.

Hoodie - Nose

2012-02-15T11:15:00.002-08:00

Grannie - Nose

2012-02-15T10:58:00.002-08:00

Bus Stop animatic

2012-02-06T15:53:00.000-08:00

Environment with Characters

2012-01-29T11:33:00.000-08:00

2012-01-28T17:47:00.000-08:00

2012-01-28T13:13:00.000-08:00

2012-01-27T18:00:00.000-08:00

2012-01-27T13:50:00.000-08:00

Characters (so far) in environment

2012-01-25T19:07:00.000-08:00

Hood Down part modelled

2012-01-25T18:55:00.000-08:00

part modelled grannie

2012-01-25T17:00:00.000-08:00

part modelled hoodie

2012-01-23T18:13:00.000-08:00

Final Environment

2012-01-23T14:08:00.000-08:00

Re Lit Environment

2012-01-10T09:19:00.000-08:00

2012-01-01T13:37:00.000-08:00

Environment for client so far

2012-01-01T11:54:00.000-08:00

drawn walk cycle

2011-12-29T11:18:00.000-08:00

2011-12-21T11:54:00.000-08:00

"Homeless" by vjsuave from vjsuave on Vimeo.

testing environment

2011-12-18T11:02:00.000-08:00

Line drawings over 3dmodels

2011-12-17T07:09:00.000-08:00

Testing Hand drawn Materials

2011-12-13T19:18:00.000-08:00

Peacock Screen Saver idea

2011-12-06T12:01:00.000-08:00

8bit Exhibition idea

2011-11-17T13:04:00.000-08:00

even though no one seemed to like the idea i had already started trying stuff out for it...

Simulated Client

2011-11-17T12:32:00.000-08:00

Rationale

2011-05-31T06:07:00.000-07:00

I initially started by picking the Fantastic Voyage script although I was interested in the Frankenstein script but felt my first year project was quite similar to a Frankenstein styled lair. After picking Fantastic Voyage I started to thinking of how I could adapt the script and then remembered the scene from Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, which has a similar scene near the end of the film where the characters are in a sub and encountering different sea life. So once I decided upon Life Aquatic I started by sketching sea life and initial idea. For the script I decided to change the location of the scene to if the world was completely underwater, which then gave me the idea of making the sea life's camouflage mirror elements of the new underwater world.

The design for the animation was going to be fairly realistic and I started testing underwater lighting and particle systems along with my modelled submarine. But after speaking to Andy he told me I needed to get my animations to look more like my drawing style and told me to use the ink and paint materials to give my animation more of a hand drawn feel to it.
Once I had got my style for the animation I began my making the main environment for the scene, the environment being an underwater town. The environment itself wasn't too hard to model as it was quite basic, with the boxes for the buildings with areas extruded. I think different elements to the environment so different stages of my progression into the design style with the buildings being quite bland with just a generic tile-able brick material which I change to brick colours in for different buildings. But then in other areas you can see where I've begun to think more about how I could incorporate my drawing style into the animation with the road, which I drew out and cross hatched in with dip pen and ink. I think it looks good but the only issue was I couldn't scan it in at a better dpi because it has become distorted when I've placed it into my environment. I think I then progressed the style further with my car, which isn't really seen in the animation, by perfecting the style a bit more. I drew the car out and then used the different elements, such as the door, window, etc., to then put on that part of the car. The drawings were first put into photoshop to get colour put behind them.

For the characters I think I've learnt a lot about modelling and rigging characters through this project but I just haven't been able to perfect the process yet, so I need to keep practising. The characters in the end I was OK with and again I quite liked the start of a style coming through with them, with areas of hand drawn elements but into them, for example, the noses, Zissou's beard, the Z logo on the clothes, but I still need to work through it because it still doesn't seem to work as well as I want it to. For the characters I find the actually rigging of the characters fairly easy, but the envelops once I had skinned my characters was the issue I had, in the animation a lot of the animation, which involves the characters, has bad elements to it especially at the elbows. When Zissou is crying, the elbows basically become flat, which you can tell in the animation but I think would look a lot worse if I wasn't using the ink and paint material.

Overall I think the project has taught me a lot and helped me start to find my own style, but now I just need to carry on with it and perfect all the elements.

The Art of Seeing

2011-03-26T06:14:00.000-07:00

http://www.flickr.com/photos/60634401@N02/

2011-03-15T04:39:00.000-07:00

Building Test

2011-02-23T07:38:00.000-08:00

Untitled from Lewis Farrow on Vimeo.

