Sunday, 7 November 2010
Some sorta accolade I guess
I pretty much known noone's looking at this, but for completionist's sake, Tales of Beardyman placed third in the Student Competition at this year's Flip Festival in Wolverhampton. I got a shirt out of it. Woop.
Thursday, 10 June 2010
NEW SHOWREEL
Dunno who's still reading this, but here's a new showreel I made for my grad show.
The animations in order of appearance are:
PokerTime
Mischievious Monkey Magic
Citv - Keep your Computer Happy
Fredbot's Birthday Animation
I love the Internet
Robotnik Destroys the Moon
Flying Squirrels
Children's Animation at BCU
Tales of Beardyman
Energy Stoat (yet to be released)
German Xmas Market
Black Hole Sheep
Robotnik's Beautiful Head
The Big Guy
Date for One
Zombie Supermarket (unreleased)
Dracula
Hot Dog Eating Contest
Cut the Madness
Sonic Shorts
LL-PeachLock vs SBC
LL-Rewrite
Cat Face 20
ZekeySpaceyLizard drinks Tea in Outer Space
The Kevin Bishop Show
Robotnik Fukkireta
Anything
Arrgh Idol
Curly Sam the Arsonist
Guide to Celebrity
Guide to Advertising
Camp Madness
Narwhals
Pico's Bouncy Funtime
What happens to the hedgehog?
Melons
8 Bit Pwny Club
Movin'
Nene's Sorrow
8 Bit Pwny Club 2
The animations in order of appearance are:
PokerTime
Mischievious Monkey Magic
Citv - Keep your Computer Happy
Fredbot's Birthday Animation
I love the Internet
Robotnik Destroys the Moon
Flying Squirrels
Children's Animation at BCU
Tales of Beardyman
Energy Stoat (yet to be released)
German Xmas Market
Black Hole Sheep
Robotnik's Beautiful Head
The Big Guy
Date for One
Zombie Supermarket (unreleased)
Dracula
Hot Dog Eating Contest
Cut the Madness
Sonic Shorts
LL-PeachLock vs SBC
LL-Rewrite
Cat Face 20
ZekeySpaceyLizard drinks Tea in Outer Space
The Kevin Bishop Show
Robotnik Fukkireta
Anything
Arrgh Idol
Curly Sam the Arsonist
Guide to Celebrity
Guide to Advertising
Camp Madness
Narwhals
Pico's Bouncy Funtime
What happens to the hedgehog?
Melons
8 Bit Pwny Club
Movin'
Nene's Sorrow
8 Bit Pwny Club 2
Wednesday, 26 May 2010
Tales of Beardyman COMPLETED
Once again, my last minute magic has kicked in and I have managed to finish my animation on time (though I won't be going to sleep tonight as I have to get my blog up to date). There's still a good half hour before this baby uploads to Youtube, so let's get this blog rolling.
There were a few last minute changes to do time allowances, this namely being the absence of the 'wife discovering the internet' parts (also because I didn't want to let those sexy map scenes go to waste). This actually works in the animation's favour, as it makes it look less like some cheesy advert and more like a general animation, taking away some of the guilt. So yeah, basically, it's not so much an ad anymore rather than your standard animation with a few flagrant uses of brand names.
My penguin guy, Martin Tierney, delivered on his 3D cyber penguins, delivering his animation on a shiny disk. However, one slight issue I had to work around was the fact the animations used their own backgrounds, which clashed with the snowy background I had gotten from Kieran. To compensate for this, I used some colour keying on one of the opening clips so that I could show the background behind it, and adjusted the colour on the others so that they managed the colour scheme. Once that hurdle was crossed, I managed to take advantage of the scenes to get creative with the story. I also got him to send me some alpha stills of the penguins that I could use for comic flinging. I also threw in some laser sights, which I made by making a long glowy solid and then moving it around in 3D space, which looks pretty badass.
The ninja octopus scene came out lovely, thanks to a combination of rainy stuff, and rocky waves drawn by Kieran. There was quite a bit of After Effects use in this, mainly for moments when I needed some epic effects or such. For simple animations mind, I just stuck to animating it in Flash.
One lil aspect I threw in was a reference to the Avatar DVD Beardyman was questing for. In leu of wasting time doing some gay drawing, I instead took a quick webcam video of me being a twat (I do not know any 'university' alternatives to the word 'twat' so forgive me), and altered it to give me Avatar blue skin. If I had remembered to take my shirt off I bet you wouldn't be able to tell the difference from the real thing!
