Like a Blue Bird

Playing Ghost Review

2012-02-11T18:59:00.000Z

I would like to point you in the direction of this review written by Bethany Burns, after Playing Ghost screened at the Santa Barbara Film Festival last week:

http://sbccfilmreviews.org/?p=17840

"It is a simple film , with a simple message: Never forget your lost loved ones, but in your grief make sure not to neglect those who may need you in life. It was beautifully shot, and choreographed. You can see the distinct detail in everything from the bags under the mothers eyes to Amy’s hair blowing in the wind outside. The emptiness in her mothers dark black eyes pierces you to your core. Anyone who has experienced the loss of someone close to them might find themselves welling up by the end of this 10 minute film."

I'm also personally very honoured by the comment left under the review. It is amazing to read such kind words about the film!

Playing Ghost WINS Best Animation at SFF London!

2012-02-11T18:51:00.001Z

Me picking up the award for Best Animation at the Student Film Festival London.

The past few weeks have been amazing. I've been incredibly busy during January, as I finished off three jobs all with a similar deadline.
First of all, I finished my time with NFTS' upcoming graduate Alastair Mccoll on his 2D flash animation film Birdworld. It was a lovely time I had and I look forward to showing you some of it when the trailer comes out.

Secondly, I did a concept poster for a feature film to be pitched at the Berlinale. And thirdly, I finished illustrations for Peter Howell's ebook "Your Music on Film". Please click the title or the image below if you'd like to have a peak and/or purchase a copy.

After this I have been travelling. One of the places I went to is Angers in France for the amazing Premiers Plans festival. Premiers Plans is a bit overshadowed by Clermont Ferrand which happens a week after, but completely undeserved. It is a fantastic, personal and professional festival that I would urge anyone to go to. The feedback from the audience to Playing Ghost was amazing, and I thoroughly enjoyed being there. Please find more info here: http://www.premiersplans.org/

Q&A after the screening with me second on the right.

Another festival I attended was the Student Film Festival in London. Despite being only in their first year, the festival was well organised and much fun. The screening, though in a tiny theatre, was one of the best I've ever attended. Another graduate director from my year, Sean Branigan, also screened in our screening. This meant that with our films came a whole NFTS family along to the screening, so it was almost like a wonderful reunion.

However not just that made this screening one of a kind, also the response of the audience was something I hadn't experienced before. I'll not go into details, but it truely was unique! The Q&A after this screening was also much fun, and I really enjoyed it.

But the cherry on the cake came of course, when the next day at the closing ceremony, Playing Ghost won the award for Best Animation! And it got also nominated for Best Cinematography, as the only animation!!

We are very proud, and would like to thank everybody of and at the SFF London for their wonderful support to our little film!

30 days?

2012-01-14T14:00:00.002Z

Been so busy the past few weeks. Have several jobs I'm doing (animation, illustration and design!), and have moved yet again. Yet even tho I've been working mental hours, I couldn't resist doing a tiny drawing for myself. Ben Whitehouse started this 30day drawing challenge thing, where no.1 is yourself. I dunno if I can make it to do drawings for the next 30 days, but maybe if I limit my time I will..

Anyways.. If you meet me in the streets now, this is most likely what I'll be wearing...

My ETSY shop!

2011-12-19T11:07:00.001Z

it took me long enough, but after many requests for prints, I have finally decided to open an Etsy shop!
I'm currently only selling a few prints in the shop, but feel free to contact me here or via info@biancaansems.com to request another print you'd like to have.

FOLLOW THE BREADCRUMBS

http://www.etsy.com/shop/Avalantis

Animator at work!

2011-12-16T16:48:00.003Z

I LOVE being an animator. I love love love it. It's tedious work, it rips you apart and drags you into the deep black pits of ~~hell~~ despair, but when you're finished, and you crawl back out of the mental institute and look back at your work - you think: "Hey.... that's actually pretty cool."

Yes it is!!

Because you created something, that could not be alive without you and your magic animation abilities.

You are the Frankensteins of this world!

So high five yourself because you deserve it!

A lot of people don't understand why you would want to be an animator, when making something takes so much effort and BST (blood sweat tears), but remember:

DON'T WAIT FOR THE STORM TO PASS
LEARN HOW TO DANCE IN THE RAIN

Which I guess fits for more life lessons than this....
I REALLY enjoy the process of animating. I enjoy the pace, the concentration, the atmosphere.
I enjoy that animation is this perfect marriage between science, art and psychology (calculating the frames needed to make a certain movement that will express a specific emotion of both the character as well as trigger an emotion from the audience).

Anyways, all I really wanted to show you was two little timelapses of me at work that I recently dug up from the crap that clogs my computers.

The first one is me at work at Trickstudio Lutterbeck in the summer of 2007, during my internship. I should have really thought of not chewing on liquorice during the timelapse, as I seem to be doing some high speed gum chewing.

The second one is me, Maja (cinematographer) and Sam Turner (animator) at work on Playing Ghost. First we are setting up an underwater & bedroom shot. Then me animating, and then Sam animating much more efficiently... and awesome. Recorded by Jack Tilley, an upcoming NFTS graduate.

I hope you enjoyed them :]

Classic composer

2011-12-13T14:01:00.006Z

Since a few weeks I'm working on an illustration job for composer and NFTS tutor Peter Howell (best known for his work on Doctor Who). He has written a great ebook for composers who are interested in composing for film & tv. Watch this space for news when it comes out!

He asked me to draw the character of a classic composer in several situations to support the relevant text.
We worked through a few designs for the character, and this is the design he chose in the end:

Doesn't he look like a nice chap?

Fiets

2011-12-10T23:27:00.000Z

When I came to England, I couldn't bring much, but we did bring my bike! It's not the best bike out there, but it has character.. It has been in a film, and has fans in the (high) schools here (literally, people take pictures of it, and I had fan girls shouting from across the road "We love your bike!! We love YOU!!").

So this is an ode to my bike.
(Fiets = bicycle in Dutch.)

Two Awards for Playing Ghost!

2011-12-09T23:15:00.007Z

God, I've been absent! I'm coming back soon, with more news and pictures, but for now I wanted to tell you all, that 'Playing Ghost' has won two awards!

- BEST GRADUATION FILM at Cinanima
- GRAND JURY AWARD at Hollywood International Student Film Festival

**Trophees may not represent actual awards.

Mellisea's birthday!

2011-11-02T10:00:00.003Z

Today it's my sisters birthday!

I made her a little celebration webpage that you can view/listen to HERE.

It should be on her own website soon, as that is my birthday gift. But for now it's on here :]

As for the picture; there is a photo of my sis when she was young, very defiantly holding up a goat. But basically she is too small to hold the whole goat up, so half out of the picture is my mum holding up the other part of it. Poor goat!

What I Wore Today

2011-10-18T17:23:00.006+01:00

Zero points for doing the most unrealistic self-portrait ever but I wanted to try the minimalist style. Or something.. Ye.. there really isn't an excuse. It's not a self-portrait really. It's clothes that matters....

LOOK AT THE CLOTHES!

So yes, most of my outfit is charity shop, because the clothes are nice, cheap and the money goes to a good cause. It's a win-win-win!

