Ident part three

Made some titles for the Christmas show reel at college, here is a medium res version of a few examples. Ive color coded the circles for different categories.

Elijah B torn also did a spot on job with the sound


Titles for show reel from Matt Saunders on Vimeo.

Ident Part two

I finished of the first ident today, me and cat changed the logo and she did a really nice job! Thanks Cat.


Once the logo was done I went back to the craft mat


three hours latter..

We have the new ident



Next step is the sound.

Christmas Show Reel part one

I have been left with the responsibility to design the show reel for my courses Christmas exhibition, so ive been having a play with some ideas.










I put together a little animatic but im doing the process by hand. same for the interface sequence.



I want to keep the logo really clean and simple, as im printing it out and animating it. It also needs to be universal as their is a mixture of work on show (its not just the matt show reel, otherwise id have my little doodles all over the design)

feed back and overview.

ive been updating my website mostly about the events now. The animation screened at BAF which Andy and co documented

AYUP Anim Lab @ BAF!08


i also posted it to vimeo, where over 25,000 people have viewed it.


A conversation from Matt Saunders on Vimeo.


It feaatured on cartoon brew who said "A Conversation is a piece combining stop-motion and digital compositing that was created by student Matt Saunders. It shows lots of creativity and promise" which means so much to me they are a great industry blog.


Psst! pass it on also blogged about my video, they were one of the major influnces for the creation, so thanks to those guys. They had this to say..."Matt sent this in to PSST! to say thank you for the inspiration and that this was “heavily inspired by the narrative of psstpassiton.” Cool! It’s really nice to hear stuff like that. And it’s a very cool short film. Nice work, Matt."



Another blog 'no fat clips' has also asked to put my work up , he did a really nice break down of my work..


A festival In LA have also asked me to send some work in so touch wood with at.


David Mack an another major influence on the pice ( see back up work) said "It looks beautiful!"

Wyldstallyons also commented on my animation giving me some helpfull feed back "I like it! The only nit-pick I can think of is that the pink circles around the 15 sec mark have no motion blur. Nice one."


I think thats all the feed back I can fit in for now.

The whale

Sorry to the little pixies that come to my site, I feel ive neglected you. The animation is full pelt at the moment deadline in two weeks :S. To tide you over here is a whale from the animation. (That wasn't meant to be a terrible pun)



Their also will be some photos of me doodling away at Best Joined up.

boat sequence

Sorry this is going to be a half blogg, its 2.30 and im sleepy. But basically ive started composing the boat sequence in my animation. Full steam ahead at the moment. This animation should wrap up next week then its off to render. then to Bradford Animation festival :)

Lesley Barnes feed back

I was working back at the part time job today , sob :< href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/rabbitportal/2959099497/" title="Matt is making the moon by rabbit_portal, on Flickr">



Also I did a very quick test of the waves with the string and it works dandy. for real tomorrow :)yes it looks like a ball of string at the moment, trust me it will be magical. :)






the string was based on a piece by the talented magdalena bors

Navigation system

I completed the navigation system.. Im dreading how long this is going to take too render. :S

composited trees and concept drawings.

colorful trees and whale.




I bought the string today to make the ocean I hope this works :)

concept art.

Ive mostly been behind a giant pile of books today doing some more reading for my dissertation

I did manage to board the next scene for the animation :)








p.s my work is finally on the noise website

x

colour pallet

Hello! today has been all about colour I have create a pallet that is based upon scrap books.






































Ive also decided to integrate a navigation system into the animation in order to add some continuity. The circles expand when the transportation hits them.














Ive also doodles up concepts for the next scene as basically they were really scrappy and I dont think anyone would understand what the hell I was trying to do.

(the blue and white ocean is going to be made from blue and white wool string.)

Ticking along...

Ive set up camp at the parents as i have too look after my little pooch for a bit (i didn't want her to go to the kennels). I have changed some aspects of the animation to fit in with the overall tones of it. The trees aren't all going to be the same color and will tie more to the scrap book feel I want it too have. Ive also made the lighting better :)

Quarter story board

Another little tease of the animation. I did a quarter render of the first part, their a few tweaks I need to do with the camera, add some more trees and push the clouds back from the lights. All in all the first part is almost done so I promise you their will be footage soon but I don't want to spoil it for you :P

on the move

Today I got the wheels moving on the building front and doing the real composite work for the animation. Below is another little tease.

composting

Today I didn't even get to leave the house Im guessing their are going to be quite a few days like this to come. Ive basically been photoshopping the buildings down and doing test composites of all the footage. At the moment Im rendering some footage. So soon their shall be a taster of all the stuff ive been working on all rolled together.

Below is a flat example of how the hills will work, except their done with real paper that will strip away.

