Creating Spooky Scary episode 2

For a while now I have been trying to motivate myself into animating this idea I had in mind but I found myself constantly struggling trying to get it started. It was a more serious plot about an orphaned cub in which the story would reveal parts of his life as he grew up.

The problem was, no matter how hard I tried I couldn't get anything to paper or at least very little.

In the end I decided to drop the idea and return to writing a comical script.

As soon as I made that decision it was if a barricade that was in way got pushed aside. I am now in the middle of writing the script for Spooky Scary Investigation episode two. But I wont scrap the design I had already completed from my first idea, instead I'm going to implement him into Spooky scary episode two.

Below are some of early concepts of creature

This is the final design (with what was going to be another character on his back)

I have also drawn up some character interactions and soon as I finished up writing the script and storyboarding it I'll post another update.

 

Annecy Animation Festival 2015

This summer I took trip to the Annecy Animation Festival with a number of my university friends and from my previous post I promised I'd elaborate more on the experience.

It was an amazing experience to go the festival, being able to see how many talented film maker there are and watch so many spectacular film ranging from a vast majority of styles and techniques.

The two films which stood out the most to me had to have been the “The Long Way North” and “Mune”.

“The Long Way North” has a very beautiful animation style and I was amazed in how much they could do with such a limited colour pallet for a film set in the Arctic.

The second film which caught my attention was “Mune” I instantly fell in love with character designs and I don't think there was any character which felt “that could have been design better” or “that character was rush”. But also the world was breath taking see, for a world which had one half rocky landscape and the other half to be a rainforest it's strange to see in how it just worked and you don't question it's existence.

With films aside the amount of new technology and hardware that was shown at MIFA event was incredible, I wish I could of taken the Cintiq's home as well as the Oculus but maybe one day I will.

When I came home after the festival I felt inspired and if I'm lucky enough it would love to go again next year.

What have I been up to?

Sorry I haven't posted here for a while I'm going to try and keep this update on a more regular basis from now on. In less then a week I will have graduated with a Honours First Degree, so shortly after the day (the ninth of July) I will write a post about the day with a few photos.

I also went to the Annecy Animation and Film festival a few weeks ago which was for a lack word was amazing.

 (A photo of inside one of Cinemas)

 (A group photo of me and class mates who also went on trip)

(A photo of me with Richard Williams, the author of the "animator's survival kit")

Lastly I have also been working on personal project. It a short film (around 4 to 5 minutes long) about a chimera which seems to be last of his kind, not exactly the most original idea but my main goal is to push myself in what I can do and also really getting into program TV Paint which till now I've only touched every now and then.

(Character Concept)

I know this post is short and I plan to make longer post detailing my Annecy trip later on. For now I only wanted to cover what I have currently been up to and give an idea on what my future post will be about.

Final End of Year Film

A week or so back I finished my third year film which was also nominated for best 2D animation for my university end of year show.
As you can could guess I was very excited that it got nominated and everyone who watched it enjoyed it and all the jokes made people laughed which I couldn't not be any more more happier about.

Below is the end of year film and I hope you enjoy it.


Spooky Scary Investigations FINAL FILM from Jason Evans on Vimeo.

New Showreel

Yesterday I put together my newest show reel highlighting what I think is the best of my work. It Can be found on the front page of my website but you can also view it at the bottom of this post.

Jason Evans Showreel from Jason Evans on Vimeo.

Credit Sequence

I haven't posted for a good while and that is because I have come close to finishing my film and I didn't want to reveal any more and spoil film.
What I can show is the end credit sequence which I have been working which involves have case come onto the screen show the credits through each page turn, but along side that I have posters of my characters on some of their other adventures.

I felt this would be the most interesting way of doing the credits that would also fit in with the theme of my film. Below is the video of the credits and still of the posters that I did.

Film update 24/04/15

It's been a while since my last end of year film post and during that time I have managed to get a lot of it done. There is a lot to do, the most important items I need to address are the lip sync, import the stop motion scenes and finish off animation at the end of the film.

Once I have completed the film to an acceptable level and I got some time left to make things better I want to go back over the very first scene and fix the stiff animation on Max.

A look at Cartoon Network

 Before I go back to me posting about my end of year film I want to take  to look over one more animation company, for this post I want to discuss a company which I pretty much grew up on watching day in day out, which is Cartoon Network.

