Third Year Show Reel (2014-2015) and final thoughts

This is a compilation of my work completed during my third and final year at university. 

There are still a few things that I think I may go back to tweak and polish or even just re-render but for now, this is my final reel. 

'Final major project' were pretty intense but I had a lot of fun animating new things like the dancing on 'Project Dance' and playing with new original rigs on 'Alpha'. 

It was a crazy three years and I am proud with how far I have come. I could have never imagined being able to not only animate but co-direct a CG animated short film before starting uni. But now it is done and I am officially a graduate.... now onto the real world. Ooo this should be fun. 

I am of course going to continue to post here ( even if this was originally for university) I have a fair few personal projects planned and hopefully I will find somewhere willing to pay me to animate for them (which still seems crazy) ahhh into the unknown I go! 

ps. watch 'Over the Garden Wall' ^^

Oysterworld Games

As well as Framestore, this week we also had an industry talk from Oysterworld.

Oyterworld are an independent games company based in Wales. They have been growing in size and success over the last few years and plan to continue to grow the company. Oysterworld produce games mainly for the casual games market targeted towards children such as 'Garden Party'. They also are working on 'hidden object' games which are very popular with 30+ females.

It was really interesting to be able to see the process of making one of these games. We were shown both the Art and Animation side of their creation process, each with their own required skills. The over-arching advice for us was to practice practice practice! Keep striving to get better and better. As well as practicing, self teaching was also pushed by them This shows you have the drive to learn more about what you do and the initiative to do it yourself.

We were also informed and given some great advice for applying for a job at Oysterworld. Part of the process for animators is that we would be given a character to rig and then animate a few tests with it. The tests include a walk and a jump. This is to further gauge the talents of the individual and also to judge their attitude to work. I found it very interesting that these tests were also to judge the applicants personality. When an applicant is lazy, it shows through in the work they produce, its obvious if you cut corners or do not properly read the brief.

As well as the tests we were informed on interviews. The main advice was to 'be a nice person'. I was surprised to hear they have interviewed people who have come across as rude. If you are at an interview stage, the likelihood is they want to hire you, but they need to know if you are a person they would want to have on their team.

The people from Oysterworld were lovely and their talk was really useful. They came across as a great bunch of people and an awesome company to work for. They all have a lot of enthusiasm for what they do. The talk was packed full of all sorts of advice, but my favorite was that if you dont feel that you are good enough for the job or industry then go away and work as hard as you can till you are.

Also a great parting advice was "SLEEP!",  that is something that I definitely need to work on.

Framestore

Framestore are an award winning visual effects company based in London. They have worked on many successful films including 'Guardians of the Galaxy', 'Dracula Untold' and 'Paddington'. They also work in many other areas such as television and advertising.

Today, we were lucky enough to have two members of Framestore come to our university to give us a talk. The talk was about Framestore as a company and about getting into the animation industry in general.

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Toyah Middleton - Recruitment Manager

Toyah talked to us about Framstore as a company and how they work. She discussed the best routs to get into the company and what Framstore are looking for when they have a job opening.

We were told that for them, it is important to specialize. They do not higher generalists often, they want you to be the best at waht you do. It is good to work on your skill and make it the best it can be. 

Framestore tend to promote people from within their company, this is why it is often the case you will have to work your way up to where you want to be. To do this, Toyah mentioned two main options. The first would be to get hired as an intern. Interns get the chance to work on shot for film as well as work on a personal project with a mentor. I like the face that you have the chance to work on your own project within the company as its a chance to do what you want to do and get professional advice on it. They emphasized the fact that this personal project is also useful so you have something that you can add to your reel at the end as their can be copyright issues with taking and posting film clips. 
The second option presented to us was to start as a runner. This is a great way to get your foot in the door and get a feel for the industry and get to know the people in it. Framestore do not higher runners that do not have a good show reel and show potential. This is because they do like to hire from within the company so you will be hired as a runner with the intention that you will be trained to move up within the company. Learning this has made me much more likely to apply for runner jobs in the future. I think its a great opportunity to get an inside look at the industry and most companies, like Framestore, will higher you will the intent of you moving up. Runners are also provided access to rigs and equipment, they are also able to stay late or come in on weekends to work in the studio which I think sounds amazing. 