Sub Test

2011-02-06T15:26:00.000-08:00

Sub Test from Lewis Farrow on Vimeo.

Under Water Test

2011-02-05T21:05:00.000-08:00

submarine still needs to be finished and the right materials put on but thought i would try some under water lighting and try particle systems

Cab Shark design

2011-02-03T17:59:00.000-08:00

This is my intial idea which i like but i decided to make the checkered area more organic looking and in my presentation Andy told my about a flower that has a natural checker board pattern so i used that for my newer design, along with that i changed the head of the shark to a more flat head like a whale shark with the eyes down beside the mouth to make it look like headlights with the cab grill for the mouth.

Environment Test in Photoshop

2011-02-03T17:58:00.000-08:00

PufferFish Sub design

2011-02-03T17:39:00.000-08:00

Sea Life Design

2011-02-03T17:33:00.000-08:00

From my drawings i've made some designs of the new camoflague the sea life would of evolved.

Initial Drawings

2011-02-03T17:26:00.000-08:00

Rational

2010-12-09T03:57:00.000-08:00

To start the ‘of Bots and Bananas’ project, I had an initial idea of an old, worn down robot because I liked the idea of robots being around for a long time and now this robot is outdated. I began the project by drawing different designs for robots old and new because I thought if I drew some modern designs for a robot it might end up giving a better idea for the animation. I drew several different designs for old designs including robots made up from different parts, or scrap pieces of metal to patch up areas and exposed wires. For the old designs I thought they should be more hard edged and not very mobile just having basic moving, and for the modern designs I felt they needed to be more free flowing and to use more curves. I decided after having a couple of ideas to stick to my initial idea of having an old robot. From deciding on the old design I started to draw out my final idea, I decided to have a few pieces of scrap metal to the body to make it look older. The head I decided to have it coming out of the body at the top and making it overlap the body to give it a slouching look to it. I decided to keep the legs and arms quite simple to give it the feel of a first robot design with basic motions. After the Week 3 presentation I had to change my story and design slightly and added addition parts to the robot, these being a security guard hat and badge. The story for the robot is meant to be an old robot that is programmed to watch over a group of buildings and now even though the buildings have become derelict the robot is still doing the job because that is all he has been programmed to do. Once sorting the story and design of the robot I started by making my robot in 3Ds Max. The robot wasn’t too hard to make because it was quite a basic design and the rigging was quite easy as well because of the simple motions I wanted my robot to have. The environment was also easy to make because of the environment being an area of buildings they all looked the same so I just cloned the first one. I added to trees without leaves to give the scene the look of being derelict and worn down. For the materials of the robot I mainly used the same image of a piece of metal and kept editing it in Adobe Photoshop adding different rust patterns to each section and changing the colour of the metal for the scrap pieces. For the environment I decided just to have the buildings as red brick but added bump to it to make it look a bit cracked and worn down. I added two planes for the floor, on the bottom plane I added a soil material and on the top plane was a tile material with a stone bitmap, which I then used again for the bump and then made an opacity bitmap in Photoshop of scratches to give the pavement a cracked look with the soil showing from underneath.
Animating the robot went OK; I didn’t come over any major problems like some people did with their bones popping out their joints etc. it was quite an easy idea to animate because it is just walking and the rest is powered by jetpack/feet the jetpack scene where the robot is moving over the banana was quite an easy scene to animate because it is just moving the robot up but to give it more of a realistic feel I move him backwards and forwards slightly and moved the arms in and out as if to keep his balance, which I think worked well, because I couldn’t figure out how to get fire to look like a flame coming from his feet.
I decided to use a range of different shots and different lens settings on the cameras. I like the shot of the reveal of the banana with a low shot looking up with the banana in the foreground and the robot quickly walking to it. Another shot I like is the camera following the fall to a birds eye view shot of the robot and then the quick cut to a side view of the impact of the robot hitting the ground. Once the robot hit the ground I would of liked the shot where you think the animation is over and the camera just rises up to of been a bit slower with the quick cut back to its eyes. I’m also not sure about the shot of the shooting into the building it looks a bit cheesy, and should of probably animated the robot a little in it rather than just him shooting into the building. For the building exploding at the end I added a mesh bomb to the building and then on the inside of the building to produce the fire and smoke I added a sphereGizmo with fire effect added.
Overall I’m pretty pleased with the final animation apart from a couple of parts but I think the project has helped me increase my knowledge of 3Ds Max and animating.

Attempt at Walking

2010-11-16T11:12:00.000-08:00

i tried animating my rigged legs, they are ok for a first go.

Untitled from Lewis Farrow on Vimeo.

Testing Robot in Environments

2010-11-16T08:48:00.000-08:00

added my robot drawing into photos in Photoshop.

Drawings of Robot

2010-11-16T08:44:00.000-08:00

Of Bots and Bananas

2010-10-10T07:43:00.000-07:00

the first project seems good, i've started to draw out some robot ideas but need to buy a printer/scanner so i can put them up.

Shot Ideas - Pub Scene

2010-02-03T09:06:00.001-08:00

Shot Ideas

2010-02-03T07:27:00.000-08:00

Today we went to our locations and took some photos of different angles we might use tomorrow for when we film.

Interview Scene

Animation with sound

2009-12-16T15:51:00.001-08:00

Slug Animation - With Sound from Lewis Farrow on Vimeo.

One Shot

2009-12-13T17:33:00.000-08:00

Final One Shot 1

Final One Shot 2

Animation

2009-11-22T09:36:00.001-08:00

This is my animation i did over the weekend, unfortunately i still cant add sound so i'll upload it as it is for the moment and then try and add sound to it later.

Slug Animation - no sound from Lewis Farrow on Vimeo.

Group Pixilation

2009-11-20T14:04:00.000-08:00

this was my test pixilation which i put together on Premiere using the photos we took in our group on week one. its quite quick and think it may of looked better if the fps was slower but it was only a test to try out Premiere. i was planning on adding music to the animation as well but it wouldnt allow me to add the MP3 file i wanted into the side bar. i'll try and research it more for my own 30second animation.

Some Pixilation examples

2009-11-20T06:36:00.000-08:00

Alice by Jan Svankmajer

After watching Street of Crocodiles i remembered this film which we were shown the start of at A Level and i liked the use of stop motion with the white rabbit and the live footage of Alice mixed together. i still havent seen the whole film yet so i'll probably buy it and watch it all soon.

PES

I've seen several of these animation before i started on the course and had forgotten about them until i saw one on someones blog so i thought i'd add it to mine as well.

with the animation they do i like the idea of using random objects to replace everyday objects like the foil for the oil in the pan, the pixie sticks for the uncooked spaghetti and then elastic bands for the cooked pasta. they use this idea of using random objects to replace the actual things for the scene in all their animation including chairs instead of people, and have done a vodka advert where the codka bottle is a fish and swimming in water with lemon slices as fish as well.

Not So Noisy animation

with these i like the simplicity of the animation with just using people in a lecture room to move about to create the space invaders. they've done several of these including Tetris and Pong. Also i like the fact that they have made there own version of the original soundtrack so there's no issues with copyright by just signing out the song himself.

Stop motion with photos

with this i like how well the stop motion flows through all the photos and how well its been made and the amount of effort it took to make it. it says on the Youtube description that it took 90,000 photos to make.

2009-11-19T16:01:00.000-08:00

Week 3
This week we had our Adobe Premiere tutorial and it’s a pretty simple program really. I messed about with one of our group shoots just to try out Premiere and definitely need to produce a much better version over the weekend of my own because we hadnt taken loads of photos it hard to make the 30second minimum animation. But I will finish off this group one I’ve started and upload it onto youtube and my blog and so it as a tester. I’ll just add a song ontop for now just to show I’ve tried out each part also. This week my idea final idea for me to do this weekend came from the idea about using photos to produce one part of the animation but not on its own but have it as part of the overall animation. The main influence came from Door by David Anderson, with his use of having a man and various things happening and there being a photo of a eyes that is moving, I’m guessing it’s done by printing each frame and adding it to the same place as each photo is taken with the other objects/people moving for each frame. I can’t find a clip of it on youtube so I can’t put it on my blog unfortunately.
Tomorrow and over the weekend I’ll be making my own 30second animation. So I’ll write down my initial ideas about how I’m going to go about it to start with and then update it over the weekend with what’s happened as I went along with it. I’m planning on going out to the woods and try and use a tree and probably having a antique picture frame nailed to the tree and with the idea of using still images and changing them per frame to make it look like a moving image inside the picture frame. In the picture frame I’m thinking of having a rotating head as if the tree is watching someone walking around the tree. But I want to keep the whole thing quite overly exposed and quite dark and atmospheric. I’ll try and find a good location of an abandoned/derelict area.

