Red Bull Canimation

I recently entered the Red Bull Canimation competition and my entry can be found here> http://canimation.redbull.co.uk/gallery#31848476

All filming was done on a single day and the editing took place over the following two days.
Sadly the image quality is nowhere near as good as I would have liked. It appears I will have to save up for a high quality digital stills camera.

Morphmation

I really should have posted up about this quite a lot sooner but I entered the Morphmation animation competition run by Aardman and Firebox.com earlier this year.

Unfortunately my animation wasn't selected from those that were submitted. My entry can be found on YouTube here> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=me2p8MUaH5g

The brief was to make a Morph stop motion animation lasting no longer than 1 minute.

Tattoo Design

On February 1st five of my friends from Derbyshire came to visit for the weekend. One of them mentioned that he wanted to have a tattoo done some time after they got home but the design he had wasn't quite what he was after. He wanted to know if I could alter it for him to what he needed. I said I would because it was a simple alteration he wanted and because he was a mate.

I got this email after he got back to Derbyshire:

"Hello Ali, hows you been since we left wrexham? This is wierd, its been ages since I sent an email to anyone!

Ok the tattoos, tattoo 1 is how the tattoo looked before I blew it up in photoshop. Tattoo 2 is the tattoo picture i'll be taking to the tattoo man to use as the template. As you can see in pic 1, the ends of the tattoo kinda extend, curve slightly and thin out to points; however, in pic 2 they just go blunt on the ends. ( probably because the quality of pic 1 is so bad and small, that when i blew it up in photoshop, it really looked rubbish! lol)

I've already spent ages on my comp, sharpening tattoo2 up, however I wondered if you would be able to un-blunt those ends for me, feel free to do as many different styles and techniques cuz you can send them all to me and I can pick the one i like the most. If you are wondering what the tattoo is of, its my zodiac sign for cancer the crab, but as i have 2 tribal tattoos already, i wanted my zodiac sign with a tribal look.

I've looked in the tattooists and they didn't have what I wanted, this was the only pic I could find of a tribal zodiac sign. There is no rush at all to do this ali, I totally understand you have your studies to do, and I am in no rush to get this tattoo done. Base it around your own time, when you are able to do it, I don't want it to affect your accademic and social time. There is no deadline. I can't tell you how greatful I am that you'll help me out like this. This tattoo as gonna looks ace. If there is anything I can help you with just let me konw.

Thank you Ali

Adam "

This is the picture he sent me:

and this is the one I sent back:

He was really pleased with the result and sent me a text today letting me know he'll be getting the tattoo done a week on Saturday.

"Mime Time" Music

Today I received the music that Kev Ryder had been working on for my "Mime Time" animation. Although I do very much like the music, I wont be using it on my animation because I feel that it doesn't fit. The music that Kev provided was very techno-ish whereas I wanted something with a classical sound; something to fit the traditional feel.
I think that I will have to leave the music as it is for now so that I can focus on my current project. I may go back to it sometime in the future though.

Storyboards With Jean Flynn

Today Jean Flynn from Cosgrove Hall paid us another visit to NEWI to give us a talk this morning in the Nick Whitehead theatre and totake a look at the second year storyboards. As I am also using her brief as a base for my current project I showed her my storyboard as well.
I got some useful feedback from her with respect to reframing some of my shots and alerting me to extra shots that I need to add in.
It was interesting listening to the feedback for the other students and actually getting to see what they are working on at the same time.
After I make the alterations to my storyboard I will then have to make a new animatic. I've already got one made from my current storyboard but its a bit too static because of the lack of shots.

From the morning talk I picked out three important things:
-Understand basic animation.
-Take any job available to get into the industry.
-Don't rule out work on computer games or web design.

Commission Work Update

Things are going really slowly.
I've not heard back from desique or ASH for almost a week now. I rang them the other day to ask what was going on and apparently Rich from desique had been off ill for a few days so couldn't contact me. Now that he is back at work it would seem that Zoe from ASH is currently on holiday and they are having to wait for her feedback before they can tell me if my designs have been accepted or not.
I thought they needed these designs quickly but apparently not if they are taking this long about things.

Commission Work

Today I was informed that I have been chosen to complete some work set forth by Desique. They are a company that specialise in producing creative media solutions for other companies.
The brief was dropped off in the studio on Wednesday last week and we were simply told to redesign a superhero character that we had been given, sticking to the same style, and we could get £200 for doing so. I emailed a submission to desique on Thursday and wasn't expecting to hear anything from them.
This morning when I entered the studio I was greeted by Jim, Marisse and Yvonne who congratulated me on being chosen. Apparently I was the only applicant who had stayed to the brief. I shall try and gain a copy of said brief for my records tomorrow.
The next step now is to modify my design slightly, which I have done, and then send off coloured versions back to Desique to see if their client approves.
Fingers crossed all goes well.