Some final notes form Toyah were to always network. Get to know as many people as you can and show your face at events and lectures as much as possible. This is an industry where the people you know can very much help your chances for success so its important to get yourself out there and make the effort. 

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Michael Elder - Animator


Michael talked to us about his own personal experiences in the industry and his own journey to where he is today. We were also told about some general tips for breaking into the industry and what some useful paths are to take. 

Micheal originally started in Sydney working on films as a junior animator. Although it was a 'big job' he said as a young animator, it is often more useful to start off in TV or even games even if getting into films is your goal. Working on films, he said he was not given much responsibility because of the high standards of the studio and his inexperience at the time. Working at a smaller company often means you have more to do and more responsibility. You also will produce more work a lot quicker and more varied. This is useful when you are trying to build up your show reel to showcase your work. He also mentioned that commercials are a good way to get a lot of work out fast as the jobs will only last maybe a few weeks. Again, a good way to strengthen your show reel as a junior animator. 

While working on films, he had a lot a spare time so utilized this to work on a personal project. Michael emphasized the importance of personal projects as its a chance for you to do what you want to and put your heart into something. It is also important to utilize each company you are in, ask for advice and use the resources given to you. Listen to the people who know more then you!

He told us that getting into the industry is probably the most difficult part so don't give up. He gave me a lot of motivation to keep trying and be confident. A lot is to do with luck and timing.

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I found this talk incredibly useful and I very pleased we were able to have it. I learnt a lot about the industry and Framestore in particular. I have a lot of respect for the company and would love to work there one day.

I cant wait to see Framestore again at FMX in a few weeks time!

FMP- Alpha (Final Rendered Animations)

Here are the final rendered versions of my scenes from the project Alpha and also a few final thoughts. 

Its really nice to see the whole thing come together and I am really happy we managed to get it finished in time (though it was very close) We ran into a lot of issues throughout but learning to fix them taught us all a lot. 

Its always nice to see the rendered versions of your animation as it adds so much more to the atmosphere of the scene. 

Over all I am pleased with the work here. I enjoyed the pace of this scene, and although not much happens, its really about the subtleties. This scene was about showing her curiosity and thoughtful nature. 

I think at some point when I have the time, I would like to go back and fix the little glitches in the forearm. This was a rig problem that I was unable to fix in the time we had but I feel it distracts from the shot and makes it feel less polished. 

I really enjoyed this creature piece! It was fun and playful even though he was scared and I enjoyed walking the line between him moving like a creature but having a human personality. 

The rig was very challenging to work with because of the unusual shape of his body but I am happy with how it turned out. 

This was my only creature animation for my final major project so I am happy with how it turned out. I would like to get into character animation, so I saw this piece as a character piece rather then just a creature animation. I would like to try more animation like this in the future as I had a lot of fun with it. 

Over all, I am happy with the work I did for this project although there are a couple of tweaks I may make. It was quite hectic being the animation director also, but everything turned out okay in the end. I found it a good challenge to have more responsibility and more control over the final product. 

And if you are interested, here is the final short film in full....

I am really pleased with how everything turned out. There are of course, always things I would change or do differently second time around but I am really proud with our teams achievement.   

FMP- Alpha (Creature Scene)

Just a reminder, here is the animatic for the creature scene...

First Block:

Here we have the first block for the creature scene. This took me quite a long time to get right but I felt that the poses were very important here. I wanted a nice silhouette throughout this piece for the creature and I really wanted to hit those key poses. 

I really struggled with this blocking as the rig was quite challenging to work with. We initially had a lot of issues with some of the controllers and the rig did not like being referenced into Maya 2015 however we got it to work in the end, it just pushed us all back a little time wise. 

First Spline: 

Again, first spline is pretty ugly and I think I need to do a lot of work to get some weight into this piece. I have had a lot of trouble with the legs and shoulders when using this rig. The anatomy of the creature means the neck is very large and unfortunately doesn't deform to the nicest shapes. I tried my best to make the poses appealing (with as little clipping and glitching as possible) while still making the movement believable. Hopfully, the more I work into it, the better it will get. 

