Space Adventure Raw

LOTD Charcoal Animatic

Pretty much finished charcoal animatic, a few slide dimensions to fix, but they don’t stand out too much. Enjoy!

LOTD Divorce Line Animatic

Finally I’ve put together a fair amount of the Divorce animatic together in sync with the audio, this gives me a fair grounding to work with to put together the charcoal frames, along with extra to give a better variety of different shots. I also aim to make the characters move more to make the production seem more like a fluid feature. More to follow!

My apologies on the youtube cropping, I still need to fix that!!

Later On That Day Explanation

Right just to explain the workings, ideas and engineering behind this project so whoever’s watching can have a boarder understanding of why they’re been made. The original idea sprouted from getting into a habit of reading the Guardian Newspaper daily motivating me to understand into how the readers react to what they read. After reading an article that grabs and routes you to the spot you can be left on abit of a cliff hanger wanting to read more of the article to find out what happens next. This gave me an idea to write a short narrative to the stories which had the most impact on me, using the stories more like a guideline to base the narrative around rather than completely copying the article and elaborating slightly.

From what I red, I had the curiosity to look at previous articles engrossing myself within the science and technology section where I came across articles on NASA and previous space missions such as the Chinese space program leading a lunar exploration on the moon (link below).

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/feb/02/lunar-us-china-race-moon

After reading through this article I became interested furthermore within the American Atlantis and Discovery shuttle launches, where I felt to get the creative ball rolling I started to animate Atlantis taking off with audio. I continued to research into space suits, and found other images from music videos like Darf Punk’s Digital Love creeping into my work (although I didn’t realize it at the time). The whole animation’s based in space I found myself drawing parts of the spaceship, which I replicated within LOTD “Space Adventure” .

Above, Space Adventure frame (left), Digital Love frame (right).

The title “Later On That Day” took me a while to come up with and figure out, as originally I had no idea where the project would led me and what would come of it. I find when I’m struggling to come up with a brief I have to keep on chipping away until the right exploration and experimentation gives way to the main core of the project, so making short animations like “Brad and Ange” arguing, helped give me the insight into how people would act their true personalities if they were put straight into the boots of somebody else just like a gripping book can do. While making this project I was engrossed in a science fiction novel by Stephen Baxtor “Ark”, exploring the possible motive to relocating mankind somewhere else in the universe, which at the time acted as a tool assisting me in making “Space Adventure”.

Stephen Baxter, “Ark”: www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/…/ ark.htm

The title LOTD is used to spit the short animations into 2 sections allowing a time gap to grant build up and suspense in a short interval before the second half plays. It also allow the audience to pause for breath and take in what’s been seen, but not too long to avoid boring the viewer too much. At the end of each animation appears the words “How would you react?”, which is because I wanted the viewer to fill in the rest of the story with their imagination or even put the idea of how the story could have unraveled inside their heads instead of just mine. I wanted to put a different slant on to the viewer’s mind giving them the opportunity to explore the articles through fictional narrative and putting forward possible circumstances the characters within the articles could in reality face.

Media and Mediums

Every time I create work I normally start out with line drawings which progress into storyboards, then become animatics accompanied by audio, but every time  I try out something new. With Space Adventure I used painted water colour frames along with cell graphics and within Ange and Brad’s divorce I used charcoal to empathize the rawness of the situation.

This project is a series of three animations, although I won’t have time to make them all as full animations, but I’ve made animatics for all of them, so you’ll have to use your imagination to create a feature version!

WWYE Poster

Check this out Kai see what you think

Raw audio/image animatic, Later on the Day (Divorce)

Very raw animatic, sound unedited, images mostly finished. Completed animatic will be drawn in charcoal.

Work Placement with Realm Pictures Making Music Video for the Quails

The weekend gone has been a real eye opener and a fantastic experience working with the film company Realm Pictures. I only had a few days notice, but I was able to pull some favors at the last minute and booked off work! Realm Picture are a small film company based near Exeter, they’ve recently premiered their short feature length film “Zomblies” at the Odeon cinema Exeter, and yet still have premiers to go ahead within Soho London.

The aim of the film shoot was to create a music video for the Quails, who’ve supported Muse and the Kooks recently and are about to hit big fairly soon, by checking out their Myspace and Facebook.

The narrative of the music video puts forward a quirky youthful vibe as the band are chased through the streets of Plymouth by box monsters who eventually chase them into a club in Exeter, turning all the band’s fans into box monsters and eventually are fort off by the band until the music video ends.

My role within the shoot was to act as an extra (box monster) as well as performing a few small stunts, including me leaping into a body of water head first while chasing the band. I also helped out the prop technician assemble and repair boxes when needed.

The shoot took 2 days to film, and took a huge amount of energy from everyone on the Realm team including the band (as well as there supporters, although they were only there for one day!). The Realm guys were great to work with, and the days were long but went by smoothly, giving me a great taster for the film industry. If I was ever asked back again I’d be more than happy to help.

17th-18th April 2010

Zomblies trailer:

Quails Myspace page:

http://www.myspace.com/thequailsband

Paul Gravett 21/04/10

With the up coming week, Paul Gravett is coming to lecture on Wednesday 21st April at Sion Hill. To spread the word to students that this is a lecture not to miss I’ve put to together a poster, which I’ve hopefully define Gravett as ‘him’. I’ve been searching for images which he’s been associated with over the past, either in books graphic novellas or other. There was one image in particular involving a poker game from one of his graphic novels (I hope! If not I liked the scene anyway!) I drew the image from scratch and put a bit of my own style into the drawing, instead of using the head from the scene I drew Gravett’s head instead, but I wanted to make it quite static, well postured like what he seems to be like in real life. Around him I drew and positioned characters from his books, as if they were being projected or swarming around him. The text was from his website, but hand drawn quickly.

I can’t wait for this lecture as I’ve always dreamed of eventually publishing my own graphic novel! One day!