Snoreeze Advert

Recently I got to work on an idea for a new advert for Snoreeze, a company specialising in snore relief products, nasal sprays and throat sprays. The intended audience for the advert is both genders, aged between 20-40 years of age.

The advert was only intended to be between 10-15 seconds long, so the challenge was to leave an impact in a very short space of time. I decided the best way to achieve this was to make the advert humorous, so I searched for situations in which it would be humorous or unfortunate to fall asleep.

As a result of the hype for this year's biggest film releases, such as Spectre, Jurassic World or Star Wars: The Force Awakens, I wrote a script where a young film buff falls asleep and misses an entire film on its first screening.

This is the final design for the "young film buff" who falls asleep during the movie. I recycled this design from my final BA animation, "Gopher Golf", where I had created several background characters. This character seemed to fit my idea for the Snoreeze advert best, due to his youthful, energetic and enthusiastic look and design.

As with most of my work in 2D animation, I drew the designs first, then scanned them in and coloured and perfected their designs in Photoshop. All the animation and editing for this piece was created in Photoshop, After Effects and Premiere CS6. When added up, the process of creating this advert took approximately two days.

Storyboards for 'Scream Street' Competition (CBBC)

"Scream Street" is a new stop-motion series which made its debut on CBBC in October this year. The show is made at Factory, an animation studio in Altrincham, and is owned by Coolabi.

Recently, CBBC, Factory and Coolabi launched a competition for aspiring animators in Northern England, inviting students to create a 45-second long animation featuring the show's comic relief characters, Dig the dog and Lulu the leech. Using these two characters and a selection of props (which the modelmakers at Factory have already produced), I storyboarded a short piece, imagining what these two characters would be like in a particular situation. The situation I chose was "bowling", a situation which would allow Dig to show his over-eager personality and Lulu her bossy personality.

AX3003: Editing a Showreel

 Recently I put together a showreel, with the aim of demonstrating my best animation work in the space of one minute. I knew in advance which clips I wanted to see in the showreel - especially my most recent work which, in my opinion, is far superior to what I was capable of a few years ago. The showreel includes footage from my graduation film 'Gopher Golf', my first and second year films 'Catch of the Day' and 'Cheese Please', additional university and personal projects such as 'Quench' and 'The Time I Like Best', my A2 media studies piece 'Intoxicated' and the short film I directed on work experience in China, 'Travelling by Food'. I especially felt it was important to include the latter on my showreel, as it was the first time I had directed a team of animators on a project.

A clip I animated for 'Travelling by Food', showing the words "let's go!", opens the showreel. I did this to hopefully gain the viewer's interest straight away. Clips from 'Gopher Golf' immediately follow this and also close the showreel, because I feel that this film specifically shows my best work.

Choosing a suitable piece of music was slightly more difficult, because it had to match the energetic tone I wanted to give my showreel. It also had to be close to one minute in duration. I was unable to find a composer, so I managed to find a royalty free piece of music online which, in my opinion, suits the fast-paced, energetic, exciting feel I wanted to give my showreel. I particularly enjoyed editing clips in time with the music, such as the final clip, which helped decide which clips should be placed where. The clips all blend in, such as water in 'Gopher Golf' fading into water in 'Catch of the Day' and, as a result, I feel the showreel has a better narrative and almost feels like a short film in itself.

DD3992: Making a Splash

During a sequence in 'Gopher Golf' when the Golfer is practicing golf in his garden, the golf ball lands into a pond in a shot which only lasts for three seconds. However, creating the water for this one shot needed careful thought, as water is often hard to make realistic in 2D or stop-motion animation.

Scaling the fence to a realistic height, based on the feedback from the test screening of my film.

The entire shot was animated in Adobe After Effects, using motion blur to make the movement of the ball look effective. For the water, I actually reused a clip from one of my earlier films, 'Catch of the Day', where I had created water in stop-motion quite effectively. The water is made from different sizes of see-through clingfilm over sheets of blue tissue paper. In 'Catch of the Day', the clingfilm was animated at different speeds depending on how quickly the water was supposed to be flowing. For instance, some parts were double-framed (animated at 12 frames a second) when the mood was meant to be tranquil, then animated at 25 frames when a man is later seen being carried down the river.

I think the result of this shot in 'Gopher Golf' works particularly well and blends in with the film's style, created using mixed media. Like the explosion and smoke effects I demonstrated in an earlier post, the splash generated by the golf ball was a CG effect free for use.

My first year film, 'Catch of the Day', can be viewed online. Two years later, I'm still pleased with the water effects I created, although I feel my animation skills have greatly improved since then!


Catch of the Day - Uni Short Project from Christopher Blower on Vimeo.

