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

Monday, February 02, 2015

Smart Made Simple for Weight Watchers

Late last year we worked with our amazing producers at In the Thicket to craft 8 spots for Weight Watchers and their creative team at BMF.

For the campaign we combined a mixture of stop motion and live action using a very stylised and graphic approach to the props and styling. A few of the spots are now live with the rest rolling out through the year.













Thursday, August 07, 2014

Unexpected Collaborations: Sweetfighter process

Earlier this week I posted up about the video campaign we worked on for the University of Sydney's Charles Perkins Centre. As briefs go this was a treasure to work on. The campaign centres around the theme developed by The Monkeys, of 'Unexpected Collaborations', as the centre fosters collaborations across deliberately diverse fields to encourage progressive research and teaching. With this theme in mind we brainstormed ideas using a visual play on the subject matter that would allow us to tell these stories in an engaging but informative way. The concept for Sweet Fighter (diabetes experts working with gaming programmers) was to focus on the theme of balance as it relates to diabetes and the constant need to keep blood sugar levels in check sometimes with the aid of insulin. Balance also tied in well with the other half of the collaboration - gaming - as there's often a sense of using physics and balancing interactions in gameplay.

The end product (view video here) is a series of carefully balanced sets/still lives incorporating fruit, vegetables, sugar and medical paraphernalia. We wanted to continue on the theme of unique insights coming from unexpected collaborations by also including a visual play at the end of the video that would hopefully surprise the viewer and have them question what they were viewing. With this video the mirrored reflection reveals itself to be a whole different world - another nod to gameplay and virtual realities.


We thought it would be nice to share the process behind making these videos as we always enjoy seeing the behind the scenes of other animations and the steps in getting to the final product. Also we had a lot of fun with this project so it's nice to have a record of how it went! For this post i'll focus on Sweetfighter and follow up with Robocrop.

Below are some of the very first storyboard frames created for the pitch. Early on in the pitch process we decided that a mixture of stop motion and live action would be the best way to handle the production as timings were tight. I think in all we had 3 weeks for pre production and shoot (3 days) so a full stop motion production would have been impossible.




It was important that we use as many found 'ordinary' objects as possible but have them behave in unconventional ways e.g. the glowing mechanised plants, bouncing ice creams. Not just thinking laterally but behaving laterally too so to speak. So it wasn't going to be a case of fabricating our props from materials like paper/clay etc like we had done in the past. Initially we thought this would make pre-production simpler. As long as we could source the objects we were fine. But after thinking through the sets (3 alone for the Sweetfighter) we realised how wrong we were. We were going to be dealing with a lot of fresh fruit that needed to be attached together without spilling their guts onto the set, make semi-solid jelly that could be used structurally and figure out how to make ice-cream that wouldn't melt on set and could be manipulated for stop motion.



Luckily the internet taught us how to make fake ice-cream (frosting and a lot of icing sugar) and we had access to Barnes nearby and found jellywax. What turned out to be the trickiest set to make was the first scene and the fruit molecule. We had about three goes creating the sculpture, the first to test the technique of connecting the parts, the second on set for the pre-production shoot to test the rotating base and then on the actual day we had to make it again from scratch. Timing was important so we had a lot of back up fruit raided from the all the supermarkets and green grocers in my neighbourhood plus Paddy's markets. After a near meltdown at one point when I couldn't find a perfectly round and green melon I went upstairs to the supermarket and found the mother lode of perfectly sized round melons. We came home with about 5 and used 0 in the end.

The rigging for the props was one major hurdle especially with the fruit. We thought gluing might work which shows what complete DIY non handypeople we are, but luckily had skewers on hand to spike them together. With clever rigging designed by Mel Pragassen for the spinning hoop (disco ball) and turntable we were able to make the first scene live action.

The next two set ups were a mix of stop motion plates comped together and a bit of live action to capture the exploding balls. With a lot of elements made to look like they are floating in the air rigging turned out to be a bit of a headache! Charlie, Sam and Maricor did a great job on the rig removal. The shaky behind the scenes video of the spinning molecule above and the photo below shows how much had to be cleaned up for the finished video.

So that's how we made Sweetfighter, next up will be Robocrop!


Monday, August 04, 2014

Unexpected Collaborations

We recently completed a motion project for the University of Sydney's new Charles Perkins Centre. The campaign, "Unexpected Collaborations" was developed by Sydney agency The Monkeys who approached In the Thicket to pitch on a series of videos to launch the new research centre.

