I found, I loved.

I came across this piece of stop motion animation by NFB.ca the other day. I absolutely loved it.

Don't judge me but it's my kind of thing.

Onto the building stage

So, if you remember my old lady character I posted the other week, well it's time to start building her ready for my animation. It's a lot like building a mini person, starting with the skeleton then fleshing it out and so on. If the armature (skeleton) isn't built right you can end up in a whole lot of trouble down the line. I'll give you a rough idea of what I need to do as the starting point for my final maquette, and I'll give it to you in picture form, the best kind of form.

This is just my construction page that I'll work from as guidance when building, in the process of my actual build I'll be taking pictures of each step so you can see how it's coming along.

The last time I built a working maquette was at the end of my first year for my character project, I made some mistakes during that build that I've definitely learnt from for this one already. Here is my final character build from my first year, this is Raymond the Mole and I'll post the animation that I made to go along with him as well.

Storyboarding

It's no secret that I'm a bit of a nerd when it comes to things like comics and drawing comic strips, so when my brief was to storyboard an already existing advert I thought 'yeah that'll be fun', wrong, oh so wrong I was. It started off great but by the time I got into the 7th hour straight I just wanted to punch every single character in that bloody advert - and that was only the rough draft.

I'll put a link up to the advert I chose, and I hope you'll agree it's a classic, then I'll show you my final advert storyboard because, lets face it, the rough draft is practically the same thing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3SAbJjktk7E

While we're talking storyboards I suppose I'll let you know about the second half of the brief. We were each given a page from a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle script and had to storyboard that page how we thought it should look/play out, so to speak. Again, sounded great, as a kid I loved the ninja turtles and I thought that this part of the brief would be a bit like making your own comic book (If any of you were "lucky" enough to have seen my previous comic book, that I made a few years ago, I must say I've progressed significantly since then!). I'm pleased with how my storyboard turned out but if I'd put maybe a bit more effort in and had more time it would have turned out far better in my opinion.

Animatic thumbnailing

As part of my preproduction work I had to start thumbnailing how my character will be acting and moving throughout the scene. Most of it's done really roughly just so I get the idea of how each key frame will look and also because I didn't want to spend ages carefully drawing out each part when I'm just going to have to draw it all over again anyway.

I thought I'd show you my rough thumbnail ideas for both the cat and the old lady character before my final, combined thumbnails. My friend was telling me the other day that he didn't realise how much development and pre-preproduction work goes into just the designing. This way you can see how my ideas change, even slightly, to get to the final product, which I'll probably even adjust again when it comes to storyboarding and such.

I wanted to post my final animatic which includes the sound but the clip doesn't seem to want to work, which is a massive inconvenience as I submitted it with the rest of my preproduction work yesterday. I'll try and get it sorted and post it if I can, it's not like it's the best thing ever and you need to see it but I guess it's something to watch if you've got a spare 12 seconds.

Little bit extra

I thought I'd add my final designs for my character and her cat to this here blog so you can have a proper butchers and see the finished, coloured work. These are my character turnarounds and again I wouldn't mind a bit of feedback to see what you think of the colours and designs.

I realise the images aren't that clear but you get the idea and I hope you like 'em.

Last minute

So, I’m meant to keep this blog updated with my work as I go along but I haven't really done that so I'm thinking if I just post my work in a significant order you'll get the jist of what I'm doing. I'm currently doing the preproduction work for my minor project. We were given a sound clip and had to create a character based around the voice and what it says. I just so happened to get the most depressing clip of the lot and my initial ideas consisted of an old lady talking to her dead husband...

After some development of the character and talking with my tutors about how I should go about portraying the story/clip I decided to have a little old lady talking, not to her dead husband but to her uncaring cat. My basic back story for her is that she's all alone apart from her cat, who she's absolutely in love/obsessed with but the cat (Harry) takes no interest in her whatsoever.

I'm much happier with this design and the story I've got to go with it. I've got some ideas for how the animation will look and will try to post an animatic of my final idea soon. That way you can hear the clip and see what you think of it too. Hopefully my ideas will work well with the voice, it may end up being rushed but then everything I do is last minute.

Feel free to comment/criticise the work I'm showing, it's nice to get genuine feedback.

Got to start sometime.

I suppose the best way to start would be by introducing myself. I'm Charlotte and I'm currently in my second year studying BA Animation at the ATRiuM in Cardiff. This blog is a way of getting my work to a wider audience and what I'm hoping is that it will show me how my work and styles are developing which will help me creatively.

I can't count the amount of times I've been told that starting up a blog has helped people get noticed in the animation business or even that people wanted me to start one so they can take a cheeky look at the work I'm doing.

Until now I've never really been bothered with getting my work out onto the internet but I've been told to start one up as part of my course so here it is. Due to my lack of blogging experience and an annoying shyness when it comes to people commenting/criticising my work the following blog may not be the best read but I hope you'll enjoy it on some level.