'Trixie the Little Carousel Horse' by Rochelle Hodgson

Rochelle takes every opportunity to make textile based work and her animation project has been no exception. Trixie herself is a riot of pattern and colour and the sets that Rochelle has made are painstakingly and delicately embellished fabrics. Rochelle has set herself a big task in putting these two time consuming techniques together but you can tell that her love for textiles work has overshadowed her animation. I would have liked to have seen movement in the sets, perhaps the Indian paisleys dancing to some traditional music and the fish swimming around the Great Barrier Reef. Perhaps Rochelle could have taken inspiration from Luka's use of time-lapse photography animation technique to really show off the process of the stitching and embellishments.

The final film is however a quiet piece that may appeal greatly to it's intended pre-school audience. If you have any comments please post them here to Rochelle who will use them to further her work and working processes...

'The Little Anglerfish' by Kerry Ann Smith

I can't find fault in this animation, those who have been taught by me will find that a rare occurrence! Kerry has worked so hard on every aspect of this animation but most especially on these cutout characters. Each one was threaded by hand and she worked long into the night to make them. I'm sure you will agree that their movement is beautiful. At first I wasn't sure about Kerry's choice of music but now I see the finished piece and the way that the fish dance I can see that the music fits the story and characters well. This story is so much more sophisticated than the first version for her illustration project, it has been a great opportunity to develop an idea and Kerry has succeeded so well because she has refined her work at every stage.

Please take the time to leave a comment for Kerry, she will use them to analyse her work and further her future work and working processes...

'Rockin' Horse' by Pip Renault

When I was talking to Pip about how he would record viewer's reactions to his animation he told me that people wouldn't actually laugh out loud when they watch it. I laugh out loud every time I watch it, I bet most people do. The best part of this story has to be 'Gator' thrusting to Twisted Sister and electric bolts shooting from his fingertips as he transforms 'Rockin' Horse'. I also like the head banging scene but with more time would have asked Pip to give the disco lights more movement. 'Rockin' Horse' is aimed at young teenagers but I think it would appeal to a much wider audience.

Leave your comments for Pip to help him improve his work and working process...

'Ook and the Blue Wheels' by Luka Pinto

The amount of test animations Luka made to prepare for this final animation have ensured that he has really maximised the potential for movement in his work. Sometimes the jumping of shots where he has photographed the frames without a tripod or seeing the photographer's shadow at the edge of the frames makes the animation look crude but it could also be seen to go along with the rebelliousness of the story. The action is fast paced, Luka had a lot that he wanted to fit into this short film, a great deal of the story has already been edited in the development of this piece. But again the speed fits the story and the music. The time-lapse animation is brilliantly done, tiny glimpses of great drawings flash past, you have to watch it again and again.

Send Luka your comments here on the blog, they will be used to help him improve his work and working process...

'The Adventures of Mikey Rabbit and Mr Prang' by Jake Stoodley

The Adventures of Mikey Rabbit and Mr Prang began as a great story with really interesting looking collaged characters and sets. I feel that the final animation seems to have become jumbled and difficult to follow, this may be a conscious decision to follow Mikey's drunken Saturday night but it may leave the sober viewer confused.

Comments please to Jake to help him improve his work and working process...

'Stubs at the Beauty Contest' by Sam Halliwell

'Stubs' is a seriously misunderstood and dangerous character. He developed quite naturally through giving a found object, (a broken toy horse) a name, character and background. Once Sam discovered that there were other Stubb's horses the story grew. I like the juxtapostion of photographic background and the crudely drawn Stubs against George Stubb's beautifully painted horses but I feel that there is a lack of action movement in the fight scene that might leave the viewer confused at the ending. The story however is wonderfully bonkers and as before I'm (a little) older than Sam's target audience of 16 year olds so my opinion may go completely against the grain of the public view. Please leave your comments here and help Sam keep improving her work and her working process...