Pixilation

2009-11-19T13:16:00.000-08:00

WEEK 2
The second seminar was showing us how to batch process our photos and luckily I’ve done this before so it wasn’t too bad. With editing the group photos I went a bit stupid and was trying all different filters to get something different, the end result has been that they just look poor. So I’m going to definitely produce my own with as little filter and editing as possible and keep it to a simple photograph per frame maybe with some little editing with the saturation and maybe making the animation more dark and atmospheric. Originally from editing I thought of making it all nice and bringht by putting the saturation right up and messing with the hue which im sure could look good but with my attempts has failed most times. Also the example of Street of Crocodiles by Stephen Quay and Timothy Quay gave me more ideas and I liked the dark atmospheric style that they used.

I like in the animation the way that it has been saturated to almost black and white with little muted colour in the animation. I think with my final animation I will try and use this sort of idea of keeping to a more eerie colour scheme of muted colours. I havent really thought of any sort of narrative to my idea yet but I have different ideas I want to try out in the animation so I might just try it all out and if some inspiration comes out of it and a narrative begins to happen I’ll go with it. But at the moment my aim is just to get a random animation using this sort of atmospheric and eerie style. I’m planning on going to a forest or somewhere quite sheltered and fine some interesting trees and roots to use in the photos as well. With the animation idea I’m going to try and use a couple of different techniques and try add pixilation and stop motion parts all together. I have an example of a technique I want to try from a Flight of the Conchords episode and this week Andy showed another example of quite a dark animation and they’d used the same sort of idea but along with pixilation and stopmotion parts so that is what I’m hoping I’ll be able to do.

This is the Flight of the Conchords video and it is with the printer parts where the sheets are being printed out with each frame on each sheet being printed out to make up the little sequence.

It's about time I wrote something about my Pixilation project!

2009-11-19T12:28:00.000-08:00

Pixilation
We started pixilation with Andy and he started by showing us examples of pixilation/stop motion based animations. Our first example was Neighbours which was directed by Norman Mclaren.

With the example I like how there is a selection of techniques with the use of pixilation through the animation and stop motion with the flower. I like the quite simple narrative to the animation and how there isn’t any words spoken but it is all narrated through the characters and their actions. With the animation it showed us the use for pixilation with the idea of if your characters are walking or doing simple things that can just be caught on a videocamera then why not just use a videocamera and with the use of pixilation do things that arent usually possible, like the example of the two men moving around the grass laying down. So with our group we used that and got one of our group to move across a bent like he was sliding across it, unfortuneately because of a slight schoolboy error we shot it and several other of our little animation ideas in portrait so I wont be using them because it will look awful when I upload it onto youtube/vimeo.
The second example we were shown in the first week was a Peter Gabriel music video that Brothers Quay produced:

With this I like the idea of using the balckboard in parts along with the other props as well. I also like that they have made it so that Peter Gabriel is singing along with the song even tho it is stop motion.
Today I started using premiere and seeing how our group attempts were panning out and tbh there is nowhere near enough photos to make a good 30second animation out of it without a lot of repeatition but that could work well with the right type of music but I think I will leave them as test and upload them as starting examples at my attempt of using premiere for the first time. Over this weekend I will be knuckling down and working hard towards my own 30second animation.

2009-11-09T15:12:00.001-08:00

cant upload my interactive narrative !!

Interactive Narrative Plan

2009-11-09T15:01:00.001-08:00

This is my initial idea which i went on with, it is basically a rough structure giving the idea of how many frames i'd get out of the idea. the plan hasnt change too much from this initial one to my final outcome.

this is my final structure layout with all the linking frames, but couldnt draw the end frames back to the kitchen or bedroom or hall but that is the basic structure that i followed for my final interactive narrative piece.

this is my frame plan with all the frame numbers and the buttons that will be on that frame. i wrote all this out before i started so it made it easier for myself when it came to linking all the frames to other frames.

Interactive Narrative!

