Merry Christmas!!!!

Hope ye all have a great time and lots of food!! :D

 My mother went a little crazy when baking XD  (lucky me). 

Second Wind Animation by Ian Worrel

Second Wind

I found this video on vimeo It's by Ian Worrel :D I really love the style of it.The characters were hand drawn, coloured in photoshop and composed in after effects. 

Here is another one of his videos:

Icarus and the Tree Herder

http://vimeo.com/71781991

New Brief- Animated Short

After the Christmas holidays we will get a new Brief. This Brief is much longer than the ones we had before. It runs over 15 weeks (excluding Christmas) and it links in with the creative writing which we did last week.

We have to take certain aspects from the stories we already wrote and create our own story for the new animation. The previous creative writing workshops were just a way to help us get started.

The animation must be from 2 to 3.5 minutes long.


The Concept and Narrative will be 25%

Storyboard and Assets 25%

Presentation and Practical Skills 50%




Here is some animation Research from links that were at the end of the brief we got:

I like the traditional way of animation like in the video below. 

The video was on this websites : www.100animatedshorts.co.uk 

This animation has a really cool style. There are more cool shorts like this one on the following link:

http://shortanimatedfilms.blogspot.ie/2013/10/olympians.html

This video reminds me of the Gorillaz Music Videos

This video contains great imagination.

This animation is very unique and interesting. 

The backgrounds in this animation are so beautiful. 

Other useful links:

http://www.shortoftheweek.com/category/style/animation/

                                          www.motionserved.com

Animation Research

At the moment I am just watching and researching different animations to get ideas and look at the different styles which are out there. 

I really love the style of this one (850 Meters):

This animation was made by Thuristar, which is a small indie production company developing and producing animation content.

The author and director :                                Joeri Christiaen 

Creative Producer and Promo Chief :            Perrine Gauthier 

Composer, Musician and Music Producer :   Frederik Segers

Here is the link to watch it:

http://vimeo.com/80977329 

The next video I watched was this one. It is kind of random and funny. I especially love the watercolour drawings around in the middle of the animation. 

Here is the link:

http://vimeo.com/81385340

Bailey and the snowman is a short and cute animation.  I really like the style of this one because nothing has thick outlines, it looks very smooth.  

http://vimeo.com/32929293 

Continuation of Creative Writing

On the 9th of December our other tutor decided he didn't like our stories and wanted us to change them again…



Here is the newer version of the story:

The biggest change is the relationship between Mr. Long and Dalori.

At the start of the story they get married exchange rings and move into their new house. Mr. Long is moving one of Dalori's boxes and finds binoculars in them. He picks them up and looks through them. Then Dalori calls him and he turns around, still looking through the binoculars. He then finds out that his wife is in fact an alien monkey. He then panics and runs away with the binoculars.

A few months later in the office, where Mr. Long is the boss, Dalori and her fellow henchmen burst into the door. Mr. Long recognises Dalori and quickly gets out his binoculars to make sure if her henchmen are also aliens.

The office workers and Dalori's henchmen misunderstand the situation and feel threatened by each other and begin a fight in the office. So it's alien monkeys vs. office workers. In the middle of the fight Dalori and Mr. Long have in argument. During their discussion an alien monkey gets pushed by an office worker who hits off Mr. Long and makes him fall out of the window.

Dalori jumps after her husband and wraps her arms around him while they are falling. Dalori uses her alien skills for a smooth landing. Mr. Long was saved by Dalori and he falls for her again, only that  this time he knows the fact that she is an alien monkey from outer space.




The thing I miss about the story is the hippie in his hoping van. 

Creative Writing Workshop

On the 4th and 5th of December we had a creative writing workshop. Our tutor put up a list of 10 different, three random things. He gave a number to everybody and we then had to pick that number from the list and create a story with it. We only got a few minutes to think of something to write.

I got number five which was :

An ex-boyfriend, a pair of binoculars and a good luck charm.

Here are a few short ideas I had for the story: 

A girl visits the places she used to visit when she was still going out with her ex- boyfriend. And looking through the binoculars her grandmother gave her she can see the good memories they spend together. But the binoculars only work when she has an object which she got or used to belong to to her ex.

An ex- boyfriend carries around an obese cat over his shoulder as a good luck charm (the cat is alive),
hoping that he will meet his ex again and that they will get back together. He looks through his binoculars from high roofs to find her.

Girl gets a good luck charm of her grandmother which is just a keychain but it enables her to see things she most loves she looking through the binoculars.

Girl can see peoples true personality when looking through the binoculars. She find out the truth about her boyfriends real personality and breaks up with him. The good luck charm shines when he finally realises what he has done wrong and regrets his decision.

Girl gets a good luck charm from her grandmothers shrine to keep evil spirits away. And using the binoculars she can see the spirits including her dead boyfriend.

Grandmother gives girl binoculars that an able her to see Spirits. Through that she can see and meet her dead ex- boyfriend. He gives her a good- luck charm to help her move on with her life.

The things we had to consider for our story:

1. The tone
2. Main Character(s)
3. The Plot
4. And the Setting

With those ideas we then were split up into groups of three and had to combine our ideas to create an other story using one out of six starting sentences on the board. 

