End of the Course

Well it's the day after, and everything has been handed in on time. The website is made (and still in progress, as I imagine everyone will be), the show reel is uploaded (on youtube, because gmail hates me trying to get my password back for Vimeo) and everything written was printed and bound.

Here's the current website- http://pionponpon.moonfruit.com/#/home/4564317252

The showreel is visible on the first page, but I'll repost it here anyway-

• It features animation from: 
• The What Project Old Man Fight(1st year)
•  Experimental Brief completed with Chloe (2nd Year)
•  11 Second Club (2nd Year)
•  Pre-Production Brief The Comedian (2nd Year)
•  Lining, colouring and a loop animation for Inbetween a Fable (2nd Year)
•  Rotoscoping for the music video Lets Blame Dahmer by Kaideka (2nd Year)
• Animation and concept art from h0le (3rd Year)
•  A walk cycle of a Pwobbel, that clown-penguin creature, that my sister designed.

The song is also called The Ludovico Technique by Anitek, that I got from the Jamendo site which licences music under the Creative Commons act. The show reel will be adjusted to include the artists name.

Compiling it was a pain because looking at the work I'd produced there were lots of issues with having not made the videos in a particularly good quality, or in the case of the What Project not having the video file at all and having to use a low quality version.

One of the biggest things was seeing the animation on h0le compared to that of the 11 second club and just cringing. Not that h0le is by any means my magnum opus, but the lining, the coluoring, the facial expressions are all so different from the 11 second one, which looks like a mess. Trying to put this together left me with a feeling of wanting to go back and redo some of the animation, make it better now with more experience under my belt, but I'm probably better off introducing fresh animation in there instead. Like the website, I see the show reel as an ongoing process for at least a few more months before I call it quits for the year and put the rest of the animation on to the next years show reel.

I'm also going to get around to changing the look of this blog, finally.

Speaking of h0le, yes. That.

The project that was submitted for marking is pretty far off of being completed with the shots we have. I've been debating whether to finish it as after all the stress of the project, completing the film after the submission deadline feels very pointless.

However, I'd rather it not be the one film this year to not get a proper showing because of that, so I'm hoping to keep working on it before the end of term for the graduate showing.

Not for another few days though, I'd really like a break!

Experimental Animation

Because Moodle is being (in the politest terms possible) massively crap this is the only version of the finished experimental project that I can upload.

Emotions in animation

This weeks subject is about changing emotion in animation, so I thought it's about time I posted more examples of such a thing on my blog before I get started. I tend to work without any reference, so this time I'll try to find a mixture of stills and footage to use. (all of which belong to the original owners).

Here's some examples of the ways different animations can express the same emotion.


In calmer poses the body is more like the characters natural shape to show that they're relaxed- there's no need to exaggerate anything on them.



This pose doesn't use much body language but the exaggerated facial expression shows that Gir does indeed love the moose.

Here the animaniacs are slightly stretched upwards, like the emotion is so strong they're being literally pulled off the ground.

This one is more maniacally happy than the others, but can show how easily happy to anger to sadness can happen just by changing the eyebrows.


Another borderline manic/happy pose, more exaggerated than the animaniacs. Everything seems to generate outwards from the character to show the energy.

More negative emotions-

The posture is rigid, but not explosive like Zim. This character is angry but shows it in a more reserved way in the way he clenches his fists close to his body.



This is the complete opposite of the above in terms of action. He's still rigid, but the facial expression and threatening gesture make his anger much more explicit, especially coupled with Stimpy's own frightened expression.


This look of fear is just that- a look, but the position of the ears on the characters head reflects animal expressions.


This ones all out. The character is so frightened they've turned into a ball, fur stood on end in all directions.

This is really more of a recap for myself so I know what sort of things to look for in a performance, depending on the type of character involved. It seems like more realistic characters rely on more subtle facial expressions than the deformity that more cartoony characters can get away with.
(Heres how I looked after finding all the images------¬




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For the experimental animation, I'm trying to think of some examples using the methods described but I tend to confuse "abstract" with "experimental", which makes looking for footage confusing for me. One example I could think of that although I think it's made with compositing different film footage rather than an animation technique it is timed with different pieces of footage depending on the sound- Star Guitar, by the Chemical Brothers.



(Have I posted about that already? I can't remember). I had some problems trying to find a video that wasn't disabled, so here's a link in case this one is too- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0S43IwBF0uM&ob=av3

Here's a little something too, for some really, REALLY exaggerated facial expressions. May involve Halo.
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Here is a version of my emotion changing animation, hopefully expressing surprise and disgust. You can see its a work in progress, but as the roughs are done I thought I'd upload the video earlier.