Andy's Animation

Rolf Harris

noreply@blogger.com (Andy Latham) — Mon, 21 May 2012 21:06:00 +0000

If you're a twenty-to-thirty-odd year old animator in the UK, you probably owe your career in some part to the great Rolf Harris and his 'Rolf's Cartoon Club'. I and my girlfriend Sian had the great pleasure of meeting him on Saturday at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool where he currently has an exhibition of artwork called "Can You Tell What it is Yet?".

His work really is excellent, and he seems like a very nice man. I strongly urge anyone in the area to visit. The rest of the gallery is great too.

If you've never heard of Rolf's Cartoon Club, you missed a treat! It's a crime that it ever got cancelled.

Drawing Drawers

noreply@blogger.com (Andy Latham) — Mon, 07 May 2012 22:47:00 +0000

After the catastrophic accidental purging of the majority of my blog's contents, I need to get posting again! Unfortunately I'm hard at work on my mime short film and can't yet show anything of what I'm doing. So in the absence of anything work-wise to share, I thought I'd show the newest addition to my 2D animation setup.....a chest of drawers to keep paper in (the white ones on the left).

What? To me that's exciting!

If you want to see some mime pre-production work, click here.

What The Hell Happened?!

noreply@blogger.com (Andy Latham) — Wed, 02 May 2012 22:36:00 +0000

Well somehow I’ve managed to royally screw up all the images on my blog. I say “somehow”, but I know exactly how. If you use Blogger, don’t ever blanket-delete all the images in your Picasa account!

Soooooo……I’ve no idea what to do about all that. I managed to salvage my last couple of posts, but I can’t repair any others.

Blinkin’ Pixels

noreply@blogger.com (Andy Latham) — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 21:24:00 +0000

I’ve been inspired by Jay Tammemagi to try out working with pixels. Rather than follow him down the route of pixel paintings, I thought I’d experiment with pixel animation. You might have seen the little run cycle I made a few days ago. I’ve been trying to decide on a method to use for future animations and have given Photoshop a go as it’s good for doing pixel drawings and has built in animation features nowadays (although they leave quite a lot to be desired). Anyway this simple blink is just me figuring out how Photoshop’s animation features work:

PixelMan Run

noreply@blogger.com (Andy Latham) — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 22:05:00 +0000

Animated with Microsoft Paint of all things!

Daytime Doodle 3, Joanna Quinn and Bill Plympton

noreply@blogger.com (Andy Latham) — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 22:14:00 +0000

I would give anything to be able to produce something this good:

And to be able to be this weird!

Glen Keane

noreply@blogger.com (Andy Latham) — Sun, 25 Mar 2012 22:34:00 +0000

So Glen Keane has left Disney. I’m surprised at how much conflict this has caused between animators commenting on blogs around the internet. Some serious venom spitting!

It is of course a bittersweet thing, but I really hope he goes on to do great things. I heard him on a podcast once speaking about how there are so many ways to push animation in the future. I really hope we get to see what he meant.

For now, I thought I’d share one of my favourite drawings of his. Love it!

Daytime Doodle 2

noreply@blogger.com (Andy Latham) — Sun, 25 Mar 2012 00:22:00 +0000

Daytime Doodle

noreply@blogger.com (Andy Latham) — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 18:38:00 +0000

A Bouncing Ball ‘Game’

noreply@blogger.com (Andy Latham) — Sun, 26 Feb 2012 21:29:00 +0000

A little something I’ve been working on over the weekend……

Can’t Do It? Great!!

noreply@blogger.com (Andy Latham) — Sun, 19 Feb 2012 23:17:00 +0000

It is often spoken that when limited, we become truly creative. We think creatively to overcome the obstacles set before us. I got to thinking today about what this means for someone early-on in their learning of a subject. If we lack the skills necessary to complete a piece of work, can we see that as a good thing? Will our creativity help us work around our knowledge gap?

What, then, happens as we learn more? Let’s take it to the ultimate – when we master a subject (if that is possible). I wonder if we then cease to be creative. Perhaps the ability to do anything would actually prevent us creating anything particularly good……? I guess it would depend on our ability to impose other limitations upon ourselves.