Colm's sentence was:  Aerobics, secret diary and a welcome back

Ross's sentence was:   A blue van a pillow and a forgotten passport

Mine was                :   An ex- boyfriend, a pair of binoculars and a good luck charm





Here are our ideas combined: 

Everyone in the office turned and stared…  (it's a boring office)
as the office workers burst into the door , squishing an other worker behind it. A bulky female business woman called Dalori is in the centre front leading the group that just burst into the door. There is a serious moment of silence. Just as the office workers step forward one of them trips and lands on his face.

Mr. Longs (Boss) office hair turns and a little midget is revealed. He quickly looks through his binoculars and can see that the people who just walked in are actually alien monkeys from outer space.

The alien monkeys are trying to invade the planet by mixing into the society unnoticed and one day  plan on suddenly attacking humans to take over the world. But the binoculars are in the way because they can show the truth of what they really are. So they need to destroy it, but in order to do that they need a secret code which is kept in a secret diary file inside of the midgets head.

Knowing the situation is dangerous the midgets puts the binoculars into his jacket pocket and jumps out of the window using a wing suit (his normal suit turns into one). He tries to run away but his legs are really short so he's so slow that the aliens are about the catch up with him. Thankfully Mr. Longs arms are really long and he uses them to run.

On the way he meets a hippie in a blue Volkswagen van and he joins him. They then hop to america. (the van hops it doesn't drive)

Mr. Long tries to hide in a Motel sweat dripping down his face but the alien moneys find him. Having nothing else to defend himself with he throws a pillow at them. A pillow war starts. Then Mr. Long gets injured and the aliens are just about to extract the code of information out of his brain when the head alien gets an important phone call. The invasion to take over the world is canceled and they leave. The world was saved and Mr. Long gets back to his office work.




After writing that we had to do a few rough doodle sketches of what the characters could look like. I had to think for Mr. Long's character and we all sketched what Dalori could look like. The title was going to be : Mr. Long vs. the Semiazoids or Semanoids...can't remember.

doodles of what Mr. Long could look like. 

I was trying to thing of what kind of office chair Mr. Long would sit on. 

The doodle of the woman on the right is what I imagined Dalori to look like But in the end we decided on a bulky body for her with broad shoulders. On the right is what Mr. Long was going to look like, with short legs and long arms. 

My first random doodle. 

Strange, Funny Animation by David O Reilly

 We were shown this video in class today and I found it really funny. It's so random that it makes it great. It has so many different stories in it and the animations are awesome. 

Eiko Ishioka-my Favourite Fashion Designer

I came across this great Fashion Designer after watching the movie "Mirror Mirror". I was so fascinated by her Costumes that I immediately looked up who the Designer for them was after watching the movie. It turns out she has won four Awards throughout her life for costume Design and one of them was from "Mirror Mirror". The clothes she Designs are so interesting and unique. I feel like she is definately my favourite Fashion Designer and I don't usually have any interests in Fashion. She was born in Tokyo and sadly, after looking her up further, she died in 2012 due to pancreatic cancer, I thought she was still alive so it's a pity I would have loved to see  further works she could have created.

Here are a few costumes that were in the movie "Mirror Mirror" ( I think they are so amazing):

Here are some more of her Designs:

I think I might Design a character for an animation some day and make the character were a dress inspired by some of her works. 

Moving Hand- Life Drawing

My boyfriend gave me the idea to animate the hands which I drew for the Life Drawing. I drew 12 different images and none of them were traced. They were all Separate drawings. The hand is a fist first then opens up . To make the video slightly longer the images were copied so the hand opens and then closes again.

Christas Card Animation

Here is the final Flash Christmas Card Animation. I didn't want to use the usual Santa and Reindeers as the Brief also mentions not to use stereotypical Christmas ideas. I got the Oxen from my Christmas brainstorm. Christmas celebrates the birth of Jesus and he was born in a crib beside an Ox. Instead of making Santa an old man I turned him into a young girl because I wanted to make the animation even more unusual. 

The music is a cover of Fairytale of New York by Nathan Walsh. 

The sound effect of the cow is from freesoud.org

The girls voice is me :P

Working on the Christmas Card Animation

Here are a four screen shots of different parts throughout my animation. I am a few days behind the due date because I just only recently recovered from my kidney infection and head cold. :D Now I am all better. YAY!!! Anyway, my storyboard is slightly different from the finished animation.

It was only meant to have trees and snow in the background, but I felt that it looked too empty so I added the city behind the trees. Personally I think it looks much better than it did with just trees.

I could have probably made the trees a bit more detailed if I had more time but then it might take away from the Oxen. 

Some parts in my animation are a bit fast like the scene where Santa reveals his true identity and when the Oxen land. 

The yellow of the buildings are a completely different yellow on this mac than on my laptop...they weren't meant to be so bright they are actually the same colour as the moon. Another problem I had was that the video went a tiny bit blurry when I imported into premier pro but apart from that I think it wash"t too bad. It could always be better but I learned more things on Flash and I am glad to be finished. Now I can focus on my exam…which is tomorrow… ;( 

Animatic Christmas Card

This is the animatic for my Flash Christmas Card Animation. My tutor advised me to make one as I have never done an animatic before and that it would help me with creating my animation.

The music is a cover of Fairytale of New York by Nathan Walsh.