Showing posts with label #animation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label #animation. Show all posts

Small and fluffy but with big ambitions

2 October 2012


When you are a child you are taught to look up and imagine shapes and stories presented to you by their various forms. They'll catch your eye as the sun shines through at sunset or sunrise. You can tell the direction of the wind by watching them hurry along like commuters journeying to work.

Clouds come in all shapes and sizes but it's often the small cute ones that claim their fair share of the commercial limelight.

A few years ago I was delighted by the Pixar short Partly Cloudy.



Earlier this year Danny Boyle's dramatic opening ceremony for the Olympic Games 2012 in London gently gathered the audience's attention and interest with fluffy clouds on strings guided around the running track.


Then today, we have the Guinness cloud, who is clearly 'made of more'!



Our desire to personify inanimate objects works particularly well with clouds as they don't share our physical human constraints. Apart from the Pixar short which goes some way to create our own forms in the material of another. I think in a more natural sense their movement conveys ideas more akin to our freedom of thought.

Exciting new things!

9 May 2012

It's always great to work on new projects especially ones where you get to test out new skills and make exciting discoveries along the way.

This is the video I have worked on for gleambook.com and it was great fun to make. Never before has my afternoon's brief been to source the perfect 'ding'.

Working with succinct, well targeted copy helped to give the film a firm foundation. The style and tone of the gleambook brand really lends itself to this type of animation.

You can find the official link with more details on the gleambook blog 



I recommend viewing in HD if your connection can stand it!

A hint of reality

1 June 2011

Recently there has been a buzz around a new way of using a very old method of animation. The good old animated gif has been hauled out from the shadows and given an airing in a fine spring breeze. To find it you need to search for its shiny new name "Cinemagraph" termed so by the animated gifs' re-inventors Jamie Beck and Kevin Berg.

I've produced a couple of cinemagraphs, both from the same source images but using different areas of focus. Subject matter must be chosen carefully; movement of some items/objects you would not necessarily expect can leave your cinemagraph looking a bit odd but if you are going for the poltergeist look then I guess that is fine!

Here are my cinemagraphs, they are my unpolished first attempts but I'm pretty pleased with them.

Firstly, the one with the hair...
and secondly the one with the skirt...

There are a number of other cinemagraphs on the web, do check them out. Good ones can be found on From Me To You and Feel Guide

If you fancy making a cinemagraph yourself them you might like this tutorial by Fernando J Baez.

Animation fights back:

5 January 2010

To start the new year with a chuckle have a look at this short animation. Any Adobe Flash users will be especially amused!

Intricate animation

2 December 2009

I found this today. Totally proves that if you have a great idea and do it properly then beautiful things can be created..

take a look