Cartoon Network launched in 1992 with a 8500 hour cartoon library showing cartoons such Looney Tunes, Merrie melodies, Popeye, Tom and Jerry, Droopy, Scooby Doo and much more.

The idea of creating a channel which showed nothing but cartoons for 24 hours was a risky choice but in 1994 it became the 5th most popular cable channel in the United States.
In 1994 Cartoon Network Studio was created and immediately the studio started production on a show called "What a Cartoon!". The show gave animators the opportunity to create animated shorts where they had full control, high budgets and no limitations to the animation. This worked in favour for both the animators and the studio alike, (the animators could be creative and show they ideas and the studio and show them and find out what the audience liked and make more shows like it).

The first short to get it's on series this way was Dexter's Laboratory (a show about a boy genius who's inventions would get destroyed by his sister Dee Dee).

Others show where then soon to follow such as
Johnny Bravo, Cow And Chicken, Courage the Cowardly Dog, Powerpuff Girls and more.

In early 2000 Cartoon Network created the channel "Boomerang" which showed shorts from 1980's and earlier. the next year three new series premièred which where Time Squad, Grim & Evil and Samuria Jack (winning many awards).

It was around this time where audience for the shows produced by Cartoon Network wasn't strictly young children but also older audience. Through the years to follows to now, a lot of shows produced by Cartoon Network Studios are aimed at audience of all ages such as Adventure Time, Steven Universe, The Amazing World of Gumball, Over the Garden Wall and more.

A look at Blue Zoo Animation

Blue Zoo Studio is based in heart of London and the company has been around for longer then a decade which during this time has created strong strong relationships with TV broadcasters and media companies worldwide and to name a few would the British Braodcasting Channel. ITV, Cartoon Network and Disney.

The company has won many awards and BAFTA on multiple accounts and is will no doubt win many more. The company has four major areas which are 3D animations, 2D animation, mixed media animation and Motion Graphics.



The company has many different IP's but it's most currently popular show is "Those Scurvy Rascals". The is about about small group of pirate (three in number) which instead of seeking treasurer chests or valuables they want to obtain underpants.



I could go onto discuss the studios other shows (such as Blue Cow which is another popular show) but it would be more beneficial to visit their site which has a good number of videos and posts discussing their work in detail.

http://www.blue-zoo.co.uk/

A look at Sun and Moon Studios

Looking at anouther company which is close to home, Sun and Moon studios (which is based in Bristol) produces two kinds of work which are animations and games.

They company started up in 2008 by Dylan Shipley and Louis Jones and since then has created a large number of high qauilty gaming apllications for children to help educate and entertain the viewing audience.

But the company has also created many animations which ranged from educatinal videos to viewed on mobile devices or web browser to TV adverts and stings.

Sun & Moon Showreel from Sun & Moon Studios on Vimeo.

I was unable to comfirm what software the company uses but it would be my best guess that Illustrator and Flash is they're primary tools but is not limited to that, the company contuinielly growing and is not afriad tto try new ideas and styles and it's because of this why they are well and will cointuine to do well.

A look at Cloth Cat

While currently looking companies close to home, I want to look at a company which is specifically aimed at doing animation and the company I have chosen to look at is “Cloth Cat”

Cloth Cat is one of largest animation companies in Wales and currently set up in Cardiff. While the company does work on a number of client-led and co-production based projects they also have their own content and shows such as Boj, Toot the Tiny Tugboat, Grandpa in my Pocket and more.


Cloth Cat Animation Showreel from Cloth Cat on Vimeo.


Cloth Cats primary tool of the trade is CelAction which is a 2D rigging and animating software to which the companies core team have been using this software for a decade in a number of companies on various productions.

A look at Oyster World Games

To mix up my blog posts a little bit I decided to take a few game and animation companies starting with a company close to home, Oyster World Games.

Oyster World is a company which specialises in making top tier independent games for a variety of platforms (to name a few would be PC, Wii, DS and many more). But the company specialises in the point and click hidden object games, with their most recent title being “The Great Gatsby: Secret Treasure”.



