Piss taking is fun!

So we have this subject at uni called "Personal Professional Development" aka, PPD.
It is a bit of a joke really, and they asked us to make a peice of work about the Do's and Don'ts in the workplace. Blah blah.....

There were 5 of us on our group, so we decided that we'd create an underwater office with finger puppet characters. It's ridiculous, but for some bizarre reason we got away with it, and it was one of the better efforts... sigh.

Architecture Sting.

The Arts Show Sting:
(Note bright green background is there to be keyed out in broadcast)

Architecture Sting....

Comedy Sting.

The Arts Show Sting:
(Note bright green background is there to be keyed out in broadcast)

Comedy Sting....

The Arts Show

I worked with Alex Blomely again on this project. We were asked to create an opening title sequence for a program called "The Art Show" produced by a fellow student at Ravensbourne called Tom Wisdom, who is a second year Broadcast student.
The show is similar to the Culture show, mainly discussing music, comedy, arts and architecture.
We decided to give the Sequence a flip book style animation which worked well in the progression of the piece. All the images made in Photoshop, except the vector characters, who are made in Illustrator. 
We deicded to work with an orange and blue complementary colour scheme, this allowed us to keep it simple, and use balanced layouts.
The music was supplied to us, and we in turn had to consider the animation and transitions in relation to the tempo changes, etc.

Here is our initial Storyboard....














Here is the finished Title Sequence:

Fish!

Our class were each given a 12 section section of the Mr. Scruff song "Fish". We were asked to create an animation to the music we were given, and consider the person's work that came before and after our section, to allow for a smooth transitioning when watching the completed song animation.

I decided the fish chanting sound was repetitive and slightly mechanical, and from this I decided to work on the idea of the mass consumption of fish in the world.
The fish factory in which my animation is set is designed to look grotty and abstract, a fictional place that highlights the mass production of the fish industry.
Ironically the dead fish go through a process which turns them into processed fish shapes, which I thought was a good comment on processed foods. Yucky!!

Type animation.

This  is just another piece of experimental After Effects using dialogue from the film Little Miss Sunshine.

Wild Times

I worked on this title sequence with Alex Blomely, another Moving Image Design student. Our brief was set by third year Broadcast students who were making a Children's television show about wildlife. We were asked to create something that engaging that represented British wildlife.
We decided on setting the sequence in a land of clockwork. As the landscape ticks by like a set of cogs, the time of day changes, showing all the various animals who inhabit Great Britain throughout the day.
We created the characters and landscape in Illustrator and then animated the entire thing in After Effects. This is a very old piece of work now, and we both feel a lot more could have been achieved on this project in order to give it more depth.




I also helped design the characters as a part of the set, here are some images from the studio:

(click to enlarge)

More Rostrum tests

This is an experimental piece of stop frame with sugar and food colouring on glass. I wanted to use the rostrum camera in a more abstract sense and this is what came out of just playing around for hours moving one grain at a time and trying to control the looseness of liquid on a flat surface!

Pixel Painty.

These illustrations are made in Illustrator to create the outlines and structure, and then built up the depth, shadow and tone in Photoshop. I wanted to play around with mixed platforms, playing around with paths and vectors, and using Photoshop brushes to paint digitally.

Cut and Paste.

In class we were all asked to create an animation based on a proverb that we pulled out of a hat.
I had to respond to the proverb "It never rains, but it pours". Which basically means that when you're having a bad day, it will usually end up with a succession of equally bad occurrences happening all day!

I decided a cool theme for this piece would be to set it in the life of a bird... just for comic value really! I've based the story around this scruffy mangy little character who first off drops his supper, then who's life is intruded upon by a Parrot, who he disgusts with his uncleanly feathers! A family of Budgies who torment him with their happy family circumstance, and then finally a Peacock who spreads his luscious tail and pushes the poor guy off his branch into a puddle.

Gutted.....

Rostrum experiment.

This is my second stop frame animation. I filmed this piece using a rostrum camera, which allows you to digitally set the cameras movement as you animate your subject, as you probably know!!
The content is very basic, but i wanted to play with the relationship between the subject and the camera movement. Fun fun fun!

Frame by frame

Cause and Reaction.
I created this little fellow to learn the basic principles of traditional animation.
I used a light box to alter each frame from the next and captured each drawing on a line testing machine.