Extracts from the latest Horse + Bamboo production 'Little Leap Forward'.
This is the short film I have been working on over the last week or two. Now that it is complete I am looking at starting work on the next Horse + Bamboo production 'Deep Time Cabaret'. I will blog more about that soon but for now you can check out the progress of the whole project on the Deep Time Cabaret Blog
Last Thursday Little Leap Forward opened at The Studio at the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester. My family and I managed to make it up there for the show and I must say it was brilliant!! I absolutely loved it. After being involved with the production for the last 6 months it was great to finally see it all come together. The story is told so well that I felt myself become immediately involved with the main character Little Leap and felt very emotional at particular parts of the story.
This was the first Horse + Bamboo production I have seen performed live. The mixture of a masks, puppets, shadow, music and film all worked so well together. It is amazing to know that there were only 4 actors playing all the characters. I have never seen anything like it in my life and I am really looking forward to seeing it again when the tour stops by nearer to home.
After the show I was lucky enough to meet Guo Yue. The co-author of the book Little Leap Forward and the man whose childhood this story is based on. It was the truths of this story that really touched me and helped me understand some of the things that went on during the cultural revolution in China. The show highlights some really important events which happened in history as well as telling the story of friendships and the importance of freedom. I think it is an excellent show for children to see as it is very engaging and would encourage them to ask questions about history and what has been going on in other places in the world. I think this is very important as it seems the vast majority of children today seem to only know about what is going on in the present. I recommend this show not just for children but for adults too... it is an excellent piece of storytelling, visually brilliant and definitely worth seeing.
If you want to catch the production it will be in Manchester until the 13th June. You can see other tour dates on my previous blog post.
I am so grateful that I was given the opportunity to work on this production and can't wait to see what will come next from Horse + Bamboo Theatre.
So this is what I have been working on for the last couple of months. This film will be projected as part of the opening sequence of Little Leap Forward. It is quite difficult to see the detail on here as I had to shrink the film to fit to a standard format. I think it works a lot better when it is being projected. Once the production begins touring I will hopefully be able to film the projections which I will then post online.
28 May - 13 June - The Studio, Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester 16 June - The Rose Theatre, Ormskirk 18 June - Wolverhampton Arena 20 June - Sherman, Cardiff 25 June - Salisbury Arts Centre 27 June - Croyden Clocktower 28 June - Pavilion Theatre, Brighton Dome 29 - 30 June - The Carriageworks, Leeds 2 - 4 July - the egg, Theatre Royal Bath 8 July - Garforth Arts Festival 10 July - Unity Theatre, Liverpool 11 July - Clitheroe Grand 12 July - Square Chapel, Halifax 15 - 17 July - the Boo, Rossendale
My time working on Little Leap Forward has come to end. I put this film together last week to give everyone a sneak peak at the production process. During my visit I was able to see the set fully constructed as well as handle all the puppets and masks (all which have been beautifully made by Alison). I came back from watching rehearsals this week and I must say everything is looking great! The masks and puppets are now pretty much finished and being able to watch the actors and puppeteers putting the show together was brilliant. We tested the animation and film sequences together with music and the end sequence in particular looked great! I am really looking forward to the opening night and can't wait to see the production!
I have pretty much finished ALL the animation for the Little Leap Forward sequence now. :) I just have to finish it off and clean up some of the frames in the bird sequence. I don't want to post the finished piece online yet... not until it is completely finished and the show is on tour. Which will be from the 28th May :) It is such a short sequence and I think it works a lot better when it is projected.
As well as working on the clean up I am also about to start work on editing together a short collection of footage and images showing the making of the production. I haven't done much video editing before so it should be interesting. :) I have a nice piece of music to edit to written by Loz Kaye (the composer and musical director for the production).
So I have been struggling with the birds the last few days and I thought I figured out how I was going to add the details to the wings and then realised that it wouldn't work that way etc. etc. So I spend most my time today hunting down free softwares. I actually came across quite a few open source 2D animation software. I will probably write about them another time as they all looked rather promising.
Eventually I came up with another way to add the detailed wings... It wasn't the way I originally planned to do it but it looks okay so far. I think that with a bit of clean up and tweaking it will look fine. Here is a screenshot from what I've been working on today.
I think I am on schedule with Little Leap Forward :) Should have the whole thing finished in a couple of weeks time. I am really looking forward to seeing it intergrated into the final production. ^-^
Apart from that I haven't been up to much else really. I am planning a re-design of my website in the next few months though which will be very fun. :) The last version was put together in a bit of a rush before my grad show so I am really looking forward to be able to just sit down and design. I will also be re-decorating my bedroom / studio starting in May. It's pretty cramped at the minute with minimal storage so a fresh start will be nice :) It's all about the changes right now, very exciting! :)
So I have just arrived back from H+B where I met up with Bob, Jonny (technician) and Loz (musician) to look at and test the film and animation sections for the production.
I am extremely happy to say that the projection tests went brilliantly! :) I am really pleased with how everything looked when it was projected. The biggest surprise was that the water background hardly needed any effects added to it as it looked perfect for projection. :)
Here we were trying to get the film to fit on the screen. The main problem we had when I first arrived was that the film was too wide. Because I was working exactly to 720x576 a lot of the film was being cut off the sides. Another problem was that the projector was tilted and positioned quite low down which was skewing the image quite a lot.
We managed to overcome these problems by: 1) Moving the projector higher to decrease the skew 2) Changing the width of the animation and adding black borders down the edge. The whole thing has been slimmed now and it fits perfectly! hurrah! ^-^
The main section of animation is pretty much completed, all that is left on that section is to tidy up the animation and add all the details. I then need to animate a single bird for the end sequence which will merge with Bob's film. I am looking forward to this as my schedule is a lot less hectic from now onwards. This means I can put all my efforts into finishing it off and perfecting all the tiny details! :)
I have been having a few set backs with the bird sequence. As it is the opening section I really want it to be perfect and I was just not happy with the way it was looking. So yesterday I decided to redraw all the bird body shapes. This means that the bird sequence won't be looking very finished for the projection tests but this should be okay. There is still another month left until these animations need to be completed.
