Tierische Weihnachten

... and even more stuff from work. That's the logo I made for a clip show called "Tierische Weihnachten" (transl.: "Animalistic Christmas"). The font is from the former logo of the show, the editors didn't want to change it. I drew the cat and put it all back together. The snow flake is a loan from my collegue Andrea. The show has been on telly on Christmas eve.

so what's been happening..

For everyone reading my blog and being curious what's been happening to me and my film:
Me and "das Wartezimmer" got a really good grade, that's to say an A+! And I was really stoked - well actually thrilled is a better word, when I got 2 awards on top of that!! One for "best bachelor project" and another one for "best overall grade", each worth 1000€. And of course I have an official title now: Marina Friedl Bachelor of Arts in Media Design.
The fotograph above shows me getting one of my awards from the governing mayor of Schäbisch Hall :)
And I think this is the right place and time to thank once again all the lovely people who have been supporting me: Prof. Guido Kühn, Prof. Beate Ehrmann and Christian M. Fischer, who have been advising my project, Steffen Mayer, Ingo Schaefer, Simon Barr, Rose Bond, Kim Collmer, Chrissie Spiess and first of all my family.

das Wartezimmer online!

Finally, I managed to upload the whole thing.
"das Wartezimmer" has had its World Premiere at our Bachelor exhibition the 2. July '08 - and it's been absolutely great!! There where loads of people at our exhibition and they actually laughed when they watched my animation! That was a real great feeling, especially cause I was hoping for them to smile every now and then, but I was totally thrilled when I heard them laugh!! I'm so stoked :)
So here's the link to my short on Youtube:
das Wartezimmer
I'll have my final presentation tomorrow, so wish me luck to get a good grade...

Polyphonic Spree at LA Film Festival

freakin' check it out: There is MY NAME beside the colon after animation!
http://www.lafilmfest.com/tixSYS/2008/filmguide/eventnote.php?EventNumber=6769
how cool is that?!

The Polyphonic Spree music video animation "Mental Cabaret" that I have been working on at Yukfoo in New Zealand has had its World Premiere at the LA Film Festival.
I've designed 4 of the characters and all the backgrounds and did loads of animation :) I'm so glad Yukfoo gave me the opportunity to work and learn on this great project!

It's done, done, done!!!

What an incredible feeling: a mixture between satisfaction, pride, total happiness and exhaustion. "das Wartezimmer" is all done!! .. and I handed it in this morning together with my theory. I'm sure I must have overseen a few quirky little mistakes, but hey: whatever! Considering the magnitude of the project and my level of experience, I've done an awesome job and am giving myself a pat on the back in this very moment :)
My film will be shown in our Bachelor exhibition which starts tomorrow in the Fachhochschule, the final exam presentation will be on the 8th of July and then we'll have the Bachelor ceremony on the 12th.
I'll upload the film shortly on Youtube for everyone to see. I'll post a note here as soon as it is online. And hey: thanks heaps for looking at my stuff! :)

Screenshots...

so.. it's been a while.. I've been really busy and got about 4 minutes of animation done now. Can't upload movies right now as it takes too much precious working time ;)
Here are two screenshots anyway with the final look and background.
I think (and very much hope so) that I will be done with all the animation next weekend. That gives me enough time to write my theory to put sound under the movie and maybe to work over weak parts.
Ok, now back to work..

Intro Animation

Ladies and gentlemen: let me introduce the intro of my animation short. I'll probably change a few things again, tweak things a bit and stuff, but generally this is what it's gonna look like. I haven't put any sound underneath it yet but I'm working on it. Hopefully more will come soon...

look refined

I've been refining the look of my backgrounds and have been playing around with lighting also over the weekend. I've applied textures and a bit of shading. In addition to that I've got my first scene animated. I'm quite happy with it but it took way to long, so I really need to speed up a little now...

awww

aww... poor baby...
What's been happening: I'm up to version 3 of my animatic now and am starting to develop an intentense relationship with my characters and the story. It's been a great decision to do the animatic with the illustrator files directly in the computer cause now I'm all familiar with how I can move the little buggers around, what's working and what's not quite there yet.
I still need to paint up the backgrounds a bit in photoshop so they are getting more grip.

Fräulein Meier-Willbrich

And yet another smashing character featured in my little bachelor animation: Fräulein Meier-Willbrich. She is the mistress of her realm and the most caring human being when it comes to potted plants. But in case your no Ficus Benjamini you better watch out, as you'll officially be labeled a disturber of the peace!