HOT Animation and eDward

Yesterday I contacted HOT Animation again to see about visiting the studios for a day to look around and show my second year animation. I was told, unfortunately, that it wouldn't be possible as the company is currently undergoing changes and that if I am still interested then I should try again at the end of the year when they should know more about their situation.

As for the eDward competition, I completed the registration forms and posted off my entry yesterday as well so that should hopefully arrive at the destination in plenty of time.

eDward

Filming on my short animation entry is now complete so all that is left to do is to create or find some music to use and then edit it all together. Hopefully that wont take too long.

edWard - Young Filmmaker's Award and Cosgrove Hall.

Earlier this month I made the decision to enter the edWard young filmmaker's award competition. The brief is to produce a piece that lasts no longer than 30 seconds on the theme of love.
I've started filming now and I'm making it using cut-out. The deadline that entries must be received by is 21st August. I don't think I have a winning entry but I thought it would be good to enter anyway just to see how these things go.

I have written an offline report on my day at Cosgrove Hall. I unfortunately didn't ask all of the questions I should have while I was there. I have emailed Chris with some questions but I haven't received a reply and that was over a week ago now. I think I shall have to email him again to give him a nudge.

Final Cut

Today, as I have completed my animation ready for assessments, I have been helping Dawn Turner and Nat Lamb with editing their work in Final Cut Express. I was helping them to add credits and sync up the soundtracks.

Collaborative Project Presentation

Today Neil, Heather, Dawn, Nat, Ryan and I gave our presentation on the collaborative projects that we took part in. We went down into the conference room at Regent Street for half past one and met up with the other groups also giving presentations.
Our group was fourth. We hadn't got a slideshow or PowerPoint prepared but we knew who was going to be talking about what. First Dawn, Ryan and I spoke about the First Thursday event that we put on in the animation studio where we tried to encourage the visiting students and public to have a go at animating. We played the animations from the line testing machines but unfortunately couldn't show the smudge and click animations from the DAR system as they had been wiped off before we managed to get a copy.
Next Neil, Ryan and Heather spoke about our time at the local infant and primary school where we went to animate characters that the children had designed for the NEWI science festival. We all chipped in when Neil showed the children's animations so that we could explain what was happening in each. Everybody had a good chuckle at the story ideas and the characters that the children had come up with. This was where our presentation ended.
After the remaining groups had given their presentations Dave Gill told us all that the afternoon's presentations had been some of the best and most entertaining that he had seen.

School Animating

This morning myself, Nat, Ryan, Neil, Dawn and Heather got up early to be at a local infant and primary school for 9 o'clock. The reason was because Des McCannon, from the university, had asked us if we could help her with a project she had started. She wanted us to go along to help animate some super hero characters that the children had designed. When we got there we split ourselves up so that Heather, Nat, Dawn and myself were helping to get the characters, props and scenery ready while Ryan and Neil took care of the actual filming part. We were using the cut-out technique to produce the animations and Neil told me that they were filming at four frames a second. They did this so that the children wouldn't get bored and could see the results quickly.
We only stayed until midday and unfortunately there were two groups, one of which I was helping, that didn't get around to animating but Des has sorted it so that we can go back next Thursday to get them done.
I really enjoyed myself today which was great because I thought I may have problems dealing with the children but I didn't.

Collaborative Project

Today Nat Lamb. Ryan Orrige, Neil Rowlands, Dawn Turner and myself held a small animation workshop in the animation room for the First Thursday event at NWSAD. We set up two line testing machines for cut out animation and a DAR system for smudge 'n' click style animation.
As the theme was St David's Day Neil and I prepered some cut out dragons that could be used and Dawn created some daffodils and a castle backdrop, both for the line testing machines. Nat and Ryan set up the DAR system with paints in Welsh colours and other materials such as real daffodils and chalks.
For the first hour nobody turned up even after we had gone looking for people who might like to try. Thankfully after we got our first person lots more soon followed. Our plan now that we have the short pieces of animation created by people who attended the First Thursday event is to edit them all together into a single short piece with music and then present it in front of our class as part of our collaborative project.
I found this evening extremely enjoyable and a lot of fun. Everybody else that took part really seemed to enjoy it too.