'Bliiink' by Lucy Dobin

Lucy has been working on this story since September first of all as a series of sequential illustrations and then as this animation. I've seen it a fair few times so it is testament to the strength of her story that it still makes me laugh every time. It's been lovely to see Lucy bring movement to her illustrations, the spiders and tumbleweed ensure that the final frames are still full of life and the build up of the music accentuates the drama of the end of the story.

As before, any comments about Lucy's animation will be used to help her improve her future work and her working process, they are most useful so please let us know what you think...

'Clyde the Clumsy Cow' by Diana Hey

Clyde the Clumsy Cow is aimed at four to five year olds. Personally I found the story confusing but then I'm thirty years older than the intended audience. My five year old however LOVES this animation and has begged me to play it to her over and over again, laughing uproariously the whole way through (but most especially at the end).

A significant part of this project involves the students collecting and analysing audience responses so that they can make their work and working process better with each new piece they undertake. Please leave Diana a comment and help her to analyse how well her animation has worked. These are the questions she would like to know, if you have a pre-schooler their opinion would be most welcome...

What happens in the story?
What sounds do you remember?
Does Clyde look clever or silly?

'Ook and the Blue Wheels' by Luka Pinto

Luka's animation begins with Ook skating down the street, looking almost like the opening scenes of Mr Benn walking down Festive Road and indeed some of the music Luka uses is also reminiscent of British 1970's children's animation. His character 'Ook' could be compared to 'Morph'. Here however is where the likenesses end, this animation is aimed at a much older audience as we discover when Ook spikes Burney the policeman with 'liquid 666' and Burney slips into a Luka's time-lapse animation of graffiti inspired felt-tip pen doodles.

The bottle of 'liquid 666' was the beginning inspiration for this story, Luka discovered it in a cabinet of Victorian medicines at the Jersey Museum. In the original illustration project the story was much longer, there was a whole background to Ook and Burney's relationship. As many of the other students have, Luka has had to edit his ideas in order to achieve a finished animation in just 6 weeks and the story feels more sophisticated for it.

Luka has been incredibly organised over the course of this project and has constantly refined ideas through experimenting by making tester animations to help him understand the very best ways to animate his characters. I have had a sneak preview today of the scene of Ook skateboarding down the street, (you can see the tester animation for that scene here on Flickr) it looks fab, I'm also looking forward to seeing Burney's trip scene when Luka switches from cutout animation to time-lapse photography. You can see some more animation tests for that technique here on Flickr. You can also see recognise an influence from Blu and David Ellis in Luka's work, see more about those artist's work on Luka's blog post here.

Below are Luka's storyboard instructions.

1. Ook comes out of the front door with his 'liquid 666' and skateboard. Ook side on in front of door (1-3 seconds)
2. Ook skateboarding down the road. Ook side on, move along background of row of houses as Ook skates (2-7 seconds) Sound of skateboarding, cars, maybe background noise of people.
3. Burney the Policeman is sat on a bench, Ook spikes Burney's coffee with his 'liquid 666' without him noticing and runs off. Camera slowly moving from right to left. Sound of cars, sound of Ook laughing a little bit (1-5 seconds)
4. Burney drinks his spiked coffee, view Burney straight on. Sounds of cars slowly fade out as he drinks, sound of mechanical toy being wound up (2-5 seconds)
5. Burney's trip scene. Time-lapse animation of doodles. Music; Mr Bungle, Gollem II, at 24 seconds the song sucks up, cut at the first frame of scene 6
6. A dog barking wakes Burney up, he walks out of frame. Back to everyday sounds of cars (3-7 seconds)
7. End credits, time-lapse animation of doodles again. Sound of skateboards (3 seconds)

'Clyde the Clumsy Cow' by Diana Hey

For her illustration project Diana's Clyde the Cow started off as Cassie the Cow who visited a fancy dress shop and went back to her field with a princess hat. Diana has decided to adapt the story for her animation by making it more slapstick, with more movement and unexpected comedy enhanced by silly noises. Hopefully making it more appealing for her intended pre-school audience. Also Cassie has turned into Clyde, perhaps to appeal to both girls and boys. You can view Diana's animatic here on Flickr along with her original illustrations of Cassie the Cow.

