moving

It has been awhile since my last post. I have done quite a lot but have found it a challenge to get access to good broadband since I moved back to Australia last month. I will have a couple of new video links here soon. Still focusing on 2d animation at this stage but I have been doing a lot of video experiments as well.

subtle blend of sound and image

I like this very much because of the way it conjures meaning indirectly through metaphor, and the way the sound goes with the images so well

venice: by the road series

Venice: by the road series from Bernard Sullivan on Vimeo.

This video is one of a series I have made over the last few years.
I try to do as little as possible with the camera, but let it follow natural points of interest like the eye does when travelling in a moving vehicle.
When I look at videos like this one it helps me remember the experience in a way that I wouldn't if I was doing something more clever.
It is kind of an art project. It is also a kind of meditation.
And from an animation point of view it is observational research into how things move.
Be patient with it, it starts to come together after about a minute.

Five Things

So this is the first section animatic with sound. The real animation will have more animation and will be done in a slightly different style, though it will still have the cardboard background, it will have some colour that looks like watercolour and I am not sure how I will do the line work yet.

Five things animatic part 1 from Bernard Sullivan on Vimeo.

Five Things - animatic trial

This is how the autobiography project is coming along. Not sure how autobiographical it will be in the end. It will have a monologue voice over and will have only slightly more animation than this. I will probably do it in illustrator using natural brushes etc and then move it into after effects. Like the look of the hand drawing so far too. Still thinking. Working on the sound now. The cardboard background is just a layer in after effects. There will be sections from the different stages of my life, and it will revolve around 5 themes which are interwoven throughout.

different angles on autobiography

Frank Film, Frank MOURIS, 1973
Uploaded by shortanimatedworld. - Independent web videos.

Different angles on autobiography. I love the ironic tone of this. Apparently it won an Oscar in 1974.

I think the greatest inspiration for me in this area that I have seen in the last year or two it is Persepolis, which was developed from a graphic novel. Its sparing use of colour, simple style and direct clear but subtle story are a good example of a story and medium in direct support of one another. This is a video on the making of Persepolis which I found interesting. All traditional animation.

PERSEPOLIS making of Part 1 of 4

Persepolis | MySpace Video

autobiography images

This is one of the images I developed today for the animation portfolio. The idea is to tell a version of my life story, with a timeline of key creative and life experiences. Haven't given it a name yet. Probably thinking about this because I am going home to Australia for the first time in three and a half years next month. I am liking using the cardboard in the background and some of the natural brushes in illustrator

contemplating the direction of all this

I have been thinking a lot about what I have been doing the last couple of weeks. The main thing is to have a simple project that will let me try out different aspects of animation, but I keep thinking well, okay, this interplanetary circus may make a good cartoon one day, eventually, but is it really the type of animation I most want to do? The answer is no. There are three or four projects that mean much more to me than the interplanetary circus even though I see its potential for lots of fun, I can't see a lot of depth there, at this point anyway.

Perhaps the most important project to me is the Nitcheketa project which is animation based on the traditional Indian Katho Upanishad story of Nitcheketa, a boy who goes into the underworld in search of the meaning of life. Over 2000 years old, it is a dramatic universal story, funny, in my mind anyway, has beautiful poetry and the potential for beautiful moving images and characters. I have been thinking about this story for ten years. I will put some images up later. Conceptually I keep imagining and reimagining it. The overall look is starting to come together now since I finished my last work contract a couple of months ago.

Another project is an animation on walking meditation. I was going to do it as a book at one stage, but I think it will really come to life in animation.

Another project is the Spiritual History of the Tree. How the tree has featured symbolically in the spiritual traditions of the world over time. It is a thesis in itself I think. I am looking to find ways to present the trees that flow through the story. Originally I was thinking 3D but now I think that it may be better in 2D.

Do I feel ready to go for these animations just yet, not quite. This morning I started recording my voice to see if I could come up with a monologue that I can use to back an animation portfolio, and afterwards I drew about ten pictures to go with it. This is looking like what I will try now and see how it comes together. Letting the drawings lead me along and see what comes out of it.

acrobats

acrobat somersault test from Bernard Sullivan on Vimeo.

Still early days for this, but I am starting to enjoy flash now anyway.

animatic example

Brothers Bloom Childhood Sequence Animatic from rcjohnso on Vimeo.



