Hello!

Another test animation created in Digicel Flipbook. I wanted to see how the line looked at Broadcast quality in widescreen:

Animation is a laborious but ultimately satisfying experience. Last night I created one second of animation in 50 minutes. It's times like these its practical to have small goals in place and a working knowledge of how long you want your animation to run. I'm planning a 2 minute video clip at 1440 drawings.

Rotoscope Test Animation

Created this test in Digicel Flipbook using drawings created in Illustrator:

Rotoscope Music Video

Confession time.
I'm a dag from the 80's, and along with countless animators who grew up in the 80's, I can guarantee that one of their most treasured memories would be this clip:

It's called Rotoscope animation, where the animators projected a filmed sequence onto a surface and traced over the image in pencil. Over 3000 drawings were made for this clip alone.

I've always nurtured a dream to create my own rotoscoped clip in the 'Take On Me' fashion and am now I am in the process of creating it using Digicel Flipbook.

I'll post versions of it as I progress.

Al Jaffee's Fold-Ins

If you’ve never heard of Al Jaffee, chances are you know his art.

For over 40 years he’s created the MAD magazine fold-ins on the last page of each magazine.

He’s still creating them in his 80’s, and he revealed he created the fold-in as a tribute to the ‘fold out’ that was popular in....another magazine!

The New York times have created this excellent little interactive site in tribute to his fold-ins. Enjoy!

Al Jaffee's Fold Ins

Video Editing

Last weekend was a CHRISTENING BANANZA with FIVE (count 'em, FIVE) kids being baptised on my wife's side of the family. Being the only one with a video camera in attendance, I was immediately designated: 'The Video Guy'.

I was happy to take on the task, although just as the priest made the sign of the cross on each child's forehead, the most heart-breaking of all messages appeared on the screen:

FLAT BATTERY

Thankfully, someone was taking photos on the day, so I managed to combine the existing footage with a nice slideshow of photographs, and burned it all to DVD using 'PowerDirector' ( a free program), much to the families delight.

I added Powderfingers 'My Happiness' as a wav. file to the soundtrack to help bolster the slideshow - a cheap gimmick but it worked!

I am currently editing my parent's US trip as well as our fishing trip in November...and here and now I will solemnly swear: NO STAR WIPES!

Character

I feel that the most important part of most stories (not all) is character, so I've been sketching madly, attempting to map out little diagrams of the characters in The Cloud Factory. Here is a sample of the daddy cloud talking to his son about growing up to become a storm cloud like his old man.

So far I’ve managed to map out the characters and the settings, the big part now will be mapping out the ebb and flow of the book by laying out each page and getting a feel for the pacing of the story.

I’m also going to mock up some coloured artwork in Illustrator to get a feel of the environment the story will be set in.

The Cloud Factory

Here is another children’s book I am working on at the moment, called ‘The Cloud Factory’. It’s about the son of a storm cloud (below) going to the cloud factory to learn to become a storm cloud like his dad, however the little cloud wants to become a shape cloud.

I’m designing the look of the factory at the moment and this is a rough (below). Those destined to be storm clouds enter the tube on the left, those destined to be shape clouds enter on the right.

Here’s the clincher:  there will be no text in the book whatsoever!

(Much like Gregory Rogers’ “The Boy, The Bear, The Baron, The Bard”.)

So the challenge is to tell the story in panels and to convey emotion through the characters. At the moment it will be 24 pages.