Below are the storyboard instructions;

1. Cylde is sat in his field, boored. Super Mario soundtrack (4 seconds)
2. He jumps over the fence. Super Mario jump sound (3 seconds)
3. BOING! And falls into a bin (1 second)
4. Bin falls over. Tipping metal sound (2 seconds)
5. Boinging, bouncing sound as Clyde tips out of the bin (2 seconds)
6. SPLASH! Clyde bounces into a puddle (2 seconds)
7. BEEP!, a car whizzes on to screen (3 seconds)
8. CRASH! The car and Clyde collide (3 seconds)
9. Clyde gets up (3 seconds)
10. The shock makes him poo (2 seconds)

'Rockin' Horse' by Pip Renault

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Pip's animatic makes me laugh every time I see it. I think it has a great soundtrack, I love the way the music is muffled behind the door and then blares out at full volume as 'Gator' kicks the door down. I also love the sound of the electric bolts shooting out of his fingers. But I think what I like most is the fact that it was sparked off by a beautiful traditional wooden rocking horse that he drew in the nursery of the Merchant's House at the Jersey Museum. I shall always think of 'Gator' every time I visit the Museum now.

Pip has also really understood and exploited the potential of perspective and point of view, the 'camera' movement echoes the liveliness of the music. I'm looking forward to seeing the final animation, the cutout of the character 'Gator' looks very promising and I imagine that the sequence of them both head banging and the stage lights flashing will work really well once animated. I think Twisted Sister would enjoy it too, if anyone out there knows them then please pass it on...

1. Close up of Rockin Horse looking bored, he sighs
2. Shot slowly zooms out from his face, he looks up when he starts to hear muffled rock coming from the room next door 'I wanna rock! Rock!'
3. Gator kicks down the door screaming 'ROCK!" as his music booms into the room, he is holding a bag
4. Gator points at Rockin Horse in an Uncle Sam style and says 'You wanna Rock?'
5. Electric bolts shoot out of Gator's fingers turning Rockin Horse into a Rocker
6. Extreme close-up of Rockin Horse's eyes with piercing and eye make-up 'I wanna Rock!'
7. Gator and Rockin Horse head bang, stage lights flash

'The Adventures of Mikey Rabbit' by Jake Stoodley

Jake's story has been loosely based on his friend Mikey's weekend binges at Snow Hill, names have not been changed, he may be hoping that Mikey won't recognise himself as a tattooed rabbit.

His animatic as you see it here on Flickr isn't finished yet, it will have a narrator's voice who sounds like DJ Lance Rock in Yo Gabba Gabba who will be ineffectually telling Mikey Rabbit off as he makes drunken mayhem.

Jake originally photocopied his drawings in black and white but they lost so much of their aesthetic qualities that he was persuaded by the other students to keep the coloured collages. His stick and ink drawings are similarly appealing, showing a particularly apt naive line. Jake also hope to go on to study illustration and/or animation at degree level so if you like what you see then leave a comment to let him know.

1. Mikey is at Snow Hill toilets. Narrator; 'What are you doing? What's that? I think you should put that down'
2. Mikey is near the grass area. Narrator; 'Have you got a bad tummy? I told you not to drink that stuff'
3. He's walked to the grass area. Narrator; 'Mikey are you OK?'
4.He's got big and bad. Narrator; 'Mikey are you a bad mo fo?'
5. He has fallen asleep behind the box. Narrator; 'What have you done Mikey? Oops the police are coming'

'The Little Anglerfish' by Kerry-Ann Smith

For our previous project Kerry wrote and illustrated a complete children's book titled 'The Little Anglerfish'. You can see it and read the story on Kerry's flickrstream here. As I'm sure you will agree Kerry is a highly talented illustrator, there are so many beautiful aspects of her illustrations from the deep watery feel of her use of inks mixed with salt and bleach to the rendering of the shoal of silvery fish.

