Out of Sight

This animation is so amazing. It's been a long time since something grabbed my attention for so long. I was receiving IMs and being handed mail the whole time and nod once could I bring myself to look away. I even found my eyes getting damp from the emotional build-up it caused - it's just that awe-inspiring.
I especially love how we're encouraged into this little girl's world as she crawls through a gap in the fence. We start off in our own world of sight before following her into her own world - a very clever way of starting. Her "magic wand" is another clever device. Its beautiful as she "creates" her own umwelt, the visuals appearing as splodges of watercolour before she becomes fully comfortable with it and starts imagining full versions of what she's experiencing. The style of the drawings and the music come together to form something truly beautiful.

Quite an amazing animation.


Website

Booster Pack

For about six years now I've had a set of characters heavily based on some friends from highschool. Over that time, the characters have become their own. That is, they started off as humerus characatures and have, over time, taken on a life of their own. The original purpose was for a comic about what would happen if myself and my friends ended up taking on our own fantasy-style adventure in another world. I found this particularly amusing as my friends weren't exactly the perfect team for such a scenario. The comic became a subject of entertainment for people at school and I enjoyed making it.

At the time, I was also going through somewhat of an "anime" phase. As such, the characters are designed to reflect on various anime design traits that I found interesting (the big oddly-shaped eyes, giant implausible hair, etc.) and that is how I usually view them. Because of this, I've wanted to make various anime-styled animations regarding these characters. However, the anime style doesn't exactly lend itself to quick animations, so these small creations would take a very long time to make if I wanted them to look perfect. Another problem is, I don't want to be seen as an anime-obsessed person. Especially given that this would be wildly inaccurate. As such, I have been experimenting with drawing styles that might make these characters more "animatable" and also more visually appealing. 

Culture Shock by ~Draco-Ryo on deviantART

I'd love to know what people think of this style of drawing. b:

No Animations But Here's a Drawing of...

Bendito Machine

Help out with Bendito Machine?!
That sounds awesome!

Paranormal Encounter

I saw an alien and a bigfoot in the woods last night. The bigfoot was sort of hopping and gliding from foot to foot making heavy breathing sounds as it walked, like Neil Armstrong on the moon. The alien made these really loud, heavy vocalisations that made the hair on the back of my neck stand on end. Then the two creatures looked at each other, pointed at eachother and made converse indications with their hands before laughing silently and switching roles, the bigfoot vocalising and the alien space-walking. It was a very disheartening experience that reminded me just how cruel and mocking the universe can be sometimes.

Paint Tool SAI

I tried doing a bit of digipainting with Easy Paint Tool SAI, which I find is much better for lineart and preliminary sketches than Photoshop. 

I started by scouting for locations for inspiration. 

Then painted from my imagination whilst listening to some lovely music.

Then played with some Photoshop filters to see what I could make of it. 

Which version do you like best?

Video Game References

I did a short animation for one of my friends.
... Like... Just now. Well, I finished just now (at 3:45am) anyway. Love adding those fine details in postproduction.

Crayon Dragon

Aaaw, I just HAD to share animation somebody showed me! ;w;
It was made by Toniko Pantoja and... Well, just watch it! D:

Animation Bites

Does anyone else really, really loathe the new Blogger layout? I still can't fathom it. I've fallen way behind on other people's blogposts because I just can't bloody find them. What are Google playing at? People despise Facebook (a company Google consider a rival) for doing the same thing, so why follow in their footsteps? The marketing department need to rethink their statistics, methinks. Actually, screw that. Every marketing department in anything that doesn't involve shopping needs to be shot off into space along with all the other useless people. Have you ever met someone who works in marketing? Have you ever heard them speak?!
"Research shows that people favour a spreadable sandwich filling over any other, and Marmite is a brand many people can relate to."
Nobody "relates to" Marmite, they just get on and eat the bloody stuff!


Sigh. That was only supposed to be a little "aside" comment but I guess it turned into a post of its own, there. Sorry about that.

Now!
I went to an animation festival held at the university today. Animation Bites, its called. I really enjoyed it, and there were lots of great submissions.
My favourite was 'Viv & Mandy in The Big Clean Up'.
I shall now forward you to... DJ Animations!

http://djanimations.blogspot.com/

Second Hand-In

Latest hand-in for university. 

Applied Timing, featuring stop-motion, Maya CGI and pivoted animation from ToonBoom.