Cubist Walk Cycle test

Trying out a Walk Cycle test in CelAction when I had some spare time from last week, influence by Cubism; with more of testing to come. Need to be heavy with the arms movement one opinion I have showed so far. More to come I am hoping.



But, for now see you in 2015. Bye.

Happy Christmas for 2014!

First there will be possibly another post in 2014. But, for now Happy Christmas/happy holidays, see you in 2015. Bye.

Sketch books/life drawing classes Oct-Dec 2014

Recently, I have done a few life drawing classes in my spare time through the last three months from October 2014 to December 2014 of my recent drawings in my sketch books. Unfortunately, I do not not have the space on this website to do so. Although I do have them on my other website, on this link right here to find. So enjoy.



Bye.

Sketch books/life drawing classes, 2013/14, year 2

During my second year on the MA Character Animation course, I have done a few life drawing classes through the last eight months from October 2013 to June 2014. I did not had the time to upload them during term time, now I have time to spare, it is the right time to uploaded them. Unfortunately, I do not not have the space on this website to do so. But, I do on my other website, on this links right here (part 1, part 2, part 3) to find. So enjoy looking at them.



Bye.

Showreel

Showrell animation work from the last two years from Uni. Enjoy.



Bye.

The Finish Animation

So here is the finish version of my final animation for Uni. They might be a few more bits that are will be tuned at a later date. But, for now here is the final version.

The Jolly Awful and Really Quite Wretched Conquest of Colchester from jonnyh19 on Vimeo.

Bye.

Finished

After more than seven months of pre-production, animating and post-production I have finished off my final animation for my MA degree. Since, after the assessment was over and a few days off, I altered some bits of the animation from previous feedback needed to change that I didn’t had the time, tuning the sound at the start and adding credits I’ve finished off my animation.







Next stop showing it to the audiences, to see their opinions.

Bye.

Music and Sounds

For my score for my final animation, I got a composer from the Royal College of Music student called Sam Jones.

I didn’t start to think about the music until middle of February when I needed a composer for the project, when the animatic was almost finished, I needed a composer soon as possible.



So, with a contact via another composer got Sam for the project, as I was impress by his portfolio work from his website to take him on.

My initial thoughts about music should be with the music and intro overall should have a lord of the rings soundtrack vibe and possibly a Blackadder vibe to it.







And throughout the three months me and Sam via phoning each other and e-mailing figuring out how to do with the music, by the middle of March, he gave me a few samples if I like the few samples would it suit the animation, then by the middle of May, I got the first rough score, my feedback to Sam was I loved it from the first time I listen to it.

The only thing I need Sam to do is just shorten the score down to a few seconds, because the animation just got shorten by a few seconds from the previous file I gave him. And finally got the final score by the end of May ready for the assessment for the start of June.

Overall, I enjoyed working with Sam, I enjoyed him more than the previous composer I had from the first year, a much more response from the previous composer, you can e-mail him and get response in 10 minutes. Overall a creative person I worked with the score.



Meanwhile last week (30/5/14), I met up with Tom Lowe and I had a great sound design session on Friday. He helped me out with around 85% of the sound effects and the only thing that was missing was a water splash and sound effects for the squirrel which I have to get on my own via websites such as freesoundfx.com and freesounds.org and place those sound-effects into premiere. But, he did said that I didn’t needed loads of sounds effects due to how strong is the score.



Almost there.

Bye.

After Effects vs CelAction2D

Four programs I have used throughout the final animation is Abode Photoshop, Premiere, After Effects and CelAction2D. And the last two particular After Effects and CelAction2D.



For the first minute of my four minute animation is completely in After Effects, and the rest mostly in CelAction2D.



So for this post its what my experience between After Effects vs CelAction2D



Pros for After Effects:

• Walk and run cycles – very easy to do compare to CelAction2D

• Fade ins and fades out – easier to do in After Effects

Cons for After Effects:

• lip syncing – will take a while to do, also the program doesn’t like playing sound.