Also 'The 13 1/2 lives of Captain Bluebear' is so awesome! Possibly the best book I've read all year. It's on of those books you will always be remembering how you felt when you read it for the first time, unfolding the story as you read. READ IT! I would read it again now - in an eye-blink. (Thought I wouldn't take it with me like here 'cause the book is too huge.)

Anyways, I probably won't be making any of these again soon, because I'm wearing too many patterns these days. This nearly killed me :[

Montreal Stopmotion Film Festival

2011-10-18T12:13:00.000+01:00

We are selected for the Montreal Stopmotion Film Festival!
Check it out here -> http://www.stopmotionmontreal.com/

Animate Clay Article

2011-10-15T18:23:00.000+01:00

Marc Spess wrote a lovely little feature about Playing Ghost over at his website animateclay.com - check it out!

Eduardo Serrano at Animage Festival

2011-10-08T13:26:00.002+01:00

A few days ago Eduardo Serrano, our lovely amazing editor, held a seminar about 'editing in animation' at the Animage Festival in Brazil. Using Playing Ghost as sample, he went through the stages of the animation, explaining issues that occurred and how we solved these kind of problems.

Eduardo was very important to the development of Playing Ghost. He understood the characters very well, and was very calm and supportive throughout. In fact, by the end of the shoot, I was so drained, I couldn't animate anymore. I walked around like a zombie, and was extremely reluctant when he said we needed to redo this one shot. He had to take me to the room, bring a coke and keep talking with me while I animated the last scene. He recorded the conversation which started with something like this:

"Bianca, how does it feel to be animating the last shot!"

By this point the last shot had in theory been animated many times already and everytime I had to get back to correct this or another shot. So mulling this fact over in my mind, while animating like a robot, I was not overenthusiastic. My answer after half a minute:

"I'll tell you when the last frame is shot.."

Eventually the coke and his excitement did affect me and I was able to communicate like a relatively normal person. Luckily it was the actual final shot in the end, and a few hours later the film was locked in edit.

Thank you, Edu!

Istanbul International Animation Festival

2011-10-08T12:59:00.000+01:00

This november Playing Ghost will play in competition at the Istanbul International Animation Festival!

Follow the link to see more info: http://www.iafistanbul.com/film_en.php

Encounters International Film Festival

2011-10-04T15:33:00.000+01:00

'Playing Ghost' is screening at Bristol's renowned Encounters International Film Festival, which runs 16-20 November!

http://bristolencounters.festivalgenius.com/2011/films/playingghost_riff2011_bristolencounters2011

All about bears.

2011-10-04T15:19:00.002+01:00

Bears and sheep, actually. I'm switching inbetween two project that should each produce a short animation by the end of this year. Here are some first sketches of bear designs. Like first first first. I doubt the end result will look anything like this (aside from that it will be made from fabric).

Maybe more to come soon!

Playing Ghost in Mexico City

2011-10-03T20:24:00.001+01:00

'Playing Ghost' is part of the exhibition 'Distrustful Space' in the National Art Centre in Mexico City from 19-21 october.

Follow this link or click the image to see more.

Puppets & Clay article

2011-10-03T13:07:00.001+01:00

For our Spanish speaking friends out there, there is an article on the renowned 'Puppets & Clay' about Playing Ghost :]

Click this link or the above image to read it~

Feature on Dragon Stopmotion | Blog

2011-09-30T11:19:00.005+01:00

http://www.dragonstopmotion.com/blog/2011/09/bianca-ansems-animates-london-for-liaf/

A little while ago someone from Dragon Stopmotion contacted me via vimeo. He inquired whether my stopmotion work had been shot using their amazing software, and if so they would like to write about it on their blog. And it happened I have been using Dragon and so yesterday a little feature with the LIAF trailer went online!

Dragon Stopmotion is a wonderful software, which really makes the life of any stopmotion artist so much easier. Where a lot of stopmotion software excells in one point or another, Dragon just excells in everything. I'm not hired by them to talk sweetly about their product, and so please take my word when I say it's just a genius piece of software. It is clearly made by and for the animator and the cinematographer - and it is so versatile. It is constantly being improved with the latest technical advances out there. And best of all, it's value for your money. So check it out if you're thinking about buying a stopmotion software that just works smoothly.

Aside from that wonderful news, I also discovered the person contacting me was Jamie Caliri who apparently had created some of my main animation influences. Be sure to check out his work for some inspiration!

Animage Festival

2011-09-29T09:20:00.002+01:00

Animage is a lovely animation film festival in Pernambuco, Brazil, and has selected us for the main competition. Check them out here: http://www.animagefestival.com/ :]

Homesickness

2011-09-28T17:10:00.004+01:00

It's been nearly 3 years now that I live in the UK, and though it's overall great and fun to be in most of the most beautiful countries on earth (I mean, I seriously want to grow old in the Lake District), I sometimes get homesick. I never thought I would, because as much as I love the Netherlands, I never thought it was that special it was worth being homesick for. But I was wrong. I don't miss the flatness, but I do miss the endless relaxed cycling. I don't miss the rude people on some streets, but I do miss the amazing art projects and festivals everywhere. I don't miss the scale of the country, but I do miss how easy it is to go everywhere.

And I miss the food. Oh, the food. I thought it was so similar in England but I was wrong! And then this time I went back to Germany too, and all my childhood food came back to me (mostly KINDER chocolates).

By the end of my visit to Holland last week, I had to be rolled back onto the plane. Luckily they don't charge extra for body-weight gained between arrival and departure.

So really. The point of this post is nothing but to show off the food package I send myself while I was back in the Netherlands and has just arrived in the UK. Last time it was 20kg worth of food, but this time I kept it to a nice 10kg. I'm sure many of you people out there are from different countries too, and trust me, the pleasure of enjoying something from your home country, is sometimes one of the best things in the world. If only I could send frikandellen..

ps: the package is obviously much deeper than the above picture shows.

Austin Film Festival

2011-09-28T11:22:00.000+01:00

Playing Ghost is still touring USA, this time it's stopping in Austin, Texas, at the wonderful Austin Film Festival!

For more info and the program list go to: http://www.austinfilmfestival.com/new/shorts_2011

LIAF shrimp

2011-09-16T11:54:00.001+01:00

I don't think I've introduced you to this little fella....

He's the size of my thumb, and so cute and shiny. He's probably my fav even above the angler fish.

Underneath the lace and fabric is a black card base. The black is significant to not have any reflections in the bottom glass plates.

He is made of lace, thin fabric, some cut sequins for eyes and thread for the antennas and the joints.

Maybe I'll upload some more pictures of the LIAF models soon.

Hollywood!

2011-09-13T10:09:00.000+01:00

Playing Ghost is back in the USA, this time in Hollywood!
It seems we are the only UK participants, so spot us on the list: http://www.isffhollywood.org/accepted2011.php

Anima Mundi kindness

2011-09-09T22:45:00.000+01:00

Anima Mundi very kindly send me and PG's producer Andy Start a thank you letter for participating, the catalog and even a certificate. I'm very impressed, because even though our film was not in competition it was an honor to be in their program and this shows their appreciation as well. The Brazilians do it right :]

2011-09-07T22:57:00.001+01:00

Fantoche International Animation Festival

2011-09-06T20:26:00.000+01:00

Playing Ghost is part of the official selection of Fantoche's IAF in Switzerland.