Spline:

After the first spline, I moved the landing position of the creature so he covers more ground with his jumps. Getting the last run to look right took me a lot of time playing around. The problem was he is a big creature so if he doesn't cover much ground with each stride, it looks odd. On the other hand, his legs are very tiny, so there is only so far they can stretch before it just looks like im making him fly across the screen. I am quite happy with how it looks now and I am excited to get some nice overlap animation done and really smooth out the curves. 

Overlap:

Here I really tried to work on making his movements fluid but weighted. I had fun adding some character and emotion with his ears. Its a little difficult again as I cant animate the eyes until the body animation is done and I also cant see what the totem glow looks like (the glow of the totem is what scares him away) So its a lot of guess work but I am over all happy with the way it is progressing. 

Facial Anim: 

Finally I got to work on the facial animation and really add some character and expression to the creature. We had a little trouble again with the eye textures as some didnt want to work, so the range of eye animation was quite limited however I still think it works and I am pleased with how they look. 

I will be uploading the finished rendered version in another post once they are done.

FMP- Alpha (Character Scene)

Now to begin animation!! 

Just a reminder, here is the animatic for the character scene...

First Block:

Blocking was fairly simple for this piece, no complex poses and im pretty happy with the timing. 

Note: we are having animated textures for the eyes so they I will have to animate them last. They are pretty intense on the pc and bog down the file and make it pretty impossible to animate so im going to have to get everything for the body done first and then animate the eyes. Its a little different to what im used to but hopefully it will work out. 

First Spline:

This is always the part I hate, so many glitches and nasty floaty bits. I have a lot of smoothing to do and I have to fix that hand but im quite happy with this as a basis to work on. I think i'll be spending a lot of time cleaning up the graph editor with this one.  

Facial Animation:

[Sorry about the curves on show here] This is a different angle to see the facial animation as the render camera it quite far away. Here are the dreaded animated eye textures....they were quite a handful to work with. These took a lot of time to get working and I'm still not entirely sure how they work, however I really like the look of them so I think they were worth the effort. 

Final Shot:

And here we have pretty much the final shot before rendering (you can see all the render cameras here) I had a lot of fun with her bouncy hair and her facial expressions with this shot. We did have a lot of trouble with the rig though and some things (like her bracelet) had to be cut out as they were just not working. A few more tweaks and I think we will be there

I will make a separate post for the final rendered shots of them both, but for now, its out of my hands and off to the techy people to do their magic to make it look pretty.

Final Major Pre-Production: Alpha (Collab) Part 2 [Creature Scene]

This is the second part of my pre-production for Alpha. Just to remind you, here are my scenes again... 

I did some research into the animals most like the creature from Alpha. This was a little difficult as he is a fictional creature but we decided he would have the anatomy of something like an alpaca or a Shetland pony. 

After anatomy and pose research I thumbnailed some variations for the scene and cut them into animatics...

In the end we decided to go for the second one. I liked the curiosity shown with him scratching around the base. I also think that animating him rearing up will be a lot of fun and give me a lot to play with. 

I then drew out the final story board for the creature scene....

And made a final animatic...

I think that this scene is going to be a lot of fun to animate. I think i may have some trouble with the posing as the design of the creature is quite unusual and the large neck and tiny legs may be an issue. Im hoping to get a nice bouncy animation for him running away as I want him to look harmless and cute.

I'm super excited to work on this project and get my teeth stuck into it. It will be nice to have a play with some new custom rigs too!!

As I am a co-director I also made up schedules for the project to keep us on track. Im sure some things wont go to plan but fingers crossed we will get it all done in time.

This will also be my first time being an animation director so Im looking forward to that challenge. Hopefully I will be able to give a lot of useful feedback and keep the animation style consistent throughout the piece. 

Final Major Pre-Production: Alpha (Collab) Part 1 [Character Scene]

'Alpha' is a project that I will be co-directing and also working on as head of animation. 'Alpha' planned to be a short film acting as a cinematic game trailer. 

As head of animation, I was responsible for getting an animation team together and sorting out who was going to be responsible for what animation wise.  

