Box Legal link

Here is a link to my entry for the Box legal animation competition. I read the suggested script the other day and it was MASSIVE! Alot going on and a whole lot of voice overs, way too much for the 2minute maximum they set themselves. Hopefully they'll like my simple take on things, hopefully it will intriege its audience to look these people up to see what they do exactly, instead of give them too much info and put them all off. Maybe....... but I've done it now,
Wish me luck, first prize is £1500 and a contract to do a second advert!
http://www.vimeo.com/26668448

Box Legal

I have recently been using my time to enter a few animation competitions. This competition is for a company called Box Legal, an after the event insurance company, used to cover lawyers if their clients case looses and they cant pay. Or at least that's what I gathered from their website. Well I decided to play on the name box, and thought I would go for a good vs bad angle. Starting with an evil jack in the box, a man has a nasty surprise but luckily he finds the good box legal box and is covered and everything is happy!
Here are a few pics. You may recognise the star puppet as Barney from The Money Tree.
I need to do the sound editing so I'll post the finished thing when I'm done and let you know if i win the £1500 prize money! and a contract to make a second ad. Annoyingly when I exported my film from Stop-Motion Pro 7.5 it but a thin black line through every frame! And I don't know how to get rid of it, short of photoshopping them all out. I cant re export it because the studio is at uni in stoke and I'm now down on the south coast, hopefully they'll see past it and I can sort it out later after the summer. Any helpful tips on avoiding said lines would be useful!

Graduation

Yesterday marked the end of a very big chapter in my life. I am no longer a student as yesterday was my graduation. But I wasn't alone, along side myself and my fellow animation students there was one man that was bestowed an Honoury Doctorate of Staffordshire University, and that man was none other than Mr Barry Purves. Awarded this honour thanks to his work with the university, I was lucky enough to be among the students Barry worked with and he has always been an inspiration to me. Working with Barry was awesome and graduating with him and my class was even better. I Wish everyone graduating from Staffs uni this year the best of luck for the future and hope everything works out alright for them in the end.

Staffordshire University's Degree Show

This is for all of you who couldn't make it to my end of year Degree Show at Staffordshire University. This was a show of all of this years graduating students from the Arts, Media and Design courses. Roughly 300 students had their work on display altogether, but here are some photos of the Animation cohort's work, including my own.
I would like to say a massive well done to everyone who is graduating this year, we've all worked so hard and I think it shows in some amazing pieces of work.

Badger Bailifts

Original maquette for Jack the Dog that we attempted to 3D scan but failed

Replacement Jacks used in The Money Tree

Steam Punk Puppets made for an earlier project by Alex Young

The star of The Money Tree Barney

Arabella, the star of my previous work, 'Feathers' watch her here: 

http://www.vimeo.com/17889728

3D models of characters from the CGI film Robots, from Blue Sky, mine is Aunt Fan, the pink one.

Unlucky duck from Abi Lloyds thriller crocodile film http://www.vimeo.com/24045193

 Here are a selection of photos of the work from the wonderful Emma Bulpitt and Sarah Lawrence, 'The Full English' was a really cool film, watch it here:
http://www.vimeo.com/24161583

This master piece is a life size robot made from bits of lego and wood, by the very talented Sam Edwards

These cheeky chappies and their uptight PE teacher are from the hillarious film 'Detention' by Ashley Lightfoot and Richard Cheung, really nice subtle animation in some parts, you must watch it:
http://www.vimeo.com/24128080

And taking pride of place at the show were the two sets from my final year film The Money Tree. My team and I had to dismantle them and carry them half way across campus to set it up for the show, but it was worth it to see everyones reactions when they came to see it and saw the detail and scale of the piece. Well thats the best bits of the show, once again, if you haven't seen my film The Money Tree yet, go and watch it now!
http://www.vimeo.com/24213370