Daniel James Animations

Conflict of Self Part 4:

2012-02-28T10:39:00.000-08:00

It’s being a long time sins I last posted anything on here as I have been very busy with all my university work. But I believe now is the time for updates, but before I can tell you about the new projects I have been working on I think I should finish off the news on how my conflict of self project went.

In my last post on this project I was at the stage where my bad-side puppet had just been completed and I had shot an animation test. The next step for me was to make a start on the good-side puppet, the original idea for this puppet was to make it the same way as I did the bad-guy puppet but with a wire armature instead of a ball and socket one. As the deadline date for this project was getting closer i would not have the time to do it that way. So my back up plan was to make the puppet using a wire armature with clay over it for the body a real fabric outfit and super sculpey head.

As I was pressed for time when making this puppet I did not take all that many photos of the making progress. Here are the only photos I got of the super sculpey head that got burnt in the oven that I then covered in clay, the body of the puppet with a rough outfit design on and the final puppet on the set.

When i came to animating i started on the shots were you see the bad-guy on his own, like getting out the suite case. I did these first so i could get a head start on the animating as i knew how this puppet acts and the way it moves when I’m working with it from doing the test. 

By doing the single shots first it gave me more time to work with the new good-guy puppet and find out the best way to work with it. In some of the earlier shots i spotted the puppets had a problem with keeping its balance and wobbling when moving him. As i did not have time to go back in and fix the armature i used my set of help full hands as a rig to support it and did my best to keep it out of shot.

The animation took around a week and a half to do and was all shot on ones. The last shots were close ups on the good-guy and animated on the morning of hand in. I then exported all the shots and did a very ruff edit and sound mix for the hand in. I then took the Christmas holidays off from doing uni work, when I got back to uni went over all my sound file and recorded new dialogue for the final sound mix and edit for this animation.

There is the final animation i hope you enjoy it and as always your feedback is welcome.

Staffordshire University is screening the British Animation Awards:

2012-01-29T07:08:00.000-08:00

My uni Staffordshire University is screening the British Animation Awards (BBA’s), a selection of the best of British Animations over the last two years.

They are being shown at the Film Theatre in the Flaxman Building on College Road next week

Screening 1 Monday 30^th January 5pm – 7pm

Screening 2 Thursday 2^nd February 12- 2pm

Screening 3 Friday 3^rd February 4pm - 6pm

I am selling tickes for this event at a very good price.

£2.00 for each screening

Or buy all 3 screenings for £4.00

if you are interested email me on: djstuidos@hotmail.com

Better yet you can email Laura Weston on: l.m.Weston@staffs.ac.uk

Or Adrian Tooth on: a.tooth@staffs.ac.uk

I hope to see lots of you guys at the screenings :D

Animated interview:

2012-01-08T14:04:00.000-08:00

As part of my audio production and lip sync module at university I was asked to make a stop motion animated interview. To get the required recordings I went out with a two class mates Joel Townsend and Jennie Lee to interview some people in and around the university. I then took my favourite recording and cut it down in to a 15 seconds clip.

Once I had my 15 second clip I then had to start coming up with ideas for the character and set design. When doing this I wanted to match the interviewers’ voice and make the character look normal and average, set with in a very basic plane walled office room with hits of a personality with the posters. I did three different designs and I decided to use the third one as the first two were too over the top and cartoony. I then did a quick sketch of squirrel related props and how they would fit on the design.

Now that the character design was completed, it was time to make the puppet. As this puppet will have replacement mouths I started making the head first. I needed a solid head to be made before I started to design and make the extra 13 replacement mouths. To make mouths I covered the solid head in cling film and sculpted the mouths straight on to the head, I then used the cling film to peel the mouth of the head as a whole piece without any damaging.

When all 14 mouths were made I added the hair and eyebrows to the head, then I made the body. When making the body I decided to get rid of the “I love squirrels” writing on his t-shirt because I could not get a way to add to the plasticine without it getting spoiled when animating.

The set was very simple and quick to make, the main walls were made out of a cereal box. The desk was made out of card board and glued to wooden base the puppet was sculpted on to then painted. I then realised there was no way to tell where the character was, so I came up with the idea of a plate that can go on the back wall saying “Boring Jobs R US”, so you know he is in a very plain and boring office.

With the puppet and set all completed I now had to fill out the dope sheets before I could start on the animating. The sound clip is 15 seconds long and I was shooting on ones, this meant the dope sheet was 6 pages long. In doing the dope sheet I planned out what mouth shape I will be using by numbering the mouths and writing the number for the right mouth in the box next to the letters. I also put in some of the big head and body movements that the puppet will do, but some of the movements will be made up on the set when I am in the moment.

