Thursday 21 May 2015

smafter effects

Removing two rigs from a 16 second animation was completely fine, but removing one teeny rig from a 2 second animation? Awful. So many teeny masks! 



I feel like I've learnt more about After Effects/Premiere/Photoshop more this week than the rest of the course. I was slightly rushed while animating the final performance, so I wanted to combined one of my tests which was only 9 frames with my final, and I somehow managed it easily! Also while animating this scene, I kept knocking the cake, even though it was stuck down it would still slightly move. So I gave up, and decided to edit it in afterwards. 

cake cake cake.


Backgrounds for this kinda slipped my mind, and my attempt of drawing something on photoshop failed miserably. I got this far and then just realised I was wasting my time. 


SO I asked my lovely friend/housemate Sydney Isaac if I could use her bakery environment as a background. I think they went quite well together. ^_^ 
I made a blackboard, and a little poster for my own attempts, so not to make it a complete waste of my time I decided to put them in. ^_^



For my rollercoaster animation, I filmed with the set floor and background green screened so I could easily edit the background video in, but that's the boring part. You might remember that in my sleepy state I named my website 'Laura on Toast'. Then while animating this animation, the word rollercoaster turned into rolla toaster! Toasterrrr! So I made a quick little logo for the rollercoaster stills.
I'm really really sleepy.



And that's it for After Effects folks!



So. Much. Rig. Removal.

I've spent the past two weeks animating, editing everything, while spending last week at work experience at the wonderful Trampires working on Chuck Steel, so yeah I'm totally cream crackered! 
I've spent so long on After Effect the last couple of weeks, I felt like I should at least one post about it. 


LOOK AT ALL THE MASKS!
Removing two rigs out of a 16 second animation. Ouch.






When the character falls off, I wanted the camera to shake. Honestly I couldn't explain how I did it, so yeah, here's a printscreen of it. All I can remember is that I had to type 'wiggle'. Proper coding like. 



Ultimate Image!

I'm so so happy with how my hoverboard animation turned out, considering how awful it was to animating. (Two rigs, ugh) So I decided to use it in my ultimate image! 
And here's the final ULTIMATE image! 


Quick catch-up!

I've spent the last two months or so animating away and completely forgot to blog about the rest of the puppet making. So this is just a little catch up post. ^_^

The final performance is meant to involve a character interaction, which means two puppets! Below are photos of the hands half way through being made, along with a photo of one of the armatures. I was pretty happy with the hands, until I realised way way wayyy too late (while animating) that they were way too big for the puppets. Oops.


I carved and glued two bits of balsa wood around some k&s to start sculpting the characters heads. They're no where near perfect, but they're getting slightly better each time! (Look at the teeny ears!)

    

Making the hair out of FIMO is always my favourite part. Last year my character had crazy blue Princess Leia hair (which I made on May 4th. Best timing.) Below are photos of the heads with hair, and the padding for the girl character!

   

I took so many photos while making, but then I dropped my phone once or five times and the SD card got a teeny bit damaged, so tra photos...
Below are the puppet with their clothes! ^_^ 


So much sass. 
(Grand Budapest Hotel fans, does the cake look familiar?) 








Friday 24 April 2015

Should probably put some animation on this animation blog!

My hoverboard animation is about 16 seconds altogether (no wonder it took so long to do!) but the kick-flip was my favourite bit! So here it is ^_^ 

I'll upload the rest when I've removed all the rigs and whatnot. 


Below is a test I did to explore the best way to animate the cake layering up and decorating itself. (as if by magic!) 

caketest from Laura Jones on Vimeo.


Oh and I've also started to make a website! It still needs a bit of work but it'll do for the time being.
(I really need to buy a domain name.)

http://lauramarlingisgod.wix.com/lauraontoast

Monday 16 March 2015

'Shark still looks fake.'

My first animation planned involves a hover-board, and being a huge Back to the Future fan I've never been so excited to make a prop before! Its without a doubt the coolest thing I'm ever going to make!


Here's the making process! ^_^

I dug two little holes out of the balsa wood so I could glue magnets for the armatures feet.



Then I glued the little extra bit of wood to give the board a better shape.


Then the rest was all needle-felted! I cut the purple felt slightly smaller than the board, and then started to needle-felt the pattern into it.




So the board will be able to look like its hovering with the magic of After Affects a rigging point was needed so I glued two bits of K&S to the bottom pattern and covered it with grey felt circles.




When both sides were finished I needle felted them to sheets of bright pink felt and cut around the pattern, leaving a boarder of pink felt. 


Then to finish I sewed both of the sheets of felt together around the wood. Here it is finished. :}



Oh, and heres how the rig attaches to the board! Pretty nifty right? 










Rollercoaster

Making the rollercoaster cart was pretty easy, just needed to make sure it could fit two armatures! When it actually comes to animating I plan on sticking two magnets on the seats to keep the armatures in place. 
Here are some photos of the making process of the cart. 


Photo of the bottom and the back of the seat, two planks of wood glued to make it more secure. 








Wooooo enough room for the feet!






The king of the swingers, the jungle VIP ^_^

To go with the explorer, I needed to make a monkey, which I was kind of dreading. I made a cat armature in first year, that ended up with spaghetti legs. I planned to needle felt it which was also scary! New things! Ahh! 

To make sure that the monkey armature didn't end up being too big I planned it all out on top of the armature design, with not much help from my cat...


K&S all glued in it's place! Then made sure that it kinda resembled a monkeys skeleton. It does. Kinda.



Added a sneaky little rig point under where the tail is going to be! I wrapped a thin bit of wire around the washer to create the tail.


Then the needle felting began! (Oh and I made hands and feet!)


Inside the head I glued a bit of foam to the wire to fill it up a bit. I decided to go with a light blue colour for the face/belly. Gives it more of a cartoony sort of look, rather than a realistic monkey. 


To make the ears I just stabbed a little ball of brown wool repeatedly, and then stabbed teeny bits of blue wool inside until I released all of my anger, I mean until the blue wool was felted into the brown...


Awww look at him with his ears! ^_^


I attempted to needle-felt the fingers, but it was so time consuming, and just looked a bit messy I ended up sewing felt around the wire instead. Looks much neater. :}


Finished monkey, hanging from my lamp. ^_^