Peri James Brandon

Artefact 1 - "You talkin' ta me?"

2012-01-26T10:39:00.000Z

First of five character animations being created for my Research Doucment in my final year of Univesity at Nottingham Trent studying multimedia. Using the famous "ya talkin' to me?" speech given by Robert DeNiro from the 1976 classic Taxi Driver I re worked that scene in animation as the original speech was physically very stiff so I loosened it up a bit in this animation.

Tim Minchin's Storm the Animated Movie

2011-11-27T18:11:00.000Z

Boss. This is an awesome bit of animation of a well known comedian that I like kudos! Also the animator Fraser Davidson of fraserdavidson.co.uk animated this, he graduated from NTU studying Graphic Design 6 years ago, pretty sweet!

Three Legged Legs

2011-11-27T18:06:00.003Z

Awesome little animation from threeleggedlegs.com having a look at a lot of their stuff, really like the graphic style and their approach to Animation

Live Client for Heinz

2011-11-27T13:37:00.000Z

My second idea for a live client project is on the YCN awards website. The brief I have been look at is the Heinz Salad Cream brief. The brief is to get young people to rediscover or discover Heinz salad Cream, making is a 'zingy, tangy, quirky' alternative to mayonnaise and that Salad Cream is full of flavour. Target audience being 18-29 year olds.

Idea 1 - This is to have fast action paced shots with people doing different 'extreme' sports like skateboarding and mountain biking. Then it cuts to a person sitting down to have a sandwich with Salad Cream with the slogan something like 'Make it different, make it Heinz' ?

Idea 2 - Setting the scene by a lake in the woods perhaps? Having a few friends or a couple? having a picnic. Then POW a bear comes out all scary!....Cuts to them all sat down on the picnic table having lunch with the bear having salmon with the NEW Heinz Salad Cream, perfect for fish and chicken. For a bit of comedy have one of the people reach out to get the Heinz and the bear growls at them, classic.

Live Client for Spotify

2011-11-27T13:27:00.000Z

On the D & AD awards website their is a client brief for Spotify, an online based music player. The brief being to get people to interact with Spotify on Facebook.

My idea is to have a conversion between the two companies but personify them to have actual characters. Spotify will try to negotiate his uses and collaborative positives with Facebook, telling the facts in a friendly and sociable manner, which it says to do in the brief.

The Facebook character resembles Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, slightly as he has a noticeable appearance whereas the Spotify character will be a fictional made up one as the faces of the founders are not recognisable to the users.

Just messing around

2011-11-26T18:41:00.002Z

Exhibition image contender?

Exhibition Images

2011-11-22T18:15:00.001Z

Just been tampering and tweaking a couple of renders to see which images I want to use in my collection of five images that I can use for my exhibition work.

I'm going to get/make/create a good few and select my favourites, these are my first sample of four.

Red Bull Canimation

2011-11-14T16:59:00.001Z

I made this in just over a week, made it for practice really as I didn't have time to spend on this little side project really...should be doing my dissertation...

Red Bull Confidence from Peri Brandon on Vimeo.

Simulated Client Evaluation

2011-10-27T11:02:00.002+01:00

We had three weeks in which to create anything we wanted for the NTU Alumni project. I decided on creating a short animation with two fully rigged characters. The modelling of the characters took more time than it needed as overall I created three models and after I created my second character and no longer liked my first character so I decided to completely re model my character. Another problem I came up with is that one of my models files got corrupt as in the process I was working on two computers as I made a changeover to one computer so this set me back a while.

It's been a while since I have modelled fully human characters so I had to dust myself off and get myself back into it and you can see from the animation the rigging is off due to my models not being model in a correct and pliable manner. I will need to model more characters and looking into the anatomy of organic creatures more to get a better understanding of how to rig the models better.

As I want to focus more on the character animation side of things in this course I don't think I allowed myself the most amount of time to actually animate. All in all I think I only gave myself about three days out of the three weeks to animate which I know, is just bad time management and is just ridiculous seeing as I want to be more involved in character animation.

Overall I am pretty happy with what I have churned out in three weeks but in future I will definitely give myself more time to actually animate but for now I will further my skills in actually modelling characters.

NTU Alumni Project - Thank you Video

2011-10-27T10:50:00.002+01:00

Here is my final, animated thank you video for the NTU Alumni project.

Script

2011-10-27T10:47:00.000+01:00

Myself and a friend will record the dialogue. This script was mainly taken from the NTU Alumni website but it has been changed slightly in order to work better as a script.

