First things first, for those of you who think that Uni is ALL spare time, it isnt, and let me explain. The spare time is filled up with socializing / drinking / eating badly.. Oh and studying. So I do not have as much spare time as I used to, so new blog posts may be few and far between.

I started Uni a week ago and so far it is pretty cool, living away from home is just what I wanted. And what better city than Liverpool to do it in. Liverpool is such a great city. I am at Liverpool John Moore’s University studying Foundation Computing… Which is pretty lame because I know everything already. They put me onto this ‘Foundation’ course and said something about ‘getting the right grades’ or whatever. I originally applied for Computer Animation and Visualization, which sounds like an epic win course to do, for a guy with my interests. BUT DO NOT FRET I am able to pursue my interest in animation whilst doing this course simply because this foundation course is easy. For example, todays lecture consisted of finding the Help function in Microsoft Word, writing a paragraph and Justifying it, then creating a table. Fun? I think not.

Pictured from left to right: Me, Laptop, Microsoft Word.

And guess what, I seem to have made something quite cool:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XmyW5RYfz_k]

I have been inspired yet again! After mindlessly browsing YouTube, I found something of meaning in amongst the countless videos of pointlessness. His name is Patrick Boivin and he is a very talented film maker and animator. So watching his ‘making of’ clips showed me a few of the techniques and made me realise I am missing a few important ingredients for animation.

One of which is a camera mount / track / Toy car.

I needed something the camera can attach to, and that something had to have wheels of some sort. Ended up using a Playmobil car I found in the loft, and a scrap bit of metal (probably from ikea). Couple of screws, some super glue, and ta da, here’s what I made:

Close up of the screw that the camera attatches to

Cool eh, and what else do I need but a Green Screen:

Ok…the green screen did not quite work out the way I had envisioned it, but the camera mount works a treat.

I think I might have to use a green T Shirt, or something fabric to make the colour true…for my printer is shit.

Now maybe I can get down to some serious animation!

I have been let loose with a drill and some screws!

This time I decided to make a stop motion camera rig, out of old shelves. After seeing animations such as Muto on YouTube, I wanted to have a go myself. Well here it is:

The screw that the camera attatches to

Dusty

Now all I need is a whiteboard. Using paper would be ok too but I would need to use alot of paper, 12 pieces per second of footage actually (12fps).