Jingle

Untitled from amy brutton on Vimeo.

For our end of year exam, we were given four days to complete a ten-second animation ending in the construction of the word "Sup" (short form for Supinfocom). Here is mine.

Je De Glace

Untitled from amy brutton on Vimeo.

And here is the finished product. Well, not quite finished, I'm looking to get a soundtrack composed for it, as although I am very fond of Chopin's Prelude to raindrops, having spent so long on this thing, I would really like it to be free of any restricting catches. And there are a few elements of composition and post-production that might deserve some more attention when I have recovered from the initial production in itself, but all in all, it is finished. Thank Heavens. Any comments are most welcome. Please scroll down to see the initial sketches and get a synopsis of the film and stuff.

Work in progress

Untitled from amy brutton on Vimeo.

An untextured, bald version of my wretched dancer. But the essence is there.

Character design

This year's main task is a one-minute animated 3d short on the set theme of dance. I've chosen to translate a young dancer's obsession with her reflection, an obsession which will eventually draw said reflection from within the mirror, and entice it to take on a more concrete form, thus gifting it with ubiquity. As this is a rather psychological theme, I've chosen to leave the dancer unaware of this new presence in the dance hall; her reflection haunts her movements, which become increasingly circular and broken, as it were. Sweeping around her, folding over her, never quite seen, the reflection eventually closes in on it's prey and draws it into the mirror, as the dancer's obsession climaxes and consumes her.

As always when I undertake the design of a new character, I try to base myself on the animal that best suits the specific character's basic traits. In this case, my dancer is a prey, she is vulnerable, and yet I wanted to give her a beautiful delicacy; naturally I chose a doe, which explains the long nose, large eyes, sensitive nostrils and low-set mouth; the ears are the only thing I changed to the original design, because they were too low to my taste, and lacked the alertness which is characteristic for a prey.

Portrait turn of the main character from my 1-minute short

Untitled from amy brutton on Vimeo.

Still a work in progress, the seams aren't perfect (despite a lot of work with the 3d tool in Photoshop CS4, si I'm going to look into disguising them with Bodypaint) but this will give a much clearer feel of the look I want to achieve.

2009-2010 Showreel

Here it is, at long last, my showreel. The front end is all the 3d-stuff I've been working on since September, and the rest is extracts from the two short films I worked on last year, in pencil and watercolour for the one with the lunar shepherd and his herd of luminous sheep, and in watercolour on cut-paper for the one of the little ballerina. I apologise for the image-quality, my computer's been having trouble lately.

Showreel 2009/2010 from amy brutton on Vimeo.

Character Design

Based on an idea for an animated children's programme, we were required to suggest four designs for the main characters, a prim mother and her precocious daughter, shipwrecked on a tropical island, and the man and his son who have already been living there for a while. I drew inspiration from various sources; there is quite a bit of Mucha, in the sharply defined outlines and faded tones. I was also inspired by the early illustrations of Peter Pan and Alice in Wonderland, which were wonderfully intricate in their depiction of flora and fauna. Mainly, I was keen that shadow and substance should be translated through lines and etchings on flat colour, as in Japanese prints. I intended that the island should be in stark contrast with the two female characters, and chose vivid tones reminiscent of Rousseau to really give the feeling that these two are out of place. The costumes set the story in the 1930's, and I decided to give the father the appearance of a faded gentleman, rather than the bearded wildman that might first spring to mind.