Boy - Hi and welcome to the Jon Van Geest Cancer Research Centre which provides the University's world class team of cancer research scientists.

Girl - Did you know breast cancer is now the most common cancer in the UK. Each year more than 35,000 woman aged over 50 are diagnosed with this cancer and, although rare, men can suffer from it as well.

Boy - The most common cancer in men in the UK is prostate cancer, where approximately 10,00 die from disease each year. It is vital we find new ways to manage this critical disease.

Girl - NTU is widely recognised fgor the quality of its cancer research and it has been identified as being of global significance. Extensive research is conducted on several types of cancer, with the principal focus ion prostate and breast cancer.

Boy - Today, due to the advancement of cancer research, many people diagnosed with cancer have a much stronger chance of survival.

Girl - Your support will make a difference, helping our scientist to continue their life saving research and to purchase vital analytical equipment, enabling us to try and beat this disease.

Boy - We want to take this time to say thanks to everyone for their support and donations but we still need your help so please keep supporting this worthy cause.

Both - Thank you.

Rendered Models

2011-10-27T10:36:00.000+01:00

Here are my models, fully rigged and unwrapped.

They're not the best modelled characters and there are some problems in the rigging as I just used CAT rigs but overall I think they will do.

Sketches

2011-10-27T10:24:00.000+01:00

As I want one female and one male looking scientists I started by drawing some rough sketches to get a few ideas of what I wanted.

Once I had a good idea of what I was modelling and laid out the designs for both the man and female characters.

Simulated Client Proposal

2011-10-27T10:16:00.000+01:00

I am going to create a short animation to say thanks to anyone that has supported and/or donated to the Jon Van Geest cancer research centre. I want the animation to briefly go over some facts and statistics about cancer and to go on to say what this cancer research centre specialises in. I want the animation to have two scientist looking individuals, one male and one female. The animation will be focused on giving brief facts and information about what is happening and just a general thanks.

This video could be imbedded into emails and sent to a mailing list of individuals that warrant a thank you video or even placed into a thank you page on the NTU Alumni website.

Simulated Client Project - Alumni Project

2011-10-27T10:14:00.000+01:00

The first project of this year is our simulated client project. We are given the project by the University and it is about their Alumni Project. The Alumni project is a sector of the University dedicated to keeping in touch with post graduate's to see how and what they are doing a few years after they have graduated from the University. The project brief was very open and it was left up to us to decide what we were doing.

Final Year!

2011-10-27T10:00:00.003+01:00

So it's the final year and it is time to get serious! I got a 81.3 for last years results but I am determined to get a higher grade this year, so lets go!

Design Practice 3, DONE!

2011-05-28T15:03:00.000+01:00

Here is my final animation, I think its ok?

Finished....(this is my rational)

2011-05-26T16:39:00.000+01:00

In design practice 3 I chose to pick the fight scene in the dojo from The Matrix as the script I would work to. The reasoning for my choice was simple, action. My thinking was that, by following this script I would in turn get better animating skills as this is a very action based script. I tried to set out in the mindset that it was the animation and of two characters that I designed that would make this short film a worthy piece of work.

When designing my characters I wanted there to be a stark contrast between the 2 characters. One would be big and strong and the other would be small and seem to be weak, that standard kind of jokey set up. Instead of copying the script to the t, I interoperated in a different way. It is set up in a military base and the fight will between an alien trainer and his human trainee. From this I decided to base the man on a character from the TV show American Dad and the alien would be a run of the mill alien with green skin and antennas.

*head shapes are kind of the same?

I was happy with the finished models of the characters but I soon found out when I started animating that I made a little mistake, the alien character was a little too short for the human guy to actually punch, for example, it would make more sense for the human to just to kick the alien, but either way they did have hand to hand combat in the end, just a lot of bent knees and jumping.

There are 2 scenes in my animation that I got inspiration from. The first one is in the dojo, the first part of the fight I tried to pan and both in animation/movement of the characters to the camera shots of the film to be as identical to the original film as possible, I just thought that this would be a nice way of showing the audience what interpretation I was coming from and then going onto my own choreographed fight scene. The second scene I chose to try to create a resemblance to be from the movie Scott Pilgrim. I chose to do this because I think they had very creative camera angles and very animated and clever shots.

*again, he is so small, why would you need to jump into the air to try to kick him in the head? ha!

