MAYAYAYA! The Ball to the floor.

Evaluations

Smudge and Click.

For this animation I decided to base them on environmental issues. For my part I wanted to show the ice caps melting. So I decided to animate Ice melting, for this I froze a block of milk and put it inside a fish tank.  I then made a background for my fishtank, I did this in photo using my graphics tablet.

When it came to filming I uses a heat gun to slowly melt the ice frame by frame. It gave a fast result and worked well. After I finished filming I noticed a few problems. Firstly there was a reflection in the glass of the fishtank, I could have got rid of this buy putting filter over the light to make it less potent.

Overall I found it enjoyable and not to difficult. It allowed to experiment in a few techniques that I have not used before. Without the mistakes I think it turned out quite well.

Cut-out.

For this we decided to base our animations on interviews about religion to various types of sea creatures.  With the touchy subject of religion we had to be careful, to make it tasteful and not offensive, I think we achieved this.

My part of this animation was “Dickens The Celotape Whale” it religion obsessed whale talking about the story of Noah. He is a character I designed at an earlier date. I loved doing this assignment it was fun and colourful. I found it quite easy but there were a few problems. One of them was the programme kept on crashing.  Wish wasn’t the best of things to happen. Also my dope sheet messed up and it made my timing go completely wrong so I had to do it without.

Overall I managed to fix it up well and I produce a good bit of work.

Stop motion.

With this I wanted to be ambitious, so I decided to spend time on making my models. The look of my character was very tall and spindly which meant I would have to use rigging to keep him up. Meaning I would then have to paint the rigging out in post-production. But this was made easier as we decided to use green and add the backgrounds in later. But this then added more problems. Lighting the green screen could of gone better. We needed the lights on pretty much all the time but because other students had to do there animation we had to animate.

While animating we came across a lot of problems. Like the sand was making the magnets weaker so they wouldn’t hold up the characters, also trying to make the sand not move while animation was difficult if not impossible.  The stage wasn’t big enough for the long shots and such.

I could go on. But for the time It took and the fact we rushed it I’m really happy with the result and enjoyed doing it. It has made me think a little more about using stop motion animation.

Mixed Media

This was a very rushed animation, yet it is one of my personal favourites to make. It was so simple and stress free and I had a great time using flash. I think my strengths are more in computers than traditional techniques. It took me about 6 hours to create this animation from start to finish but the time went passed so quick because I was having fun.

Of course there was problems, like flash not wasn’t to export the movie properly and me killing my laptop by accidently overloading it with “Toms”, but apart from that it went very well.

http://www.youtube.com/user/SirDannyJak

My Youtube channel

Time at BAF (Slightly Over-due)

Bradford Animation Festival (BAF)

Coming out of college and right into university was a kind of a rushed decision. I have not yet had a chance to enter the real world.  Never had a full time job. Been at university still didn’t seem real, and then BAF changed that.

I didn’t know what to expect really. I have never been to a film festival before. Nor had I watched many independent animations so it was going to a lot to take in.

During the four days I must have watched so many hours of animation. My brain went slightly numb to it. But I still enjoyed watching them and I wasn’t sick of them at all.  Most of my time watching them was spent looking at the technique used and how they would build character and tension etc.

I didn’t like all of the animations. I had quite a few that I hated and found hard to watch. This is because when I decided to go into animation. I wanted to make animations that people would find enjoyable to watch. Yet some animators seem like they are trying to become some sort of profit of animation by creating these long draining animations that has no story line and are very repetitive. Like they where trying to find meaning out of nothing.

The ones I liked tended to be well animated, interesting and clever. I would name a few but I have completely forgot what they where called. But it doesn’t matter.  What matters is that they influenced me to go on in animation and made me want to create films just like they did, to compete in festivals. Also so people can enjoy them like I did.

There is a selection on films that have stuck in my head ever since and if one day I would be able to achieve that I will be happy. Knowing that I have influenced a new generation of animators like myself.

Up close and non-sexual.

This is just a blog.

About me.

At this time in my life I feel that I’m at the most creative I have ever been. All it takes is my pencil to hit the paper for me to start drawing a picture that will impress me and others.

For this I thank the people around me. Its thanks to them that I have the force that drives me to do better. Because they expect a style of art that I produce. I find that I have a good style of drawing. It’s influenced by a few artist but I find that it’s also very different. This is what is in demand from me.

I don’t want to seem big headed or like I have a massive ego. But I do love compliments. They are healthy for me. Without them I would not have the drive to do better. I take them very humbly but I do crave the compliments.

Friends

I find that having these friends will improve my confidence a lot, coming from a bad high school experience, it’s nice to have this feeling of success now. (I had a bad time at high school, due to the massive amount of heartless scum). Then and again I still start to wonder if I would still be like this if not been bullied so much. I only try so hard to do better than they could ever do. It seems to be working so far.

