Finished Edit

Here it is!

Poster Making and Editing

Screen shot from editing "Feeble's Attempt". I recieved some assistance from both Lynda Barnes and Elodie Markwell.

 Above are two screen grabs from Adam Pooles blog he help me with the colouring stage while I was away in Stuttgart at the FMX festival. Faye Wombwell and Nick Bourne also assisted in colouring. Between them they managed to complete over half the colouring during my absence. This meant I was able to keep on track.

Poster for promoting Feeble's Attempt.

Finished Backgrounds

Now I have finished the animation I have been spending all my time inking the pencil frames. I enlisted the help of Jacqui Davis to make my backgrounds look beautiful.

These are the finished articles!

Rough Thumbnail sketches for Backgrounds

 Very VERY rough sketches...

                                           Opening scene

                                           Clucky's house

                                           House side view

These are the rough backgrounds I used as layout sheets whilst animating. I Have scanned and handed over these sketches to the very talented Jacqui Davies.

I have asked Jacqui to use references from animations such as Looney Tunes, Wile E Coyote cartoons in particular. A lot of the inspiration for my animation came from my own personal fondness for the old Warner Bros. cartoons. Jacqui is an exceptional artist so I am very excited to see how they turn out.

Here are a couple of images which show the particular style I am aiming for.

What have we been doing then?

Well well well! It seems I have neglected my blog for a while... naughty naughty! It has been such a busy couple of weeks what with trying to complete the animating. It is a very different process to my usual stop motion medium. But I have enjoyed doing something different. I am coming to grips with the process now and actually feel quite comfortable with 2d medium.

As I said I have been concentrating on the animating side of things. My usual animating times tend to be from 9am til 7:30pm... here is a photo to prove it.

Once the lengthy process of animating is done I look forward to putting my film together and making it look lovely I would not have got as much done had I not made use of the studio being open until late.
I have updated my animatic with the line tests I have done.

http://vimeo.com/38390105 Click here to have a sneaky peak!

I have had fellow animator Elodie Markwell assist me with the inking side of things so I can put all my effort into getting the animation done and dusted. We make a good team and I wouldn't be on track without her.

Scanning my clean inked frames was something I had fallen behind on, so I speant a good afternoon this week scanning all the nice frames in.

Here is the first ''little'' pile of inked frames that were scanned...


Still a way to go, but there will be more updates later on in the week. I shall try not to leave it so long this time.

Feeble animated colour tests

As I am very new to the 2D animated process I enlisted the help of the lovely Elodie Markwell to assist me with some colour and ink tests for my animation.. Elodie was kind enough to hand ink my pencil frames. These are just a couple of the finished colours (minus the backgrounds, they will be done by my fellow animation student Jacqui Davis.)

 Getting to grips with Harmony animation software.

Elodie doing some much needed inking. Markwell by name Mark well by nature... hahah...ugh.

I am growing in confidence with the technilogical side of the process and with more practice I can't wait to see how everything will be when it is all put together.

More updates coming soon!

Feeble running test

I have many tests on the linetesters at uni, this shot was a very quick one so I could sort it at home. I have completed about 4-5 shots so far... But I need to press on! I am starting to feel more confident with the method of 2d tradtional animation. I think it is starting to suit my way of working. I don't have many 2nd year animation students but I have my fellow 3rd years such as Elodie Markwell, Lauren Dorling and Jacqui Davis to lend me a helping hand where needed. 

I am also on with looking for music for my animation. I have found quite a nice jazzy piece which sounds very 1940's/50's cartoon. So this is very good. It is royalty free and I just have to credit Kevin Macleod from http://incompetech.com/

Very useful!

More sneaky peaks on their way soon!

Posters... The search for 2nd years.

After I did my presentation to the 2nd years last Tuesday, I thought I might have had quite a few people wanting to help. I remember being a 2nd year last year and I wanted to help as many 3rd year students as I could in the hopes that I would get credited in more films, thus boosting my experience. The 2nd years this year do not seem to have grasped this... perhaps they are just a bit timid.

Anyway the next plan of action to rectify this is to create posters.

And then here is a bigger version of the doodle I did for the poster... I think it shows me a happy kind person to work for. Lets just hope that reels them in!

Fingers crossed!

Feeble and Clucky Maquettes

Clucky's close up

Chesty Chicken, she has some serious curves going on... as all sexy cartoon love interests should.

This lady takes no crap from anyone!

Dearest Feeble's close up.

Trying for a kiss... I don't think he is going to get one.

But he can keep trying...


More updates coming soon

Other line tests

First quick attempts on animating Feeble.

Clucky sweep line test

                                       
This is just a line test for the shot where clucky will be sweeping. I think it just needs a few more frames and then the timing should be right...

The beginning of the final push!

This is my new blog dedicated to the production of my animation entitled 'Feeble's Attempt'. The original title was 'Be My Birdy', but my new title is much more suited to the story.

Let me start with were the idea came from...

Whilest attending FMX animation festival in Stuttgart I came across a postcard that amused me very much. I loved the expression of 'no nonsense' on the gooses face. It led me to draw my own doodle of how I thought the goose would react to the fox trying to kiss her. So I came up with this...

This led me to fall in love with the idea of a Fox falling in love with a bird. I changed the idea to the fox lusting after a chicken... A chicken suits my personality better (or so I have been told). So that was my own spin on things which then allowed me to develop my own characters and narrative based on the images above.

So the plot outline...

My intension was to tell a story of what a fox may do to persue a chicken should he happen to fall in love with her. Even though I am a stop motion animation student I have decided that this story would be better told in a 2D tradtional medium. I thought the concept would be a tad more interesting than if he just wanted to eat her. Instead he would have to be craftey to show his affections. I came up with the name Feeble for my fox as that is how he looked. As he is a vegetarian he is not as strong or well built as a fox that would live on meat. This also explains why he wants to kiss the chicken (named Clucky) and not eat her.
The story is supposed to show his 'feeble attempts' to woo Clucky. Here is the early character designs I had for the pair.

They have now evolved into this final designs...

Here are the final colour designs for Clucky and Feeble.

What Inspired me?

I looked over a number of old Looney Tunes cartoons. I really wanted this animation to have a traditional feel to it.

Screen grab from Foghorn Leghorn cartoon "Little Boy Boo" (1954)

Screen grab from Wile E. Coyote and Roadrunner cartoon "Fastest with the Mostest" (1960)

These characters really helped me with the animation style I wanted for my characters.

Now that I have gone over how they came about in my head, I shall be looking for 2nd year animation students to help me make this animation.