Sumo Science

Ed Patterson & Will Studd are an award winning directing duo, specializing in different forms of animation. Together they are Sumo Science, their aim is to create a fresh mix of styles usung elements of stop-motion, puppetry, 2D and live-action. They are currently represented by Aardam Animations and have directed a range of commercials for clients such as Innocent Orange Juice, Weetabix, kP. Hellmans and Nokia. Their biggest success to date is for Nokia with the film 'Dot'. The spot went on to win 15 major advertising awards as well as claiming a Guiness World Record for the smallest stop-motion character in a film. It has become a huge success online with nearly 3 million hits. And lastly they have finished another film for Nokia called 'Gulp'. This film is currently enjoying rapid success online and has claimed another world record for the largest animation set. So here it is 'GULP' Enjoy!



Gulp. The world's largest stop-motion animation shot on a Nokia N8. from Nokia HD on Vimeo.

Limerick Exercise

Today was an interesting task, it was to create an animation but from a Limerick, we had to story board the limerick that we was given. You had to be careful because you had to make sure it kept to the Limerick and was in time time with it, otherwise it would be out of sync. Our Limerick read "There was a man from Peru, who wanted to live in a shoe, a size 6 was to small, So he went to the mall and now he has nothing at all" We had to draw each frame on the storyboard hand out, the first frame was obviously a drawing of a man, followed by the Peru flag behind him and then some mountains. After the introduction we then added in a shoe which he lived in, but it was too small, so we had to draw him hanging out of the shoe. Well you get the basic idea of what we had to draw. It was to just some up the Limerick through Drawings which will be turned into an animation soon.

Blu Research

Blu - His career broke out in 1999, thanks to a sequel of graffiti painted in the centre suburbs of bologna. In the early years of his career technique and budget was limited to spray paint, the typical medium of graffiti culture. his style emerged in 2001, when Blu started working with house paint, using rollers attached on top of telescopic poles. This solution allowed him to increase the painted surface area and convey a stronger intensity to his visual style. Huge human figures sometimes dramatic or sarcastic looked as if they were from comics or video games. They started to flood the streets of Bologna.

The following year, from october 2006 to december 2006, he returned to central and south America for a long circuit of murals that included Mexico City, Guatemala City, Managua, San Jose and Buenos Aires. A year later he was again in South America, in Sao Paulo, Brazil, participating in the festival "A Conquista do Espaco (conquering space). On that occasion he came up with a new interpretation of the c"christ of corcovado" of Rio de Janeiro. In Blu's version Christ is literally submerged by tons of guns and rifles. In the spring of he lived in Buenos Aires, devoting all his efforts to the creation of a video called Muto (Silent). In addition to receiving many international awards, such as the Grand Prix 2009 from the festival of Clermont Ferrand, Muto has been seen by 7 million-plus viewers on Youtube. It is also available in high definition on Blu's website under the creative commons license. The video is composed of hundreds of paintings on walls, made throughout many steers of Buenos Aires and, Frame Creates more than seven minutes of an animated mural.

In 2009 Blu started his umpteenth tour around South America visiting Bogota for the festival "Memoria Canalla" then to Montevideo, Uruguay, and back to Buenos Aires and for the first time to Lima, Peru, where he painted the entire facade of an historical building in the central Avenida Arenale. In Tis Huge mural Blu seems to reinterpret the history of South America, a continent that has been violated by both ancient and modern conquistadores, Blue has visited North America only twice, and the only notable trip was in 2008, when he accepted an invitation from the Deitch Gallery in New York to paint the exterior of ther Long Island Location.

Bouncing Ball Exercise

The Bouncing Ball Exercise, Today I made a flip book of a bouncing ball, I had 31 pages to fill so I started to draw the Ball. I traced the bottom line from a booklet and then copied it from page to page, this means the line in which the ball with bounce on are all the same and straight. Once I had done that I then drew in the key frames which were pages 1,7,12,19,25 and 31, these frames help me draw in the others. I then drew all the motion frames in which the ball would bounce. Once I had drawn all 31 frames I then added a shading below the line so that it looks more realistic. Once the flip-book was complete, I opened up I-stop motion and took 35 shots of the booklet, 1 of each page and then 4 of the end page so it isn't too short and looks more realistic. I then played it back and it was animated. I then took it into final cut and copied 4 times so its a constant animation and finally I exported it as a Quick Time file and uploaded it to vimeo. So here it is! Enjoy.


L3-YR2 NATHANIEL - BOUNCING BALL ANIMATION from Long Road Applied Media Diploma on Vimeo.

Creating My Card Animation

Today I watched Jan Svankmajer famous animation 'Darkness by Darkness' I found it very interesting and different because it had so much to take in. I then created my own short animation of some cards coming out of a tin and moving around and going back into the box. I tried to make it in the same style as Jan Svankmajer. I used I-stopmotion to create the animation, I took 12 frames per second and then I had 18 seconds worth of footage so thats 216 frames altogether. The technique to make a good animation is to take lots of frames and to move the object  slightly with each new frame. I then took the footage into final cut and added sound to the footage to make a more sense of realism. I then played around with the brightness and contrast to make it look more dark and old like Jan Svankmajer's style. It was quite hard to make the cards flip over because I couldn't do it in small steps, so it had to be one motion of a flip. But in the end it looked fine. Once I had recorded the sound I rendered the video and exported it as a quick time file. And then uploaded it to Vimeo, So here it is.