It is screened in the children's program 'Ende Gut, Alles Gut?' on september 7th. The winning animation will be voted for by a children's jury. This officially labels Playing Ghost as an 8+ animation :]

http://www.fantoche.ch/2011/programm-n10-sE.html

PLAYINGGHOST.com

2011-09-02T20:02:00.000+01:00

I still haven't had the time to make a proper website for this baby, but it's not bad for a one-day job :]

Follow THIS LINK to find more information about 'Playing Ghost'!

You can now also follow it on twitter and facebook.

There is more good news about Playing Ghost soon to come!

Twitter!

2011-09-02T19:57:00.000+01:00

Oh dear. After refusing to join it for I don't know how many years, I've decided to make a twitter account. Mostly to keep up to date with the industry and also to of course announce new work and significant progressions. Click the image for link.

Rule Number Three

2011-08-30T17:17:00.005+01:00

Through all the announcements of LIAF and Playing Ghost, I completely forgot to mention that inbetween the stress I worked on a fantastic fiction film called 'Rule Number Three'.
My role was simple: animate the scrabble credits. Unfortunately I didn't have much time between work and the setup consisted mainly of a dining table and desk lights, which might show, but -

- the film should be seen!

And most importantly there are only 2 days left to vote for this winning at the Film London - Best of Boroughs award. Please watch the film and VOTE following this link or by clicking the image.

http://filmlondon.org.uk/best_of_boroughs/rule_number_three/

Film of the Week @ KinoLondon

2011-08-30T10:59:00.002+01:00

Kino London’s monthly open-mic film night is the only film night of it’s kind in London. Filmmakers register in advance to screen their short at the next event, sight unseen. Filmmakers turn up with their film on the night, introduce it personally then stick around to discuss their work with audience and filmmakers alike.

This week KinoLondon selected my trailer for LIAF as the Film of the Week. It's a massive honor, and I'm very thrilled about it.

Please click HERE to go to the article!

"Incorporating the leading theme of this year’s LIAF – “cut-out” – Ansems has succeeded where only great animation can, and taken us into a world we’d never get the chance to see in real life. This world is the deepest depths of the London Thames. No longer full of shopping trolleys and The Krays’ unlucky “associates”, through Bianca’s eyes the Thames is now an underwater abyss that would give Sea World a run for its money." - extract from KinoLondon's article

The Skillset Tick

2011-08-29T11:34:00.001+01:00

Just over a month ago Skillset had a showcase for their accredited courses, one of which being our very own Animation Direction at NFTS.

The showcase was in Soho and was a nice blend of graduates, course representatives and industry people. And free drinks.. Next to the bar was a big orange clay tick, with spare orange clay next to it, inviting creatives to add to it...... .........I couldn't resist.

Next thing a photographer from Skillset snaps my brief burst of claying in a suit, and I'm on their flickr. Visit their website and flickr for more info and pics!

BIANCAANSEMS.com

2011-08-25T15:37:00.003+01:00

It took me nearly 4 years, but finally, I got myself a website. I mean, more than just a domain name, like it has been for most of the time...

It's an actual

fully functional

personal website.

Designed and build by me, and you can find it -

\/ RIGHT HERE \/

Click the image or this link to go to the website!

"Why are you dressed as a cat?"

2011-08-16T16:04:00.000+01:00

"I'm not a cat. I'm a squirrel."

LIAF selection - British Showcase

2011-08-12T20:38:00.001+01:00

On september the 1st 'Playing Ghost' is showing as part of LIAF's British Showcase.
I will be introducing the film, and will hang around afterwards!
- click here for the schedule -

So please join me, at the UK's biggest animation festival :]

Head in the clouds.

2011-08-09T14:38:00.006+01:00

Today the miniature shoot has started.

Yesterday I finished the massive scenic painting in the background. The whole painting is about 10ft by 8ft at least!

A WIP snapshot of a small part of the whole canvas. That black hole in painting is shoulder height and the canvas stretches another 2 ft above the picture frame and another 5 or so on the side.

I have never done a scenic painting before - nor painted a sky - nor really painted with real paints (photoshop galore). And to be honest I don't know how I got myself into this, but it was fun - even when frustrating at times because I didn't have professional tools or skills. I think the whole painting turned out quite well and I think it looks good in camera. (better than the top picture because that's just a bad iphone picture!)

In the second picture you can also see that the clouds out of camera look really crap, but they work well when properly lit and through the lens of the camera. They are made from chicken wire and decron, which is the technique used for Brazil's dream sequence.

If you want to read more about this VERY interesting project, go to their own blog!
http://skybornthefilm.blogspot.com/

Skyborn Miniatures

2011-08-04T23:58:00.001+01:00

Skyborn miniatures test from Jamie Stone on Vimeo.

First tests with miniature cloud formations and flying machine.

The past two weeks I've been helping out a grad fiction film at the NFTS. It is respectively directed and produced by my good friends Jamie Stone and Len Rowles, who before commissioned the tree house drawing. The short is called Skyborn and is very very interesting indeed, though I can't say too much about it just yet.

This video is a compilation of a few test shots we did to see how the decron clouds and steam interact with the light and miniature flying machine. The effect, even in this rough state, is quite convincing and encouraging I think! (though when they get too close to the camera, the magic is broken)

I've been supervising the making of the clouds and also a stretch of landscape, which I might be able to show pictures of soon too. I'm also needing to paint the backdrop of the sky, which I'm currently doing.
It's fun to sometimes just be away from the computer and up on your feet doing these hands on projects with such interesting people.

In the meantime I'm also working on development of a new project for a proposal. Exciting times :]

London International Animation Festival TRAILER 2011

2011-08-04T11:23:00.002+01:00

London International Animation Festival 2011 trailer from Bianca Ansems on Vimeo.

So after months of working on this inbetween my other jobs, it's done! This is my trailer for LIAF.

"The London International Animation Festival wanted a trailer to celebrate their upcoming animation festival and their new home, the Barbican. LIAF is the UK's largest animation festival, showcasing more than 250 films annually and screening over ten days and nights at Central London cinemas from the 26th of August to the 4th of September. To find out more about the festival please visit liaf.org.uk

Both me and Daniela Negrin Ochoa have made a trailer for this year. Be sure to check hers out too! vimeo.com/26226167

This year's focus theme for LIAF is 'cutout'. Inspired by my previous animation 'AIRMAIL' and the BBC Blue Planet documentary 'The Deep' I wanted to try and create an exploring experience of the London Thames. For all we know, there might well be jellyfishes and octos in it!

Directed & produced by: Bianca Ansems - likeabluebird.blogspot.com
Co-produced by: Len Rowles
Cinematography by: Charlie Goodger & Jack Wilkinson
Animation by: Bianca Ansems & Sam Turner
Sound Design by: Duncan Price
Original Score by: Lennert Busch - scoringforfilm.com"

More news coming soon! I've been busy :]

Happy memories

2011-07-17T12:42:00.001+01:00

A good friend of mine - who before asked for the tree house picture - commissioned me once more to make a personal drawing. This time it's a birthday card for her father. She asked me to base it on a photo of him swinging her around when she was young. I quite like how it turned out.. I hope it does this great personal memory justice.

