Feeling Inspired.

Hey guys.

A sudden surge of inspiration has hit me like a ton of bricks, not literally, that would hurt..

This however, doesn't mean I'll be jumping straight back into the project. That would be dangerous, I need to slowly ease my way back into the project by animating small segments, by practicing with a character I just made this morning for fun. (Breath!)

I want to have some real fun with these little sessions rather than trying to make over complicated messes of hell, there's still nothing worse than animating a characters legs without tie downs. That's actually one of my biggest problems when it comes to animating, since I just have a computer desk to work at I don't really want to be drilling holes through it. I think I need a stage of some kind... Actually, that's perfectly possible right now so I might get working on that soon. It'll have to be after this project though since it's all shot on my desk, it would look strange if in one shot it was on my desk and then it was randomly somewhere else in time and space.

I thought about some ideas for my next project...I don't think I'm going to jump right into another one right after this one. After a successful project, you feel a mixture of accomplishment and exhaustion, a bit of frustration sometimes when people pick at the tiniest mistakes.

So far, I seem to have given Early Battles a serious kind of feel when I talk about it, trust me guy's it's far from it! There are hands in shots, camera being knocked and all kinds of rookie mistakes, plus add that to some gory fun and you got yourself a bit of a laugh.

Now, I do want to embark on a serious project very soon but, my style stops me from being able to. The overall feel of my work is not serious or scary, but I do want to create that effect with future projects. LOADED was one of them, the characters style stood in the way though. They looked horribly childish and that makes me appear childish when I'm trying to create something "Real".

I think I'll leave it there for today. I don't know who reads this at all to be honest with you, I don't think anyone does but if you do then that makes you a pretty cool guy type thing. So keep on being cool you one person who actually enjoys me rambling about "Playdoh". It's plasticine really, this stuff:

More Complications.

Hey guys, it feels like it's been a very long time since I posted here. I've been holding off on posting here as I don't want to disappoint people or bug them with pointless updates, I think it's time to talk.

Early Battles has been at a complete stand still for a few weeks now. I don't want to work on it at all, I just don't want to work on it at the moment, I've hit a metaphorical brick wall which has put a stop to my creativity, no motivation at all, literally. I have managed about 1 minute of animation so far, it's about half way done and I just don't have the motivation to finish it off.

That doesn't mean I'm not going to finish it though. 

This crap happens every time, I'm pretty sure it happens to other people too but they manage to get around it, I'm looking for that way right now, and it's not showing itself to me.

For the time being, I'm going to be looking for something else to do until I feel inspired and motivated. Last time this happened, I got over it quickly, let's hope this is the same!

There are valid reasons as to why I have no motivation, but I don't believe it's necessary to talk about why.

You're probably sick of this crap happening, and reading these types of blog posts. I got a bad feeling about the next blog post...

Well, that's enough so see you next time!

Update for Early Battles.

Hey guys, been a little while since I posted anything, been trying to keep quiet about the progress of my project and what the whole project is actually about.

Well anyway, I will give you a small update on the progress I've made so far on the project.

Alright, so I started animating on the 22nd October I believe, so far I have about 30 seconds done. According to my storyboard, I'm not even a quarter of the way through yet, which is saying something considering the usual length of my animations.

I can tell you now, I have some fairly creative ideas going on for the project, but I've not been able to execute them all perfectly like I managed when practicing, I think I'm just gonna focus on these ideas to get this animation going rather than trying to make everything perfectly smooth like some of my practice footage got close to.

And that's another thing, practice footage. Right before I started animating, I got set up to start animating for the actual project but I decided to go with one more practice/warm up session. I came out with some of the best animation I have ever done here, the footage contains several takes at certain movements, this is something I don't usually do.I usually try something, like for example, I might try to move a characters hand up and then I would move onto the next thing without trying it again. Very happy with the way it turned out, but I'm not sure I'll post it until I post the complete finished Early Battles animation.

Anyway, I don't know when you can expect Early Battles to be done, I haven't worked on it for about a week now since the time I usually do any animation (At about 7:00pm) is occupied by the neighborhoods fireworks. (Don't even get me started on last night, I don't even know why people are letting them off)
I like to have absolute silence and a relaxed state of mind before I animate, if I don't I'll rush into things and get easily annoyed (Thanks anxiety) which usually ends up with me getting upset and miserable just over a tiny problem like that.

Hmm, that's quite a lot of writing without anything of real interest. How about a quick picture?

I got quite a lot of pictures actually, just not sharing them otherwise I'll spoil too much.

Oh yeah! I just remembered something! The interest for LOADED is back, it's probably going to be the next project but..... It's not going to be the same. I'm in the process of re designing the characters whilst I'm not animating Early Battles. I'm gonna re do the entire story board, but still using the same ideas, just a different feel. And that whole secret meaning behind the animation? Pffft, not anymore. I can't work it into the project without it looking stupid so I'll save these "Special Meanings" for another time.

I actually got quite a lot of ideas written down for animations, each idea I come up with gets progressively darker, this last Idea I just had though... geez. It's gonna be interesting when I get around to it.

Well, I think that's enough of a blog post/essay today. Gonna do some drawing, come up with some more ideas for my next project and yeah, that's it for now.

See you all in the next post, with something a little more exciting, I hope.

New Cam, 10 seconds done for Early Battles

Hey guys! Gonna try and keep this one short, need to leave the house in 15 minutes to go to college, well anyway....

