Hardcore Pound Puppies

So, one of the first assignments we were given for BFA was titled: "The Chair". We had to interpret what that quote meant to us. We could do anything we wanted as long as it wasn't shot in real time, was at the max 30 seconds, and was done in one week. I really wanted to explore more with stop motion so I decided to do something in that direction. Knowing full well how much time I had, I wanted to do something that felt complete in itself and being an animator, I thought how it would be fun to bring a chair to life. I remembered the wonderful animators at Aardman did something called Creature Comforts. I really like how it was like little snippets of what each creature was like in their life and how creative it was that they put random interviews they had with people on the street and instill that into the animation. So I know full on the direction I wanted to go in.

So I knew I wanted to do something within this in limit, but knowing that I would be spending a lot more time making everything than animating it, I made sure I gave myself enough time so everything would be ready by the time I get to animating.

I interviewed one of my friends and asked her random questions. Picked the one that I liked the most. Meanwhile, I would go research on chairs and picked the one that I felt best fit this character that I had in mind after hearing JUST her voice. Now the fun part, making the character and props. :)

I picked a design that felt a little Southern to reflect this friendly warm feel I wanted with this character. I wrapped some cord around some of the clay making it seem like the cushion was made from a straw-like material. I think one of the hardest things for me to deciding where to place to eyes. I ended up putting them in front of the cushion next to the mouth so the viewer would have less space to look from the eyes to the mouth since that is what is moving for the majority of the time.

Here she is in all her glory! Her legs were made from white paintbrushes attached to the top of this white jewelry box I kept from many years back. On top of that was the cushion seat. And the top of the chair was made out of white cardboard. Even with all of this...something was missing that she felt incomplete!

I made a little sunhat left off in an angle so it looked like someone left it there for the day. Now she's complete! :)

I bought a ton of colored cloth from a previous black friday at a fabric shop thinking I could one day use it for something. Good thing I did cuz now I needed to make the curtains. What was important to me was that everything in the background supported the scene with the character. So after a while, I narrowed it down to these fabrics.

But even that was too much, so after even more thinking, I narrowed it down to four.

This felt too busy and I felt it would detract from the character.

I felt that this color didn't work, it made it too mellow for me and for some reason, it felt a little sad.

The red felt too bold and romantic for the character. Even though she was talking about what love means to her, I didn't want it to be something like she was crazy in love with, more like how someone would love their pet.

This was the color I ended up going with. It had a very nature-like and friendly feeling with this shade of green and the patterns was fun without being too distracting.

For the back wall, I painted it all with gesso and layered it thickly with a palate knife giving this stucco feeling I wanted.

Here is the character with the back wall. The blinds were actually part of this toy picket fence that I folded in together.

The set with the curtain and a clear plastic over the window.

After listening to the audio that I picked for a number of times, I knew that when she was answering this question about what is love, I wanted her to be thinking about the cat. So I called the same friend up and asked her to take a picture of one of her cats.

And viola! Kitty cat!

Here is the kitty in the scene. I also added a cloth behind the window with a pattern that reminded me of clouds. I also added that other green cloth with the vine patterns behind the window to make it look like part of a bush. I also added a photo frame with a little drawing of the cat.

One of the things I also did was made an X-sheet of the dialog to make sure by the time I put everything together, things synced up. Literally everything that I could think of was written or drawn out on those X-sheets. From mouth shapes to when the cat moves, eye darts, blinks, everything I could think of. Since I never did this before, I wanted to make sure I could control as much a possible.

Here are some mouth shapes.

This is probably like...90% of all the mouth shapes in the scene... what was funny is that I ended up not using like 40% of these mouth shapes.

The other 10% of the mouth shapes.

Here is the set in relation with the camera, which was borrowed from one of my other friends. I also added a microphone by this point. What was interesting was that I did not account for the fact that the battery in the camera only last me at most for around 2 to 3 hours. It also took a really long long LONG time for that battery to be recharged. So here I was, wondering how I was going to adjust. I went back to the audio clip and cut it even more to make sure I would have time to edit everything. Went back to animating after the batteries were recharged. So the little jumps in the frame is actually because I had to unscrew the camera from the tripod and then put it back on trying to match it back to how it originally was as much as possible. I think it took me in total around 4 to 5 hours to animate the whole thing.

I used the blue from the Beast statue I had as bounce light.

The whole set...in front of my books...

I also had a lamp that was attached to my bookshelf. I put over it an orange cloth to help give a feeling that this was happening in the later part of the afternoon. You can kind of also see the blank picture frame on the bottom which I was trying to bounce a little more of the light onto the set as well.

I also had a lamp in the back, which I faced the wall. That light hit the red cloth which I put behind the cloud cloth layer to further give the feeling of that time of the day as well.

A blurry picture of the cat picture hanging on the wall.

So after much talking about it, here is the final product of the film! Even with the backaches and being drenched in sweat after animating this, I wouldn't change a thing. It was such a trill even completing this project and I'm super happy that I went through with it. I hope you guys enjoy! :)

Hey everyone!

Long time no see! Sorry for the lack of posts, I'm not really good at blogging. Lately, I've been involved in two projects! One is the second ever short film done in 3D titled Tamara. I don't want to give too much away, but it looks very promising thus far and I am excited to be a part of it. :)

The second is a vis-dev project where we do illustrations/vis-devs to short stories.

But Danny, you're an animator! Why are you doing a vis-dev project? I believe that in order to grow as an artist and animator, I need to experience different parts of this industry as well as improve myself in both confidence and experience. Not to say I'm done from animating, far from it. It's just another turn in my life I wish to experiment with. :)

The first story from this project I chosen to draw from was from a Japanese story titled Urashima Taro. Urashima Taro is about a young fisherman who saves a turtle and in reward, gets to marry the princess of the sea. After a while, the fisherman becomes home sick and wishes to return above ground. Much to her dismay, the princess allows him to resurface and gives him a box with the exception to never open it. When the young man comes back up, he finds himself 300 years into the future, with nothing but a legend from the village that he came from about himself. Desperate to find a way back to the underwater palace, he opens the box, but there is only death awaiting for him there. The story ends with the young man dead.

I choose this story because I thought there were some imaginative scenes in there and characters that were simple enough that I could pull from and play around with. As the project progresses, I'll post my updates as well. :)