Midnight doodle

2011-07-12T10:52:00.002+01:00

Nipped in between work. Just an hour of doodling. Turned out to be some sort of.. deepsea thing?..

..Oh photoshop, you still are my best lover.

(also, hands are may BANE)

Testing

2011-05-27T23:16:00.001+01:00

Thought I'd show you this little test image I made of the trailer I'm doing for the London International Animation Festival. It's all rather innocent in theme and quite a massive contrast in style and technique to 'Playing Ghost'. But fun to do :] All the bits are made from card, fabrics and threads.

This is done in multiplane. See below what the setup looks like:

Playing Ghost on IMDb

2011-05-25T14:39:00.002+01:00

Please click the image to go the Playing Ghost's IMDb page! :]

RAWR

2011-05-13T19:45:00.001+01:00

Fabric super-explosion

2011-05-13T19:43:00.002+01:00

I'm currently the epicenter of an explosion of fabrics.

I'm working on the trailer for LIAF - the London International Animation Festival.

The brief was very free and one of the few limitations was that it had to be done in this year's highlight technique: cut-out.

(I cleaned up the mess before I took this picture obviously..)

I've been wanting to get back to this technique ever since I had warmed up to it during Barry Purves' workshop in the first year (I hated it before!). The result was AIRMAIL, a 10 second animation with a little cutout puppet made of fabric on card.

So this time I'm returning to the technique but advancing the look.

Three jellyfishes waiting to be animated.

The puppets are fun to make but are a lot of work. I'm currently working on an angler fish!

If you're wondering what jellyfishes and angler fishes have to do with London.. you have to wait and see! :]

Desk, cork & trees

2011-04-21T10:37:00.004+01:00

I've been in a bit of a DIY mode this week. As I have started to take my future as a freelancer seriously I have decided to allocate myself a workspace within my room, so that whenever I sit there I know I have to do work. Unfortunately though I haven't owned a desk for quite a few years and with a laptop I was very happy not to, because desks take space both physically and mentally. But I needed one. Now. So I found an old beautiful but incredibly disregarded dressing table that was a school prop. I spend over a day sanding the desk down through 4/5 layers of slapped on paint and varnish. Then re-waxed it and put new knobs on the drawers. And now I love it.

Next I needed a notice board. I browsed on amazon for a nice rectangular one, but then I came across this super-cool mini-board. I wanted it.

But I'm out of money and just like with the desk I needed to save money. However that didn't stop me from nearly purchasing this overpriced item. But instead I decided.. I can make it myself for a fraction of the price. And so I did.

Of course, it's not as perfect as the commercial one, but for £2.79 I can't complain :] And I thought while I'm at it, I'll quickly show you how I did it! I know that this blog isn't quite related to DIY but why not eh...?

I started with a cheap cork board I bought at the charity shop for a quid, some pins from WHSmith and some sculpey I had left from the puppet&prop making for Playing Ghost.

The board turned out to be mostly cardboard, which kinda sucked. The most ideal would be to buy one of those thick cork hot pan holders, but my little town didn't have them in any shop so this had to do for now.

The most time-consuming was making the trees with sculpey. I cut off the top end of the pin, and then folded clay around the bottom. Getting the first layer right is most tricky, then it gets a bit easier. All you have to do then is to make a small roll of clay, squash it to the thickness you want it to stick out with from the previous layer, and mold it on. Then you smooth out the top and keep shaping it till it slopes off.

Then afterwards when you've spent 1.5 hours making little trees on pins while watching Nausicaa, you stick them in the oven according to instructions (130 degrees for 15min).

In the meantime I made the board. I cut out the shape I wanted. I tore the cork off the remains and stuck those on the side with superglue. I made the edge wider, as I needed to double-up the cardboard to get a thick enough rim. It was a bit of a pain to do.

Then when that was all done I just painted the trees, and lacquered them FIMO polish. I didn't want them as shiny but my cheap paint was coming off as I touched the pins, so I had to lacquer them :[

And TADA! I still want to continue making little houses and animals (bears etc), and paint some snow on top of the mountains but for now it's all good :]

Right, now I'm back to my real job. Honestly!

Showreels are GO!

2011-04-12T12:41:00.004+01:00

The template for the DVD cover is my own design, and also used for the Playing Ghost DVD Covers.

You can't really see it in the picture but the gorgeous pattern on the inside (and on the DVD itself) is Woodland Creatures Pattern2 by Chamelle Designs. I modified the colors with a gradient to fit the overall design :]

Self

2011-04-01T15:00:00.008+01:00

I was in need of a picture that was personal and nice to use for media backgrounds (website, dvds, etc etc).
So when my friend Nicole had an art meme for her artist project, and the first question was 'what do you look like?', I thought: 'smells like a good excuse to paint a self-portrait' (you can't get more personal than that afterall).

I have only done one other self-portrait in my life. I mean, there are loads of the quick sketches like the few ones of previous posts, but only one other properly painted one... which now dates.. 5 years back.

So anyways. Here it is. It's a bit rough, because.. well I wanted to. Also I think it's the first time I've painted something fully since.. about 4 years. DAMN YOU NFTS DAMN YOU

(the preview shows the proper colours, whereas the zoom in mutes them for some reason)

CLICK HERE TO SEE THE ART MEME

Also have to give credits where credits are due, as you can see, I got heavily influenced by this beautiful piece. I wasn't very creative and just wanted to slap something on to use, but even tho the base idea is the same I think my portrait turned out quite different in the end (and not as good :[ ).

but they smell soooo good

2011-03-29T21:07:00.000+01:00

Playing Ghost TRAILER

2011-03-23T00:20:00.004Z

DVDs x200

2011-03-17T23:09:00.001Z

It's unbelievable how many copies I am making of the film and I still keep running out.

SHOWREEL 2011

2011-03-17T18:56:00.000Z

This is my showreel! WAH!

SHOWREEL 2011 Bianca Ansems from Bianca Ansems on Vimeo.

Websites coming up soon too!

Snoozzzzzzzz

2011-03-16T23:11:00.003Z

Oh, glorious, glorious sleep.

Playing Ghost Awesomeness

2011-03-11T20:06:00.000Z

This is one of the production stills of Playing Ghost's team. This is part of the quite large team that has done an amazing job on the film. From left to right: editor Eduardo Serrano, VFX supervisor Leo Ferreira, producer Andrew Start, director Bianca Ansems, animator Sam Turner, production designer Antonia Lowe, cinematographer Maja Zamojda, composer Lennert Busch, in the front: sound designer Mauricio D'Orey.

Demonhunter?

2011-03-11T17:22:00.000Z

Not sure whether I'm going to be doing Diablo3's Demonhunter justice here so will probably start again!

Almost..

