working away...

Today we spent all day at my flat working on our animation!
I was patching everything together on final cut(hence why my face is it is alot and I look confused or annoyed. ha!), Jess was helping me and telling me what came next (SO helpful!), Petra was figuring out sound and the stage and Amber was a total animation star and filmed pretty much all the in-between stop frame scenes without istop or dragon!
I stuck istop on in the background for a while which resulted in this:

working away from Kim Smith on Vimeo.

kind of a fun behind-the-scenes look!

My group minus Pat (does he have a blog?):
JESS: http://jessicartworks.wordpress.com/
PETRA: http://rookieontheloose.blogspot.com
AMBER: http://amberandersoncamberwell.blogspot.com/

it's fun to see the updates on their blogs. It's really coming along. Another long day tomorrow and I think it'll be nearly done!!!!

a bit of sketchbook.

So, there isn't really a terrible amount in this sketchbook, but it's a nice place to practice text, plan things out, write down reminders and generally keep things in one place.




I made this sketchbook out of different papers and card, sewn together. nothing fancy.

Here is our latest 'storyboard' which is basically just us trying to figure out what going on, on the different screens. Right! time to get on that to do list! We're having an animation and piecing-it-together day at my house. I'll take some pictures. :]

first story boards.

On the 13th we didn't have a studio, so we worked in the canteen pretty much all day, on story boards and I went and did some research later on. It was a very needed session where we did a lot of decision-making and task-giving. Here are Amber's and Petra's storyboards:


To me, storyboarding has always been a quick get-it-down process, more for planning purposes that anything else, so I was a little surprised when they spent so much time over them- it obviously pays off, because they are beautiful. (I guess this is the 'i can't draw' thing coming in here- I've never really drawn comics or people/scenes from my imagination, or at least never had much confidence in it. Something I need to work on and practice, i think!)

Test Animations!

The Witch Of One horn. from Kim Smith on Vimeo.

This first video was my first ever try. I used stop frame and took pictures one step at a time, uploaded them, made them an image sequence and adjusted the colours in Final Cut.

The second one (below) was another test, and I uploaded it to show my group members so they could 'approve' it and I could get on with the rest of them


Open Open! from Kim Smith on Vimeo.


We also went to the animation studio a bit after these and filmed all the scenes together. It was fun working together to get it right, and I could help out a bit as I've done a lot of stop frame before.
Then, to finish it up we spent most of the weekend at my house, working hard- one of us from animating and the others were editing and piecing it all together. Petra was also working on our Stage which ended up being too difficult, but she had some really good ideas for different ways of showing it!

look at this.

Holy moley, this is exciting. My favourite part is the bit where the bird rips the paper to reveal a new bit of gorgeous old paper underneath. siiigghhhhh This comes from THIS photostream.

animation by die dié en el bosque

I did the majority of my Alevel Animation doing stop frame and trying out new techniques (see some here), so I'm quite confident I can churn out the last few 'scenes' easily. We made a to do list and everything. This has just inspired me a lot and I thought you really ought to see it too. I miss playing with paper like this.

The Cabinet of Dr. Calligari.

It's rather beautiful, with the soft focus and the black and white and the makeup and outfits, not to mention those amazingly inventive sets and a rather interesting storyline. such a fan of the silent films. so dramatic but hard to really take seriously.


I kind of wish we were doing a more live action type thing now. aw well- there will always be other times to make beautiful black and white movies with circular lighting. [:

going (mostly) smoothly

i need to update this blog a lot.
working on our group project- making some animations!

three horned witch

Another workshop we did was to help with characterization. My group picked the Three Horned Witch from our story (in the cabaret project) to draw objects, places, people, rooms, shapes, and a couple of other things. then we pooled our ideas and made a 'sentence' that said something about the witch.(i especially loved this zooming that happened by accident- something we are thinking of adding into the real thing!)


Again, it was loose and fun and quick and mainly to get us thinking. :]