Norwegian 'Crazy Wheels' animation project selected as the Celtx POW!

"Red car is speeding and bullying. The green Police car is chasing at all costs. And our unlucky stickman is the victim who first kicks red cars butt, but in the end, looses his head."

For those of you who don't understand Norwegian, this is how 33 year old Christian Antonsen, the creator of 'Crazy Wheels' animation project, summed up his story in English. And for such a brief summary it's quite amazing to learn just how much effort went in to making this short animation movie.

The result of a student assignment for a multimedia class, 'Crazy Wheels' was Christian's first attempt at creating an animation. Designed as a game, this fun and fast-paced piece exhibits great sound effects and a catchy music score that was also composed by Christian. For our team though, it was that 'effort' that went into the pre-production phase of his creative process that really made this project stand out from the rest.

As a self- described computer geek, a Dad of a 3 year old, a part-time High School math and music teacher, and a part-time student of communications and multimedia, Christian has definitely acquired great organizational skills over the years, which is also evident in this work. While we get a view in on his creative process, and see all the software programs that he used, Christian's 'Crazy Wheels' project also serves as a tutorial of sorts on how to go about creating an animation. Below, Christian shares the details of his creative learning experience:

"Since I’ve always been a sucker for technology, I really wanted my PC to play a big part in my project. I had a lot of ideas, and decided to go tech wild doing chroma-key stuff. And if you haven’t figured it out yet, I had no idea what to do. Okay, I’m kind of a computer wiz (geek?? ;). So using my computer wasn’t the problem, it was all the other stuff. I’ve never written a filmscript in my life. I’ve never animated anything, and my drawing skills, well lets just say that my three year old daughter is a professional artist compared to me. Things kind of didn’t look too good. After reading some articles about moviemaking, drawing and animation, and whatching tons of videos on Youtube, it came to me. It all starts with a good story. I wouldn’t say my story is great, but at least I managed to write a story.
 
Then I really wanted to organize my project. And I wanted my script to look kind of professional. Some searches later on the net, led me to Celtx. After an easy installation, I found it really easy to use. I know that my script isn’t the best in it’s design, but it did involve a lot of planning and thinking, which ended in a short animation movie.
 
The animation was a real challenge for me, but I’m pleased with the end result. I combined stopmotion animation with some tweaks made in flash. Each scene was animated in flash, and the video was edited in Premiere. I also added all the sound effects in Premiere. I made the music in Ableton Live especially for this project. I decided early that I wanted a catchy tune with energetic rhythm, but still easy to listen to.
 
This is my first ever attempt at making an animation movie, and it was a lot of fun. It did take a lot of time researching and planning this project, mostly because all the software used in making this project was completely new to me. So it did take me some time to figure out how the programs worked. I will guess it took me between 60-80 hours completing the project, including all the trials and errors in learning the tools I’ve used in my Crazy Wheels animation project. To be honest, I found this project so much fun, that I’m already looking at some ideas for a new animation short movie, where I hopefully will have improved my animation and scripting skills."

Well we anxiously await that next animated masterpiece, Christian!
Cheers, and Congratulations to you!
from
Sheila and the C-Team

Comments

[3D Animation Movie on Lord Ayyappa]

Thanks for sharing.