2011-02-07T20:12:00.002Z

It's been quite tough the past few weeks. Mostly for these guys on the photo. They are working very hard to get the post-production done on time for this film. In two weeks time it's graduation day and there are still quite a few things to be done.

In the meantime I have caught a bit of cold/flu that has manifested itself today with achy joints, feeling nauseous and overall miserable. I guess my body is starting to feel it's almost resting time as well.

We're gonna be friends.

2011-01-06T18:30:00.004Z

A friend of mine commissioned me to make a drawing for her boyfriend's birthday/christmas. It would be about how they would have been if they were friends when they were younger. Unfortunately the budget and time kept the drawing quite simple. If not I could go on and on! The concept was very cute and I enjoyed doing something for one friend to another friend :]

It reminds me of Jack Johnson's song 'we are going to be friends'.

What I Wore Today ..

2011-01-04T13:55:00.005Z

It's being a busy, no-fun day :[

2010/2011

2010-12-31T11:42:00.007Z

And then, all of the sudden, it's the 31st of december again. 2010 has passed so quickly to me, that reflecting on it now, all I can relate it to is that feeling of when you've been in an amazing rollercoaster ride but then all of the sudden your ride hits the breaks, the hatches go open, and you have to quickly get out as the next line of people comes in.

The past week or two I have kind of been taking a bit of a rest. I hadn't had a break during the whole year, and even during this break I was doing another job (that was great to do though!).

But that one finished yesterday and so I got one little day to do... nothing. Well, not really, there is still much queued up, and next week I will throw myself fully on the project again. But until then I couldn't help myself to start painting again (the pic next to the text is a preview of it!). Oh, beautiful lovely photoshop paint tools, how I've missed you. I can't wait to open my sketchbook again and start manically sketching everything alive.

I just can't wait to see what 2011 brings!

So happy new year everybody! Good luck with everything that will come in 2011. All the best health, success and happy moments. Thanks for having been with me in 2010 :] Lots of love xx

And then suddenly...

2010-12-14T09:28:00.003Z

...I realized that I am nearly graduating. Only 2 more months. I don't know how it happened, but one day production was over and post-production was in full swing. Today we are finishing our gorgeous sound mix, and DPP is starting to tie the loose ends of our film together. In the new year we'll be grading this baby and at the end of february is our grad show.... STRANGE!

Anyways, top image is one of the publicity stills of the film :]

Brain fry.

2010-12-02T17:38:00.001Z

I bet it's fun being a hedgehog!

The end of an era.

2010-12-01T10:40:00.003Z

It is strange but true... our little film is picture locked. If you don't know what a picture lock is, it means that the edit of the film is finished - there won't be any more changes in the cut. In our case we needed to wait with the lock until I had finished animating and was able to provide Eduardo with all the material he needed. So on Saturday I finished animation and by monday we had a lock candidate and yesterday it officially locked.

It is the end of an era. Let's reflect for a moment...

- I have been working on this project since over a year now.

- Around this time last year we teamed up with the producers and if willing writers.

- By January we had our idea well set out and by March we had started editing the animatic.

- I came to Eduardo with over 300 images, a large amount of scenes and a story that needed a good spring cleaning.

- After several weeks of intense editing and redrawing we came out with a 7 minute film.

- We were asked to cut down drastically, which resulted in a 4 minute film. Which we then expanded to a 5.5 minute animatic.

- This animatic was the basis of our animation.

- The sets to 6 weeks to build.

- The puppets to 6 weeks to build as well (excl. armatures of 2 weeks build).

- The animation started 28th of june and finished 27th of november - FIVE months of shooting.

- The film is now a nearly 9 minute film!

I'm pleased with the results so far and am overly excited to now be into the post-production process a 100%. Being able to talk with my DPP and VFX and sound and music guys and starting on some of the post-work myself is like bliss compared to the chunk of load that is behind me.

However, it's not over til the fat lady sings, so until then,

WORK

WORK

WORK

What I Wore Today

2010-11-13T16:35:00.009Z

(well.. a few days ago..)

Gemma Correll has become well known for her 'diary' entries on what she wore that day. She now set up a blog (linked to a flickr group) for people who want to show what they wore that day as well.

I felt up for drawing this morning and drew one of my outfits of this week. Though, as much as it might be useful, I own no fiery cracking director's whip of doom *sad face*

Toby, a graduate from NFTS of 2009, also submitted a drawing of one of his outfits.

Underwater Hugs

2010-11-04T20:02:00.007Z

The final part of the film is underwater. Because it's all shot on bluescreen apart from the final shot, I quickly sketched a concept art for the digital post-production department.

After 4 months of shooting we are starting to come to an end. We have started edit and slowly the film is starting to emerge. I have never done an animation film where so much was still left to appear in the end. It's a little bit scary but mostly exciting.

And/Or

2010-10-30T16:59:00.011+01:00

It's been nearly a year since I completed a short puppet animation for And/Or Kraszna-Krausz. You can read more and see some still of it earlier in this blog.

A few weeks ago the animation was uploaded to the internet! You can watch it here:

Wow the preview image is oversaturated!!

Director: Bianca Ansems

DoP: Maja Zamojda

Production Designer: Maryam Mojtabavi

Sound Designer: Tom Drew

Composer: Lennert Busch

Animator: Bianca Ansems

It was a little competition between our class, and I won runnerup! You can view the winner Nandita and all the other animations here.

2010-10-29T08:48:00.001+01:00

One day I will get bored of this.

Another one -

2010-10-12T09:42:00.001+01:00

- in the series 'But it works in camera!'

More strange things.

2010-10-06T18:12:00.001+01:00

Looking through the camera it makes more sense, I swear.

Popping an eye.

2010-10-05T12:27:00.004+01:00

Yes, I've had nightmares about this.

The last/late member of the family.

2010-09-20T20:26:00.005+01:00

After nearly 3 months dad has finally come into life. Just some last detailing and he is good to go under the water.

ps: This was also post 100 on this blog!

2010-09-16T10:31:00.012+01:00

Since the past couple of months I have been making newsletters about the project that I send to my team, telling them the latest. They take a bit of time to make but are definitely worth it, since it keeps everyone on the same page at all times.

As the tutors found out about this, it became a bit popular and now even the school director gets a copy of each one. It's a bit weird, since it was intended to keep the team solitary informed before the meetings with tutors. So now it means the tutors already know everything before as well :p So since I figured everyone has seen it by now, I'd publish two of the frontpages online (since the other pages contain pics of team members, and I don't want to infringe on people's privacy).

nr.6 frontpage

nr.7 frontpage

I just love graphic design.

...

2010-09-03T09:38:00.002+01:00

Not everybody seems to get it.

My muse is a madman..

2010-08-28T09:49:00.004+01:00

lalalalal-lala-lala-la

Started painting this when my brain had died and I had a pen tablet in my hand and a laptop on my lap. I wanted to draw *a pretty girl* in furs and bones, but my brain said 'no.' ("computer says no..."). I don't know who what or why he is, but I think I might continue on it to find out!

Kerry Dyer

2010-08-22T12:10:00.003+01:00

Kerry Dyer was one of our lovely assistants during the puppet making process. She literally gave a hand, as it became her main task to sort out all the hands of the puppets. She did an amazing job! Sometimes I get so distracted by faces that I tend to forget the hands and rush them in the end, but she spend the full 3 weeks sorting those things out. As you saw from previous pictures we go through a lot during the filming.

