Fountain

It may have taken about 2 months on and off of doodling in grasped spare time but at last the fountain for the autumn shot is finished... hopefully, just the remaining square to paint in, including all of the paving stones.  With luck I'll find a way of animating the water but it may not need it....

Conquering A Blank Page Slowly

It's not much to look at but the creative funk I've found myself in has finally shifted. I've begun once again to work on leap year and opted to begin on one of the Autumn scenes. It's been a while since I've done some painting so getting back into it will take some time. I decided to start with an easy task which every high school student begins on: colouring in some fruit which will make up part of a pomegranate tree in the foreground. As you can see there is a long way to go but I'm looking forward to breaking out the warm colours and posting it on here gives me some incentive to finish it!

Post 400! Have a Shoe!

I would of liked to have done something epic for post number 400 however i like the silliness of it being a shoe. Baby steps towards modeling Tom and Ada in Maya for Leap Year. Its been a while and I have lost the model three times but its a learning process and one which i am starting to enjoy! Once they are modeled I can't wait to test out 2D textures onto them and fellow animator and friend Rudy has offered to help me rig them, a lot of tea and pints will be heading his way! However advice is needed as I really don't have 
much clue how I should be doing this!

Leap Year Shot 10_Take 09

So baing back at uni has meant I can finally get access to CS5 so he we go a Vimeo link to Shot 10 again. The camera is stil not correct but its really to test if the many layers are lining up. Let me know if you spot any which are going awry as I may have gone cross eyed. picture below is for illustration purposes only!

Vimeo link: http://vimeo.com/29742280

Shot 09_Take 01

Well, I was so excited at getting back to this project only to be hit with painfully slow software and constant problems. 


Its rendered out at very poor quality and there's tweaking needed with regards to the camera and the point where it flashes is where I'm having difficulty stitching parts two and three together. Most of the problems and extreme thinking and rendering time [even at this low quality it was taking approximately 10mins a frame] is due the ancient version of after effects on my dear old laptop. Its taken me far too long to get this far and as my time is limited at present this will have to do until I go back to uni and can hi-jack the power of a far faster machine with whose help I know it will take about an afternoon. It does however leave time for comments and all will be taken on board so fire away...


http://vimeo.com/27386752

Springtime!

Work on Leap Year finally returns with a vengeance!

Scene 04. Shot 09 blocked out background layout/colour.

This background is for the continuation of this shot here: http://vimeo.com/15432152 so you can see there is still so much more that I am going to do, both in photoshop and in post. This shot is the first one where the audience is confronted with the magic of this city and its supposed to sweep the viewer through a global impression of morning and springtime as the city awakens. This scene is dedicated to Golden Boy and I'm very excited about playing with it and seeing it when fully completed, I have some ideas for it which hopefully will work and get it to where I want but for now here it is...

Kyoto Concepts

More concept work from the talented Jenny Gauci for leapyear. Absolutely gorgeous work.

Pier Concepts

Another amazing piece of concept work for Leap Year from Jenny Gauci. Praise her blog, and wish her luck job hunting in London.

Absolutely gorgeous, and the sea is exactly what I was thinking of.

Makes looking at Maya and working on a 3D smoke monster less fun...

The Clocks Go Back, Winter Storms

Lovely concept art from Jenny Gauci for Leap Year.

Check out her blog here.

Amazing stuff, many thanks!

X

Clock Prop

Prop sheet for Leap Year Station Clock. Designed by the talented Eleanor Affleck, coloured by me. 
Many Thanks
:) X

It Moves and Everything.

Leap Year
Scene 4. Shot 10. Part 1. Take 1. :)
3D Maya particle birds to follow next week. 
Vimeo link: http://vimeo.com/15432152

Production Charts Can Be Colourful Too

Animatics Ahoy!

There's more sound been added to A Sweet Disposition animatic before Monday's ridiculously early peer review. 


Animatic : http://vimeo.com/15284191


Also the storyboards for Leap Year have been redrawn, scanned and formatted for the production bible! Yay. A revised animatic can be found at the link below. Also Jenny Gauci has kindly been working on some background designs/ colour/ concepts for it so can't wait to see what she's been up to!


Animatic : http://vimeo.com/15283325

Leap Year New Animatic

I've updated the Leap Year animatic, very quickly with a new shot layout at the start. It will be revised for as you read I'm updating the storyboard with Ciaran's characters for the production bible. Its fun but alas as Ciaran is a more talented drawer of characters than I, I fear I may be butchering them. As it's been a dull couple of posts I've attached some of the production bible pages with the new character logs on them to refresh memories and enthusiasm!


New Animatic : http://vimeo.com/15168801

Layout of The Pier

Today has been frustrating layout day. The first one is a pretty rubbish one for Ashley's Mouse-tasche . I'm not proud of it but am loath to fix it tonight because there will be a script cut down soon, and with luck 1/3 [or more] of the 97 scene changes will be obliterated. To my mind a high angle perspective crowd shot can go. 


The second layout is a sketchy one for Ciaran for the bridge/ Ada jumping in the water scene for Leap Year which he'll kindly animate for me at some point. Exciting! It's great to have a project to work on which has no specific deadline!

Production Bible Round Two

Despite not using Leap Year as final project, I am aiming to work to roughly the same deadlines despite not having the same brief. As there is a peer review on the 27th/28th I'm using this date as a production bible deadline. It will be pretty rough but will at least work as a coherent document of the mad project. And so it has begun. Beware as a consequence many dull updates will follow..

Rooftop Morning Shot Take One

Background first part of the early morning Spring shot over the rooftops of the city on Leap Year. Testing colour, atmosphere and composition. Evolution from Storyboard panel, ink drawings and initial colour.

 

Updated Train Shot 2.0

Ciaran Murphy kindly helped me edit my After Effects file for the train station shot for Leap Year and gave me some mini tutorials on how to make things better. Many thanks! Updated file can be found at the following link:


http://vimeo.com/14943844

Train Shot 3 v.1.2

Now, with headlights that don't float around, a slight glow to the flowers and gravity defying particles! Far far from finished but its a start!


Vimeo link here :  http://vimeo.com/14359349

Now With Shed...Possibly

I'm still not convinced but the station probably needs some kind of structure, if so I don't think this works terribly great but for now at least its been tested...