showing off

I like to think of myself as a very modest person, but I am proud to say that my work has been on show at an animation festivals (Stoke your fires) two years running as well as two graduation shows (i still am not sure why). here are just a few pictures of my work on show.

 this is pipa (yellow figure) on display with others  from Blue Sky's Robots at Stoke your fires. she later featured at Staffordshire university graduation show (one year before I actually graduated)

 these two are from a steam punk animation that I made with May Jowdh and Richard Ackland. the top picture is my main character and the other is one of the background characters i made, you may have noticed that it is based on count dooku from star wars clone wars ( and when i say based on.....).

this is a picture from my graduation show. i made the maquette of the dog that featured in the money tree. the replacement puppets were made by May Jowdh.

 again from the money tree these are the badger bailiffs that i made from foam latex. i animated the one on the right and Tom Grainger animated the one on the left.

 this is steam boy (as well as my steam powered robot), he was a background character from steam pub.

 this shows some of the small detail of the house set for money tree.

 and this is the set in its entirety.

finally this is the woodland set.

to see any of the animations that i have worked on please visit:
http://vimeo.com/user3906252

thank you
alex

work continued

Hello again.
last time i ended with the money tree. here are a few pics from it.
 this was the biggest stop-motion production that the university had seen that involved two sets roughly 1 meter square each. the forest was fairly straight forward but time consuming, but it was the house set that tom (co-director) and i really had fun. we put as many references in as we could. these included a pinup darth vader poster, apollo G poster that has the rocket from "A Grand Day Out" (I still want to make this into a real poster) and pacman pizza boxes. we spent some time putting a lot of detail into the props, even though it would never be seen. an example of this were the bills that littered the floor that i wrote on computer and then shrank to scale.

for full detail of the production have a look at this:
http://tommygrainger.blogspot.com/




this is a steampunk robot that i made in my first year of uni. unfortunately it completely failed as a puppet as you can probably tell but it was my first attempt. i did not mind that much as we never filmed due to time limits. despite its failings it is still one of my favorite creations and has been displayed at Stoke Your Fires Animation Festival. it is made of Styrofoam and bits from the pound shop. whilst i was building this i was also building another puppet and a large transport vehicle (pictured below) as well as help build an exterior pub set at roughly 1/6th scale.

this next item was really my first prosthetic and i made it for my friends birthday. it is my twoface costume. i made it by using a mannequin head as a base. i then sculpted on my likeness so that when i sculpted the prosthetic it would hold some of my features.

i then made a mould out of plaster. then i pasted in some latex that, when dry, i painted. i also added a faint eyebrow using my own leg hair. for the suit i just cut two suits in half and stuck them together (i also sanded one of the sides as some more detail). i also dyed my hair which was a lot harder to do than i thought it would be. i have to say though that pretty much everyone put quite a lot of effort into their costumes. i have no idea how we found time. and only the party boy himself (who went as judge dredd) immersed himself completely into his character, going to the extent of going up to a couple of policemen and proclaiming "I AM THE LAW" at the top of his voice (that is still my ringtone to this day.
i wore this costume again to win 1st prize in a costume competition.

thats all for now, thank you for looking at my blog
alex