Sunday 29 November 2009



I made this short test of a armeture interacing with some folidge.. im going to make the head tomorow when we get some fimo and i have yet to finish off the clothes.


I cant write a big essay like Hayley but we have all been working very hard mainly on set building so far. tomorow morning we will be assigning shots in the shcedule for people to animate.


Grace

Hello peeps! -Bloggery by Ben...

Hello there all u fine specimens, im takin th time to finally write sum stuff here; hope u enjoy... Id like to start by saying this is my first propa blog entry cos computers scare me sumwhat, so here i am facing my fears...
Ok, a big hand to dave (n james) for th animatic, looks wicked, tho it was a shame we cudnt hav all got stuff in th final cut, i do think havin dave focus on it has helped it 2 look unified and entirely awesome.. Whilst on th subject of big hands; i thought ur big hand was great james; tho what did i kno?
Onto the set; those photos grace took look great, they really wowed me and it made all th work on trees n stuff seem worthwhile, and i kno it can look even better! The mini planks also look great dave, realistic lookin and cheap; good stuff, i might hav to get involved.. Simialarly th boat looks very much like a boat; jus what we need!
To hayley; that post was long; u hurt my brain, but im gona get revenge by tellin u a really long n borin story nex time i see u! And th nite sky outside my window has a kinda dull orangey pink glow, which diffuses into grey as it gets higher- not in fact black, tis one of th reasons i love cities...
Cool, so what hav i been doin? Panicing, fretting and general shilly shallying aside, ive been visitin hardware shops, doin trees(see graces pix) and general foliage, making puppets, trying to solve issues to do with th puppets and doin (finally) a bit of animatin with th puppets..
Old skool hardware shops r great, if u hav one nearby, go (its free 2 get in) and has a rare breed of shopkeeper(one who knows his business), worth it for th hard stares alone...
The trees i made using an ancient technique i got from an old white dwarf, scaled up, and i think they look great(wire wrapped round with bandages soaked in plaster), the bandages n plaster really kinda resemble bark when painted n lit rite... Leaves n foliage made out of trusty cartridge paper painted green- ok, but obviosly not quite as good as jamess bought stuff, which defnitly adds a good quality of realism...
The puppets hav been fun, from plan to drillin th wire to puttin th lil buggas together- and then watchin em grow foam muscles and plastacine arses...sniff...its been emotional..
On a technical note th slightly thicker of the two wires(we had) is best for th armatures(16mm i think..) and feet can b annoying.. I went first for wooden ones(solid enuff for screwin down), but these died on my first test. Ther gluin again now, but i dont think ther gona b as good as these ones i made from wire(see pic attached). What i like bout these ones is ther flexible and r movable in two parts like all good feet(see toe tapping man in vid attached).
Which brings me to th test vids; a walk, a walk cycle and a bit of a mess around to punish the puppet and see what mad positions u can make him do. What i got most from these vids(sorry ther a bit shaky and blurry- no tripod, used an eisel n frame blend was on..) was th need to fix positions for steps and to work in really small increments; there r quite a few more inbetweens needed.
Anyway, sorry for th long post, if u read it all, well done, let me kno what u think..if u skim read it; fair does i probly wudve too, let me kno what u think still.. Im excited bout 2moro, hope u all r 2, lets do this thang...big hugs....latas.

Ben

Friday 27 November 2009

What I've done this week (Hayley)

Here’s everything I’ve done this week

Painted a black background (I believe this is the same one shown in Grace’s picks). Adam C asked why it is black on Monday. Because a good portion of the animation is set outside at night. Looks outside window just to check for reference; yep the night sky is definitely black, not bright orange or any other colour. Why do I think a plain black background is the best rather than a mottled, 3 toned streaky painted tree one? Because for one its cheaper less paint is used, takes less time and it gives the viewers eyes a rest.