New camera has been here for a couple of weeks now, Microsoft Lifecam Cinema, and it's great! There are some problems though, but I'll talk about that another time.

I finished everything I needed to do before I started animating Early Battles, making the characters and stuff like that, and then I went on to practice a little just to get back into animating after a long time without doing so.

I think the animation turned out very good here, I made more practice that turned out even better than these, but I'm not posting them yet.

Anyway, roughly 10 seconds of animation done already for Early Battles, just got the first bit out of the way which can be considered the boring part, now onto more interesting stuff. Will probably animate more tonight so long as I am able to work in peace like I have been able to for the past few weeks, believe it or not.

That's all for now, need to get off to college, got an early bus to catch and I have a whole day to look forward to animating!

Finally! Things are looking up!

Hey guys, things are starting to look up!

As you know, I've been farting around trying to get my hands on a new camera whilst trying to find money from somewhere. I finally got around to it, got the money and I know what I want, I'm buying it tonight and I don't know when to expect it arriving, but man I'm so happy to have finally found what I need!

This long absence has been very good for my creative mind, I have not been thinking about "Early Battles" at all since I stopped and I have become very excited and happy about the project, I was thinking about the animation too much and I wasn't having much fun with animation since I was having a few problems, but now is probably the best time to get cracking with some animation. Got tons of new ideas, tons of inspiration and maybe even some new skills?

Well anyway, once camera get's here I will be animating something as soon as I am given the chance, either straight after college or on the weekend, very excited to get on with something.

I have also managed to "Acquire" a copy of Flash, already been drawing and messing around. I want to make a sprite animation with the sprites I have been making at college during free time and breaks and I also want to make some completely original ideas in flash, don't have any ideas for that yet but when inspiration strikes I'll get to work on it. I'll just have to look at some tutorials to refresh my memories and then I'll experiment again.

I've also been drawing a lot too, I finished my 30 day drawing challenge and I think I should carry on drawing everyday but I need to be pointed in the write direction. I need ideas and help, I want to improve and I want to learn how to draw the human body correctly, just can't seem to get a hold of the right resources, I want to check in the library at college to see if I can find anything I can't find on the internet.

I have recently become very interested in forming a band, don't want to jump into that yet, I need a few more years of practice and I really want to play with some people so we can share ideas. I'm a very big fan of progressive rock/metal and this is the type of music I want to play after being inspired by many bands. This idea is rapidly turning into a huge dream of mine, never thought I would feel this way actually.

Well anyway, don't want to go on too long so I'll just make a little brief summary: Camera is coming, Got flash back (Again). And the rest isn't important.

Would have been done.

Hey guys, been a while since I made a blog post and nothing has happened since. I'm just finding money to buy a camera so I can start animating.

I would be done with this project by now too,  just annoyed with money. I literally haven't thought about or worked on the project for a few weeks now but I'm doing all I can to get this god damn camera.

I'm actually working on another little project right now, I'm doing a daily drawing exercise which I'm 15 days into. One of my current goals is to basically get better at drawing, I'm practicing by drawing my own things, drawing from observation and drawing people! I'm posting all this on my deviantArt page which is kind of like my secret getaway from things

Still practicing guitar on a daily basis and I'm seeing a lot of improvement since last month.

And that's pretty much it, just getting some money together to buy a new camera and I'm just drawing and playing the guitar whilst I'm not able to animate.

Almost ready to animate.

Hey guys! Made lots of progress since my last blog post!

I got the storyboard done, plenty of good shots on there that put this weird grin on my face every time I look at them, some I'm not sure about but it all depends on how it looks and how it works in the animation, I have other ideas stuffed up my sleeve which I'm ready to pull out if a specific shot doesn't look right.

Since I wont be messing around making loads of armatures for my characters, the character wont take long to finish. I don't plan on finishing the characters today as I'll be spending today cleaning and throwing out some old things I've had since I was a kid to make room for other cool things, I have three or four character done though, all of which were done in one sitting, except one character that I made before I finalized this project idea, that character was what gave me the idea for the project.

I may as well throw up some pictures here so this isn't too boring, nothing special though. It's just the usual stuff you see from me, which is the whole point here, trying to master a specific style before I take too much of a step forward into other styles.

I changed the four legged creature a little because I wasn't happy with it, the eye was annoying and it ended up getting "Smushed" into the clay, so he has a tongue instead. The dead guy actually has an armature, you may be wondering why? That, will have to wait.

Hopefully there is a familiar type of vibe going on here, but if not that's also good because then whilst it feels familiar and fun to me it will be fresh for you guys!

If I wasn't planning on cleaning up today, I would have got the rest of the characters done and then the following day I would be animating, I'm not messing around with this project as you can see, trying to get it done properly rather than starting it, then losing interest and coming back to it weeks later, I have done that enough times.

That's all I have to share for now, this is going to be the last update on my blog till I finish the animation. I have shared enough information and pictures for now, if I share any more then the whole viewing experience will not be as fun!

Something fun!

Hey guys, in the last blog post I talked about how I had become bored and annoyed with LOADED. I wasn't having fun with and I didn't want to work on the project whilst I was bored, but I still wanted to be working on an animation even though I said I was going to stop thinking about it for a little while. Well, I did manage to take my mind off of the project and I did have a slight moment of peace and relaxation, and by slight I truly mean it.

