Quote of the 'Week'

"Men will always be mad, and those who think they can cure them are the maddest of all."
Voltaire
Discovering that someone has commented on one of my blogs is such a joyous feeling. Hint, bloody hint!

Thursday 30 April 2009

Been a bit under the weather as of late.

Yes, as my good friend Mister Title just mentioned, I have been feeling a bit unwell recently. I did what everyone with the sniffles is doing recently and wondered if it was swine flu (admit it, fellow paranoid snifflers), albeit only briefly. I then decided that swine flu was a somewhat far-fetched self-diagnosis.
At this point, like some unearthly master of bad timing, my dear ol' daddy sauntered in and casually, and rather suddenly, announced that in order for swine flu to take out as many Mexicans as some sources would have you believe, it would have had to start months and months ago. He then, like some oblivious harbinger of terror, reminded me that his mate came back from Mexico a couple of months back and is a bit under the weather. After this frankly terrifying announcement, father dear proceeded to blow his nose.
...I mean, I ask you, what were his intentions, with me standing there, off school with a the flu, him effectively declaring that this reportedly 'deadly' disease was already here, plotting its first kills in Britain?

Okay, maybe I'm exaggerating my reaction. I, like most sane people, consider swine flu to be a trumped-up pile of media-excreted hyperbole. But I was still a bit fazed by my dad's 'innocent' remark. Perhaps the Mexicans are not as hardy as the British, and through a rich blend of poor health care and malnourishment are more vulnerable to illness.

After all, people in Mexico die of flu all the time. We can draw two possible conclusions from this fact: the first being that we Brits rarely, if ever, die from the flu as we have flu jabs, and our self-made protection from normal flu could protect us from this new strain, and the second conclusion referring to the fact that it turns out that Mexicans can't tell normal flu from swine flu. If they can't tell what's wrong with them, how can Mexico come up with all these death tolls? They can't, that's how, and as a result, swine flu has actually clocked up a phenomenal seven confirmed deaths. Derisive snigger.

But anyway, I digress. Because of my terrible case of the sniffles and IMMINENT DEATH, I was unable to continue work on 'The Flood', so sorry about that. I really wanted to, as well. I'm getting really, really impatient with my immune system and my school for diverting me from the one project I am passionate about. In fact, I shouldn't even be on the computer right now. My head hurts and the glare of the computer screen could easily trigger a migraine (hardly anyone appreciates how awful migraines are, so to sympathise with my plight, look up 'migraine' on Wikipedia, you callous bastards). Because of this, I'll end this post now. I just felt that I needed to let you lot know what's going down in Willsville, especially my schoolmates, who were probably wondering where I was today.

Well, wonder no more!

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Tuesday 21 April 2009

'The Flood' Update #2

I haven't done much lately to the animation, as I've just returned to school after the Easter holidays and the GCSEs are kicking off straight away. They've worked me like a dog (even more than a dog - I have yet to see a dog cutting out and gluing paragraphs onto a coursework sheet at midnight), but rest assured that I have really been wanting to crack on with my labour of love. This surprises me, as I tend to lose commitment very easily with even the most promising of projects. I suppose it may be because I have been creating a storyboard on Flash as well, and that means that when I'm animating, I don't need to think about where the story's going to go, because it's all figured out. I will have to remember that in the future, as my commitment problems have been a cause for serious concern when I think about my future career as an animator. If I plan my animations out meticulously, I stick to it to the end. What a fantastic breakthrough! Between pressing the keys to form this post, I am patting myself on the back.
I have now reached the part of the animation where the old man sees the weather forecast (that was piss easy to animate, see) and starts to get up to phone his friend. Quite frankly, it's not worth forming a screenprint of just that moment. When I've done a lot more to the film, I'll include a clip of this bit with the rest. If you're going to post screenprints, post loads of them - that's what I say!

Cheerio for now.

Tuesday 14 April 2009

New Project

I've just started a new project - an animated silent film, set to classical music. It's called 'The Flood', and here are a few screenshots of it so far:

This is the title card for the film. Pretty much sums itself up.


I 'hand draw' all of the backgrounds in this film. Well, actually I use a piece of very realistic drawing software called ArtRage. It provides the look and feel of a classic animated film.


This is the hero of the film. A nameless hiker, who through a series of events, saves a village community from a terrible flood caused by the bursting of a nearby dam during a storm. His personality isn't yet defined - he'll develop instinctively as I animate him more. As you can see, this isn't a film that relies on tweening to animate people. I wanted to go old school and draw each frame by hand (of course, things like panning scenery will use tweening, but only because that looks no different to old films).


A good example of the power of ArtRage to capture that hand-drawn look that I wanted. Note the first signs of the approaching storm!


I was going to do it with no dialogue at all, but I have already set myself so many challenges with this project that I decided to make it into a proper silent film and add the classic caption cards. As you can see, our hero is lost.


That bloody cottage took ages to do. I got the shadow wrong, but couldn't undo it without undoing the whole cottage, so I had to rub it out and then 'mix' loads of different shades of green for an hour to replicate the green used for the grass to cover up the rubbed out area, and so on, and so on... However, I like how it turned out. The cottage belongs to an old man who hears about the storm during the weather forecast on the telly. He phones up his friend, who lives near the dam. This seemingly irrelevant old man has therefore provided the audience with a reason to see the dam and figure out what'll happen. Clever, eh?


Well, I've run out of possible screenprints to tantalise you because I've only just started this project. And judging by the amount of effort that's already gone into what is only a minute of film so far, this is going to take bloody ages to finish. But God help me, I'll give it a go...

Wivell out.

Get it?



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