During my internship we were approached by a newly formed production company that were going to make a tv-special about heavy metal bands and concerts. They wanted some animation, although the payment was... a small detail... however, me and my colleague Bosse decided to make some animation for them. We decided to make them as quickly and as "cheap" as we could. In other words I tried my very best to make limited animation work for me. As I've written here many, many times, it's a process, and today I'm going to share that process with you!
The assignment was sketchy to say the least and we got free hands to develop it as we saw fit. The contact with the production company has been... scarce... and the project has changed a couple of times during this summer/autumn/winter...
Metal1
This was the first animation that I did for this assignment. It's a cycle, and it's what happens when you've been headbanging all night long...
Metal2
This piece was based on one of the crew members, again it was easy and fast, and kind of worked, I like it. Unfortunately she left the production so they could not use it. My intention with this animation was to cut to it during an interview or something like that.
Metal3
We had to our disposal some pictures of heavy metal fans, and I found this rock-chick that is so bad ass and cool, that I wanted to animate her. I had still the notion of limited animation, and I tried to solve the issues of the staticness of the parts that doesn't move, here is one of the last linetests that I did. It's a cycle, although I didn't take this idea further...
Ny metal3
...but before I threw it in the bin, I tried to make it with more movement and with a clearer or more simple character.
Airguitar
I wanted something that was easy and clear and also told a story, this piece of animation do all that! I've noticed that I recently has strived for a simpler drawing technique, to find the character without unnecessary details. Maybe I took it to far, but the production company liked it, and this piece of animation was delivered to them.
Hammer of Thor
During this project I looked at what I found fun and interesting about heavy metal, since I'm not that into heavy metal myself I could look at it with fresh eyes. I found some videos of headbanging that was fun to watch so I made some animations with that. Here I've also added the hammer of Thor! What you see here is a linetest and not the finished animation. The finished animation was delivered to the production company.
Singer headbang
This animation also features headbang and hammer of Thor. This is also a linetest and not the finished animation. This animation was delivered to the company.
And that is all my heavy metal animation at the moment, the latest I've heard from the production company was that they enjoyed the animations and that they are going to release the show on youtube, when that will be I don't know, as I said earlier the project has changed somewhat during my stay here...
But it's not over folks.... there's more!
I've also done some animations for a project based on the renaissance painter Hieronymus Bosch.
Liedemon/scythe demon
This animation is based on one of Boschs demons from one of his paintings, this animation is featured in a short pilot for the film project, it's a cycle. Here, I also wanted to make it as easy as I could.
Flygande groda/Flying frog
This is also a demon (I think) that I found interesting, and animated it, it's also featured in the pilot, it's a cycle.
Uggla/Owl
This is also a character from a Bosch painting, just a simple blink of an eye, it's also featured in the pilot.
The project is en route, although the financing is a tough nut to crack. The storyboarding has begun.
The Animators Workbook
Many years ago I had an internship at Pennfilm studio in Malmö. The animators there talked about this book by Tony White, The Animators Workbook. I did one of the assignments and found it very rewarding. Later during my education I got the book and browsed through it now and then and did some exercises, this autumn I returned to the book to really try and nail one of them!
This is the first linetest with all of the animation. I developed the exercise somewhat and treated it as a production. I gave the idea some serious thought, wrote a script, made sketches, did a storyboard, drew the keydrawings, worked on those, cleaned them up, and then the inbetweens. I sent this piece of animation to a friend that I pester with such things... He gave me some input that I took to heart, which is shown here:
I did some small touch ups here and there, most notably on the walk, when the character walks in from screen right. I also did some tooling about with the timing and the pauses which is seen here:
This is the final linetest of the exercise to date. I've got some small things to ponder, maybe I'm done with it, maybe not, I haven't decided yet. The main question is, is the character alive?
Is this all then you ask? Nay, I say!
These last weeks I've been nibbling on Maya, the cgi animation tool/software, it is a dozy... It's so complex! When I explained to one of the members here in the workshop, what it was like for me I said this: it's like drawing a picture, with a pencil, but sometimes you have boxing gloves on, and sometimes not... Anyway, yesterday I made this animation and kind of thought that I had gotten the hang of it (it was my fifth day with the software...;-), the animation was not done, but I felt a playblast was in order. So I did one... (Important note, this is my first cgi-animation ever, besides one small tidbit at animation school...!)
Walking_block_man
It did however not move in the manner I had expected it to... I noticed that the speed of the playback when you are animating does not have to be the same speed when you do a playblast... so basically I've made an animation, along the wrong conditions... I'm probably not the first that have discovered this, the hard way... Well, when I saw this I just laughed silently to myself...
I guess John Lasseter did NOT feel a disturbance in the force when I worked on this... or maybe he did... like.... "Ouch..."!
The block_man is featured in the book Introducing Autodesk Maya 2012 by Dariush Derakhshani, and is part of the resources to that book.
Well is that all then... yes it is, for now...
Take care!