Animation has become one of those things where I only enjoy it on occasions, I need to feel inspired to work on something other wise there isn't any point. Since LOADED was a project set outside of my usual comfort zone, I was taking a risk by trying something new and exciting to see if it would work out. Well it quite obviously didn't, yet. If I just pumped it out and got it done, it would be pretty good, I was very happy with the story too. So basically, the project is officially on HOLD, no more thinking about it until I really want to work on it.

Rather than doing nothing in terms of animation, I have started another new project to be working on for the last month or so of the summer holidays. It's going to be my usual familiar style of animation, no more stupid stories and poorly made characters. This time I'm take a step back into the comfort zone to work on a project I know will be fun since it has a very familiar yet fresh vibe to it, however, I don't want to spoil this animation. Just like I did with the last one, blog updates will be completely picture related, no information on the animation it self will talked about in any blog post. There is no story to spoil like the other one, this time it's the whole concept and the surprising nature of the animation that can be spoiled. I would like you all to be able to experience it properly, I don't want to other hype it or excite any one about it but I'm sure you'll all like it if you enjoy my previous efforts.

There is one particular thing I don't want to photograph and share here on this project though, I wont say who or what but it will definitely spoil the whole surprise value of the animation!

So for now, enjoy a small demonic creature that will not play a big role in the animation!

This picture is not enough to spoil the animation thankfully, there is nothing familiar about this character either... This could be anything eh? It looks pretty simple too, simple is good and that is what this project is. It's a step up in terms of simplicity from OGVTD though, that was a very simple concept, but this one takes it a little further but not too far like LOADED.

So far I have started a storyboard and finished the main character, I'm having a tough time thinking about all the different shots.

Also one last thing before I go, the working title for the animation is "Early Battles".

And that's all for now, see you all next time! :)

What's going on as of now. 4.0

Greetings fellow animators and people who happen to be following this blog!

This is the fourth addition to the "Whats going on?" blog post series type thing and I will be talking about what I'm up to right now with my current animation project; LOADED.

All right so where do I begin.

I know! Let's start with how I have not done any work on this project during the summer holidays!
Okay, so in the last post I talked about how I wasn't happy with the characters and how I wasn't finding them fun, but annoying to work with. So then I went on to re make them one last time by making two more armatures, that's as far as I have gotten. Well I did get a little build up done on one character but I'm still not happy with it... This is annoying, but I think I can work on the character a little more to get it looking a little more "Dashing" so to speak.

I'm not feeling animation at the moment, I straight up don't want to work on any animation, I'm not calling off the project and canceling it as I would with any other project though. Just need to wait until that feeling comes back. During this time of lack of motivation/inspiration, I have begun playing the guitar after stopping many years ago, and by many years ago I mean about 7 years ago. Music has actually become a very big part of my life since April, something hit during that month and now I regret telling people that I wasn't interested in music a while back!

So yes, I need to take a little time off animation, I need to stop thinking about it and focus on music, sculpting or drawing until I feel inspired. I'm not going to force this project out if I don't feel like working on it, and if that inspiration is not there then this project will remain unfinished until inspiration comes back. No good doing something if you're not having fun with it, it will look like crap if I force it out now (Ew that sounded kind of wrong) so lets just be patient!

This happens all the time guys, I'll be back into the swing of things soon!

Complications.

I have come across a slight complication which is sapping all of the fun away from the project. You all know how much I enjoy animating those characters I make for projects like OGVTD, I mean those are my signature style and it's just how my characters look when I make them. But for this project, for the sake of style, I stepped outside of my comfort zone when it came to making characters, I instead made clothes and hair for my characters. This is what I don't enjoy, for some reason it doesn't feel fun animating these slightly more detailed characters!

These characters are easily ruined, the colours smudge together and they get dirty easy. I don't even think they look as good as my simple "Guy" style characters so that's why I whipped up two new armatures and started working on making the characters how I should have done in the first place. The only difference is the armatures, but one thing I have learnt from the old characters is that they can really help!

My last animation project really shaped my style and it came out exactly like I saw it in my head, this current project seems to be really weird, I should have never stepped outside of my style just to create a story and better characters, OGVTD had a really fun smooth flow to it when I was making it, this project feels like an awkward bumpy ride into another style that doesn't really work out well. I'm telling you now, I wont be making anything like this, I'll be going back to the fun, but dark ideas. This project is dark in terms of style, but it's far from fun at the moment, it's this whole story and characters thing that just isn't working out very well for me, I just hope it turns out good in the end and if not then I will be moving away from the silly sets and stories to go back to the things I like making.

That doesn't mean tabletop fighting or whatever though, I just mean back to the normal characters and minimal set usage.

Well, here are the two new armatures made at the same size as the last two:

Got a bit of clay slapped on one of the characters the other day but I haven't touched it since as I have been thinking about doing certain things.

Tune in next time to see the third version of these characters! This is becoming a theme now, the same thing happened with One Guy Vs The Dead!

No dialogue?

Hey guys, I have just come to realize something. Well, you're all probably fed up of hearing about my webcam by now, but I just can't find the silence to record voices. It's literally never quiet enough to record and it's very frustrating! The camera is still not working right, I'm getting the "USB device not recognized" message, sometimes it will work and other times it wont, I'm beginning to wonder whether it is the device or the USB driver thing in my computer.

"Hey Bagi, why don't you just buy a new camera?"

I want to, but I don't want to. I want to get my camera working because the camera itself is fine, just the USB and it might not even be the USB on the camera that's broken, it could be my computer. If I buy a new camera, which I can do very easily, I might end up finding out that I have the same problem with it not being recognized, I can always return the camera I guess. Hmm, enough of that, onto what this post was meant for.