I have seen lots of people avoid doing a project because they feel that it is beyond what they can achieve with their current level of skill. I have always tried to encourage them to try anyway because I believe that anything is possible if you put your mind to it. But thinking about things in terms of what I’m talking about in this post, I think it is actually important to embark only upon projects that are beyond our ability. In doing so we impose a massive limit on ourselves that we are then forced to negotiate with our creativity.

Hats On

noreply@blogger.com (Andy Latham) — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 16:03:00 +0000

Just a small mime update. Yesterday I modelled a clay head to aid me in drawing him from obscure angles. Today I gave it a hat.

Maybe That’s Enough

noreply@blogger.com (Andy Latham) — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 23:57:00 +0000

My friend Andy sent me this a couple of days ago and it really struck a chord with me. Not just because of the emotional subject matter, but because of the conversation about silly songs and whoopee cushions.

We all, I think, feel like we are ill-equipped for whatever task we are undertaking. But in reality I think each of us has everything we need.

“Take what you got and fly with it.” – Jim Henson

Tops and Bottoms

noreply@blogger.com (Andy Latham) — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 00:14:00 +0000

It’s been a while since I mentioned my mime film. In fact it’s been a while since I really did any work on it. I’m trying to get back up to speed on it now though and in particular have been trying to address a couple of problems that I have when animating him.

Firstly, I struggle a little with drapery. Specifically in this case, I struggle with trousers. So I spent a little time tonight concentrating on trousers.

I also struggle with drawing the mime’s head from awkward angles (is it a coincidence that “awkward” is a rather awkward word to spell?) and I have long desired a sculpture of his head to use as an aid. I’m not too good at the old modelling thing, but I thought I’d have a go. As you can see he looks a bit odd with simple balls for eyes and unfinished facial features etc, but his only purpose is to help me get things in the right places in my drawings, so he should be good enough for that.

A Random Doodle

noreply@blogger.com (Andy Latham) — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 18:25:00 +0000

Who knows why?

550th Post Reflection

noreply@blogger.com (Andy Latham) — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 23:32:00 +0000

Do you ever really look at things as they are? I’ve been thinking, as I often do, why I keep this blog. And it’s really not for all the great reasons that I like to think it is. Hence why there are so few posts devoted to anything useful.

I pretend that I keep it up to do the following:

Document my progress as an animator.
Keep a record of the things I learn to remind myself of them later.
Receive constructive feedback on my work from people.
Provide a useful resource for other animators in positions similar to mine or in positions that I have been in.

While I don’t consciously think about things like this, I really keep it for the following reasons:

To try to get praise on my work.
To spout my opinions on matters that I don’t have the experience to back up.

That’s pretty crappy really isn’t it?

So is there anything that’s truly positive to extract from this? Well I guess it must be helping to teach me some of my flaws. It makes me mindful of my dependence on the acceptance of other people, and it exposes my naivety. In short I think that it shows me that I’m just the same as most people.

Still Going…….

noreply@blogger.com (Andy Latham) — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 23:26:00 +0000

I need to give this blog a bit of attention. Why I started another one when I don’t find the time for this one I don’t know! Things have been tough lately. Lots of changes and potential changes leading to a feeling of limbo. And now a lovely painful tooth abscess to contend with! Anyway here are a few recent bits and bobs.

First some sketches.

Next some animation tests I did in about three days. A bit stiff, but time was tight.

And a really quick 2D walk, just for fun.

Finally, I put this on my other blog, but since I’m already considering deleting that one, I thought I’d stick it on here. I did it quite some time ago when I first started working on Lego Star Wars III. I figured it was an important moment in Star Wars history that has never really been tackled.

Yawn

noreply@blogger.com (Andy Latham) — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 21:22:00 +0000

As I haven’t posted anything in a while, here’s a random doodle to keep the old blog going!

