Animation Tests

A animation test for the first shot of the raven project.

It was really a test just to see how to draw up the wings. Thank god for youtube and to all those people that have a thing for filming birds in slow motion. I like the results, so now I just have to look into inking the animation, colouring the animation and creating some follow through for the tail feathers.

Toon Boom

I got it, you want it?

Heroes Posters Complete

I ran a little late with these as I probably spent longer on them than I should have. Kofi didn't seem to mind however as they came out really nicely. I'm quite proud of them. It was a challenge to come up with an adult character in the same style as the boy, but some how comic book it.

Never the less, I am still happy with the designs and the variation in the colours of the posters. Now they are in Kofi's faithful hands for mapping on to his modeled posters for the bedroom of the Kid.

Buildings

Ive FINALLY finished drawing up the buildings primarily for the fly through. It took me days, nay weeks. I am however so stoked with the results. Hopefully this post is pretty self explanatory. Created in Photoshop with home made textures (Thank god for unfinished kitchen extensions).

Big Ben
The London Eye
St Pauls

The Globe Theatre
The Tower of London

Collapse Test

I've recently completed a lot of the building images for the Raven Introduction. So I thought I'd have a quick go a the Tower collapse test. Here are my results.

I'm not happy with the shake after the first tower drop, it needs to be smoother. But still not bad for an initial test.

EDIT: Showed the test to sophie, whom loves the pop up card approach to the animation. She also agrees with the first tower fall not looking right and suggests toning down the movement in the first shake.

Heroes 1.0. Update

Hey Hey,

Kofi has asked me to develop a superhero and create some posters to be dotted around the room for the short. They however have to be completed quickly as he wants to begin rendering in a week. This should be accomplishable as one of my all time passions is creating and drawing super heroes.

I'll keep you posted.

Portrait Shot Composition

So I played about with the Portrait show, rendered it out as an alpha and imported to After Affects.

I created the back wall in PhotoShop, and played with some After Effects particle dynamics to create the dust. The compositing was really quite fun, and after completing the one shot, I feel like I can start to visualize the end result.

Portrait Test

The first shot I wanted to really work on was the Portrait drop shot, In the animatic the shot itself was just a swing and drop which looked unprofessional but was fine for the animatic. Instead I decided it would be good practice to try and incorporate 3d into my 2d introduction. First I had to model my portrait.

I started by creating the portrait itself, using the same style as the animatic. Then I went forward to model the frame, keeping it simple. I then experimented briefly with materials finally deciding on a Anistropic with edits to the ambient and reflectivity. And finally to create a hand drawn effect I added a toon outline shader. However the setting were too clumsy and it just wasn't floating my boat.
Instead I played with lighting starting with an atmospheric light and lowering the intensity. This gave the desired cartoony effect but completely drained the reflectivity and shine of the frame. So again I lowered the intensity, and added some Area lights.

Below is a play blast of the frame dropping, I shall move on to composition tests when im fully happy with the animation.

EDIT: Played about with the speed of the piece. Still a little too slow.