Also during this journey of self discovery I have become a lot more intact with my personality. It appears I have a unique style of talking. There is no other way to say it but people find me really funny. I don’t try to be funny it’s just come naturally to me.  I constantly get called strange and weird but in a good way. Today I found out that my some of my new friends where really excited when I decided to move in with them because I’m a good laugh to be around.

It’s not really like me to talk in this way, like I said I’m a fairly humble person. But these new experiences make me want to try new things.

New things

With all of the support I have been thinking about maybe writing a stand up script in which I could try on a Open Mic Night. This is very unlike me. I’m usually very shy when it comes to standing up and speaking. But if I’m able to put on a good show I think it will benefit me when pitching ideas and also socialising with new people.

Another thing is that I have decided to start getting slightly more fit. I find that people with a more looked after body tend to get taken more seriously. Also I feel that the world that we live in at the moment it is needed. So much crap and sugar goes into food, that later on I might be more venerable to illness. Also looking healthier will make me feel better about myself.

As much as I love animation, I want to start working with my illustrations as well, I’m going to take up painting on canvas. I have always loved the look of really well worked on pieces of art. I will still stick to character drawings but just paint them to give them a different look to them. Also it would be handy to be good at a paint brush. If I get pretty good I could sell my work out create paintings for my house.

Thanks for taking the time to read this dribble about myself. But maybe it helped you see threw my eyes and the way I work.

Danny Jak Midwinter.

Just me.

Dickens The Whale

Well what can I say.

I’m proud of it! My first animation where I came out with a real excitement to start showing it to everyone around me.

I guess this is what happens when you start to put effort into your work.

It found that the brief was flexible for me to go wild with my imagination. So I did. So mad that I created a religion deluded whale called “Dickens”.

Dickens is a sperm whale that rests at the bottom of the ocean in his “Turch” the place he lives is decorated with crucifixes that have been sellotaped to various things.

What went down!

Well this was my first real chance at doing a cutout animation. And as I keep doing more and more animation I’m starting to learn my boundaries. So this project wasn’t to ambitious for me. But I didn’t give myself any less work. I decided to try and make it look a good as I could.

I made bubbles come out of his mouth.

I made the coral on the rock move.

I designed the set to a neat and professional standard.

I lined up my animation well. Using lines and markings to reduce mistakes.

That was just in the animation. I did a lot of developmental work as well. Working out how I a mouth would look from the side, a basic understand of the anatomy of a whale and also the speed it takes a bubble to raise in water.

All in all I think it was a great attempted and I was very pleased with my result.

All of my friends love it and where shocked at how well I had done it.

I just hope my tutors love it as my as my friends!

Fingers Crossed.

The Danny Jak enters the world of text.

Well, Its a late starting blog.

But thats ok.

Its just nothing interesting has really happened with my life.

But now it has!

Plus I dunno if I’m meant to be formal on this or not, so I have decided to just be myself.

So Basically I went to london, for the first time in my life. It was pretty intense.

We visited some studios and post production companies. This was pretty darn useful! I will explain 1 by 1.

Picasso Pictures:

Right, so this place is like a small animation studio that basically only uses like digital animation. The woman talking to us was pretty damn friendly. Very approach able. She gave is a chat about whats going on and that. How they recruit and such. Turns out they find a lot of there employees by the show reels from london. In that case it leaves me kinda handicapped. As they see a lot of work from the Royal art college thingy. Put apart from that, it seemed like a very happy place, seemed friendly and would be a nice environment to work.

Double Negative:

So basically what we saw here was ??????? ???? ???????? ??? ?????????? ???? ???? ??????????? ??????????? ?????? ???????????????? ?????????? ???????????????? ????????????? ?????????????! ????????????? ??????????, ????????? ??????? ????????? ??? ????????? ?? ???????????. Yeah we signed something so I’m not really allowed to speak about it. All I know is a lot of people work there and they work on a lot of hollywood films.

12 foot 6:

Small company, a lot like Picasso Pictures. There more 2D animation only. They do nearly all there work on flash. It was all very kinda of graphicy styled. Wasn’t much to it, but it was simple and worked. It was all character animation. Didn’t really see something without a main character. Nice guy talking to us, very straight to the point. He talked to us about the money and stuff. That was interesting to know. As I’m planning to get a job at the end of the course.

Cartoon Network:

This place was up to a very high standard. Had 2 really nice guys speaking to us, they had knew each other since they where like 8. I think thats pretty impressive. But apart from that. They gave us a few looks into some animatics and concepts that they had put forward. Turns out most of them got rejected. Not good. Was a good eye opener on how good you really need to be. It was kind of spoilt toward the end, when one of the second years didn’t know when to stop asking questions. I think there is something wrong with him, but it was pretty embarrassing.

Well, thats all the companies. We also went for a sneaky peek around london. Got to see some sites. I spent £50 on Tim Burtons Art Book. It was so worth it! But thats something else to write about another day! Till then. How for now.

:]

I often get judging looks off Brayden. It makes me feel wanted.