Foam Stop Motion Models

Today I had a go at starting to make a foam latex stop-motion puppet for my latest animation project. I originally intended to make the model out of plasticine and I did but I found that it was too soft and would melt quickly under the animation studio lights. :( That is why I have turned to foam latex.
I managed to create a plasticine mock up (without a head) of the model from which to create the mold. I packed half of the model in clay and then poured a plaster-like mixture (I've forgotten what it's called) on top. This will create half of the mold. Tomorrow I will remove the clay and plasticine model and be left with one mold half. Then I have to repeat the process to make a full mold.
Unfortunately I forgot to take pictures today but will ensure that I do so tomorrow.

Animation Web Ring

This is just a quick entry to post a link to the Animation Web Ring. The web ring has many sites of professional and amature animators and covers the main areas of 2D cell, 3D stop motion and computer animation.
A particularly good site seems to be one owned by Phil Dale found here.

RetroJunk

RetroJunk.com that is. It may primarily be a site for people to go to and remember their childhood days but also has many animated intros to live action programmes and cartoons from the 70s, 80s and 90s. I find it very interesting to look at to see how animation and techniques have changed over the years.

Frozen Moon Productions

This afternoon we attended a talk given by Mark Kendrick from Frozen Moon Productions ltd. Frozen Moon is an animation company that has been set up by two ex students of NEWI and they work from the Innovation Centre next to the art and design school studios. Mark came in to talk to us about setting up our own business and about the current "Science" film competition. We were shown examples of their work and some examples of what can be entered into the Science contest.
All of their work that we were shown had been produced in Flash but to say that they are a proper company that have produced work for the likes of Firefox, it didn't look that great.
They also said that they would be happy to try and take on people for work experience and that they will be looking to hire 6 new animators within the next 4 months.

Contact details:
Mark Kendrick
Mobile: 07832121002
Landline: 01978 293516
E-mail: mark@frozenmoon.co.uk
Address:
Innovation Centre
Plas Coch Campus
Mold Road
Wrexham
LL11 2AW

R.I.P Joseph Barbera

Today I found this article on DeviantART.com paying tribute to the great Joseph Barbera of Hanna Barbera, well known for the likes of 'Tom and Jerry', 'The Jetsons' and the 'Flintstones' to name only a few, who sadly passed away this month on the 18th.
The article gives a brief outline of his life in animation and names some of the many shows he worked on. It is an interesting read, if a little short but gives me the names of plently of shows to go and find out about.

The Periwig-Maker

I have just finished watching a short stop-motion film called 'The Periwig-Maker'. I can't remember where I heard the name of it today but I went to look for it and really enjoyed watching it. The film was directed by Steffen Schaffler and produced by Annette Schaffler. (The names have umlauts on the 'a') It was completed in 1999, runs for 14 minutes 49 seconds and the models were made by Mackinnon and Saunders. Apparently it is based on 'The Plague Years' by Daniel Defoe.
The film can be viewed in it's entirety here and the Mackinnon and Saunders website where I obtained the film information can be found here.

Links

Not much of an entry today but I have just come from deviantART where, after commenting on snowkatt101's journal, I have recieved some links to companies that produce commercials and shorts with the use of 3D CGI animation. Now although I have no major desire to go into CGI animation I do find looking at what people and companies can do to be very interesting and sometimes inspirational. The links that I recieved were;
Method Studios
Animal Logic
Blur Studios
Zoik Studios and
PSYOP
I particularly liked the 'before and after' reels on the Zoik Studios website, here, because of the way they show the processes used to get the desired results. I also really like the shorts over at Blur studios just for comedy value.

Animated M.A.T.E.S.

Today I managed to complete my dope sheeting for my personal project of my animated M.A.T.E.S episode that I want to make. So now I have the voice recording, the animatic and the dope sheets as well as the first few frames complete. It's slowly coming together.

Maya: Interaction of two objects (2)

Well I finished off the animation of the two objects today. I doubled the speed and it now looks much better. I decided against adding little jitters to the movement of the mouse as I thought that a computer mouse should glide along, not scamper like a real mouse as they are two seperate things. It's only the name that links them.

Maya; Interaction of two objects.

For this project we were required to animate two objects interacting with each other. Only one of the objects had to be animated, the second could just be static.
I originally planned on using a candleabra and my computer microphone as the two objects but after talking to Alan Summers we decided that the candleabra was a bit too predictable in the way that it would move so I instead opted for a computer mouse.
I drew up a storyboard which showed how the two objects would interact: The mic was to turn on and lift it's 'head'. It then had to look around, jerk it's 'head' back as it saw something off camera and then 'crawl' across to it. The off camera object was the mouse. When the mic reached the mouse it would stroke it a few times before the mouse decided that it didn't like it and zipped off.
This never happened.
Unfortunetly I hadn't planned well enough at the start of the project when I was modelling my mic. This meant that it was difficult to manipulate it to do the things I required of it. I tried to rectify this by adding controls to the mic model but this just made things worse as it decided to seperate the bones from the skin. Because of this and with how frustrated I was becoming with Maya acting up (spinning the camera irratically when it should remain static, moving key frames, quicktime not being able to show me realtime playback) I decided to create a much simpler animation.
In this new animation the two items are a red ball and the mouse I modelled for the previous animation. Well, I wasn't going to let all of the modelling I did just go to waste. I spent a long time on the modelling. Where was I? Ah, yes. In the new animation I have the ball sitting in centre screen with the mouse zipping onscreen, past the ball and then off screen. After a short pause the mouse comes back to investigate the ball. It moves close up to the ball and gives it a soft nudge and the ball rolls forward. The mouse then moves around the ball a bit and pounces on it causing the ball to shoot off. The ball then bounces off of 4 walls and hits the mouse, knocking it slightly. The ball finally rolls off screen and the animation ends.
I am much happier with this and all that remains to be done, at the time of typing this entry, is to speed up the animation a bit and make the mouse's movement a little less smooth and a little more character filled.
I will just add now that after undertaking this assignment I can't really see myself ever actively persuing a career in 3D computer animation. I feel there are just too many things to go wrong and that are out of my physical control.