Saying Chow for Now to O.U.A.I (Once Upon an Iceberg...)

WoWzer! How oh how is it already Friday!

That's a good thing the week has gone so fast isn't it?  And guess what our last and unfortunatly quick little post will be about? 

That's right I'm on track for my last week, being my last week for O.U.A.I! I have been in discussions about still attending for a little longer to  help out bit more, but we shall see how that go.

And what have I been doing? 

Well I'm glad you asked! So we have an iceberg but no ice caps! What do we think, Tatutuga's iceberg is the only one? No, so here I am creating the basic shapes to create some truly amaze background features. Its all in the little things. That's the key. (Take a look at the Witcher! -if thoust dost game, you get me)

I digress! 

I made my caps by getting what tibits of foam and poly the team could muster, and stuck and cut them into general shapes that kinda looked like what I wanted it to. And then I cut the foam with a hot wire, which can get very toxic in fumes BTW, so if you do ever melt foam or poly, make sure your not breathing in any nasty stuff with a mask and good ventilation. 

Here I am in a time laps so you can see a little bit of what I'm doing and get a better 

understanding of it.  

After this I simply cleaned up what I needed to and covered the pieces in plaster! Tada! Iceberg. 

And some more pictures of my work space and the process of making the ice just for you guys. 

And that's it.

Hope you liked my short but creative post. =P

Hit me with a comment and let me know if you like my time laps and if I should put more on here. Also if my step by step was interesting to you, or if you wished I would go into less; or perhaps more detail. 

Just hit that comment and let me know! 

Until Next time,

~Chow4noW~ 

Back to Once Upon and Iceburg.

Back to Once Upon an Iceberg

And I am in my final week (with potential for recall in EMERGENCY! =P)

For the last few weeks I've updated you on how I've been helping to create this wonderfully cute yet strange animation. And after this post there may only be one more on my 'icy' blog post! Yes that means I will no longer be able to keep you updated an right in on behind the scenes.  But I have seen a few clips and test shots and it is looking amazing and I cant wait until next years release! 

So What Have I been Up to...

...last week I was painting these little guys along with making a few props myself for a boat. If you follow me on Instagram you will already have seen a mock scene of the boat. Have a looky! here is a link  If you have the Instagram, why not follow to get more in depth updates on what I'm up to and where I'm at! 

My work space painting TINY lite props.

And bellow is what I painted! I had a lot of fun with these, especially the made up language. Luckily I had developed this writing from a young age...aka I used to use this type of writing in a lot of my drawings growing up. ✍(◔◡◔)

And here is a collage of pictures showing my making process of a bucket. Perfect for fish! Or so I'm told. And I think there going to be dead fish too.... oh look there they are below.

I also helped to paint these little guys... aint' they cute..  These were made by Becky, from wire, masking tape and sculpy. Arnt' they amaze! 

And last but not least, to get an idea of the final piece, some of the assortments mixed with the boat. The boat its self was made by the wonderful Becky. It's made of a body of foam, fashioned with planks bolsa wood around the edges, and a bolsa cabin. All etched with a wood grain and painted with rosco. I helped construct the roof of the hut and I finished the paint job on this puppy. 

I think it looks soo cute! the design was inspired by a mixture of Inuit and western fishing boats. 

I am going to add a few more shots of where we left one of the stages (for now) and some screen shots. Photographs are by myself and the crew who are all very talented. To see morw of the project and more amazing work! Why not check out the links below and have a look at all the skill. 

Enjoy! 

 Becky! 

Inside of Tuts' place. (unfurnished)

Screengrab of animation

OH TUTS! Why you so cute! You heartless little one you. 

Before I leave I am going to leave you with a few links to the producers and animators websites if you would like to follow this project more! I defiantly recommend it as they have more amazing information and pictures for your drooling chops. 

onceuponaniceberg.tumblr.com

facebook.com/onceuponaniceberg/timeline

lizzieosborne.com/animationshortonceuponaniceberg

How did you like the props I helped make? Think of any other cute tiny things I can make that could help. or have you ever made any tiny props? I'd love to hear from you and what you made your tiny props for.

Until next time,

~Chow4noW~

A closer look at those icebergs..

(So this was meant to go out last week! For some reason my phone didn't upload it, so thanks phone. 😭) so this week is a double posting week it seems! 

This week I'm still primarily working on the props for the animation 'once upon an iceberg' so I haven't had much time to invest in anything else incredibly creative. (That is until next week! See next weeks post to find out 😋)  

👾

So let's have a closer look at what I've been doing. 

We moved our studio first of all! Well, I say moved, more like removed to make way for another, lmuch larger production. 

And here's another Shot of me hard at work. Safety notice: always were protection gear when dealing with fibreglass, it's a prickly so n' so. Also it's dangerous so seriously guys... 😜 

 

So our final concept is to have these peices apear like there the underside of an iceberg and have a small cap with snow on top. We're still testing on the snow but the burgs will be made from resin. As you've seen. So what do the final ice burgs look like? 

Here we go! 

This peice is a moc up of one of our smaller burgs, once we zoom in from the whole smaller scale peice. 

Next, a closer look at one of our wonderful resin burgs. Here we have one before any of the paint has been applied. As you can see its got a blue tinge already, this is because of the slight pigment dropped in when the resin was in liquid form. 

