Neon This! And Neon That!

Hello world,

I’m back with another fabulous if slightly boring blog about my on-going e4 sting adventure. Today I started putting together images of dilapidated buildings for the background of my animation and whilst they were all very nice and dilapidated I felt they could use a little oomph! But what on earth could give my buildings the desired spark I required? One word - Neon! (I’ve just realised you probably guessed that from the title).

Below is a bunch of designs I made on an A4 sheet of paper of possible neon lights designs. Naturally I decided to go down the slightly sleazy route as it turns out there are no classy neon lights.

With a few designs picked I then somehow managed to force the paper into a Photoshop so I could make the image glow like a neon light. It can be seen below.

Finally I made a simple animation of the light in action.



Here's the final background plate with added chimney lights for no extra cost. 

And that’s the end of my neon light adventure - or is it? More words and pictures coming soon.

The end.

We All Live Where?

Hello World,

I’ve been busy beavering away on my little Beatles animation and it’s finally starting to take shape. I’ve finally completed all the backgrounds and the animation itself is well on its way. So to reward you for your patience dear reader, I thought it would be nice to show a little screen shot.

Get it while its hot guys and females as this is beginning to look like it’ll sadly be the last animation I do for a while. I hope you like it.

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Meeting the Beatles

Hello World,

I’m a massive fan of the super British skiffle and rock and roll group The Quarrymen, they later became the slightly better mega global band known as The Amazing Beatles; Starring: Mr John, Mr Paul, Mr George and Ringo Starr.

As a special tribute to the fabulous four of them and because I have a lot of time on my hands, I’ve made this little flash looping video of the group performing one of their numerous super sound songs (maybe She loves you or maybe Maxwell's Silver Hammer or maybe one of their lesser known ones).

For a slightly bigger, slightly less distorted, slightly more downloadable and slightly better quality version go to my deviantArt page here.

Is this animation bigger than Jesus? Possibly not.

The end.

It’s not every day you blow up a planet.

Hello world,

It’s been over two months since I first got the idea to do a little project involving a spaceship narrowly escaping an exploding planet. Over that time I’ve designed, modelled, textured and animated two rusty spaceships. Got heavily distracted by making some time consuming, but neither the less nice looking fly-bys, and started to really learn how to use After Effects. Now, at last, I can say that my project is finally finished…I think.

I must add that none of this would have been possible without the fantastic tutorials by Andrew Kramer over on videocopilot; he’s like some kind of crazy After Effects god or something. Anyway watch the video below and witness just what happens when an unemployed animator has far too much time on his hands. My next on-going project will be a series of basic animation exercises to help strengthen my animation skills, it may be less glamorous than blowing up a planet, but hopefully it will help me get an animation job.

Exploding Planet from Stephen Craner on Vimeo.


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Starships were meant to fly!

Hello World,

Oh blimey! I’ve only gone and made two blogs in a week, I’m going to need a lie down. Well here’s my spaceship flyby test video in all its Starship glory. The quality is a little more pixelated than I’d like but it seems this is as good as I can achieve and still have a workable file size. To enhance the film I added what I consider to be the best piece from Marc Streitenfeld’s Prometheus soundtrack and for no extra cost a smattering of Saturn from Gustav Holst’s Planet suite. Hope you like it.

Spaceship Flyby Test from Stephen Craner on Vimeo.

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We're Gonna Need a Bigger Ship

Hello world,

Well once again I’m found guilty of neglecting my little blog but hopefully you’ll understand why. Over the last few weeks I’ve been delightfully distracted with making this rather large space(transport)ship. Keeping with the intent of designing a “used worn look” I free styled (not recommended) the design of the ship which kept getting bigger and bigger.  I’m busy rendering out some spaceship flybys now and once that’s done I’ll hopefully get down to animating my original spaceship scene of the ship(s) escaping the doomed planet.

PS. To enhance your viewing pleasure of the pictures below I've found it helpful to make some super space noises in your head or out loud. The choice is yours.

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It’s the Fourteenth Fastest Ship in the Galaxy…Give or Take a Few

Hello World,

Well I’ve got a whole heap of pictures to show today of my non textured spaceship.  I’m fairly hopeless when it comes to modelling in Maya (especially if it’s something organic), but even I’m quite pleased with how it’s looking; now all I need to do is start the long process of texturing it.

 The End.

Celtic Media Festival

Hello again world,

Oh dear. In my haste to post my first blog I completely forgot to shamelessly pat myself on the back for my graduation film “David” winning the Student Animation Award 2012 at the Celtic Media Festival over the weekend.  Unfortunately I couldn’t afford to make the trip over to Ireland but needless to say I’m extremely chuffed to win it. Many thanks have to go to the good folk at the University of Wales,Newport and the people at Celtic Media Festival for selecting my film.

Here’s a link to the winners.

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