The Arctic Shoulder

My first animated short film is finished!! I had so much fun creating this. Animated with classic Disney tunes in the background and danced around. Usually Amber was animating next to me, so that was pretty fun. Although it got frustrating at times, especially using the support rig to get the penguins off the ground, I learned a lot through the process. Mostly about timing, but also a lot about implying 'dialogue' through expressions/emotion. Since I am most interested in character animation, this was a good task for me! After nearly two months of working on it, I'm glad the short is finished, but I will miss the class!

Fun Time in the Black Studio

I am currently in the black studio taking a bit of a break from animating. Shooting the last scene today and I have the first pass done. Now just to make my penguin fly and I'll be done animating! It is quite exciting. Although, I will miss this class. I learned so much about animation in general from this class; timing and weight especially. Doing stop motion has made me think about animation in a different way. Definitely been beneficial. Made me a better animator. Shell's been a great teacher. Super helpful.

Anyway, last night when I was in animating, I decided to take a few pictures of myself and my studio space.

Strata!

In the midst of working on our short stop motion films, Shell gave us an in class assignment to create a strata cut animation. I opted to just play around and see how it would turn out. No rhyme or reason to what I did. It was pretty fun though. We all got to sit around and work. Jenny said it was like a knitting party since she looked up and we were all talking and working away. It was so nice out that day so it was hard to stay put in the black studio. When Amber and I finished creating our strata cuts, we decided to go take a walk outside while we waited to shoot our strata cuts. I got to enjoy the day somewhat.

So here is my finish piece. I shot it and then decided to smoosh it all together and shoot it again to see what happened.

Penguins!

I've been meaning to take a picture of my completed stop motion set and penguins. I've already started animating, but I figure now is a better time than never! Plus, I won't be posting any of the animation until it is completely done. Things are going fairly well on the animation front. A few problems here and there, but nothing too bad. It's pretty fun once I get started. I tend to drag my feet to start, but after the initial push, I'm alright. I'm at a stand still at the moment since I need to talk to Shell about my support rig. Wasn't working how I want it to last night. I'll figure it out tomorrow and progress will commence! My goal is to finish animating by the end of the weekend so I miss the madness of people rushing to finish. Then I'll have a week to do all the post production.

The main set piece is a two in one piece: A slide and a cliff!



In other school news, I finally remembered to upload a photo of my complete featherless chicken for 3D Modeling! All the modeling is completed. Now I am working on the rigging. The process is alright.... ok, it is a bit frustrating. Stupid paint weights. And I'm just not in the mood for it right now as stop motion has taken first priority on my To Do list. So here's Cluckles. I think there's been some minor changes since this screen shot was taken though.

Set Building

I've spent the last couple weeks working on my set and getting things ready to start animating. I glued together pieces of pink form and then carved it into the shape that I want for my set piece. It's a duel set piece; half works for one part of my short and the other half for another. It was fun and also a pain to carve the foam. I had pink foam shavings every where. It especially liked to adhere to my clothes.... I was smart and where black..... I also got my armatures for my penguins set up; wood blocks at the base of the body and head connected by wire. I melted black and white clay to get a charcoal color for the penguins. I dipped the armatures in that so the clay will better adhere once I build up the penguins.















Tonight I primed my set base and the main set piece so I can add any other details to the snowy landscape. I'm going to attempt to get an icy feel to the slide portion. My goal is to get everything ready so I can start animating this coming week.

Down Shooter

Our stop motion assignment for this week was to do a piece of animation on the down shooter. It had to be 120 frames, move in the x,y, and z axis, do a turnaround, and have a dynamic pause. I chose to use paper for this and had fun experimenting and playing around. I had a lady bug friend come visit me twice during my shot, so see if you can spot him!

Lip Sync

We got to do a lip sync project for Stop Motion this week. A 40 sec clip from Princess Bride was split up into 2-3 sec clips for each student. Besides everything getting smooshed together inside the mouth, it actually went quiet smoothly! It helped to have the video clip for reference too. It was a fun first venture into lip syncing in stop motion.

Stop Motion Fun

I had a really fun time in my Stop Motion Animation class today. Opposed to watching dailies for most of the class, we worked the whole 5 hours. We got together in groups of 3 and worked on an abstract, experimental piece. Shell's inspiration for this assignment was Blu's animation Muto: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uuGaqLT-gO4

It was neat to work with our work spaces directly and just go crazy. He encouraged constant movement of everything including the camera to really give the pieces some life. It's a totally different way of working than what I am used too; very intuitive and abstract. It was very freeing as it didn't involve much planning or accurate movements; very spontaneous. A nice change of pace. Probably the most hands on fun I've had in a class so far!

Short Film Animatic

We get to do a short film for the Stop Motion animation class. After much thinking, I decided to animate a story Sam and I came up with freshman year in high school. We came up with a character named Wiggles, who is a penguin rat. She is shunned by the other penguins because she is different. She goes up on the edge a cliff to cry and then one of the 'normal' penguins push her over the edge. They all celebrate. This is where the story original ends, but I added on to the ending. As the penguins celebrate, they hear a honk, turn around, and see Wiggles flying up above them. Their beaks hang open in astonishment. My prof had a funny idea where Wiggles beckons them to join her and they do and fall off the cliff. I think I'll just leave it with the penguins in shock; let the audience make a conclusion themselves... unless I have extra time. :)

Here's my color study and animatic:

Expressions

Yesterday I finished up my stop motion assignment. Animating a clay head is not an easy task! It is such a slow process as well compared to other types of animation. We had to do a change of expression, so I did wishful longing to disappointment. I created an old man with a mustache and as he changes expressions, I tried to make him wiggle his mustache. Didn't work out the greatest, but I'm happy I at least tried! The animation itself is alright. Don't know entirely how I feel about it. As a first attempt at facial animation in stop motion, I'd say it went fairly well. We'll see how crit goes on Wednesday!

Stop Motion Walk

Today we had a critique on our walks in Stop Motion. It was interesting seeing all the stop motion walks, which aren't as nice and smooth as 2D or CG walks. Some were still pretty neat though. I was one of that last to get critiqued and my professor looked at it once through and said, "This is horrible. What were you thinking." He was being sarcastic though and had lots of nice compliments for my piece. It definitely gave me a boost of confidence as I wasn't (still not quite sure) how I will handle stop motion. Straight ahead is a little scary for me since I'm used to Pose to Pose animation, but it is quite freeing. I'm excited for the next assignment. We're creating clay heads and will be animating a change of expression. Will be a fun challenge!

End of Week 1

And so ends my first week back at MCAD. I think it will be a good semester. I am still getting back into the swing of things though. It's taking a little longer than expected, but such is life. Once school picks up pace (which is sure to be soon), things will be good. Life may be stressful, but I'd rather be busy than have too much time on my hands. It's nice for awhile, but long periods of time.

This past Friday I worked on my Stop Motion homework. I was a bit nervous about the class coming into since it straight ahead animation, but after working with the clay, I think I will enjoy it! Granted, I only did a rolling ball and a blind freestyle where we couldn't look at the computer screen. As things get more advanced, I'm sure I'll run into the issues I've worried about. Now I view it as a fun challenge.

Here's my first venture into claymation: