Mike Tharme, Continuing the Snowball.

Wildlife on Mars-2012 Over the years, between retail jobs and in times where I found myself doodling ideas, I redesigned the existing creature designs, created new ones, merged two features from different designs together and created better creatures. However, it was still based around the same documentary style of viewing, and this was starting to bother me trying to find that working formula that would make Wildlife on Mars stand out. Then, in 2011, whilst I was volunteering at the Bradford Animation Festival for my 3rd year, one of the volunteers, Steve Henderson, told me of a storyboard contest that was being held on the Don't Panic Online website  for the Ray & Diana Harryhausen Foundation. Naturally I went to check out the terms of the contest, and boy what terms! You had to use a pre-made storyboard template between 6-12 boards. If it was turned into an animation it had to last between 30 seconds to 3 minutes and had to run with the theme of monsters (Ray ...

Art has always had root in inspiration, ever since the first parietal art depicting animals and hand stencils of the inhabitants of the land, artists of all kinds are inspired from fellow artist and nature. Animation is no different and often inspiration is triggered from watching the work of other filmmakers, be it King Kong or The Nightmare Before Christmas. This list will show films that have inspired me from an early age to present day, some films have had more influence on me than others, but I will go into detail in my explanations why they have shaped my imagination in storytelling, visual ideas and how I was moved emotionally by it. JURASSIC PARK (1993) When I was young, the films I would often lean towards had some element of fantasy or science fiction, more often than not, Dinosaurs were always a guaranteed hook for my attention. When I heard of Jurassic Park through a TV commercial, my mind exploded with excitement. The only Dinosaur film that was high ranking on my...

I've been studying stop motion armatures now for over 10 years, 3 of those years has been actually fabricating them with Animation Toolkit on Chuck Steel: Night of the Trampires , and at Telegael studios on  Morten and the Spider Queen and Project 390 . What I have learned, both historically and technically would be of great interest to future students in stop-motion. I know what your thinking, you take one look at a ball & socket armature and think "this is way to hard to do, its so complicated", well, I once thought exactly the same when I started my animation path back in 2002. The trick is learning how to use it right, ball & socket armature kits are like a steel equivalent to Lego construction kits, you have many tiny pieces that when assembled create a final item, in this case a armature, so understanding the mechanics of biological joints and translating that movement into a engineering solution. Wire is simply understanding how the wire and which wir...

When I was a child, I was introduced to modelling clays like plasticine (normally the thin strip types) and Play-doh. I fell in love immediately with the material, I didn't have many toys growing up, but with this stuff I could make anything, from Dinosaurs to characters from my favorite cartoon shows. A pack not to dissimilar from this, was a staple gift in my youth. This Play-doh set was one of my first introduction to modeling clays From 1993 I started to get more adventurous with my models, learning to make dinosaur legs more realistic by adding muscle shapes and scales on the feet and adding details like scutes on my crocodiles, but they were still a long way from anything I would call "professional". It wouldn't be until 2002 when I would touch plasticine again. Upon starting my university BA Animation course I was introduced to the product Newplast, the same, if not a very similar product used by Aardman studios. A selection of ...