Post production was gonna be a tricky matter given how painstakingly last minute it was, but it came out really well. Editing the video came out nicely with some little fades in and out of the map scenes that were pulled off nicely IMO. As for sound, Deven had given me a health supply of 'Aarrrghs' to accompany Beardyman's battles. Hunting for sound effects was a little trickier, but a quick hunt through FindSounds and SoundDogs turned up some decent clips. Since I clearly had no time to make a worthwhile soundtrack in Fruityloops, I turned to that ever so loveable source of royalty free music, Newgrounds. After going through all the relevant keywords 'epic, quest, journey, etc.) and hit and missing through the iffy techno tracks, I eventually found 'Our Epic Journey' by Zero123Music, which not only sounded great, but synced PERFECTLY with the video!
The end result looks absolutely magical. A combination of smooth animation, high res visuals, top notch voice acting and well layered sound effects. It gives off a level of sheen that's expected of most professional animations (well, in the advertising field at least). For me personally, it's given me that chance to actually take my tutor's advice and animate something that isn't just the same bog standard flash stuff I do all the time.
Without further ado, here is Tales of Beardyman!
There were a few last minute changes to do time allowances, this namely being the absence of the 'wife discovering the internet' parts (also because I didn't want to let those sexy map scenes go to waste). This actually works in the animation's favour, as it makes it look less like some cheesy advert and more like a general animation, taking away some of the guilt. So yeah, basically, it's not so much an ad anymore rather than your standard animation with a few flagrant uses of brand names.
My penguin guy, Martin Tierney, delivered on his 3D cyber penguins, delivering his animation on a shiny disk. However, one slight issue I had to work around was the fact the animations used their own backgrounds, which clashed with the snowy background I had gotten from Kieran. To compensate for this, I used some colour keying on one of the opening clips so that I could show the background behind it, and adjusted the colour on the others so that they managed the colour scheme. Once that hurdle was crossed, I managed to take advantage of the scenes to get creative with the story. I also got him to send me some alpha stills of the penguins that I could use for comic flinging. I also threw in some laser sights, which I made by making a long glowy solid and then moving it around in 3D space, which looks pretty badass.
The ninja octopus scene came out lovely, thanks to a combination of rainy stuff, and rocky waves drawn by Kieran. There was quite a bit of After Effects use in this, mainly for moments when I needed some epic effects or such. For simple animations mind, I just stuck to animating it in Flash.
One lil aspect I threw in was a reference to the Avatar DVD Beardyman was questing for. In leu of wasting time doing some gay drawing, I instead took a quick webcam video of me being a twat (I do not know any 'university' alternatives to the word 'twat' so forgive me), and altered it to give me Avatar blue skin. If I had remembered to take my shirt off I bet you wouldn't be able to tell the difference from the real thing!
Post production was gonna be a tricky matter given how painstakingly last minute it was, but it came out really well. Editing the video came out nicely with some little fades in and out of the map scenes that were pulled off nicely IMO. As for sound, Deven had given me a health supply of 'Aarrrghs' to accompany Beardyman's battles. Hunting for sound effects was a little trickier, but a quick hunt through FindSounds and SoundDogs turned up some decent clips. Since I clearly had no time to make a worthwhile soundtrack in Fruityloops, I turned to that ever so loveable source of royalty free music, Newgrounds. After going through all the relevant keywords 'epic, quest, journey, etc.) and hit and missing through the iffy techno tracks, I eventually found 'Our Epic Journey' by Zero123Music, which not only sounded great, but synced PERFECTLY with the video!
The end result looks absolutely magical. A combination of smooth animation, high res visuals, top notch voice acting and well layered sound effects. It gives off a level of sheen that's expected of most professional animations (well, in the advertising field at least). For me personally, it's given me that chance to actually take my tutor's advice and animate something that isn't just the same bog standard flash stuff I do all the time.
Without further ado, here is Tales of Beardyman!
Sunday, 23 May 2010
More Updates, now with actual evidence I've been doing something
Okay, so in the final week now, so things need to speed up. The hot weather and ever increasing amount of bugs is not helping. First off, here's a couple more of the models I've done.
I've decided to do a lil self insert and cast myself as the HMV clerk. I took a quick webcam picture to use as a reference and used some of the official assets from the defunct contest brief for the badge. The only real thing I'm lacking is a reference for the HMV checkout itself, as google seems to be lacking (and if google's lacking, it probably means it won't be easy to take some pics meself.)
And then you have a generic boat, but the sail does animate.
