sophierender

[sophierender]

Happy New year!

[sophierender]

Nibbol and Naw- Episode 1- The Top Hat

This is my first proper animation with my new rig, with my funny little monsters Nibbol and Naw, it was nice to animate with them, it's been a while. I made these characters in second year as part of the two character interacting module and they have inspired new animation ideas ever since.

[sophierender]

My dad has helped me convert the old conservatory that never got used properly, into a rig room so I can carry on my stop motion animating. Hopefully I can test out new ideas and build up more of my showreel. Got over 1 metre of space to animate on and I’ve just bought some great backdrops for backgrounds. So behold Render’s Rig Room! 😁

[sophierender]

FMP- Lip Sync Test, fat pig burglar

This was a lip sync test for my fat pig burglar character. In the scene he is telling his partner in crime that he has taken the last of the money out of the bank vault now and they are going to leave soon. I will be test animating majority of my dialogue for my FMP. With the limited materials and resources, I am just focusing on character performance with heads on sticks and not making full bodied puppets. I am using my home-made rig to do all my tests. So far these tests are coming out really well, there is no light flickering because I am using small LED lights that stay constant through animating.

[sophierender]

FMP- Rig Complete!

So here it is! My finished stop motion animation rig! I have used various materials that I could find in my house including towels, blankets comma Paper, chairs and a lot of clothes pegs. I have blocked out all sources of light so I won't get any flickering in my animations from uneven lighting and just have the light source from my LED lights.

[sophierender]

FMP- Rig Building

With the lock down, I now can't access the animation studios to use the stop motion rigs. I still want to animate because I enjoy doing it and want to carry on practicing, so I have been making my own rig at home, using whatever I could find. This included cardboard, towels, blankets and paper as well as a lot of clothes pegs!

[sophierender]

External Brief- Literal Shorts Animation 1- Shot Through the Heart

To expand any showreel and too practice lip syncing in general, I have started a collection of animations called Literal Shorts. This is the first of them. My Literal Shorts will be animations based on literal sayings or song lyrics.

[sophierender]

External Brief- 11 Second Club Competition

I have created an animation for The 11 Second Club, a website that selects one piece of dialogue from anything in entertainment, that is approximately 11 seconds long. They hold a competition each month for anyone to animate to and then they pick a winner, there is no prize, but you are mentioned on the website and people can comment on your work. The key thing the voters on this website look for is good lip syncing

[sophierender]

External Brief- Lip Sync Practice

For one of my external brief tasks, I chose to do the loop-de-loop competition. This competition was to create an animation that is able to be looped repeatedly.

[sophierender]

Final Major Project- Unused Characters

These are some rough drawings of possible characters I was going to have in the background of the bank as maybe hostages. Now I have changed my idea so the burglars are robbing at night so no one is around.

These are characters I was going to use as extras in the bank, hostages of the burglars. However, now my idea has changed, the burglars are now comitting their crime at night with no one around. Also, I am keeping all of my characters as pigs to save time in the model making process.

[sophierender]

Final Major Project- Story Development- Changed Animatic

I have realised at this point that my story just keeps getting more bigger and over complicated, as I am trying to make several points, so I have made a big change. Also I have realised that in my whole story, my main character doesn’t actually get a chance to wear his costume, which is what I designed my whole story from to begin with.

So, my new idea now is to have two pig burglars robbing a bank and they get stopped by a pig in a costume called Arachnopig! I have found that I can make the story a lot more entertaining and action packed and really get a chance to test out my animation and lip syncing skills.

[sophierender]

Final Major Project- Set Design

To get a better perspective and scale of what I want, I have created a rough set design of my bank scene in Google Sketchup. I like using Google Sketchup because it has tools to simply create basic three-dimensional shapes and I can see the shapes from every angle with ease. I also like the fact it comes with a human character to help me get a sense of real-life scale. It also comes with a useful feature that lets me import ready-made objects that are made by people who are more experienced with the program and the objects are all free to download. This is how I got the giant safe in my design.

As you will see in the screenshots, I want a giant safe with space from there to the main doors to give Arachnopig room to perform.

[sophierender]

Final Major Project- Arachnopig Mask Designs

I have created three designs of the mask my Arachnopig character wears. At first I went for basic eye coverage, but then I experimented more and thought about covering up more of the head like one of variations of Batman who wears a mask called a cowl. A cowl mask covers most of the face, but leaves the mouth exposed. I like to this design as it still left the mouth open for lip syncing, but gave my character and more heroic and mysterious look in my opinion.

I think I shall go with my second design, as I like the way it covers up most of the face, but leaves the mouth exposed for lip syncing. I think covering up most of the face gives my character a more mysterious and heroic look.

[sophierender]

Final Major Project- Police Pig Character Design

I have created a rough design I what I want to my place to pick characters to look like. They will have dark blue trousers and light blue shirts with black ties. They will also have a dark blue police hat. Am I to also design the uniforms in black. Whilst researching Please uniforms, black and blue were the main colours of them.

[sophierender]

Final Major Project- Arachnopig Character Designs

I have designed several versions of my main character Arachnopig. I originally liked my first design, but I decided to experiment more with colouring just to see if I could find a designer I liked it better. After experimentation, I still like my first design and will stick to it as I feel it shows the comedic parodying without it looking like it’s going too far into copying the franchise. The spider in a web motif on the top of the costume is not finalised yet and I will keep working on it until I get something that works better.

I have designed several versions of my main character Arachnopig. I originally liked my first design, but I decided to experiment more with colouring just to see if I could find a designer I liked it better. After experimentation, I still like my first design and will stick to it as I feel it shows the comedic parodying without it looking like it’s going too far into copying the franchise. The spider in a web motif on the top of the costume is not finalised yet and I will keep working on it until I get something that works better.

I am also going to work further with the design of the mask. I am possibly going with a mask like Batman so most of the face is covered with the mouth still exposed, as I want to do lip syncing in my final animation.

[sophierender]

Final Major Project- Pig Burglar Character Designs

These are the designs for my two pig burglar characters. I want to go for an opposite affect like Jasper and Horace, the burglars in 101 Dalmatians. The two burglars in 101 Dalmatians are opposite as one is tall, thin and intelligent and the other is short, fat and not as intelligent. I am doing something similar with my characters by making one really thin and one fat. Also, I have played around with the clothing of the characters.

When I researched cartoon burglars, they are mainly dressed all in black or the typical black and white striped clothing we associate with burglars. I have experimented with the shaping of both types of clothing on both of the characters.

I think I will go with the black and white striped, as the fully black clothing makes my characters look more like ninjas in my opinion which is not what I’m going for.

[sophierender]

Final Major Project- Pig Hoof

This was a test hoof I made with wood and wire. I have used my pig anatomy references and learned that there is a solid hoof at the bottom and two finger-like claws further up the foot. I have not made it to scale as I wanted it to be big enough for experimentation. I feel it animated well and it has helped me understand the shaping and functionality of the hoof. This how I would animate the hoof if the characters were to function with them as hands, bending the wrist and using the two bottom claws as fingers.