Working with co-director Mel Pragassen, we pitched a series of videos that would be a hybrid of stop motion and live action. The treatment we pitched back to The Monkeys made use of unexpected materials and objects such as bouncing ice-creams, fruit molecules, buttons and mechanised plants to visualise the innovative and progressive nature of the centre which brings together experts from wide ranging fields.

We were stoked to win the pitch and the following three videos are the product of 3 long weeks of pre-production, testing , a 3 day shoot and post. The three stories told are Universal Similarities (biologists working with astrophysicists dir. Mel Pragassen), Sweetfighter (diabetes experts working with gaming programmers dir. Maricor/Maricar) and Robocrop (farmers working with robotics experts dir. Maricor/Maricar).

We also worked on the design and build of the props for the two videos. Unlike our previous stop motion animations for this project we worked with mostly 'real' items such as fresh fruit and flowers which was a new challenge but thoroughly enjoyable. In the next few posts we'll share some of the process we went through making the props and how the videos were developed.

Wednesday, December 14, 2011

WIRED Magazine 12 11

Hello, we're back! We touched down in Sydney a couple of weeks ago and have since then gorged ourselves on summer fruits and catch ups with friends and family. We're in between studio spaces and rentals but have managed to set up desk spaces at least. It's funny how having even a bit of space to yourself helps you feel settled.

It's been a while since we posted regularly so we have a few projects to share that we'll post about steadily. Firstly we can finally share an embroidery we created for WIRED magazine's December issue which we completed around June. It's for the features introduction page and includes the numbers 12 and 11. For iPad users this embroidery is animated too as a nice little bonus. The piece took about 185 hours to complete. A huge task as the whole surface was covered with needlework and while we were embroidering we were also capturing photographic stills to build the animation.

There were a few changes to the final embroidered piece, colours were changed and tweaked. Once it was completed we realised that the 12 and 11 got a bit too lost in the pattern so we swapped in a few more red tiles into the mix. Normally we would have unpicked the tiles and sewn in the new colour but as we had animated the piece as it progressed this option wasn't feasible. Instead we digitally tweaked the colours frame by frame.

We were lucky our apartment was high up or else neighbours might well have wondered why our windows were boarded up. The makeshift studio we set up at one end of my bedroom needed to be completely blacked out for the photography. A bit of a shame we worked on the piece right in the middle of the London summer, we hardly got a chance to enjoy the sunshine.


Thursday, September 01, 2011

Summer/Autumn and "Back to the Start"

There's now a chill in the air and the blazing sunsets we've come to expect have faded away to ones
that are grey, white and pale. Brrrr, luckily we're going to skip the northern winter and will be home in time for summer in Sydney. We realised we have less than 3 months though before we head back so we're cramming in all the things we kept putting off: galleries, museums, cafes and curiosities. We jotted them all down and each week we have a lucky dip. Our fist pick was the flower markets at Columbia Road where we enjoyed a leisurely Sunday of people watching and flower hawking and came away with a chili plant and some thyme. But not as successful, was our trip to the Natural History Museum. We got diverted by heavy rain and a sea of children to the bedlam that is Harrods on a wet weekend in London. Some things I learnt that day – avoid museums during the summer holidays especially on a weekend, Harrods is crazy and somewhere I need not visit again and I'm very picky about my almond croissants. Since then we've had trips to St Bride's Printing Library, Victoria Park, Brick Lane Sunday Markets, Rough Trade and No Brow which have all been a lot more exciting.

Below are some of the goodies we picked up from the No Brow store. Everything We Miss by Luke Pearson, Flesh and Bones: A Colouring Concertina by John Sibbick and Rise & Fall by Micah Lidberg. A place you must visit if you're in London, No Brow are independent publishers that work with graphic artists and illustrators to produce exquisitely tactile printed works. They have a show coming up in September that looks like it will be pretty awesome. Masks is an exhibition of works from Ben Newman and it opens on the 15th of September.



And lastly here are some stop motion animations that have blown our minds lately. Johnny Kelly from Nexus Productions beautifully crafted stop motion animation "Back to the Start" has just gone live. There's a behind the scenes here and some production stills from the shoot.

And a classic animation that we were introduced to at LIAF, "Hedgehog in the Fog". Stunning, mesmerising and so technically brilliant.



Monday, April 04, 2011

London Calling


So long Sydney, we're sad to say goodbye but hello London!

We arrived early Tuesday morning at around 5.30 and after 24 hours flying thank goodness we opted for a cab transfer from the airport. I doubt we'd have made it to our friends' place otherwise. The flights themselves were pretty good but any extended period of time suspended in halfway time between your old timezone and your new one is always disorienting and exhausting. On the second leg from Hong Kong to London we somehow managed to score first row seats which meant we had extra leg room. I felt a bit guilty though. Since we're small asian girls we were in the least need, especially as there seemed to be a whole fleet of giant rugby fans/players crammed in nearby.

