Week 46 and 49 - Goofy Animation with Meelis

In week 46 and 49 we had animationlessons with Meelis Arulepp, an animator from Estonia who among other things has animated on Asterix and the Vikings. We had animations exercises with Goofy as a model. In week 46 we had to make him lift a ball that should look as heavy as possible and in week 49 we had to make him look drunk.



The bouncing balls principles really shines through in these exercises: threating Goofy's stomach and head as simple balls really gives you a point to direct everything out from in these exercises, ecpecially the arcs becomes a play.



I really planned the last animation out very strictly, ironicly it is the last 10 frames wich I did very fast an loosely that is the best. But of course, you can't plan the loose kind of fluency: less planning, more fast pased sketching next time.

(note Goofy is owned my Disney)

Week 39, 40 and 41 Animations

Week 39 was the last week with Uri. Since friday should be a fun day, we got that's week assigment early: Animate a flour sack after a storyboard by Uri. I missed the inbetweening in the two middle scenes, so I had to settle with this:



As mentoined, friday should be a fun day and it was indeed! We watched pixilation movies before figuring out the plot for our own pixilation movie in groups. Then we shot it in 3 hours. Except for my hand you'll see in the movie, I did my best to function as the director - otherwise the credit goes to Sandra, Thomas, Christoffer and Atli.

The Pillow Hunt from Niels Dolmer on Vimeo.

Since the animation was done fast, went fast and is without sound I figured the plot might be quite hard to catch, so to make the story (and a second view of the movie) a bit more interesting, let me tell it!
A girl sits uncomtable at a chair and decides to find something more comforting. She encounters a magic hat that gives her a magic turtle-compass. She fellows and finds a freezing guy, aids him and befriends him. After some travel they encounter an evil wizard! The friend with the scarf attacks, but the wizard curses his leg and forces him away, then teleports behind the girl, hits her, teleports and takes the hat... The beats him, he falls, and turns into a pillow - The End

In week 40 and 41 we had a teacher from MarkFilm (http://markfilm.dk) named Anders Nejsum to teach us basic walk. Walks are rather technical so at the first week we ended up doing a simple standard walk:



In the second week, we needed to come up with our own walk. I decided to go for a sneaky walk:


The Pink Panther is the property of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

First Animations

For the last 3 weeks I've been thaught basic animation at the school by Uri Kranot - an independent filmmaker/animator from Isreal. (You can see more about him at his site www.tindrumanimation.com). It has mostly been fun, interesting and very time consuming to finally touch what my education is all about. In the first week, apart from bouncing ball and pendulum exercises, each student made their own "short" which was to be "10 seconds long and about a frog and a fly." I made this:



In the second week we continued with the wave and follow through principles ending up each making our own short about a ball with a tail. The ball was to enter the frame joyfully, remember something, exit and come back in. Note that the ball doesn't jump in fear in the middle of my animation, but because it came to think of something it should get. Ofcourse that should had been clear in the animation.

1st Week at KAU: Clockman, drunken elephant and burning squirrels

Holidays are over, the 24th I started at KAU or CA (Character animation) as it is called now. It has been quite a busy week, with lots and lots of drawings focusing on good construction, but thats not an excuse to make poor poses, or boring characters anyway.
Here are some of the best stuff I've come up with this week:
The tasks for each drawing was, as I remember them:
Make a superhero standing in an action or acting pose.
Draw a drunken elephant in 30 min.
Make a drawing of a woman/girl (the idea with the squirrel came from an earlier assigment).
Make a drawing containing what you've learned this week

Some Tower Background

Remember the ”upcoming project” I mentioned two posts down? Turns out it turned into an examination project at the media school, which again turned into a personal project... Because some things are remarkably unwilling to be finished. Anyways the shown (and yes, slightly unfinished) background is a part of the project, enjoy!

I’m off on vacation, cheers!

Made it to KAU

Yes, I've been accepted into the character animation line at the animationworkshop. Feels very good indeed.

(Edit: Since the school prefers to keep the titels of the educations at the same langauge, KAU is now called CA (Character Animation) thus I've changed the tags.)

Savannah Background

Background for an upcoming project. The colours doesn't really match the usual savannah, but I like them as they are.. At any rate, that is what drawing/painting is all about - making people see things that aren't really there, make a connectoin between the viewer and the viewed! I.e. if I've made this picture right, you're thinking: "oh, its a savannah (and the colours are perfect)!" rather than: "I'm seeing colours on my flat computerscreen, or just a badly coloured savannah."

Portfolio for KAU

Ahhh, can you smell that? The fresh smell of a new blog, the smell of the very first post, the smell of naive, foolish optimism! This is truly a sacred moment, the moment for important words to be written... Well, I'll have to get back to you on the important words, in the meantime, why don't you go and look at the pictures below.

Its the pages from my portfolio for KAU (danish shortening for Character Animation Education), delivered the 16th of march at the Animation Workshop in Viborg after a sunday night without sleep and some rather stressful months. I tell ya, these drawings are just the top of the iceberg, I've got alot of paper with exercises, compositions, developments of characterdesigns etc etc - lying around. You can go to www.animwork.dk if you want to know more about the education.
At http://nad.tegnebordet.dk you can see the same drawings with fitting descriptions and in some cases, larger resolution and correctly turned. The site is in Danish though... You have been warned.

(Note: Batman and Catwoman is owned by DC Comics)