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! :)
Saturday, 31 March 2012
Sunday, 11 March 2012
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!
Monday, 20 February 2012
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?!
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?!
Saturday, 4 February 2012
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!
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!
Wednesday, 25 January 2012
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.
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.
Wednesday, 11 January 2012
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!
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!
Saturday, 24 December 2011
Update for OGVTD!
Ok so where should i start, hmmm..
Here is the new and improved head for Guy, i got fed up with how the old one looked as i felt it didn't look badass enough, plus it was missing the pointed chin which is what makes guy stand out!
Here is a work in progress shot of the new head, this time he's got his nice big brow and pointy chin, the very original model actually had blood shot eyes but his eyes weren't as visible as the newer models, he looked sorta high. ;)
Round about here Guy is beginning to look more like the classic guy before i sculpted the blue bandanna, like he looks in this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c44-e3hGA2w&feature=mfu_in_order&list=UL
And now here he is! The absolute final version of Guy, he will not last till the end of the project because of the transformation, so once the animation is done he won't look like this anymore haha, more like a twisted half demon kind of thing!
And now for the final version of the demonic replacement head for the transformed Guy:
I replaced the generic eye with a layer of green sculpey 3, i thought it looked a little scarier, i refined the spikes a little more and added a few more spikes here and there.
Looking better eh? Well im not going to post all of the photos since this has been a very photo heavy blog post. Now for some animation experiments ive been getting up to.
Here is the new and improved head for Guy, i got fed up with how the old one looked as i felt it didn't look badass enough, plus it was missing the pointed chin which is what makes guy stand out!
Round about here Guy is beginning to look more like the classic guy before i sculpted the blue bandanna, like he looks in this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c44-e3hGA2w&feature=mfu_in_order&list=UL
And now for the final version of the demonic replacement head for the transformed Guy:
I replaced the generic eye with a layer of green sculpey 3, i thought it looked a little scarier, i refined the spikes a little more and added a few more spikes here and there.
Looking better eh? Well im not going to post all of the photos since this has been a very photo heavy blog post. Now for some animation experiments ive been getting up to.
Well i have been looking into animation principals, something i should have done a while back, and i have decided to test what i learnt, but before i share that here is a video of the newly planned shots.
Not bad eh? I was intending on using what i have here for the final animation but nope, decided it isn't good enough yet!
Thats where the whole principals come in, here are two videos of me practising some basic animation principals:
Now this is more like it, this is the kind of quality im after in OGVTD!
All right i think that's enough for this update, so for now, stay tuned and look out for more experiments and tests!
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