• Rendering- unless its a video file and not importing Photoshop files it will take forever, it took 3 hours on my laptop to render 55 seconds worth but on a computer with 8GB worth of RAM, preferred 16GB of RAM on a new mac is much better and much faster, took 15 minutes to do. Worse time rendering on CelAction2D took an Hour for a 35 seconds worth on animation.

So with CelAction2D:



Pros for CelAction2D:

• lip syncing – you can do it much faster then After Effects, also the program can play sound, when the frames are highlighted.

• Building the body in assemble mode- when the character is sorted, is much faster to find in animator mode and it takes less time to animate with different body parts

Cons for CelAction2D:

• Walk and run cycles – very difficult to do compare to After Effects, however easier with body movements.

• finding the source file – the actor file may need to find once a while when the file uploads and goes red

Overall, it would be difficult to choice which is the better program. But, its down to preference, they do have pro and cons both programs. But, with two programs together it can make great animation as the background and the Romans was in After Effects and the foregrounds with the characters was in CelAction2D.



Bye.

Change of colour

From early on, I felt that the The Dave of Dagenham, The Ray of Romford characters would be dressed as Romans



But, throughout the months I felt this would be the wrong idea, due to it won’t suit their personality. Also, with other animations from this period such as Astérix characters.





So, therefore I change the clothing for the Essex characters, so I started to look at Joey Essex as for a reference.



However, I felt this looked to modern what I wanted to with the character.



So, therefore I change the character clothing colours to a much darker colour.



And gone much more to a non modern look with the image below to darker blue colours, as this would suit well to the script of that I am follow with.



Bye.

Actors

For my actors for the final project I got CSM actors Mike Corsale and George Johnston to do the voices. George Johnston did the narrator and the director. While, Mike Corsale did the main characters of Claudius, The Dave of Dagenham, The Ray of Romford voices.



Due to limited time with my actors because of their schedules I only had an hour and weeks after that they would be working in a different country altogether.

This would have been the improvement for the animation I would have liked to due to limited time with the actors. Also, not recorded the audio in the sound studio also hurt us due to couldn’t get into it due to how busy it was getting into one. When we did record it in the animation studio in the end, we had bad background noise due to I was talking to one of actors on how I would like to sound like.

Also, an American student who is in the first year is overheard in the background from the recordings, so I had to retouch a lot of it in Adobe Audition so you don’t here the person. Because it doesn’t sound bad in a QuickTime file as it more forgiving, but in Premiere it is noticeable. Also, the score and some effects did helped to hide it well. But, if I redo it again, I would have booked them in a sound studio to sound much better.

Overall, I would work with them again if the opportunity come across.

Bye

Essex Girls, Chickens, Donkeys, Progress, rough cut viewing and other stuff in this post that is not included

As you can guess, first post in a few months, as the image below shows on video 5 timeline (21/4/14) that I did almost 90 seconds worth on animation done.



And this image below shows on video 5 timeline (12/5/14) that I need to do almost 90 seconds worth on animation to do within the next three to four weeks I’ve got left.



And within three weeks between I have been animating the difficult scenes that needed to animated, which includes, the last scene,



the last but one scene,



and the Alfa scenes, which gives me 90 seconds left to animate to complete my final animation.



Also, I had my final rough cut viewing for the animation (8/5/14) with Pete Bishop. I think it went well. No major complaints, just minor changes with timing and laughing from my peers which is still a positive so its still funny.



Also, here below is some testing with some of the minor characters below, which includes Essex Girl, Chicken, Donkey with walk and run cycles from Essex girl and Donkey.







Bye.

Photoshop Hell! three weeks of work

First post for a while, and for the last three weeks I have been working hard on the final project.



The great thing is that the backgrounds are mainly sorted with a little help form my first year called Sasha, who has worked with backgrounds in Photoshop and coloured them in within two weeks which is great.