The dragonfly and fish sections are almost complete. Over the next month the main focus with those two sections will be the water and adding the paper cut details. I have some water footage already but I need to find some kind of effects or re animate it completely to make it appear painted... I have a few ideas at the minute but can't put them into action until I have completed this section with the birds.
Here is a very early animation test I did of the bird flying. I plan to create something similar to this for the final animation but with more wing shapes.
I also thought I would share a couple of links with you.
This first is the Little Leap Forward Production Blog. Which I have recently discovered which will have updates on all aspects of the production.
The second is Guo Yue's Official Site. He is the co-author of Little Leap Forward and who the book is based on. On his site you can read about the other books he has written and his music.
I have a busy weekend ahead with my other job and helping out at the AMEF workshop so I probably won't update again until sometime next week. :)
I am slowly getting there with the Fish :) I have got the movement down and am now adding the cut out texture in Photoshop :) So far I have just the face, going to start working on the scales over the weekend. ^-^ I have lots of things I want to post about but have so much work on at the minute that it'll have to wait. But yes, I will soon be filling this blog with many things other than my own work. :)
I quite enjoyed myself this morning drawing out the riverbank design :) I have missed drawing the last few months. I really want to start life drawing again... going to hunt for some classes in my area. Until then I will just have to draw from the things around me. So watch out if you're near by! ^-^
I still need to add the wings for the dragonflies and some more colour on certain parts however I think the movement of them is pretty much complete. :) hurrah! It's just the keyframing of the wings that will be quite a long, slow progress so I will leave that to work on later.
Tomorrow I think I am going to start animating the basic movement of the fish. :) I'll post updates as a progress.
The Norwich project continued to run over and I pretty much finished my work on it in the middle of last week. I think there are only a few more small things I need to get done. It is a shame really as I would have liked to spend more time on it and get to animate a few of the other characters. However I really couldn't sacrifice anymore time as it had already run over far too much.
The positive thing about this is that I finally can put my head down and concentrate on Little Leap Forward. This is actually an EXTREMELY positive thing considering the animation needs to be ready in two weeks for projection tests.
So I have begun work on the bird sequence and am now concentrating on the dragonflies. My aim is to get down all the timing and basic animation for each section complete over the next two weeks. I will then spend the time after that touching it up and adding colour. Here is a quick screen grab so you can see what I'm up to. :)
I finally moved my butt this week and deleted the crappy old shelf from my room and installed a lovely new work space. As my latest project is going to require lots of paper cutting and hand drawn animation I needed somewhere to put my lightbox. I decided to add some flowers as my bedroom was beginning to feel a little bit too work placey :) Luckily I found some pretty tulips all ready for the Easter period. I'm actually really pleased with how the desk fit in as I was slightly concerned it would cramp my room even more. I really enjoyed my first evening working there ^-^ I also pulled out the old calander file again from uni to create a nice strict schedule for me to follow :)
So as the Norwich project ran over it has been keeping me pretty busy this week. I haven't actually had as much time as I would have liked to spend on Little Leap Forward. I did however manage to grab a couple of hours the other night to cut a dragonfly design and stick it into After Effects. I did a quick wing cycle test but I don't want to post anything up yet until I'm 100% happy with the movement. (below is a colour preview of what it is going to look like.) I actually cut the papercuts on animation paper this time instead of straight into the red stuff. I found it really easy to cut and they came out so much more delicate than the ones I cut last year. I think I am going to have to invest in some much thinner red paper.
Anyway I'll leave this post for now. I am feeling pretty tired and have to work this weekend in the shop. o_O Earning money is good but having no days off is not. Aw well, it has to be done! :) Good Night
I have been busy the last couple of weeks so haven't had a chance to work on this project until today. I am currently trying to get the design of the bird right and then plan to animate a short wing flap cycle.
New Bird Design based on the puppet which will be used in the production.
I'm going to working with Bob Frith on the animation and film for this production. My main focus will be the animation. I am currently working on a piece to be used at the opening of the production featuring birds, dragonflies and fish which will look like Chinese paper cuts. At the minute I am working on the designs for the bird so I thought I would update with a couple of sketches I've done so far.
I have recently come back from a visit to the Horse and Bamboo Theatre where over the next few months I am going to be working on some animation for use in their production of a story called 'Little Leap Forward'.
The show is based on a book which tells the story for Chinese flute-player Guo Yue and his experiences growing up in Beijing during the Culturual Revolution in the 1960's. There is actually an interesting video on You Tube with an excerpt from the book featuring photographs and illustrations from the book. The illustrator Helen Cann really created some wonderful images for this story.
So a little more about Horse and Bamboo. They are a theatre company based in Lancashire and work on productions based centrally around story-telling and music. Their productions are made up of a mixture of puppetry, masks and film. More information on their work can be seen on their website. Although I have been unable to see any of their productions I was able to watch a DVD of the production 'In the Shadow of Trees' and I have never seen anything like it. I don't have much experience with theatre but this show had a certain charm to it and the set and mask designs were wonderful. If you ever get the opportunity to see one of these shows I would highly recommend it. I can only imagine seeing it live is 1000 times better than a DVD. 'In the Shadow of Trees' is showing throughout December at The Met Arts Centre in Bury.
This is turning into quite a long post so I'll leave it for now. I will update with some more information on the animation I am going to be working on for the 'Little Leap Forward' production soon.
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