Third Year Final Brief- Final Major Project

FINALLY! I wanted to update people on my own work, which I have been focusing on since my AMAZING time at Chuck steel has ended (for now :P). 

So a small break down of what I am actually doing? I have decided to make a Trailer for a short film, this will consist of a VERY short 30 second animation sequence of my main Character "Sophia" roaming around her airy manor.

Here are some of my design sheets that led me to the style of my character.

Along with my to scale armature plan :)

For the next post I went straight to constructing my character so you are going to need to keep checking up on me to see what I am doing! 

Company Research- Part 4

My forth company which helps inspire me is called Factory Transmedia, it is a company that develops children's television programmes using a range of modern media methods such as Stop motion, 2D, CG and even VFX! 

http://www.factorycreate.com/

Based in Manchester they have contributed to many different children's tv programmes such as Raa Raa the noisy lion, Muddle Earth, Strange hill High and one of my old favourites Post man pat. Factory Transmedia work very closely with Mackinnon and Saunders for puppet fabrication on their shows, they have a great working relationship with them and they both contribute to children's entertainment.

I will be honest and say that this is not a company I have known for years and it is one which I know a lot about BUT I can say it is a company that I have been really interested in since finding out about it a year ago!

Looking through Factory Transmedia's website and seeing the bold coloured characters, mixed media and professional finish to them their style is definitely my kind of company!

The simplicity of the designs are so flued and the way they have been brought to life through traditional puppetry, models or even 2D is fantastic! It is a refined style I haven't seen from any other television devoted company, it goes to show how much they care about the quality of their work.

Factory Transmedia is a company to be reckoned with and by earning themselves a lot of awards while at the same time giving back to the industry as well as along with Mackinnon and Saunders are giving new life to the clangers while also bringing a new show into the mix for 2016.....

I am really excited to see what this show will look like because it is going to be in stop motion! so the style and media they will be using is something I can not predict, but I am sure I will love it!

Company Research- Part 3

My third company choice is one which I know first hand is BRILLIANT and that is Trampires Ltd.

http://www.nightofthetrampires.com/

Being a new company in the industry I imagine it can be hard, however Trampires Ltd is a fantastic company bursting with so many experienced craft men and woman who are still raving with ambition!

Check out the crew below :)

http://www.nightofthetrampires.com/trampires-production-crew/

They are taking on a mammoth of a task creating a new action-thriller feature film for audiences along with setting up a company and the creator/writer AND director of the film is Mike Mort a very multitalented individual who literally started form the bottom and is making his way further to the top with this project!

this talent pool of individuals will be smashing out a feature film called "chuck steel night of the trampires" which will be making its début in 2017!

I am so pleased to say that I was able to spend a full MONTH of work experience with everyone at Tampires Ltd. It was a real eye opener to what it will be like after I graduate in JULY! and I am SO EXCITED BY IT!

I can not tell you how much they inspired me with my work and how helpful and friendly everyone is! I learnt SO MUCH and it really is a great place which I wish to work at once I graduate (IF THEY WILL HAVE ME!) and I wish them all the luck with this film's take off (even though I don't think they'll need it) ;P

Company Research- Part 2

For my second company I have chosen another one of the UK's largest Stop motion production companies......

http://www.aardman.com/

Now Aardman is one of "THEE" biggest names known internationally for its contribution to the Industry, their great reputation within film and advertising has earned them many nominations and winnings of awards!

The creators of Aardman animations are Peter Lord and David Sproxton, setting up in 1972 they have been entertaining audiences in the UK with animations for around 43 years! 

One of their first well known pieces is of Morph who is a character traditionally animated out of Clay, he was created for a children's programme called "take heart" back in 1976. Aardman have recently brought back this historic character after many years without him, showing a new generation how and why the children who watched the original loved the character and animation of it so much.

Being responsible for many of the biggest family feature films Aardman have a fantastic reputation for family entertainment, which I myself have truly loved. They have created many of my favourites to date such as Wallace and Gromit, Chicken Run, Pirates! and the newest edition Shaun the Sheep!! no doubt films I can watch continuously! 

Being masters in many different medias Aardman have a true all round crew of experienced craftsman that can make great concepts come to life brilliantly, by telling a story or watching these 3D cartoons come alive inspire me with my work each day.

They are company I wish to one day work for or even get a chance to work along side! their style, story plots and model making are of a high and professional standard which has grown more consistent and robust since its creation.

A cheeky note- Aardman have an Exhibition in Paris from NOW up until the end of August which I am most definitely putting on my list to go and see! I will also be going to the Annecy animation festival in June so I may have a chance to slip into paris to see! :D 

www.artludique.com

Company Research- Part 1

As part of my Business module at University we have been asked to blog about some of our favourite companies which also inspire our work and who we would be thrilled to ever work for!

The first company I wish to talk about is one of the largest Stop Motion companies in the UK, Mackinnon and Saunders!

http://www.mackinnonandsaunders.com/

Mackinnon and Saunders is an incredible puppet making production company based near Manchester who create a range of characters from television shows to feature films. 

Having a bag full (AND MORE) worth of experience building up the animation industry for around 30 years!!!!! they have produced characters to some of my childhood favourites, such as bob the builder, Pingu and Post Man Pat. They also have a great artistic range of characters in feature films like Corpse Bride and Fantastic Mr.Fox.

Being a true artistic company they have a very large range to the making of their puppets, from breath taking and incredibly intricate armatures that have high quality silicon castings, to detailed fabricated puppets such as Fantastic Mr.Fox.

It seems like a company that enjoys the challenge which each character design brings while also incorporating there already extensive knowledge on puppet fabrication, which they have fine tuned for many many years. 

