Tim Allen

We had a visit from Tim Allen today who came in to talk about his experience in the industry. He was extrmely interesting and he talked through all the projects he had worked on and showed us how his showreels had progressed over the years. He also gave us good pointers on acting and composition and tips on how to get your foot in the door when it comes to looking for new work. He also brought in his portfolio and showed us some of the dope sheets he used on the Corpse Bride and talked us through how some of the shots were created in Peter and the Wolf and how those shots were first planned out.

Flash

Well it's been a while since I updated this blog aint it XD
Over the last three weeks I had been working on an industry brief given to me by Dinamo. For this brief I had to animate to a piece of dialogue, but also build and design the characters and backgrounds. I was given a style to follow but I was free to do what I wanted witht the way it was layed out and set up. It was really challenging, one of the worst things to do is to let me do my own thing, cos then I get a bit ahead of myself and end up in a huge rush at the end. I tried really hard to follow a scedual I made, I'm glad I did make it. It made me understand how much work was involved.
The designing process was really fun and drawing them in flash was good too, learning how to use the pen tool, but got really annoying when the lines would break up for no apparent reason. I just had to learn to work with it.

I was really pleased with how the characters came out in the end, animating it after two weeks of designing and building was really refreshing.

Flash 23 - 27th July

Spent last week getting to know flash a little better. I didn't have much confidence with Flash but after being talked through it by the lovely Marc Lewis (that man has so much patience) I was able to do some really fun stuff. I practiced at lip sync, which is something I still have to get the hang of. Avoiding it wont make it go away ha ha. We were also working on some short stings for this years Eisteddfod. We had to come up with an idea for a series of 10 second sketches to be viewed on mobile phones and keep in mind that a new sting can be downloaded every day. I only came up with one idea but played with it and developed my flash skills a little more, learning the benefits of turning frames into symbols and 'Auto Tweening'. It was nice that we each got to work with our own ideas and ease our way into what could be quite a dificult program if you don't know how to use it. So I'm feeling a lot more confident about using the program in the coming weeks on out industry briefs.

So here are a few frames from the film.

Well, I was working straight through into yesterday finishing off the drawings and putting the whole film together in Premiere. I'm really pleased with the way it all turned out and the way it was laid out. I was happy to be able to treat the drawing side as a comic book, something I've always been interested in, but never really explored. It was tricky because I still had to balance the comic look and turning it into a film, so some frames were quite repetitive. But it looked nice when they are all put together, and given a bit of life. It was harder work drawing each panel, and I did have to compromise and take shortcuts, but I think it paid off. The most time consuming part was the colouring and shading, but I was pleased I managed to pull that off ^__^ I was also plesed I got to learn a newer version of Premiere too. The features are much better that the old one, it's a little similar to After Effects in some ways, which has boosted my confidence about using that program again.

Comic

Over the last two weeks I've been working on visualising a short personal story. Its being done in a comic book style and then put together in premiere to make a short film. This is what it's looking like so far. Really enjoying it at the mo, though it's touch and go if I'm going to finish it to the standard I want it.

Visiting Beryl.

Today we went to Beryl studio's where Joanna Quinn is based. We met her again and she showed us around the studio. We were shown the layouts and the work process, how they go from idea to storyboard to line-test and then the finished product. It was interesting to see how they adapted Joanna's hand coloured style and applied it digitally in After Effects, something I didn't know you could do in that program. We were then shown some work in progress in After Effects which was also cool. I really liked the studio, it was smaller that some of the other studio's I've visited, but it wasn't a bad thing, there was a stong sence of community, even if most of the employees were freelance. I wanted to swipe some of the artwork off the walls though XD

Tuesday 10th July onwards!

I should really be updating my blog every day, but I'm getting carried away with our new project now and I keep forgetting. It's really different to anything I've done before, mainly because it's a personal story about me, and using my own narrative. We had a visit from Ian Staples on tuesday, to help us create better story telling and he was such a huge help.
I'm usually really shy when writing things and letting other people see it, but he understood what I wanted to get acrooss in my story and he really liked it, which boosted my confidence a bit. This sis a really hard story to tell.

Wednesday 11th July
Today we recorded our narrative for our films, that was, scary, ha ha. The first recording I was really nervous and read the script way too fast. I slowed down by the second recording, but still managed to get some words muddled, but I had enough to put together for one successful narrative. Made a start on actually drawing the story out, which is harder than I thought it would be, and there is a lot to be done.

Thursday 12th July
Spent all day working on the drawings for my film. I'm about halfway throught the drawing stage, but I still need to tackle the more impotant drawings. I'm saving those till last so I feel more confident about getting them out and to the point.