The first thing to do was to cut a rough animatic/ previs together so we had the whole short planned out and I could start dividing shots between animators. This took a very long time, as there were many points we wanted to communicate to the audience but we also didnt want to ruin the pace of the shot or make it too long. We aimed for a minute and a half and we managed to get it almost exactly which I am very happy with. 

This is what the final version looks like: 

Luckily, everyone managed to get the shots they wanted or were happy with. Each person on the animation team needed this project for different reasons so I tired to tailor their shots accordingly to what would be most useful for them. If they are happy with what they have to do, hopefully they will enjoy their work much more and produce better work as a result. 

These are the shots that I will be animating. I chose one character and one creature one. I wanted the character one because these scene should have a lot of subtle acting in it and I want to get better at that. Especially because a lot of my other projects are very over the top. 

I chose the creature scene because I would really like to improve my creature acting skills as I have not had the chance to animate many animals. I am also yet to animate an non realistic animal. 

I am happy that these scenes are interesting yet each just contain the one character as I also want to make sure I have enough time to work with the others as head of animation. 

First I worked on the character scene. I did some research into the type of character I think she would be. It helped that I was provided initial character designs by the Director who will also be working as head of the art side.

I explored a few different ideas while still keeping the base movement the same. I wanted to explore different emotions she may be going through during this scene which would impact the subtle ways in which she would perform the action of bending down to look at the claw mark.

In the end i decided with the third as this claw mark is something they have never encountered before and  I think, being the more sensible one of the pair, she would realize the danger and be worried. 

I then went on to develop that idea and this was the result. I think timing is going to be very important in this scene. I want her to pause for a moment before she bends down and also pause throughout to show she in deep thought. 

I am really looking forward to animating this scene as I think its a chance to spend a nice amount of time on a relatively simple scene and also a chance to improve my subtle animation skills.  

Final Major Pre-Production: Dance Off (Collab) Part 2

This week I continued on with the pre prodcution with the 'Dance Off' project. I have quite a large amount of animation to do on this project, so it has taken a while to plan out all the shots. Luckily, all off my shots are one after the other so that has made things easier for me as I dont have to worry about the flow of the whole shot as much. 

Continuing on, Shot 16 is the male characters reaction shot to shot 15 (this is the shot where Ragina snaps her fingers and turns a spotlight on above our characters head) This is a very quick shot but a lot needs to come across in that time. I want to communicate his shock at this surprising event (as most people cannot turn lights on and off with the click of a finger) he also needs to look confused about whats happening and look worried about what could be following. 

I played with both a lot of body movement and just the facial expressions with this shot. However, I felt more body movement gave it life, and given how over the top he reacted in an earlier shot (shots 12-14) it would have been a change in character for him to suddenly not be as over dramatic. I chose the third as I felt it also communicated to the audience this is the second time she has barged in on him acting odd and he is now slightly concerned about her and her persistence.  

The next shot is Regina seductively walking towards the male. Me and the director had great fun filming video reference for this and looking at films such as Chicago for inspiration. We played around a fair amount with how she was going to walk towards him.

In the end we settled for the third. The first was very dance like and the second was quite silly and funny but I felt the last was still funny but more predatory too. She is coming to 'get him' in this shot and as well as seduction, I want to be able to convey the desire in her movements. 

The last shot I have for this project is a very long but hilarious one. Regina finally makes it to Alphonse and starts seducing him by dancing around and on him. We filmed reference for this shot pretty early on and my thumbnails are based from our reference for this shot. The reference filming came out so well none of the team really wanted to mess much with the shot, so I only tried two similar versions. 

Alphonse's movements will be very minimal in this scene, I want him to seem very stiff and awkward, not quite sure what to do with himself in this situation. On the other hand, Regina will be throwing herself all over the place. I think there is the opportunity to get some nice hip action in this scene and I also think the facial animation will be a lot of fun. 

I am really looking forward to working on this project. I think its going to be really fun and if anything, I will just be laughing watching my video reference back. Im hoping this project will really help me with body movement and mimed acting. Its a good opportunity to improve my facial expressions as they cant talk and also improve on some basic body mech as there is a lot of walking and shifting weight in the shots I have. This scene is very large but I am excited to take it on and make it funny and silly and it should be nice laugh on my reel. 

