The Blog of Justin Bowen

recent Life drawings from 2010

2010-05-28T10:39:00.005+10:00

selection of life drawings from 08/09

2010-05-27T15:49:00.002+10:00

Final weeks, reflection!

2009-11-16T18:01:00.003+10:00

So in the final 5 weeks the plan was to go full out with the 2d major project, it seem as though I was going to be able to cope with the workload and was going to be able to complete the animation and the backgrounds.
Then came the realisation once we were handed another major assignment in out visual story subject that this was not to be the case.
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I held off on beginning the visual story assignment in favour of the 2d animation and i got a number of shots done at a high quality but as the weeks passed it became clear to me due to the commitments for other classes, community engagement, sound design and visual story that I was going to be struggling to complete the animation to a quality I wanted. I was going to begin the layouts but decided i would prefer to have most of the animation completed over having the backgrounds in, so i continued with the character animation.

Deadlines drew closer and I knew I was n ot going to be able to complete other assignments in only a week, I decided to try and finish the other class assignments as quikly as possible so i could get back to the 2d project.

Two weeks passed and no work was done on the film... but i had completed the other assignments and all that remained to work on was the 2d film. Hurrah!

Then I started working... missing a 1 day of uni work a week may not seem like much but it did add up.

John was kind enough to grant us a one week extension on the deadline. I was grateful but this is when I came to the realisation that I still hadn't got the voice acting for the female character done and only had one week left, the animation was not finished the backgrounds weren't started and the sound hadn't even be thought of.

T-minus 48hours and counting, i had most of the shots animated and i decided to dig in at uni to try and complete the remaining shots then trhow together a quick placeholder soundtrack to hand in.. In the final a hours I figured out that colouring frames takes a long time...

by 6am in the morning i was exhausted, first all nighter at uni, it was fun, but while exhausted the quality of work begins suffer, some animation was rushed and some shots not even started.

Time to throw it together in after effects! Mashed up and adding some blur and effects, minus the shading and lighting i wanted i exported it. Into premiere and adding the voice and sound fx and music, I picked a Harry Gregson-Williams track from the Metal gear Solid 4 soundtrack as a music placeholder, it actually worked quite well, not all the sound effects or voice efforts were added but i decided it was all I was going to get done without falling face first into the keyboard!

I talked to John and we had a good helpful disscussion, the overall process was a great experience and I have come out of it with a good understanding of what i can achieve within a a deadline and how much i cannot achieve, the ambition was there but the lack of time and a little bit of laziness here and there was my downfall. I produced i think to be some good animation and I have decided that during this Christmas break I shall continue to work on it complete it so i can put it in my demo reel next year.

Time to start planning for the third year film, now that i have found out what I am able to achieve In 2 months of work! I'm looking forward to it.

Week 9 part a

2009-09-21T22:18:00.000+10:00

Okay finished my preproduction pack and handed it in, going to get started on the animation asap, heres the display frames, the quality of what I am aiming for and also mouth sheets etc

Week 8 Storyboards and preproduction pack

2009-09-18T19:12:00.000+10:00

Wow, been pushing myself this week, the pre-production pack was due today, and i hadn't got everything together, luckily John was cool with letting everyone hand in the pack on Monday.

I overdid the storyboards i think and ran out of time for the rest of the pack but im glad that i did, the final product was i think pretty decent. Pushing myself pays off in the end, i really want to start animating already!

We pitched our ideas to the class today, feed back was good and we decided that there were way to many shots in my film, I'm cutting some out, but i really don't want to, I know i have to.

here are the storyboards, they are small so i could upload all the panels.

Week 7 Characters

2009-09-11T19:36:00.001+10:00

Ive locked off the character designs and talked with John about them and the premise. John seemed to like the idea apart from the ending where I was introducing a third character. John thought that just having the two characters play off would be better. Also I think that he had issues with the complexities of the character designs, but I decided myself that I want to push myself and see if I am able to do what I have imagined in my head, I think I will be able to, lets wait and see!

