"The Art of Listening"

I have a sound bite that i am going to make a short character animation from. I will be animating in Flash, this is because as well as wanting to develop my model making skills, i also want to develop my 2D skills. I do illustration work in my own time and i want an exercise that will keep me drawing in a certain style. And of course, it doesn't hurt to know how to do things outside of your practise....


Sound file i have is a man talking about snow falling. First i got a little farmer man (he has a west country accent) but then this little owl came through. A little barn owl, and i thought; well they do have good hearing and that...

i thought it would be more interesting if the owl was a hybrid of a man and an owl, so i did a few doodles...

I tried drawing this guy out a few times in different poses an din flash but the scraggily feathers are too much to redraw and as I'm not a flash pro i want to keep the design simple.

After a few more experiments i came up with this:

I've kept the clean lines and silhouette that barn owls have. The first set of ideas was too scruffy for a barn owl. This design will be nicer to animate i feel.

I'm going for a similar look to Simon's Cat by Simon Tofield. 

from Simon's Cat, Tofield, 2009

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Owlbert lives in a hole in a tree. He likes to observe things, and is very good at listening. He can hear anything from mice whispering to snow falling. He's a warm hearted little chap who likes the simple things in life.

I have been watching videos of owls and how they move while when stationary. They move little but when something catches their attention they turn their heads it sharp, swift movements to listen. I found out an interesting fact about barn owls: their ears are positioned one slightly higher than the other so they can find exactly where the source of sound is coming from.

For this project i will use flash cs4 or cs3...it is black and white line...will need to practise flash animating...

Exploration and Development

SO... here i am. Tiny bit at a loss with what to do for this next semester.

Exploration and Development into my practise. What is my practise, what do i want to specialise in?

So far i know i want to make models. I want to make puppets. I've decided that for the personal brief we have to write that I will explore different casting technologies (they say to only pick one area: armature fabrication, casting etc). I want to know how to cast hands, faces, textures in different materials. I can apply  methods and materials to different sorts of puppets with different functions: stopmotion or theatre.

This is my hope any way.