I believe giving the viewers eyes a rest is the most important thing in that list. The background will probably be out of focus and we will have the 3D trees we have made and the 2D trees and plants before it anyway. I believe you can have too many patterns. If you decorate a room and everything is covered in different patterned material it looks garish and your eyes can’t rest. I believe by painting the board 3 different colours you’re adding another pattern to an already heavily patterned set (metaphorically looking at the different trees, grasses, rocks as individual patterns). Also the 2D trees David made out of cardboard will stand out nicer against a solid background, they’d merge and be lost in a 3 colour background when the camera’s out of focus and we might as well have painted them directly on so thus to me they would become a bit pointless. James’ refuses to agree with me on this and wants to paint over my background with streaky trees and no one has joined in on this discussion so I think we should have a vote, because I’m not going to back down this time unless more than one person disagrees with me.

Second thing I’ve done this week was paint David’s 2D trees brown for him while he was busy with the animatic. There the flat cardboard trees that I’ve seen already posted in this blog.

Third thing I’ve done was I went out and sourced the materials for the characters clothes. I now regret how much I bigged up John Lewis’s material department down here and there free samples. When I went in on Tuesday they had absolutely nothing of any use. Why wasn’t there stuff of any use? Because all they had was very elasticity cotton material that’s very difficult to sew, overly thick curtain material, lots of patterned Christmas material and tonnes of shiny satin for ball gowns and wedding dresses. In short they had nothing that real clothes are made of. They then upset me further when they refused my 25% off staff discount card because even though it’s in date they’ve changed the system this month to a new card. So I had to have a polite moan at customer services where they did give me the discount on the fabric glue I got. David has a record of what I’ve purchased for the project and I’ve still got the receipts so I’m not going to list prices here today.

So I went off to fabric land (my apologies to grace who suggested I go there in the first place) had fun in there off cut bucket and came back with a bounty of some nice lumberjack coat material some denim etc.

Now Adam C did come in on Monday slightly confused on our justifications for using material clothes so I’m going to answer everything I can recall him mentioning with my opinion. I can’t directly quote anything he said but this is the gist of what I remember him asking and saying and since he’s marking I believe it important to answer every point.

None of you has any tailoring ability, has made miniature clothes before etc? Wrong. I personally have a 12 week dress making course behind me. I cosplay as a hobby. I make my costumes from scratch. I have come 1st place in three cosplay competitions. Have appeared in Neo magazine twice, am in the new cosplay fever book, and have been featured in a long list of websites and smaller publications here and abroad. I have more tailoring ability then the average Joe and I believe yourself, so please don’t make out tiny costumes are impossible complicated things to me. I have also made small scale costumes before I will put up proof of all this if I have time by the end of writing all this or later.

Why not just glue the clothes to the armatures? Well just to say I took your advice to humour you I tried using fabric glues on the material when I tested out techniques on my Neil Armature. I didn’t personally think it would be a good idea in the first place as I know glue on fabric rips easily same problem with iron hemming glues from previous cosplay experience, and stitches are normally the only thing to do for a lasting hold as well as neatness. This is because a glue seam never seems to be straight as the glue absorbs and spreads (like ink bleeds on paper) into the fabric at random along the line. I could appreciate the speed of this idea but when I tested this on Neil it just meant his shirt looks naff because the glue has warped the material causing it to curl and loose shape.

Jordan asked if material and the way Neil was slightly soft (he’s wrapped with wadding along the plastercine in the inside) would cause ripples and unwanted movement during filming? I have already thought about the fabric appearing to boil problem. The jeans are made out of denim and I have sewed them to fit Neil perfectly. The denim is tough so it won’t boil like a soft fabric, if at all and bends nicely and handily gives added strength and support to the armature.

Now with the shirt and this soft wadding beneath it also has anti boiling properties. This is because when you move Neil it doesn’t matter how much you brush or accidently knock your finger against his shirt it will pop back out again to the same position. Like when you squeeze a soft bear toy, it will pop back out again into the form it was before. If your bear was made out of plastercine it wouldn’t pop back out again at all.

