Amoebas- Stop Motion Animation with Water Droplets

Here is a stop motion animation that I did for my animation class. Kenny Mcaffee helped me out on a lot of it. It was sort of experimental and I had no plans for it to turn out the way it did, but I'm glad that I was able to create "characters" (sort of) from drops of water. It was super well received in my class. The students were generally impressed that so much could be done with just water droplets.

My next project is Puppetry. If anyone has an idea for a cool 30 second film using puppets of some sort, I'm all ears.

Rikki Tikki Tavi - Concept Animation

I've been wanting to adapt Rudyard Kiplings amazing short story from the Jungle Book, Rikki Tikki Tavi. I quickly realized it would be really difficult to do it live action. So as I started looking into options for animation I kept having this vision of a completely monochromatic visual component that makes the foreground and the background blend.

At about this same time, I signed up for an animation practicum course here at BYU, taught by Ryan Woodward and Kelly Loosli. The class focuses on experimenting with animation (the medium and the content). So this is the result of my first dabblings in Flash animation.

2 experimental components that I was after: First, in making the process simpler and more unique, I was interested in seeing how many lines I "didn't" have to include. Thus my characters body parts are not connected but individual shapes moving together and our mind almost automatically fills in the blanks.

The second experimental component, is that I animated the whole thing with a mouse. For those not too familiar with Flash, animators use a tablet and a stylus that lets them "draw" by hand, on the computer. Its pretty cool stuff. But I chose to not go that route and instead designed my shapes like a graphic designer would, using Adobe Illustrator and bringing the shapes into Flash to animate them. I think the result was a sharp edged, sort of "toy-like" result with the movements and shapes.

Villains - Halloween Movie

Here it is. Villains -The Rexburg Idaho Halloween Movie from 2010.
Part 1


Part 2


Part 3



For the past few years, since all of us guys got home from our missions, we've had a lot of fun spending an exorbitant amount of time sewing, gluing, and mounting a costume. Comic book heroes and villains have been our main focus. We;re a bunch of comic-book nerds, what can I say.
This years specialties were Nightcrawler and Hobgoblin, both made by Troy Parson. (Jordan Parson wore the Hobgoblin). Troy is the master at making these costumes. He spends more time and cash than most of us, because he sees it as more than a hobby. And seeing how we spend so much time making our costumes, we wanted a way to make an enduring memory of it. So, we make movies in our costumes--Thus it is called a "Halloween Movie"

This was definitely our most ambitious movie, as compared to previous years. It was all shot in 2 days. 1 scene here in Utah, and the other 13 in Rexburg. It was intense and a run-and-gun sort of production. Everyone who is in the film also doubled as crew, which is awesome. A lot went wrong the day of as well, cast members dropped out, costumes lost at the dry-cleaner... but somehow it came together. Hope you enjoy it.

If you have yet to watch a video on my blog -- MAKE THIS YOUR FIRST!!!

This is an amazing animation, by Ryan Woodward. He is one of the professors here at BYU in the animation program. He has worked as a storyboard artist on many big movies in Hollywood. Check out Ryan's website. http://conteanimated.com/

This animation is beautiful and emotional and somewhat tragic. For anyone who has woken up the morning after breaking up with the girl (or boy) of your dreams, you know how this feels and the animation captures it amazingly. There's a particular moment, when the boy wakes up a second time and his limbs turn into heavy clay that he can't get off the ground--its just astounding what animation is capable of conveying visually.

The words from a Pearl Jam song (Nothing Man) come to mind while watching this video. "He caught a bolt of lightning, curse the day he let go..."

For further information on the making of this video here is the documentary that accompanies it.

Thought of You - Making Of from Ryan J Woodward on Vimeo.