Playthrough Video

I have spent all day making my prototype in Gamesalad Creator, before today I had a rough skeleton but now I have fleshed it all out except for the levels. That means I have a working menu system! I have recorded a play-through in Camtasia, and put it on my portfolio site. It is the first video on this page...

http://www.rosieball.com/Site/Showreels.html

Street Scene

A scene from the intro that I have been working on this week, on and off. I need to make an animatic before I continue I think... getting ahead of myself with the details.

Update - Late April

Paper work is going well, I have quite a few positions and pieces for the old man character and lots of tiny paper jars. I have found a reasonably sized cardboard box to build the shop in and I've made some of the shelf units and the door. I have though a lot about how the counter will be (one pieces of flat paper, or a folded pieces with a surface top) and how the shop front will appear when animated. I have intested in a high quality camera over the easter holiday and I have been looking more at After Effects. Animating the level segments is not going so well, Flash does not alow the colour to behave as I would like because it is vector. I have also tried using some other animating programmes like Pencil which is simple and effective but crashes a lot. Traditional media has also proven largely unsuccessful so far, I tried making a flip book of the swimming boy but I was going about it the wrong way. I am still enthusiastic to try more at all of these areas and make something that works. Since making my site rosieball.com I am keen to see how I can mold the sweet land page to become my portfolio for assesment. As for a showreel the shelf unit experiment from the previous post could be used for this.

Paper Cut-Outs

First try at making a paper cut-out set today, went well and I hope to continue this set in a cardboard box and make an animation from it. So far I have taken some photos and also digitally coloured some...

Update - FGA6 Week 1

I have handed in my document of concept images and can now focus on FGA6 in which I will be mostly experimenting with paper cut out animation and digital animation techniques. Flash tutorials this week (week 2) have been extremely helpful for more basic understanding of the programme. I have started animating a sweet land scene in Flash. Discussion with Britta has introduced me to animator Lotte Reiniger and I will be doing another post on her silhouette work, something that I hope will help my real world cut-out animation and my sweet land boy animation. I will also be looking at representation of the elderly in games and possibly other media, something I will mostly be doing in critical studies but that will help my course work. I will no doubt blog about it here too.

Lauren Child

I have been introduced to Lauren Child recently by Nigel my tutor. Her illustration style when drawing is similar to Quentin Blake (who I looked at in my first research document) but feels more carefully constructed to me, but just as wistful and alluring. Most famous for her books Charlie and Lola (below left) and Clarice Bean (below right)













Her work I have found most interesting though is her book The Princess and the Pea (below)

This book is illustrated with photographs taken by Polly Borland of scenes created by Child of cut out paper illustrations and dolls house furniture arranged together in small, hand painted card or wooden sets.

After making one model I am enthusiastic to make another, more intricate and accurate to the changes I have made - and more substantial. This is a bigger task though and I will attempt it next year. For now I may make a section (eg the shop counter and old man) in paper to see if it would work.

I have always loved doll's houses and have animated this way before. I am still keen to do some 2D drawn animation, but this is a different way a 2D image can be brought to life.

Adverts

Two uk adverts influenced my design for embedded illustration:

Robinson's 'Just for Milk' cordial and squash adverts 2008/9



And the McCain's Rustic Over Chips advert April 2008




http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AnNDX_uiMag


Both feature animated figures and recognisable imagery emerging from a two or three colour scene or texture.

Shop interior

The shop is very important, and until now I have avoided planning the shop layout and interior except for my preliminary animatic:


After seeing the inside of the bear shop in Norwich and drawing some birds eye view sketches, I made this paper model to work out how I am going to draw an isometric view of the shop.