Extra Terrestrial Cattle Mutilation

More fun with motion -

Going Through The Motions...

Just started playing around with Motion on the Macs at work, it seems like a really good program! Here's a little alien I made, more to come soon...

Supersonic Loops

Here are some of the videos I took to the Supersonic interview, as ideas for visuals that could be projected whilst a band plays. I didn't get the job, but I still kinda like these loops, especially the Melt Banana one.

Melt Banana Loop from Kez Whelan on Vimeo.

Swans Loop from Kez Whelan on Vimeo.

Calvin Chimp

What if primates had their own pretentious perfume adverts...?

Calvin Chimp from Kez Whelan on Vimeo.

Showreel - First Edit

Here's the first rough edit of my showreel. It will most likely be changed around a bit before I've settled on the final version.

Showreel from Kez Whelan on Vimeo.

Client Project Animated Storyboard

Here's an animated storyboard for my client project -

Client Project Storyboard (Silent) from Kez Whelan on Vimeo.

It's currently without sound as I still have a few things to work out with the script as well as the soundtrack. The animation is also pretty crude, but I think this gives a good indication of how my idea will look.

The Mighty Riff VS Terror Torrent

Here's another short animated storyboard for the simulated client project -



This idea doesn't fit as neatly into 20 seconds as the other one does, and would obviously be a lot harder to film. For this reason, I think I'd be more likely to go with the first idea, just because it's a lot simpler. However, I'm glad I finished this storyboard, purely for my own satisfaction!

Animated Storyboard

Here's an animated storyboard for the first file sharing idea, the one I already drew up a rough storyboard for -



The idea fits quite neatly into 20 seconds (this one clocks in at 24, but 4 seconds won't be too hard to trim off. I doubt the final film will have the 'The End' bit either), and stands as a solid little story. The music in this one is a Boards Of Canada, but this is used only to illustrate the kind of music I want to have in the final one and give a taste of the atmosphere I wanted to create. For the final one, I would create my own piece of (non-copyright!) music.

I'm still considering other ideas at this point, but this one does appeal to me. I'll try doing a storyboard for the second idea, and also keep trying to think of new ideas.

It's Kyle Cabinet!

A reeeeeeeeeeeeally rough idea for a character -



I'm still not really sure if it's a good idea for the character to be a literal visual representation of a 'file', I toyed with the idea of just making it a file with googley eyes and legs, but I couldn't really make it look very likeable at all. Then again, how likeable is Kyle Cabinet here? I'm not too sure...

First Blog Of The New Year!

And a happy new year to you all! Here's a little visual aid as to how mine was spent -

But enough of this frivolity, lets sink our teeth into a tasty hard work sandwich.
After several projects last term didn't actually come to fruition, it's probably a good idea to look at why. The Pixelation videos turned out fine, other than one me and John were working on which was probably a little too ambitious to finish off in the time (who knows, maybe we could have done, but with other projects, a social life and a need for sleep, realistically maybe it was a bit much...).




The film was going to be about a sketch artist who can't really sketch very well, and just as he gets frustrated by this, he gets sucked inside his own crude sketches, and then goes on a little adventure. We got as far as taking all the photos for the artist starting off in 'real life', and then him sticking his hand into the paper and watching it turn into a cartoon, and then him jumping in and landing in the animated world, but no further! There was a further plan to get him onto a little cartoon boat, and then voyage across seas of ink, but this sadly never happened. Even though it won't be marked now, I'd still like to finish it off, as it'd look pretty cool!

The One shot films weren't quite as successful, partly because our group could never get together. This term it might be a good idea to make group meetings a higher priority, but I think for this one it was maybe because we were all a little uninspired to begin with, and when we did start having some cool ideas we were all too stuck into the Flash animations and it was too late to give them the time they deserved.

Finally, here's my presentation for the last term! I decided not to use Power Point, because pixelation is way more satisfying, heh! The different projects are meant to be viewed in between each part of the presentation, but you'll get the gist of it. Enjoy!

Pixelation

Here are our first attempts at pixelation, the first is the video I edited along with some jaunty music I found on a CD lying next one of the computers in the Waverley Building, the other is the same video but accompanied by Agoraphobic Nosebleed's 'Mosquito Holding Human Cattle Prod', for my own amusement more than anything else. I think the first piece of music fits a little better, but the second isn't a total disaster (more like a partial disaster...)





We learnt many valuable things about the art of stop-motion here, like not to move the camera unnecessarily, not to alternate between portrait and landscape shots, the fact that things have to move really gradually for it not to look jerky, etc. On a personal note, I learnt that the inside of the bins outside the building smell really bad.

Lego Rodents!

Me and John wandered over to the Lego workshop at Waterstones a few days ago, and hours of slowly nudging Lego blocks culminated in this -



I edited this at home with Pinnacle Studio rather than in uni on Premier, which had it's ups and downs. Knowing how to use Pinnacle Studio, where everything is and what all the little icons do, is obviously very helpful, but I'm sure that I'll figure Premier out given time. It would have been a lot quicker to edit (and possibly have made a smoother looking movie) on Premier, as Pinnacle doesn't have the handy little function where you can tell it that a series of photos are meant to be played as one continuous chunk, so I had to drag and drop each photo in and then shorten it...which took some time!

No mice were harmed in the making of this movie. However, I almost tripped up a small child.

Whiteboard Animation

Here's a compilation of everyone's animations, I think the one I worked on is about the 9th one on there. It's the one where the box morphs into a little fat alien, wiggles about a bit, then realises he's actually too lazy to walk, so sends out a call to his extra-terrestrial buddies and gets them to beam him up and over the tree.
This was a lot of fun to do, and has made me appreciate the hard work that goes into animation even more (I'm sure Disney have never resorted to conveniently placed UFOs to transport their characters about)! I'd love to give this another go with more time on my hands, it's really satisfying to see characters you've drawn actually moving around.