So what do I know of what they are doing at the moment? well the word is that they are apart of the re-creation to the Clangers series, which will most definitely look great! there is always people who are skeptical about re-creating old tv series, especially original stop motion ones as they have tended to be done in CG. So bringing the clangers back in all its glory will be Awesome!

Mackinnon and Saunders will always be a company I look to for inspiration and ingenuity, pushing their innovation more at each large scale production and which I hope will be again really really soon!  :D

Third Year Final Brief- Collaboration- Puppet 2

Following from my last post, this post is of the second puppet that I made for my collaboration side of my brief, which is for my friend Jason's final year Film! :)

The Character is of a Knight that is a ghost :O it is going to look really cool when animated as its floating around the manor! 

As always I started with making a to scale armature plan, and built up the armature using simple K&S and wire

Like the werewolf mummy character I again used silver solder to secure the rigging points and pieces of the K&S together. Then I used milliput to make it more secure and sturdy.

Once the armature had been fully constructed I started work on bulking out and shaping the body, using a combination of first balsa and then milliput I shaped each of the pieces using a lot of sandpaper. then 1 arm, 1 leg and 1 head core was created.

I also started to use the same method on the main body over the armature.

Third Year Final Brief- Collaboration- Puppet 1

For a section of my Final brief there needs to be COLLABORATION, which is very EXCITING! :)

I luckily came across another student on my course Jason who wanted to have 2 puppets made and then animated to go into his end of year film called "Steampunk Mysteries-A Haunting At The Blindknight Manor". Looks to be an awesome piece and I can not wait to see it all put together! If you would like more details about his film here is a link to his blog, which he keeps really up to scratch with what he is doing (I don't know how he finds the time, the mans a machine!!!!!)

http://jasonevans1337.blogspot.co.uk/

SO what am I doing!!!!! One of the puppets I had to make was of this crazy design from Jason a WEREWOLF MUMMY! so crazy I wanted to jump straight into it! 

I made a construction plan of how to make this beast using a simple wired armature, below is my attempts at using silver solder which was a fantastic learning experience (even if I did burn my lip, HA!) I really do not think I would go back to epoxying K&S together! along with the armature I constructed the core for the head out of balsa wood and glued it onto the k&s with epoxy as seen below :) 

click read more to continue :)

Project Development Turnarounds

Here is my turnaround for both maquettes, they are in a lit and then atmospheric environment that hopefully fully show what is within the environment and then gives it a mood.

It was important to have one turnaround displaying all the detail in the environment and another which depicts the emotion and concept of the character :)   

Also I apologise but the video quality is a little poor (I need to figure out how to import higher quality videos) :(  

Like all my projects there is a learning curve, I was really happy with its outcome compared to some of my previous work this year it stands out the most and will make sure to carry on putting a 1000% into everything I am making :) 

Thanks!!!!!!! 

Project Development Continued!

For this post I want to blog my construction sheets for my previous project and then I will be posting a video of turnarounds from this project :)

to start with I constructed the Armature and worked into padding that out, details are below.....

I then fabricated both the body with fabric and constructed, sculpted and baked the hands.

Continue.......

Project Development!

I have been really BAD with not posting my work lately! but thankfully I can say it is because I have been doing a lot of work! from dissertation to Business to finishing this current project (which im blogging about now) and starting my FINAL MAJOR PROJECT!!!! WELP! :/

But Anyways here is a post to do with my previous project, the aim was to design a single character in two different environments and have them portray opposite emotions. This was all together a 9 week Project (including my "3 week christmas break") Which I LOVED and HATED at the same time! :P

For todays post I wanted show my Concept work from the project then in the next couple of days I will post both my build process sheets and then my Final Maquettes :)

Hope you Enjoy!!!

Here is some good old fashioned research into Character Design and Maquettes I had in mind, this helped me better visualise what I desired to create for this project.

I also did a little research into lighting for use in my work once it was completed and in the studio, I came across three point lighting which was pretty interesting to be honest! :D 

DESIGN!!!!

Decided to a go with a Golem Character, I really enjoyed drawing up ideas and visualising the environment I wanted to create from him. :)

Final Scale Project Images

I felt once the project was over that there was a lot of things I could have done differently, however I think for a 3week project along with the paper work it wasn't to bad. I feel I learnt a lot about the techniques I used because I can improve on them or use them in different ways on future projects :)

Scale Project

The project before my last was known as the "Scale Project", were I had to do a 1/8th scale of an environment. Because the images that have previously been given weren't around the university anymore to measure, I had to find a space that I wanted to do so I took a photo of items on a shelf in my room.  So here is the process I took to get to my final model......

Research into the items once I had the photos.

Sculpt Turnaround!

Using StopMotion pro I took my final sculpt and filmed it on top of a turntable, heres what happened!

HOPE YOU ENJOY! :D

First 3rd Year Project!!!! SCULPTING! :D

Returning to University has been extremely fun! being able to catch up with everyone, become challenged artistically and even learning a thing or two is always motivational!

So jumping straight to it, my first project back was to basically create a sculpt of myself! this was a project that was to get me back into the rumba rhythm that is known as my model making brief.

At the same time others on my course were learning After Effects or Flash for their projects, so being the ambitious numpty that I am I wanted to learn After Effects as well!
I would post up my tests however they are fairly boring, simple things like masking, flames, lightsabers etc BUT I did do a simple tutorial were I ran like the flash, that was pretty epic I must say. I will post that at the end :)

However back to my actual Brief! I started by looking at research of sculptures that I admire because of their style and appearance do appeal to me and of how I invision my own sculpts.

Final Photos Of Set

Also here are the final images that i managed to take before my hand in of my set.  

Im a little bummed i couldn't get it into the studio, but argh well these will have to do :)