Gaz

So since getting back from Benidorm, to watch Stoke City take on Valencia, I've cracked on with Gaz, our main character. Me & Tom called the character Gaz because the lead singer of Los Campesinos! is called Gareth and we wanted Gaz to resemble Gareth in some way.

I looked at a few pictures of Gareth and did some quick sketches of his facial features to get a rough idea of how Gaz would look. I didn't want to make him the spitting image of Gareth because, well, that would be odd, so I just took certain aspects, like his ginger-ish hair and square-ish head. Sorry Gareth if you ever read this.

This is what I ended up with when I drew Gaz up on Photoshop.

I know what your thinking...why does he seem to be a stump with no hands or lower body?! Well, Gaz suffered from a really horrible accident which left him like this, Photoshop froze. I didn't think you needed to see his jeans and shoes so I popped him on at this stage. But rest assured he will eventually get a lower half!

His eyes won't always look like this either. At the moment he looks like he's staring directly into the sun. I want his eyes to always be a little bit squinty but not nearly closed like this. I think to pull off the rock & roll student type that we want Gaz to be, he needs to look a little tired...right? 

I'll keep working on his bottom half & maybe other characters so keep posted.

A

Storyboarding

Good evening fellow bloggers. I am sorry, on behalf of myself and Ashley Lightfoot, for the lack of entries concerning our new project. The conclusion is that we are both very busy and haven't quite nailed the storyline. I have, however, began to storyboard the sections of which HAVE been decided. Of course, the idea of a storyboard is to create a visual and not necessarily be the final shot for shot breakdown, but the storyline within the drawings is very close to what we want. 

The opening 9 shots for the animation

This is only an example of our storyboarding and will probably only cover the first 20 seconds of the song but it's something for you guys to check out for now. I am working on the next section and I know Ashley is also sketching and jotting down ideas. Soon you may get the another 20 seconds of the 6 minute+ song!

T

Planning

There isn't much more I needed to add to dear Ashley's post from yesterday, however, there were a couple of photographs knocking around of which I thought would jazz the place up. He is absolutely right in saying how much of a mammoth task we have ahead of us, but the enthusiasm we share has been very inspiring and hopefully spur us on to animation splendour!

Ember Lounge; 22/01/12; 13:20:15

The next step for us is to begin sketching and storyboarding so we can get some more visual depth within the animation, even if it's just for the small section we have already planned out. Essentially any drawings will helps us develop the rest of the story in general. I am also going to download a 30 day trial of the stop motion animation software we are going to use. This is to try out my new camera and also to test the Dragonframe programme (which seems to be the top software to invest in).

Please take a gander from time to time as we continue to update the progress.

The journey has truly begun! 

T

You! Me! Dancing!?

Hello & welcome to the You! Me! Dancing! production blog!

But a production blog for what I hear you ask, in your head, whilst staring at the screen?!

Well, me (Ashley Lightfoot) and my very good friend Tommy Grainger are making a Stop-Motion animation music video for the song You! Me! Dancing! by Los Campesinos! and this is where we will be posting all of our creative doings and findings for your wonderful eyes to see. Isn't that just brilliant?!

You! Me! Dancing! by Los Campesinos!

So how did this all come about?
If you follow either of our personal blogs then you probably already know how, but just encase you don't i'll go over it again.
I said to Tom "Do want to make an animation?" and Tom said "Yeah go on then!"

That did actually happen, but I guess you want to know why You! Me! Dancing!?
Well, we were both animating at Staffordshire University and Tom was playing some music for us both, when You! Me! Dancing! came on. It instantly lifted our spirits and we had a right good dance about whilst we were animating! I say 'a right good dance about' it was more like just bending our knees up and down being careful not to knock the animation rig.
From then on whenever we were animating for long hours of the day we would stick You! Me! Dancing! on, just to get us through the last few hours. It became our feel good song.

In the last few weeks of University life me and Tom were discussing possible projects to start after graduating. We both got really excited about the idea of making a Stop-Motion animation music video for You! Me! Dancing!
Then we graduated and it all went quiet for a few months whilst we both worked and saved money. Until the other week when we started talking about the animation again and it sparked that passion and drive back into us!

We both met up today at our old watering hole, The Ember Lounge, on the University campus today and thrashed about different stories and possible character ideas etc.
We had a really productive day and came away with 1:40 of the story pretty much set in stone.

1:40 however isn't that much when you think the song itself is 6:39.
It's going to be an absolutely mammoth animation and it's going to require real focus and effort but we know we can do it! We set a rough goal to be animating by November this year which we would like to stick to, but we know things may happen with our part-time jobs that could get in the way of that.

Keep a close eye on all the posts to see if we are after any help with the animation. We know it would be a great opportunity for students to take part in as one of their final year modules and we will be posting updates later into the production possibly asking for your specific skill set.

A