Animation takes a long, long time. It is very hard to keep the motivation up when doing a lot of fast paced animation, its slow work but in the end, depending on how well you do the outcome can be very rewarding. I did find that although towards the end of the animation I started to lose motivation for the animation of it, I found it kind of equalled out as I found the animation get a little easier. Patience is really a virtue to have and I gained it after a little while.

I found that working to a pre composed script makes the creation of characters, sets, animation the whole project go far more smoothly than having to come up with your own ideas. I believe that I really need to gain more inspiration for ideas as at the moment I definitely feel like I am not using 100% of my talents due to the fact of my lacking creativity. I have a lot of talent to give, I just need to wake up?

All in all, I really did enjoy this project, I’ve learnt many new things not only in 3DS Max but in After Effects. I wish I was a better editor and better at SFX but practice makes perfect. I am going to try to put some time away this summer to learn and home my skills better, more drawing, more reading, more modelling, more animating and more learning.

Thats all for now, shall keep you posted.

Oooooh, Major Problems!

2011-05-24T11:21:00.000+01:00

I've had Adobe CS3 for a few years now and I don't know what I did wrong or the installer was corrupt but AE keeps shutting down my PC. I doubt its lack of power as I have an Intel 9 processor with 12GB of Ram with a 2BG graphics card in my custom build, so just acquiring a newer version of the software and fingers crossed I get this sorted soon and get back on track!

Outside and Sunny.

2011-05-19T16:05:00.000+01:00

Well the fight scene has now moved from an inside environment to and outside environment which is good but sure is making the comp lag a tad due to amount of objects to render e.g military buildings, trucks, mountains and many others things. This is all ok though as soon the fight will move into an empty mountainous environment for its ‘momentous crescendo’ to this fight, Dragonball Z style...maybe?

Also, the guy in this animation has now and updated, damage, battle style Map ;)

perijames.com

2011-05-11T17:08:00.001+01:00

Been busy lately, not animating (ahhh I need to!) but sorting out my webiste, check it out, this blog and the website both link to each other so all is well.

Sneaky Peaky

2011-05-10T14:55:00.000+01:00

Been animatin a lot recently but it sure is taking a while and is rather tedious but it sure does look good when its does!

Been also playing a lot with post production effects, in after effects no less, as I want to achicve Dragonball Z style destruction when fighting in the desert, just things like dust, explosions etc.

Also, been playing a lot with physics and such in Max and I am liking what I see..

POW!

Environments

2011-05-10T14:50:00.000+01:00

As I wanted my characters to fight both in the dojo and on the desest floor that meant I had to create rather a bit of scenery, but none the less, here they be!

Just a note, I know the environments aren't the best but I wanted to focus more on the animation and making that look fluid rather having beautifully rendered images of crap animation?

The dojo, plain and simple:

Random army base:

Design/artwork

2011-05-10T14:40:00.000+01:00

These are what I want my characters to look like

Not a bad resemblance I'd say

Design Practice 3, POW!

2011-05-10T14:35:00.000+01:00

What I am doing:

Right, time to update this blog, in this and last project of the year I have chosen to interpret the matrix script, the script being a 3 minute (or so) fight sequence from the first matrix (neo: I know kung fu, Morpheus: show me..). In my interpretation the scene takes place in a miscellaneous desert (perhaps area 51? Doesn’t matter) to have that military kind of vibe. Morpheus is now the alien trainer (yoda?) and neo is now Stan (from American dad, kind of, not trying to breach copy writes or anything). The first part of the fight is going to be almost shot for shot the same as the original fight scene in the matrix dojo scene but then after the initial first sparring session I was thing to get serious and for this I shall use not only The Matrix for inspiration but Dragonball Z as well. So after the first minute or so of fighting in a standard dojo, they shall smash through the ceiling and fight in the desert Dragonball Z style.

2010-10-23T15:10:00.000+01:00

Bots and Bananas

Second year, first project, first post of a new academic year.

In this project the general idea is to make a robot slip over a banana with the duration of the video being no less than a minute and no more than 5 minutes, but there is more to that than just what it says in the project brief. This project is more to do with slapstick comedy. We started the project by looking at classic slapstick comedians like Laurel and Hardy, Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton and so on. Looking at these comedians and studying their style of comedy will help later in the animation process of this project.

What makes a good slapstick formula?

Looking at what makes a good slapstick formula will help in the writing/storyboarding of my idea for this project, in class we worked in groups then shared out ideas to the class to try and get a list of words and sentences that sum up a good formula for slapstick comedy, this is what we got; repetition, being in outrageous yet believable situations, the exaggeration of pretty much anything for example violence, timing and delivery is crucial, taking jokes to the limit without crossing the line and jokes that exceed common sense. Having an understanding of what makes a good slapstick joke will make it easier when it comes to creating my plot to my animation.

