Technical difficulties

It's been some time since I last posted, but even longer since finishing Sundae Afternoon however, there's something I meant to get stuck in to which has been bugging me. I'm sure any animators can appreciate the madness of an After Effects or Premiere edit near a deadline. The necessity to finish a brief might take your eagle eye off a small technical hitch that will come back later and bite you on your arse.

Eagle-Eyed Viewer

Well, I found mine. Not to bore you all, but I exported my footage in separate layers, with an Alpha Channel as a PNG sequence. The point of this spiel is that one of my layers (the boy) was one frame out of sync, so he overlaps on every cut. Very noticeable on a projector, which is rather concerning so I've managed to source the rogue file and make a new edit which I should be able to export over the next few days. Hopefully the gaffe is only noticeable to me because I've seen the film so often, but who knows.

This and That

Hello all,
Just a brief update on the past few weeks. 

On September the 22nd, The National Gallery hosted private view for us students, from the CSM Character Animation course. It was to be the last time that the Gallery collaborated with Central Saint Martins in the particular way, so it was quite nice to be a part of it, and to see everyone's work up on a large screen, and to meet up again with people who've been a daily part of my life for 9 months, or so.

The films are due to be posted on the National Gallery website at some point in the near future, so watch this space.


In other news, I have just received an email this morning from Sparkle Animation, informing me that the work on The Tortoise is complete. I'm very excited to see the end results, but in the meantime, here's a trailer to whet the appetite.



Till next time :)

The opportune moment

It's fair to say it's been an odd week. I've been a bit under the weather and didn't leave the house much, to get over the cold.
Somehow, two opportunities came out of thin air. 1st was an internship at Not To Scale. I was recommended by a friend from CSM.
They're working on an After Effects/Photoshop based project... right up my street. I sent over my reel, got a call back. They liked my stuff. Pretty much all done, but they suddenly realised they had no work space, and my lack of a laptop scuppered the deal.
*desktop still FTW
Secondly, I asked Van Susans if I could use one if their tracks on my reel, to which they obliged and went on to suggest I consider doing some music videoy stuff for them too, possibly on one of my fave songs atm *check my last.fm account if you don't believe me* Hoping to meet up with them this week and discuss.

So laying in bed drinking honey and lemon and being financially wreckless on Football Manager, as Man Citeh, cos it's fun, had brought about relative rewards. Nothing decided yet but it's cool to know my work is seemingly worth looking at.

Watch out for when I'm back to normal! :P
Till next time, take care.

Oh, hi

"It's been a long time
I shouldn't have left you,
Without a dope beat to step to"
As the lyrics suggest, I've not been here in a while, but plan to put that right. My last post was about an 8 day internship at Sparkle. This turned into 5 weeks worth of experience.
'The Tortoise' (Ó Cagado) should be having the final touches added as we speak, but all the animation is all done. I hope you all get to see it at some point, as it was an enjoyable story to work on.
Which leads me to my second bit of news. I have updated my showreel with the footage from 'The Tortoise', and it's looking rather spiffy if I do say so myself, so check it out and/or hire me...


Errrm, Moving on, the plan from here is steady employment, so I'll see how that impacts my creative flow. Till next time, you lucky people.
:) Karl

Forgetful Intern

Time to update this thing, as promised. I've had 6 days of interning, so far, at Sparkle. I'm working on a 7-minute short film, called 'The Tortoise'. It's an adaptation of a well-known Portuguese story, about a man who finds a tortoise in the forest one day.

The character is fun to work with, which is important in my opinion, especially when inbetweening. We're working with Flash CS5, which hasn't been fiddly at all, for me.

Today has been my best day so far, I've been doing the character's shadow, having inbetweened the keys, and breakdowns.

The hardest thing for me was getting familiar with staring at a computer again. Sounds silly, but especially when its not your own work, you need the discipline to sit, stare and draw for long periods of time.

I'll write a concluding piece on Friday, on my train journey to Southampton. Til then, mi gaan.

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