The Wizard (and the spelunking of Råtröckbat cave)

The Wizard - Animation

- Second year Animation project

- April 2015

Solo Project.

My first real Animation. The idea started off as a simple fight scene between a mouse and some toys, as if a child was imagining an epic fight where his pet is the hero. The only real similarity between the original pitch and the finished project is the mouse, albeit with as completely different character. 

It is a very experimental project. The mouse needed to look realistic (for the original idea), the best way to achieve this was to use a real mouse but in my experience live mice don't do what they are told. Cue mouse taxidermy kit. 

Picture courtesy of Firebox.com

It's safe to say my Biology A level has left me with a curiosity and interest is biology, I think this may have leaked into my work. Anyway, I dabbled in taxidermy for this project and I'm not sure I'll do it again. For one thing the mouse wasn't very moveable, once I'd treated it and put the armature in and everything it just went very stiff. Hence the exaggerated, jagged movement of the mouse in the film. This was one of the major factors in changing the story. I could have used it as a main character and had it's animation style as a feature, but this isn't what I wanted for my first animation project. I wanted to practise and learn good animation technique, which I couldn't do with something that wouldn't animate.

Fun Fact: I accidentally pulled off one of the mouse's feet when taxidermy-ing him. 

I'd like to note the mouse was ethically sourced from a pet shop, already dead, sold frozen and intended to be snake food. 

The new idea was a movie trailer rather than a complete narrative. I needed some new characters. I wanted to use Lego and see how I could animate it, seeing as it has been done before I thought it would be a good test of my skills. It was a lot more difficult than I though it would be, it took a day of testing just to get the walk cycle right. The orange dots in the image below mark out the distance of each complete cycle.

Click for larger image.

The cave set is the only one I built myself as it was the only setting I could get the aesthetic I wanted out of the Lego I had available. All of the Lego, minus the figures, was donated by a good friend of mine. On a low budget production like this I would never have been able to fund it without borrowing  and foraging. 

The film was quite post production heavy and allowed me to get to grips with some of the more complicated aspects of Adobe After Effects. The laser and the explosion were the most demanding sections. The explosion required a lot of masking done individually on each frame. 

Click for larger image. 

This animation has informed my ideas for my third year animation project, mainly on what I what to do differently:

- No Taxidermy

- No Lego (although it is something I would like to use again in the future)

- Complete story, not just a trailer

- Less emphasis on post production