All right, so I have realized something, and that something is a major change in this project. And that is to not have any voices! What? After all that work and you're not bothering with voices? I've realized that this will be for the better, firstly I can't even find anywhere quiet to record, and secondly this will actually be closer to the over all feel that I was after at the beginning of the project. It wasn't originally going to have voices but I decided to have voices so people would understand the story a little more. I realized that the actions in the animation are enough for the audience to understand, not only will it be easier for me but it will also look better in the end.

Whilst writing that, I decided I'm going to try out the camera one more time and if I get the error message then I'm going to blow £30 on a new camera, even if I still get the message with the new camera, at least I'll have a better camera in the end! Just gotta install the camera into another drive, in fact I'm going to try that with my Quickcam and I'll see what happens.

The First Shot. (Practice, or final?)

I did what I said I would do and animated something, I animated the first shot according to my storyboard and I think it turned out pretty good. I feel like I did a decent job capturing the emotion of the character, it's quite obvious that he isn't happy here and he is fed up with "Something". Nothing will make sense to anyone to anyone yet, just gotta wait until this is done and you should be able to understand it.

I actually uploaded the animation which I did but I set it to private as I don't want many people to see it, I only want the people who are interested in seeing it to see it which is why I'm posting it on my blog and in my WIP thread on Moulding Minefield, with the previous project I posted way too much information so all the work in progress and stuff can go on my blog rather than my youtube channel where everyone will see it.

The lighting is a little funny but it's ok for now, this was just a practice. The animation is ok and I would totally use this in the final thing but the lighting doesn't seem right, needs to be whiter rather than orange. I shot this on doubles because it's not going to be high speed action or anything like OGVTD was, it's going to be a slow going story driven animation.

That's all I have to share for today, and this is also the only shot in the entire animation that I can do right now, the other shots without dialogue can't be done without.... Well you will see in the end.

No new camera, but I fixed my current one!

I got my camera working, simply by uninstalling the driver and software, something I didn't want to do because the last time I did this it took me forever to get the right software since there wasn't anything for Win7, at least from what I could see. Microphone is working very good too, no buzzing like it was before and no more sound card conflicts.

Since my last post, I haven't done anything on the project but at least now I can move on to more exciting things. Still some little things to add to the set which I keep putting off for some reason, need to record the voices when I have some privacy and complete silence, I mean you don't want to hear cars in the background and my usual neighbors stood outside my house shouting and comparing dogs or whatever.... Actually that could add some atmosphere! I'm kidding, but not a bad idea hehe..

Well I guess the point of this post was to let you know that I have a working camera now and that I can make some progress, I should animate those scenes that I can do as soon as possible otherwise this project will never be finished!

LOADED: Update thing.

Quick little update type thing, I pretty much finished the set and I wont be posting the finished pictures of the set since there is nothing to look at besides a white wall.

Yesterday, I tried recording the voices but my current mic just would not let me, the mic I have is built into my Logitech Quickcam Pro 9000 and like I said before, this camera is kind of broken. It actually bugged up my computer yesterday after trying to record and it corrupted my iTunes for some reason, nothing else could have caused it so I am NOT using this camera ever again after that whole failure, I spent almost my whole birthday importing my CD's back into iTunes again so I wasn't very happy, I could have done it another day but I needed that music to keep me sane.

So yeah, that sucks huge soggy genitals. I am getting a new camera though so no worries, already decided on one just waiting for confirmation from my parents to let me buy it from amazon.

Everything is done but the voices and the animation, and a little bit on the set. I wanted to animate the shots which didn't have any dialogue to get them done now whilst I am waiting for better audio quality but I am too afraid to even plug that camera in again! Luckily this new webcam I am getting has a built in mic, which should be better than my current one which doesn't even record sound due to a sound card conflict caused by some compatibility issue. Everything would be fine if my desktop computer hadn't pooped out on me, but it was a pretty bad computer that lasted me at least 6-7 years so I can't complain about that. If I find the money to replace the motherboard then I can get that thing going again just so I have a backup computer.

Current Status of this project = On halt until I get new webcam, will finish set during this wait but that will take literally 10-15 minutes.

See you in the next blog post which will be...... I actually don't know!

Start of a set!

Hey guys, as I said yesterday, I immediately got to work on the set straight after yesterdays blog post.

I got to work on the window set which appears in the first few shots of the animation, the character will be looking out of the window whilst thinking to him self during a particular shot. As far as I'm concerned, this set is done, I just need a night time back drop for the windows and then It's time to work on the door way set, which like this set is just one piece of cardboard with a hole cut out of it, pretty basic.

Here I just got the character out for reference when making the windows.

Cut the windows out and put the cling film wrap over the back to replicate a nice window like surface.

And here is the character looking out into the distance, here I made a day time back drop to be place behind the windows, there will be a back drop for the night time scene too.

The lighting is poopy because the light is coming from the sun! I will of course have a better lighting set up later on, these pictures are only to show the set.

So next up is the doorway set, this is a boring one since it's basically just a door, but this is one of the most important sets in the animation!

Script is done. (Uneventful Blog post)

Okay, so the script is now done. Only took two sessions of working on it from the day I started it, just held off from finishing whilst I got a few days of complete relaxation in.

