Grandpa and Fred intro

This is the one of the key shots where Fred is introduced to 

Grandpa as Fred decides to be a bit cheeky towards Grandpa.

Katie and Moses both took turns to animate this scene with Fred included,

as Katie animated Granada and Moses animated Fred.

Key frames were quite tricky to animate in this particular shot as a lot of movement

with both puppets and props was a little tricky to do - but they managed to get it sorted.

Above we have a shot of Grandpa from Fred's point of view.

Next to it is Grandpa's shoe that Jen had been working on also that day.

It's covered really neatly with some black cloth she brought in.

So Grandpa's got a new pair of shoes! and is delighted 

whereas Fred is quite surprised at it all.

Production Update 2

In these production photos Jen and Kendra are both making and touching up props. Jen is working on Grandpas spats as they were made of silicon and needed to be a jet black colour for his shoes. There was a slight problem with the shoes as Katie cast them in silicon and tried to make them black but the emulsion made it a grey colour instead so Jen began to sow black material over the shoes.

Kendra finished making the extra boxes needed for the shoe store which look great, and gave a hand at animating Grandpa in the underwear department. 

Production update 1

So far this week we've put together a shot list for our animation as we have completed the pre-production stage as everything is in working order. On Monday the 23rd April we began to animate our opening scene where Grandma and Grandpa are walking along the department store. It was a very tricky task as we ran a couple of tests before shooting this scene, but we've managed to get through it.

 

The puppets and background set we had to be animated at the same time which was a challenge in its own way, as we had to keep an eye on moving the set whilst animating Grandma and Grandpa.

We each took turns to try and animate the characters so we can get a better understanding of how to use and animate puppets in stop motion - which is all about practice, repetition and consistency.

We carried on to animate throughout the day and worked quite hard and then retreated on home quite late that day.

Grandpa's glasses broke a few times but we managed to fix them asap - he's all better now. 

Katie put together a schedule for our production stage which is very helpful and yet due to change if needed.

During this day, we had our whole team in and working on different parts of the project. Kendra helped to work on making extra props for the sets as we were short on quite a few boxes for our shoe store section.

                                                                                         






Jen and Moses  gave a hand to help animate a couple of shots set out for today and setup the set for the next days shoot.

Katie began to work on our mysterious character Fred who is new to the scene, the photo's above show Fred's outfit and armature along with stuffing.

Moulding & casting research

After working with plasticine on several projects, Katie wanted to work with silicone puppets like they do in the industry. Jen had some knowledge of the materials to use and after researching a bit deeper, found some useful tutorials and blogs online by other modelmakers and animators.





( the above two videos are by http://www.picturetrail.com/hilligossnic )



Ben Whitehouse http://benwportfolio.blogspot.co.uk/


And also we stumbled across two brothers called Joshua and Nathan Flynn (or as we call them 'The Flynn Twins') who both studied animation at the University of Glamorgan. They have documented the making process of their current project 'Opening Night'.


University of Glamorgan is also where animator Tim Allen studied! Theres a really good interview with him on The 11 Second Club blog here http://blog.11secondclub.com/2011/11/tim-allen-interview.html

Animation Tests - 7th March 2012

Katie brought the maquette of grandpa into uni to do some animation tests. his feet are bolted to the floor which has a grid of holes to allow him to move in any direction across the floor.

Grandpa examines shoe

Grandpa walk test

Grandpa dance


Thank you to Anita for setting up the lights, camera and computer.
Jen edited the footage and added sound.

visual tests - 7 March 2012

Here is  a look at Grandpa and a special pair of shoes, followed by a character turn around of Fred in the early stages of design. The middle image is a test to see what our animation would look like if we were to go ahead with a split screen theme between Fred and Grandpa - to reflect their opposite worlds.

Kendra designed the background image and Katie created Grandpa, Fred's character turn around was modeled by a friend of Katie's.

Set design props

Here's a look at fountain designs and the make -up stands for our animation - All in progress.