This is what surprises me the most out of all the questions bombarded by teachers and please correct me if I’m wrong no one asked the obvious which was why did no one decide to make the clothes out of plastercine? So I’m going to ask myself that question to be completely thorough. We could of I suppose, but it would have cost a lot of money in different coloured plastercine to achieve the same range that we currently have with the material. So basically I see it as a money thing, bargain bucket at fabric land, very cheap. Perry’s plastercine, extremely limited colour range and not cheap. Ok we may have been able to mix the plastercine colours together for the same amount of money, but our range would have been limited. Also material is a mass reduction in weight and stress upon the armature skeleton. I made Neil keeping weight in mind so he didn’t become top or bottom heavy and thus when I make his shoes out of fimo he should be supported by them fine, with plastercine balls as feet he can still stand up rather happily at the moment.

No one has asked either what about strobing? That’s the effect you get sometimes on TV when someone wears a stripy shirt if flashes and causes strange patterns. Well none of the fabric has strobed at all on the camera. However I am a little worried because when I photographed Neil his jeans did rainbow a bit in a couple of pictures. However we think this is due to my camera’s display and it is a much outdated low res (4mp) digital camera. Though if they do strobe on David or Grace’s cameras what I will do is run over it with a blue pen because what will be causing it are the white threads in the fabric against the dark blue. Problem solved.

Another thing I would like to highlight is apparently something has been said along the lines I have taken all the milliput, plastercine, and fimo from the stop motion room and thus this apparently slowed down any armature progress today. Now I’m not going to point fingers at people, but I’m not going to keep my mouth shut if I have been used as a scape goat or accused of being a thief either. Firstly I have taken only a golf ball piece of plastercine, from that giant block on the desk and I asked James’ permission first and he Ok’d it and David and Grace where there to at the time.

Now it annoys me when it has been said I have taken all the fimo. What fimo? The only fimo we have ever had in that room are the tiny squares I bought myself from Perry’s. One brown square for Matt Ord’s guitar, one flesh tonne for Neil’s head and hands, and one black square for Neils boots. These squares are tiny and the only reason they appeared in the room was I was asking people if it was ok I use them to make the guitar and to test the flesh tone on Neil. I’d only bought tiny squares because no one had agreed on what we were using for the faces and hands, because everyone had their own idea so I wasn’t going to waste loads of money on fimo if no one had agreed or tested it. So this large amount of fimo that was enough to build the entire cast was never purchased by me or stolen by me. All I can see is that someone has got it into their head I had bought enough for an entire cast of characters and run off with it. No someone needs to go out and buy it still, I would have bought loads on Tuesday but no one had agreed as a group what we where using, so I’d only bought one square for Neil just to test it at the time. I’ve made that clear more than once this week.

So if any amount of anything has been stolen or taken from that room that meant you couldn’t finish your armatures today. It’s wasn’t me and not my soul fault either if they weren’t purchased in the first place. I also said I would be showing people how to make clothes for there armatures and finishing the clothes on the armatures that people didn’t want to dress themselves today. I went in today there at about 2ish there was no one about. Grace was leaving for the dentist and no armatures on the desk other then bill who isn’t finished enough for me to dress. I can’t just make clothes without the actual armature the clothes are being made for in front of me as they are all slightly different shapes and sizes and I sew parts onto the armatures as well.

I’m sorry if the above sounds as a rant, it is not intended to be malicious in any way or anything personal, I just don’t want people turning around to me on Monday and saying it’s my fault the armatures are not finished.

I don’t have time to put up photo’s today as I have to catch the train now home and it’s a half an hour job to upload on photos on this blog, so I will upload them with captions on Monday probably with anyluck.

Hayley Warner

Thursday 26 November 2009

Making stuff...

heres my atempt at makin the boat, i know what your thinkin, its too small and its made of cardboard...and you would be right, but i thought we could maybe use card as a base for paper mashe and then paint it or somethin; and about the size, well yeah i'll have to make a bigger one if people think it'll work. otherwise i guess another option is to buy a modle boat, but not sure where we would be able to get one to fit our specific requierments. any suggestions?



heres how bill is commin on...


I thought i would test out the floorboards for the cabin set, i used PVA glue to stick the single plie to cardboard and then painted it. i think its turned out well and feel we should use this method for the cabin. what does everyone think?



i stole James's pictures off the blog and had a little play about with the colours and saturation, this is what i came out with.

Here i added more of a green tint, trying to emulate the pirates of the carribien screen shot we used as reference in the pitch.


