final version

This is the newest, and the last, version of our movie without a name. There are still some flaws in it, like the position of the moon, but I think we did a great job considering the small amount of time we had. Also we had to communicate by email only.
Anastacia spend the last evening finishing the sound and I think she did an amazing job! I think the sounds really adds a lot to our animation.
I'm really glad to have worked with Anastacia, think it was a good match, and I like the final result. In a few hours I'm off to England to meet her, and all of the other Norwich students, looking forward to it!

end titles

try out for the end-titles for our animation. It's not finished yet, but the most important part (our names!) is finished.

first 19 seconds

this is my part of the animation, well the first 19 seconds of it... This is the greenscreen version, Anastacia will put everything together. For our first 10 seconds of combined animation, please visit her blog.

lola sleeps_seconds 10-14

posters

seconds 05-10. Due to bad keying, it's a bit crappy

Visuals

After brainstorming about Ideas, Anastacia and I also brainstormed about the Looks. We decided to work with nice structures in the background as well. This are two visuals, the day and the night, there can be made some changes. In the movie underneath you can see day and nigh switch. Done really quickly, After Effects has abonded me...
Actually used the tree from Anastacia's weblog, because she is in charge of the Tree.

quick animation test with shifting backgrounds

rough storyboard

really rough storyboard about our new idea. Will put textual explonation on my blog later on. See above for more refined pictures of our new idea

New Ideas We Had To Make Up

Anastacia and I were working hard on our ideas when Anastacia's classmates and tutors stood quite suprised when they saw our idea and Anastacia's lovely animatic. (click on her blog to watch it) They thought it was a bit rude... well, maybe a bit more than just a bit. I didn't thought of it that way but anyway, all of a sudden we had to change ideas. A brainstorm session held yesterday night by Email resulted in a less rude, good, idea which is created upon a idea from Susie and suggestions from Chris.
This is my first sketch of our new movie. This is a splitscreen of Lola and petrol pump (PP for friends) both using a pool. Pp uses his to make it filthy, Lola uses her to drink and wash and have fun. While PP destroyes the nature further and further, all nature dies and eventually Lola and PP meet eachother at the same pool. Lola swallows petrol and chokes. PP want to make up for his mistake and pumps the pool clean. After some more brainstorming Anastacia suggested that we don't use spitscreen, but a natural boundery instead, like a tree. She is good with trees. See her blog for her quick sketch.
So, our new idea is not about being funny, but a bit more about saving the world. Quite a change! For the good, I suppose.

Storyboard test

Anastacia and I have been brainstorming about ideas over the mail. This is one of the possible outcomes. I tried to make a storyboard using the images of Anastacia's blog and my Lola. But the body language and detailwork are not quite done yet.

Lola runs!

Lola made friends!

Last Tuesday we had a online meeting with the Norwich students, both sides using a web cam and a skype connection. After a lot of hello’s and how are you’s? We started to match our characters. I got a match with Anastacia who has created a petrol pump character. That will probably go very well with a sink elephant… I wonder how it will look like when they meet, maybe something like this?
Anastacia, can you email me?

Lola's first animation (test)

Lola, the character

About Lola,

She is a very friendly elephant. However, she is very clumsy. Well, she is big, so I think it is to be understood. If she walks (limps swinging like crazy) she sounds like a rusty tap finally sprouting water.

If you turn her ears she can spray water out of her nose, teeth and tail. It is never to predict from which source she is going to spray.

Wednesday: lola comes to life

This time you can clearly see that Lola is made out of a sink. She is still not quite finished. I received some useful suggestions from my classmates and Christa. I really want to change the eyes and I need to think a little more about the structure of the body. Right now that is made out of the bottom of my sink. However, you can't really tell that.
I'll hope to finish Lola as soon as possible.

For the animation I want to use the digital cutout technique. If you want to see some examples of my 'normal' work and a little piece of cutout animation, please visit my other blogs. You can find the links on the right side of this blog.

Well, here she is: Lola the second:


Lola the first:


The naked facts about Lola:

Tuesday: the creation of lola

Sometimes when I look at my sink I swear I see in elephant. With pictures I took from my sink, I tried to create an elephant. The pictures in this elephant were too dark to be recognisable as parts of a sink. Although I do like the shape of the elephant, I will continue to make a more recognisable sink elephant.

Monday: character workshop

From Monday till Wednesday we were thought by Christa Moesker (the creator of Sientje and many Dutch sesamy street movies) about the do's and don't of character design. On Monday she let us draw some characters. These are my first sketches.
I didn't like them enough to use them as animation characters.

Introduction

Saskia van Gelderen, 4th year animation student at the St Joost Academy, Breda, Holland, is the creator of this blog.

Here you can find my progress in the Norwich project, although the people from Norwich probably call it the Breda project. In this project my character Lola will meet a character from a Norwich student. This can happen in a short animated movie or a series of very short animations. The interaction will completely take place using the Internet. In November we, the Breda students, will go the Aurora film festival in Norwich. There we will finally meet the Norwich students. Our movies will be shown in the Academy of arts in Norwich.