Kerry's original story was far too long and complex to make into a 60 second animation, so she adapted it for this animation project. The animation has the same moral, the ugly anglerfish is rejected and finally accepted by the shoal of silvery fish, in her second retelling Kerry has refined the ideas to a more sophisticated, less obvious story. However what Kerry has exploited most cleverly for this animation is the movement of the fish swimming. Out of all the student's work Kerry has really understood and run with the idea of giving her illustrations movement and life. You can see Kerry's full storyboard and animatic on her Flickrstream. Even the quick, rough sketches on the storyboard show the viewer exactly how these fish will move across the screen.

Below are the storyboard instructions;

1. Background fades from black and the anglerfish begins swimming upwards (6 seconds)

2. Flicks to new shot, anglerfish swims up into it and stops, looks slightly left of camera (use a still hold) fish appear in the background (2 seconds)

3. Turns to face the shoal as they swims closer (fish should reflect light as they swim)

4. Shoal swims along (use whooshing sound for each curve) (3 seconds)

5. Lure grows brighter, anglerfish swims quickly off shot (2 seconds)

6. Shoal swimming slowly, anglerfish swims up below them

7. The shoal swims quickly away (6 & 7, 3 seconds)

8.Lure dims and sinks, anglerfish swims downwards after them (2 seconds)

9. As anglerfish approaches the shoal splits and darts behind him

10. Anglerfish swims after them and shoal dodges behind them (9 & 10, 6 seconds)

11. Shoal: foreground. Anglerfish: background. Swims into foreground and the shoal disperses (2-3 seconds)

12. Anglerfish stops, lure fully dims and droops down (2 seconds)

13. (zoomed out) Shoal swims away and then stops and faces anglerfish (2-3 seconds)

14. Fish stop and turn back to face anglerfish, then swim back over to him (2 seconds)

15. Fish begin to circle anglerfish, lure begins to light up (2 seconds)

16. Shoal swims in a loop around him. Anglerfish looks up, lure is glowing bright (6 seconds)

17. Anglerfish swims with the shoal (2 seconds)

Kerry hopes to go on to study illustration and/or animation at degree level, hands up anyone out there who would like to give her a place!

'Bliiink' by Lucy Dobin

Lucy's story developed from two drawings made at the Jersey Museum, one of a stuffed, staring rabbit and one of a stuffed, staring owl. Of course this developed into a staring contest as a Mexican Standoff, with a Cactus judge. You can see the development of Lucy's drawings and her first test animatic on her Flickrstream here.

Her intended audience was older children up to OAP's, this is such a funny story that I'm sure most people would enjoy it. My favourite part is the withered, drooping cactus at the end. Leave a comment and let us know what you think.

1. Rabbit walks down the road (footstep noise) (3 seconds)
2. Owl walks down the opposite side of the road (footsteps) (3 seconds)
3. Rabbit stops and turns to see Owl (camera looking over Owl's shoulder to see from his point of view)
A tumble weed rolls past (whistling wind noise) (3 seconds)
4. Swap sides to see Owl on the other side of the road (camera looking over Rabbit's shoulder to see from his point of view) (2 seconds)
5. Zoom in on the eyes (2 seconds)
6. Both characters jump off the boardwalk and just stare. The Cactus judge appears (camera pans out to show the whole setting) Sun slowly sets (5 seconds)
7. They get a bit more angry with each other, Cactus looks worried (camera pans in even further, close-up on main characters) ( 1-2 seconds)
8. Owl and Rabbit start to shake their eyes start to water, (camera pans in more to show how much they are trying not to blink) (3 seconds)
9. Rabbit gets very angry and shouts "BLIIINK" Owl and Cactus look shocked. Sun continues to set. (3-4 seconds)
10. Night time, moon rises, Cactus falls asleep. Rabbit and Owl keep staring. (3 seconds)
11. Buildings start to crumble and fall down (keep switching from day to night, very fast) (7 seconds)
12. Clock hands moving around fast, pages flying off the calender (wooshing sound) (4 seconds)
13. Owl and Rabbit old and bearded now. Buildings keep crumbling. Keep switching from day to night (6 seconds)
14. All that is left of Owl and Rabbit are skeletons (fade to black after 7 seconds)

The animation is set to the music of 'The Good, The Bad & The Ugly'. View Lucy's animatic here, I defy you not to be humming this music for the rest of the day.