Final Major Pre-Production: Dance Off (Collab) Part 1

Dance off is planned to be a short film set at a high school prom. The main character attempts to make his way across the dance floor while being ambushed by various girls trying to win him over by dance.

After a lot of decision making I was luckily given the shots I had initially had my eye on from the first pitch. At one point during the short, the main character (Alphonse) runs into a popular 'mean girl' type character (Regina). My shots include their encounter. 

After I had my shots given to me, I took the animatic given to me by the director and broke it up into my shots. 

I was also given character profiles for both the characters I would be working on. With them, I went on and did my own research and looked at characters similar to the ones described for inspiration.

 First was shots 12-14 to plan. This is the two characters first encounter. Regina comes into shot and stops Alphonse in his tracks, she gestures for him to dance, he refuses and makes his way past her. She is not used to this rejection and storms after him .

In the end I chose the second as I feel it is dynamic and there are a lot of fun poses to play with.

The next, shot 15, is where Regina once again stops in front of Alphonse and snaps her fingers which causes the main lights to go out and a spotlight to appear over Alphonse.

I preferred the second as I felt it was more clean and sharp.

I have ended up with quite a lot of animation to do for this project, which Im looking forward to, but its going to be a lot of work. Im going to continue to work on my pre production for this project next week and hopefully have it all finished.

Final Major Pre-Production: Dialogue "you're not important" (Personal)

The first project that I started working on for my Final Major was my first of two dialogue pieces. I knew that I wanted to complete two dialogue pieces, one male and one female. I wanted them both to be very different, yet interesting for me to work on.

Previously I have never had the chance to animate a female dialogue piece so this was the one I was most excited to start. I also hadn't really done anything where the character was angry and getting very over emotional, so that was something I looked for when hunting for a sound clip. Eventually I found a clip I thought had nice timing and a good rhythm to it that would work well for animation. 

As soon as I eventually decided, I had to start building a character and a setting. For me, I find this important for when I come to referencing. I like to know how what kind of character I am trying to convey and that in turn will influence how they act in certain situations. 

After roughly planning out what situation my character would be in and the context for the animation, I did some research for inspiration. I looked at characters who were similar to how I wanted mine to be. I also looked at facial expressions I thought would work well for the character with the dialogue.

After research I threw out a few quick poses I thought may work, just to get a feel for what sort of movement I wanted.

I also explored a few options for the core emotion she would be driven by throughout the piece and what sort of gestures she may make depending on that emotion.

Although I wanted her to be mainly angry and frustrated throughout the dialogue, I didnt want that to be her only emotion. There is a lot of opportunity in the dialogue for many emotions, from a sad and contemplative pause while thinking to an outburst filled with rage. I explored some facial expressions she may hit and worked them into some poses too. 

After I was happy with the character and had a fairly solid idea of the sort of emotions and gestures I would like her to hit, it was time for thumbnailing.

I chose to work on the second animatic as I liked the change from her started much more calm and slightly upset to then bursting with anger and acting in quite an intimidating way.

I am really excited to start working on this dialogue piece. There is a lot of opportunity to push poses and facial expressions. Also, as I want to eventually get into character animation, this is exactly the type of thing I enjoy the most and want to improve my skills at. I can see myself spending the most time on this project when production time comes.

Final Major Project: Planning

The time has come to plan my final major project. My Final Major Project is a project or group of projects that I will work on over the last 16 weeks of my final year. They must add up to 80 seconds. We can choose what it is we work on and how many projects we choose to take on as long as at least 50% of the work is collaborative.

For me, this is the project that will give me the material for my final show reel before I graduate, so I bared that in mind when deciding what projects to work on.

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My classmates had a chance to pitch any projects they had already planned and wanted to direct. This was an opportunity for the rest of us to make a decision on who we would like to work with and what projects would best suit us. I decided to choose my collaborative projects first and then fill in any gaps with personal projects so I have a well rounded show reel at the end of the year.

