WHAD DA HELL IS BROCCOLI ANYWAYS?

Latest  - another week done and dusted at One Little Indian Records, I'm getting used to it more and more and settling in which is great. I'm getting better at the HTMLing as well, which initially I didn't like but I understand it a lot more now, at the end of the day it's a great skill to have on board as a Designer so it can only serve me well. 


AVA music vid is coming along bit by bit, I've done just over 1/3 of the scenes, (definitely the easier scenes) from now on it's gonna take a little while longer to do these detailed scenes - one includes the band in 'vulture' form running into a forest, another jumping into water.


Some other news too, it looks like I have another 3 month internship lined up after this one I'm currently doing! I'll say more once it's been confirmed.


And HEY look at THIS!

Free coloured 7" vinyl from work. Lovely jubbley. If only I had a vinyl playing machine (?) to play it on, but for now, it will do a great job spinning on the nib of a pencil for me while I 'sing' the songs. Yeah!


In relation to the title of this post, I've been told I'm a bit late on this one but if you haven't seen it already, it's the funniest video I've seen in ages:







See YA!


Jamie

Hallo.

I always say this when I haven't posted in a while but BOY HAVE I BEEN BUSY.
At the beginning of the week, I started preparing for the hand drawn element of my music video for Avenge Vulture Attack. After a few trial and errors on Flash, the digital/stylus approach was stopped as the aesthetic that came from it didn't satisfy me at all, it looked very amateur. Hand drawing the whole thing onto paper came to mind but I soon decided that was a silly idea and that it could quite possibly kill me. So now, I've gone for a whiteboard/marker technique, a technique which is slowly getting more and more popular within the stop frame animation world a la the Kristofer Strom adverts for Carphone Warehouse. He's been around for a while, look at some of his older vids, he's mega cool.
With this approach, instead of a white board I'm using my white desk, it's fine and durable to use, but might get a bit smudgy. 
I got all my materials I needed so I could start first thing Friday (today).


I started my 3 month internship as a Digital Designer at One Little Indian Records on Tuesday. I was really excited about starting this, even though whenever I start/work somewhere new I'm quite reserved until I'm settled. But nonetheless, I did get into the swing of things quite quickly. I'm currently doing various updates on the bands Myspaces, as well as doing little bits and bobs for Joe Howden the Web designer there and I'm even getting to do a kinetic typography animation for a promo video for a brother/sister band which is cooool.
More to follow on this, but so far so good, working Tuesday - Thursday and I get travel expenses. Only thing is it's in Tooting Bec, so a good hour through rush hour morning and evening. Waaaa. Shock to the system after being out of routine and work for a while.


So back to the music video - today I started the animation for AVA and without speaking too early/jinxing myself, it's going really well. I've done 4 scenes out of 26 that I need to do (I'm leaving the hardest ones till last). But good progress all in all. Here's a low quality photo taken by my laptop of my set up:

You can't really see the camera, but it's on top of the tripod which is almost at 90 degrees. My back is killing me! But I do have enough space so it's all good, may need more pens as I'm running out already.


Hopefully I'll be able to do a few drawings soon to put up on here (and to have a break from working ever so hard).


Smell ya later.


Jamie

It's a new year so that must mean um, new posts..

Firstly, Happy New Year.

Secondly, Hello.

Today was my own official 'Back to work day' too. In the form of the music video I'm doing for Avenge Vulture Attack. I spent most of the day colour correcting and editing all 738 photos I took of them just before Christmas, which was made a load easier with Adobe Bridge and being able to do multiple photo edits at a time. You rock, Bridge!

That was simple enough and was done efficiently.

But the rest of my day, I was kindly reminded why I tend to stick to my practical and hand drawn ways. In my ever lasting, 100 year battle with technology, it didn't go very easily. I first set out to see which software from Flash, After effects and Premier Pro would work best for this project. And each, individually, crashed, moved things around, insulted me, called me girls names and refused to work in any way I wanted it to.

Admittedly, I haven't used any of these softwares in the best part of 10 months (except Premier Pro, which is more like 5 months) in favor of doing lots of drawing since I've relocated home. So initially it was a case of "UGH WHAT ARE YOU DOING THAT'S NOT SUPPO-oh balls, I am doing it wrong aren't I? My bad." 

So you could even compare it to when you jump back onto a bicycle for the first time in years, it just takes a bit of practice to get back into the swing of things. And then you can crash everywhere you like!

Tomorrow will be more productive. But I did manage to tickle After effects the right way eventually for the last part of my draining day, producing this VERY SMALL preview (below) for one of the scenes I'm doing. It looks okay, obviously needs tweaking with frame rates, positioning, etc, bit of everything really. But a step to the right direction.

Very basic test. from Jamie Kyle on Vimeo.

TTFN

Jamie

Eyebrows Cat #5

Meowy Christmas!


Jamie

Avenge Vulture Attack Music Video.

Hello Hello.


Action packed weekened! I'm currently doing a music video for the band Avenge Vulture Attack at the moment, I'm doing a cross between a hand drawn animation and a stop frame animation. This weekend we did the stop frame animation part which was fun to do, but very tiring. Especially as the snow kept challenging us on the Saturday like an annoying little brother (a cold one at that, maybe the type that flicks your ears when they're cold).

(All photos haven't been edited by the way)
Above, the guys are getting their make up and hair done. Over Saturday and Sunday it took between 2- 3 hours each day to get ready, which seems long but considering it's 3 guys and a gal getting their make up, hair and clothes done, seems about right. Especially as we were up really early on both days.

Here are some 'action' shots of the shoot. We had fun with it and that's what it should be about. If we tried to be too serious with it, we would risk coming across as cheesy or trying too hard and ultimately it will backfire on us and we'll be the laughing stock of the whole music world!! (Okay not QUITE that bad, but it wouldn't be nice for either myself or the band to look cheesy!). Overall,  a lot of fun in the cold snow and I'm aiming for the hand drawn animation that accompanies this will portray the same tone.

Group shot! (L-R clockwise) Juss - Bass, Ella - Vocals, Jenny - stylist, Lee - Make up, Ben -drums, Drew - Guitar. And myself right in the middle.


All in all a fun weekend but ever so tiring. I took a total of 738 photos, which will be just over a minute's worth of footage. Going to be fun to organize!


That's all for now folks.


Jamie