Recently Oyster World has set up in Melin Corrwg Business Park within Wales after being in competition with Canada for the project for an unspecified amount of time. Today the company is still creating jobs for junior and experienced employees alike.

http://www.oysterworldgames.com/

Ultimate Image Development Part 2 13/04/15

Using my final concept as template I fine lined my work in flash and then continued to colour and shade it Photoshop.

Below are some of the screenshots I took during the development process but I have cropped them because I don't want to give away how I colour or layer my work.

Below is my final image (The text isn't part of the poster, it is there to stop anyone from taking it and reposting). As a whole I'm satisfied in how it turned out.

Ultimate Image Development Part 1 08/04/15

For the last few days I've taken a break from my final film in order to work on business projects.
This first of which is my Ultimate Image, which in it's simplest form is a poster which promotes your work as an animator or character designer.

When doing initial research for this project I took a look at the work from past students as well as looked at movie poster that are currently being used to promote movies out in cinema's.

(I would show examples but until I get permission from the artist I won't post there poster just yet)

After looking over my research I knew I wanted to have poster which incorporates the character I have created over the last three years of university. So after drawing a few concept I managed to narrow them down to one idea, then I refined that idea a bit more and played around with the composition to get my final concept (while getting general advice and ideas from colleagues and family).

(Final Concept)

End of Year film update 02/04/15

The last couple of days I've trying to finish off as many scenes as possible (but not including the lip sync). I've only completed 3 scene's but I'm hoping I'll pick speed since the next few scene's involve only one character at a time.

End of Year film update 28/03/15

A bit of set back this week where my days of work got corrupted which slowed down my progress. I've managed to redo what I lost and got all the scene's ruffed out.
I'm currently fine lining all the keys and discussing the stop motion scene's with my animation as my previous animator had to much work finish and wouldn't be able to do my stop motion scene's.

Below is a video of my current progress.

Werewolf Mummy Puppet

From the very beginning I planned to have the ghost in my animation be stop motion puppets and use after effects to merge the stop motion into my 2D animation.

My fellow colleague Saeed Ahmed needed to collaborate for his final brief and seeing how talented he is I leaped at the opportunity to have him make my models.

At this moment he's only revealed the werewolf mummy on his blog which turned out amazing
(I've linked the post below)

http://thelittleworkspace.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/third-year-final-brief-collaboration.html#more

When he has posted the ghost knight I will post a link to that as well

Film update, Tomb Scene

After having the critique Monday I was heavily recommended to redo all my voice because they wasn't of good enough quality, I've re-recorded all the dialogue apart from Max which I need to find a voice actor because the last one wasn't emoting enough.

Below is the test which I showed for the critique.

Film update: Keying the hallways

I've spent the best part of this week drawing key frames for my film and skipping the colouring, in-between and lip sync. By doing just the keys I feel I got more to show when I post an update.

Smoke and Progress

I have almost completed the best majority of scene one of my final fill but instead of completely finishing it off I moved onto the next scene. The reasons for this is I could work forever on getting my first scene perfect and make no progress on the other scenes which could result in having an unfinished film for hand in. Secondly I want to get the time of the whole film completed so I can give it to my music guy so he can finish off the sound of the film.

Below is a test of one possible smoke effect for my ghost and the second is a ruff cut of my film so far.

Repost Scene one colour update

Scene one colour update

The first scene of my film is almost complete. There is still a little bit of colouring yet to do but once that is finished I can then start adding the lip sync into the scene (but I will adding the lip sync once all the scene's are lined and coloured).

The step is to complete the reaming scene's which shouldn't take as long as scene one so the updates to this blog should be more frequent.

EDIT:
For some reason which is unknown to me, the video's frame rate has drastically dropped. Until I can find the reason to why this is I'll be adding all future updates as an SWF file.

Scene one film update

Sorry for the long delay, but I wanted to finish a big part of my animation before revealed it to the public.
I have completed the key frames and in betweens for the for character Josh for the first scene and I am now in middle of cleaning up the second character Max.
I can then colour them both in and processed onto scene 2.
Below is a flash file I embedded of scene 1

Background Test 1

I decided to put the backgrounds I've completed into my old animatic to discover if anything doesn't work or if any of the backgrounds need to be redone. Only a few tweaks are required for one or two but everything else looks fine.

Mansion Backgrounds update

A few background which I have finished consisting of the outside of the building and the hallways