The set is up next, and I'm going to be getting a start on it as soon as I have written this post. I only be making a start, I'll be sorting out the measurements and doing all that boring stuff then I'll be making an actual start on it tomorrow.

I also have all week up until friday to work on the project, if I'm lucky I might be animating by the end of next week. Just gotta remember that I enjoy doing other things as well as stop-motion, Like I recently got back into playing the guitar and I have had to find a couple of hours a day to practice, so far I've managed 3 weeks of practising every day for at least an hour.

Anyway sorry for yet another boring blog post, I'm just letting you all know how I am progressing which is the point in this blog!

See you all very soon!

Storyboard is out of the way "Phewww"

Thank the heavens, the storyboard is done. This is always my least favourite part of working on a project, I love drawing but I hate deciding on shots and things!

I was going to put a little snippet of the storyboard here but it will spoil the animation, so far the whole plot has remained a secret just like I had originally planned, it's going to stay that way until this bad boy is done. All I can say is that it is different.... Very different in terms of style, I kind of stepped outside of my comfort zone to work on this one but it will be worth it in the end.

Next job is to finish off the script, that shouldn't take long since I already have pieces of dialogue noted down at the side of the storyboard to go along with each shot. I just also managed to gather a large amount of cardboard to build the set out of, it's only going to be two or three walls with windows but it should look good along with some better lighting I have planned.

This was a boring blog post, so next blog post I might actually have some form of animation because I think I'm going to make a test puppet using the same kind of armature so I can see how much tension it can take before it breaks. If it turns out that the wire is too brittle, then I'll be sizing the characters up so I can use my strong wire, if I use the strong stuff in a small puppet, it's not going to work out too well that's why I used soldering wire for them. They should be okay though because they wont be doing much in terms of action, just moving arms and torso around. The test puppet will also be used to try out my chosen shots just so I don't end up ruining the actual puppets.

2nd Character done and personal shenanigans.

All right, the second character has been completed after spending a few days doing nothing, well I actually finished this guy a few days back but never got around to making a blog post.

I did make a few changes in the end, one of which is the absence of the neck tie, I couldn't get it work, I actually wanted to animate it but because of the small size of the character it was very hard to think of something that wouldn't need constantly repairing. He is also missing a hand, this gives the character a kind of sinister and mysterious look. I don't know if it's just me, but whenever I see a person who is missing limbs, I find them to be mysterious as I'm interested to know how they lost their limbs. I mean no disrespect but it's just something interesting I feel.

2 of the 3 character complete, the third one will never appear though. He is just there for the sake of the story!

Well guys, these past few weeks have been interesting, in a bad way. Things just keep getting in the way, smalls things. Small things that if you put up with for long enough, turn into big things that drive you absolutely crazy to the point where you feel like a different person when you step away from it. And then things get better for a day and you feel real happy and relaxed but the next day ends up being like hell.
I really need a break from this house and town, other wise my head is just going to explode due to stress. When I get stressed, it doesn't show because I don't show it, i'm almost ashamed to be stressed out about the things I am stressed out about, they're very small things to other people but to me? Wow, I've exposed my self to too much of these weird little, annoying things. Instead of getting away from them, I just try to put up with it and now I kind of regret doing so.

And the worse thing about these "Little things" is that they always get in my way when I'm about to do something productive. Yesterday I sat down and picked the guitar up to play, I become distracted by the people in my area who just magically know that I have picked up my guitar to play, perfect timing. But this isn't just one time. It's almost every time I'm about to do something, I'll sit down to work on some animation and it'll happen, I'll sit down to try and relax with a video game and it'l happen again. The only time it will not happen is when I'm outdoors or at college or something, but I'm not much of a outdoors guy so I only really go out when I need to. If I have been outdoors and I come home to find these "Little things" going on, it doesn't bother me as much than it would if I was already in the house whilst it was going on.

This had become so much of problem that it actually emotionally drains me when I think about it, I feel regret churning inside my mind and it makes me sick. It's like I've been traumatised, without the whole trauma thing. It's confusing and I think I should seek help or seek a break of some kind from my home.

Does anyone have any tips to battle stress and relax? If you do hit me up on facebook or something: http://www.facebook.com/joe.bagshaw.5

Sorry for the bad stuff here, just thought I would let you know what's going on and why the project is moving along so slowly, I have the time to work, just don't have right "Head on" at the moment, I need my "Creative and doesn't care about what's going on around him" head on.

2nd Character in progress.

Got to work on the 2nd and last character for LOADED, the brother to the first character.

Yesterday I made his armature just before I went off to college so that when I got home the epoxy would be dry, but sadly it didn't because this epoxy is taking an abnormal amount of time to cure, it wasn't this slow at first as it only took about 40 minutes but now it needs over 12 hours!

So yes, 3 inch armature exact same height as the other character and is pretty much a replica of that one.

This morning I got to work on building up the first layer of clay like I did with the first character, I used the old crappy clay to build it up as it is going to be covered later anyway:

I left the ends of the wires exposed like that for a reason, it's for the flesh coloured arms which didn't work out as well when I did the build up method for them on the previous character.

And just about 10-15 minutes ago, I finished working on the head for the character, I might change the nose though:

And that is about it for now, I have a week off college this coming week so I hope to make much more progress than I have been!

See you soon, these posts are going to be more often than usual! :)

One character finally finished!

Before I start, this is the same character I was working on before, he turned out too bulky and hard because of the old blue clay I was using. So that was pretty stupid on my part.

