Animation: Music Video

So, along with the short films, I'm also animating a music video for my Media course. The song is my own, and it's called 'Medication'. It's about losing yourself, and trying to find what you're really capable of. That there is hope, that life isn't a set of repeated events making it's way into limbo... *sniff*...

Anyway, here's a little clip from it.

Film: I'm a Director now!

Sort of. For my A2 Art project I'm making 6 short films over the course of the year. I've got the ideas down on every one, and finished 2 scripts. The one I'm to film soon is entitled 'Butterfly Brains'. The short is about a group of girls who welcome a newcomer into their group - Michelle. Once this newcomer starts to become more involved within the group, more truths are spilled, and the girls' true colors start to shine.

Here's a poster!

Animation: E4 - E Stings - Cake

E4 had a competition going for a 10 second clip that they would show in between shows. The prize for the winner was £5000. So, stupid old me, who only learned about this competition 4 hours before it ended (Yep, that happened) decided to spend those 4 hours animating this little diddy.

     I panicked way too much when making this, going 20 minutes close to the deadline before I had to wrap up the thing. Oh well, I'm not as proud of it as I could have been, but I may as well post it here anyway.

Animation: In The Backseat (Behind The Scenes 2 - Storyboards + How I do what I do)

 Here are the storyboards I do when I plan the next scene of the animation. VERY rough drawings and directions and camera angles, you know, professional stuff.. *cough*. Can you figure out what's going on in each one? Because I can... sort of.

Animation: In The Backseat (Behind The Scenes 1 - Characters)

As this is my first actual 2D animation, I thought it'd be appropriate to first template all possible angles of the character 'Bert' so I could simply draw a background to any template, and animate on top of him. So far it's worked out okay, but I may have to draw out some new templates. The easiest way I thought of doing these angles was by creating a 3D model of him in some simple play-dough, and taking pictures. Here's what it looked like:

Animation: A Few Shorts For A Talent Show

Nothing much really, just something a friend asked me to do for their schools talent show. To be projected at the back of the stage as they perform their bit (Mainly to distract the audience from the crap performances, what? Her words, not mine).

 This one has the balloon sequence on a loop, the scene previous to the Big Ben was a countdown to new years (Then the performance started)

Animation: Plan For The Summer

2013 will be a busy Summer for me this year, I have 3 major animation projects I want to do, plus my bands EP which is about a quarter of the way done. The names of the 3 films are as follows:

• In The Backseat
• Medication
• A Day In The Life

The first 2 feature songs from the EP (win win situation). The third I've decided to keep quite for now (Mainly because I only have a rough outline of what it actually is... what? Don't judge me..). 'In The Backseat' is already up and running with progress, I'm about a minute in on that, out of a possible 5 minutes.

Will post already finished work on 'In The Backseat' soon 

Illustration - 1: 'Red'

(Old Stuff) Stop Motion: Origami

     Thought it'd be fun to make a Stop Motion animation of origami animals coming to life in my attic..... yep.. for my final AS Art piece. Overall, I think this took 3 months to complete, I can't remember. I also know that it doesn't look it, but I had other work piled up on me at the time.


Final AS Art Project: Stop Motion Origami from Tom Bates on Vimeo.

The Process:

(Old Stuff) Stop Motion: Ben Heine Inspired Short Film

(Ben Heine)

(Ben Heine)

     This film was made during my AS year in Art at school. Heavily influenced by artist Ben Heine, I decided to take his ideas further and attempt a video take on the style. Although rather sketchy and messy, I think the final piece came out better than expected. Here's the link to Ben's website

The Process:

1. To film the initial video, I used my iPod to record the POV in front of my face, ultimately leaving room for my right arm to complete the actions.
2. The piece of paper was quite simply a hollowed out piece of paper with 2 pencils stuck on the horizontal and vertical sides to add support
3. The video was then split into frames (around 500 I think)
4. The frames that I intended to animate with were thrown into Painter 12 to fill in the white of the paper and the drawings, giving the illusion that what you see is, well..... actually happening.
   Ben Heine Animation from Tom Bates on Vimeo.
   
   (Pencils stuck either side to support weight... am I or am I not a genius)
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   (A cut that didn't make it, one of the segments had my cat in it.... sorry, cat.. )
   

Introduction: A Little Bit About Myself

Hello!

My name is Tom Bates, I live in Kettering, Northampton - UK. This blog is to showcase the entirety of my work/process regarding 2D Animation. Although I may post an odd Stop-Motion film now and again

I do not attend a specialized Art/Animation school. All of my work is created at home.

I also create the music for every film I make. Songs that you may hear, for example, my first project - 'In The Backseat' is from my band 'The Blind Lights' EP, also entitled 'In The Backseat'.