As for what the Level 5 students have (or at least are supposed to be) doing, some dude named Keiran is working up some backgrounds. They just need a few tweakings colourwise but should be alright.
Another dude named Martin is making something supremely awesome if it turns out well. 3D Cyber Penguins, which should hopefully be turned into a massive army. Here's a mockup model he's made using parts from an Iron Man figure. I've reccomended the final one be more blue tinted to fit in with the winter battlefield.
I've also got some other dude working on the HMV dog, to compensate for my general suckiness at drawing animals. I'm just worried about whether I can get all this stuff in time to do something about it. Not to mention I still have to worry about soundtracks for both this and the monkey short which quite frankly I haven't given a rat's arse about once it was finished.
As for what I've been doing, I've finally started animating and have finished animating one scene, the encounter with the fire sumo. As the process goes, I used the models I created and animated them in flash using good ol' tweenage. (These could technically be tweened in After Effects, but I'm a lot more familiar with this method). Then I imported the animations in their SWF formats into After Effects. After looking up a couple of tutorials online, I made a nifty little fire using CC Particle Systems II and CC Vector Blur, which gives it an awesome 'this is seriously gonna melt stuff' look.
I've uploaded a look at the video here (though I'm not particularly convinced of its ability to show up properly): http://www.twitvid.com/7QVE6
Another animated bit I've got sorted are your classic map travelling intermissions. Since the animation for this was a lot simpler, I could just animate everything in flash and export it straight from there. The lil 2D icon was also drawn in Photoshop since I wanted to practice my Photoshop sketching.
http://spamtheweb.com/ul/s244201088_mapscenes.html (takes a short while to load)
Usually I have to worry about stuff like file size when it comes to sticking loads of graphics and stuff in flash, but since I'm compiling it elsewhere, I don't have to worry bout that.
I've decided to do a lil self insert and cast myself as the HMV clerk. I took a quick webcam picture to use as a reference and used some of the official assets from the defunct contest brief for the badge. The only real thing I'm lacking is a reference for the HMV checkout itself, as google seems to be lacking (and if google's lacking, it probably means it won't be easy to take some pics meself.)
And then you have a generic boat, but the sail does animate.
As for what the Level 5 students have (or at least are supposed to be) doing, some dude named Keiran is working up some backgrounds. They just need a few tweakings colourwise but should be alright.
Another dude named Martin is making something supremely awesome if it turns out well. 3D Cyber Penguins, which should hopefully be turned into a massive army. Here's a mockup model he's made using parts from an Iron Man figure. I've reccomended the final one be more blue tinted to fit in with the winter battlefield.
I've also got some other dude working on the HMV dog, to compensate for my general suckiness at drawing animals. I'm just worried about whether I can get all this stuff in time to do something about it. Not to mention I still have to worry about soundtracks for both this and the monkey short which quite frankly I haven't given a rat's arse about once it was finished.
As for what I've been doing, I've finally started animating and have finished animating one scene, the encounter with the fire sumo. As the process goes, I used the models I created and animated them in flash using good ol' tweenage. (These could technically be tweened in After Effects, but I'm a lot more familiar with this method). Then I imported the animations in their SWF formats into After Effects. After looking up a couple of tutorials online, I made a nifty little fire using CC Particle Systems II and CC Vector Blur, which gives it an awesome 'this is seriously gonna melt stuff' look.
I've uploaded a look at the video here (though I'm not particularly convinced of its ability to show up properly): http://www.twitvid.com/7QVE6
Another animated bit I've got sorted are your classic map travelling intermissions. Since the animation for this was a lot simpler, I could just animate everything in flash and export it straight from there. The lil 2D icon was also drawn in Photoshop since I wanted to practice my Photoshop sketching.
http://spamtheweb.com/ul/s244201088_mapscenes.html (takes a short while to load)
Usually I have to worry about stuff like file size when it comes to sticking loads of graphics and stuff in flash, but since I'm compiling it elsewhere, I don't have to worry bout that.
Wednesday, 19 May 2010
Wifey
Just need to make a few more expressions and stuff for her. Decided to go with curly bangs, cos...like...I've never done those before.
Monday, 17 May 2010
And I came face to face with a...
FIRE SUMO!!!
In other news, I've got the voices in from Deven Mack (Arrgh Idol) and Alison Stark (voices ladies in the Edd Egg series), and they are mighty fine. Just gotta get a few more models done (working on the wife atm) and see what the L5s are up to and I'm ready to animate this thing.
Wednesday, 12 May 2010
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