In this one i added a bit more blue to the last and toned down the saturation.


feedback for grace:
yeah those photos were a bit rushed today would be good to spend a bit more time and thought on them tomorrow. One thing i notice from the photos as they are, is that the background trees look too obviously 2D so we might have to make sure there lit less or/and more out of focus. otherwise i'm really liking the way the set is looking.

~ Dave

Today
















Today we carried on with set building in general. Dave and I done some test shots with layers of trees and test lighting. Feedback appreciated. I want to do more lighting experiments with filters, shadows ect tomorow.



Tomorow i want to know if anybody else is going into uni, mainly James ( i text you )as he has the putty stuff for the armiture heads (and beads for eyes) and i want to make mine tomorow i am going into uni for about 11/12 leaving at 2 for dentist, will be in the stop mo room if you read this before tomorow James let me know if you have that stuff ect otherwise i shall just use plastacine for the time being.
Grace

Wednesday 25 November 2009

hey peeps,

good work james, i love the top right one although it migh look a bit too tranquil and not quite creepy enough, looks awesome none the less though.

yeah grace, i should be up for that tomorrow. i'll see you at ron-puter's information download.

i've been tryin to get the shot list, duration, etc. sheet done tonight. its not gonna be completely finished for tomorrow but the bulk of its out of the way. also, i've worked a little more on Bills armature, tis getting there.

~ Dave

yo

Hey guys all is looking pretty good. James did you get that latex stuff?that could be good for the heads/faces maybe then we could add mouths, like Adam C was sayin' about plastacine with latex over it? and i think we have to have abit of lip sync n doubt wer guna get round to makin crocs ect. Also are we all going to the other photo tutorial dec 2nd i think tis?could be very helpfull if everybody knows the same amount of info on the cameras before we start shooting/ whilst we are shooting, will make life easyer.

Also i am planning on going into jm46 between rons lessons and after to do more set building hope you all can make it :)

Grace

Eat Your Greens...

Here is a very quck picture I snapped of our set today. It is not completed yet, and the photo is a wee bit blurry cos I didn't use a tripod but you get the idea. The content for now isn't important... I was messing about with digital grading in Paint Shop Pro to see what kind of hue, saturation and brightness we wanted. Take a looksy... (clicky = biggy).


Ok so we have from top to bottom, left to right:

- No adjustments
- Darkend with heightened contrast and a blue filter... simulates night
- Tinged with green... moist looking
- Sort of a lim greeny/yellow hue... sort of looks verdant and swamp-like
- Slight desaturation and pale blue overlay... bathed in a tranquil moonlight
- Almost entirely desaturated with hints of greenery... less vibrant, not as inviting

I don't know which I prefer of the above but these are just a few of many options... we'll have the addition of physical filters on-set as well so we could achieve pretty much any colourisation we desire, this was only a quick experimentation.

- James

Tuesday 24 November 2009

I can't think of a witty title... Armature Test

Sorry its a bit late James, heres the test animation you did today.




~ Dave (the post) James (the vid)

Sunday 22 November 2009

feedback and what i've been up to...

Regarding the real .vs. hand made trees… I think what anon. meant was that sticks look like small trees not that the trees we’ve made look too small. I think it might be good to use a combination of the two. As mentioned before, Steven brought in some drift wood that would fit in well with the setting of our animation, but then again if this in turn doesn’t fit with the overall materiality of the set then it might be best to stick with the hand made ones.

Give him a big hand...
That hand is awesome. Not sure how to do the joints though. I just looked over a book I’ve got on stop motion and I’m really not sure how they do it, it doesn't mention anything about it as far as I can see. I know that now days they use latex a lot more, which would solve that problem. I think it might just be a case of smoothing over the cracks when using plastacine.

Shoppin' for Fishin'...
I can’t think of anything else we might need at the moment.

2D trees for the background...
James mentioned the other day about the possablity of using 2D trees to create further depth in the background, so I’ve made a few to see how they go.


Heres a test model of bills head…


adam mentioned it might be hard to animate a big character like the current design, so heres another possible design for bill, let me know what you think?