As for main characters they are sorted, with just the background characters and animals to draw. But, characters like Claudius,



…The Dave of Dagenham…



…The Ray of Romford…





and the Romans are drawn, scanned in, and glued in Photoshop, after weeks of doing this in Photoshop and basically being fed up with this in Photoshop, as you guess the title is called Photoshop Hell!

My big pursued from the last month is buying CelAction2D on my Toshiba laptop for £360 at a discount price which I’ve did.



After buying it, I’ve started to animate with it, which includes from the last eight days, 57 seconds worth of animation from the last week.



With seven weeks to go I’ve got 3 minutes worth of animating to do to even finish the animation, so basically that is 26.5 seconds a week worth of animating to do. More to come I hope.

Bye.

CelAction2D testing

After weeks of getting the animatic sorted out, I am now starting to start of my animation. Firstly, I have been testing in CelAction2D with simple character designs that will be in the animation. To start with a squirrel that we see at the start of the animation, I started to work on simple walk cycles, run cycles and experiment with shadow effects too on Monday (3/3/14).



Then I imported a rough version of Claudius on Tuesday (4/3/14), this time I worked on a simple walk cycle and an improve one from yesterday. Also, experiment with shadow effects, and simple expression with Claudius as-well.



Then finally on Friday (7/3/14), I done an much improve version of Claudius with any colour. However, I didn’t had anytime to animate him in CelAction2D.



More time in CelAction2D next week with more character development I am hoping to do.

Bye.

Free to Animate

After a few weeks of finishing off the animatic, and after weeks of feedback from professionals from the animation world I am ready to animate.

The feedback from the last few weeks have been positive, which include laughing, laughing and more laughing as positive feedback. Some of the negative feedback, I would not called negative but probably on how to improve it; is to make sure the Claudius character has a strong voice, make sure the characters colours are right such as make sure the Essex characters are bronze, and finally with the right voice actors it can reduce the animation time down 30 seconds less to animate. But, the best bit of feedback is my animation is like horrible histories meet Viz magazine, which was nice.



Finally, I have got my voice actors in place, and also I have found a composer in place for animation as-well giving me ideas what sounds I can use for the animation so far.

First thing tomorrow I am going start to animate my final year animation.

Bye.

The Essex (acid) Test

Had a busy week of redrawing the new Rough Animatic for the Final Project which was shown on two last Thursday (6/2/14), with one of the scenes was removed and replaced with a new scene.



After this I showed this off to a few people if it works better. Which includes showing this to Martyn Jones, who is an animator who taught us a 2D program call CelAction2D from two last Thursday and Friday (6/2/14 and 7/2/14), which his form Essex, will be the acid test. With his reaction, the animatic works as he was laughing at the right scenes when needed.

This animatic was a little bit clean up version from last Tuesday.



Also, last Friday (14/2/14) we had animator Philip Vallentin come in to look at our animatics. With my animatic it needed to be tighten up in places and also add some more sounds effects when needed. And below, there is a much more clean up version of my animatic so far from Sunday Evening (16/2/14).



Bye.

Got some bad news

Last week, we showed off our animatics to Shelly Page, which below was a little bit of a much cleaner version of the animatic in places and added one more establish shot to the animation.



Feedback it was funny with a few people laughing at it. But, sadly a few criticism, which included too many talking heads, too many lip-syncing to do in the time, there was also a criticism that the animation lived its live after the first scene, which I disagree with.

And the big thing that was removed I have to do due to many criticisms and opinions that the West Hammus scene has been too cut, due to too many characters to animate and possibly a very limit minded jokes that the audience won’t understand with, unless you are a West Ham fan. Anyway we have rewritten (cut and chop) a new script with an old scene from the previous script we have placed in and used that to re-draw the animatic. New animatic in the next post.

Bye.

First rough and a half animatic for Final Project and another character design

Another Rough Animatic for the Final Project that was uploaded on Tuesday (21/1/14), added one more establish shot to the animation were needed. If there’s any-more opinions, opinions below please.



Also, I have uploaded another character design. The character is called Terrance of Upminster, a very old and nutty West Hammus fan with many opinions about his club.