When it came to animating I was very concerned about the time I had left and the amount of available animation rigs free in the university. To make things a lot easier for me I decided to animate this clip in the free room at my house using the same camera, laptop and lights I used when working on Viv & Mandy. The only down side to this is that the lighting and picture quality would not be as good as it would be if I animated on the university rigs and that I would have to animate the whole interview in one go.

This took me around15 hours giving myself 1 hour to do a second, I’m very happy with how the final animation turned out.

I hope you all enjoy it and your feedback is all ways welcome!

Green Screen character Interaction

2012-01-03T11:58:00.000-08:00

As part of my conflict of self brief I was asked to film myself acting out an interaction with my dark side character, in front of a green screen. To do this myself and a course-mate Nicola Everill booked out the university’s green screen room. I did around 5 takes with myself acting on the green screen with Nicola controlling the movements of the hat, with it attached to a piece of string tied to a pole. Once I was happy with what I had recorded I imported the multiple takes into the After Effects, cutting the best take down into the required time of 15 seconds.

With the main recording of myself completed, the next stage was for me to record back plate. As I want my clip to be set in a park, I went to Hanley Park with a friend’s DSLR camera and recorded a single tree that I knew would be the right one for my stop motion puppet to hide behind. I took the clip from the camera and imported it into After Effect so I could edit the green screen and the back plate together.

To remove the green screen from the footage of me I cropped out the parts of the frame I did not need using the pen tool. I then used the chroma key removal tool called keylight 1.2 to take out green colour itself. In order get the best result I removed the green using the MattView only. Once the green was removed I realised that I was too large in the frame and I had to resize the layer with the free transform tabs so I would be right in size and scale next to the tree.

I then exported this clip so I could use it as a reference when animating my puppet with Stop Motion Pro on the blue screen roughly to the video clip. I had to use blue screen instead of green as the puppet I was using has green skin and would key out in the editing. For me to be able to animate the puppet coming from behind the tree with a sense of depth to the movement, I set up a blue board so that the puppet could interact with it and would also key out in the editing.

I then exported the finished animation as a full quality QuickTime file and imported it into After Effects to start on the editing. I keyed out the blue screen in the same way as I keyed out the green screen. When organising the different layers I realised that I had to do a lot of moving around and doubling up with the layers of me sitting down. I had to do this as the arm of the puppet had to be behind me, but the hand of the puppet had to be in front of me so it could grab my hat right.In total I ended up using 4 separate layers of me to get the final result.

Once I was happy with the final editing I exported it out of After Effects to put the sounds and titles onto the videos.Here is the finished animation I hope you enjoy it and your comment and feedback is always welcome

Conflict of self part 3:

2012-01-01T11:42:00.000-08:00

Its time I gave you all on update on how the conflict of self project went now that it’s all finished with. After I did the animation test that I posted in the last update on the project, I carried on making the bad side puppet by adding the extra foam and body details to it with copydex glue and shaping it.

With the body now completely finished I then started working on the head of the puppet. To make the head I used supper sculpy with a ball of tinfoil in the centre to make it lighter for animating. I made the upper part of the head as one piece with the tassel for the hair sculpted into it. When I was happy with the sculpt I covered the hair in foil and to stop it from burning and cooked the head so it was a solid piece.

As the head is now a solid piece I could now drill in the holes for the wired jaw and eye browse. I put the pieces of wire into the holes and started sculpting the jaw over them with sculpy. When I had the basic jaw shape made I then cooked it solid, re-drilled in the holes, glued in the wires to the jaw and head, I then sanded the jaw and neck down more into the slim and pointed shape I needed.

The next step for me was to drill the holes into the upper and lower jaws in order for me to glue in the wires for the lips. I had to do the lips twice as the first attempt I did made the lips look like the head was smiling and was sad at the same time and it did not work out well.

When I was happy with the lip wires, I took the head and covered it with spray glue, once the glue was tacky I then cut and placed 1mm thin foam bandage over the wire to make the lips shape, I then placed more foam over the wires on the jaw itself, so there were no caps. I then covered the rest of the head in foam so the liquid latex would have something to stick to when coming to painting it.

With the head all made, I then glued it to the main puppet body. The next step for me was to paint the puppet in liquid latex. This is a technique I have never tried before and I did not want to do it wrong and mess the puppet up, I decided to ask a good online friend Richard Whillock who I knew had lot of experience working with liquid latex as I have seen the amazing puppet work on his blog.