This week she has put up a blogpost with a few pictures of the process herself:

http://kerrydyer.wordpress.com/

Please have a look. I can't express enough how thankful I am for her help on this project!

Bicycle!

2010-08-13T17:11:00.002+01:00

Allar fixed my bike's back tyre, so now I'm back on the road, endangering anything in near sight!

I drew this for him as thank you :]

I love my workspace.

2010-08-13T16:52:00.004+01:00

In a world so disorganized I am secretly quite pleased with being a tad OCD... This is the view of my workstation for puppet building, puppet and prop maintenance, director business like meetings and scheduling, etc.

Left is the door to the black room where Sam is animating. I made little boxes for small props. The two chairs have just been repaired. The black drawers contain puppets that are in limbo. The other box has all small and spare parts of the puppets. The jar now has over 30 hands.

From my desk I look onto an arctic freezer landscape with a Caribbean sunset. The mixol pigments are neatly sorted into old ferrero boxes (best boxes ever - another good reason to eat MANY ferreros). The wooden box contains hair for the puppets.

I have so many tools I desperately try to make sense of them with different cups and containers. One for all the glues, a little cup for all the scissors (6 of them), pencils, paint brushes, pens, hardware tools, etc etc. I use half cut-through cups for mixing paint/pigments/silicone on.

I am currently looking onto this:

The background is from Toni's fiction, and the foreground is our fantasy freezer set. It makes for a weird combo!

Need a hand?

2010-08-03T13:39:00.003+01:00

5 mum hands (2 left, 3 right) and 20 Amy hands (11 left, 9 right) so far

The hands are doing my head in. They're constantly breaking, sometimes even before I have sanded and painted them. Once one finger breaks, the whole hand is done for. Sam is currently even animating the title shot of the film with both pinkies broken!

It's. A. Pain. In. The. Arse.

More pics from the process

2010-07-24T12:24:00.002+01:00

Failed casting attempts and some early make-up paint tests.

After weeks of testing several techniques these are the final eyes.

The hair is a removable wig...

...made from real human hair...

Inside the heads are little fibreglass skulls, to keep the weight of the head down. Hence the fancy respirator picture of a couple of weeks ago. Fibreglass has a most toxicating smell.

So, where was I?

2010-07-22T19:55:00.016+01:00

My god, doing this grad compares to nothing I have done before in my life.

So much has happened that I don't know what pictures to show or what to tell anymore. I don't even remember what last update I gave. Let me just check...

... okay. So I basically only posted a pic of the heads my sis was modeling. Wow. That was long ago... We tried for a while to find a good company to make our puppets, and though we found a good option, for several reasons (mainly time) we decided to do it ourselves instead.

Now to be honest, it might not have been the best decision, particularly because the main reason was time! But in the end I learned loads and met great people, and that is an experience that is invaluable for the future.

Let me show some pics of the process...

Mr.Wuchan kindly made our armatures. I greatly recommend him and his company to anyone looking for a good professional armature maker.

The mum's armature.

For the making of the puppets we asked advice from Toby Hawkes and Chris Mendham, and several other great people. We then got assistance from Kerry Wright, who in the end stayed with us for a month instead of the original 1 week planned!

She made molds of the heads and in the meantime I fleshed out the armatures of the puppets with blue foam.

Unfortunately taking the sculpey out of the stuff we used for the molds, became a nightmare when there wasn't enough release agent on the sculpey (we were forced to cast hard molds from hard models, which normally you either do hard molds-soft model or other way around). I had to painfully bit by bit with a very sharp surgical knife break the sculpey, to eventually make the sculpey layer thin enough to lift out without damaging the mold.

I cut myself over 20 times, even one time in my FOREHEAD.

Yes.

Yes, I did.

(oh and I also sliced the top of my thumb off eventually... to top it all off... (see what I did there??))

So after getting al the moulds ready, another assistant - Kerry Dyer - came to help me make hands for the puppets. Also a costume designer came to make the clothes for the puppets. All in all we worked many days for over 12 hours each, and somehow managed to start shooting on time.

Bit by bit our puppet came together and then when she starred in her first shot, everybody was extremely excited. Then our next run was getting the mother puppet done on time. So no rest for the wicked!

However we did it and in the last post you could see how both look :]

Now we're one month in shooting and 2-3 months more to go! WOOP WOOP

(OVERSATURATED iphone pictures lose!)

Hello :]

2010-07-20T11:31:00.003+01:00

We made a still for mr.Wuchan who made our lovely armatures. It also shows off both the mum and Amy, the gorgeous kitchen that Toni made and the beautiful lighting of Maja.

I'm glad the puppets are generally able to pull off very close close-ups :]

We now have completed 13 shots in 3 weeks. Mike is amazing. He is currently animating a shot of over 35 seconds, where he did more then 20 seconds in one day! So proud.

ps: These shots are all raw files from the animation, so hardly any DPP has been done on these (visible in the temp Celsius thing I put in the corner of shot above).

We started animating :]

2010-07-10T10:41:00.002+01:00

Still no time for a proper update, but we are animating! This picture is from a tracking shot of the girl in the freezer, so we had to improvise a setup. Left is the cinematographer/DoP Maja Zamodja and right is the talented animator Mike Hollenbeck who is all the way from Canada and stays with us for a month. In the background you can see the sets on legs. The shots are coming out beautifully and we are averaging about 6-8 seconds per day. This would mean that in 8-10 weeks time the film would be done. That's half the originally 20 weeks planned :]

This is the new look.

2010-06-15T14:55:00.000+01:00

Soon back with more updates.

Talking Heads

2010-05-28T13:06:00.002+01:00

My sister is a genius.

Life Drawing 03

2010-05-28T12:49:00.006+01:00

Man, ever since my moleskin got wet, the scans have been so incredibly RUBBISH. Urgh.

So anyways, for the first time since almost a year we had life drawing again in our school. It has been an incredible while since I've sketched.

I should start drawing with charcoal or anything else, to define the shadows more rather than trying to resemble everything perfectly. Would make me look more artistic etc too. Plus this moleskin is getting too small!

15 + 5 min (of which mostly spend on another drawing)

5 minutes (again mostly spend doing sth else)

10 minutes

MEMO TO ME: Buy a new moleskin.... bigger one.

Work on our film!

2010-05-19T18:25:00.000+01:00

We currently have two job ads running on mandy. I am at the moment particularly interested in puppet makers to help me out next month. Maybe that can be you :]

Take a look here:

Puppet makers

Animators

Both jobs are on an expenses-paid bases.

Light tests.

2010-05-19T18:12:00.002+01:00

Using flat cutouts of the characters as reference in the sets (that are still under construction obviously). The more I look at these pictures, the more excited I'm getting.

We're receiving the armatures tomorrow! They were done by the AMAZING Mr.Wuchan from Claymate in South-Korea.

Bouncing ... ball?....

