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Coming Later Today

We will be showing you something later today.... Mr Paul says don't get too excited.

Jobs

New 3Dstudio Max animator jobs opening up in Bristol. Click here for more info.

Coming Soon

A List

 Here is a list of all the things needing to be designed and built for one 11 min episode of Pedro and Frankensheep. The items marked in green are already done and in a prop library from the 5 min episodes that the Brothers McLeod had done previously.
Oh and we had to do this (build into flash, colour and sometimes have animation in it) in about 2 weeks between 2 and a half people. While this was being done the storyboard was being drawn. It was a tight schedule, but we always do it. Good teams are essential... and a lot of organizing.

New Website

Here is our new website. Ignore the post from a little while ago. It didn't happen, nothing to see here move along.

Skwigly Podcast

On Skwigly right now you can hear Mr Paul and Miss Jane talk about the encounters trailer we did this year.
Click here to listen.

Model Sheet

Here is a model sheet for Scratch to show the turn around and some facial expressions. This would be used as a quick guide to show the animators how the character looks. He looks a little different in Flash than his 2D version.

Crew

Here are some of the Driver Dan crew on the Animators last day. So we fed them healthy snacks.

A Poster

Here is the poster for A Liar's Autobiography. You can see little bits from all over the film on here. The phone box and the kick line over the word Auto are from the section A for Animation (which is us also) worked on.

A Liar's Autobiography Trailer

Here is the link to the official A Liars Autobiography trailer. The picture above shows A for Animations section style, so you can see bit's of it through the whole trailer.

Something New

Hello, have you seen our website? It's changed a bit. It's still been over hauled with more things added daily.
Mr Paul has been a busy bee.

The Book

You can follow us on Facebook now. Click here.

Franks Cat BG

Morning, here is a back ground from the series Frankenstein's Cat. All the BG's for this series were drawn on paper then coloured in Photoshop.

The foot prints were left by the Bigfoot Burglar! (Who stole all the hats).

Animation - It's what we do

Here is a picture of the frames of some animation put together on one page. This is the rough (before clean up) drawings of the gorilla from Amazing Animals jumping out of water and zipping onto the bank. It would have been on 2's and was drawn on paper. See how Mr Phil has drawn the water in red pencil and the whizz lines in blue. It's so things dont get confused and they would all be cleaned up on separate pieces of paper ready for scanning into computer and painting.

Encounters

Here is a link to see this years trailer for the Encounters Short Film Festival.
It's a new direction this year. Smith and Milton came up with an image for the look and feel for this years festival.
Faced with this new challenge Mr Paul and Miss Jane went out armed with her two 35mm film cameras and a whole load of film stock donated by the lovely people at Photographique. This was in May and June so the right lighting conditions moved all the time depending on location and position to the setting sun.
As a rough idea the ideal lighting times lasted for about 30 mins to an hour but changed from 9pm till 11pm. It was also necessary to have moving traffic in each shot, so you can imagine how long they had to wait for the right conditions. It was a little hit and miss, but the end results were great. Considering the time frame this had to be done in and the varying conditions it was a bit of a tight squeeze.
Mr Paul then took all the locations and figures shot by Miss Jane and pieced together the main body of the trailer. He also had to get all the clips in from last years winning films and tie everything together and make it all work. It was all composited in After Effects.
The figures were Mr Peter, Mr Paul, Miss Libby, Miss Katherine and Miss Maggie.

Victor

Here is a still from one of the shorts we did for Littlefox Communications and Victor. You can see one of them here.
We used Flash and After Effects.

Encounters Trailer

Hello, look what we picked up from Photographique to help us do the new Encounters Trailer. Hmm, what could we be doing?

Random

Here is a random picture that was never used for anything, we were trying to work out a style for something.

Story Train Cakes!

It was Mr Gareth's last day today and he brought these in which were made by his lovely wife. I enjoyed eating Mr Dan, he was yummy!

Old Header

Hello. Due to the new blog layout you wont see the header that was on here since the beginning of this blog. Well here it is. This is a back ground from Rubbish King of the Jumble.

Gary Spangle

Here is a board from Mr Warwick for the Gary Spangle shorts we did for the Chanel 4 Animation night. Gary Spangle was a slightly off kilter presenter.

Concept Art

Here is another concept picture for one of our projects by Miss Susanne.

All The Posts on this Blog

Since I have changed the layout of this blog it is easier to see all the posts that have been done on here. Here it is as one picture. Maybe take a little bit to have a look back at some old posts? Some lovely work by a lot of different people over the years.

Dance Cycle

Here is the last dance cycle for Fizz from the Tweenies. This was animated by Mr Phil.

Painting

Here is a painting of Lolly and Jeff by Mr Tom.

