Pitching

Last Friday we had what is called a pre-pitch here at the school. We had a chance to pitch ideas for our bachelor films and try out pitching before the actual pitch which is sometime in June. My pitches could have gone better, there's no denying that, but it was great fun and I'm glad I went and did it.

I now have the opportunity to work on my ideas, based on the feedback I received at the pre-pitch or ditch the ideas and come up with brand new ones. Still mulling it over.

Anyway, thought I'd show some pitch material here. The first pitch was Bunto, a story I've had in the back of my head since the first year. It stars a giant childlike forest spirit and a girl made of mist. The major problem I have with this one is that the relationship between the two needs work for the climax to grab the audience. Anyway, art:

My second pitch was basically a kung fu western. It was called 'The Dumpling'. A lone warrior (kind of a samurai) with a delicious dumpling head finds himself surrounded in a starving backwater town. There would be plenty of action and cool shots. This idea seemed to engage my classmates more than the first, sparking their imaginations. The problem with it is that it could easily just be a halfminute joke which isn't really bachelor film material. So unless I find some way to give it a deeper meaning and story, this could get ditched (for the bachelor pitch, anyway).

Jonas bm

Project Q

Long overdue update here. Right after the Christmas holiday we started working in pairs of one animator and one CG artist to make a 5 second quadruped shot. We worked together on the initial design after which the CG artist tightened up any loose ends and took it into 3D. i had the pleasure of working with the very talented Frederik Storm.

The creature we ended up with is called the Royal Boose, a strange bird/moose hybrid. Here's the final shot, uploaded by Frederik:

Jonas bm





Pantomime and Dialogue

That's all for now.

Jonas bm 

Update Time Again

Man, I'm getting terrible at updating. Here are my assignments since last time.

For this one we had to come up with a character, complete with backstory and everything. My guy is an old prospector, who thinks everyone is after his gold.

Here, my guy is an eager private investigator's assistant running from the mob.

This was my midway exam. Guy sneaks in, sees something out of the corner of his eye, is startled, and runs off.

And this last thing is a collaboration between the animators and the CG artists. It's a trailer for a different take on the movie 'Citizen Kane' - a very different take :D I animated the bit from when he yells Grossbutt to when they are about to go over the waterfall.

That's it for now.

Jonas bm

Much Needed Update

It would appear that I've skipped a few updates. Time to rectify.

First some walks and runs from a while back:

Next, the end result of our one-week course on rigging - just a little taste of the subject.

And lastly, something for a TAWmonkey challenge. Theme here was 'Jimmy'.

That seems to be it for right now.

Jonas bm

Introducing Hogan

After the floursack we went on to a human-like character rig, These assignments are from the last two weeks, two short exercises, weightshift and a swing (a wimpy one) and a longer performance centered around a bow. My guy is a waiter who's used to waiting on celebrities, but has to wait on a farmer and his pig who got rich finding truffles. He is annoyed and very unimpressed.

Jonas bm

The Floursack Returns

Yeah, much like the first year, we got to work wuth a floursack. Had a really good time with these assignments. First we have the sack drop to the floor, then a hopcycle and lastly a short performance, going from sad to shocked.

Jonas bm

The Luxo Lamp

These are from our second week, going from simple balls to a real rig. Hopcycles and a small performance.

Jonas bm

Update Time!

Our final assignment from the first week, 'ball in a room'. We've moved to 3D, and so far it's going fine. More updates to come :D

Jonas bm

1st Year Exam

My first year exam. It was pass/fail, and I'm happy to say that I passed.

Jonas bm

Box Boy

The last thing I did for this school year. For 3 days we got to have fun with Maya.

Jonas bm

Color Class

Okay, it's been a while. There hasn't been much to share, really.

But this week we had color class with Tod Polson so here's some stuff:

Monkey in grayscale, then brown and blue:

Monkeys in split-complementary

and analogous color chords:

 Tea through the day

(morning, afternoon, evening):

We worked with acrylics and it was a lot of fun. Really looking forward to exploring color more from now on.

Jonas bm

Flash

Ah Ah.

So this week we were introduced to flash animation. Kind of a frustrating experience, though I didn't run into too many problems, just annoying obstacles - most of your time is spent fixing little things.

We started off with a lipsyncing exercise, using the replacement technique on mouth, hands and eyes. It was fun to try to make the most of a limited pallet. Fair warning: the clip we used has very bad language by most standards. Also, the first thing we did was design and draw a character in Flash to use for this execise (before knowing what the sound clip was, mind you). I call him 'Mediocre Mr. Moon'.

Next exercise was to make a character walk across the screen. We were given descriptions of our respective characters and started out by designing them. My character was 'a fat boy from France wearing sneakers in a hurry'. I had a lot of fun with this, especially the design.

Jonas bm

Escape Project - Done

The escape project has run for several months. We started with a class on story before Christmas, took it through storyboard, character design, etc.

And now, we've finally come around to animating the scene. The story is that our character, 'The Escapist', has been accused of murdering his master, the man who taught him the art. The 5 second scene takes place at his execution.

We worked in teams of two, one animator and one CG artist. I worked with Martin Zauner who did the background.

Jonas bm

Dance Animation

So this was a two week course. We had to animate a character dancing to a short piece of music. The cool thing was that we could choose any character. Some people had a lot of fun with this. I wound up created my own character, Eggshell. Had a lot of fun with him - might have to use him again for something else :D

The dance:

The dance with background:

A fun couple of weeks indeed.

Jonas bm

Animation Jam!!

!! indeed :D

The Animation Jam went for two weeks and we worked in groups of roughly 3 people (one group had 4). We took a short film from concept to finished product. It was quite the rollercoaster and certainly not the most laid back course we've had. I think it came out pretty good, though.

Made in collaboration with Natalia Marcos and Sirid Garff. Special thanks to Dionysis Douliakas for doing the rap.

Jonas bm

Layouts for Animation

Been a while.

After two weeks of taking it easy with some dialogue animation, we put animation aside to work on layout. We were given storyboards for a sequence from 'The Emperor's New Groove' that never made it into the film. We got two scenes/shots each to make layouts for. In my part, the story is that Kuzco put on a little 'play', showing the destruction of Pacha's village.

All in all, a good, challenging week and a nice change of pace. Had the most fun with the bottom one.

Jonas bm

You See? - Dialogue

We had two weeks for this assigment, and we were encouraged to take it easy, relax and have fun with it. We had the choice between four sound bytes, and I chose one lifted from 'Plan 9 from Outer Space', which I have sadly yet to see.

I really enjoyed the two weeks. The teacher was great (Mike Polvani) - the stories he could tell :D

Jonas bm

Character Design

A while ago we had two weeks of character design, which was really cool and fun. We started out with a warmup exercise, designing two characters foir an imagined ad campaign involving lightbulbs.

Then we got to work on a character design for a project we're doing with the CG class. The project is spread out over the year. We'll get to animating in a month or so.

Jonas bm

Birds Flying, Cows Invading

Somehow I keep forgetting to update this blog. These assignments are from some weeks ago. A short introduction to After Effects and Photoshop. A fun, challenging week.

First up, draw and color a superhero in Photoshop. I thought up my own hero, so there :D

Next putting a bird from a previous course into a world.

And lastly, the most fun assignment, I reckon, simply entitled: 'Close Encounter'. More of an enCOWnter, heh heh - you'll get it in a minute :D

And that was that week.

Jonas bm