Itching to Talk

Lego Batman is pretty much done and dusted now, which is pretty cool. I'm not aware of anyone in the company still working on it. I have started on the next project, which I'm still unable to talk about. I'm hoping an announcement will be made soon so I can say a bit more!

So for now, here's some doodles I did today. They are all from photos. Well the two animals are from the fantastic BBC documentary, "The Life of Mammals". David Attenborough rules.

Bag End

Right I have finally finished my little flour sack hammer throw animation! You may remember my last post on the subject. Well I have added a background to it and done a couple of little effects that I'm sure noone would notice if I didn't point them out. They are really for my own amusement. The animation has been created entirely digitally but I wanted to make them look more like they had been done with traditional cels, so I have added a film grain to the animation and added a very slight drop shadow under the character as this is something I often notice in cel animation, reulting from the fact that the cel isn't completely flush against the background.

For a much larger version, please visit my portfolio site. I have entered it into the competition I made it for, and the deadline is on Sunday. Believe it or not, this is actually my first truly finished piece of 2D animation, if you discount rubbish cut-out stuff I did in my old job. God how nice it is to finally be able to say the stuff I was working on then SUCKED!!

Mousing Around

Following the lead of Bitter Animator, I have made a couple of minor changes around here. Firstly, I have created a nicer web address for this blog. So my sites can now be accessed by the following URLs:

My portfolio - www.andysanimation.co.uk
My blog - www.blog.andysanimation.co.uk

My usual blog address will still get you here too of course.

The other change is the addition of some subscription buttons on the right. See? Over there --->

Roll With It

Yesterday I discovered something interesting. All of a sudden I can roll drawings on my animation desk. This is something that seems so easy to do but actually takes a some practice. Last time I tried it was ages ago and I couldn't do it very well. However this time I can do it reasonably trouble-free. If anyone else has trouble doing it, I have discovered that you have to move your fingers in a wave-like fashion, with one finger moving slightly after the previous one. To roll back the other way, I find I have to push my whole hand towards the right, which pushes the paper back down rather than letting it fall under it's own weight. I even made an exciting video if it!!

On another note, I recently saw an advert for United Airlines. I don't know how I came across it as I live in the UK and so haven't seen it on TV. I really love it though. It uses pretty much all forms of animation including 3D, traditional, cut out, stop motion, and even puppetry. The inclusion of a great piece of music just makes it even better.

I happened to look on the United Airlines website too and found another really nice cut out animation entitled "Dragon". It's made by the same people as the Sea Orchestra one. There's also an interesting 'making of' video there too. I went on to find the website of these talented people, and found they are called The Black Heart Gang.

More Hammer Time

Today I did some more of my flour sack hammer throw animation. I went back to fix that direction change at the start, adding more frames to slow the transition down a bit. I also doubled the total number of frames, making it animated on ones rather than twos. I also added a lick of paint and some sounds that I found free on the internet.

All that I need to do now is paint a background!

Hammer Time!

A while ago I mentioned that I planned to enter an animation competition on the Animation Forum. Well although the deadline is 9 days away, that is still my intention. Today I took my Cintiq to work and made a couple of attempts at it. The best of the two is shown below, but still has problems. Most notably, there is a bit at the start where the flour sack swings the hammer one way and then changes direction. This doesn't read particularly well. I'm going to try to fix it tomorrow if I can. Hopefully then I can get the thing inked, painted and submitted in the next few days.

To Be Frank

Over the last couple of days I have been practicing lip-syncing, using the head rig I downloaded and some audio from 'The Rocky Horror Picture Show'. I chose Dr Frankenfurter (Tim Curry) singing 'Sweet Transvestite'. The rig seems to suit Tim's grinning face, which is quite cool for this little project. I haven't yet done the whole song, but I'm getting there. I'm not happy with it when he starts to sing though. I like the talking bit at the start, but things seemed to go downhill after that.

Nodding Off

While things are quiet at work, I've been making the most of the time by doing some general practice with Maya and doing some drawing. One of the little bits of animation I did used a head rig that I found on highend3d.com.

It's so nice to have some time to draw. I find myself burning out after a while though. For a while it's like my pencil is just doning its own thing, but then after some time, I just run out of ideas or inspiration or both. So here's a selection of my doodles from today. First, a sequence of a flour sack doing a backflip.
Next up, a random collection of animals. and a guy singing (I was listening to classical music at the time).I don't know what this guy is.This is a flour sack falling backwards and rolling over. For some reason I thought it would be funny to have a flour sack with a big bum, so that's exactly what I drew below the sequence!
Next is a funny angry pig and a manatee (at least what a manatee looks like in my head - you don't see to many of them here in the UK!). Also a little bear.
And here are some cats and a dog. The dog was actually going to be a cat but it started looking like a dog so that's how it remained!And finally we have a sort God-like guy. Well in the second picture, he looks like God with a bad back!So there you have it, from the mind of someone with nothing to do!

