Patrick Pleau

Patrick Pleau, a French Canadian has created the Bocalophobe.  He created this by himself and proves that he is a very intelligence and gifted created.  The programmes that he used include, Adobe After Effects CS4, 3D Studio Max 2010, Photoshop CS4, Adobe Premiere Pro CS4, Adobe Flash Professional CS4 and Red Giant Magic Bullets Look. 

This animation is very good when you consider that the creator put this all together himself and when the blends of design are considered.  The animation is accompanied with music and although it is in another language, its beat fits the activities perfectly.  The story is about a fish who is looking for freedom.  However, there is an aspect of the story that I found complex and difficult to understand.  Why were crisps and fish cola added to the bowl? I did not understand the relevance of this, unless it was to show cruelty to the fish!   All in all, the blend of different resources, pen and photo shop etc was very impressive.

http://www.vimeo.com/7794748

Fazil Say "black earth" Full animation by Volkan aydemir

This commences with the blobs being dropped on the wet sheet creating the Black Earth.  Out of the Black Earth a tree is created and through this image the subtitles are presented.  This animation creates the scene and allows the video to evolve. 

http://www.vimeo.com/7169426

Fazil Say "black earth" animation by Volkan aydemir

Black Earth was created by Volkan Aydemir.  This animation involves a blend of watercolour, pen, photograph, computer and pencil .  Also at one point the wet paint is put on a wet page and blended, an interesting process which I would like to explore.  The story is set to music and appropriately the piano music blends in association with the animation.  This creates a full audio and visual picture.  This animation creates a beautiful story, difficult to create but the finished article is very beautiful. 

http://www.vimeo.com/5030638

When Humans Ruled the Earth by Stephen Ong

Again this one is very interesting .  When Humans Ruled the Earth was created by Stephen Ong.  The story tells how the body goes through all the different machines in the factory.  It begins very slowly but builds up gradually until at the end, the earth explodes.  Interesting, but a difficult concept to understand!  Hand drawn sketches would not be possible for this type of animation as this would need to be created on the computer.  Photo shop may be useful but this is something that I would need to look into.

http://www.vimeo.com/13010221

Umbra by Malcolm Sutherland

I found this quite interesting . Umbra was created by Malcolm Sutherland.  The animation was all hand drawn, a mix of drawing on paper and digital animation with Toonboom Studio and a wacp, cintiq tabled assembled in After Effects 7 and edited in Sony Vegas 8.  It was interesting to see the story and how it progressed.  It takes you to see the end to see what the story is about.  At the beginning you are unsure what it is about however, as you follow it through, the story becomes alive and you see the people disappearing into the shadow.  Very interesting!.

I was thinking of doing something similar to this story.  I would draw over a 100 pages of sketches and develop the same sort of story.  I would try this firstly on the computer to see how it would works. 

http://www.vimeo.com/14844291

The Production Cycle

The production cycle is a complex task which involves various types and areas of development and design.  The Cycle begins with the ‘idea’ and this is then brought to life in a story board and show reel.  Next the characters are developed in their initial form in character studies and associated model sheets are produced.  Further life is given to the project with the associated sound being recorded and its appropriate length analysed in number frames.  Of course at this stage it is also necessary to conduct a sound analysis on dope sheets. 

The next stage of the production cycle is the creation of the scene layouts, these accompanied by the dope sheets allow the director to plan movement and timing.  After this has been sorted out, colour is added to the background paper and the movement drawings are commenced.  These completed drawings are again entered into dope sheets. 

The drawings are then tested on the line tester to ensure that the correct drawings are appearing at the right times and the movements are then traced onto cells. These cells are then painted or coloured and brought together with backgrounds.  At this stage the cells and backgrounds are combined on film and the exposed negative sent to the lab for processing. 

Here the sounds and pictures are edited and the sound tracks sent to the dubbing studio for mixing.  The negatives are then cut at the lab and with the cut print and final sound the final print is then made.  At last the print can be projected to the audience and the film then transferred to a DVD etc.

This completes the cycle.

Book: Animation in Process By Andrew Selby (TR 897.5)

This book contains a list of topics and associated artists with the various types of work.  The DVD which accompanies this book contains various pieces of work by these artists and I found it fascinating.