AX3003: Notes from the Creative Festival

These notes were taken from lectures given at the Creative Festival, where the following animation professionals were talking:

• Tristan Oliver (Wallace & Gromit, ParaNorman, Fantastic Mr Fox)
• Simon Partington (Old Jack's Boat, Slumberless)
• Jean Flynn (Cosgrove Hall)

Gopher Golf: Gopher's Burrow

The Gopher's burrow is only seen for two short shots in the film, but still required some thought in how it would be produced.

The burrow was initially to be a flat background behind the Gopher, but instead the Gopher was sandwiched between a background and two foreground layers, covering the top and bottom of the screen. This would give the illusion of the Gopher digging his way through a tunnel. Part of this idea was inspired by the way digging is shown in films such as 'Fantastic Mr Fox' (2009). Many recycled drawings from other scenes in 'Gopher Golf' - including the fence, a golf tee and some pebbles - were reused in these scenes, albeit slightly modified with darker lighting and more texture.

Gopher Golf: Golfer Shoot - Part #4

Here are some photos from the Golfer's scenes which were filmed on 21st April 2015. Again, these were experiments and I was trying out which facial expressions suited the Golfer best. I needed to have a screwdriver on set, because the Golfer puppet had been moved around so much that some of the joints needed to be strengthened again.

Gopher Golf: Mixing the 2D and 3D

These pictures are stills taken from the trailer I made for 'Gopher Golf'. This is the first time I have tested 2D and 3D elements together using Adobe software - Premiere, Photoshop and After Effects, so seeing these two elements together for the first time was very exciting. It was also the first time I allowed myself to screen footage from the film to family, friends and colleagues, and it received a highly positive response.

However, there is still an outline around the character and odd moments where the character blends into the background. The lighting also does not match. I feel like I could have improved this a lot if I had given myself more time to edit the trailer, but hopefully, for the final film, I will have more time to resolve this issue and experiment a lot more with lighting and chroma key effects.

Gopher Golf: Additional Shoot Pics #1

Here are some additional pictures from the shoot of my film.

Gopher Golf: Golfer Shoot - Part #3

Today I filmed further scenes with the Golfer in stop-motion animation. This was my first attempt at changing the Golfer's facial expression by remodelling his mouth for different shots. His hat also creates a greater effect when he needs to lower his eyebrows.

It was great fun to play around with which different facial expressions the character could generate. It helped inspire how the rest of the body should perform on camera as well, particularly when I filmed the character mouthing an "ooh" sound - the rest of the body turns away from the camera, as if something horrific has just happened.

Gopher Golf: Golfer Shoot - Part #2

Recently I filmed a scene in which the Golfer is required to lean down and pick up two leaflets. The puppet was capable of walking by itself, but it couldn't lean down by itself as it was too flexible. I solved this by using two magnets underneath the set - one for each foot - which were strong enough to hold the character down.

No additional support was needed when the Golfer was required to pick up the two leaflets, because the fingers move around freely and could pick up the leaflets by themselves. However, to make the puppet easier to stand up whilst leaning over, I had to remove the Plasticine from the feet and let the two magnets do the work.

Gopher Golf: Editing the Lighting

After reviewing all the footage filmed so far for Gopher Golf, there were a few problems which I had to sort out before filming could continue. Firstly, the blue screen was not flat enough and the lighting was not strong enough for the blue to become one solid colour. The blue screen still had a number of creases in it, which had to be ironed and then pulled taut to both sides of a frame.

The blue screen was moved right against the wall, as was the table I am animating on. The set lights were also moved closer to the set and the wall, improving the lighting greatly. It also gave me more space for any work I needed to do behind the camera, such as reviewing the film on the screen.

The other issue was that, after reviewing all the footage, a black smudge was in the middle of the screen. It was directly on the lens and I didn't have the correct materials to wipe the lens clean. Therefore it was agreed I could switch to using my own camera, a brand new Canon 70D which is more up-to-date and offers higher quality than the Nikon D300.

Keylight, a useful feature in Adobe After Effects, was used to delete the blue background from the raw footage, although the levels of black and white lighting had to be adjusted because the blue background was not a block colour. The outline also had to be erased. I have very rarely used After Effects before this year, so I had to look at online tutorials to help with certain features, although the software was fairly easy to use. It saved hours of time as I was about to try removing the black smudge frame by frame.

I was pleased with the results after I had doctored the footage in After Effects, although hopefully the consistency of the lighting will no longer be an issue. If I do have any more problems in filming, I'm satisfied that I have a solution.

Gopher Golf: Setting up the Shoot

These pictures show the stop-motion set for 'Gopher Golf' as it was being set up.

Every stop-motion scene in the film will be animated against a blue screen (not green screen, as the main character's clothes are green), so there was no need to install any backgrounds as these will be added digitally later. The animation software I am using for this process is Dragonframe and the camera being used is a Nikon D300.