Lotte Reiniger's animations

After researching Lotte Reiniger and watching a few more of her animations on Youtube, I came across a pretty old looking but interesting video showing the process of making a cut-out silhouette animation. You can find the video here.

Because of the silhouette technique Lotte Reiniger has used to animation her short stories, the characters lack facial expressions. Instead, the characters are only identified by their appearance, and emotion and expression is communicated through the movements of the figures. I think this is a good example of how simple animations can be made effective and tell a narrative without the need for excessive detail.

Boiling animation

Boiling is the name for the uneven and wobbly lines in animation drawn by hand. Most animators dont like the effect of boiling and try to avoid it, but a few animators do like it, one of the best examples of boiling animation i found was of the old cartoon 'roobarb and custard' created by Bob Godfrey.

You make boiling animation by drawing out the scene you want, then trying to draw it out again as similar as you can make it a few more times, and then putting all the images together on a loop. Because the images are never going to be exactly the same you are always going to get the boiling effect.

Here is a website that explains boiling animation a bit more. http://www.animationpost.co.uk/notes2/wobble.htm

lucy

my research

this post is some of my research for an animation pproject im doing in college.
After all the historical research we had to look at, i looked mainly at 2 artists; David Ellis and blublu.

 

blu does animations but on walls and floors with paint so it looks like his creatures and people are walking all over buildings.  

Ellis does timelapses of his own work but layers peice ontop of peice so he ends up with a painting but underneath could be say 10 others.

They also did a collaboration piece together which covers the whole of a derelict building. its really nice to see the bright colours and soft shapes of david ellis and the harsh black and white

creatures of blu together in animation. 

also thinking about target audiences led me to think about the relationship between skateboarding and art.

 click on the image for a bigger version if you want to read it.

luka.

Alice In Wonderland

I would like to share another favourite animator, Jan Svankmajer . His work will give you the shivers.

Now I love Disney’s version of Alice in Wonderland as much as the next person, but that’s the issue, most people only know Disney’s Alice. Jan Svankmajer has interpreted this classic story in a most frightening and peculiar way, watch it, you’ll never forget it (and you’ll never see the Disney version in the same way again).

See a clip of Jan Svankmajer’s Alice here.

And if you liked that you like the Brothers Quaye too, check out their work here.

Let me know what you think, Joanna

Animagika

Paper Cinema

Lotte Reiniger, Cinderella

I had a gobsmacking evening of Animagika at the Branchage Film Festival last month, watching a Paper Cinema performance and a Lotte Reiniger screening of Cinderella accompanied by Amiina.

Paper Cinema is illustrated and performed by Nic Rawling. He makes hundreds of beautiful pen and ink drawings, drawings of pirates, drunks, children on bicycles chasing trains, girls transforming into birds. These are cut out and stuck onto cornflake packets with lollypop stick handles. Nic works with another puppeteer, together they work through the pile of illustrations, wiggling them about and shooting them backwards and forwards in front of a camera that projects onto a big screen. At the Animagika night the film was projected onto a huge screen on the Opera House stage and an amazing musician sat with them improvising music to the story as it played out onto the screen.

It was truly entrancing to watch the story unfold and to be able to see the puppeteers working at the same time. The handmade, hand manipulated drawings reminded me of the early television animation of my childhood, Bod and Mr Benn.

Watch Paper Cinema and Kora present King Pest here.

Watch Bod here.

Watch Mr Benn here.

Lotte Reiniger made her animation of Cinderella in 1922, she was a pioneer of twentieth century animation and made the first ever full length animated film.

