Marionette

Away for a very long time...

I have been busy and away from blogger for a larger period of time now and really need to get back into the habit of making frequent posts! Since my last post in my second year of the BA (Hons) Animation Production course I have gone on to make a graduate film and graduate myself! Since then I saved up and travelled round the entire world and now find myself back at my parent’s new house in Manaccan, Cornwall. The next two post will get this blog back up to scratch and up to date starting with my third year and the increasingly successful stop motion short Marionette!

My pitch was a bit rushed after China and was not picked by my fellow third years to be made into a film so I hastily rounded on what I thought were the best looking films for my talents and was picked by Tom and Frayah onto the wonderful pitch of Marionette at that point a working title (obviously it stuck) We then spent the rest of the year, alongside fellow third year Carmen developing the story and ideas and working it into a storyboard. We then took the storyboard and developed that into an Animatic and started to get in contact with music and sound designers to produce some sound for the short film. My job on the film was to produce, animate, design and build sets, characters and props alongside developing the story and working on the shots in terms of lights and camera angles. The film stuck to its schedule and small budget and was successfully completed by the end of the year. I could not be more proud of how it came out; it was a wonderful experience and hopefully one that I can repeat! Below I will post up some of my work and favourite bits from the production of Marionette!

Some final shots at the end, and now some extra fun reference videos and images!

I also got the great experience of working on a eight week course taught by two Framestore employees. The course was fantastic and really opened up my eyes to the post production world and the way it all works. The course was fundamental in getting Marionette finished as we had no idea how to remove rigs and work post shots into final products so it really saved the day, as did hundreds of hours spent by myself and Tom learning Nuke and slogging our way through all of the shots.

Marionette link below!

http://vimeo.com/66817790


I should also mention that Marionette to this date has now been nominated for over 10 awards and in a total of 16 festivals which is amazing! Go Team Marionette!

China Work Experience - “Back To The Sea”

http://www.backtotheseamovie.com/

Last year I was lucky enough to be accepted onto a work experience program with the Chinese animation company Glory & Dream working on a TV series spin off from their feature production “Back To The Sea.” It was an amazing experience living and working in China for a month; it also gave me an opportunity to use Photoshop a lot for painting which I had not done before. The first images are drawing taken from their characters to get the feel of the style and the second set of images are Photoshop work, that I did looking into different styles for the studio. We had a lot of contact time with the director and producers of the feature film and overall it was an amazing experience.

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"Not A Tree To Piss On" Pitch work!

Seeing as my film didn't get through thought I would post up the work I did for it...it's a western set in the 1880's in the Australian Outback, heavily influenced by the Proposition and the Backwater Gospel:

Summer Work

Some artist study work that I did over the summer to help with my pitch work:

The Art Of Pixar Shorts:

 

The Art Of Bioshock:

The Art Of Up: