Storyboard & Animatic

The last few weeks I've been working on a project at uni that was built off of our christmas research project which was to analyse a film in great depth. However, the film had to have been made before you were born.
I chose the film The Hunger (1983, Tony Scott) which stars Catherine Deneuve, David Bowie and Susan Sarandon.
We were then paired up with another person and had to our own film with the one that they had chosen.

So the two films I ended up having to combine were;
The Hunger (1983, Tony Scott)
The 400 Blows (1959, François Truffaut)

We were then told that we had to create a storyline that incorporated these two films in some way, and storyboard it, then create an animatic.

Here's my final animatic:

The storyline should be pretty easy to follow. A woman comes home to her lonely son with a mysterious box, which turns out to contain a cute pet bunny. Unbeknownst to the audience however, the mother and son are both vampires, and the boy eats his 'pet' snack.
I took the setting and character of Catherine from the Hunger, and threw in the boy from the 400 Blows as her son, as I wondered what it would have been like had Miriam Blaylock had a child instead of a lover.

There are a few things I'd change if I were to spend more time on this project, but nothing that I really think ruins it at all. General feedback from my group crit was very positive and I learnt a lot with this project.

Here are the individual storyboard frames:

Location Drawing - British Museum

Yesterday I went location drawing in the British Museum, London.
During this session, we were discouraged from creating a lot of quick drawings, and told to only do between 3 and 4 sustained drawing. This was to help train our eye for detail, and to force us to develop techniques to deal with boredom or fatigue whilst drawing.

This first image is of a canoe figurehead from the solomon islands. It was drawn on brown paper, and the white was done with a tipex pen. I spent about an hour and half on this guy, making sure I got all the proportions as right as I could. In the end I realised that I'd spent far too long on him, and left him unfinished.

These two images were much quicker than the last one. After spending over an hour focused on such a tight drawing, I needed to do a much quicker and energetic one to loosen myself up. The images are of the mummified cats in the egyptian exhibit. The first image was done using continuous line and without looking at the paper. The second was done using continuous line.

Fianlly, I found a gorgeous lion figure that instantly caught my eye. I spent the remaining hour drawing this guy and I really wish I'd had longer before having to leave for the group crit, because I would love to have finished this little guy off. I used pens of varying thickness and pencil for the working out. He is without a doubt my favourite picture of the day.

Hair Fanzine

At uni we are working on a fanzine project in groups of 7/8. The subject that we were given to make the fanzines about was 'hair'.

Today we worked out who would be creating which pages and what the pages would contain. So far, the fanzine will be black and white with a colour cover.

I have created 2 double page spreads to go in the fanzine. One is about my experiences as a woman with a shaved head, the other is about a disturbing conversation my mum had with my friend while she cut her hair.

Here is the first and the better of the two (I won't be uploading the 2nd):

Practice Fanzine

We're currently working on a fanzine project at uni. Last week we had a single day to create a fanzine within our elected groups.

The subject matter is hair.

These were the four pages that I created. I had no reference images to use that day, so it's all from my head.

 

 

E4 Sting & Valenteins Castle - Old Animations

My entry for the E4 sting competition a few years ago, I think back in 08/09.
I used the rotoscope technique for the animals, created the background from a photo of my old house and edited it on photoshop. The sound effect was a default one from iMovie.

Used a combination of Photoshop 7, iMovie, iStopMotion





A short claymation I made after my A-Level or AS-Level Exams were completed and I had plenty of spare time to take over the computer room next to my art class and turn it into a temporary studio.
I made all the sets and characters, and some of the furniture was stuff I had left over from when I used to play with barbies. ;)
I believe that this was shot using 12fps. Used iStopmotion for capturing, iMovie and FinalCutPro for putting it together and effects.
Sound effects were default ones from iMovie and various free ones off the internet I think. I can't really remember.

Werewolf Transformation/Walk Cycle

A short animation done for my 3 day induction to animation at Kingston University.

The brief was to create a character and an animation that focused on the walk cycle of that character. Extra elements were then encouraged to be included.

Factors I'm happy with:
- For the short amount of time we had to do this, I'm pleased with what I did managed to accomplish, especially as it's been a while since I last did some serious animation
- I really like the way his ears bounce
- I'm happy with the way he transforms from the man into the werewolf

Factors I'm unhappy with:
- The speed of the werewolf walking. I'd like to add some more filler frames to slow it down so you can see a little more of the detail
- I'd eventually like to have added the walk cycle of his as human, as I feel that him simply standing there just breaks up the animation and ruins the flow

Technical Info:
- 46 individual frames, hand drawn and lined with fine liner pen
- Shot and put together using a program called Dragon Stop Motion, at 25fps shot on twos