Character Designs

Thought I'd share some of the concept work I've created for the college character design project.

These are my character turn arounds:

These were hand drawn then coloured using Photoshop - I have always shied away from that dreaded program before but I confess I'm a convert, I guess there is a reason it's become a verb! Who knew?!

The final character will be created, rigged and animated with Maya. Hmmm... wish me luck with that!!

Satisfying this Craving!

Animated trailer for E.F Morris' book - "Craving"


This is a trailer for the vampire novel, "Craving", by young adults author, E.F Morris. I made this using a combination of Cinema 4D and Adobe Premiere Pro, both of which I have really grown to like.

New Character

Ok, so I know I should be doing the truck load of other things that are piling up in this final sprint towards the end of my college course, but sometimes you just need to step away from the weighting tool and go back to basics... and so I did and this was the result!

Please let me introduce... The Biped!



The Biped - part frog, part freak and all mine!

This is part of a project I started ages ago and left because I wasn't really familar enough with the software to get him finnished. But since recently I've spent a lot of quality time on Cinema 4D it seems I've skilled up enough to get him finnished. 

Any New Ideas For The New Year?

What does animated cinema hold for 2011?

Sad as it is, it looks like there is every chance that this year could hold another crop of animated sequels and spin offs. I’m not saying that that means there’ll be nothing to look forward to, I’m personally quite excited about the new Kung Fu Panda and I know there will also be plenty of those queuing to see the sequel to the Pixar film Cars, but still the lack of brand new titles doesn’t inspire that much enthusiasm.

That said, there are some lights of innovation and originality in animation in the years ahead!

1. Tangled – Disney’s re envisioning of the Rapunzel story sees the studio turn its hand to 3D CG for this musical fairy story.
Watch the trailer

2. Rango – ILM venture in to the land of CG animated films. Johnny Depp stars as the chameleon who has to work his way through a wild west of dessert critters.
Watch the trailer

3. Rio – The makers of Ice Age bring a similar style to this story of a domestic Macaw who must face his fear of flying after being taken to South America.
Watch the trailer

Monsters Without A Monster Budget

Sometimes a film comes along that gives hope to all of us struggling to break in to the world of film, VFX or animation and Monsters is one such beast. Made on a shoe string budget the film is the brain film and directorial debut of Brit VFX artist, Gareth Edwards.

Reminiscent of movies like Cloverfield and District 9, Monsters again takes a look at how humans would deal with alien guests. However unlike previous films, Edwards attacked his idea with a tiny crew of 5, an even smaller cast of 2, a camera, a van, a laptop and the beautiful and distopian vistas offered by South America. There was no script, no storyboard and no huge team of post prodcution staff waiting at the other end! Instead what editing and VFX wasn't done on his laptop on the road was done on his PC at home.



Were they crazy? Possibly. But in these times of austerity, where smaller studios are finding it hard to support themselves and big studios are happier to sequels then risk huge investments on new ideas, it will be film makers like Edwards who make sure that cinema isn't left to stagnate.

The film is released in cinemas on 3rd December in the UK and is already available to download on itunes.

Holidays are coming, holidays are coming...

Well, its mid November. There are mince pies for sale in Tesco, frost to be scrpaed off the windscreen in the morning and Mariah Carey singing "All I Want For Christmas Is You" wafting from the car radio. There is no denying it, this years Christmas season has begun. And so its time to break out the eggnog and tinsel and decide what are my top five all time Christmas animations...

1. The Snowman
It was the song that brought a young Aled Jones to fame and a beautiful animation that brought us all to tears. So much better then Frosty!

2. The Nightmare Before Christmas
Tim Burton and Henry Selick bring us an enticingly original and deliciously dark stop motion adventure that gives Christmas magic a gothic twist.

3. A Christmas Carol
Its not like there aren't other films of this Charles Dickens story, heck even the muppets have given it a whirl. But in 2009 Disney knocked it out of the park with this incredible piece of 3D CG animation.

4. Robbie The Reindeer
It might look and feel like an Aardman prodcution, but this stop motion was actually created by the BBC... all be it by Aardmans Richard Goleszowski.

5. The Coke advert
Hey, I never said they had to be feature length animations and there is nothing that says its Xmas like the Coca-Cola advert.

Make Your Animations A Little Xtranormal.

If you have't yet encountered xtranormal then let me enlighten you, xtranormal is a "free" online animation application that lets you create 1 or 2 character animations, complete with a script, using their special text-to-movie software. All you need to do is select your characters, set and sound scape and then start typing what you want your characters to say. You can also add in your choice of expressions, gestures, sound effects and camera angles to your film. And don't panic you don't need to know anything more fancy then drag-and-drop.



As you can see from my attempt, there are limits... not least to my scripting skills. Not everythings free and a lot of the characters and scenes etc cost a little extra to use. Additionally don't expect Laurence Olivier style vocal performances from your actors, the voices will say what you've typed (most of the time) but not suprisingly with minimal inflection or emotion. Also your characters movements are minimal - you can select from a range of premade gestures but they're not going to dancing around... not using the free online facilities anyway.

Which brings me to the topic of Xtranormals software, State. This, I'm guessing from the video posted on YouTube, gives you a lot more freedom of choice and movement but this time at the bargain price of $49.50. Personally I wasn't willing, I'd prefer to go and download iClone if I just wanted to have some animated fun or learn Blender and produce real 3D, but thats just me. If you've tried it please feel free to leave a comment and tell me what I'm missing.

There's a lot to be said for xtranormal. If you just want a bit of fun then its a fantastic tool, and if you want a simple way to test out a script, understand a scenes pacing or look at the effect of various camera angles then its excellent. However, if you think you are trying to create stuff for an animation showreel or think you might be the next James Cameron and are looking for the right too for making Avatar 2 then keep googling, xtranormal is not the tool you're looking for.