Phew, it was a bad idea filming my self make this character as that meant I had to find the time and privacy to sit down and film as well as make the character, I hate having people around me when I'm trying to work on something!

Well anyway, one of the two characters is now done, should have only took about 2 days but yeah. Here are the 4 videos which I uploaded with me making the character!

So after all that was out of the way, we got some pretty hot weather here in the UK for once and my room is the hottest in the house during the summer (coldest during the winter too) and the character was just too soft to animate. The weather is still hot so I thought screw this, I need to get some animation done and so I did:

Nothing spectacular, as none of my test videos are, just trying him out and seeing how well this mini armature is working out..... And oh yes, it works perfectly! Not come across any problems with the armature yet but the clay is still way too soft for animation, may have to stick it in the fridge before I animate the actual animation.


As for other news, I started a storyboard which is actually almost complete, just haven't picked it up in a few days as I honestly can't even be bothered doing anything in my room without air conditioning. I also started writing out a script, it's looking good but the only problem is that I can't do lip sync this time since the characters are so small, it would be way too fiddly!

Annnnd, here is a picture of the character which I should have posted when I finished making him rather than waiting for the weather to cool down:

He isn't anything special but he is easy to animate compared to my other characters, his feet wont be in shot most of the time so they're not a problem.

And that's about all I have to share with you guys for now, just please be patient with me! :)

LOADED: Starting a character.

As you can see by the title of this post, a name has been decided! LOADED, it stands for two very important things which are seen in the animation. It's up to you to figure that one out though!

I decided the next step would be to start actually making characters, that way I can get a better idea on how big the set is going to be. The set is basically just a backdrop and a floor, which resembles a run down old looking apartment. But before I get working a set, I need to decide on all the shots so I can build the set/or sets, around that plan!

Anyway, the first character I decided to make is the first of the two brothers:

Got all the clay I used for the zombies in OGVTD and made the basic body shape, it will be covered later so it doesn't matter what it looks like.

Building up the t-shirt here

 Just putting the head there to double check the proportions are ok, still need to work on that head!

And then this morning, I ran into a bit of a problem, the light blue clay I used here is part of the first ever batch of newplast that I ever bought, all the clay I bought back then was very hard compared to how the new stuff is. When it gets cold it will crack as you move it and that is what I had to discover this morning, I did figure a way around it though which meant I had to change up the design a little bit.


Sooo, I cut off the arms which which were made of the blue clay, I could have replaced the t-shirt with a softer and newer colour of newplast but I would rather keep the colour and change the design a bit since I need to use up this blue stuff anyway.

Then I cut into the area where the arms were to create a slot for the new fleshy arms to go into.

Here I just put the basic fleshy arms into place and sculpted a little rim thing around the edge of the sleeve.
I wasn't sure whether I liked this as much as the original at first but it's beginning to grow on me, at least the arms are now moveable and animate-able!

So that's about it for now! Got a start on the first character, decided on a name for the animation! (LOADED)

See you in the next update!

The 2nd Character.

Hey there guys, been fairly busy, by which I mean I have been procrastinating.

But yeah, first year of college is almost over and that will probably give me A LOT of free time, not that I don't have enough free time already I just never spend it productively, and if I know I don't have college work to be stressing over then all shall be good.

( I had actually just written out below here about the main character based on me but decided to delete it since it spoils the whole point, basically there is a secret hidden within this animation that no one but me and my absolute closest friends would know, if you have read my thread on moulding minefield then you would know but that is all I am ever going to say about this little secret, also the secret within the animation is kind of personal, and is basically something I put in there for my self and the people who know me the best, the rest of the animation, story, characters is for you guys, the audience!)

This drawing is enough for me to get the general idea for the character in my head using my own style of sculpting, except it'll be much darker because I can't draw like that haha.

Well, I had planned on this being a big post with all those spoilers but I decided to cut them out!


See you all in the next post!

A New Project has been begun!

Hey there guys! I finished up the Test Compilation just the other day and I have now decided to start working on my next major project since OGVTD (One Guy Vs The Dead).

I had a hard time deciding which of my 3 or 4 ideas I was going to expand upon and eventually make my next animation project, but I have now decided. A few days ago I picked out this idea and wrote 2 different possible stories for the idea, they were only very brief but they made sense to me anyway.
Today I started thinking about how the heck I am going to get this project moving, I always find it hard to get going with a project, especially when choosing all your shots when doing a storyboard. I thought that the best place to start would be by designing the characters, there are only 3 characters, at least now there is.

As you can, they're very basic, and stiff looking (I apologize for that, I can not draw poses. Full stop). The head at the bottom looks a little too feminine for some reason, probably the eyes.

This character is loosely based off of my appearance and is sort of like an over "cartoonified" version of my self. His personality will also be based off of my own, he will be like me, but in stop-motion form!

I made a big mistake in my WIP thread on Moulding Minefield by spoiling the whole point of this animation, one thing I am worried about is that the majority of my viewers are fairly young and might not be as open minded as someone a little older, an adult or my self.

When I release it, after seening some peoples interpretation on the animation, I'll write up on here what it is actually about and why I made it.

All I can say for now without spoiling anything (Like I did on the forum) is that this will be a very personal animation, this is going to be tricky for me to pull off though as I've never done anything like this before, this one has to look completely different in terms of style other wise it going to be hard to take it seriously.

All right so in the next post, I'll either have a start on the story board or a rough sculpt of the character. Oh and before I go, this one is going to take a long time to finish, I have about one or 2 days a week to work on the project and not only that I don't always feel working on it.

