Projects

Here, I have a section for my miscellaneous, non-Crumbs, projects, either from college or from my spare time. These projects were all done by a brief, the majority of them giving me guidelines I absolutely had to follow but also giving me some amount of free rein so that I could be creative. In the early stages of learning animation I found this a huge help as it meant I could explore the medium further, and help me get into my course and get ahead.

CURRENT PROJECTS

COMPLETED PROJECTS

The Great Experiment: Big Draw Campaign For Drawing

My first brief where I worked in a group to produce a short animation as work experience. We had to animate a story worked on by a teacher and her students about a scientist that accidentally created a robot, footballer and skateboarder hell bent on destroying the world. My job was to change some character designs and animate the robot and little Timmy (who you may recognise from stretch and scare), as well as voice him.

The animation is complete but can't be uploaded until it has been screened. Watch this space.

Jax and Jinx

This was my very first exploration of animation. I volunteered to do an Extended Project, that would give me an AS level that I could use in my qualifications. At this stage I wanted to go into animation but didn't really have any experience so naturally I jumped at this chance. The project was completely free rein, I could do anything I wanted so I planned a 10 second animation featuring my two mutant cat characters, Jax and Jinx. Nothing too impressive here, just a quick scene of the two characters, Jax walking in and licking himself and Jinx chasing a ball of goop. This was done using Paint Shop Pro and Animation Shop 3.

Still Life

This was another experiment to gain animation experience. The brief was one out of a possible three or four I could have chosen. As I was looking for any means necessary to use animation, the one brief titled 'Moving Pictures' kind of made the choice for me.

Inspired by Sam Taylor Wood's photograph series of fruit decaying, I decided to try my own attempt, recreating a still life scene that gets eaten away. Much friendlier in terms of keeping the house smelling nice... not to much on my stomach.

At this point I had Photoshop Elements so I was 

able to use this to touch up the photos. Animation Shop was used as well.

Walk Cycle

Well technically this is a run cycle. As I never did the original walk cycle the way I wanted (and because I lost the original file) I can only upload the finished file. Basically what it says on the tin, a quick scene of my Underdogs character Ruby running. I will expand on this movement when I begin production on one of my mini pieces, Have a Nice Autumn. As a stand alone though, I'm happy with the overall movement. It's fluid and natural enough. The head stays in place but only because I had her focused on something as she ran. This was done using Photoshop to animate and colour and Illustrator to lineart the character.

Not a Drinker (Loop)

Here we have the very rough version of my loop animation, where we had to take photos of someone doing an action that could be looped and animate a character doing that. I couldn't actually choose between two sequences, drinking and eye spinning so I decided to do both and tie them together. The sound effects were all stocks I found online to make the actions in the scene even funnier. However, I definitely want to redo this one with the colouring style I have developed and maybe make the animation even funnier with more random sequences and exaggerated expression and movement. As for this scene, each frame was hand drawn and Dragon Stop Motion was used.

E4 Ident- Little Red

This was our first brief for a client in the year. E4 has an ident competition every year where they ask people to create idents for them. This was the perfect chance to learn how to work for a client and see how our work develops when more demanding guidelines and deadlines are involved. As far as my projects from the first year go, this one is the one I am most pleased with. 

The idea for Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf characters all came about when I was looking at previous characters I had designed to get ideas, as I knew I wanted to use character animation in the sequence. I also thought that the idea of 'everyone wants a piece' would be perfect to advertise the channel, with Red and Wolf fighting over the basket of E4s. It's a cliche but it's a cliche that works.

The scene of Red kicking the wolf in the nuts was purely for the shock and entertainment factor. It would certainly make the channel memorable. I mean come on, how many little girls have kicked a wolf where it hurts before? Lil' Red is one tough cookie!

I'm considering redoing this someday, mainly just to reset the art style and change the execution of a couple of things but ultimately this still remains to be one of my favourite projects.

It was also a chance to explore advertising too. Check out the posters underneath. I'm quite happy with how they came out.

Pixellation Experiment: Musical Chairs

In our second year, we took a couple of hours out of the day to work in a group to experiment with pixellation. Basically stop motion but using people instead of objects. We came up with the idea of making the chairs move away from everyone when they went to sit on them. It doesn't make all that much sense, we were all just having fun with the task at hand really.

Especially with the bowing at the end. I don't even remember why we did that. Some sort of evil musical chair cult or something.

The music is from the Magic Roundabout opening. I can't hear that tune without thinking of this. Dragon Stop Motion was used to shoot the scene. 

Stretch and Scare (Little Timmy Development)

This was for a module where once again we worked in a group to make a B Movie. We decided pretty much immediately to make something revolving around nazis. After more discussion, we decided to create a public service announcement telling the world about the evil giant monsters that the nazis are making and how to defend yourself against them: Stretch and Scare.
A little boy named Timmy was created by yours truly to be the cheesy little cartoon mascot for the message.
This project was certainly interesting because everyone in the group were skilled at various things. We had some 3D elements, some green screen effects, traditional, it was really good fun seeing everything come together the way it did.

Underneath, you will see the coloured animations with Timmy's movement as well as a link to the finished piece.

Finished piece Stretch and Scare: http://www.emmafriel.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/ta-daaaa.html

MTV Flower Ident

This was for another group project. We were once again working on idents but this time for MTV. As I had been away the first week of production I wasn't involved with the initial development much in this project but  I caught up fast and helped plan how everything was to be executed. The part I spent the most time on was collaborating with Ashleigh to create a flower that would explode into the MTV logo. Done with Photoshop and Illustrator. Ashleigh did the vines and the slow purple to green transformation.

Pictoplasma Yeti Contest

This was an entry to Pictoplasma's Yeti contest, where we designed our version of the yeti. I wanted to make mine a very cartoony version of the ones I saw last year, pie eyes and all. Sadly it wasn't included in the show in Paris but regardless I'm happy with how it looks. It's certainly worth a mention at least.

COMMISSIONS

Caricatures

Here we have the caricatures I have experimented with, some of which have been pieces for clients, others a quick experiment and one that was a final piece for a life drawing marathon. I don't think there have been many Friends With You life drawings. I wonder why that is...

I'm alwas up for a caricature, if you're interested hit me up and we'll talk wonga!

Cocktail Hour Posters

The two posters (so far) I have created for my friends radio show. I'm basically their go-to person for this type of thing. I like the simplistic design of both posters, the first featuring an object rather than a character and the second featuring cartoon versions of the hosts. And the colour really stands out from a black background. I just always think black and colour with this show, not entirely sure why. Either way, it works.


Card Designs

 

Just some card designs I've done. I plan on doing more of these for the various seasons/holidays/celebrations/so on so expect this to keep growing.



PROJECTS ON HOLD

Oddco Toy Brief: Crumbs Collectables

We were given a brief by someone who works at Oddco to create a design for a toy and present said design to the class. I decided to take the opportunity to market my animation/web comic series and create a bunch of collectable plastic pigeons that were based on the characters, with more to be designed as more pigeons were introduced into the series. If the design is approved, the toy will be made.

30th April: Design accepted! Now to begin designing. However, Paul (the man from Oddco) gave me the idea to, if I were to take Crumbs away from the toy, market the toy as a tourist collection of british characters and stereotypes, which is something to consider once I have completed the design.

2nd May: Project lower on list of priorities until portfolio work is handed in and 3D work can continue.

31st August: Project on hold for time being. Unknown what is going to develop at this point.

Anyhow, these are my side/college projects so far. Expect this to grow and expand as time goes on and I have more and more to add. I hope you've enjoyed looking at these. Thanks for visiting!

~Emma