Thursday 29 July 2010

To America!

... And here's the finished product:

Tuesday 6 July 2010


I'm still playing around with that background inbetween doing bits of animation, trying to achieve more of the effect I want. I'm much happier with this version, using a photographic background to the tent (after all that work drawing a tent, grr). Also using a Petrushka-themed paper I found for the stage.


Monday 5 July 2010

I've been playing around with the character's shapes and proportions, having decided they're too normal looking and wanting them to be a bit more grotesque and strange.



Here's what I've so far (for the Moor, the Ballerina and Petrushka):


Friday 2 July 2010


So... yeah.
I hate when that happens: you've got all your seperate elements working fine, then you put a few together and get something different from what you expected.
I mean, this looks fine, except it's too clean-cut and bright. That really wasnt the intention.
I think it's the bright, pastel colours of the Petrushka puppet against the background. I might have to do some re-colouring on him.
Also possibly the faintness of the outlines? Perhaps if they were heavier, the jointed puppet nature would be more obvious?
Oh, I did replace the stage surrounds with speaker stacks here, which I think works better.

Flash is not my friend today...


... So while I wait for it to sort itself out/crash I'll say abit about how I've been colouring the characters and scenery.


I wanted lots of pattern and detail, and I happen to have a big bag of bits of nce paper I've collected over the years which get used in the collages i do (kathrynrosamillerart.co.uk).


So, I scan a selection in and do some preliminary work in a graphics program. I decide which patterns would go where on the characters' clothes, and usually play around with the colour balance and saturation and stuff. When I've got a rough representation I import the lines and colour seperately into Flash and start neatening everything up, adding shading etc.




This is the background I've created for the main part of the video - the performance of the puppets in this Big Top/puppet theatre style marques.


It's pretty heavily based on Petrushka again - the starry background; the stage surrounds etc are based directly on the ballet sets. I drew the structure of the tent by hand and scanned it in, out and the colouring is a mixture of painting within Flash and images and patterns I've imported, vectorised and played around with.



I'm not sure this isnt too much like the ballet set, though... considering the puppet characters that are going to be in this setting are also very heavily based on Petrushka, it might all be a bit too much. I want a mix of the ballet with other elements. Like some rock n roll imagery.


At the moment the only incongruous element is the collection of lanterns hanging from the roof, which I like...


I'm thinking of changing a couple of elements, like maybe replacing the stage surrounds with speaker stacks or something.

Thursday 1 July 2010

... And here's the other two:



Rather than fit out the puppet band with exact representations of the instruments on the track (guitar, bass, violin and drums) I decided to run with the Petrushka-Russian-folky angle and did of a bit of research.

So Petrushka is on balalaika, the Moor is on hardingfere (okay, that's essentially a violin anyway, plus it's Bulgarian. But I couldn't find an interesting-looking Russian bowed string instrument :)), the Conjurer has a military-style side-snare and the Ballerina is on bass domra.

Some thought went into that... I wanted the connection to the more conventional instruments to be visually obvious, and tinted the instruments colours that referenced the particular instruments played by the real band members, while also looking quirky and exotic.

It's part of my overall plan for the band in the video: the idea is that the puppets are part of a mechanical toy (like a cam-toy, with a big ol' crank handle) and are just perfoming a automated mime to some extent. The extent to which they are actually producing the music should be ambiguous. It's a balance between timing their movements to the track, and making their movements stilted, so they might or might not be playing the song you hear.

For one thing, depending on how much time I find I have as I get on for the deadline, I might have the band wind down when the song slows down for the middle-eight...

Wednesday 30 June 2010

Wow, it's been a looong time since I updated here.
I'm working on a music video for a very excellent song... I did a rough animatic for about the first minute, though I'm staying fairly flexible about the timing of sequences so I didn't go beyond that.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qDFt-9bUx-M


Here's two of the four characters I'm animating. They're based on the band members a little, but mostly on the puppet characters of Stravinsky's ballet Petrushka (after which the album is named).