The Test Compilation Thing.

All right, today I'm going to start this sucker. A lot of what this is going to be is me just messing around with what I can and can't do with animation up to now. I want to finally get my characters jumping, full on fighting and some kind of acrobatics. Actually, fighting isn't such a big deal since I don't have any fight related animations planned until the next instalment in the One Guy Vs: series. I have a lot planned for that in the future but for now I'm leaving it alone as I'm quite honestly sick of it after how long it took to do, I'll talk about that later in the post actually.

So anyway, the test reel, compilation thing is something I want to do regularly. It's something I am just going to make by using practise footage, whenever I animate something it'll get thrown into the compilation. As you probably know, I like to post everything I animate because I like you guys to see how I am improving but now I feel like I need to be entertaining you. When I made "BagiClaymations", the whole idea behind the channel was just something for me to look back on and to see how well I have improved, I used the channel as a way to show you what I have been doing and to hopefully receive some critique. There aren't many other younger animators out there who post everything they do, at least as far as I know, but now I actually want to entertain people as well as provide some kind of progress so that's why I'm creating the test compilation, as an easy source of entertainment and good practise and progress.

So from here on, I am here to entertain you rather than update you. The channel is changing, if I start a project and it turns out crap then it's going straight into the test compilation, anything I would usually just put straight up on the channel will be thrown into the compilation. I want bigger projects to eventually be more frequent, OGVTD was my first successful project in the 5 or 6 years of animating I have done, but the amount of project I started and never finished is ridiculous!

All right, time for some quick new on OGVTD, back in November 2010 when I first came up with the character I said i wanted him to have his own series which would be my first major project, the series would simply be One Guy vs whatever random thing comes to me, the two I originally thought of was the dead and Hell, Dead being the first one that I thought of though.
Then much later on in around October or November 2011 when I made the 3rd version of Guy, I got the whole story line idea with the whole backstory and prequel type thing going on. As much as I like having a story and such, I think I'll stick to the VS series with Guy versus random things, each one being different in terms of style and setting rather than just the desk.
BUT! That will have to wait for a while now, I have all the time in the world to animate things but I'm putting Guy to rest like I said earlier. I suspect that he will be making a return some time next year in a new fight versus something other than the dead, the whole story concept is going to be them main inspiration for the other project I have been talking about which I wanted to write a deep story for.

Phew, that's quite enough writing for now, I think you get the idea. Guy returns in 2013, Test compilations will be my new way of showing progress.

If you made it this far then thanks for reading! See you in the next blog post! :)

What's Going on As of Now 3.0

Well, i had planned to get personal in this blog post but i don't think that is necessary to be honest with you since i don't really think anyone cares what I'm feeling right now, you guys just want to know what im doing animation wise!

Anyways, that project i talked about in the last blog post is going to pushed back a little since i have been stopped by an invisible wall which is trying its best to take a big dump all over my creativity, i haven't animated anything since i finished OG and to be honest with you, that kind of worries me in a way. When i stop to take a short break that often leads onto this phase where i can't think of any ideas. Taking a break is the worst thing for me to do when it comes to animation!

Enough of that for now, onto the project! All right so i already talked about this project and what i wanted to do with it and now i have decided to push it back so i can concentrate on it when i get my head straight and get all my creative juice back, so instead of working on that project I'll be starting a new one similar to the weekly animations, I'll be producing a practise footage reel/compilation type thing, rather than the weekly 5 second or so videos i will be compiling practise footage and test footage into one long video. Hopefully this gets me pumped up and back into the flow of things, unfortunately, there wont be as many videos this time around like before so i'll have to keep you all posted on the blog and through facebook, twitter and youtube bulletins!

Now when i said i was going to get personal with this post, all i really wanted to talk about was some personal health problems that have been getting in my way, i wanted to speak up and get some crap off my chest but there is no real need, all you need to know is that I'm having some problems with some health scares and personal problems, no need to go into detail about it to be honest with you, unless you really want me to?

Enough of that boring old stressful crap, what really matters is my favourite hobby and how im going to eventually expand it into a living! 

See you guys in the next blog post and thank you for taking your time reading!

OGVTD finished, so what's next? (Quick Review of Finished Animation)

As you probably know One guy vs the dead is now out of the way and fully completed, with this project over it has given me a load of space to think of my next project.

The whole idea behind OGVTD was that it would be a high speed action fight sequence between a bad ass character and a bunch of un dead guys, later i thought it would be even better if the bad ass unleashed hell on the undead creatures via some kind of demonic transformation. So anyway the whole project DID indeed turn out just the way i want it, but nothing is ever perfect. If i was to remake this the first thing i would do is make a load more zombies and increase the length of the animation by at least 3 minutes.
One thing that annoyed me about animating Guy was that he was hard to move around, his arms and head were easy to animate but his legs were a little too thick and chunky, might not have looked like it but newplast gets hard when it's not being played with or under heat so that made it so when i moved his legs there would be a chance the legs will crack, when they get hot they tend to squash down when i move them so you have to be ready to take Guy off the set and fix him up (Thank god for onion skin!).

So basically, whilst Guy was a very simple little character he was actually a pain in the backside to animate, thankfully he kept his upper body shape when animating, which brings me to my next point! Guys upper body was hard to twist around, during some shots i wanted his body to twist around to look towards the zombie but the clay refused to cooperate with me, when i would do this he will lose his shape which means taking him off set to fix up again.