I'm going to do the animation in flash because I prefer the workspace and the vector lines, ill aim for doing mostly frame by frame animation but implement symbols where needed, no tweening!

I have decided on cutting back the premise of the story, it will just have the two characters. Time to lock off the story, I'm going to start working on the storyboards this weekend. Here are the are, character designs.

Week 6

2009-09-04T21:21:00.000+10:00

Well the deadline for the first assignment has been pushed back which is good, Ive basically got it all finished, with sound effects but I'm thinking of adding in a scene with the bear cut-out I made, if i could get around to it. Started working on the Character animation project, creating characters, have yet to talk to John about the concept and stuff, Im sure it will be all good tho. The basic premise is that it is a Parody of the action/adventure movie and game genre, a la Indian Jones and Tombraider.

The characters will have different personalities, playing off for the same goal, to get their hands on a priceless treasure of some sort. Once they gain the item they are attacked for it and then both try to palm it off to the other.

Here are the initial character concepts and then the final head-shots, working on the turnarounds now, will post them up soon.

Week 5 after effects

2009-08-28T17:14:00.000+10:00

I have been messing around with After effects amongst the stop mo-ing this week, im enjoying learning the program. Using tutorials from Video Copilot i've been playing around with the titles and credit sequences, as well as compositing and the stopmo stuff over a textured background. I definitely think that it would be worthwhile having more hands on with After Effects in tutorials at uni.

Week 4

2009-08-21T20:59:00.002+10:00

This week I've been mucking around with the home stop-mo setup, using AnimatorDV+ Simple and a web-cam, I prefer this program over stop motion pro, its easier to use and has more functionality.

I have decided that working with sand animation is not for me, its too fiddly and takes too long. I like the imagery but I think I am too impatient to get any thing worth using. I have come out of these tests with more of an appreciation the animators who actually work with sand.

Ive begun doing some cutout animation, so far i have a walk cycle with my guy cut-out. While working with the cutouts I have found that it is easier in some cases to remove all of the pieces and replace them in a new position rather than trying to slightly move pieces.

2009-08-14T21:25:00.002+10:00

Well, we didn't have a lecture or tute today, but ive decided on do a cutout animation, silhouette style, then muck around with it in after effects, i'd like to learn a few things in AE. Anyways here are a few images, from my trials with sand and the cutouts I've made, heh no story yet :S i think that ill just wing it and see what it ends up like, it is experimental isn't it?.

Inspiration week 1-2

2009-08-07T22:35:00.002+10:00

The first week of 2d & alternative techniques we discussed our experimental animation assignment and checked out a few different styles of experimental, mainly animation done with sand and stop-motion of different objects and cut-outs. Then in Iweek 2 we had a look at roto-scoping, i find the idea kind of interesting but also kind of like cheating, that said I wouldn't mind doing some experiments with it(seeing as that is what this whole assignment is about).

At first I was contemplating the idea of doing sand animation, I liked the idea of using the back-light. The imagery it produces is kind of beautiful. But now I am sort of opposed to the style after having a bit of a muck around at home with a makeshift setup and not achieving the images and smooth animation I was imagining.

So, I thought that I would kick off this blog thingy with a bit of a inspiration dump and show you guys some of the experimental animation stuff that I find kind of interesting. I am going to try to replicate or at the least 'experiment' and see what I can do.

Here is a short film, Saccharine (Silhouette Animation).

I'm really liking the art style, I don't think this particular clip was done with cutouts, I'm thinking it was done in software although I want to achieve something similar using cutouts and aftereffects, maybe some sand as well who knows!

As I said earlier, I was interested in doing some sand animation and I still may! But i find it too time consuming and extremely fiddly. While checking out some sand animation i found a couple of these clips, I enjoy them, although its not the sort of thing we are after, the animation is done real-time as opposed to stop-motion

Vivaldi Four Seasons Summer Sand Animation film Ferenc Cakó

Kseniya Simonova - Sand Animation (Україна має талант / Ukraine's Got Talent)