Product animation

Here's a little product animation I made for my parter company Siller Print Factory. I'm quite stoked actually that I get to do that sort of stuff there as well, so I don't have to always just look after the company's website. I did this animation in AfterFX with 3D layers which worked out just fine. Please excuse the horrible quality here.

one more

and just because I'm in such a good mood today... another animatic screenshot which features my protagonist Florian Heimerl :)
(actually this is the opening shot of my short film)

Animatic Screenshot

Sooo... another weekend of not having any spare time has passed by... and although I have been real busy and productive, I didn't manage to work through the amount of stuff that I originally had on my schedule. Which means I have half an animatic now...

Anyway, after another meeting with my advising profs today, I can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel (and I hope it's not the train...).

The picture above is a screenshot of my animatic (my favorite one actually, cause Klößchen is by far my favorite character). More will follow soon. The full animatic is due monday so I'll have another lovely weekend locked up in my refuge.

However, I'll try to listen to my mum who said "just don't forget that you're actually enjoying what you're doing!" - she's right, I tend to forget that sometimes...

..and another one

alright, here's another character named Kevin alias "Gameboy Kevin". He's the typical asshole kid that has got no social competence whatsoever. He's the result of a childhood spent in front of the TV and a divorced mother that tried to make up the lack of attention with all sorts of material goods, preferably computer games.

Right now I'm trying to get some sense into my plot, so I can make my advising profs happy. The last meeting with them has had the result that I had to redo and change quite a bunch of things, but what they said made all perfect sense actually.

Haven't slept much the past week and at some stage I thought I am actually going crazy, but I guess everything's gonna be just fine...

Awesome Artist

Just a quick post to say how amazing and inspiring I find Yannick Puig's work. Particularly his music video "I lived on the moon" is mindblowingly awesome!! I think he deserves an Oscar.
Yannick Puig's website

Sneek preview and synopsis

Et voilá: the first character sneek preview of my bachelor animation short film "das Wartezimmer"(the waiting room).

And this is roughly what it's about: The protagonist Florian Heimerl needs to get an autograph of his doctor. He arrives at his practice and asks the receptionist to get it for him, but instead of fullfilling this task immediately, the heavyset woman sends him into the waiting room. An this is where Heimerl's odyssey starts... he'll be spectator and "victim" of the strange behaviours of his fellow occupants - the corpulent Ms Breitfuss with her overweight infant Klößchen, granpa Wilfried who is hooked up to a breathing apparatus and the rude Gameboy kiddo Kevin.

I'm done designing all the characters, but I'm not gonna post them all at once - to keep up the curiosity :P

Fachwerk Titel

Von meinem Bachelor Projekt hab ich im Moment noch nichts zu posten, drum fang ich mit dem Cover vom "Fachwerk" an. Diese erste Augabe unseres Hochschulmagazins haben wir zusammen im 6. Semester entwickelt und entworfen. Das Thema des Magazins ist 3D und beinhaltet so ziemlich alles was räumlich ist: Von Origami über Hologramme und Wallsticker bis hin zu Paper Toys und Filmarchitektur.
Das Cover- bzw. Umschlag-Design (mit Ausnahme vom Logo) habe ich mit Hilfe von viel Input seitens meiner Kommilitonen entworfen.
Das Magazin haben wir durch Anzeigenschaltung finanziert und digital drucken lassen mit einer Auflage von 150 Stück. Am Tag der offenen Tür der Fachhochschule Schwäbisch Hall fand es bereits reissenden Absatz.

Erster post ever!!

Aus aktuellem Anlass gibt es seit heute auch einen Blog über mich, meine Arbeit und was sonst noch so ansteht südlich des Weißwurscht-Äquators in der großen bunten Welt des Mediendesigns.

Welcher Anlass denn? - Mein Bachelor-Semester hat vor unglaublichen zwei Wochen begonnen und bereitet mir bereits jetzt schlaflose Nächte (na ja, um ehrlich zu sein sind's bisher eher nur schlaflose Stunden...aber das mit den Nächten kommt ganz sicher noch). Und da ich ja nun in den kommenden Wochen hoffentlich am laufenden Band mit großartigem Design um mich schmeißen werde (ich hoffe man kann hier den Sarkasmus rauslesen), und da ich ab heute endlich mit CS3 arbeiten kann und weil's langsam echt Zeit wird, gibt's eben brandneu und exklusiv den Shapefarm blog.

Hier werd ich also ab heute tolle Sachen posten. Natürlich nicht jeden Tag und vielleicht entscheid ich mich noch das ganze hier auf Englisch zu machen, aber das kann ich mir ja noch überlegen, weil ich bin auf meinem Blog schließlich der Chief Commander und kann meine eigenen Regeln aufstellen. Gott, ganze 24 Jahre musste ich auf diesen Tag warten!!! :)

Na dann, viel Spaß beim Durchgucken,
die Marina