Plot-Lines

noreply@blogger.com (Andy Latham) — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 22:46:00 +0000

Happy New Year! For anyone interested, I have started a new blog. I’m not going to say too much about it here.

plot-lines.tumblr.com

It’s not going to be a replacement for this blog of course, so please stick around!

I have also started to guest-post on OnAnimation.com, so why not stop by there?

Here’s to 2012!

Lessons from the Bathroom

noreply@blogger.com (Andy Latham) — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 23:24:00 +0000

You never know where your next lesson is going to come from. A recent one of mine came from a hand dryer.

At Traveller’s Tales last week we got some new dryers in the toilets. Besides being powerful enough to show more bone than an X-ray, they have the curious property of shining a bright blue shaft of light on your hands while you’re drying them.

After posing a query as to the purpose of this light to a colleague, he asked me, with wisdom perhaps beyond his years, “would you rather the light was not there?”

And the strange truth is that while I know the light does not impact on the function or performance of the machine, I really wouldn’t want it to not be there!

Sometimes things are just right or wrong, regardless of the presence or absence of logic. In writing my short film I have wrestled again and again with the inclusion of a particular secondary character. All I really needed to ask myself was, “would I rather the character was not there?” The answer, it turns out, is no.

Frame by Frame

noreply@blogger.com (Andy Latham) — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 19:29:00 +0000

I don’t know how many of you follow the ‘Frame by Frame’ blog, but it’s fantastic and today’s addition really stood out to me. It illustrates something that I find fascinating in animation – an invisible focus, for want of a better term. All the elements in the scene lead your eye in a lovely sweeping curve, first to the left, and then curling around back to the right, leaving you looking at the piece of cheese Remy is holding. It does this so well that it feels very much like you’re watching an invisible object traversing through the scene.

Brilliant!

Animation Showreel 2011

noreply@blogger.com (Andy Latham) — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 18:45:00 +0000

With the release of Lego Harry Potter: Years 5-7 in the shops, I can finally unlock my 2011 showreel that I put together a couple of months ago. So if you’re interested, please have a look :)

Pencil Full of Lead? Paulo Nutini, I Am Not!

noreply@blogger.com (Andy Latham) — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 23:57:00 +0000

I thought I’d just mark the fact that I have drawn the first pass of all the extreme drawings in the first scene of my mime film……and this is how much of my pencil is left after all the furious scribbling!

Film Study 1: Guns at Batasi

noreply@blogger.com (Andy Latham) — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 21:26:00 +0000

Last week I happened to catch a few minutes of a film on TV that I had never heard of, Guns at Batasi, starring Richard Attenborough. I didn’t see enough to be able to judge the story, but I thought the compositions in the scene I saw were really quite striking, in part owed to the dance-like choreography of the actors. Have a look at this scene from the film:

I’m going to concentrate on the first two shots.

Look at how in the first shot the men are arranged in a sweep that ends on the bug on the bar. That bug is really quite small on-screen and not particularly high in contrast, and yet it’s unmistakable what the focus of the scene is at this point.

In the second shot where the men turn around to see Attenborough’s character enter, they arrange themselves to frame him and direct our attention to nowhere other than him.

Then as he walks over, the camera moves in and the officers subtly arrange themselves again to not only direct attention to Attenborough, but to also create a pleasing diagonal sweep across the screen.

The next bit is particularly interesting as the man second from screen-right moves around the group, and the others all rearrange themselves accordingly to never allow an unpleasant composition to be seen.

Then notice the man on the far left:

As the camera pulls right to reveal Attenborough, the man on the left moves himself over to add to the oppressive feel of the composition.

Study the rest of the clip, there’s load more lovely choreography like this. I really need to watch the rest of the film!

The Man Who Planted Trees

noreply@blogger.com (Andy Latham) — Sun, 13 Nov 2011 12:00:00 +0000

On Friday I saw an animated film that came recommended in Hayao Miyazaki’s book Starting Point, that is probably the best piece of animated film-making I have seen in a long time. So good in fact that I thought I’d share it here. It’s on YouTube in two parts, so here they are!

By the way, the book is really quite excellent too, I recommend it highly!