Bye.

First rough animatic for Final Project

A Rough Animatic for the Final Project which was shown on Friday (17/1/14), the main problem was add more jokes and add more establish shots to the animation as seen below.



Bye.

Some character designs

Last week was our first week back since Christmas, on Friday we did our pitch for the final animation. I basically show off the story and show off a new bit of concept art.



And show off some characters for the animation which include roman emperor Claudius.





And show off one of the Essex characters called Davious Dagenhamus.





Next week, show off the first rough animatic.

Bye.

So here is the rough story

This is basically the rough story for the final project, which I have been figuring out with my writer Charlotte. So here is the rough story:

The Jolly Awful and Really Quite Wretched Conquest of Colchester.

The Romans have minced their way up from Italy and are taking over Europe. They’ve got their sights set on Britain – they want to introduce some Roman engineering and well as general Italian pizazz.

Claudius arrives on a boat with his men and a number of elephants. They have heard the British are terrified of elephants, but so are the Romans, which has caused all manner of problems on the way over. Because of this they’ve arrived late and the British – who had painted themselves in blue woad and had been waiting for them – have all gone down the pub.

Claudius struts around and demands a battle, he faces his arch nemesis Dave Dagenham and his podgy sidekick Arg Essex who take one look at the robust Roman army and immediately surrender. Claudius employs his men to take over Essex and to introduce new Roman feats of engineering.

They first revolutionize the plumbing system, fitting in proper sewers. However the Essexians fancy the idea of a hot tub, and ignore the groundbreaking technology and just enjoy a nice glass of something (using the Roman’s new glasses) in the hot tub.

Next they take on the transport system – the Essexians have been driving around in clapped out wooden chariots pulled by donkeys, but the Romans introduce the Alfa Romano with four horse power, as it’s pulled by 4 magnificent stallions. However as they are Alfa Romanos they do tend to be highly unreliable, and Claudius is continually breaking down in his new Alfa Romano Chariot.

The Romans also introduce Football Italia – the players are proper athletes who wear tight football kits and cheat as much as possible, while the Essexians stand around smoking fags, drinking beer and scratching themselves. Terry from Upminster – a typical rough Essex lad – is interviewed on his thoughts on the new Essex team West Hammus. He believes West Hammus is already going to be relegated before they’ve even started.

Claudius gets more and more frustrated with the Essexians, and wonders why he’s bothering to do all of this. Eventually he loses his rag Christian Bale style and shouts at everyone, then the director comes in (breaking the 4th wall) and suggests everyone calm down. The whole animation has been a filmed TV show. The actors who have played Claudius, Dave, Arg and Terry all stand around enjoying a polite cigarette complaining about how badly written the animation has been, and how they’d love to get a job on an advert making lots of money with little work involved. They mention how factually inaccurate the story is, and that the Romans in fact invaded Deal in Kent first, not Essex.

The End.

….

As of now, we have got a begining, middle and end to our story. Next up, we just need to get the script right for the animation, as we are going a few rough drafts right now.

Bye.

Research part 3 (Colchester)

Recently, I went to Colchester for the day before Christmas (2/12/13) to do a little research. First I went to see Colchester Castle. Despite it was closed for the winter, so I look around the outside the castle and its area anyway.








Also, around the Colchester Castle area there was some statues with roman themes.








Some interesting facts about the castle from the wiki page:

• The castle is built on the foundations (or the podium) of the earlier Roman temple of Claudius (built between AD 54–60).
• Building began between 1069 and 1076 under the supervision of Eudo Dapifer, who became the castle’s steward on its completion. Building stopped in 1080 because of a threat of Viking invasion, but the castle was completed by around 1100. Many materials, such as Roman brick and clay taken from the Roman town, were used in the building and these can easily be seen.

And finally went into Colchester itself (3 minute walk from the castle) and took some images what I might use as influence for my background drawings.




All in all, a nice few hours day out of Colchester.

Bye.