Jail House Jazz: backgrounds

Ive been working on these backgrounds over the last few days, using the textures I made a while back based on Klimts paintings. The backgrounds are of the night sky above the rooftops, the inside of the house looking out the window and the trumpet case prison on a shelf.

Deck of cards: 16th centuary cards

2 new packs of cards arrived in the post last week, i ordered them for inspiration for my Cards project.

They are printed by rose and pentagram designs and they are replicas of a 16th century french deck of cards which is a very similar design to cards we still use today except without the numbers and a !6th Century German pack of satirical playing cards, which is a 48 card deck (is has no ACE cards) and each cards is a detailed picture card.

The cards are lovely, here are some scans

Rise and shine: Animation tests in Celaciton

Yesterday I had the oppotunity to go to a workshop in using Celaction, the Workshop was brilliant, and the software is great, I really enjoyed using it, its simple to get to grips with and easy to get started on. By the end of the day I had completed 2 walk cycles with my cut out dog character, they are not perfect but with a little more practise i think we are going to have a very professionally looking animation for this group project.

Life Drawing: 18th January

I had a life drawing session today which a enjoyed, i produced a few pieces i was happy with. I looked at movement in the body and also experimented with different medias; inks and coloured pencils.

Deck of Cards: black rock collective

I bought this awesome pack of cards, as inspiration for my Deck of cards project, online a few days ago and they arrived to day.

They are made by the Black Rock Collective

"the black rock collective, or BRC, is a group of internationally local artist, illustrators and designers who come together to share ideas and feed of each other's talents."

Each card in the pack is individually designed by a different artist so the pack is made up of 54 different pieces of artwork. The pack is really beautiful and has inspired me to do some more work on this project!

Jail House Jazz: Character Spreads

These are the 2 page spreads for the character designs to go into my bible.

Jail House Jazz: Consept storyboard

I've been working the last couple of days on the concept story board for my Production Bible for the Jail House Jazz animation for the Pre-production Brief.
Ive been painting each board and i've scanned them in to work on in photoshop, the last image here is some character designs for the human versions of the instruments.

The Cyclotrope: Festivals and screening

Over the last few months i've had my film 'The Cyclotorpe Experiment' that was based on the idea from my Experimental animation project in a few film and animation festivals and screenings.

Firstly was the Bristol Cycle festival in september where i exhibited the wheel along side the 3 films i've made, Then it was in the official selection at the Cornwall Film festival in the Animation category when it received a special mention from the judges.

And most recently it had been screened in berlin at the International Cycling film festival

As well both tv companies Deutsche Welle (in germany) and Cannal + (in france) have screened the original Cyclotrope Film

Digital Puppetry: Essay and presentation

Digital puppetry is the topic I have chosen for my Animation Technologies essay and presentation.

I started off by looking at the Dinosaur Input device used in Jurassic park for stop motion animators to work with CGI software.

Then while reasearching about it i came across jim hensons Waldo device, for live performance animation that uses sensors to follow the movement of a puppeters hand.

I then started looking at modern tv shows made by the henson company using similar technology such as 'sid the science kid'

And i then came accros the attractions at disneyland 'Turtle talk' and "laugh floor" where characters from pixar films and puppet by puppeters behind the screen and they can talk to the audience.

Deck of Cards: personel project

Ive started this new personal project that has no relation to any of my uni work over this christmas break.

I had the idea at the start of the holidays about printing an animation onto a deck of cards so it would work as a flip book if in the right order, I have been doing some sketches and brain storming and im going to try and design my own pack of cards and get it professionally printed.

Jail House Jazz: searching for klimt

Over the christmas break I had a few chances to go up to london and see some galleries.

I had hoped to find some painting by Gustav Klimt, and the National Gallery Website said that they had one, but when i got to london it was no where to be see, we tried the portrait gallery and Tate Modern as well but when we asked where we could see some gustav klimt we were told "Vienna".

We did on the other hand see some very good exhibitions, We went to a panoramic of the work of Gehrard Richter, The Photographers portrait award, An exhibition about Portraits of british comedians, The Wildlife Photographer of the Year Award and A film installation by Tacita Dean.

As for Gustav Klimt i've been working with a painting called Death and Life and by cutting , rearranging and photocopying i have been trying to create imagery that could be coming out the the musical instruments in my film.