Our first week has been a mix of work and exploring.. sadly more of the former. We sorta nerded out and made sure we hunted down an art supply store, fabrics and craft store and grocery shops nearby. No denying where our priorities lie :)

On Saturday we checked out a couple of Markets around east London. I scored a rope necklace at the new Designers Markers Market and we ogled the beautiful food (and people) at Broadway Market. We're hoping to find a rental nearby since the markets are so amazing. I miss living in Newtown and it feels somewhat similar, a cross between Newtown and Surry Hills.

This week we have a commission to finish that's been keeping us from exploring more. I shouldn't complain about being busy but it's a bummer we're stuck indoors. Oh well we'll just have to sew like crazy :)

Maricor and I have also put up a massive update on our site. The full series of embroideries from our Turns of Speech & Figures of Phrase exhibition is up as well as the latest Global Village artworks and an illustration we made for Anorak Magazine's Food is Fun series. We are also proud to share our latest animation that we created for British Council Australia. Together with Republic of Everyone we created an animation to help launch Big Green Idea, a great funding initiative by the British Council. We worked on it before we flew out and had to multitask more than usual for this project. Making the props, rigging, lighting, camera ops and post production. It was a bit of a stretch at times! Although it was a busy two week we had a great time working on it, coming up with the cute paper characters and learning new techniques.

Thursday, March 17, 2011

Non-stop stop motion

We're very excited about the latest project we've been busy working on which will go live very soon, in the meantime here's a sneak peak. A paper based stop motion animation...in two weeks. No tag teaming on this one, all hands on deck!

Monday, November 15, 2010

Pinching Ourselves

The last couple of months have been pretty awesome for ca and me when we thought it couldn't get even huger, BAM, something comes up which makes us pinch ourselves and wonder if its all for real. The nominees we're announced for Plus Camerimage 2010 and in the music category sitting amongst the big names Lady Gaga, Gorillaz, Fever Ray, Florence And The Machine, Eminem and UNKLE et al is our clip for Murder By Death.

Plus Camerimage is an international festival dedicated to cinematography and our animated clip for Murder By Death's "White Noise" has been nominated in the music video category and to say we're chuffed is a huge understatement! We're excited just to be amongst great directors and to have our work seen by the jury.

Other things that have happened this week include; meeting one of our creative heroes, Deanne Cheuk, missing out on a SOYA award but huge congratulations to the winners and all the finalists, taking part in the I Can Draw You A Picture: Re-Building lab at LiveWorks, getting an ass-whooping in Scrabble, taking down our group exhibition ABD6 and parting with some favourites and enjoying a day in the sun at the Newtown Festival.

Capture the Fade Photography Exhibition opens at the Paper Mill Gallery this Wednesday and guest judge Bill Henson will announce the overall winner of the competition. Congratulations to our friend Gene whose work will be exhibited and good luck for the anouncement!!

One last thing for this Monday's post, ca and I have started work on our next series of type and thread pieces, below is a sneak peek. Oh and since ABD6 has finished up, the unsold pieces will be put up for sale soon on our site, we'll keep you posted.

/co

Tuesday, October 12, 2010

Bingle Car Insurance

The paper project we mentioned a few weeks ago has gone live so we can finally share more details about the job - a series of stop motion Bingle car insurance tvcs created by Scott Pickett from the Jungle Boys. Co and I created the 2d paper elements working with the super talented Benja Harney who created the 3d paper sculptures. My favourites are Benja's car, co's driver and customer rep scene and the Sales Department building. It was heaps of fun coming up with the different characters. The most nerve wracking part was drawing on top of Benja's lovely creations, we didn't want to screw them up!

Here's one of the five animations, and some production shots from the shoot.





Monday, September 27, 2010

Almost beach time!

The weather has turned and i'm pretty confident I can pack away my winter leggings! I'm really looking forward to summer and having friends over for dinner parties and cult movie nights.

We finished the paper props we were working on last week. Hopefully the TVC will go live soon so we can show you what we've been up to. It was a really fun project and to top it off we got to work with Benja Harney of Paperform. We had blogged about his work after seeing the Pop Up Alphabet Co Op show at Object Gallery so we were really excited to work with him. We hope we weren't too fangirl!

Oh and we probably should have posted about this before it happened but the UTS: Sydney International Animation Festival ran over the weekend and the embroidered Architecture in Helsinki video screened as part onedotzero's Craftwork program. We also entered a short animation into the MAKE IT competition run by the CIIC.

