Finished Animation

As I promised, here's the finished animation, beautifully edited together by Tom.

I hope you enjoy it, as much as we enjoyed filming it.

Filming.... finished!

Well filming of "The Money Tree" has now finished, all scenes have been filmed and gone really well.

All that's left to do is hand all the files over to the more than capable hands on Tom Granger, so he can continue to edit the whole thing together. To his credit, he's already edited most of the film now, he just needs to add in the last few scenes and it's looking FANTASTIC.

Here are a few screen shots of us finishing up the animating.

Here the fox is just about to start writing his warning letters to Barney.

The final notice being handed to the badger bailiffs.

Shhhh! I never posted this up....

 Here's a quick glimpse of the final scene of the animation, which was animated by Alex, Tom and myself, each taking a different character.

I animated the fox, Alex animated the badger in the foreground and Tom animated the badger reclining on the sofa.

The scene went really well and to top it all off we had a good laugh while shooting it, which made it all the better.

Here's a few shots of May finishing up the last of the Barney scenes, the animating's been great and we're all really excited now to see the final thing.

For the very final scene, where the credits are rolling we needed Barney sitting naked cowering in a corner, so, Alex made a good plasticine puppet that would be the body double for Barney. Once sculpted he then gave it a coat of the same paint (latex) as the main puppet so it would be an exact replacement.

The head will be simply placed onto this puppet and the hands have already been put on, using a spare set of replacement hands.

Here Alex and Tom are animating the last few scenes which just have the badgers in.

Here the badgers have just turned up on Barney's door step and they are about to raid Barney's house of all his possesions.

As I mentioned at the start, the animation is now finishsed and is being edited together by Tom (the guy standing at the back of the set).

Once it's finished I will load it upto Vimeo and post it up on here, but for now you'll have to wait.

Regards,

Jonathan

160511 - Filming so far pt3

As I mentioned on my previous update, the filming today went very well and I was pleased with how the puppet performed.

I managed to get 10 seconds or so filmed today in 6 hours no stop shooting, shooting in a combination of 1s and 2s.

This included a small 5 step quadruped walk cycle, it didn't go too badly but it felt far from perfect so I might, if I get the time/chance, re-shoot the scene and see if I can improve on it.

Here are a few quick shots from today, no film stills as I left my hard drive at home.

While I was filming the fox, May continued to film Barney in the indoor/house set.

Things seemed to go really well and the animation is looking great, so far we have well over 1minute filmed and we are slowly getting onto the last few scenes of.

While we were both animating, Alex and Tom were working on the Sound/Foley and also putting together a first edit of the scenes we've shot so far.

Here Tom is compiling all the finished scenes we've done so far, along with putting in all the music and foley.

The first edit it fantastic, and with all the sound in place the animation really is coming together.

Here Alex is editing all the foley he's been working on throughout the day with Tom, the sounds have been brilliant and really worked within the animation.

Over the next few day's we'll be finishing off the last few scenes of animating and turning this first edit into the final animation in Final Cut Pro.

150511 - Repairing the Fox pt 2

To rejoin the cut seam on the fox's leg I simply used liquid latex.

The liquid latex was carefully brushed along both sides of the inside edge of the seam using a cotton bud. This ensured that the latex was neat and as little as possible was allowed to cover the outside edge of the puppet, which would ruin the repaint job and may also cause a crease.

The latex was then quickly dried using a hair dryer.

The resulting join was pretty good and with a coat of paint would blend in very nicely, however with it being the back of the leg, there are no shots where it would be visible.

This picture was taken after the repainting and also after 6 hours of filming during the day.

The ankle, and the puppet in general was brilliant to work with and was faultless throughout the shoot.

If I could make the armature and the puppet again I would experiment with more stands of 2mm wire, and also replace the the 1mm aluminium wire with copper wire as it's a lot more durable and would at least allow me to finish a shot before a joint failed completely.

I would also paint the puppet using a combination of acrylic, for the colour and silicone. This would allow me to get a thin paint coat on the puppet, that would keep creases to a minimum, but it also wouldn't crack as easily as the acrylic, therefore not need as much attention/repainting.

However, time was running short due to a University mishap regarding the use of foam latex we just had to work with what we had in the limited time frame.

13-140511 - Disaster, Fox ankle broken and the repair pt1

At the end of the day on Friday, things didn't go to well with the fox. Very similar to the disaster with Barney, one of the fox's ankles broke, resulting in the joint being very loose and only 2 stands on 1mm wire left holding the ankle on. This wouldn't be strong enough or last for the walkcycle that I need to do.

To start repairs on the fox's ankle I first had to cut the seam along the leg.

I then removed the damaged part of the foot.

I then carefully removed the brass "bones" from the leg, just bellow the knee and cut the remaining wire from the knee joint down.

To join the new bottom half of the left to the top half I cut a small length of K&S tubing, the same length as the original "bone" section and slotted it onto the leg. 

I then glued the K&S to the leg using some 2 part epoxy and left it to dry for an hour.

While that was drying I removed the broken armature from the foot using a pair of pliers, so I could then reuse the metal plate I used in the foot.

I then twisted up a small length of wire, using the same method as the rest of the armature, a combination of 1mm and 2mm aluminium wire.

I them simply test fitted this in the joint and cut it to length.

The metal plate of the foot was then keyed to help the glue stick and using 2 part epoxy I attached the foot the new part of the leg.

To finish the repair off I then simple glued the replacement ankle into the joint using yet more 2 part epoxy.

All that's left to do now is leave it to dry over night, then rejoin the seam on the leg using some liquid latex and repaint the leg/foot and get on with the animating, first thing Monday morning. Fingers crossed this is the last of the repairs and I can just get the walkcycle done and my part of filming/animating finished without anymore problems.

Filming so Far pt2

The animating has been going really well and before Barney broke May finished off all the forest scenes, leaving the set free for me to make and start on the fox part of the animation.

Here are a few screen shots of the last of Barney's scenes in the forest set.

The scene's with the fox have gone pretty well so far, the animating is going smoothly and fingers crossed everything will come together nicely in post production/editing.

At this point I've got about 18 seconds on animating finished and May's done about 40-50 seconds, so in total we have around 1 minute which means we're about half way there.

090511 - The Props pt5 - - Making another set of hands for Barney

As the animating went on, Barney's hands were slowly deteriorating and were in need of replacement.

Using some spare hand blocks I knocked up some replacement hands for Barney in no time at all.

After several hours with latex, dipping and waiting for it the dry the replement hands were finished, just in need of the last paint job to match up with the old ones.

Sadly the hands werenn't the only things that needed replaing. By the time the hands were done we had a small disaster when Barney's neck broke, along with a few of his joints wearing out.

Thankfully Alex managed to make a whole replacement armature that evening so he was ready to shoot with the next day. It was almost an exact replica, with very few minor diferences on the surface, once big difference thought is that he was no loner foam latex.This was because to the mould for Barney broke and is no longer useable and we don't have the time to make another. We've just got to make do with what we've got at the minute.

A few more props were also needed, so I set about making them.

The first are the letter that the fox sends Barney. These are essentially reminders/letters from the fox to tell Barney he owes him the money he took from the tree. The problem is, they're just paw print and scratches so he can't read them.

I made these letters very quickly on photoshop, scaled them down and printed them off. All I had to do then was cut them out and they're ready to go.

We also needed standard letters that Barney would recieve through the post. Again these were made in photoshop. The small and large letters were just rectangles of colour, printed out and cut out, to finish them off I just drew on all the detail using a fine liner and a ruler, quick and simple.