Took a while but I finally got my head round how an insects legs move when it walks. I've only used six of the eight legs as actual legs for my spider with the other 2 becoming arms at the front - they'll be shorter and hang from the front of the body.

I looked at videos of spiders and also at how the spider in James and the Giant Peach was done. The body doesn't bob up and down instead it stays at the same distance from the floor and moves at a constant speed with the legs moving rhythmically either side of it.

Next step is to include the legs on the other side of the body and to then add the big bum bit at the back and her head.

possible aesthetics..

I've recently seen an advert on tv for a childrens charity call Action For Children. The advert tells the story of a girl who looked after her mum as she went through chemotherapy using a heart to represent the girls mother. In the beginning it shines above her but as her mum gets ill the heart gets bigger and eventually too much for the girl to handle which is what the charity is all about - helping kids who are having to care for ill parents and.

I like the symbolism of the heart and the simplicity of the animation especially the way that they've used crayons and colouring pencils to do it.


Here I've tried applying the crayon look to one of my own bits having found a way of getting a crayon effect on Photoshop. Not sure if I'm entirely loving it at the moment but I'm finding it tricky getting a decent photo or scan of actual crayons without bright lights or background shadows getting too much in the way.

I'm going to persue this technique and hopefully will be able to find a way of capturing real life crayons otherwise I'll play around with the textures on Photoshop to get the crayon looking just right.

Other ways I've tried were to just block colour the entire thing which looks nice but I've done it before and I wanted to find something more appropriate. I also tried cutting photos of the actual bits into the picture which looks nice but I don't think its necessary for me to go in that direction.

turnarounds

Did these before Christmas, the proportions of them are alot better than before. In earlier sketches I had them all wrong and they were looking much taller older than they should have been.





Working on getting the final pilot edit sorted for next week. Keep having ideas for shots and making little bits better which is good visually but annoying practically as time is not of the essence and I can't keep changing things.

2nd version

second version of my film from stu buckle on Vimeo.

i got rid of some of the unnecessary fluff and added to bits that needed it. now i've gotta work on refining it all and getting it all looking good for after xmas! woo woo

Monster House aesthetic

I really like the aesthetic of Monster House.. like the way they used normal colours and how everything looks quite muted and more real. Also the suburban aspect of it is something that I need to draw influence from as there are going to be bits in mine that happen outside of the house on a street not too dissimilar from the one in the film.

The aesthetic of the kids is also something I need to look at. I want to make them all quite thin like DJ in the film but when I draw them they end up with either a massive head or looking like tall thin adults

animatic version one

jats animatic 1 from stu buckle on Vimeo.

I screened this version of my animatic in uni last week (3rd december) and it went alright. Got a bit of a laugh which I was not expecting.. There are some bits in it that I don't like - they feel a bit unnecessary so I'm going to get rid of them and replace them by lengthening other bits that I feel need to be longer.

inspi(de)ration..... hehe.. lame

The spider is going to look a bit like the one from Tim Burtons James and the Giant Peach. She is gonna have a different body structure but I'm going to use the same 6 legs/2 arms set up (as opposed to 8 legs/0 arms) that they used on the film as I need my spider to have some arms...