Collaborative Projects:
- Dance Off [20 seconds]
- Alpha [20 seconds]
- Tree Project [10 seconds]

'Dance Off' is a project I will be working as an animator on. It is planned to be a short film set at a high school prom. The main character attempts to make his way across the dance floor while being ambushed by various girls trying to win him over by dance.
I decided to work on this project as I think it will be a great opportunity to work on body mechanics and two character interaction. The short is planned to be very funny and cartoony, so it will also be an opportunity for me to try a more exaggerated animation style.

'Alpha' is a project that I will be co-directing and also working as head of animation. 'Alpha' planned to be a short film that works as an advertisement for a game. The main characters are a girl and her creature companion. The game would about the two of them exploring and hunting down these 'Alpha' creatures. The short follows them as they make their discovery of an Alpha for the first time.
I was drawn to this project because of the light hearted humor and the dynamic between the two characters. I think this is a good project as it gives me a chance to work on my non human character animation. This is also a much slower piece to 'Dance Off' so I will have a chance to work on more subtle animation.

The tree project is a artistic short I was asked to animate on. Its planned to be a very short piece of animation, where a tree-like creature walks to the top of a hill and releases spoors into the wind.
This will be fairly simple animation but I think is a good chance to work on a walk cycle for a large heavy creature. Also, this is planned to be a very technical artistic short, with wind dynamics moving grass and leaves and many particle effects with glowing spoors and fire flies. I think this will be something different to add to my show reel and make it pop.

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As I want to get into character animation, I wanted to mainly work on characters for my personal project. I also intend to fill in any gaps in my collaborative projects with my personal. I want my show reel at the end of the year to fully represent who I want to be as an animator when I graduate. I also want to work on things that I know I will enjoy and things I havent had the opportunity try out. I want my personal projects to be fun but push me as an animator.

Personal Projects:
- Dialogue #1 [10 seconds]
- Dialogue #1[10 seconds]
- Body Mechanics [10 seconds]

With the collaborative projects planned, I had a lot of mimed acting but no dialogue, so I decided to work on two different dialogue pieces. The plan is to have one male and one female as I would like the chance to use both the Mery and Malcolm rigs.
For one of my dialogue pieces I would like to work on something very emotional with quite I high intensity. I feel most of my collaborative work is fun and light hearted so I want to make sure I have something serious in my show reel too. It may end out sticking out a little in my show reel but its something I am desperate to have a go at.
To balance out the first dialogue, I would like something that is quite funny. Possibly a piece where I can play around with a lot of gestures and comedic timing. Of course, when it comes to finding a sound clip, it could all change.

Finally, I wanted to work on some more body mechanics. Although its not the main thing I would like to do, I feel its been very useful for me in the past and helps with timing and weight. Last year I really enjoyed working on my gymnastics project, so I think I will try something similar again this year, but perhaps more difficult. I would like to try to animate some free-running and parkour as I thunk it would be very challenging but fun. I would also really like to use the Stewart rig again, and I think it would be well suited for something like this.

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Now everything is all planned, its onto pre-production!

Ident/ Sting Project: Animation Production

Here we have my animation progression for the ident/ sting project. 

First off, the first block:

I found posing the K character very hard for this piece. He has very unusual body proportions and his large head I found to be quite a challenge. I used my reference video mainly for timing with K as the model could not hit the poses I could. 

Spline:

Smoothing this out was a lot of fun. I tried hard to get nice curved lines on K's movement. N was pretty idle throughout this piece so it was a good chance for me to practice that. I haven't really done idle animation before as there hasnt been much call for it in dialogue or mime pieces I have done in the past. It is something I would like to make sure I can do however as it is very important (especially for games) 

Final Render:

As acting TD I was responsible for the rendering of this piece. Im quite happy with how it turned out overall. It is not exactly as we originally planned but I am pleased with what we did in the time we had. If I were to go back I think I would have liked to make the animation with K a little more toony and really exaggerate the movements and the fall.    

Finally, we had to make a 'making of video' brace yourselves as there is my video reference in there which is not the prettiest. I think its a nice idea to have a making of video though, I think I will try to do this with some of my future projects. Its a nice way to round up a project.

Now Im back in to the swing of animating, I cant wait to start up my final major projects. We will have a lot of time on these and a lot of freedom so Im excited to see what projects our class creates.