Saturday 8 January 2011

1500 Pictures uploded in Photoshop

Lets say that the "Not Growing Up" first cut have few small glitches... but the truth is that it will take me another few week to fix it all... well, yes maybe YOU don't notice the obvious animating mistakes, but it's not all about you this time... you know.
In my defence now I'll explain why did I allow those mistakes to take place and how will I avoid making the same mistakes in the future.
- The light was changing cause of my assistant waking up - (solution) Give him more alcohol so he wouldn't wake up in the middle of the shoot. Or give him less alcohol so he wouldn't fall asleep in the first place.
- Camera moving - (solution) Rent a place that will not have old wooden flour.
- Stenography moving - (serious solution) During the planning stage I should consider building the set more solid. Animating a puppet is sometimes quite complicated because of limited access or difficult movements. In this situations it is very hard to focus on being gentle on the set. Cause of that, the set needs to be solid at all times, so that at the stage of animating nobody needs to focus on in.
- Mistakes in animation - (solution) HEY nobody's perfect... I was tired... If I only had a bit more time...
Those are the mistakes in the animation. I can see them, not sure if any one else can... but now comes the difficult bit. Fixing it. Photoshop here I come... I'll see you in a week time.

Shoot from the top.

The up from the tree shot is one of my favourite in the animation. I decided to take that shot so that the animation would be a bit more vibrant. So that there would be a bit more interesting shots.
The audience is looking down through branches at the bunny rabbit standing under the three. The bunny is looking up at the apple.
The truth is that the branches are laying on the ground just next to the bunny. That's because all the branches had to be composed into the right shape. To do this the tree had to be destroyed and put back together.
To make the shot a bit more understanding, I decided to lift the fruit a bit higher so that the lens optics would blur the apple a bit.
I love this shot.

"Not Growing Up" First Cut



"Not Growing Up" my new favourite animation. An animated illustration for Szymon's music.

Music by "Hemofilia" Szymon Szwarc

With help of my good friends Zuza Bukala, Ola Hryniewicz, Panayiotis Melodias... and Tomas Petronis?

Animating The Bunny



The "A.R.T." was the first project in which I used the screw based armature. I can't say that the first skeleton was a huge success. I was a rather difficult task to animate Arty (the robot).
Before I started to construct the armature for "Not Growing Up" boy in a rabbit costume I created a document in with I specified all boys movement. Decided on all gestures and smallest reactions, so that while constructing the skeleton I knew exactly what kind of movements I need the puppet to perform. Then I gathered all my notes on pros and cons of Artys armature design. I completely changed the solution for the shoulders and waists.
- Yeah did you, and how did it work?
- I'm glad that I asked...
It turned out to be brilliant. When I took the bunny for a ride it turned out that it's absolutely intuitive, it reacts exactly the way I expected it to react. I started to animate straight away. Took me two days to animate the whole thing. The eyes were great. Not difficult to animate at all, they escaped me one or twice, but I'll fix it in post editing.
I really enjoyed animating the car toy. The rope from the toy had a wire inside of it. It was a pure stop frame exercise to animate it to look like a loose rope... lovely.
In overall I'm pleased with the quality of animation in the clip. Can't wait to my next movie to make the animation even better... I have some ball joints now... that's right babe... I'm going PRO.

Building The Background

Did you noticed the background? You didn't?... good. That was the whole idea. The whole purpose of the background was the fill up the gaps in the shoots while adding a bit of tonally balanced perspective.

The colours of the animation were chosen on early stages of the project. They were a painters decision (as there is no other point why the sky would be orange). They were compose and balanced in a way which would emphasize the specific mood of the animation. The warm colour of the sky together with cold greens is mixing with rabbit grey costume exactly as planned.

Back to the background. The idea was to create a number of small hills in the distance. To create the effect of distance between two sets I had to pull out the colour from the further sat, because the colours in the distance are always less intense, that's cause of air perspective. I used clothes with desaturated colours, a bit green and white spray on brown clothes, a bit of white on green clothes... and almost done.

Now, what have I used to build the background?
- Old shirts.
- Jacket - that my Mom gave me but I never like it.
- Gradfathers coat.
- Blanket