So far so good

Bed time.

x

Paper Plane story board

Today I did all the green screen shooting for the paper plane sequences I also did a test composite with the same plane, I have done five others but this one will do for now. Tomorrow is hill building time then Im going to put all the bits together for a draft which I can show at the Ayup meeting.

Sleep time..

p.s My website has got stuck down the bottom, it will be fixed by tomorrow :)

Paper Plane tests

Today was mostly about figuring things out. Mostly what kind of paper plane I want and whether I can jump from the train evaporation (see previous blog) to the plane.























































































Here is a rough composite of how it will work.

1. The end of the previous blog post

2. Several bits of paper spin off from the others

3. Folding into paper planes

4. They float through the air and start to dip as they are crumpled from the right side to the left.

5. They all form into paper balls that fall down, and because their are so many of them they will look like snow, (which goes into the next scene, which is... yes you guessed it a snowy scene :)

All in all its going to work, its just going to take a day or two to make all the different planes.

Animation booth interviews/computer tests

Ive just started the third year of my degree, so I had to stop animating for a little bit. Yesterday I managed to do another test composite of the trees and the trains, which I can safely say looks pretty sweet.

These screen shots below give you an idea of the movement that will occur, I cut the train bit by bit and stop-motioned the movement into a circle in total the process took about 4 hours or more. next its paper plane time.





oh, also their is a little video interview of me for ayup. I didnt sound as daft as I thought I would.

Matt Saunders and Eleanor Woodburn Interview


Sadly my time in the booth is over, but their is a great deal of work to be done. The animation premier will be At BAF Where you will also get to see the Mighty Studio AKA's Varmints which I am really excited about seeing :)

Animation booth part four

olla their is a video before this one, but ill put that up soon :)


Building trees: This video doesnt really translate how long it takes to do each tree. In the video you can see the trees we created early (See previous video) are being cut bit by bit and stop motioned with a green screen behind, each tree took over an hour to do. Their is also a test composite at the end.


Animation booth: part 4 from Matt Saunders on Vimeo.

computer tests.

But I haven't had time, patience people. their is videos photographs test animations lots.

this will little tease will have to tide you over for now..

animation booth part three

Today wasn't really worth making a video about, the infinite wall (the big green wall) was a little tatty and needed a good paint in order to make it work

.

Basically it got very dull and smelly waiting for the paint to dry, 

We did make some use of the time inbetween drying by putting the gels onto the backs off the buildings we cut out earlier. 

animation booth part two

El wasnt feeling to good, So I had to go it alone, I decided to set up camp at home. Basically what I am doing in this video is making candy floss into clouds, their is a very rough composite at the end just to get an idea of how it will look. All in all I think candy floss make quite good clouds!


Animation booth Part 3:going solo from Matt Saunders on Vimeo.

Next up...green screen.

Animation booth

Sorry for the delay in blogg action, but here is lots of stuff to feast your peepers on.

Our first day in the booth was mostly just cementing the idea down and adding some more elements to the story board (so if you went about you didn't miss very much.




here is an early sketch of the storyboard.






So I went to york to find blueprints of as part of the animation, the national rail museum were more than happy to help me (I would say a little to happy as the lovely bloke talked me through what felt like the whole history of trains I had to stop him when he was about to launch into model trains.) I found what I was looking for and had a little test at home.










I then did a very rough animatic (Im not having a red background) with some scrap paper trees I had. Doing this gave me a good idea of whether what Im trying to do will work.


















Mine and el's first real day in the animation booth. We only had one cutting matt so we had too share. basically what we are doing is cutting out buildings from photographs we took, then we decided to add more work for ourselves by cutting all the windows out, we are then going to put them in front of a green screen so I can key out the background, and I can also back light them with some gels to give some nice lights for the windows.



Animation booth part 1 from Matt Saunders on Vimeo.

(more photos of bleeding fingers and hard work on their way)


Today's work in the booth, was similar to the day before except I think I had the better deal I was mostly drawing the trees while El had to endure the hand cramp of cutting them out.



Animation booth day 2 from Matt Saunders on Vimeo..


Also I cant believe don fontaine died!

research part three

Their is a scene in the orphanage where the boy goes on a treasure trail to find different items, I feel this is kind of like the structure of the animation.

Also in the devils backbone their is a boy who collects bugs and comics and scraps of intrigue and puts them in a box. This also will translate well with the scrap book scene.



This company that makes animations for poems by billy collins have also been a massive inspiration upon me. This also a great inspiration for the animation.



The thing I love about them is the way in which they mix traditional animation with compositing software, this is something that I do my self.

research part two

Ive long been a fan of David Macks work, I feel his work can perfectly translate into the animation Im planning.