Lucky Bunny Part 2

What I do with the Lego gift is the exciting part, and the extremely nerdy part. As an artist and animator I can't help but set up my gear on night and time lapsing the assembly of my new toy. What can I say?! Afterward I pump it into After Effects and use some of my skills in the digital realm to put it together into a pretty package, check it out below!

Enjoy!
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One lucky Bunny!

Well today just got even better, My friend Joe and his Dad Dan popped into my work this morning to drop off an unexpected gift, and check out the wicked wrap job!

We hung out at Devonian gardens last night after work and talked shop, Joe is planning on making his own science show to carry on what he begun at Beakerhead this year. I mentioned my LEGO collecting addiction cause I shook the box and I could tell what it was, the surprise was even better once I opened it!

WHAT?!?!?!?!? A Volkswagon Camper Van kit!!!!! Way too awesome, I am so stoked it is going to be difficult to get thru work not wanting to assemble this, alas I'll have to use the force.

Here is a quick After Effects project I put together today as a demo and for kicks and QAS. Check it out. I don't expect it'll get over 50,000 hits like the the video I launched last week, but I'm not counting anyway. lol.  If you want to see the AF Satori animation check it out below.

Week-end update 2, but wait there's more

On friday night I bought a ticket to the Landscape demo at Swinton's Art Supply. When I showed up the owner, Doug asked me if I liked Vodka. That was a trick question because before I knew it I had slammed back a few too many screwdrivers and thus was a screwed driver in that I couldn't drive him. lol.

Neil Patterson gave a demo and wisdom session to a full house. It was fun watching him work the crowd while working the paint. He's quick, that's what years of experience can do for a painter and not a drop on his outfit = pro. It was great hanging out with the Swinton's crew and reconnecting with Milo who gave me my first break at the Sugar Estate Gallery back in the day.

Before and after After Effects. lol. Thanks class for being awesome!

We began the advanced animation portion of the class after a brief review of the principles and functions of how after effects with key framing transform properties. I taught the students how to make their work more professional by using the 5 types of motion. In order to do this I demonstrated a variety of ways to adjust the velocity and behaviour of the keyframes using the graph editor as well as keyframe assistant etc.

We also launched the animated music video/novella I have been working at in my "spare" moments. It is done in After effects with scanned watercolour drawings. Take a look.  I am on the last week of art production for the Aboriginal Youth Animation Project and we are really behind, which is to be expected. Stress levels are rising as deadlines are quickly approaching but I am really looking forward to a long week-end so I can catch up on household chores where needed.

Hiding away working / painting myself into a corner

It should be no surprise that there hasn't been much noise from my end. If you haven't seen or heard from me, I've been hiding away working.

 Here is a ground shot of plasticine growing for my flick.

And a bit more as it progresses across the screen. Later I will drop in a background where the white is and put my animated wooden snake slithering by on top.

But first I have to scrape and clean. The plasticine. Will not fit back into the bucket from which it came.

Look at how full the bucket is. It took longer to clean it up then to make the animation.

I also decided to get rid of my animation table to create a bit more room so I can add another regular table. It made this much more space beside the bookshelf. Enough for my chair and....

 a wire shelf full of painting products, airbrush, canvas etc.

I have been working a tonne with After Effects. Here is a lens flare type thing I am working on for the intro.

Here is a shot of the space during the closing reception.

I had to move out of the +15 space during the Easter long week-end. It took some time but the traffic and parking were not bad since it was a holiday.

 I painted myself into a corner as I exited the space, leaving it feeling brand new.

 I took down the Epcor painting show(above) and the Calgary 2012 publication came out with my Skyline painting on the cover.
Also: My arts collective (Full Spectrum) got into Wreck. We will be doing an undersea kingdom installation in the basement of 807.

More to come, stay tooned.

SNACK TIME online

Going back in time, back to my animation project "SNACK TIME"

WATCH IT ON YOUTUBE CLICK HERE!

I got 'er done before my birthday and last night I uploaded it to youtube for your viewing pleasure.

There was lots of processing and outputting to be done since I last posted about this project so there are a lot of additions and improvements. Based on my limited time to finish the piece remaining, I had to remove the camera moves and lighting in 3D on all the flat scenes because the render time was outrageous! There were more food characters and whales to be animated and seeded, it may be something I have to go back and revisit. Otherwise I am happy the piece is done. There was a huge learning curve and I have a far better idea how to do a grant project like this. Special thanks to Cosmic Lurkn (click here for his Soundcloud) for the underlying soundtrack.

Snack Time, process is like eating

I continued on with the boy piece.

I ended up changing the initial order of events and made him eat a popcorn box of characters then follow it up with drinking the soda. This will become the impetus for the internal melting to skeleton stuff which I have to now move around a realign once everything with the boy melting layer is in place.

I also made a list of all the stuff I still needed to draw for the cartoon. I went to the studio  and put a couple of hours in drawing more stuff from a ketchup character to additional movie monster silhouettes to be added to the theatre portion. I still need to go and put in some time drawing more whales so that I can go into QAS and do some scanning at the start of the week.  There are still major areas I have not quite figured out but will come together as the animation develops further.

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While in the studio I also blocked in the figure for the Kali painting. Today when I go into the studio, I will not only draw more things for the animation, I will block in the figure and background with the first pass of my darks.

Snack time, but not time for a break

It may be gorgeous outside, but I am in an art prison, slave to my computer system so that I can get this project completed by the preferred date, my Birthday.

I am getting to the nitty gritty parts and the details. I started animating the characters faces within the walks. I spent most of the session working on the many elements that make up the theatre scene. I also compiled a list of artwork that still needs to be completed and tackled tonight so that I may scan and process them on Monday.

