The Spoon and Me

This is my final year film: Pinny Gig

Pinny Gig was designed so that I could have fun with what I was animating, I didn’t want something the audience had to think too much about (or me, for that matter.)

The lead character himself was animated traditionally, then coloured using Shake and Photoshop.  The drumkit was modelled and animated in Maya.  My good friend and modelling genius Laurie Priest rigged and modelled the drum kit.  Then taught me how to animate in Maya!

The two layers were then combined in After Effects, with additional effects and clean up produced here too.

Sorry the file is so small, but the genuine article’s taking too long to post.  Seriously, I’ve watched Mulan and Road to El Dorado in the time I left the file to upload, but nothing happened.  Or at least, not a lot did.  This dinky version is missing a couple of edits, which aren’t detrimental to the plot or the animation.  Hopefully I’ll be able to upload the proper version on a faster computer when I have more time.

Bron

** PLEASE NOTE:  All material shown here is property of Bronwyn Dowle and the University of Lincoln.  Recreation of work shown here is not allowed without my express permission. **

The following are line tests of walks I produced in 2006/7.

The first is a two legged human walk, which I think is quite spunky and a good start considering it was so early on : Walk I

Next is a quadraped walk, using a character designed for a project last year. The sheep character had no specified joints, which made him interesting to move. This was only a draft line test, which is why there’s not a lot of detail on him: Walk II

Another quadraped walk, same project as above, but a lion this time. Feline quadrapeds walk differently to other quadrapeds, which in a sad way interests and excites me. Again, very drafty: Walk III

Finally, the most recent walk I’ve produced. This was a test for my final year film (2007/8) to get the movement of the rodent (a guinea pig, for the record) and to test the colouring technique on Photoshop: Walk IV

Bron

** PLEASE NOTE:  All material shown here is property of Bronwyn Dowle and the University of Lincoln.  Recreation of work shown here is not allowed without my express permission. **

Finally, I have got myself into gear, and posted some work!

These are floursacks that I animated in 2006/7. The task was to animate four floursacks, approximately 10 seconds each, showing the following emotions:

Lonely Lonely Floursack
Curious Curious Floursack
Hypocondriac Hypocondriac Floursack
Wounded Wounded Floursack

Lonely and Curious are fairly self explanitary, as is Hypocondriac (though I’m not sure that’s how it’s spelt.) I chose to have the Wounded floursack as being emotionally wounded instead of physically wounded, as it presented more of an acting challenge.

Still trying to get my head round aniblogspot, so bare with me if things don’t work as planned…

Bron

** PLEASE NOTE:  All material shown here is property of Bronwyn Dowle and the University of Lincoln.  Recreation of work shown here is not allowed without my express permission. **

OK, imagine this:

You’re a wee sprog, about 5 or 6 years old. Much to your wide-eyed excitement, you’ve been let loose in an old fashioned sweet shop, the kind with jars filling shelves, a set of scales on the counter and paper bags to hold your treats. It’s the most brilliant day of your young life.

Until you realise you’re only tall enough to reach that jar of mint imperials on the bottom shelf.

And who likes mint imperials, really?

So you wait. As you grow up and grow taller, you can reach out for other jars; the fruit drops, the mint humbugs, the sherbet lemons, the aniseed balls… but that jar with what you want most is on the very top shelf, always out of reach.

And you think to yourself, that jar is ages away. So you feast, half heartedly on flying saucers and chewing nuts, because as you’ve already established in your young mind, that jar is still a long way off.

But suddenly the day comes. You look up, and you’re suddenly face to face with this jar of your most favourite, most desired goodies. When you glance left and right, there’s a whole host of sweets you could never have dreamed exisited.

Not only that, but the person who owns the sweet shop is a daft, blind, old biddy who has left you in charge of this wonderland of sugary delights. Best bit is that she never checks the jars to see how much has gone missing.

That kind of describes my life at the moment. I’ve finished my degree in animation, and suddenly there’s everything that can possibly open and yet at the same time there’s too much for my mind to deal with. Right now, there’s a huge, paper bag in my hands, but I don’t know how to fill it.

Naturally, I have some plans, some thoughts and possiblities. I’ll follow up what I want later, along with my work over the last few years and the next few decades (with any luck.)

For the record, my favourite sweet is fudge. If it could ever come sugar free, that would be in my jar.

Bron