At Uni on Wednesday (I think it was) me and James went skip diving for materials. One thing we found was a box made of really thin wood, which will be perfect for floor boards and wood panels in the cabin. I was thinking we could maybe just stick them on to a cardboard structure, as it would be easy to make. I might test this out on Monday, unless anyone had any other ideas for the cabin.

And finally, I don’t know if anyone’s checked evil as sin lately but there’s a camera and lighting tutorial on wed so it would be great if the bulk of the set was done by then, so that they can help us with lighting the set in specific.

25th november
level 2
2 groups
10 to 12
jm046
dslr workshop

--------------------

2nd december
level 2 and 3
1 group of puppeteers only
10 to 12
jm046
studio lighting workshop


~ Dave

Shoppin' for Fishin'

I'm off to HobbyCraft this afternoon and just wondered if anyone can add any supplies we need to my below list. This stuff will be for both set building and armature construction. I'll try to keep the costs down cos while not overly expensive there it does add up. So I am interested in getting:

  • Balsa wood/foam core (for armatures)
  • Modelling foliage/grass
  • A craft knife that actually cuts
  • A big sheet of green card (this may seem unecessary cos we could just paint a bit of card green, but it's worth it as consistancy of colour is key to getting a clean edge.
  • Some latexy type stuff I've used before which is like a 2 part mixing thing that you just sculpt onto a form and it sets but is entirely flexible (wow, that was clear).
  • Sundry tools that we may need.
  • Fimo/clay..?

I may or may not get all or none of the above, but that is what we basically need.

As I say I'll keep cost in mind but I'm not too concerned if I dont get money back for some of the tools etc, as this is all stuff I'd happily pay for and use myself after we've finished the project.

Can anyone else add to this list..?

-James

Animatic Feedback

Hiya

Client has passed feedback on to me regarding your animatic, I have emailed it to each of you.

If you have trouble accessing it check with another member of your team.

On the whole it was very positive, read/discuss/crack on...fast

Jordan

PS - REMEMBER TO PUT YOUR NAME IF YOU POST

Saturday 21 November 2009

Give Him a Big Hand..!

Hey guys,

So after finally finishing lockdown 1 (yay) I could once again set sail on the good ship Hey Negrita, destination Fishin'.

We are in desperate need of puppets to be able to start animating. Our main jungle set is on its way to completion, but we can't animate without characters. So we need to make that our next priority.

Today I made a large scale hand armature for use in our close up shots, of which there are many. Eventually it'll be covered in Plasticine to hide the armature of course. Below is a quick articulation test I created using it:

(Forgive the compressed quality of the video, I couldn't upload it in any larger file format).



Or click here for a bigger version of the above.

Update: Ok So I have covered the above armature in flesh tone Plastacine, but the annoying thing is whenever the joints are articulated the Plastacine 'rips' apart. Does anyone know how to prevent this..? I've always wondered when watching Aardman stuff how they stop this from happening. I image we just have to let it rip, and then smooth the plastacine over the gaping tear. I'll continue experimenting though...

-James

better late than never... i hope...

its probably a bit late in the game to suddenly reallise that i have never done a walk in stop motion before, but thats exactly what has happened. so heres my first steps (in stop motion)...although it needs alot of work, i really enjoyed animating, twas very refreshing. any constructive crit would be muchos welcome.



~ Dave

Tuesday 17 November 2009

Budget Sheet

Hey everybody,

I'm putting together a budget sheet, so can everyone let me know what they've brought so far, the reason for purchase (just briefly as i presume we will be asked) and the price. Keep all receipts and hopefully you’ll get your money back.

~ Dave

Sunday 15 November 2009

Hello people. that stuff your looking at dave is cool, my boyfreind can get some for free backhome and post it to me but then you will have to waite a fue days for it.so its upto you if you want to buy it and start making or waite but time is of teh essance.

Also in regards to Hayleys reply to the no named post, Hayley is compleatly right, we are making tres as the trees of the environment our set is baised in cannot be found in England, and finding sticks that look like magroves would be long. we do however have many sticks and bits of wood we have collected to be the fallen trees/logs.

Grace.

