Friday, November 28, 2008

toy car.


Finished the outside of my car and moved it around a bit. Needs lights.




Monday, November 24, 2008

composition: move car around - day 1


Started on my After Effects car today. It is four wheels and a base so far. The front two wheels move together when you rotate them. So they can go from this:

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to this:

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and even... to this:

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Sunday, November 23, 2008

The end of Encounters Film Festival 2008

I spent most of my last week at Encounters Short Film Festival 2008 in Bristol. Enjoyed myself as 'Keith Reynolds can't make it tonight' was screened in two of the short programmes and ended up gaining another special mention for the 4mations International Newcomer in Animation Award which was nice.


'The surprise demise of Francis Cooper's mother' also had his World Premier at the festival in the UKFC Digital Generation section but was not in competition. It was interesting to see the two films both in the same festival. I think 'Keith Reynolds' got one of his best reactions I've seen it have when I watched it on Tuesday. It's harder to tell what people thought of 'Francis Cooper', as it's a darker film in general and not as funny, but people who spoke to me before they saw it weren't too ashamed to come and speak to me afterwards so that is something.

I think maintaining an interesting blend between what is happening on screen and what you are hearing is something I need to work on. With 'Keith Reynolds' I think people like the fight scene (see preview) because of this. Looking at 'Francis Cooper' I notice scenes where the visuals don't add much or anything to driving the story and I could have thought of more interesting things to show. I had a problem with 'Keith Reynolds' in that I was contained to a side-on view of the building - with 'Francis Cooper' I was contained to six days of the week, visiting each character on each of those days - and so for my next film I'd like to make what I can show and when I can show it as unconstrained as possible.

I do think I learnt a lot visually making the film. I think in still form 'Francis Cooper' looks a lot nicer than 'Keith Reynolds' and I'm pleased with that because I didn't like reading write-ups about how ugly some people thought Keith was! Being able to feel comfortable feeling as though I can create nice visuals I can hopefully focus a bit better on what I'm going to show rather than how I'm going to achieve showing it - which should mean I can be a lot freer in what I make which somewhat helps to solve the problem I mentioned at the end of the previous paragraph.

Anyway, Encounters is over and I was happy to see 'Stand Up' by Joseph Pierce and 'Skhizein' by Jeremy Clapin win awards as I like those two films as lot. Well done.

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Proposals again

Been mostly working on pitches at the moment. Some for developing TV seriessss and others for adverts which have been quite fun. Last Monday was the deadline for submitting a Digital Short again so I decided to do a proposal for that. Mostly as an excuse to put things in my head in a way I can look at them. I did a character design (right) and built something in After Effects to go along with it (below). I'm getting quite into using After Effects since doing Francis Cooper.... This film if it ever gets made would be more like Keith Reynolds and be set in America again. Think it was my trip to Chicago that did that. Will keep working on it on and off this week I think. I want to build a car in 3D space so will see how that goes. Trying to make good use of my time off at the moment.

Encounters Film Festival 2008 in Bristol starts today so I'll hopefully be going along to that a lot too. Err.