The Title of My Last Post Goes Here.

So I suppose with the animation done, this will be the last post that I will make. I hope that you have enjoyed watching my progress these last 10 weeks. Be sure to check out my other blog for some arts and stuff.

Alex Barrella.

Last Meower

Watch Full Size

Finished

I'm all done with my little animation! I'll upload it sometime thursday.

Status Report

Currently I'm just under 4 minutes into production. This Puts me on my handy finishmometer right about :
Here are some stills:

My Only Prayer: Candle With Pear.

So I got farther into my third minute over the weekend. I need to flesh out my Dreamy sequence a little more, to figure out how to get him from laying on the floor to the warehouse where (the sequence) ends. Animating is much easier when you're using stills, so hopefully this minute will be done quickly.

Sir, I need just two minutes of your time.

I've now reached the 2 minute (rough to semi polished animation) milestone.
If I had a progress bar, it would look something like this:

Leaps and Bounds

Working over the weekend, I am just now reaching second 100 on my animation.

here are some more production shots:

Bars, Steps and Walls.

So far I've got just over a minute of rough animation. which includes some animated guitar strings, a breaking shot glass, and climbing steps and walls. I'm starting to get into the groove of drawing the cat now.
Here are some stills from thus far:

Progress Update

This weekend I started working on the actual animation. So far I've got 49 seconds roughed out, hopefully putting me on schedule so far!

Animatic

I threw this together last night so I can get started right away on the actual animation.

Enjoy

Cat Designs

Here are some designs I've been working on for the suicide cat.












I decided on the brown cat with the tuft of hair and the fluffy tail for my character, so expect to see a lot of it.

Premise Expansion

I've been bouncing ideas off the inside of my head while listening to the song my final animation is set to (Last Hour by Extreme) and I've come up with a few new things I can share.
I already laid out the premise of cat killing itself repeatedly and generally just going down a path of self destruction. Some added concepts are each of the 9 cat-ghosts building up a full band over the course of the movie, so it would end with an almost full ensemble of cat ghosts rocking out on their little instruments by the last lives.
Just some set pieces:
-Death situations: jumping off of top of tall building, gun to the head, violin(tennis racket?) factory, hanging (with idea put in the cats head by one of those inspirational 'hang in there' posters).
-Cat ghost totally shredding a guitar solo on a harp.
-Beginning fools viewer into thinking a street performer is singing the song, is soon reviled to be the cat.
Because the song is such a long one (5 minutes), a simple art style will be needed and the pacing of animation will be pretty slow. This does however tie in with the somber nature of the song.

In other pre-production news, I've been drawing lots and lots of sad cats. I've got a basic idea of what I want but I'm still tweaking those, I can post some sketches online later tonight.

Lip Sync

Lip sync test from in-class. Minus sounds but plus spiderwebs.

He's got it bad. He's hot for jinkys.

Walk Cycle

Here is a slightly annoyed looking guy walking in circles.

Men never ask for directions am I right ladies?

Here is the walk without color and in place.

Rotoscoping

Rotorscoping exercise one: Walk cycle of a man in darkness. 

He appears to have someone on his tail.

I hope he knows there's someone behind him.

Rotoscoping exercise two: Louie Louie.

Cut Out Animation

Cutout exercise number one: Freaky clown-spring guy overcoming great hardships and jumping several feet. What a feat!

Cutout exercise two: Doe, a deer, a boxing deer. 

Ball Bounce

Here is my bouncing ball, complete with surreal background.

Doodle Blog

I added another blog for flash drawings unrelated to any

projects but that are done in class. Hopefully this will keep 

this blog to actual projects/production stuff while still being 

able to share the little shreds of flash art that I do between

actual classwork. Anyway, the link is on the right menu bar.

The Current

Over the last week I've been working on the premise and character design for the final animation assignment. So far the idea is an animated music video of sorts to prepare me for my senior project which also is a music video.
The concept is a cat, grief stricken over the loss of the love of his life, committing suicide (which naturally has to be done 9 times before it takes). The piece will be lighthearted for the subject matter, with black humor arising from the futility of cat suicide and cartoon antics.

Illustrations

Here are some illustrations that I enjoy viewing
(They're thumbnails so click for the full thing):

Lane Smith:



Mo Williams:



Dave Kelly:



Francesco Marciuliano:

Favorite Animation

Swing You Sinners


This is my very very favorite animation. It's classic 1930 Fleischer Studio work. The reason it is my favorite is the creativity that is in every frame, character, background and action. It is very frantic, funny, surreal and jive.

Introduction

My name is Alex Barrella and I am an animation student at the Savannah College of Art and Design. My hometown is Chapel Hill (North Carolina). I run a website at www.butterflysmasher.com which I update almost every 3 years. Some of my favorite things are:
The Internet.
Fine foods.
Plastic Instruments.
Funny Pages.
Puppy Dogs.
Containment Lines.
and several other things.
I am mostly experienced with flash based animation and I'm looking forward to using my skills to create more traditional style animation using computers.