Still Animating

I can't believe I have been at Traveller's Tales for three months already. Today I had my review which I had been dreading since it was the point where the powers that be decide whether they want me permanently or not. Thankfully they told me they were really happy with my work and thought my sense of humour with the Lego characters was exactly what they wanted. So I really can call myself a professional animator now!

There are a few projects coming up there after Lego Batman finishes (which will be any day now) which are going to be really good, but they told me about a new one that apparently wasn't going to happen, but the movie studio concerned has finally decided that it is. I can't say any more other than I'm really looking forward to working on it. Well that's assuming I'm working on that and not one of the other projects.

How to Hook Up Your Home Theater!

Second post of the day, but I had to mention this. Someone has put the new Goofy "How to Hook Up Your Home Theater" short on YouTube! Watch it while you can, before it gets removed!

Toddling Along

It's a bit strange at work at the moment. It's crazily busy with people rushing round trying to get Lego Batman finished on time, but at the same time is incredibly relaxed for us animators as there's not much left for us to do.

So I did a bit of drawing. I don't know why I chose a toddler. There weren't any toddlers in the office, that's just what popped into my head (click to enlarge, they don't look very good small!).
I track the viewers of my blog on Google Analytics and have noticed a strong pattern in the data. It seems that most people who look at my blog do so on Tuesdays. Why Tuesdays? Are they particularly boring days? If you're looking at this on a Tuesday, maybe you could let me know why you are here!

More Bagginess

I showed my little flour sack animation to a guy at work who used to do traditional animation. He offered me some advice which I have tried to bear in mind while I spent this evening having another bash, this time planning out the animation properly.

On a separate note, there is a show on TV here in the UK at the moment called "Last Choir Standing" it's kind of an X-Factor/Pop Idol type show but with choirs. There is one choir called Revelation, who are pretty good, but it is one of their singers in particular who really stood out to me a couple of weeks ago when they sang a really nice version of Take That's "Rule the World". Just watch the big guy's face in this, it's so animated. I have developed a bit of an obsession about him, wanting to do an animation of it. Me being me, I haven't got round to it yet though!

Bagginess

It's soooooo hectic at work at the moment. Deadlines galore! It's really been wearing me out.

However I have managed to keep drawing, having just finished that sketchbook. I've got a nice new orange one now. How exciting!!

At work I was feeling a real need to do some 2D animation. As you may know, I'm hopeless at getting myself to do it. It's that whole fear of the unknown thing I guess. Anyway, I managed to do some tonight for once. Since I've been doodling so many flour sacks lately, I decided that would be the best thing for me to animate. So here we are:

Very rough of course, but the aim wasn't to have something pretty. I'm not entirely sure what I make of it yet, so any comments would be appreciated!

Turning Pages

This might sound like an odd statement from someone pertaining to be an artist, but I'm close to filling my first sketchbook. While I have owned and drawn in many sketchbooks, I have never filled one. I usually just don't draw enough to make any big dent in one, and when I do, my drawings are so repulsive to me that I end up discarding the book and never opening it again. This latest one showed signs of having the same fate as the majority of it has very poor drawings, even by my low standards.

However something has kept me drawing in it. I don't know what, but I'm glad it has. I have been drawing something in it almost every day for the past couple of weeks, ranging from one to five pages. There are a lot of flour sacks as I have been feeling like they are a good warm up exercise for me. Anyway, here are some of today's drawings.
These were done over a couple of pages but I've stuck them all together for this purpose. The guy on the top left is a guy at work called Shane. I was quite pleased when someone saw the drawing and recognised him without me saying anything. Batman vs Hitler? I don't know where that came from. I guess Batman's enemies are all evil psychopaths, so Adolf's no exception.

I saw my name in the credits of Lego Batman the other day - very pleased with myself! Actually I found a games website today showing some officially released images of the game, one of which is from one of my cutscenes, so I can finally show something I've worked on!
Ok so it's a bit of a non-descript image, but I like the cutscene that it's from. This must actually be an old shot as the scene looks a lot more atmospheric now. This is Manbat in case you were wondering.