one of the things i was working on this summer was an animation project with one of the masters graphic design students at the old university. the idea was to produce three 50-page flip books explaining how traditional games from around the world worked to the youth of today.

a possible alternative to angry birds? who knows.

anyway, here's one of them. heads up- it's pretty jerky. probably should have up-ed the frame rate but imovie is a thing that i do not understand:




aaaaaand here's some sketch book stuff:







===========

while we're on the topic of sketch book stuff, do yourself a solid and check out THESE PAGES FROM MARCO MAZZONI'S MOLESKIN. oh my word, that bird. man does incredible, incredible things with coloured pencils….

so one of the things i'm working on at the moment is a project with one of the masters graphic design students from the old university. his fmp is all about teaching the youth of today with their iphones and ipods and other shiny things beginning with 'i' the joy of games that time forgot. one of the ways he's doing this is with a series of flip books illustrating three such games.

i guess this is where i come in, huh?










more on this at some future time.

----

speaking of animation, there are some freaking amazing animated projects looking for funding on that newfangled kick-starter thing. i am, for instance, way too excited about this (and may have thrown some change at it).
->

holy shit. when you see the footage and he's all like "oh yeah, i've done all this myself" it's like…. SAY WHAT???

… shit like this is such a kick up the ass.

more on that !!!!!HERE!!!!

so that final major project thing, huh?

initially this was just going to be a comic designed to be read on a computer or some sort of snazzy digital reader do-hicky thing. my tutor though the we could spice it up a bit by adding some interactive elements but then it turned out the programming skillz required would melt minds. so instead we made a movie. here it is. i hope you enjoy it.



sharp teeth is a cracking read by toby barlow. the super dulcet narration was provided by our print tutor phil shaw

aaaaaaand some more pages from the macmillan book. hopfully going to get the last three pages drawn by the end of the weekend... and then get them all coloured, photoshopped and ready to before next thursday when i bugger off on holiday? AH HA HA HA HA. LIKE THAT'S GOING TO HAPPEN.

ah well. you can always hope.


in the mean time, i never saw black dynamite BUT i did CATCH THE PILOT FOR THE ANIMATED SHOW OVER AT THE NERDIST. holy moly. this shit is amazing. as so beutifully animated too.

pimps don't do chores, yo.

for the last project, we had to take a news article and re-tell it. mine was about these two sisters in china who, tiered of going out with men that they could trounce, decided to hold a kung fu contest to find a husband who could best them. the whole thing inspired by ancient warrior princesses dating methods.

hoy hoy comrades! so for this current project, we were tasked with finding a news article and making a sequence to go along with it. man, i am loving how much more open to interpretation the briefs are this year. and how they seem to end with me getting really enthusiastic about things i'd sworn off like plauge after year one- i.e print making and, in this case, animation.



frame from the first crack i took at this. i got mid-way through the second sequence and had to throw in the towel. that kinda sucked (although maybe not quite so much the cheery email informing us that we had one week less than thought to get this thing in the can. A CAN I HEAR YOU SAY WOOP WOOP?!?). but not nearly as much as what i was churning out. anatomy was being disregarded something awful and the whole thing was as smooth as velcro. blegh.




crack two. i've been roughing these out on layout paper and polishing them up in photoshop and so far, so good. fingers crossed that the whole thing doesn't shit the bed when it gets ported over to *shudder* after effects.

if all goes well and i don't die in the process, the final animation should be up by next weekend. OPTIMISM HOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!

some character designs for the never-ending animation project. do mimes count as carnival folk?

more backgrounds for animation. gah, these things are (in theory) meant to be in for next wednesday. outlooks looks... mildly improbable? hmm, backgrounds have always been one of those things i've always thought i've kinda fobbed off so to have to focus on them like this has been a super fun exercise and oh my god this post is dull dull dull. let's talk about something else.

went to the last of the london evelyn evelyn gigs on sunday and oh my, was it a good stuff. for those not in the know, evelyn evelyn is the current pet project of jason webley and amanda palmer that involves the pair pretending to be conjoined twins and singing show tunes. you can check some of their stuff out here: http://www.myspace.com/evelynevelyn

it was a hoot. hats off to those two as well for managing to play pianos, guitars, accordians, drums and ukuleles while wearing the same dress

backgrounds for the much bitched about animation project. holy moly, do i need to pick up the pace on this thing. GAH, LEGALISE CLONING ALREADY SO AT LEAST ONE VERSION OF ME CAN GO OUT AND PLAY IN THE GLORIOUS SUNSHINE WE ARE CURRENTLY ENJOYING.

oh perspective. i love you and all, but some times you make my brain want to crawl out of my ear, hop in the microwave and put an end to it all.

shit-tacular storyboards for animation.

uuuuuuUUUUUUUUUGGGGGH! i just spent the last four hours or so doing the line work on one of the backgrounds for this. haven't got onto the making things move bit and this thing is already killing me! there's lots and lots of cool stuff i want to link to in this post but my brain feels way too much like rancid granola for that right now....

idea fishing for our animation project. came up with some wonderfully intricate plot featuring abusive onimatipea before i realized that after effects is the devil's animating program of choice and i was probably going to end up doing nigh on all of this by hand.

...

yay?

but either way, chalk this up as another victory for the Keep It Simple, Stupid school of thought.