Now for the zombies, which was probably my favourite part to animate. These little guys, believe or not, gave me no trouble to animate at all. They had small stubby feet and thick arms, since zombies are lifeless you wont see them do much beside flail their arms around and move forward and these little guys did this perfectly! They were really fun to animate but it's a shame i didn't get as much gore in as i hoped, and yes that brings me to my next point. Gore. I never knew how animators did all the gore business in their claymations, leehardcastle is a good example of what level of gore i was after but i couldn't actually figure out how to animate it without wasting my valuable clay, i didn't want to use ketchup or fake blood because it would ruin the clay but i had to use the red Sculpey 3 which stains other colours and especially my hands. This would be frustrating because i would get red on my hands and then i would handle Guy without realising i just got a big old red stain on his leg or something, this stuff get's really hard and crusty too so it would crumble when i handle the zombies who have all the blood on them and it left tons of sculpey crumbs on the desk which then get into Guys feet or in his body!

Well I'm going to leave it there for this review type thing so now onto my next project details!

All right so some of you wanted to know what's coming up next, I've talked about this in previous blog posts but this time I'm going to give you even more information! So anyway, OGVTD was an animation to test my ability to animate a high speed fight scene and to animate camera movements and plenty of angles, this next project will be testing my ability to tell an in depth story. Well im not too sure about an IN DEPTH story but we will see, one of my main strengths that I find is story telling.

I also said that very little will be released about this project, it's going to be one of those "You'll have to wait and see!" type things since it's such a story heavy project. I had originally planned to use a set but have decided not to and will save that for my next project. (Phew, im saying project a little too often here) A new thing ill be doing with the characters (Hopefully) is some dialogue, telling a story can be tricky without dialogue but to make things a little challenging there will only be very little dialogue!

For now that's all i want to say, sorry for the essay length blog post so i congratulate you for making it this far!

See you in the next post hopefully with some kind of pictures or maybe even a storyboard?!

1 Last bit to animate!

Just finished animating the extra scene AND the transformation scene which leaves only the last fight sequence, boy am i pumped to animate this!

I hope to finish this bit off tomorrow and finish this project for good, it may have been a quick fun project to work on but due to my lack of time during week days it's took much longer, can't forget all of the changes ive made to the project either!

I can hopefully finish editing and upload it tomorrow but if not then it will be the next day or even on Tuesday since i don't have much free time on a Monday.

Also, R.I.P.

Guy MkIII will always be in our hearts, you served me well on this animation project, now may you rest in piece..

So yeah, haha, no more Guy!

2 Scenes left to go.

All right, this is going to be quick blog post to let you guys know that i have just finished animating the second scene for OGVTD, it turned out very good, and bloody!

There are only 2 scenes left to go now, one of which i have just added in at the last minute. I don't want to hype it up or go into detail about it since it wont be anything special, just a way of adding a little extra to the over all run time of the animation. The very last scene is of course the demon chaos scene, this one might be hard to animate, well todays animation session was a very hard one, the particular actions i animated were a pain in the back side to animate, Guy kept wanting to fall over whilst his feet became all soft and mushy, thankfully it isn't present in the animation!

Some of you might be wondering what i have in mind for the next project, i can assure you that it isn't anything to do with OGVTD, but the sequel/prequel thing i had planned will be a project for 2013 or even later, i may have covered this in the last blog post but i have a list of ideas in a note pad document on my computer which have a butt load of potential if i ever get this project finished. I don't remember any off the top of my head since they were just very random ideas that came to me whilst i was using the computer or playing a video game, i just typed up a quick brief of the idea that came to me before i forgot the idea.

Next project, i want to work with a small minimalistic set with 2 characters rather than 1, a story of some kind and maybe some voice work and lip syncing.

Not far from finished now.

Well this project is coming along very slowly but each time i get to work on i do manage to make a a lot of progress, if i was working on this daily it would have only taken a week to finish but since i have a few other hobbies that conflict with animation it can be a little annoying, right now i am just using Wednesday, which is my day off, to work on it.

Anyway here is the trailer i made, i hope i haven't hyped up this project too much!

I made the trailer using the very first scene in the animation which i animated just before i made the trailer. Also a quick fun fact; I have been using WMM since 2006 and only now have i figured out how to cut and trim video footage, i know I'm pathetic..

So yeah, next up on my list of things to animate is the very next scene which is the entrance of the second un dead monster (Zombie, in other words) which Guy obliterates with a gun shot, another zombie enters the scene and the pistol locks up (Reference to the 2 Guy's vs the Dead video) and draws the rusty old sword which then leads onto Guy slicing and dicing the zombie. The next scene is what i refer to as the best one, the un dead creatures get back up on their feet and surround Guy leaving him pretty hopeless with a blunt rusty sword, he feels the pressure and Guy's eye radiates a bright red glow and the transformation begins! And the final scene is total chaos, demon Guy tears through the zombies and escapes into the distance. What's next you might ask? Well, for now that is my little secret!

So what IS next? Well i wont be animating another project after this one, not for a while anyway, i want to get back to painting miniatures for a bit to refresh my mind. I think ill also go back to weekly experiments again when i start the next project! I do have a few ideas for my next animation project but ill tell you now that i wont be working on any more OGVTD related projects for a looong time, not because it's boring because it is definitely not boring! But it is time for a few fresh ideas!

For now that's all and ill see you in the next blog post!