And the last bit of news is that Co and I have been shortlisted for SOYA in the Visual Communications category. We're keeping our fingers crossed that we'll make it to the finals as we are huge fans of Deanne Cheuk who will be the mentor. Her mix of art direction, typography and illustration has been a huge influence for us, so to be able to meet and get some much needed advice would be awesome.

Phew that was a long post...

Tuesday, July 06, 2010

Oxygon Animation

MaricorMaricar and our friends Michael Blanche and Sam Hoh have made it to the second round of Graphic Festival's animation competition with out animation "Oxygon". Oxygon is the story of two lost cosmonauts and their misadventures in space. Thanks for all the support for our clip, you can watch the first instalment here.
We're working hard on part 2 of the series, its another 20 sec animatic continuing on from the last animation. As part of this next round we need to get a Facebook group up and running and get as much people behind the project, so please help us and join our group. Here is the link for the profile, we'll be posting up a video diary and process work as well as some random bits of inspiration along the way.

Friday, June 11, 2010

'Blerg' IdN magazine 100th issue + Australian Edge interview

The stop motion animation we directed with Michael Blanche is finally finished! We didn't want to jinx it in case it wasn't finished in time for the deadline but now we can say what it's for. We'll post the final animation when the issue comes out.

Also co and I have an interview up at AustralianEdge. Thanks Clayton and Duncan!

Sunday, June 06, 2010

A new animation

We've got a new animation in the works, it's a stop motion one with miniature sets. We're experimenting with a few techniques with lighting and lenses and we've done all the animation in camera. This piece is a joint collaboration with co-director Michael Blanche and our super talented friend Becky Freeman aka Sui Zhen is providing original music.

We're just putting the finishing touches on it so in the meantime here are some progress shots. The process has been interesting and to describe it as hectic would be a huge understatement! The turnaround for the whole project has been 2 and a half weeks but we're all chuffed with the results.

co/













Friday, June 04, 2010

Murder By Death "White Noise"

Here is the finished animation for Murder By Death's "White Noise", the band were awesome to work with! We had fun with some stop motion in this video but the majority of it was created in After Effects using hand drawn graphics, built props, bleached chicken bones and bits and pieces we scavenged from our garden and our clothes.

Murder By Death - "White Noise" from MaricorMaricar on Vimeo.

Tuesday, May 11, 2010

WIP - "White Noise" music video

We've almost finished our latest project, an animated music video for Murder by Death's track "White Noise". The band have been awesome to work with, they came up with the idea for the video and asked us if we would like to work with them after they saw our animation "Say Hello to the Ground".

These are some style frames for the animation and I've also posted some photos from the mini stop motion shoot we did. Thanks Michael for building us an amazing animation stand!

/ca

Thursday, February 04, 2010

'Songs to Make You Smile' by Justine Clarke

Animations created for Justine Clarke's 'Songs to Make You Smile' album and dvd for 'Creatures of the Rain and Sun', 'Doin' It' and the single 'Dinosaur Roar' while at Mathematics. Visit our vimeo page for more animations for 'Imagination, 'The Witches' Ball' and extra animations created for the DVD release.


Justine Clarke - 'Creatures of the Rain and Sun' Songs to Make You Smile from MaricorMaricar on Vimeo.



Justine Clarke - 'Doin' It' Songs to Make You Smile from MaricorMaricar on Vimeo.



Justine Clarke - 'Dinosaur Roar' Songs to Make You Smile from MaricorMaricar on Vimeo.

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

ABC Playschool - "If All the World Were Paper' animation


If All The World Were Paper from MaricorMaricar on Vimeo.

Paper animation we directed and animated for the ABC's Playschool while at Mathematics.

Architecture in Helsinki - 'Like it or Not' video



Music video sewn and animated whilst we were at Mathematics. It was inspired by the work of Megan Whitmarsh and the imagination of Cameron Bird.

The video was featured in IdN as well as onedotzero's 'Craftwork' programme 2009!

SBS fund raising promo



SBS promo video animated whilst at Mathematics

Justine Clarke 'Songs to Make You Smile'

We created the following videos for Justine Clarke's second DVD release 'Songs to Make You Smile' while at Mathematics. The design package also included the DVD cover and internal artwork as well as the DVD menus, bumpers and credits.

Art direction, illustration and animation for 'Imagination', Creatures of the Rain and Sun', 'Songs to Make You Smile', 'Doin' It', 'Witches Ball' and DVD menu and credits by Maricor and Maricar. Animation for 'Dinosaur Roar' by Maricor and all live action directed by Mathematics.

Animations will be posted up soon, in the meantime here are some stills from the videos and the album art.