating block-throughs in Maya. These Maya shots - that dictate basic animation and camera moves - are being carefully timed to fit with the animatic. (I have also helped by going into Maya and adjusting the camera sequencer lengths to block-through shots that were completed prior to the final animatic.)  The idea is that people who're doing the animating can work within the appropriately timed shots that maintain the correct pacing to the film as a whole. Its an intuitive process and of course, the animation will probably not stick to the frame counter exactly - so long as it roughly fits with all the original timings then we're on the right track!

My roles on the project have extended to editing and compositing for which I have been getting to grips with Adobe Premiere (CS5.5) and The Foundry's Nuke (6.3 v2) software. For both of these I have been working my way through some helpful books - 'Adobe Premiere - classroom in a book' and 'Nuke 101' by Ron Ganbar. Both of which, give you files and exercises to work through. As the editor, I will be constantly updating a premiere project file, as the shots gradually progress from the block through stage to animation and eventually the final composited shots.

The image below shows what I have learned most recently in Nuke. Using a rendered 3D sequence of exr images, I have rebuilt a basic beauty pass which mirrors the way a beauty pass would be created in Maya. The advantage here though, is that the beauty pass has been divided to its essential elements - which I can tweek independently. Working this way should prove highly efficient as it allows one to have good aesthetic control over the shots and save on the lengthy processing and rendering times Maya would incur. The bonus is that the files that Ganbar has provided with his book is of a lemming 'road-skiing' using a car. Amazing!

The Kernel team have been working really well together and it feels like we're building up a creative symbiosis of all our talents. If we maintain this kind of momentum then we should have something good to show by the deadline which is now less then 100 days away!

Aside from Kernel, I have been working on the dissertation and am currently 2 weeks away from completing a Web Communication Dreamweaver AQA course. Busy busy busy!

Level 3 Pitch Presentation and Showreel

Here is my pitch presentation (that was presented at our Animation Pitch forum) designed to showcase my skills and method of working in Concept Art, Environments and Storyboarding.

The subsequent showreel also demonstrates my skills in Compositing and Animation.

These are areas I would like to focus on throughout my third year and hopefully build up an Industry standard portfolio/showreel. It may be that I end up focusing down onto one of these areas or that I continue to be more of a generalist. Time will tell! Ultimately, I would like to work in the Industry on feature films, short films, music promos etc..

Presentation

The only bit that isn't really explained - as it's a presentation the explaining was done verbally - is after my first concept piece. The subsequent slides show how I produced that piece, starting on a city I put together in my room made from things found around the house (for initial reference and inspiration.) It builds up from there switching between Maya models and working over it with pencils and pastels.

Final Pitch

Animation and Compositing Showreel



This was produced a bit last minute and combines work from my Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament Film, my previous Showreel and my last main project from Uni 'Colours and Cogs' that I produced at the end of level 2.

My Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament Film - now available to watch :-)

My film entry for this competition is now officially open to the public to watch and review! Please feel welcome to watch and review it :-) It appears that 'When I grow up' is just one of four in the 'Chance of a lifetime' gallery that has been shortlisted by the judges. Ouuuu exciting!




When I get a bit of free time spare I will upload more information here about the 'making of' this film. It took about 4 months to make it (on and off) so it feels like a very nice achievement to have it handed in, in time for the deadline (with at least 24 hours to spare - result!)

Some Art I did before term

This first image I made following a Photoshop tutorial from the magazine " Illustrate with Photoshop - volume one" by a chap called Magnus Kjall. I thought it would be especially useful to go through to get a feel for matte painting. I found it quite satisfying to produce. 

Here's an album cover I produced for my friend Nathan. The music is a groovy blend of trip hop and ambient electro. Nature is a theme that features strongly in his work. He wanted something a bit Kandinsky. You can listen to the tracks for free here..

This is a painting I did (using Gouache) of the view outside my bedroom window. Its quite vibrant for a car park! After doing the drawing, I got the paints ready at which point I looked up and the car had gone. I decided to paint the rest anyway - I quite like the look of this. Gotta love serendipity.

Negotiated Brief - Music Video - Finished!!

I am pleased to announce that I've completed my Negotiated project good and proper now..
If you want to skip the 'making of' and see the final video - I've embedded it at the bottom of this post.

I was quite inspired by the Richard Morrison talk earlier this term and took a couple of things from it. With reference to this project I applied what he said about letting the idea come out naturally - and not forcing it out. This was partly due to juggling several other projects but also a result of my way of working.

I acted on moments of inspiration and combined the results of these creative impulses with a methodical approach. In other words - doing some storyboarding and visually responding to the music (see earlier post) as well as thinking 'hmmm - I'd quite like to put in a sunrise timelapse' or 'I feel like going out and doing some creative night photography'.

Some results of these experiments are below:

Also during the term I went to an Audio Visual and Projection mapping Festival at Geneva with Simon which was great fun and inspiring. I will do a separate blog post on this. The point of me mentioning it is that I was able to get some great shots of being above the clouds.

So around a week or two ago my head was full of ideas - I had lots of footage filmed in mind of the project, I had some initial artwork to go on, and some timelapses and photographs. I just needed to somehow condense everything into the 50 second audio piece. Essentially I needed to go 'back to the drawing board' and do some final preparation work. I still needed a proper storyboard (the first one was done before getting a lot more ideas/footage etc.) , a dopesheet -which turned out to be very useful and a place to put all my ideas:

I got to work following the storyboard and produced some artwork designed to be composited into the piece (whilst listening to the music I was doing it for) Eventually I had all the raw material I needed and worked the different elements into After Effects.

One fun idea was to dress up in a suit and incorporate pixellation of me holding a heartbeat (using a video but having it printed off so literally holding up a frame at a time.) I was planning to do the same with a sunrise - but due to time constraints I decided 'hey I'll just composite it onto a blank sheet of paper that I'm holding ' This was a massive time saver and looks a lot smoother. There is a nice hand-done quality to the Heartbeat however. If you have any opinions on this feel free to comment! Getting muddy whilst wearing the smart clothes was Ninas idea (who is also featured in the film.) This was great fun. Also see if you can spot the additional prop in the shot. Here are some elements I put into the final video:

I cut out these cogs by hand using a scalple and some card. Then I scanned them in and animated them in Flash. These fed into the people timelapse shot below - for this I used After Effects.

These were initially hand drawn using pastels on black paper. Then I put them into photoshop and
used a pallett brush and liquify effect. I designed them carefully on photoshop to be able to be looped.

So you get the idea - inspired creativity is what it is! I Love it!



Presenting an Audio Visual piece I produced for my 'Negotiated Brief' project at the Digital Animation BA course in Falmouth.



I really enjoyed doing this, it gave me a chance to be quite experimental and incorporate a range of techniques. Hopefully I will continue to do this kind of audio visual work. Its great to have an idea and then make it happen.

The highlights have to be dressing up in a suit and getting muddy - great fun!



Thanks to Nina Cumberbirch for allowing me to feature her in the video. Thanks to Lazulene for the music.

What does it all mean?.. well I leave that to your interpretation.
Now I must go out and celebrate ! Wooooooooooo!