'Showtime' is off to the Royal Television Society Wales Student Awards...

Tomorrow is the big day... the Royal Televison Society Wales Student awards, and 'Showtime' is nominated! Just a nomination is absolutely fantastic, and I couldn't ask for nicer people to be up against, so whatever the outcome it's going to be an amazing night and I can't wait to get on down to Cardiff and let the good times roll...

Talking with Frank Spencer...

The main aim when starting the little side project of Frank Spencer was to end up with a piece of lip sync material for my showreel. So before getting into the main animation of the character, I took a small clip of audio from an episode of 'Some Mother's Do 'Ave 'Em' to animate to. I feel that it went well and am happy with the end result, so hopefully when I do more I can piece lip sync to action and have a full scene going...

Betty, I've been articulated...

'No man who never did nothin, never made any mistakes' as Frank Spencer would say.  And mistakes are just a part of the learning process when creating a character that's going to work well when animated, So whilst completing Frank's character and posing him up in various ways, adjustments became clear that were needed in order to make it possible to animate him well. For example, the arms were extended, and different pieces were made to be used when the character is flipped so that the shading can be kept on the correct side throughout. At the minute, he is only able to be used from the one angle, so the next stage may be to create the character in different view points- from the direct side view, the front view, maybe even the back view, so that animation of the character could be more flexible...

Betty, I've been animated...

Now that Frank is all cut up into separate pieces, he is ready to animate and move about. To begin, and test the character, I wanted to try a couple of poses, hopefully that are recognisable for the character...

Showtime gets a Royal Television Society Wales Student Award Nomination...

A shocking yet amazing piece of news came through today, that my third year film 'Showtime' has been nominated for a Royal Television Society Wales Student Award! Came a little out of the blue to say the least, but so great-full and happy, and hoping that I can get down to Cardiff for the ceremony. Whats even better is that one of my partners in crime from University, and an extremely talented stop motion animator has also been nominated, Jasmine Hedger, for her film, 'Dr. Mandala', so congratulations to her, as well as another extremely talented stop motion animator, James Carlisle, for his film 'Fishing for the Future, a great film and great guy! So all in all, pretty darn excited about the whole thing!

some animator's do 'ave 'em...

Another little bit of a free period at work means another little project. Looking back at my show reel it seemed to be missing some lip sync material, so my mission is to get some done, based on one of the comedy worlds biggest legends- Frank Spencer! I love 'Some Mother's Do 'Ave 'Em' so when trying to think of a piece of audio to base a character on he seemed just perfect. So today began the process of designing the character and trying out a small portion of lip sync on just his still head...

playing in the snow for 'Do It In Ten'...

Whilst we had a little free time at work, to keep myself occupied I decided to try 'show me the animation's' 'Do it in ten' competition, where they give a new word for each month with the aim to create a 10 second animation around. February's was 'Snow', so I came up with the idea of using a cute little yeti character playing in the snow with his penguin friend. Unfortunately due to other things with the main project coming up, it never got passed animatic stage, but hopefully some day it'll make its way to being made. But this was a little bit of concept art done for it, a way of me getting back into drawing on Photoshop more than anything...

Things a looking a little sheepish for BAA...

During the main production at Fettle, we've been lucky enough to have the odd bits of time here and there in between the chaos to dip our toes into other projects of our own. One such project was to create a sting for the British Animation Awards 2014. The brief was to create a piece of between 4 and 25 seconds that had to contain sheep in some way, and if possible, references to Britain. The idea that I decided to go with from the several that were developed was inspired by the short Bird Box film, 'Wildebeest' and focused on two sheep, attempting to come to a decision on what a little tuft in the ground could be?...

http://vimeo.com/85575588

Fettle continues...

Well hello again. It's been a while. So lets get things going again with a little catch up. Since September I've been working in Marsden at Fettle Animation, working on a series production. Unfortunately I can't say much else than that at the moment, but it's all being produced in Adobe Flash, and so far we're past the half way mark and its all going rather well :) I've been lucky enough to take on a major chunk of the animation on the episodes so far, and it really has brought my skills on Flash right up. It's been fantastic, allowing me to do what I enjoy and a lot of it, and I couldn't have asked for a better team around me to be doing it with, they've all been great people to work with and become friends with.  I'm just not sure where exactly the time has gone. I can't wait for the time to come when I'm able to show what we've been doing, so keep an eye out in the coming months.