An Anthropomorphised Mouse Walk Cycle

An anthropomorphised mouse walk cycle. By Mr Phil. That is all.

2 Years Work

Here is the result of 2 years work. All fit onto 11 DVD's. This is just the animatics, audio and storyboard pannels for Driver Dans Story Train. The actual animation files or the green screen would be a totally different story.

The Final Final Cut

So we have finished the Animatics on Driver Dan's Story Train now. This is a view of the timeline of the last episode special. What you are looking at is 22 mins, blue blocks are storyboard panels (top 3 rows). Then in the audio tracks (all 24 of them) are the blip track (blip at the start of each new scene), Dan's line, 6 kids tracks, 12 character tracks, 2 sound effect tracks and the bottom two tracks are the dump tracks (unused lines). Fhew indeed I hear you say.
We use Final Cut Pro to do the animatics.

My Health Tips

Here are two visuals designed by Miss Leah for the shorts we did for MV Studios which was for the My Health Tips website. You may notice the original top picture showing the dead animals in spicy sauce, it was later changed to a burger. You can see the shorts on our site here!!

Franks Cat Do and Dont

Here are some examples of some do and don't sketches from Mr Jerome for drawing the characters on Frankenstein's Cat.

Frankenstein's Cat

Here is a group picture of all the recurring characters from the Franks Cat series we did for Mackinnon and Saunders and the BBC.

Scratch and Sniff

Here is a Scratch and Sniff sketch found on Mr Phil's desk.

Born to Learn

Here is a nice article on the Co.Design website about our Born to Learn shorts for the 21st Century Learning Initiative. You can see them all on vimeo here.
Fhew, I don't think I have managed to fit in 4 links in one post before.

Play Bus Again (but with added video)

Hello, I am reposting an old image but thought I would as Sis has posted a link to the video of the title sequence for Playbus. See it here. This was one of the original background paintings for it.

Happy New Year

Happy Christmas

Happy Christmas to you all. This was our card we sent out to people. The concept was by Mr Paul and was executed by Miss Leah. See you next year.

Group Shot

Good Morning. Here is a recent line up with just some characters we have worked with over the years. That was quite a hectic day in the office when they showed up let me tell you.

Story Board

Here is a page from one of the Storyboards from Driver Dan's Story Train. These are done by Mr Phil. Each episode has two weeks for storyboard, that's one week rough and one week clean up, typing out, corrections, making sure all the characters are the right hight to each other, adding a few extra panels for clarity of action etc. adding back ground detail, making sure the staging is right etc.

Concept Art

Here is just one of the many concept art pieces being done at the moment for a project of ours. Miss Susanne did this. We love it.

Robbie Viking

Here is one of the Vikings that were in the flash back bit in Robbie and the Vikings. Mr Paul did this section as cut out in after effects. The characters and BG's were designed by Mr Tim and drawn by Mr Gary . Click on the Robbie Tab to see the other pictures.

Simmo

Hi good afternoon. Here is a picture from a few years ago of a pilot we did about football. It was called Simmo. The kit looks a bit like Bristol City doesn't it? It was in no way intentional.

Flash Library

  "This morning I was doing something with Flash using an old library. This was the library for a series we did called Dusty and Musty. I decided to open this up and see how extensive it is. As you can see it's full. This is everything you need for the 6 main characters. Turnarounds, walk cycles (for every angle), run cycles (for every angle), lipsync (for every angle, happy AND sad) and everything is in twice as one has the shadow on and the other doesn't. This was library version 53 and was what was ready for the start of production. It was constantly updated with reusable animation in and more props etc.
So much work by so many people, there was a lot of heart put into this project. I discovered I was capable of 46hr shifts. We became a little family for those 18 months." *genuinely wiping away a little tear.
- Jane

The picture shows the library in sections and the long thin pic on the right is how it looks un-sectioned, quite long isn't it.

Ink Dot

It's a new Ink Dot exhibition next month and 2 of our Directors got in (Mr Paul and Miss Jane) as well as one of our freelancers Mr Mathew! Go see it if you have the chance. Buy some of em too. Especially Miss Jane's (she paid me to say that).

Encounters Trailer

Here it is then, the trailer for this years Encounters Festival in Bristol. Once again Directed by Mr Paul. Animation by Miss Jane, Miss Kirsten and Mr Chris.

Children In Need

Here is Driver Dan practicing the routine with Cerrie for the Children in Need dance. You can watch it here.
Mr Matt also helped Dan with his moves.

Team

Here are the team for Driver Dan's Story Train. Don't they look happy.

Encounters Trailers

Leading up to the point when we can show the new Encounters Film Festival trailer we have done this year, here is a place where you can see all the previous years trailers. All in one place. It's Mr Pauls website. He has made them all from the very beginning.