She worked in black and white silhouette cutout animation inspired by Eastern European traditions of shadow puppetry. The version of Cinderella that I saw was truly gruesome, the point at which the ugly sisters hacked off their toes and heels to fit the glass slipper on their feet was stomach churning. How wonderfully clever to cause such a physical reaction with simple silhouettes.

The original film is silent, at Animagika it was accompanied by Amiina, the percussion section of Sigor Ros. They played a selection of wonderful instruments such as musical saws and wine glasses. It was a perfect marriage of sound and image.

Watch Lotte Reininger’s Cinderella here.

Hear Amiina here.

Joanna.

PS. Join Branchage on Facebook, make sure that you don’t miss out next year.

Flickbooks Flipbooks

The students spent the day making Flickbooks, you can see videos of their first animation attempts on their Flickr stream here. Why not leave them a comment...

Joanna

the animation brief

"You are asked to develop ideas from your illustration project to make a short, digital 2D animation piece lasting between 15 seconds and 1 minute. Your animation must be set to a soundtrack and be carefully planned with drawings, designs, a storyboard, a script and a production schedule.

The animation must be digitally produced, it may be a stop-frame animation, time-lapse photography, sequential photographs, collage, cut-out animation or an animatic. Your choice of style of images and animation should reflect the story that you are animating (based on your mixed media illustration project) and the audience that you are choosing to target. Your choice of style should also be informed by critical research of past and contemporary animation styles."

Watch this space to see what happens next...

Joanna

Access to the Jersey Heritage Art Store

Henry Bosdet

Edmund Blampied

Edmund Blampied

As part of the student's research we visited behind the scenes at the Jersey Heritage Art Store, primarily to make drawings from Edmund Blampied's wonderful etchings of farming in the early C20 and his illustrations for Peter Pan. But we also discovered huge Bosdet cartoons for stained glass windows, beautiful Jersey travel posters from the fifties, painted Blampied caricatures and an enormous portrait of Hitler that hung at the old Forum cinema during the Nazi occupation. See more at our Flickr site here...

Joanna

Drawings from the Jersey Museum Collection

See some of the drawings in more detail at the students' new Flickr site here...

Joanna

a new term, a new class, a new brief...

"The purpose of this project is to stretch your response to “illustration” in ways that you have never before considered. You have purposefully been kept in the dark about this project so that you would collect arbitrary information from the Jersey Museum collection to work with. We are now asking you to put these drawings to one side and resist the urge to jump ahead with final ideas whilst you research the many aspects, uses and audiences of illustration and then go on to experiment with a range of illustrative media and techniques.

You will begin by spending some time at the Jersey Library looking at newspaper and magazine illustration, graphic novels, comic strips, children’s book illustration and the illustrative work of fine artists. You will also visit the Jersey Heritage Art Store to look at the original drawings of C20 Jersey artist Edmund Blampied. You will look at contemporary illustration online at flickr.com, weblogs such as DRAWN! (drawn.ca) and also use youtube.com to research contemporary digital illustration in advertising, television and film. You will use this time to forget everything you thought you knew about illustration and move your ideas into new and exciting areas of illustration, stealing ideas to experiment with.

Your research will then inspire your own experimentation with illustrative materials, techniques and processes. These experiments will be vastly wide-ranging in order for you to assess the suitability of many different approaches and also ensure that you move away from your usual “style” or approach to illustration. Be prepared to have every mark you make challenged. Whilst you experiment you will also be choosing or perhaps even writing your own words to eventually illustrate.

At the mid-point of your time back in the studio you will write a short brief outlining your final piece plans and pitch your experimental illustrations and story ideas to the group and receive constructive feedback concentrating specifically as to whether the style of your illustrations, the compositions and the media and techniques used communicate the narrative well and whether they are suitable for the audience that you have chosen. You will use this feedback to further develop your final illustrations.

After half term you will develop the illustrations/characters/or even small aspects of your narrative into either two-dimensional digital animation OR three-dimensional moving sculpture."

Joanna