Good boy film

Hello everyone, it has been a long time in the making but finally the 'Good Boy' film is finished.
I will be adding some making of and behind the scenes photos and videos later on but for now please enjoy the finished product.
It has been a fun and moving project to have worked on and I am really pleased with how it has come out.
Thank you to everyone who has helped me along the way (even just to give me photos of their dogs for the end credits) and to Kelly Angel for giving me the opportunity to bring her original comic to the screen.

Please enjoy.

Good boy film continued

Hello all.
It has been a little while since my last update, but the animation for the good boy film (based on the comic strip by Kelly Angel) is finally finished.

It's been a really fun project to work on, It was such a wonderful story, very funny and quite emotional at times and It was a piece I am glad to have animated.
The work isn't over yet though, I still have editing and sound and other various finishing touches to work on for the next month or so until it is complete.
So check back soon and hopefully the film will be here waiting for you to feast your eyes upon.

Until then, here are some stills from the film and some making of shots.
Enjoy.

Good boy film

Hello

It has been a little while since my last update so I thought I'd get right to it and let you know what I've been up to.

My latest animated project at the moment is a short film based on the amazing and very moving comic strip 'Good boy' created by Kelly Angel.
If you have not read this then I urge you to do so now by following this link:
Good boy comic

After reading this comic I knew almost at once that this was a film I wanted to make.
With Kelly's approval I began working on the film and have been doing so now for the past couple of months.

Original model prototype 

In summery the film is about the life of a very happy dog.
In the film I am trying to follow the comic as closely as possible, using the frames of the comic as reference for each scene.

Comic panel and film still

The film is now over half way finished and if all goes well will hopefully be complete by mid August.
Keep your eye out for it and I will update again soon.
Until then, here are some making of pictures for you all to feast your eyes on. Enjoy.

11 second club mother and result

Hey everyone, i thought i'd posted pictures of the mother but looks like i've been slacking, the 11 second club was finished in any case and I came 45th which i'm really pleased with considering the competition. Here's the finished result. (Making of picture's underneath)



Potty training (11 second club submission)

I made the entire face for the mother out of plasticine

I started the mouths by making the shapes in black

I then added white plasticine teeth and red plasticine lips

Here is the potty before i painted it

These are the only pictures i have, i will try and take more of the making process in the future.
Stay tuned for my next animation update!

Big Baby Madness: Making the baby!

Hello everyone, if you've been following my posts, you'll know that i've been working on a short project for the monthly competition the 11 second club.
I'm doing the animation in two sections, the mother and the baby. Since the baby's part is shorter I thought I'd do him first to get him out the way. I've finally gotten around to puppet making and sorting out his animation.
I documented the process as I went to show my progress.
Here's how I've been getting on!

Starting to build the baby's head with mixed plasticine 

Here's his finished head, all that's missing are his eyebrows which will be added later

Some replacement mouths

Building up the baby's body

There was no need for legs as he would only be shown from waist upwards.

I then built some simple props for the animation:

Some building block toys 

A cot for the baby with bee design

Here's my final set up, a simple set with a simple puppet ready to animate

Here he is, mid shot, in his whole 3 second appearance 

Next up is the mother and her part of the set. Hopefully it won't take me too long, there's only a week and a half left of the 11 second clubs deadline.
I'll keep you all updated as to whether I succeed or not!

Thanks for checking out my blog!!!!

Big Baby Madness Animatic and test heads

Hello everyone, as promised here is an update on my 11 second club project.
Using the rough storyboard from the previous post, i have created a basic animatic to see what the clip will look like. Here it is:

I then got to work building some test heads of the mother and baby to see what they would look like in 3D.

Here are some pictures:

I've decided that, as the characters won't actually be in the same shots together I'm going to work on 2 different scales, meaning that the mother will probably be around the same size as the baby. But the sets I build will make it look as if she is much bigger. 

More updates soon!

Big Baby Madness

With the new Gammon film finally finished and out the way, (see here: Gammon)  I've decided to go back to basics.

I want to do a few short pieces, most recently I created a new Georges reviews. (See here: Georges reviews)

And for this month I've decided to do the 11 second club. This will keep me from spending the next couple of years on a single project.
I want to work on short pieces like this and will probably do some more Georges reviews over the coming months whilst I work out what my next big project will be.

I'm hoping to get the Gammon film into festivals for this and next year and if successful I may be working on the continuation of that.

But for now we have the 11 second club, a short monthly animation competition in which you animate to a piece of dialogue, see link if you are interested: 11secondclub.com

Now after all my babble, here's the interesting stuff, the pictures!

This is the mother character with a few mouth designs

This is the big baby character with a few mouth ideas

And here is my unintelligible storyboard
(If you can understand this then you are a very smart person)

       These are just my initial idea pages, there will be more up soon and it should make a bit more sense.

 I'll keep updating as the month and project go on, so keep checking back for more updates!

Rabbit lip sync

Okay, i've finally got round to sorting out my blog and getting myself together, so i am going to update on what i've been up to and then will post updates of all projects i will be working on.

So to start with i thought i would put up the work from a project that i really enjoyed working on: Rabbit lip sync.



This film was created when i was in my second year of university (now graduated)
I first started by interviewing people around the Stoke-on-Trent area.
I found a funny fisherman who had a lot to talk about, he was mostly talking about fishing but finally he started to talk about his garden and his vegetables.

When listening back the audio i had recorded, images were conjured up of this big brown rabbit on a vegetable patch.

Here is what i did:


After a lot of concepts for this character (that i have unfortunately now misplaced) i created many different rabbit maquettes

 

 

 

 After this i created a simple garden set using foam board and coloured Fimo.

 

I created a foam board fence and drew on lines with an ink pen

 

I used fake grass from a hobby shop to create the ground and a ball of tin foil covered in orange Fimo to make the pumpkin

 



This was a simple drawing to see if the rabbit puppet would work on film


 

Next it was time to create the rabbit.

I felt that in true Aardman style i would create the rabbit out of Plasticine, this was an esthetical choice as i felt it would look best on my brightly coloured set.

I began by creating a pumpkin that would be secured to the set, i then built the armature of the rabbit from the pumpkin. I did this because the rabbit puppet would not be getting up and walking and would remain on the pumpkin for the duration of the animation.



The eyes and nose were created using Fimo. The eyes were secured into tin foil covered eye sockets and Plasticine was moulded around them to keep them in place.
The eyes had tiny holes in the centres so that they could be moved easily with a pin

I created the rabbit without a mouth as all of the mouths would be replacements

I next created the rabbits replacement mouths:

Rabbit with his A mouth

And here is the finished rabbit puppet:

Then all that was left to do was the animating (my favourite part!) Here are some shots of my set up:

 

 

 

I really enjoyed working on this project, it was really fun and i hope to work on more projects like this in the near future

And that's all I've got to say about my rabbit animation, here is the link to watch the video, please enjoy:

https://vimeo.com/17490055