Richard was very helpful and gave me some grate hints and tips on what I need to do so I will get the best results, so a big thank you goes out to you mate. I gave the puppet a first cote of dark green. When the first cote was add and dried an interesting thing happened to the foam that gave it a brilliant texture that relay helped to give the skin a grate look once the other 5 cotes of latex paint were added. The last 4 cotes were added to highlight and show the shape and mussels of the characters body from different camera angels.

With the puppet s paint job finalised I just had the small tasks left, adding the eye browse with milli put, painting them, cutting and gluing the hair in place so it won’t move when animating. As soon as I had the puppet finished I took it straight into uni and did an animation test with him to see how everything worked and looked on camera before I came to animating the green screen character Interaction with him and final conflict of self animation.

Here is the animation test I never got to finish the walking test as it got too late in the day and the rigs got closed. Hope you all enjoy it and as always you feedback and comments are welcome.

I’M BACK and it’s time for updates!

2011-12-30T07:04:00.000-08:00

Hey everyone I hope you all had a grate and relaxing Christmas. As you may have spotted I have been very busy with university work and sadly I had no time to update my blog with all the new photos and videos of what I have being doing. But now with Christmas over I can now get back in to the swing of things and get you all up to date on how everything has being doing.

So keep an eye out over the next 2 weeks for all my news and update on my university work, puppets, videos, oh yes and finally I will be revealing all-new news, photos and the final trailer for Viv & Mandy in the Big Clean Up part 2!

And as all ways your comments and feedback are always welcome.

Set building the cobweb hotel

2011-12-16T06:46:00.000-08:00

As part of my university set building brief I found out that the whole class will be working as one big group as we are remaking an out of copyright 2D cartoon the cobweb hotel as a Stop Motion animation. The first thing we did was to get given small separate task to do, 3 people of given the character sculpts to design, 3 more people were given the 2 main sets to make, and the rest including myself were given the main props to make as very basic first draft models.

The point of doing this was so we could all come back and see what size and scale would look best for the animation. When we got back and got to see the clay sculpts of the characters we decided that the size of the female fly would be the right scale to go with.

As the task I was given was to make the perfume bottle prop, we decided that all the people who were given the prop tasks would now focus on getting the main set finished and help by cutting out the wood grain effect in the foam board. This wood effect will go over the main body of the set that is an old wooden desk top set. We spent around three weeks cutting out the wood effect.

As well as the desk top being the main set there is a smaller room set that was being made by one of my class mates Joel. When i was not helping out with cutting the foam wood grain i was helping out Joel with his set. I cut out the wooden support frame that the set was glued to so it won’t warp as much. I also helped out with the first cotes of paint, we gave them a basic cote of black followed by 3 layers of a dark brown. Once it had dried we spotted there was still parts of the foam board showing up, to get rid of these we watered down some brown paint so it was very thin and covered all 4 walls in it. This got rid of all the parts of the foam board showing and once it had dried Joel made the final touches of dry brushing some highlights onto the walls.

With the smaller set completed I started to help out more on the large desk top set. By the time i came to help the wood had being placed on the set and i helped on giving the set that first layer of brown paint in the same way as I did with the smaller set.

To tell the truth this project has sadly got very under looked by most of the class as we have all being very busy working on other projects, as for me i got very over involve and spent too much of my time working on the puppets for the conflict of self project when i could of being working more on this project. This has being a big learning curve on how to time and plan a project, knowing this i will be spending a lot more time on this project in the new year when it comes to making the puppets and animating on it.

Canimation

2011-11-25T01:53:00.000-08:00

Red Bull Canimation

Hey guys just a quick post to ask you all to watch these to brilliant animations done by my fellow animators for the Red Bull canimation competition.

Cut Short by Drew Roper http://canimation.redbull.co.uk/gallery#32111930

No Bull by Gareth Hirst http://canimation.redbull.co.uk/gallery#32095013

Thanks guys and pass them around!

Conflict of self project part 2:

2011-11-13T03:40:00.000-08:00

It’s time I updated you all on how my Conflict of self project for university is going, in my last post for this project I had made the final clay sculpts for good side and the bad side characters and coloured them on Photoshop.

The next step for me was to put them in to some dramatic character poses. I took around 4 different poses of each character based on a series of life drawings I did.

I then picked my favourite 2 poses of each sculpt and coloured them on Photoshop.

With the designs for the good and the bad guy finalised by my tutors, I started making the bad guy design into a puppet. I started on this puppet first as I knew it would take longer to make, as I would be making it using a technique I have not done before. This can be seen in this YouTube tutorial by the awesome and very talented Nick Hilligoss.

