Creative Futures 3

Well everyone, here`s an anti smoking animation commercial which I have been working on over the summer.

I developed this idea at the same time I developed the idea for the Drunk Driving animatic. But I could only go with one idea for the animatic, and I chose to go ahead with the Drunk Driving idea since more work had gone into it and I felt it was a better choice.

Since I`m not back in Uni yet, I have decided to further develop this idea to get it out of my system and I`ve finally done it. Better still I have decided to fully animate the sequence, instead of putting together a series of still images.

NOTE: The audio may not be fully synchronised in places, and the animation may be a bit fast, but still I`m quite pleased with how it`s turned out. I hope you`ll all enjoy it. Below is the original Storyboard sequence for the commercial.

Also this summer, I have finally got a proper soundtrack for my “Inspector Bluefin” introduction.  The soundtrack has been produced by a musical student named “Jamie Massey”, at my university. Although this music track is not really what I was expecting, I still like it and I`m very grateful to this student for his help.

The credit for the soundtrack (apart from the whistling sounds, I got them from the Freesound website and added them in myself) goes to Jamie Massey and everything ells is credited to me.

I hope you`ll all enjoy it.  

 

My animation ideas

Here are also some ideas which I have been developing for animations over the summer.
 

I have developed one idea for a science fiction cartoon, from looking at this lantern (Above), which I have used to design an alien space ship. Below are some sketches of design ideas for the space ship. The third sketch is the final design.
 

Below are some photographs of a rough model I`ve made of the final space ship design, for sketch referencing.
 

Character designs

Below are some character designs for my cartoon. Some of these designs are inspired from looking at a man made out of buckets at the B&Q store, in Chester, which can be seen in the photographs above.

 

My Ghost train animation

Well everyone I have now just finished my second year in Uni and here`s my last animation project of the term.

 In this animation a humanised diesel express train has an alarming encounter with a mystery steam train one night, which strangely vanishes when the diesel attempts to stop itself. The diesel is confused until it rounds a corner and sees that part of the track ahead of it has been damaged and washed away by a landslide. The diesel panics and just narrowly manages to stop itself from plunging over the cliff.

We then discover that 70 years ago in that same spot, a steam freight train had an accident by plunging to its death after it failed to notice the huge breach in the track in time. As a result the ghost of that steam engine still haunts that section of track to warn and prevent any other trains from having the same fate (which turns out to be what the express diesel train saw at the beginning).

 I did this project because Trains have been one of my favourite hobbies since I was a child and I`m happy to have done the project. Although I didn`t manage to finish all the animation on time I still feel quite pleased with it and I hope you`ll all enjoy it too.

I had my assessment today and I passed really well, I haven`t had the grade yet though but I`ll let you all know when I get it.

 NOTE: I know there isn`t any smoke coming from the steam engine, I ran out of time before I could add the smoke in.

 

 

Above is a rough animatic video which I put together to see if the story would work with the original storyboard an rough sketches I did (I had animated a few scenes when I did this animatic).

Also as you can see in this animatic there where scenes at a big railway station that didn`t make it into the final product, first at the beginning where the steam engine starts off, and then mid way through when the diesel express train tells the other diesels it`s horrifying encounter with the steam train (and one diesel remembers hearing about a steam engine`s accident in that part of the line years ago and tells the others that the steam engine`s ghost continues to haunt the line to this day). There was also another scene at the end showing the ghost train steaming and disappearing into the night.

I was going get these scenes into the final product, but because I`d spent so much time doing the research and rough sketching, I ran out of time before I could animate them. But in future I`ll make sure that I get all the research done much sooner so that I can get more of the actual animation done.


Below are my character designs.

The first image above shows the design of the trains from the side views. The second image below shows the original facial designs of the trains, the designs had to be changed due to copyright issues with "Thomas the Tank Engine" and another train cartoon.

The third and fourth images below show the following facial designs. The designs on the right of each image are the final designs I went ahead with.

 

 

 

 

The two images below are the character sheets, which show the different poses and facial expressions of the Steam and Diesel train.

 

 

 

Well I cannot believe it, but on YouTube this animation of mine has had over 800 views in just 2 months, I`m very greatful to everyone who viewd it!!!

Also before I forget, I got a grade B for the video. I feel really proud to have had this grade after all the hard effort I put into this animation.

My Life drawings

Now here are some of my life drawings. Durin the first term we`ve had life drawig sessions once a week. Durin these sessions we`ve have a model to pose for us and we have short amount of times to draw each of his poses before moving to the next pose.

Below are some of my best life drawings, which depict all the following pose movmemnts. Hopefully these poses will help me out with my human animation sequences.

Drunk Drving animatic

Here`s an animatic sequence idea for a commercial, featuring drunk driving (with humanised cars). This is my idea of trying to get people to stop drinking alcohol before driving.

For those of you who have never seen an animatic before, it`s when you put a series of still images together in a video with the images being held on the timing of the audio (similar to how deleted scenes from animated films are put together).

 In the animatic a car (a little red Nissan) stops at petrol station in the countryside to pick up some fuel and carelessly fills himself up with Alcoholic fuel. Then as the car sets off again he gradually gets more and more drunk from Alcohol and gradually loses his focus and vision of the road. He gradually creeps further over the centre of the road and ends up crashing into a bigger car (a 4 by 4 Hyundai) on a bend.

This is another project of mine which I had to complete for my assessment. I worked hard on this animatic and I hope you all like it.

NOTE: I own all the hand-drawn images, but not the actual photograph at the end. I also recorded a few sounds myself while others where got from the “Freesound” website.

 Above are the original storyboard images which all drawn by hand and scanned onto the computer, they where then coloured on "Adobe Photoshope Elements" for the animatic. A few of the images where taken out of the final product to improve the flow of the motion and to avoid confusion. A blurry effect where also added to 2 of the images (again using "Photoshop") to show how increasingly drunk the drunk car was getting.

 

Also I altered the phrase (EITHER QUITE DRINKING OR DRIVING) at then end in order to give out a more powerful   message (DON`T TANK UP WITH ALCOHOL). I even used an actual photograph trace over for the cartoon image of the crashed car. Then i finally decided to use the actual photo in the animatic, fading from the cartoon drawing to the photo, to give  the message a greater impact to the audience that drinking while driving has real consequences.

 

Hopefully one day I might make this into a real public information film to make people think about drinking and driving.

Below are photographs of the actual Nissan (Top Picture) and Hyundai (Bottom picture) cars, which I modelled for the cars in the animatic.

Well everyone, I received a “B” grade for the “Drunk Driving” animatic, like my "Inspector Bluefin" intro. Once again I feel very pleased with the grade because I didn`t expect that I was going to do so well.