My Animation Evolution

 Although my main speciality is writing, some readers may not know that I possess experience in animation. It does sound ironic, but it's true. As a matter of fact, the first time I experienced making animated films was at the age of nineteen.

When I studied a music course at a local college, one of my assignments was to write an essay on production companies. It was a course that followed when I achieved an A-Level in Film Studies, plus an AS in Photography, and I'd missed studying film. Therefore I decided to write the essay on film production companies, despite my obsession with film-making annoying some of my classmates who were very focused on music. One of the companies I studied was Aardman Animations. I bring this up because Aardman stayed in my thoughts since then as did how stop-motion animation worked and it led to the very first animated short I produced.

The Coils Of A Blue Snake

As you can see, this film is very basic and centers on a snake performing a brief sway, uncoiling itself and escaping from a human hand attempting to squash it.

At the time, I only possess a digital camera that wasn't manufactured to shoot professionally made movies, hence why the quality is not exactly up to HD standards, but it was a start. As for the editing, I used Windows Movie Maker, which back then was the only source of editing software I had access to.

Dancin' Balloons

Dancin' Balloons is another stop-motion film I worked on, only this one is the first where I collaborated with another filmmaker. 

During one lecture at my college, Harvey, our lecturer, asked for a volunteer to help him through the production of this film. I volunteered and my task was to direct him into moving the giant balloon sculpture into position for each shot I took. After that, I edited all the footage onto Premier Elements. This was the result.

During the editing process, I ensured that each second contained twenty-four frames.

The Apple My Apple Your Apple

I had wanted to try 2d animated hand-drawn animation for some time. Part of the inspiration came from the Disney animated features and other cartoons I grew up with. The Apple My Apple Your Apple helped me to gain that experience.

This film is another self-produced animated short. It was made some months after I purchased Anime Studio on CD-Rom from the Games Workshop. It was also produced as part of a film-making challenge set by Seven/Five Productions (a now-defunct Leicester based organisation) known as the 20-Second Short Filmmaking Challenge; the idea was that each member was given a phrase for a title and eight weeks to pre-produce, produce and post-produce a film consisting of twenty seconds and in relation to the title.

I, therefore, decided to make good use of Anime Studio for this production and create a film consisting of fruit and vegetables as the characters. In this one, the protagonists are three apples, one being a fuji apple, one a granny smith apple, and the other a golden delicious apple. The antagonists are an army of cucumbers, led by El Presidente De Cucumtopia. The idea of providing each apple a different colour was loosely inspired by the three main protagonists from Super Duper Sumos, each of whom had a different identity and background. Some of the cartoons I grew up with featured villains obsessed with world domination which gave me the inspiration to create El Presidente De Cucumtopia. The music was created via Guitar Pro.

The film didn't win the competition, but it has since received phrase from local filmmakers.

Waiting To Wait

Another animated short that was created for the 20-Second Short Filmmaking Challenge and using Anime Studio. Because Seven/Five Productions finished at the end of the year, this challenge was held for the last time.

For Waiting To Wait, I wanted to start creating and animating human characters. I was going to produce a Disney-esque cartoon. The problem with most Disney cartoons is that the characters move their muscles quite a lot and the more movement that occurs, the more time-consuming it is for the animator(s) and I only had eight weeks to produce the film. So instead, I used William Hanna and Joseph Barbera's works for inspiration, including Wait Till Your Father Gets Home, The Jetsons and The Flintstones. These cartoons are known to demonstrate examples of limited animation; characters would usually stand and walk in a straight posture and occasionally go into a still position.

Regarding the tone of this film and thinking about the last few occasions I participated in this challenge, my previous three films each had a light-hearted tone added to them. I decided to provide this film a darker and slightly bleaker tone. This film sees the protagonist being summoned by his boss to one of the tables to serve some drinks only for his route to be delayed when he slips over a bottle. I picked up some inspiration from the nightclubs I attended during my late-teens/early-twenties, one of which had glass bottles on the floor which caused one of my friends to slip over. The segment with the waiter getting trampled by customers/staff was loosely inspired by the time a young girl got trampled to death by the crowd at a club in Northampton.

Again, I didn't win this competition, but still received praise, plus I don't make films just to win awards.

Presently...

At the moment, I'm working on a new animated short film - only this time, I shall be using CG animation. I was going to make another stop-motion movie, but I wanted to try a different style of animation, plus I needed a source of software to create a certain background. 

For this project, I'm using a software known as Blender (version 2.91). I intended to use Maya - we had a few lectures on Maya when I was at Northampton and learned how to create models, special effects, and so forth. However, the software was not available to install on the computer I have access to. This is why I'm using Blender instead.

This image demonstrates what I've done through Blender so far. As you can see, I inserted a JPEG image, using it as a template to create the shapes for this character.

Confirmed release dates are currently unavailable considering that I'm fairly new to the software and still learning how to master it. So far, all the voices have been recorded.

I shall end this post by offering my many thanks to YouTube users, CG Geek and 3DGreenhorn, for their tutorials on Blender and in addition for their inspiration.