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I will be making this puppet using a ball and socket armature( that was very kindly given to me by Tom Brierton) covering it in foam, using spray glue so it won’t peel off, Then cutting down the foam with nail scissors to the size and shape I need.

Once I cut the foam down to the basic shape I needed, I then started building up the body mass, hands and muscles. To do this I used pieces of foam and Copydex glue, i used this as its latex based and I no it will not weaken or dissolve when Its painted over with the liquid latex.

I have being building up this puppet now for around 3 weeks and this is where I am currently up to.

As part of the rushes presentations at university we were asked to make an animatic of the short story line we had come up with, showing the two characters interacting with each other. As i don’t want to give away the whole story here is a small sample clip from my animatic.

With all the extra foam getting added to the puppet i was concerned that it would restrict its movement when animating. To make sure it still had all its movement I did this quick animation test.

I was happy with how the animation test came out and I have decided that i will do a second test once all the foam has been added to the puppet and not yet painted, keep an eye out for them and more making of images in my next conflict of self post.

Flip Animation Festival Day 2:

2011-11-05T13:15:00.000-07:00

The second day of flip was a lot more relaxing for me as i was not all stressed over having to go up on stage. There was lots going on this day, starting off with a screening of shorts, a behind the scenes on model making chat and Q&A with Jim Parkyn from Aardman animations, the amazing Brian Cosgrove and Mark Hall the founders of Cosgrove Hall gave a chat on their time in the animation industry and the Brothers McLeod screened their new very funny 2D half hour animated comedy Isle of Spagg.

As well as going to all the screening and presentations it was great to finally meet some of my online contacts and have a chat face to face: Ben Whitehouse who i ended up spending most of the day with, Gareth Hirst who has got some great stop motion work on his blog and Ravi Maheru whose short 3D film Caged won an award at the Flip Festival so a big congratulations goes out to you Ravi.

They had some amazing sculptures on display from Mackinnon & Saunders of RaaRaa the noisy lion with his friends and Nine and Lottie from Frankenstein's Cat. Looking at these sculpts I found it amazing to think they are just plasticine painted over, with acrylic eyes pushed in, they looked so smooth and solid.

The talk that Brian Cosgrove, Mark Hall (the founders of Cosgrovehall) and Marc Silk gave was fantastic. They spoke about all the big programs they are known for: Dangermouse, Wind in the Willows, Count Duckula and Chorlton & The Wheelies. They also showed some rear behind the scenes clips from them. Everyone in the audience got a photocopy of an original storyboard from Count Duckula, I got mine signed by Cosgrovehall at the end of the talk.

I had a fantastic to days at Flip I met some grate people and all I can say is bring on next year!

Flip Animation Festival Day 1:

2011-11-05T07:23:00.000-07:00

Well the big day finally came around, on Friday the 28^th i went to the Flip Animation festival for the first time. This festival was a big deal to me as you may have seen in my previous post I found out that Viv & Mandy in the big Clean up Part 1 will be screened there as part of open shorts 2.

The week before the festival I found out that As well as Viv & Mandy being screened i also would be taking part in this year’s Showreel panel. This is where the panel will sit on the stage and discus the affects of what makes a good showreel and the best ways of making one, this year panel was made up of: Mick Foley, Barry Purves, Glen Holberton and Neil Hall.

After the panel show there clips they then call up the participant’s one after the other. We get up on the stage introduces are self’s say what we do, where we are now and then show are showreels. The panel then gives some feedback and we take any questions from the audience. There were 4 participants that were screening there showreels Terri Matthews, Matthew Waruszynski, Hannah Wright and myself.

I was the second participant to go up and present, it's a understatement to say I was nervous. I got up on the stage introduced myself told them briefly about my 8 years of animating, Viv & Mandy and my uni work; i then played them my new up to date showreel:

The feedback i got from the judges was all very positive and all mostly saying the same thing, that i need to get my hands on some professional armatures, as they can see the talent there, they like what i have done with the limitations i have when animating at home and Barry Perves went on to say how much he loves Viv & Mandy there characters and on screen chemistry. I got a comment from one judge saying don’t be afraid to make the some of the animation faster and punchy in places, this was grate advice and I will be keeping this in mind when I come to animate on my next projects.

This was an amazing experience that i won’t forget and I’m very happy that i did it. i would like to say a massive thank you to Drew Roper for recommending that I put my showreel up for the panel.

Here are some photos of the room were the panel was held:

Once the panel was over I only had to wait 10 minutes before the open shorts 2 started, which included Viv & Mandy Part 1. It was a surreal experience seeing my little animation on the big screen in front of an audience. The screening went down well it got all the laughs in the right places and I was very happy with how it went.

