Super Sid comes alive

Print Screen from a flash project, showing character parts

After loads of redrawing, (at the same time it was very important to me to stay as close as possible to James' original drawings) i finally started putting the character of Super Sid together in flash.

Here's a print screen of the library in flash, with all the seperate components of the character. Having everything clearly labeled was key, as i was trying to make it as easy as possible for James to use.

Before each lesson i would have a play with what it is that i was trying to achieve (I must say i was learning aswell, a lot of it was trial and error). I found , that James learned a lot more enthusiastically, after I'd show him an example of what he could make at the end of the lesson.

This was a colour reference image
done by James.

 So normally i'd start by explaining some basic function within flash, for example scaling rotating, drawing etc. and than show him an example using his characters and drawings, at which point he'd get extremely happy and start paying attention again :).
After all the hard work it was amasing to see his face as i showed him an .SWF of Sid just blinking and changing his facial expression, it was the same for me, and i think it'll never get old, that moment that you first see your character come alive.

The final character
constructed in Flash

Animation Mentoring Continued

James' first attempt of the storyboard

After the first session with James, I decided that due to the limited time we had and also the style of his character design, Flash would be the best programme for him to use.

I gave him some homework, after we finalised the story together, i explained to him what a storyboard was and asked him to draw his story out. Also due to the time limit i decided it would be best, to focus on one of his superhero characters, called SuperSid.

The story James came up with, was that a lion breaks out of his cage at the zoo, and the superhero SuperSid is called to save the day. I also asked him to draw some different facial expressions for his characters.

I've included here, the drawings that he did for homework.

After this session i went away and scanned all of his artwork, and redrew it so that all the sizes matched up for seamless animation. I used photoshop to draw, although i could've drawn straight in flash, instead of vectorising my drawings inside flash later. (which i started doing later)

After creating a library inside flash i was ready to start explaining evrything to James at the next lesson.

Animation Mentoring

Here are a few of his initial character drawings,
that he brought with him to the first session.

I haven't blogged in a while, and the more time passes the more daunting the task becomes, but I need to start somewhere right ? so here we go :)

 i thought I'd share with everyone the work I've been doing with a 13 year boy, James. He is a very talented and a very keen artist, and my role was to help him use his creations and create a small character animation.

 He was extremely enthusiastic from the very first lesson, which made it extremely fun to work with him. He had a couple of characters already designed, and I've worked with him to come up with a story and get him to do a storyboard.

Change Of Plans

So it turns out that microphones really scare people :( ... the amount of rejections i got is unbelievable, the shop lady completely refused to even think about :( so i had to change my idea and it evolved through several stages , from being a surfing-surfboard, to a seagull surfer ... and THAN a breakthrough i recorded my sound and suddenly an idea of a turtle seemed brilliant , don't really have my final design but here are a few sketches of the work in progress, and the sound bite edited in sound booth. The length i think is 43 seconds, but i had to cut quite a lot of funny stuff out :(. so here it is .

After Effects

This is my After Effects project, but unfortunately not a very good quality copy yet, as dynamic link just REFUSED to work and render cue was also very stroppy. So after 4 hours of rendering this very low quality video is a result :D , enjoy !

My Life in Falmouth Initial Thoughts

Here is a couple of my initial ideas , but i really think its going to change depending on what sound i will record, im posting a few images of my character design sketches and also a "things i associate with cornwall" page :) a jumble of ideas.
Firstly i thought of this shop in falmouth, which is just FUUULLL of like a gazillion things, i don't really know what it's called but when you walk in, there's really not even enough space to stand :D , so i want to maybe interview the shop owner, see if anything good comes of it :) and the character that i came up with is a hedgehog :) , (well not fully came up with yet , but its getting there).
Than i decided to sketch all the things that i associate with cornwall, and whilst doing that i came up with a possible other idea - A surfboard as a character.
So based on those two things i should be able to get an interesting sound recording when i go into falmouth.

You live and you learn!

Well ... so i tried uploading the little bouncing balls videos onto the learning space sometime yesterday evening and imagine my PANIC when it JUST WOULDN't work, so first thing i did is check the file size, and surprise surprise it was 67Mb, way over the limit. I ran to the studio and it turns out i was suppose to save my project in MPEG format (compressed form).
After submitting my work, when the panic was over I realised i wanted to redo it :) so i DID redo my bowling ball  and submitted it again,so here it is !