Ponyo, Ponyo, Ponyo, tiny little fish...

Today, a coursemate and I saw Hayao Miyazaki's 'Ponyo on the Cliff' at the Barbican. Anyone who is bored of the predictable discourse of Western narrative has to see this animation.
What I like best about Miyazaki's films is the refreshingly original worlds he creates. The featured creatures and their systems of existence are what makes Studio Ghibli stand out.
However, it's also what makes the films so unsettling and hence difficult to embrace. I'm sure that the young children filling the cinema were quite as disturbed as I was when I first watched Disney's 'Alice in Wonderland'!
The bizarre, combined with the simplicity of the script and plot, causes a dilemma as to what kind of target audience are best suited to Studio Ghibli's productions. This may account for how little financial success their films have had in the western world. However, Disney are determined to promote this new film in the US and so much the better if they succeed. Animations such as this have the power to expand young and old minds alike.
My favourite scene in the film was when Ponyo has released the elixir and is sprinting along the crashing waves. You can really sense the power behind the sea and I was completely transfixed!

Crocodile March

A walk cycle exercise

Victorian Bathers

Week 3 focused on follow through and we did a lot of flag waving exercises. Everyone was also to work on a jump-and-dive exercise, which offered a lot of comedy potential as you can imagine!
Trying to brush up on my Flash skills, I created this very messy animation. The symbols used are transparent so the lines defining the various sections of the body cross over and look messy. I though I would try it out to see if it created an archaic, cut-out aesthetic but it didn't exactly have the desired effect. At least it got a lot of laughs during the crit!!
Unfortunately, the movement is very jumpy on this uploaded version but you get the general idea :)

Bouncing balls!

Week two of the course was a struggle to get through because we were instructed to do


Week two was a struggle to get through at times because we were instructed to animate plain balls with no creative context at all! At one point, Jason was acting like he was having some sort of breakdown. I couldn't handle the lack of artistic license and ended up doing some silly stuff. Enjoy!

Girl and Crocodile

In the first week of the Character Animation course, Steve set us to work on walk cycles to see what we could come up with.

Character design

This is a CD cover design for my friends' band, Rubber Band!