Robot Designs

From the start of this project I wanted the animation itself in this short film to be fluid and as real as possible, having the animation and motion telling the story. With this in mind I wanted to keep the design of my robot pretty basic, so it would be easy to model, easy to rig and then hopefully be easy to animate.

I eventually decided that this next sketch would be my final design, although there’s still a few things here and there that I will change once modelling it.

Storyboard

I had an idea for my story and I went for it, and when I gave my presentation Andy said that it would work fine, which I was happy with. The basic story is that a cleaning robot walks past a zoo where a monkey has thrown a banana over the wall, the robot picks it up and he’s like ‘yeah!’ Then as the robot is about to walk away another banana hits him on the head, he looks up with an annoyed face, before turning to walk away, but forgetting about the banana peel he slips over and falls to the floor. Un suspecting to hit a monkey hurls some faeces over the wall which in slow motion goes towards his face, before it hits him in the face its goes to black. Finish. With the use of Foley and sound editing I am hoping to make the monkeys an audio character, being one of the main characters in the story but only being there through sound.

More blogging soon!

Moving Image

2010-05-28T14:02:00.001+01:00

This was by far the most difficult project to execute, mainly due to lack of team management. Due to the fact we are all close friends we didn't have a clear leader to it was hard to organise ourselves. We only had our actor, Matt, for two days as he had exams to revise for, which was fair enough, but on our second day of filming we were getting good shots but we needed to get some outdoor shots, this is when the weather took a turn for the worst and we had to do with the shots we had. All in all the edit came out rather well, due to good editing and I really think the sound/audio/music goes with the video very well and sets the scene (I'm not just saying that because I was the audio guy). Matt was a very willing and able actor, and when we did get around to working we didn't work too bad as a group.

I'll will be adding screen shots and the final edit a bit later.

Super Mario Quiz

2010-03-31T11:51:00.000+01:00

Hey hey, well the quiz is almost finished now, just needs to add the final bits and bobs to it. Haven't had much time during this easter holiday as of yet as I've been busy working. I'm pretty happy with what I've created, although I might make some changes to the AS at some point, but for now, have a butchers at my loading screen.

Flash Quiz

2010-03-19T14:43:00.001Z

For my flash quiz I was doing some research into one of my all time favourite games, Super Mario Bros. The only online flash quizzes I found were drab, boring and uninteresting texts and images, answering easy questions with the standard click and go sequence. So my flash quiz will be a trivia game based on the Super Mario Bros. Franchise. I’m going to incorporate many more things into my one than I have currently seen on the Internet such as video clips, animated sequences music and graphics. I’ve got my list of actually challenging trivia questions, time to get planning, sketching, drawing and programming!

Virtual Environment

2010-03-19T13:57:00.000Z

I didn’t really know what my direction for the virtual environment was going to be, but I had a vague knowing that it was going to belong to someone menacing, so with that in mid I started modelling weapons.

I started by using a sourced image from the internet and modelling from that, I would model half then use the symmetry function to make it whole.

I then did a quick UVW unwrap and use the sourced image for the detailing on the gun.

And then did the same process for the other gun

I then created very simple rooms, relying on lighting and texture to give a sense of realism. This, the first room only consist of a simple cabinet, table, a few ‘toxic’ like barrels, stairs and some sort of electricity wires, by adding light I was hoping for an ominous feel throughout the rooms. The second room is far too basic for my liking, it’ pretty much just a circular room with some sort of ornament in the middle, but it is unknown to the viewer what it is. The last room is the lab, full of ‘aliens’ in a sort of cryogenic tube.

Here are the final results:

Evaluation of my own performance:

Although I am happy with my first attempt at a virtual environment, I know I could have done much better. I didn’t push myself, imaginatively or artistically during this project due to my lack of motivation I guess. I know I want to do this next year, so I need to pull my finger out and crack on, so during my spare time during the year and summer I shall go on to create 3D works. Here are some I’m playing around with at the moment,

Peace out, 1x

5 Q's to make someone talk about their development

2010-03-19T13:50:00.000Z

Myself and Kalenn spoke on how this course has influenced the way in which we work, and develop our work. We both came to practically the same answer. Whereas before studying this course we may have been more reluctant to use different software in order to create something, staying within confined boundaries of using software that was familiar to ourselves, but now we use a range of software in order to create something to the best of our abilities.

