L2L Animation Project: The Finished Animation

Finally! After 1 week and 3 days, with 382 frames and a 1:39.29 run time, my animation is complete! Here it is, enjoy!

Click Here for my finished L2L animation

L2L Animation Project: Creating my Animation

My animation was a challenge to create, and very VERY time consuming, but I eventually did it. Heres how I created each frame for the animation.

Step 1

I drew the frame using my storyboards and character concepts as a guide. I first use a very light pencil, then go over it with a very skinny tipped marker.

Step 2
I took a picture of the drawing and imported the image into my computer. Sometimes there is more than one frame on the same page, but these are split up later. This is what the frame looks like at this stage.

Step 3
To make the frame look clean and clear, I open it in Photoshop and use the threshold feature to make them completely black and white, then use the eraser to clear up any leftover black. On certain images, there is more than one drawing, so I used the marquee tool to cut out some parts and put them in different frames. This is very efficient as I got around 200 frames out of 40 pages. After all the editing is done, the frame looks like this:

Step 4

With the frame complete, I imported it into Windows Live Movie Maker and put it in the right place. I usually do this in batches as I can get a good idea of what it looks like. I then set the time that each frame will be shown, which varied from frame to frame.

Step 5

I repeated steps 1-4 381 more times. 

And that's how I created my animation. It was a long and challenging process, but I enjoyed it and would probably do it again-probably.

L2L Animation Project: Inspiration

A few things inspired me but from the start I wanted to use the policeman snorting coke as its a very striking image. I watched a few videos on YouTube for inspiration and noticed that most of the animations didn't really have any sort of story to tell, they were just random images turning into other random images. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying they are bad, they are excellent and it would require a vast amount of skill and time to create them, but I wanted to tell a short humorous story with my animation.

The videos below are some of the few I watched.

This was the animation that first inspired me, and I was originally going to create my entire animation on walls using paint or spray paint (with permission of course).

The black and white cartoon style is similar to what I wanted with my animation. Color would probably triple the amount of time it would take to create it, and time is something I didn't have much of!

Lego turns out to be a pretty awesome way to create stop motion animation! Crazy video, the amount of time it must have taken to make it!

L2L Animation Project: Background Music

After going through a number of different soundtracks for my animation, I ended up with a piece of music from an anime I watched a number of years ago. I really like this music as I think it fits in perfectly with my animation, and the series that the music belongs to is fantastic too.

L2L Animation Project: Better Storyboard Images

My camera seems to be working properly now so here is my storyboards in slightly better quality! Most of them are still quite hard to see as I drew them in very light pencil and my camera is still pretty bad.

L2L Animation Project: Better Concept Images

Yesterday I uploaded a post with bad quality images of my concepts and storyboards. I took new photos with a slightly better camera, but the camera is faulty so it goes blurry most of the time. I was lucky to get some of these photos, so here they are.

If I can get this camera working, I will upload some pictures of the storyboard.

L2L Animation Project: Storyboard

After going through a few ideas which are all wrote down in my L2L notepad, I liked this one the most so I got to work.

The idea is inspired by the image of a policeman snorting coke that Banksy created.

The idea is Banksy getting stalked by a policeman while he sprays this work on a wall, with the policeman getting angry, turing into a strange monster and attacking him. It is going to have a cartoonish style.

The storyboard is below but the image quality is quite bad as I am using my mobile phone to take pictures at the moment.

I will re-upload these images if I get a better camera before the project ends.

L2L Animation Project: Character Concepts and Plans

When I finally decided what the animation was going to be, I chose the most simple but memorable designs I could come up with for the characters that would be featured in my animation. The three characters are Banksy, a policeman and a monster. The animation was going to show these characters doing a number of different things all more complex than I initially expected, but I like a challenge.

I plan to draw the animation frame by frame as quickly as I can, scan them into my laptop using a scanner I have at home, then use photoshop to edit certain images. After the images are all complete, I plan to put them together using Windows Movie Maker. I have had experience with this program before this project, and its features and functions are quite limited, but it will do the job.

My character concepts:

Banksy and Policeman

Monster Concepts 1

 Monster Concepts 2

Final Monster Concept

(I decided to go with this one)

I am aware that the image quality is not very good but I am using my phone as a camera at the moment, and I will be until I can afford to buy a good camera.

All of these drawings and ideas are in my L2L notebook.

L2L Animation Project: Researching the Artist

Well since this is my 2nd post, I've come to the conclusion that I need to post more. At least twice a week anyway. Or once.

The artist I chose was initially Alex Pardee, but because of lack of info and books about him I chose Banksy. I quite like Banksy's work and didn't know very much about him until I researched him. 

Most of my research is written down along with the sources for my research, but at the moment I haven't printed out any pictures (but I will), so here's a few of my favorites.

Internet Sources for Research:

http://www.briansewell.com/artist/b-artist/banksy/banksy-biography.html

http://www.banksy.co.uk/QA/qaa.html

http://www.banksyfilm.com/

http://www.boredpanda.com/80-beautiful-street-crimes-done-by-banksy/

The journal sources are in my L2L notebook.

First Post, Mind Map and David Hockney

Well, I already had a first post but it was a rushed one that basically said "This is my first post". So I'm gonna start fresh and count this as my first post. Anyway, I created this blog for college work, check it out if your interested, I might make a personal blog but I'm using a friend's laptop at the moment so.... meh! (It's TINY, my hand is bigger than it, I can barely type with it).

A bit late, but here's the mind map I made based on a short passage I wrote about why I'm going to Art College.

Also heres a little mindmap about David Hockney, a very interesting artist I had to research. Below is Hockney's "Model with Unfinished Self Portrait" 1977. Like him? 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hockney