I spent the majority of time creating this theatre scene. the theatre and chairs are constructed in 3D space in After Effects so that later on, I can have a camera fly thru it. I plan on adding more movie monster characters as well as noisy theatre sounds, popcorn being chewed, coughing, shsssing etc. The audio will really help to fatten up the scene. It looks great in HD, but draft version is needed for this blog.

I hope to get this scene pretty much wrapped up today. This is the work done so far. I need to get the arms movies and the throat swallowing. I have a lot of timing to work out as well. Characters are going to reveal they are not walking on a red carpet but are in fact entering his mouth. Its the popcorn and soda that cause the skin to melt off the character.

More to come ;)

Snack time - making progress

Yesterday's full day session proved to be very effective.

I made a bunch of test movies to see them in real time and to give myself reference points of where to animate.

I made null joints on all the puppets and animated a variety of short loops to be tweaked and added to other compositions. Still works in process you can see some of the progress I made on my animation.

Here is a rocket ship made up of the body with a wiggle parameter on the scale and position property. I added the three tubes to the bottom and anchored them to a null object at the centre of the rocket ship body. Each flame is parented to each respective tube. The flames have sine wave effects put on them. The eyes of the character are anchored and have a different wiggle parameter on them. Later I will animate the rocket flying across the sky with a plume of smoke following the motion path behind it.

Here is a pink plane made by drawing, scanning and slicing up many parts in much and then assembling in After Effects the same way as the rocket ship above. I may make a new propellor and just have it flash on and off rather than how it is now. At about 15 seconds in there is a trap door in the back that opens and will drop some bombs over the landscape in the animation.

Here is a humpback whale that I animated that I will have floating up into the sky pulled by an air balloon and finally being dropped down into a movie theatre and squishing the the words "the end" or onto "intermission". I created null objects in the tail then put puppet pins on their left corners then used this piece of code as an expression for each:
n=thisComp.layer("name of null object") 

nullpos=n.toComp(n.anchorPoint);fromComp(nullpos); 

In this way, each pin on the object layer is attached to the named null object. I then created a hierarchy of the null objects by parenting them from one to another so that when I rotated one the others are affects along the hierarchy. 

Snack Time

No it hasn't been time to eat...

I've been slaving away all the while on finishing up an animation project I've been on for quite a while now. It is enough to make my hair grey.  Then while rendering out a test shot at lunchtime today................

CRACK!!!!

Enmax blew the electricity while they were working a block away!
I would have taken it as a sign to eat (ie SNACK TIME) and have a snack myself, but I couldn't heat  anything up.

 Since I haven't posted about it while I've been at it the last week, here is where the process has taken me so far:

I drew a bunch of stuff based on my storyboards.
I colored and created parts to be individually moved like paper cut outs.(see examples)
These drawings were scanned into photoshop and each drawing was digitally cut out and placed on a transparent background.
I imported over 100 of the individual drawings into after effects and began constructing timelines for the animation and assembling the puppets together.
I'm creating a bunch of long scenes with many moving parts and layers to tell the story as described in the treatment and storyboards.
After I test, time and render everything out of After Effects, I will then add the backgrounds and audio track consisting of individual sound effects synced to the visuals and a soundtrack. This will be done in my trusty Final Cut Suite.
The final part will be to output it and burn a playable DVD.

The beauty of Adobe After Effects is the way you can do just about anything in terms of animating visuals. It may get complicated but I just have to keep remembering to stick to the plan and not get lost getting mucky with crazy additional visual effects and stuff.

K.I.S.S.

I have to have the entire piece edited to sound and burned to DVD with a report by September 15. No exceptions!!!

Animation is by no means quick and easy so the next week is not one I am really looking forward to! Keep wishing me good luck, my fingers are crossed!

This is the end, my only friend, the end, or is it?!

THE END?!

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I went to Glenmore Village Library to give my final flip book class for 'tweens'. There were 12 spots to fill and a long waiting list, so thanks to the Glenbow's gracious donation of some flip-books, I had enough supplies for 17 participants. I let everybody in. They have a really good core group of kids who do a ton of activities at this library. It got a little crazy but it was my most fun class to date. even one of the moms got into it and made a flip book. Everybody had a great time.......I like to go out with a bang!

Half the girls on this side of the room were wearing pink.

 I didn't get the memo, or I would have too!

Afterward, I instructed my official final After Effects class at Quickdraw Animation Society.  Something I picked up while in New Orleans called Lagniappe - which means that little bit extra, I always like to go up to 11 and do a bit more in everything I do.......... so I'll be in teaching one extra class next week and fielding any questions the students may have about their future needs for future projects =;)

I spent some time in the studio this week working on various commissions.  I also took  a piece I sold out of the frame and sanded the frame down in order to put a fresh coat of Black paint on it. I think you will agree, it looks better than the crappy frame it was in. But I'm not going to show a picture in that frame, I just can't let myself, I won't put it back in that frame, it looks like crap.  Hopefully the new owner and I can go on a little frame shopping date together soon, and get something better suited for this work and her condo =;)

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Some things come to and end, while other are beginning....

I had to pick up a new sketchbook. My previous one is somewhere in the USA with my wicked $122 Micro topic pens ;(  I got this one at Frosst Books. It is wicked! The gold cover was designed by Ryan Scott. The paper is of grand quality. There is a pocket in the back, trust me this is very useful. There is an elastic that keeps the book closed when needed. They come in a wide variety of shapes, sizes and prices. There is a really cool square one that looks so fly, but I only had $ for one.  If you call yourself an artist, go and get one of these from John Frosst @ Frosst books on 9th Ave. in Inglewood, right next to Pith Gallery. Do it now!

Frosst Books website: http://www.frosstbooks.com/

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