Here is the final animation (for now, I plan to expand on it and possibly colour it in the future). My notes and crit will be in my next post, as I need a break after shooting and editing 120+ frames

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Basic things I have learned that need to be implemented when shooting the animations: Curtains shut - Natural light changes too much so all light must be artificial and controllable to avoid inconsistencies Tripod fixed - To avoid any movement between

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When creating all of my other animations, the beginnings and ends were not so noticeable as they were so short, however for my 10-20 second one I feel a brief title screen and end screen would round it off nicely and

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A still from The Potato Hunter, this was a great reference for the over-the-head swing with the mallet, as well as watching someone chop wood with an axe, as all these movements are very similar. First of all, apologies for

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The use of sound in animation and film has always played a vital role, and moreso in films of little dialogue, such as Wall-E to help convey emotion, stage a scene and tell the story. Ben Burtt is considered the father

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This test is just for the launch of the rocket, and looks good I feel although, a little fast. The smoke is believable and the takeoff is exactly how I wanted it to look: a squat down as if pushing

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Another test piece with a lot more of it inked and ready, but with still a few tweaks to make like the hang time during the bell shock and his landing from it, but want to get the bulk of

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Here is the next pencil test for my Rocketman short, this segment is mostly the introduction as it merges from the title screen into a more 2d-profile view which will be more consistent to the rest of the animation. From

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Throughout these early animations, I have taken inspiration from some stop-motion shorts by Timothy Hittle, Canhead and The Potato Hunter. Hittle was a computer animator at Pixar studios for a while before working on such films as MonkeyBone. The main character

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Written and created by Georges Méliès, this 1902 short film used a combination of camera trickery and studio effects to create one of the first science fiction films, with effects that wowed audiences. Georges Méliès took much inspiration from The

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Here is my first attempt at colouring in an animation properly, all done frame by frame on photoshop, and didn't turn out too badly I feel, but still deciding if it was really worth it, as I really like simple black

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From this week's life drawing class, the images in order are; a longer 1/2 hour drawing of a held pose, a constantly moving model with a 5 minute drawing time, a held pose for 5 minutes, drawn with the left hand.

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After watching a documentary called "From Pencils to Pixels" which described the birth of animation through to today's furthestmost cgi creations, mainly focussing on Disney and Pixar, I felt I had learnt a lot about the path animation has taken to

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Another test for "Rocketman" just trying out a small title page before the short starts, there is still a lot of missing stuff here; its only about 20% there I'd say!

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I'm still not sure how I prefer to digitise the animations, using a mini DV camcorder and iStopmotion to use the live streaming effect to make sure everything is lined up and be able to test as it is being compiled,

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For this weeks mini-project the principal we were tasked to show was anticipation. This short animation shows a crouch (with a brief pause to emphasise it) with the stretch up and leap to roll and grabbing the rabbit. I feel it

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From my last post you can see how today was spent doing a lot of quick life drawing, and after thinking about what I had produced I found myself reaslising I felt I had only learnt something from these exercises when

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Just a few bits from some of todays work, quick life drawing studies from 5mins to 10seconds per drawing to encourage economy of line and to plan our drawings (line of action etc) Expressing character and posture through minimal use of

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Further testing of part of my "Rocketman" animation, pretty pleased with the run cycle now I think, especially pleased with the leap and landing on the chair which looks very natural(ish). Note: Inking is laborious but allows further changes to be

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Today we had a group crit of our bouncing ball animations, and unfortunately my main one wouldn't load as the imac in the room couldn't cope with it as I had kept it quite large to be able to re-size it

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Just a quick test of a run/jog cycle I hope to use for my 20 second short "Rocketman", I feel it looks a little stiff, but actually better than I expected that it would. I think with a little tweaking when

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Just some snippits from still life doodles in my sketchbook and from life drawing classes. Feedback always appreciated.

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So finally getting my workspace sorted out...

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The lighting problem is mostly sorted now and seems fairly consistent. I decided to add a different ball to the animation to experiment with working with the visible weight of objects. I feel it went well, but due to the fact

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Just a few examples of my first still lifes in my still life sketchbook, any feedback welcome!

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Its looks little smoother, however the lighting for taking the pictures is still a bit too inconsistent. Will look into this... Any feedback welcome as always!

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Quick test to see how the ball bounce animation is going along. Also, It is incredibly nice to be working on proper animation paper at last, even though I seem to be getting through it at an alarming rate, and

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Here is the final little animation for expressing and exaggerating emotion in a face, I had to slow it down to 8fps as it was whizzing past a little to fast to notice all the transitions otherwise. I'm fairly pleased

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Just a quick test to try out some frames I did to make a head spin but it's jumping all over the place, I think next time I should not do the photographing of the frames without checking the tripod's

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These are just a few of the sketches from my RVJ exploring the exaggeration of facial poses during expression-making emotions and searching for a base character face for the next animation. They were purposely kept simple, taking into account economy of

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Just another little flipbook animation that I was using to get some more practice at them. Trying to make the figure walk/run convincingly was the trickiest part and I feel a lot more practice will be needed on that to

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