These bergs have been quite hard; figuring out how to paint while still maintaining the translucency and  keeping the light traveling through the paint, while creating texture! It has been the trickyist little peice. 😖

Here a some more shots, each with a little bitore paint.

And just to finish off, a shot of us setting up for a proper moc up set up. 

What our test looked like with a backdrop and proper lighting. 

You can see more on my Instagram link past and future, here https://instagram.com/deni.santana/

Until next time! 

Chow4noW

Back on to Prop Making!

I forgot how much I love it! 

And I'm back at the NFTS! This May I've been traveling to Beaconsfeild to help out my oldest friend Liz with her film project, as I've said in my previous post.

        On my way to Bwacknsfeild 

Liz is the set designer and is designing for a stop motion animation 'Once Upon an Ice Burg'.  I'm very excited about this project and to help out any way I can, it's been a while since I have created; or assisted in this case, assets for a 2D feature. 

Right now I am concentrating on ice! Yup, you've got it, I'm helping to create the ice burg. I mentioned this a little bit before. 

We're using resin so that we can play with light, shade and texture to really help recreate the ice qualities. Also, shinny. 

 Here are some of the test peices that we have been producing. 

                   

And me hard at work hacking out polly so we can have a cast of the resin. 

Here is inside the burg...

And the outside so far...

To shade the peice I'm spray painting I top of white highlights, inside of the resin casting. This way we can retain the gloss on the outside. 

And let's not forget the studio! 

Chow for now

X

Last project of the year!

Working hard on finishing my transitions for the amazing Phatfyterz pilot.  Having lost of fun with this one, so far I think is by far my favorite scene. Hopefully the episode will have much success when it approaches the people  in top hats. =3

                                                                               x

OKIMDOINGITANDITSGOINGTOBE fine.....

Yaay video, I decided I wanted this video on my blog and after a we little bit of research thought, 'you know, it'll be ok, to upload that video..." so here we go. Enjoy.
 

I made a little somit fo' Dusk...

                                                                   Its birthday time!

So I made a little introductory video for my buddie ol' pal. Dusk. You can find her wonderful blog here. Its so pretty and I love to read and see what she writes about.

Dusk darling is also her title for her video blog, and a couple months ago, (when I was craving  such one  of these videos)  I thought wouldnt it be nice, for when she does her next video if she had a little animated title screen. SO! birthday time = gift.

So TAA!

Back so soon?

Naturally! Since I'm now approaching my compositing stage in my music production video. Its all happening now.

So what progress have I made? Well, today I am finishing off my cartoon characters. As I only had two months to create this project, I decided not to go full whack and instead animate with 2D multi layer characters and rig it all up in AE.

I like to sketch my drawings by hand in a sketchbook before I put them into Photoshop.  So I started there, scanned those puppies in, outlined them using the pen tool then I coloured my characters parts in.

You can see the side views parts here, hope it demonstrates clearly how it works.

I did this with ALL of the peacock pieces, long, but defiantly worth it. Have  look and let me know what you think. 

x

Next I will show you my other character Charjan, perhaps I'll have a movie of it instead....

More puppets!

LAAAA!!!!!

In addition to the prep piece I made below from water based clay, (this stuf cracks up by the by if you dont treat it or make your model secure, BEWARE! =3)

I also made my puppets from URO clay, which can be used to create cute things such as Dolls house appliances e.t.c, or like how I did, for puppets!




So where did I begin? Exactly where  I should, with the armature!
 I measured my wire against my planed drawing, spliced the wires and then added all of my nuts and bolts and such. I think if you consider yourself fairly adept, you should find your own way of doing your puppets. And learn from your successes and fails , its a large part of learning and improving your skills.

I found CESAR DACOL JR particularly useful when doing my research on armatures. 

After gluing, twisting, mulching and swearing,  I began to mix then model my clay beginning with the head and implanting the eyes.  

I continued to manipulate my clay to the way I wanted it for my characters.

Here are a couple of stages within my modelling so you can see my process, if it helps.

 And finally they were finished. They move and everything. Here they are ready for filming on my un-made set.

x

Puppet Time!

Here we go, some pictures of the puppets that I've been making and the preparation that I had to do for these amazing creations.

I started by getting used to the tools, I have modeld before, but just the basics like the head that you might have seen below.

So I started with what I know, head first. Exhibit A.




I then checked out some tutorials and such, then I made my wire frame, covered it with tin foil to fill it out, then i started to cover it with clay. As this was just a prep to go off of for when I did make my puppets.

       Tadaaa!

After much labour and love, this is the model that was produced!

Drawing my backgrounds...

Today I'm drawing my latest set of backgrounds for one of the animations I'm working on; I've mentioned it on here before, 'Serious News' for The Guestlist.  And this scene has been deleted so I thought I'd share it with the world! The frame work was drawn by the wonderful talented Duane Oba in flash, and the colours were done by yours truly.

In addition to this; its so cute I had to share it. By bird warming up his butt on my Mac. Its good to know they have a multi purpose function.

LookieohChewieshocute!

x

Screen Grab from current animation

Serious News. Episode 03. 

 

As the title says, this is a screen grab from the latest animation project I'm working on. Unfortunately this scene has been cut, but production will go on!

Until next time,                                           x

My Showreel!

Unfortunately blogger doesn't seem to like my video for uploading.  So here's a link instead! 
                                            www.vimeo.com

                               And a few screen grabs to wet your apatite. 
                                                                x