Super broadband

Over the weekend we installed some lovely new high speed broadband. After not being able to work it for a good 6 hours and arguing down the phone to script readers in pakistan, our house rejoyced at our super fast connection. I will celebrate by finally uploading my animation about the robot I made last term.

Dreamscape

Progress!

Finally I have got round to uploading the stop motion short film about anorexia!

The sun and I are not on the same wavelength

Today is a wonderfully hot day. The sun has decided to come out and tease us all again. So I had the brilliant idea of filming my last scene with the curtains and the window open...

Now half my images have different exposures. owrjngoaurengrin. Yes. Fuck.

On the bright side (ha) my animation is nearly complete! I will keep my progress updated. But for now, it looks like a have a tedious date with photoshop...

Bringing plasticine to life

I'm very excited. Set aside a whole day to finish the set design for my robot's house and animate it, and now scene one is complete! My little robot fell over several times due to a rather terrible design flaw of having a head too big for it's body and very small feet, but all in all she/he's coping very well.

Yesterday I popped back home and raided my dolls house for furniture. My old model of robot was a tad large for the chair so made a smaller version without the original wire skeleton. 

My excitement will have to wait until monday though to see the finished scene after it's been through FCP. 

Here is the set before I got it all grubby dragging plasticine balls across it:

woo!

Robotics

What a horrible day. Rain AND gale force winds, that kind that make you entirely blind because your hair decides to blow in every direction possible. I struggled to find a good enough reason to leave my nice warm bed to subject myself to these harsh conditions. So I very cleverly decided to stay at home and do my project here instead [my other housemates were not so clever and came home shivering, leaving small puddles in their wake]. 

Anyway, so new brief: Man, Woman, Machine. I have been asked to create a sequential narrative embracing the three of these. My idea: to animate a robot who is unsure of it's gender. It will try out stereotypical traits of each, and eventually realize that it will never be more than a lump of metal and circuitry. Poor sod. 

Dug out my animation books I have received every year for christmas since I expressed my love for aardman. Tried my hand at making an amateur armateur out of wire. The skeleton for my robot. In pictures:

 I have a funny feeling it's head is going to be too heavy for the rest of it's body to support it. Hmm.
 Approximately 0.7 seconds after this photograph was taken it fell over. Oh Dear. Looks like a smaller model is in order. Cute though huh?

I've just run out of tobacco. Looks like i'm going to have to brave the weather after all...

DYNAMIC

Today the "Dynamic 7" created a short one minute documentary of our given word. Surprisingly enough "Dynamic". Anyway, armed with a camcorder and fueled with caffeine and nicotine this is the bi-product of our antics whilst out terrorizing the media block and causing havoc in the corridors. Enjoy.

Secrets

I have a secret I need to communicate over a distance. 

I wanted to go for a projection style animation with influences from the projections used in Minority Report where they become 3D and leave the screen, however sadly it is still only 2009 and someone is yet to invent that technology. 

I also used The White Stripes video for "Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground" (excellent direction from Gondry) as inspiration (see below). 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zh7UFi2b9xU

I took over the studio, set up my tripod and camera and set to work. By taking multiple photographs of the sequence I can then animate these later to create a stop animation piece. 

I decided to film these sequences in two layers so as to only focus on one aspect at a time.

Layer one:

I must have looked like a complete maniac trying to squeeze through those conveniently placed sliding barriers at the entrance to university with all those cardboard boxes. 

Strangely appropriate.

Layer Two:

I can now layer these over each other, to hopefully (fingers crossed) create my animation. 

When I give my presentation the animation will be projected onto the same wall, where I shall sit in the same place, to give the illusion of my thoughts taking place. Essentially there will be nothing there. So, can you guess the secret I was given?