2010-05-13T08:22:00.003+01:00

My bouncing balls always have too much life in them, making them look like they kick themselves off. So to hide this, I drew it as a flee. HAH! Now it's just a shitty flee.

So in the past 12 hours I've been getting good and bad news. The good news is GREAT! Let's hope the bad news gets sorted out within the next 12 hours...

I am not a master but

2010-05-10T12:39:00.010+01:00

I thought I'd show you a bit how I go about character designs. I tried a different approach at first, to try and cut the way, but turns out the good old fashioned way works best.

First of all I define in words what character's traits are. In the kid's case it was: "mischievous, naive, bubbly, tomboyish, daddy's girl". For the mother it was something like: "sad, forgotten beauty, absent, unkept, etc". For the dad it was just something like: "nice chap, head of family, fun".

I start looking for inspiration images. People who's work is great for this is: gunnmgally, anuk, and imaginism. I wish I was half as good as these people in character designs..

After I have studied those I start pencilling down some shapes and faces playing with what I have in my head. I draw and draw til something keeps repeating itself. That is an element I like. I try to specify it. After I feel I roughly captured the shape and design of the character I just take a picture of the sheet of paper. I can't do the sketching digitally. It just works better for me on paper.

The quality of the picture doesn't matter. As long as I got it digital. With the transform tool I rotate the images and distort it to get the proportions back in shape.

Then I draw over it in photoshop and start correcting it. It's easy to stretch, squash, and change colors in photoshop. I use the lasso, move and transform tool (warp, distort, rotate) a lot in this process.

Right is the first sketch from paper, left is the cleanup from that.

Once I got what I like and I flipped it to check what it looks like mirrored, I use guidelines to draw the other side in the right proportions.

(I saved a bit more images of this proces while drawing the mother so I just use that.)

Because I usually don't know what that side exactly looks like it's quite tricky sometimes!

But thanks to the transformation tools in photoshop we get there...

I like to keep my other characters close by when designing so I can keep them uniform.

After that, we start playing around with the colors of the clothes etc and add shading.

Often I then find I still don't have the right proportions. To make easy changes I merge my layers into one (after duplicating them for backup ofc). I use the before mentioned tools again until I got what I need. With some quick fixing I cover up all my dirty work.

Then everything gets slapped onto a sheet and we have a character design :]

Done.

I'm not a master. I just thought it was fun to share. Even if it doesn't help you, I hope to look back in a year's time and think "I can do this better now". lol

Slow but steady.

2010-05-10T12:17:00.004+01:00

Slowly but steadily we are going out of pre-production. We put the ultimate deadline for animating on the 28th of june.

My sister came in last week to help us out for a week, making the tiniest little props, like dead flowers (given after the dad's death, but then disregarded by the distraught mother), mobile housephone, kettle, iron, etc etc etc.

We moved the bedroom set to the black room (the above room is the so-called greenscreen room).

Toni made actual sized cardboard prints for the puppets so we can see their sizes in relation to the sets. It was very useful as I also learned that in the first designs the kid had a much larger head than the mother!

The character designs are all done now which is a great relief. The armatures are being made, and we have decided to make the puppets indoors with a small team, including myself. I am looking forward to get hands-on again. While designing the dad I found he resembled a rather handsome young man.

I don't care if you disagree lol The dad's design is not very special but he's also hardly in the film.. As long as he looks like a nice chap haha.

Oh yea two weeks ago I got to the chance to go to the RCA London to see Suzie Templeton reveal a part of the Peter and the Wolf set in the RCA common room. Me and Toni immediately tackled Suzie with the first chance we got and questioned her all about her films. She was very patient and answered all of our questions as best as she could, while keeping a watchful eye on her beautiful baby Rosie. Our cinematographer Maja tackled Suzie's cinematographer to ask him many question and in the end we left fulfilled with knowledge. Amazing!

The Happy Family

2010-05-01T22:53:00.010+01:00

The final designs for Mum & Amy.

It has been quite a ride into the year so far. It's enjoyable most of the time, but also sometimes quite frustrating. The past few weeks with the meetings had been quite full-on and got most of the team quite out of their mojo. To get us back on track we are keeping up to date with Newsletters and Production Meetings.

I have also dipped into my spring blues. Yes, I have spring blues. Summer, Autumn, Winter are all fantastic. My height is usually at Autumn, but spring just drags me down. I love the sunshine, and the flowers, but somehow I find starting up in the beginning of the year tougher. I also have hayfever that is at it's most intense around april :[

Anyways, I drifted off topic. So school. As I posted I came out of development 2 weeks ago. It was an extremely intense process. After this we did eye-tests with the puppets (sticking human eyes on top of the puppets), which was again very intense. Then I had to get several other things going. The bedroom set is almost finished now and we are moving on to the kitchen next. My sister is coming over for a week tomorrow to help us with the project, making miniature props.

Crappy iPhone pic of the sketch I did of Amanda Neville, Director of BFI.

I also attended the And/Or Awards Ceremony at the BFI. At the end/the beginning of this year we a one-minute trailer for them. We competed with the 8 of us from our class. Nandita eventually won the competition, and me and Dani were runner ups. We got certificates and a BFI membership. The awards were given to us by David Sproxton, the co-founder of Aardman, Colin Ford CBE (chairman of the Kraszna Krausz Foundation), and Lord Puttnam CBE who was chairman of the NFTS during Nick Park's years.

Winning and being runner-ups we had the chance to chat with David Sproxton for quite a while and also neatly posed for press pics. He was a very kind man with the most interesting tie that I couldn't keep my eyes off. They should post up the winning animations soon, so I'll link you when they are online :]

Time is running out.

2010-04-28T01:07:00.003+01:00

Amy?

The first set has arrived!

2010-04-23T15:06:00.002+01:00

Isn't she a beauty?

Obviously it's without doors, windows, and everything else at the moment :] But we did immediately place in some of the lovely (unpainted) props.

Happiness is greenlight.

2010-04-22T23:03:00.003+01:00

When I came in the editing suite with a 300+ images of storyboard Eduardo must have died a thousand deaths. However 4 weeks of hard work later, we both came out triumphant, with not just one but TWO tapes of animatic.

So what happened? We cutted the story down to it’s bare bones, and went from a 6’49’’ animatic to 3’50’’. Amazingly the story still stands with almost half of the original time! However we feel the story rushes by too quickly, and to slow it down and get the right emotions we have to add at least another minute in the animation. We were also missing some essential scenes and therefore we made a better version, which is 5’20’’ long. This will be the version that we will work from. We will schedule in for all the shots of the 5 minute one, but will put all the essential scenes that are in the 4 minute one first, so that if time runs out we still are able to tell the story.

In the meantime my brilliant production designer Antonia Lowe has begun building the set. Each time I come to visit her I feel like a kid wanting to touch every item they are creating. It's truely amazing and I am slightly jealous they get to do all these fun things! They as in Toni and her many assistants she has drummed up to help her. All amazing people who are spending a bit of their time making little doors and little chairs and little freezers. I'm astonished.

We also have started to seriously look at the technical side of my project, with tests being done this week and a final conclusion coming up next week wednesday.

Amy is still under construction.

