MSC ANIMATION & VFX

Finding art books to use as research/reference for stop motion and/or visual style Stop Motion. Analysing either their methods or how characters were designed around them  - The Nightmare Before Christmas  - Fantasic Mr Fox  - Guillermo Del Toro Pinocchio  - Wallace and Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl - Stop Moti on Craf t Skills  - The Stop Motion Filmography (find any references to look into?) - LAIKA has a lot of YouTube bts  Visuals - Robots 2005 (character and environment design!) - The Art of Pixar (colour scripts)  - REALLY want to get my hands on a Guillermo Del Toro Frankenstein book at some point  Storyboards  - Wallace & Gromit: The Wrong Trousers storyboard collection (full film boards of a stop motion production, it’s perfect)  - Composition & Narrative  "The Stop Motion Filmography" by Neil Pettigrew 700+ pages of every single film up to 1999 featuring stop motion elements. Skimming through to find any mention of ...

Working on the catch of the day animatic with Maggie, she put it all into Blender for me because I didn't have a clue where to start. We got it complete so now I can focus on the colour script  Asked friends for feedback on my script so I can continue work on it. Just need to find time to update it now Need to keep working on colour script this week, been very overwhelmed and stressed and busy so not much has happened this week. Nothing had been updated since last week's session but I have taken the feedback on board  Continued Tails retopology on Thursday. Just his head left to model at the moment. Nearly done, just a bit more tricky topology to finish. Should be complete in next weeks 3D support, then I can move on to UV unwrapping hopefully (or modelling his outfit). Only got one more 3D support session left this semester and I don't trust myself to work independently cos I'd likely need Phil's assistance within half an hour, so really plan to make the most of ne...

 I finally have the room code for the space I'll have next semester, I'm excited to check it out and see how much space I have to work with. Sean will get script feedback to me this week - for assessment video I can upload the script and any animatic to the "supplementary documents" folder. We were discussing rigging and I realised I can in fact just go ahead and build a base armature (approximately the size of the Inventor) so that I can practice rigging and actually animating a figure; the Richard Williams animation bible may be a good place to start for exercises. That way I can get some animation tests done this semester and worry about fabrication once I have his design In the meantime I need to continue character and environment design, update my production timeline, and start working on storyboard once I get the script approved (worth reaching out to Freyja again and seeing if she'd be able to come down to studio one day?) Been working on the colour script ...

Started doing some material experiments, specifically for H3LPR. I was inspired by the ball joints and sockets on my WALL-E Lego figure and how well they hold their position with micromovements. I'd ended up dismantling the entire model to use the neck mechanism before I realised after prototyping that the model was going to be far too big. Instead I used a small ball joint from his hands, which is a significantly smaller and easier mechanism with more flexibility for model size (as it's only two pieces and not a full supported structure). The H3LPR prototype is just made out of cardboard and taped, with a layer of masking tape to provide grip for paint; still yet to figure out what finalised materials could be used. 3D printing would be easiest, but not for me as it would take me way too long to model the components. Other potential options are balsa wood (easy to carve and hollow out) or reinforcing cardboard; I still want it to be fairly lightweight  I realised I had a red L...

I finally got my script draft in! There's still a few moments to figure out but I think I'm in a good enough spot that I can leave it and go to practical work. I might try and illustrate some of the workarounds I'm planning for the review next week. I have no idea what I'm going to present yet, I'm supposed to be working on material exploration but I'm struggling to find time The Catch of the Day presentation on Tuesday went fine. Georgi said my matte painting was a colour key so I need to look at what the distinction is. As a team we're aiming to redo our animatics with Mack's construction sheet and 3D environments, but also additionally I'm doing more colour and look development. Which is a lot, I have a lot of frames to redraw On Thursday we used the AdvancedSkeleton plugin for rigging which was a bit easier than doing it manually, but I still got a little lost. I ran out of time to do a lot of the facial rigging and weight painting but I think I ...

Monday 23rd Speaking to Sean about next steps. I'm still working on the current draft of the script, I'd wanted to get it done for today but ran out of time. Need to get my current progress sent to him this afternoon, it won't be a complete draft cos I wasn't quite as far along as I thought I was. I'm getting stressed and overwhelmed by how far behind I am and the scope of the project. Currently looking at the possibility of cutting the living room interior, I'd have to shuffle a bit of the story but it could work (won't change it for this draft yet though); I still think the street set is necessary though I need to show the houses (make miniatures and full scale bases).  I need to start prototyping materials I want to use for the robots and the Inventor, practiucal exploration needs to happen ASAP. And maybe making another quick armature for me to use for test animations to get used to the rig and animating a human, make my way through the Richard Williams ...