Five years ago I was in LA attending the CTN expo as part of an animation industry group from Scotland. Today, as part of CTN Live (sign up now if you haven’t already – it’s free!) we’re having a reunion to discuss the trip and where we are now. It All Began 5 Years Ago:Continue reading “CTN Live – It All Began Five Years Ago”
Tag Archives: animate
Liquid Solid at DepicT!
Liquid Solid is now screening at DepicT! You can watch it in full here. If you enjoy it please rate it out of five – your vote will count towards the DepicT! IMDbPro Audience Award.
Liquid Solid at Encounters
I’m thrilled to announce that my short animation Liquid Solid has been selected for Encounters Film Festival! You can find out more about the film and the festival through the links above.
Animated Logo for Cornhill
This was a really fun little project I worked on this autumn. I was asked by Trinity Digital to create an animated logo intro for Cornhill Scotland. The logo is a dandelion head with seeds blowing away, so they wanted a figure blowing on the dandelion to lead into the still logo. My initial pitchContinue reading “Animated Logo for Cornhill”
Morphing Workshops
I led more high school-age animation workshops this year, expanding on the morphing workshop from last year. This time everyone who took part was in complete control of their own piece of animation between their character and the next person’s. Whether the character melts, explodes, shatters, or morphs, this was planned out in thumbnails beforeContinue reading “Morphing Workshops”
Skoog Animation
Recently I animated a couple of elements for the new Skoog advert, which you can watch below. I animated the girl’s moustache, plus several ‘flourishes’ throughout the video. I’ve added a couple of examples as gifs below.
Animation Workshops
Recently I taught some animation workshops for groups of mainly high school aged children and youth. This is the first time I’ve taught animation in any depth, though I ran one workshop on pixelation a few years ago. My main goal was to give a basic framework for people to think about animation in aContinue reading “Animation Workshops”
British Shorts
My short film “Dreid” is screening at British Shorts in Berlin on the 25th of January! For those of you who haven’t yet seen it (or want to see it again!), you can view the short here.
Sneak Peek
Here’s a little sneaky peek at a project I’m working on right now! I’m having fun with the simple palette and design. I’m building all the characters, props and backgrounds in Illustrator and am animating them in Flash.
Walk Cycle WIP
This is a walk cycle WIP from a short scene I’m animating. It’s the first time I’ve animated with the Mery rig (available from meryproject.com) and it’s been a lot of fun to use.
Create
I’ve been going along to several events at the Edinburgh International Film Festival this week. As part of the EIFF’s Youth Hub events I took part in a filmmaking competition. Each entry had to be made in under a week, and include the dialogue “young and the wild” and the prop of a mobile phone.Continue reading “Create”
New Portfolio and Showreel
I thought it was time for an update of my portfolio and showreel! Here’s a peek: click on the image to view the full portfolio. My latest animation showreel, featuring Maya and paper animation: Music: “Dial Up” by Kris Oliver http://www.krisoliver.com Paper Animation (Photoshop / ToonBoom): All character, background and colour design by myself. MayaContinue reading “New Portfolio and Showreel”
Deer
I cleaned up and inbetweened the deer over the last couple of weeks. At first the movement appeared very even, so I removed some of the inbetweens and rejigged some of the remaining drawings to get back to the feeling I wanted. Once I was happy, I coloured it, added a little more to the background,Continue reading “Deer”
Deer Background and Breakdowns
I returned to my deer animation today, changing quite a lot of the ending and adding more breakdowns and inbetweens. I’m planning to clean it up in Photoshop, something like the deer shown below: quite loose and free, hopefully keeping some of the rough nature of the original.Here’s one of my favourite breakdowns from today:
Deer Line Test
This idea I’ve had for a while, but today I had the chance to get all the keys and some of the breakdowns drawn. Lots of issues here still, so I look forward to working on it more.
Rude Awakening
Character (Morpheus) from here: http://www.joshburton.com/projects/morpheus.asp Chair prop provided by Aardman All sound effects from http://www.freesfx.co.uk This is a short animation I created while a Trainee Animator at Aardman. I wanted to push my animation and go for a more cartoony style. For reference I watched a lot of Tex Avery takes! However I still struggledContinue reading “Rude Awakening”
Animating a Horse III
Polishing Previous posts: Posing and Breakdowns. This is actually the hardest stage to describe, I think; there are so many small things that I do it’s hard to summarise them. But I’ll give it a shot! I normally don’t use the graph editor all that much before the polishing pass as I know I’ll haveContinue reading “Animating a Horse III”
Animating a Horse II
Breakdowns Find parts I and III here: Posing and Polishing. What with Christmas, applying for jobs, and so on, it’s taken me longer than I hoped to do some more work with my horse animation. Today I’ve had the chance to do so! To find my first post about this animation, click here. I beganContinue reading “Animating a Horse II”
Animating a Horse
Posing Find Parts II and III here: Breakdowns and Polishing. One thing I’m determined to do is to keep animating in 2D and 3D. There are lots of free 3D rigs available online, so I downloaded Tomasz Jurczyk and Carlos Contreras’ horse rig from here. I want to add variety into my reel with some four-leggedContinue reading “Animating a Horse”
Short Animation Idea
I have an idea for a short 2D animation, drawn and painted in my rough sketchy style. I drew this test one morning last week – it was great to sit down at an animation desk and draw. As I don’t have an easy way to linetest traditional animation at home, I just went forContinue reading “Short Animation Idea”
AJAiken 