I took some photos of the film when it was playing.

I have to say a big thank you to flip for screening the film and lest hope I can show part 2 next year!

Viv & Mandy to play at Flip Animation Festival!

2011-10-08T05:19:00.000-07:00

Exiting news everyone I found out last week that Viv & Mandy in the Big Clean Up Part 1 has being short listed and will be screened at the Flip International Animation Festival on the 28^th of October!

I’m very excited by this news and im looking for would to seeing my work on the big screen in a room full of animation lovers. I’m very grateful to the people at Flip for give this me this opportunity, thanks very much!

For more information about the Flip International Animation look at http://www.flipfestival.co.uk/ to book tickets and see what great things they have going on there this year.

And for anyone who is going come say hi or let me know as I want to meet as many of my online animation mates face to face this time: D

Conflict of self university project:

2011-10-08T04:58:00.000-07:00

I have being double busy over this last summer as well as working on Viv & Mandy Part2 i have being working on my conflict of self summer project for university.

This project was given before i left university for the summer break, for this we had to fill out a 30 page sketchbook with one half full of designs using good attributes from my personality. With the other half full of bad attributes of my personality.

My bad attributes:

When I started this project I was working on the bad attributes first, as I felt I could do that side faster as I knew there would be so many different ways to take it.

Here are some of my drawings that show the design process I did

Settled on a design I liked I started working on different variations on the way the skin and muscle texture could look on this design.

Using the design I did a final 3 way turnaround on paper, from this I did 3D sculpt of the character in clay.

Taking the sculpt into photo shop I did 4 different variations of the colour scheme.

Choosing the best bits from them to make this final design.

My good attributes:

Now that my bad side was completed it was time for me to repeat the same process, this time to reflect the good attributes of my personality.

And there are the final two sides of my personality, the next step for me is to start working on the fully articulated puppet versions of them, so keep an eye out for upcoming posts were I will show how the making of these new puppets goes.

Frankenweenie Tour:

2011-08-12T02:51:00.000-07:00

This time yesterday I went on a 5 hour drive down to London, were i visited 3 Mills studios. Once there I got a one on one tour by an animation friend who is working on Frankenweenie the new Stop Motion film by Tim Burton.

While i was there i got to see all the sets, puppets and workshops used for the film including some almost completed scenes from the film its self. As i signed a confidentiality form I’m not allowed and will not be going into anymore details about what i saw.

But I will say this was an amazing experience and one I will not be forgeting any time soon, and a massive thank you to Chuck Duke for giving me the tour.

Every Stop motion fan must keep an eye out for Frankenweenie its going to a fantastic film!!

Me outside the studio

New puppets and sets:

2011-08-01T10:14:00.000-07:00

It’s been a while since my last post so I think it’s time I give you guys an update as to what I have being up to on the production of Viv & Mandy in the big clean up part2. The first thing I’d like to say is a big thank you to everyone that watched the trailer in the last post and commented, your feed back has being fantastic.

Now with the bad news, Due to technique difficulties with the laptop I use to animate on I have not being able to animate now for 4 weeks as I’m waiting for the laptop to come back. There is good news tho, the weeks were I have not animated have in its way being good. As I have had the time now to work on the last parts of the script and get the new big main set for Part 2 completed.

This set will show what Viv & Mandy saw at the cliff-hanger in the end of Part 1, I am very happy with the way this set looks and I hope you all will like it. As the set is a secret I won’t be show any full images off on here, but I will be showing some close ups of things that are in the set to give you a sneaky idea.

As well as set building I have used this time off to repair and make new copies of all the puppets that I will be animating with over the course of time on the film. Here are some images of the new waist up puppets that I have made new far part2. These puppets will be used mostly for shots were they are cleaning and walking in shots from the waste up as I can get lots of movement in to them. I still have to make a new full lighter copy of the Viv & Mandy puppets for walk cycles; I will be making them when they are needed towards the end of the shoot.

Full Cast Before Reapers

New Puppets

The animation laptop should be back by this time next week and I’m very much looking for would to getting back in the studios to carry on animating on Viv & Mandy in the big clan up part 2.

That’s all for now guys, keep a lookout for more news and updates over the coming weeks.

Preview clip of Viv & Mandy in the big clean up part 2:

2011-07-05T11:38:00.000-07:00

Here we have a preview of all new Viv & Mandy in the big clean up part 2, coming soon in 2011 i hope you like it and will look forward to the full film! :-D