Animation competition

Loop de Loop: Black and White

Hello blog, what is going on with you?

I've recently moved over to Melbourne to work on some kids show about a boy and his ass who hang out and have adventures. It's pretty goofy but it's good to work in a studio with some old friends oh and it pays the billz. Last years work was a little light so a long contract is what I need.

Anyway I made this for the

loop de loop

screening

A loopdeloop to the theme of Black and White or Another cat video for the internets

I was finally able to attend a loop de loop since it's screens here in Melbourne. Oh and it actually won the best loop for the month which was nice. I also got to meet a whole bunch of rad animators which was fun.

I liked the theme of black and white. It brings up some new rule I made for myself and that is to never use straight black and white always use slightly off blacks and whites. The reason being that black and white are your 2 major colours that draw in your eye so by saving true black and white and using it only on specific things you have more control of your image focus. Also not using true blacks and whites and using off colours means the textures and lighting shows up nicer. You can also play with warm blacks and whites or cool blacks and whites and mix the 2 in the same image (eg skin is warm clothes are cold).

The other little trick I tried out on this short loop was the idea of using shapes to plan my inbetweens, secondary movement and keep a consistent volume.

I tried something different of using shapes to plan my inbetweens, secondary movement and keep a consistent volume. Since the shapes are quite simple with Toonboom and flash you can use the onion skinning and see quite easy that everything is travelling through nice arcs and how your spacing is working.

Since the shapes are quite simple in Toonboom and flash with the onion skinning on you can see quite easy how everything is travelling through nice arcs and how your spacing is working.

The tradeoff is that you are adding another pass to your animation which would slow you down a bit. So I think I would only use this technique for specific shots rather than for an entire film.

You also got to watch that you don't lose the energy of your original drawings by being to mathematical like this. So you got to not blindly follow and trace the circles and make sure the lines you draw have power and guts to them.

Anyway that's the fun of loopdeloops. Trying out ideas and being pretty relaxed about it. I've actually got a whole folder of unfinished loops of ideas that got out of hand or that I ended up not feeling.

At the moment I'm storyboarding and planning a new video clip for a pretty awesome track and slowly working away at a

Manly Show

comic as well as occasionally taking turns updating

that tumblr

. I've also got another commercial job to do on the side soon as well. So that's what is up with me.

Stay cool blog, we'll talk again

Liquid loop

Here's my loop submission for this months loopdeloop



I've been reading a bunch of X-men comics lately and I'm pretty sure you can tell by looking at this haha

It wasn't my initial idea for this theme. I just woke up one morning and just started pressing random buttons on Garageband ipad and came up with this goofy song loop. I then animated loosely based on/inspired by the music straight ahead in toonboom animate.

It turned out to be a fun experiment animating 2d effects. When I was animating the effects I tried to feel the effect more than to plan it out. I tried to force myself to draw big confident strokes and solid shapes and not over work the drawing.

The line I used for this was a square brush with pressure. I really love the feel of that line! It feels like paints or ink and it's great to work really bold and messy.

The character design I wanted to keep really pulpy with flat colours and black. I worked in shapes and details that would help define limbs as I knew there was going to be that rotation but also so you can see what's going on when she gets really small in the background.

You can head over here and give it some star ratings today and tomorrow... 350 star ratings so I can win hahaha

You definitely should head to the website though and check out the loops this month there's been over 50 submissions and lots and lots of really great ones.

http://www.loopdeloop.org/

I really would have loved to go to the screening for this one. Curse my no where near Melbourneness!!!

Oh I should also say I finished another film for a competition on Saturday. I can't wait to show that one it's pretty fun!

48 hour Animation competition winning film!

Well the film is done and it won both the 'Best film' and 'Audience choice' woo!




Congrats to everyone who took part. Quite fantastic results all round. Special thanks to my crew. Craig great to catch up with you and work with you again. Michael you learnt flash in half a day then I made you learn premiere elements, great work! And to little Roseline, you can always come through with the goods!

Graeme Watson put up some behind the scenes stuff on the FTI site

Oh and I forgot to mention the event was called WAM BAM and was a WANIMATE event.

Many thanks to Kate Vyvyan for doing such a great job putting it all together.