2009-11-07T07:06:00.000-08:00

i haven't posted anything in a while so i thought i'd best write something about my first project seeing as its been and gone now. i started the project with previous, failed attempts at Flash and knew i wouldn't be that much more successful here. 1st week in our seminar we were given the brief and we started drawing out our ideas and stories and started planning our layout of the narrative and how it would branch out and the different links. i will scan and uplaod all my drawings and plans on a later post. because i wasn't confident i went for a simple idea for my narrative of sum1 losing there keys and having to find them, boring and simple i know, but i do seem to lose them alot. i decided to take photos around my flat, i decided on just photos because i havent used my camera in a while and thought i'd use it and just leave it sitting in my camera bag. second week i didnt really do alot but as i had my photos i could plan out my structure better which i'll also scan and upload later. i planned out all my frames on the second week as well with which photo would go where and how many buttons they would have just so it would be easier to see it all planned out. also because i was still completely confused by flash and the actionscript i just copied and pasted the actions and buttons frames and pasted them the number of times i needed them and wrote titles of the photos in each frame so the intial structure was there for when i could finally start setting up the buttons. so tht was basically it for week two. then it all kicked off our third and final seminar shaun showed us how the actionscript is set out and what it all means i finally understood flash, to be honest its hard not to understand it with such a simple templates to use, but hey thats hindsight for you. so thats the basic summary of the three weeks, im just starting the pixilation project now and will try and keep on top of that a bit better. i'll upload all my sketches and of course my finished narrative later.

Eric Lerner

2009-10-21T09:22:00.000-07:00

Eric Lerner is an animator who use 3D elements combined with live action, often 3D characters walking around in live action surroundings. Eric Lerner studied at Jerusalem’s Bezalel Academy of Art and Design. The example i've got of his work is from his graduation project, called 'Mr. CityMen' and is 1 of the 5 shorts he produced for the project. Each short was about a different character, the characters are called; Mr. Fortune, Mr. Deja-Vu, Mr. Dreamer, Mr. Sunken and Mr. Afraid-Of-Everything-But-Heights. the example ive got is of Mr. Fortune.

Eric Lerner from Mr. City Men has found commercial success and has animated for Vodafone, Coke and recently an O2 advert. with his work i like the simplistic 3d characters, which with Mr. City Men are just really shapes but then have urban live action shots which seem to work well with the simplistic characters. with his live action i think the locations he uses look well and i think he use Adobe Aftereffects to edit all the wor.

Pinhole Camera

2009-10-20T04:17:00.001-07:00

i have made pinhole cameras before but never with a beer can so that was a first. i would of liked to of done more photos using it but unfortunately i ran out of time so was only able to do the one photo which ive put below.

with the pinhole photos once we developed them they came out in negatives so we need to scan our photos in and then onto Photoshop to invert it the normal version. i didnt get my positioning right with the camera so the actual photo and subject isnt very interesting but i like black and white photos. with my photo i like the different tones in the sky and clouds.

Whiteboard Animation

2009-10-20T04:07:00.000-07:00

Our groups was the very last of all the animations. Ours was basically about six different ideas trying to happen at once which left us with 5 minutes left of the 2 hour time limit with the box only just under the house so in a rushed panic we gave up and just drew the box on the other side of the house. From the whole thing i don't know how the original Disney animators coped with having to draw frame by frame its such a long process. i enjoyed doing the animation but its such a long winded process i doubt I'll attempt it anytime soon.

La Maison en Petites Cubes

2009-10-15T10:07:00.000-07:00

La Maison en Petites Cubes from dorsumi on Vimeo.

During our tutorial we were asked to find something multimedia based that we like and add it to our blog and explain the good and bad bits so here's mine. it is an animated short, directed by Kunio Kato, and won best animated short in the 2009 Oscars. i'll start off by explaining the good bits because they're easier to find. for starters i think the narative is interesting and keeps you watching throughout becuase of the way the story is told with starting with an old man living in a house on his own and slowly his backstory is unvailed. I really like the hand drawn design for the animation and like the subtle drawing styles like the sort of cubist approach to how they've drawn the table and little bits here and there you notice. i think the music and sound effects work well with the mood of the animation. The title roughly translated because my french isnt very good is House of Little Cubes, which is what the mans house is, with a tower of little cubes that he has to keep building every so often when sea levels keep rising, which i felt was a sort of shout to global warming.

MonkeeHub Animation

2009-10-15T09:52:00.000-07:00

The above animation was shown in our tutorial group today so i thought i would add it to my blog. It's been made by a company called MonkeeHub and is a video for an acoustic version of Radiohead's - Creep. with the animation i like how they've slowly built the environment around the main character with just him singing in the middle of nothingness and slowly the buildings begin to build up, then they're mainly cover by the wall of the building, which he is in, then all the the inside of the office emerges and other people in the office.

2009-10-06T05:14:00.000-07:00

From the course I would like to learn new softwares and begin to find the pathway i would like to progress with through second year.