Practitioner Development

2010-01-17T17:54:00.000Z

Virtual Environments, 3D Modeling - This is the path that I am more than likely to take, not because I'm good at it, but because I'm really interested in it. Comparing to James I have to develop my skills in much different way, most noticeable the fact that I'm pretty much starting from scratch. James wants to go down the interactive narrative and web design route, this is because this is what he feels comfortable doing, hes interested in graphical layouts and web design. Me on the other hand I want to be a 3D modeler. I have been doing a lot of reading and researching, varying from how to tutorials to video blogs and trying to create 3D models myself. Similarities between us is that we both have little knowledge in the specific programs we will be using, so both of us will have to get to grips using and becoming pro's at our specific software.

Wake Up! - Interactive Narrative

2009-12-16T07:29:00.000Z

Right, I put a lot of effort into this as I kinda got carried away in the design process, this is definately the project I got most involved in. I'll Do a full evluation of my work soon, but for now have a look :)

http://peri-jay.deviantart.com/art/Wake-Up-Interactive-Narrativ-146921048#ViewFlash

Pixilation = Drugs.

2009-12-11T12:51:00.000Z

Finally finished! I know its taken me forever to finish this but I've not been up to date with work, but nonetheless its here, I know its a bit cliche but hope you enjoy it.

Interactive Narrative Update

2009-12-10T19:40:00.000Z

Right kids, I've been sorting my life out hard today, finished my pixalation vid, thats uploading to YT right now. The narrative is going well, although its time consuming I like doin it, so thats all good, I'm 541 frames of animation in, I reckon I'm about....half way there give or take. Think I'm doing an all nighter tonight baby!

TEASER

Interactive Narrative - Basic outline

2009-12-09T00:45:00.000Z

Hey blog, I haven't died, just been working on my Interactive Narrative, I'm liking it, but I may have bitten off more than I can chew as I'm choosing to draw all my images, but we'll see. I don't want to give too much away, although the image below does give you quite a big clue of what is happening in my narrative. I will update soon with some teaser shots!

One Shot - Dead Like a Car Battery

2009-11-27T08:40:00.000Z

So after all our drama we finally got a finish version of our one shot, this time we did two versions of our film and copyed it straight to the computer with no drama! The final result is this.

Drama!

2009-11-18T11:39:00.001Z

So after recording an Oscar winning performance with my group the other day it ended up in misery.

As you can see from the picture to the left our footage was eaten my the tape machine! So today we are going to re record our one shot film! To be honest though I'm not too angry about it, its just more annoying really, but hey, at least now we can possibly make it even better!

That 1 Guy - Mustaches - Music Vid - One Shot

2009-11-13T14:24:00.000Z

Ha! I like idea of this, it simple and it works, I know not all of it is one shot, but the parts that are work very well.

Yard Sale - One Shot

2009-11-13T14:07:00.000Z

Found this the other day and enjoyed it thoroughly! What I like most about it is, not only is it a well choreographed piece of film, but I like the continuous cycle it has, which I thought was a very cleaver ending.

One Shot Film - Shoot 1

2009-11-13T14:03:00.001Z

Well on Thursday evening we did out film shoot for our new project, and it went well. We filmed in the pouring rain and was wet through! 'Twas fun! Without letting anything out about our film, our acting was soooo good that a member of the public tried intervening as she thought we were beating people up and we just narrowly avoided her calling the police, Booooyeeah!

Can't wait until we upload onto the computers and start editing!

Stop Motion *un fini

2009-11-11T03:44:00.000Z

Hey gang, basically I know its rather late but hey, better than nothing. So here is my unfinsihed stop motion animation, I will eventually finish it and upload it :)

Basic plot to this if there is any is as follows: Man takes drugs, drugs affect body in numerous ways such as violence, dancing, and time warp. Drugs wear off, drugs hurt body, man dies = drugs bad.

Whooop! Educational!

New Blog!

2009-11-11T03:32:00.000Z

Hey 'tinterweb, how are we? I've never really been a massive fan of all this blogging business, but seeing as I have to do it, might as well to it proper! From now on I shall actually post blogs as well as work!

I'm enjoying this course thus far and am looking forward to creating this 'One Shot' short film.

Peace.

Midnight

2009-11-03T02:35:00.000Z

Is it only me that works best burning the midnight oil? Perhaps.

Whooooo!

2009-10-06T13:18:00.001+01:00

Multimedia begins now baby!