Leeds City Council Animation task.

LCC has asked us (Me and Betty) to come up with an animation that advertises the activities that they have for elderly people. The idea is that we are to integrate animation with live action. we are to tell the story of one of the elderly people that was helped though these activities in animation and then it end with live action of the person telling the story in his/hers environment. So far we have a volunteer to tell there story, I have come up with a few pieces of concept art of the characters.

The next step is to do more drawings and have a finished storyboard and then start animating. The style of animation we are doing is hand drawn.

Henry Selick

Henry Selick is another animation artist and director. He is mainly known for A Nightmare Before Christmas, Jame and the Giant Peach and Coraline. He previously went to work for Disney as an animator trainee on Pete's Dragon and the Small One. He became a full animator under Glen Keane on the Fox and The hound. Selick did various freelance work in his spare time, working on advertisements and story writing. selick has currently joined with Pixar to create stop motion films. It is a long term contract that was signed in 2010. his new studio is now called Cinderbiter productions.

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Tim Burton

Tim Burton is a director, animator, writer and producer. He is the brains behind Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands, Sweeney Todd, Sleepy Hollow, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Corpse Bride, Dark Shadows and Frankenweenie. He didn't jump straight into making his own films he started off as an animator on the Fox and The Hound, The black Cauldron and Tron.  He became and animator on these films as Disney was interested in him after he created Stalk The Celery Monster at CalArts. Whilst working for Disney Burton started to create his own films with the help from Rick Heinrichs. He then went onto create Beetlejuice and Batman. Burton started to work with Henry Selick on The nightmare before Christmas they was then reunited for Jame and the Giant Peach. Burton like to reuse his actors such as Johnny Depp who is in numbers of Burtons films as well as Helena Bonheim Carter, Michael Keaton and Winona Ryder. Burton now has exhibitions showing his films and artwork all over the world. He has won many awards ranging from Emmys to BAFAs.

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Aardman Studios

Aardman studios is a well known animation company, mainly known for there stop motion feature lengths and advertisements. One of the films they made was the very successful Wallace and Gromit and Chicken Run. They have also made Pirates! The Band of Misfits. Some advertisements they have created include Cadbury Creme eggs, Lurpak, Kellogg's Rice Krispies, Quavers and many more.  Aardman was founded in 1972 by Peter Lord and David Proxton. Aardman have gone onto creating music videos, shorts and TV series. Some of their successful TV series include Shaun The Sheep, Creature Comforts, Planet Sketch, Angry Kid, Timmy Time and more.  They are incredibly successful and have films in the making for the future. I am a big fan of Aarmans animations, they are very colourful and childlike. They are full of excitement and have received great reviews.

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Business card ideas.

I have been designing some logo ideas for a business card, I want to be able to include the idea that what I will be doing will be stop motion so the first idea that I got was to include a armature. I have come up with a name which is SaraLara Animations so I instantly thought that the armature can represent the L. Another idea that I had was to maybe include a worm which them represents the first stop motion I ever created. I also have a few ideas that represents my artistic side like a paint brush writing the name, or the logo being written out of spilled paint. Here are a few ideas that I have drawn up.

The first one is like it has been squirted out of a paint tube, I like the idea of the writing being red as it stands out a lot. The yellow and red one is meant to represent it being made out of plasticine. My favourite one on this page is the one with the paint brush.

These are a few more designs. My most favourite one is the second one on this page as it is simple but playful.

Here are a few that I created using photoshop with original fonts, I believe that the one that I like the most is on the second page and that will be the one I use.

Nick Park

Nick Park is a well known animation artist.  He is the creator of Wallace and Gromit in which he created at college. Aardman noticed his talents and took him on board. Wallace and Gromit is a stop motion animation created using plasticine, the film has won many awards including Academy awards, BAFTA awards and Broadcast awards. Wallace and Gromit was so successful that many films came from it, there has also been TV spin offs and video games. Nick Park also created the successful tv series Shaun the Sheep which is also a stop motion piece. He has also helped to create Creature Comforts which was so successful that an American version was created. I especially like his work as that is what I have grown up watching, the characters are extremely thought out and interesting. I also love the colours that are used as they aren't massively bright they are simple and classical.

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Willis Obrien

Willis O'Brien is a special effects and stop motion artist. He has worked on films like The Lost World, King Kong 1933, Dancing Pirate, Mighty Joe Young, The Lost World 1960 and more. He was a former newspaper cartoonist before he started with special effects and animations. His work from King Kong and The Lost World are considered classic pieces of stop motions. These films were considered amazing for it's time.

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Suzie Templeton

Suzie Templeton is a writer, director and animator. She is well known for her short film Peter and the Wolf. This short has won many awards like an academy award for the Best Animation short, the Golden Rose for Performing arts, British Animation Awards and more. She has made other shorts ones called Dog and the other is Stanley. Again these have also won awards. Templeton has had many good reviews ranging from Design Week Magazine to the Animation Magazine. Her work is very different to the average animation it is quite dark and sad. She is very skilled in making the puppets for her animations, they are very detailed and interesting.

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Phil Tippett

Phil Tippett is a director and visual effects supervisor that specialises in character animation. He has worked on many different animations ranging from stop motion to computer generated animation. He has created visual effects for many titles such as Piranha, Dragonslayer, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Robocop, Jurassic Park, Dragon Heart and many more. Tippett is now working on the new Jurassic World that is set to release in 2015, he is also working on Gods of Egypt, The Crossing, The Pyramid and Mad God. He started off by getting his inspiration from Harryhausen's work, as a youngster he watch his films and then went onto studying stop motion animation, and became very successful in the special effects department. He has won many awards such as BAFTA, EMMYs and Academy awards. 

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Pop Up exhibition - Game Art and Machinima module

I believe the Pop Up exhibition was a success, as a group we chose to present the two character turn tables and the environment. We decided to go with these as they are better quality than the finished footage. As we had more time to improve on things before the exhibition, I improved on the turn tables to make the tables they are on better quality and they matched the theme of our video more. I also changed the atmosphere of the characters to represent them more for instance the Grim Reaper has more of a dark sky rather than a bright blue sky which really doesn't suit the character.

These are the characters that was on show.
We also showed the storyboards and concept art.

Instead of showing the actual video we decided on showing screen shots from the footage.

Cuppa Coffee studios

Cuppa Coffee studios is a Canadian based animation studio. It was founded by Adam Shaheen and Bruce Acock. They have produced films for companies such as Disney, they have received over 200 international awards in animation. Some of the films and shows they have produced are ugly Americans, Life's a zoo, Little People and many more. They have also done commercial work for companies such as Cartoon Network etc.

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