And aside from all of that, me and Jay have taken off again with our dissertation project that has gone on a hold over the winter months due to my grad development and us lacking the help of a scriptwriter. However we found a great scriptwriter and today we had our first meeting with the core members of our team: me, Jay, Adele (scriptwriter), Adam Jackson (producer on this project, production manager on my grad film), Kathy Lee (editor), and Maja Zamodja (my DoP on every project since last november). It was very interesting and it's great to have that going now as well.

And breathe.

2010-04-15T15:06:00.005+01:00

The past few weeks had all been about editing the story, budgetting the film and getting the characters down before greenlight meeting. Yesterday we had our greenlight meeting, and of course things are hardly over. But for the first time since over 4 weeks I am back in my own corner of the school and it feels amazing. I had to conclude that two of my plants had died of dehydration, two were about to die and the others are just hanging on. It's great being back with the sun shining outside and people passing by with smiley faces.

The only ones not having smiley faces at the moment are the first year animation directors/cinematographers/production designers, because they are in full stop stress with one of the best workshops from the year: Character of Place. It was the first thing I could do after I had recovered from my broken back last year. Even though very stressful it has a lot of influence for the rest of the year. It is a great atmosphere if the teams work well together with amazing results!

I sneaked into the main stage just now and had a peak at what the first 4 groups were up to:

This is Jonathan's set. I just noticed a bizillion flowers at the ready so I'm curious what's it gonna be like!

This year they are having the most amazing tutors supporting them. No one other than Barry Purves has joined them for two weeks, and the production design tutor also works a lot with animation, which is a great advantage that we unfortunately didn't have last year. I'm sure the results will be splendid! Go first years go! (don't get too good tho, we still want to outshine until next year at least ;p )

Dad?

2010-04-11T14:20:00.002+01:00

In trying to draw the character design for the dad I just couldn't get it right. He's a hard character because he's basically..boring. He just needs to be a nice daddy-like bloke. Bit strong, but trustworthy. Not too young, not too old. Not too cool, not a nerd. And he was a builder (he died falling off a scaffold).

The only picture that did him justice imho was the previously posted picture of Amy and her dad. So after many attempts in trying to get his design, I just decided to try and paint it realistic first then. Understanding the faces. And then stylize it again. Just like I had to do with the mother. So here is a quick sketch of them in color with real eyes stolen from the internet. Now I need to make them into 'puppets'.

Ma. Ma. Mammy. Mammy. Louis. Louis. Mama. Mama. Mama. Mum. Mum. Mum. Mum.

2010-04-05T18:01:00.008+01:00

EDIT* changed the design a bit more. Also the colors get very faded in the preview, so click to see the bright red in her skin.

I'm currently working some more on the character designs for the 3 characters in my film. First to break the ice is the mother character. You've already seen some early sketches, where I was trying to find who she was and what she looked like. Still the proportions were quite human, and I like pulling them just a tad extremer. Unfortunately I can't pull them as extreme as I am used to because the film is quite subtle, so I refrained myself.

She still is inspired by a mother-hen look. I think I could pull it a bit further in the colors and everything.

Which of the two noses??

I did a design earlier that was quite stylised, but I didn't like it. So I tried to do the middle-way, which came to a face like this. I used real photographed eyes (from Charlize Theron in the make-up, I believe) and painted around it. After all, that's sort of the technique we're using. I'm a bit deciding between the two noses. The left one is nice and pretty, but the right one is more mummy-like. It also fits the hen-look more. I just need to put the ears down some to make it more droopy. Oh, poor mother. She just needs a hug really.

1 3 2

2010-03-26T18:21:00.005Z

I love this article called 'Less Talk, More Rock' by superbrothers.

Even though they are talking about video games it kind of applies to any creative art.. Being in the current stage of scriptwriting going into animatic preparing for production, I feel kind of tired of talking when I could be visually showing what I mean if I get the chance.

It's time to get VISUAL.

Writings on the Wall

2010-03-25T10:31:00.006Z

Yesterday we started editing the film.

While I was storyboarding I was constantly printing off every image I drew and stuck it straight up the big white wall of my room. It helped a great deal while storyboarding, but once storyboarding was done I was able to sit down with my amazing editor Eduardo Serrano (or rather stand up with my editor) and look at the whole film in one glance.

Eduardo sticking up the latest storyboard frames.

Seeing the film like that, some cuts and images immediately stood out as not working, and so we already roughly cut the film without even starting to load the storyboard in Avid. It was also great for us to instantly write down thoughts and questions about scenes and images, and stick them on the wall in the right place. Now when I work on my room I always know where I am at with the film.

A corner of my room with many important objects and inspirations for the design of the film.

In the meantime sets are being designed by the wonderfully talented Antonia Low. On my board I have the latest copies of her plans and elevations, and also some color copies of some of the pages of her sketchbook for this project. Again, having it close at hand in my room is very inspiring and keeps me up to date. Then next to the storyboard are some reference images, notes to myself ("NO SAD KID" & "if its not in the color palette, it's not in the film") and the first character sketch. And also very importantly, and therefore framed, is this:

Graduation Graduation

2010-03-17T19:42:00.006Z

Man, it's been another long while. As before it's been so busy it's quite unbelievable. However I am determined to keep this blog updated. On my last grad film it really helped to keep me stimulated and always have an overview of what's going on. So let's give it a go!

Our And/Or animation is finished now and it's looking awesome. I'm pleased with the outcome. Since it was tied in a competition we can't show it around yet, but once the winner is announced it should be ok to post it online. We'll hopefully know soon~

So then we proceeded with grad film. We are going through so many script drafts, it's unbelievable. We are now on the last draft before storyboard takes over and then animatic becomes the new norm. Our story is about a mother and a daughter, who's husband/dad just died. The mother so sunk in grief misses strong signals of her daughters dangerous games. It's the question whether the mother realizes in time that staying stuck in her own loss she might lose another loved one...

Sounds heavy! Shouldn't be though... we are relieved by seeing most of this happening when following the adventures of the child, Amy.

Anyways, enough talking, here is some artwork...

Some first concept art of the mother..

And a small extract from my rubbish anime-stylish storyboard...

It's just an easy and quick way of drawing and so it ends end up looking like a bloody manga.

I've also one time had the chance to sketch again when I was working in the school's bar. Yay! I miss it..

2010-02-25T15:36:00.000Z

And Or ?

2010-02-17T10:13:00.005Z

While we are working hard for our graduation, one project is still slipping inbetween: the AndOr trailer. It's quite difficult to balance both projects at the same time, particularly when graduation is more prominent. However the end is near, and the puzzle pieces are coming together. It's looking quite cool, and I look forward to the end result of everybody!

Here are two pics of how the set looked:

The set was designed by Maryam Mojtabavi. The cinematography was done by Maja Zamojda.

As the puppet starts running through the book, he animates the pages (like a flipbook), and this animation turns up:

I know it's not very exciting indeed...

The sound is being done by Tom Drew, and the music will be composed by Lennert Busch - my fellow Dutchie in the school. Dean helped me with DPP work and Daniel from SFX made actual smoke and dust on the puppet, soooo cool. Hope to show you it once it's done :] Until then...

TO THE BATMOBIL!