Polyfoam


I went to B&Q on Friday and there was this polyfoam board for £3.78 for a sheet 120cm x 50cm, its about 2inches thick and I recon it would be good for creating mounds or hilly terrain for the set. In the animatic there are a few shots where this will be essential. Also, I was thinking of building the bulk of bill's armature with it; as its light wait and easy to craft. what does everyone think? I didn't buy any yet, but was thinking about going back on Monday.

~Dave

Friday 13 November 2009

Hello whoever had left that post would you kindly leave your name at the bottom, this has been mentioned more then once in this blog already.

The trees for starts are not small, they are in proportion to the characters which will be six inches tall, if you walk into the stop motion room and pick up one of the cardboard characters and put them next to the tree, you will see they are in proportion and that there is a nice variety of shapes and sizes. Also swamp trees such as mangroves are thin and not big thick forest trees. Also if you look at the wire frame of the one I was making with me in the photo against my body size you can see its not small and once it has been built up it will appear larger and thicker.

Why haven't we used sticks and wood. Well if that had been suggested earlier we would have considered using more of such things, as it stands its cold and wet outside, and the trees are so big in the parks you cant reach to snap bits off. There is also the fact of the amount of wildlife we did not want to bring back. I'm sure wood worm, wooly bugs, and silver fish would not be appreciated in the animation room and I'm sure disinfectant would not be claimed back on the budget. Though I think the largest argument would be we all like making things, and all prefered making things from scratch to suit our needs perfectly then waisting hours in the cold then looking for that perfect branch.

If you go into the stop motion room you will see that Steven has sourced some dried wood we are using in the video. I apologise there are not photos of those on here but I can't document what everyones doing at once on here thats their own responsibility. Also we felt making these style trees meant are requirements are met to match it up with the animatic, you simply don't get mangroves and swamp trees growing outside the university. If we where making Robin Hood fair enough. I feel the trees made so far also show level of proffesionalism and effort.

If this does not answer your question whoever you maybe then I am willing to discuss further, but I feel I have said enough to prove the point. I would appreciate if other members of the group signed on and left their thoughts on this.

~Hayley Warner

trees

any reason why your trees are not made from sticks and twigs?

they really look like small trees

Tuesday 10 November 2009

10th Nov 2009...

A nice productive day. cheers for recording the work Hayley. i'm really liking the way the trees are turning out, can't wait to see them painted.

The animatic is looking alot clearer now and i think theres only the cabin and end scene to finish now.

~Dave

Tuesday 10th November 2009 Group Progress
















Hello everyone Hayley here ^_^. I have lots of photos here I’ve uploaded but that’s because we have all had a very productive day. Just about everyone minus one person (Laura Warner – is she ok I haven’t seen her in a while?) turned up today and everyone’s worked their socks off being there nearly all of the day, David and I were the last ones to leave the basement at about 7.30pm and the others had gone only shortly before that.

David and James focused on the animatic mainly throughout the day, and Steven did some frames for it this morning and I had a little play with the editing this evening. Grace, Steven and I though mainly focused on tree building today, and went shopping together to buy PVA glue and paint, brushes etc, all bought at the cheapest possible prices. Ben came in today as well but went home to work as he had access to more useful tools at home so it was easier for him to work there. Even though the group split into two most of the day into a set team and animatic finishing team so that we were getting the most possible work done, we have all been talking to each other and giving feedback on the different parts.

I apologise for the shoddy labelling as I did it in paint, but I felt it was useful to label all the photos to show who did what. My apologies also to James’ and Ben as I did most of the photos this evening and didn’t get a chance to photo you both, but I think I’ve made it clear enough in this you both had been there today.
~Hayley Warner




































Me and Ben made some tests trees sunday. Grace.

Monday 9 November 2009

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkEcCZQeTyM
Hey guys this is a link for armatures, how to make them if anybody wants to have a go at it for testing as we have started testing trees and that, i will post photos of tree building later.

Also as for meeeting tomorow is 1pm good for everybody at jm46?we need to make a list of things we need 2 buy for set building and go out shopping together, nobody forget their wallets! we will give adam recips to get our moneys back via the budget.

Grace.

Sunday 8 November 2009




Hey guys, sum awesome swamp pix to peruse, for tree n general set buildin reference...

From Ben.