Identity Project v2

In some down time that I've had between projects I returned to this from the beginning of the year to adjust audio and add some music.

Story Writing

So this week we were kind of between projects and were giveen a mini-project to write some ideas for a short story using some random element. My elements were:

Aerobics, secret diary and a welcome back. The idea I settled on was:

After a long journey through space the monkey named Aerobics (Aer for short) returns home. He reminisces on his journey by looking through his video diary.

Once we had our basic ideas we were put into the groups and told to combine our ideas into one story. Beginning, middle and end. We were then given a starting sentence. Our story is as follows:

Everyone in the office turned and stared when the doors burst open, pinning a temp between the door and the wall. Moment of silence as a group of alien monkeys disguised as generic office workers walk in. They are all unified as if one single entity, except for their leader, a woman named Delori. Dressed in a similar suit to her henchmen only grey. A large office chair spins around to reveal the protagonist Mr. Long a 'little person' boss.   Mr. Long removes the secret binoculars from his desk drawer and hides them in his suit pocket. The binoculars have the ability to reveal the office workers and Delori for what they really are. Delori points at Mr. Long instructing the office workers to chase him down. They charge through the office, bashing anything out of their way. Mr. Long jumps out the window to the street below. A chase scene ensues where Mr. Long soon begins to stumble and fall. His legs can't keep running so he uses his arms instead. He makes it to the coast where he finds a blue VW camper. Fluorescent Moon, the hippy that owns the camper offers him a lift to America. There's a shot of a map of the world where we see the van go from Ireland to different points in America leaving a rainbow trail behind it. This is then followed by the Alien Monkeys. When we return to Mr. Long he's tired and his clothes are all torn, he's on his last legs. He retreats to a motel room. There's a moment where it seems he has lost them. But over his shoulder the room door slams open and in walk the Alien Monkeys/ The first weapon he finds is a pillow. He throws this at the aliens in desperation. The Aliens misunderstand this, they think this is the standard method of fighting on earth and begin to pummle and eventually overpower Mr. Long with pillows. Mr Long is held down by the aliens. One Alien arrives over with an Info Extractor 9000 to get the information needed to work the binoculars from his head. Just as it's about to be put on his head Delori gets a call. She tells her minions to hold up. She has an argument over the communicator. She clicks her fingers and points towards the door. All the aliens leave. Mr Long picks himself brushes himself off and begins the journey home with an alien ship flying into the sky. 

It's far from perfect or even good. But the point of the exercise was to show that the more substance and back story you add to a story the more interesting it becomes (at least... I think that was the point)

Christmas Card Animatic

This is the animatic for my newest, Flash animation. It’s very rough yet and void of detail. But it WILL be better in the end.

This is the story board for my Christmas Card animation. The recording of the astronauts I found online was a little boring and vague. So I decided to use the one I heard on QI which is completely inaccurate, yet much better for the task. Have to say my favourite part is the “probably in a polar orbit” section. 

Lyric Music Videos

’m thinking of making the animation like a lyric music video. It will solve the problem of the quality of the broadcast being quite crap by giving the viewer a reference. There’s not many good ones as most are sort of like a glorified slideshow of words. But this is my favourite which actually incorporates the lyrics into a complex, interesting background. Too bad the song sucks.

Here's some more. Like I said though, mostly crap. Except for guetta's. Quite fun actually.

Christmas Card Idea

My current project is to create a Christmas E-Card (hello 2002!) using Flash. I heard the transcript of this transmission on QI and would very much like to do something with it. Although it’s so hard to hear what he’s saying through most of it, I think it might be better to just recreate it myself or even do something completely different. 
This time round, I’ve decided to stay well clear of any kind of character design. So I’m thinking right now of doing some kind of vector based animation where the elements will come in as I ( the astronaut) describe them. Like this: http://vimeo.com/48880375

Storyboard

This is the storyboard for the upcoming animation. It was supposed to be an entry to a competition to be chosen as one of the 8 animations to be played during an award ceremony (the IDI Graduate Awards that were held in LSAD). But unfortunately I missed the deadline. But I am continuing it alongside my other projects/ college work. 

Ident Animation

This is the finished product of the ident project. I was inspired by the mult-icoloured paper stars I have in my room to create my name and logo out of many different colour papers. Which actually suited me down to the ground because I do love to make things rather than just creating something on the computer.

EVERYTHING

This a 3D paper form piece I created in response to the self-titled "paper engineer" Benja Harney. And then I worked on them in Photoshop just adding bold black lines which I think recreates a really slick, 2D design while still having the depth of a physical form.

Final Animation

Here it is! The finally finished animation! Drum rolllllll!

Everything's Ready!

Finally, every building, every sign, every puppet is ready to be filmed! We have 4 tables total set up in the hall where the city will be placed and filmed. We removed as much of the light as we could by blocking the windows with boards and turning off the hall lights so that we have as much control on lighting as possible. Here's som test pictures of puppets, the cityscape and signage.i

The rubble in front was made by just crushing dried clay. In the end this was mixed with earth and sand and bits of debris. 

We painted some of the buildings to try and create a greater illusion of depth. 

This is the stand we used to create an electric bill board. We put a phone into it with the Fred Willard credit.

 The Buildings once they had all the signs put on them.

So everything is ready and NOW we start filming!

29/04/13 Bus Stop and Cityscape

This weekend I set about creating our city backdrop.

This is just a small selection of the buildings I've made. I'm hopijng that we'll have more than we need so we can place some further behind and create a nice depth of field. The buildings are glued together in sets of 4-8. This way the skyline will be easily customizable so that we don't have to be repeating backdrops when we change shots.


I also built a wee bus stop set piece.

In this photo I was trying to see what it would look like in the shot we have planned. Looks good. yep.

Continuing to Make the Set

TOday, I've been continuing to create the set. Though thankfully we have a direction now. Our storyboard/ treatment file is ready so all we have to do now is dive in and create our wee universe!

Today I focused on 2 set pieces for our sequence that will swith up the perspective to break the title up a little. The first is a shop window. THe camera will be inside thyis window and Wall-E will pass by on the outside.

I glued a piece of aceteate to the back for a window. But I then decided that wasn't enough. I dragged it across tthe ground to make it look worn.

I then decided to add in shelves to obscure the view more.


Once this was done I got to work on the other change in perspective, which will actually give us a look through Wall-E's eyes. As we see with his eyes, he will be picking up a few objects with credits on them. It took me a few attempts to get it right. Most were too big to make any difference in the view. Others weren't true to the film. I got it in the end though.

This piece mounts onto the lens. 

This, though accurate of Wall-E's eyes, aren't what he actually  sees.

This was also inaccurate of his visor.

This is the visor that will be used! It's [sort of] digitalized  and it's got the correct shape.