Thinking a lot about creating animatics and this is a very good example I think. The whole story is there, the drawings and characters all clear as well as how it will eventually be animated. The narrative voice over is easy to work with I guess, but not so keen on this as a device, steals the life from the story somehow. Just realised that this was recently released as a live action film, so not animation, but still works that way from my point of view of looking for ways to organise my ideas

exporting from flash

This video is directly from flash as a quicktime file. Lots of exploring since yesterday. Found some reasonable tutorial material on exporting flash to video and to after effects. Also managed to get nice looking images into after effects as well. Feel more confident today. Here are some links to tutorials on exporting video from flash.

http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flash/articles/integrating_fl_ae.html

http://www.focalpress.com/uploadedFiles/Books/Book_Media/Animation_and_3D/Flash%20+%20After%20Effects%20Sample%20Chapter.pdf

Bouncing bliss

This is another character from the space circus. He is struggling a bit at the moment. He will bounce and bounce and then explode with bliss. This may be hard to achieve of course, but I have some ideas. Still primarily considering different workflows without being too fussy - playing with passing flash files as png files through photoshop in this case.

Introducing the bear ox - awkward acrobat

This is one of the circus cast. Apparently ill suited to the role of acrobat when they are built like an elephant, the bear ox is surprisingly agile...

I am primarily working on sorting out my drawing and animation workflow. I did this in flash and found that when I exported it as a still it didn't do so well. I tried bringing it into illustrator and converting it from there - with a little bit better result. I am trying to work out how to get flash to output in a reasonable quality. It is one of the reasons I am not working with lines, but then it turns gradients to rubbish as well...

Today I feel tempted to bypass flash for animation, except for a minor role perhaps, and going from illustrator to after affects for most things as the rendering is so much smoother, well from what I can see so far anyway.

nice clean look

Bombay Sapphire "Drift" from PSYOP on Vimeo.



I like the nice clean look of this and that it was done with illustrator, photoshop and after effects, plus some softimage.
Also the silhouettes, and asian art look.

zinglys in the forest

This is another drawing I did of the acrobat family last year.

original circus idea

The drawing is a little grungy but this was the original idea for the circus from about a year ago. There was a family of human acrobats called the Flying Zinglys who would defend the world from aliens, a little too Disney somehow. I may still use the family but they won't be so human I expect. Yes, the aliens have now taken over the plot if not the world. I am looking back over my drawings from the last year to see what I can distil as it is now all coming together.

MC Cat interplanetary space circus ringmaster in action

This is more like how I want him to move. He is a showman after all. The last one was too much like a talking Myazaki cat - something wrong somehow. I am working on a sequence of drawings for animating of him introducing the show.

MC Cat interplanetary aerial circus ringmaster

He is still a bit static but the basics of him are there. Now he is learning to talk and after that I will concentrate on making his body more dynamic. He will have an aerial hover thing on which to move about.

jumpTrumpRumpBump

JumpTrumpRumpBump from Molasses Murphy on Vimeo.

This is an interesting style. I like the cut out layered look. I like the simplicity of the facial animation too, particularly the eyes.

inspiration Lindsey Olivares

Anchored HD from lindsey olivares on Vimeo.

I like the way that natural media were implied while at the same time using plenty of technology was used also. Also interesting to me that although these characters were made into 3d models the end result was all cut up and rearranged in After Affects. Which is something I am thinking about a lot.

I am not sure when things took off but this is coming into land anyway. It will have smoke and flame and sound and this scene leads a scene where the rocket transforms - transformers style I think - into a big top.

It is a test for the Interplanetary Circus web series I am working on. The story involves a travelling circus troupe moving between planets. I am working on the characters now.

They are all freaks. The tag line to the title is: 100% genetically modified.

Well I was becoming a little tired of 3d and went and did some 2d for awhile. Here is something I am pretty happy with. The small images won't show the detail that well though.

I will end up using a combination of 2d and 3d, but I am tending more and more to the main character animation being in 2d.

mediaeval esoteric hatch

Feel like I am beginning to get a feel for zbrush. I am working with it as a program on its own more now rather than moving between programs so much.

on the back of a tortoise

This was a chance to model some ordinary objects. Also an attempt at art really - a comment on the interrelationship between art and nature.

vegebator

This is another image for an online challenge. This took me a few hours, but the last one took much much longer. I hope there is some improvement anyway.

Screw in village

This is what I was busy on in February. I was getting used to lightwave which I am using for rendering and layout. I did most of the modelling in a program called silo and plenty of touch ups in photoshop. It was a good exercise. I am thinking a lot about how to create a look that isn't typically 3D or super realist, more traditional illustration style. I am not sure if this is my style but it did help me get a little closer. The pig which is almost invisible was the most work. It was done in zbrush and it took me a week to make it in a way that I could get into lightwave. Having figured this process out I should be able to create and render almost anything now. I took most of the textures from buildings in Ljubljana and from Istria in Croatia. 

welcome

The idea of this blog is to chronicle my process as I develop my animation and illustrations after having been away from it for a long time. It is as though I am starting from scratch really.  

So by whatever name you know me, welcome.