Three Square Wheels animation!

Here is the opening scene animatic for POP!. I scanned in the storyboard pics and then used after effects for some simple camera pans and animated movement. These were then brought into Premier where I added transitions and the sound fx. Most effects I downloaded for free off the net plus I recorded some scratch guitar music and some additional dialogue.

Its a bit rough & ready but it I think it sets the tone, establishes the balloon world and introduces the antagonism between the red & blue.

See what you think and comment if you like.

Cheers

Neil

I was looking through some old animation files and I found an mpeg of my old showreel I made in 2002 to appy for jobs etc.
Mainly stopmo stuff with a bit of sand on glass, scratch film and early CG modelling. I made all the puppets.

There is some good stuff and bad stuff on there but I would like your comments.

Cheers

Neil

I picked up a microphone last night and got it working to record some scratch dialogue and some guitar music. I have also downloaded some free sound fx for the animatic. I am  adding some limited animation and camera moves in after effects and then putting it into premier for all the usual transitions and audio.

I haven’t used after effects for several years and I forgot what a cool program this is. Its cool to see my storyboards come to life with some simple pans,zooms and animating simple masks of storyboard elements. I will have the first sequence up on youtube on the weekend.

Cheers

Neil

Here are some boards for the opening scene for my film POP! It establishes the world the story is set in, and sets up the antagonism between the red and blue balloons. I have coloured the boards that will be in the animatic and some panels are out of sequence which I added later on after reviewing the first drafts.

Character and set design still needs a fair amount of work but I need to concentrate on the story at the moment.

I am compiling the animatic in Adobe Premier, but I need to buy a new microphone to record some scratch dialogue and record some guitar music I will lay down for a rough music track. I hope to upload this first scene soon.

Your comments are most welcome.

Cheers

Neil 

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Hi everyone,

I have been working on the storyboard for POP! and I have scanned the first sequence into the pc and I am putting together an animatic in Adobe Premier. I hope to have the animatic up sometime this weekend if I can work out the youtube blogg link thingy

Cheers

Neil

Well I’m settling down into my blogging site. I’m planning on posting some more of my past work soon but also hope to have a section of the first draft of the storyboard for my film POP!

I have set a deadline for myself the closing date for submissions for Annecy (I can dream can’t I?) to keep me motivated. So I had better get cracking. The next couple of weeks will be filled up with storyboarding and then onto the animatic which I will be putting together using photshop, after effects and probably premiere as well.

I picked up a book on the making of the Nightmare before Christmas the other day. Nightmare would easily be in my top five animated films of all time. Reading it I got all nostalgic about my own stop motion work. How liberating it is to get a piece of clay and put it in front of a camera and just start clicking. Unfortunately space and cost prohibit me from doing anything in stopmo at the moment so its back to the pc for me.

In case you are curious here are a selection of animated features (not shorts) that have or continue to inspire me in no particular order:

The Nightmare Before Christmas

The Iron Giant

Akira

Howls moving castle

The Incredibles

The adventures of Winnie the Pooh

Fantasia

Wind in the Willows

Steamboy

Robots

Cheers  Neil

 Here are a couple of pics from my second film “Street Entertainment”

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Since I had such a interesting character to base my film on, the design of the puppet was mainly just a caricature of the actual violinist. His suit was made more tattier and ragged with his toes poking out the shoe. I took a little from Einstein in the Hair and Chaplin with the suit and the character Geri in the Pixar short “Geri’s Game”.  The final drawn design was enlarged on a photocopier to the desired scale and was then glued to cardboard. It was then used as the template for the construction of the sets and puppets and to practice my camera setups and lighting.

The puppet had a aluminum wire and brass tubing armature. The head had a hollow resin core covered with plasticene. The suit was sewn by hand by me and the fabric was then stiffened with a inner lining of felt and I carved the violin out of balsa wood. The hands had to have that old boney withered look which would have been impossible with plasticene so they were molded in silicone. The puppet took almost three weeks to make. The head could be taken off during filming to make it easier to sculpt the mouth and eyes movements.

Cheers  Neil

POP! design pic

Here is a design picture for my short film project POP!. It was done with acrylics, fineliner and a little touch up in photoshop after scanning. It was my first attempt at painting balloon animals, showing the transparency of the balloons that will be evident in the final look of the balloon. Balloons for balloon sculpting can also be opaque if the colour tint has a white base. I think it will look better with the transparent look and hopefully the extra rendering won’t be a problem.

One of the things I do to earn a little extra cash now and then is puppetry. I am one of the few traditional Punch & Judy professors (that’s what we punch performers call ourselves) in Australia. When I do children’s birthday parties I also make balloon animals. It is great fun to make these animals and they are always a huge hit with the kids.

The idea for the film POP! came from these balloon animals where I imagined an entire world made of balloons. All my previous films have been stopmotion and of course stopmotion was out of the question for a story about balloons so it CG this time.

I have written the story treatment for the film and now I am storyboarding it. I will post some storyboard frames soon and hopefully some more design work. Hopefully I’ll get better at drawing balloons!!