Cel Action and Third year so far

So the past couple of months have flown, as they always seem to be doing.

For the past couple of weeks I've been taking a course in CelAction at ClothCat studios in Cardiff (some results above). Been pretty blown away by this thing. Although it can't make up for being an average animator it certainly makes life easier in a whole lot of ways. Going to keep experimenting with this in the future hopefully.

The character here, I simply call "The Gent" (short for gentleman)

Really wish I'd known more about CelAction last year. Would have been so much nice to use for my final film. Anyone who has the chance to learn it, I highly recommend.

Now onto the last project for BA Animation at Glamorgan (now South Wales)... that'll come very soon I promise.

This year so far though has been a couple of little projects. First was a short Flash production a tutor of mine was making (check out Matt Morgan's "Seeds of Change" artwork here http://www.flickr.com/photos/chocolatesausage/9729800889/). Took a little while to get back into traditional animation after doing symbol stuff for all of this year pretty much, but was refreshing, and a lovely film to work on. Definitely need to improve in this area though.

Next up was After Effects. Something I love.

This has been a great chance to try out new things I've always wanted to do.

Found a lot of really cool things including the Puppet Tools 3 plugin, which vastly improves After Effects' rigging capabilities.

Does get a bit fiddly though

Heres what a puppet looks like with inverse kinematics. A lot of effort for what you get.

Apart from all this I've been dabbling in Cinema 4D. CG is just a whole different world. Respect to all you CGers out there. Here's some tests.

Early days. That's all I can say.

 Was making this for an open mic night hosted by my friend James Sarson at Gw Di Hw in Cardiff (he also does a lovely couple of nights every week at Porters on Tuesdays and Thursdays, check it locals).

Ultimately went a different route.

This is the final thing. Most of these objects aren't my creation, I'm starting very slowly. I'm currently exploring the idea of low-poly CG backgrounds for my final film, so I'm trying to weave C4D into work I'm doing at the moment.

Finally as part of the After Effects project I was part of a team including Jake (http://jakeharv.blogspot.co.uk/) and Gregg (http://gwillis1991.blogspot.co.uk/)

We teamed up to create an advert for the national student survey. Still not quite finished to be put up but here's a screenshot of my bit. Was really chuffed with this. Loved working in a team too.

Should've really broken this up into little posts...