Work at the moment

Erm it's been rather a hectic time for me recently animation wise. I have been extremely overwhelmed with my projects.

I managed to hand in a file of the pig flying animation film to be looked at recently and should hopefully get to completing the necessary changes and that will then be a completion of the job. I shall finally be able to pot some freelance work up.

In terms of the film though I do wish I had a bigger deadline as the pigs animation isn't at the level of animation quality I would have hoped for. I look forward to seing it up on the clients website though, and getting some recognition for my work.

As of this week though I was set 4 speaking/acting animations or the computer game. Three are fairly small and simply done, however I was set a 20 odd second animation piece with three characters interacting, so it was a nice chance to explore this area more, I have enjoyed doing it. It has taken me I beleive 3days to do which I'm pretty proud of because I have worked my butt off on this one. It looks pretty nice now it just needs a bit of cleaning up which I plan to finish tonight and then I hand it in and move onto the mini ones, in which I have to produce one a day to meet the deadline on Friday. 

Also I unforunately ad to turn down yet gain another job this week. I seem to keep beingapproached now which is realy nice, but some are areas I don't know a lot about so like this one I amtigh for time with other things so without knowing all the techniqe it would be hrd to even concier.

Random post to say what's going on with me at the moment.

I have been completely crammed with work over the last couple of months. Since braking from University I have had a really stress full and busy summer with animation.

On the first 3 or 4 weeks I worked solid on more game animation, this particular task I had to do was the most challenging I have had I feel. It took me a while to get that one complete.

As the weeks went by I decided to try and make some Internet presence for myself so I signed up on linked in, animated buzz and also posted a couple of videos on Vimeo. From this really amazingly I have made allot of really friendly, encouraging and inspiring people.

Also as time goes I like to check out companies and also see what kind of freelance work is out there. I haven't yet applied for any myself as I don't have much work to show them at the moment.

About 3 weeks ago I got a random urge and wanted to see whether any local companies would be interested in any animation done for them. I emailed around 13 I think and from that I received 8 responses 2 were that they wouldn't need that sort of thing and a couple interested to know more but strangely never went further. I managed to get 3 offers though. One was unfortunately technical animation done using coding which wasn't my area so I had to refuse. The other two however were really good offers.

1) The first is a promo film by Fresh Fish design, for this I have been assigned piece on a local area of thanit.

2) The second is to produce a selection of 2d flash animated logos, in which components move and come together to form the logo.

The promo film I was only assigned 3 weeks so it is very tough going, I am in the last week now and the deadline is approaching quickly, I hope to get it done in time, and then I will finaly be able to have some freelance work I can display rather than hiding it like the game as I don't know if I can yet.

The logo's weren't a very pressing Holman design so I am casually doing them when I can fit them into my schedule. I hope to get a selection for them of around 10 by the end of the summer so early September. I look forward to showing them too as so far they are looking nice.

Finaly I have also been approached by two people for other projects. I had to unfortunately refuse the first as it would have required me having to commute or rent a hotel which wouldn't have been feasible for me. The second I haven't heard anything back from so I don't know if that's going anywhere.

I look forward to posting some videos when I have finished each project.

Degree show, how it went and we won best 2nd year film!

Just got back from watching the animation degree show at the odeon.


Our film seemed to go down very well. It looked realy great on the massive screen.
 Lots of people giggled when it came to the imp section. I'm not sure wether it's because they understood the story or was just because of the cuteness of the imp, but I think I pulled off the cute imp apeal well and the movie seamed to connect together well.


After watching all the movies I was happy with what our group did and to make it even better we won an award for the best second year film.

Character turn around of me as a character

I have just done a simple trun around of my character in simple clothes to just get an idea of how he looks all round/perspective wise. From now I hope to take this forward and try to produce some nice action shots. And also develop the character design wise into other clothes for the sport ideas.

Initial head/faciel expression designs of me as a character.

Yes I have developed the faces above some ok some not so good but they were just to test the drawing process of how I can quickly produce quick drawings of my face using shapes. so in this instance It's easy as I just use a circle and basily half a hexagon for the jaw/chin. This process seems to make it very easy to reproduce the characer.

Current work I'm going to start on at the moment

I have a huge list of ideas i'm going to do this summer but as I'm working on the game animation at the moment my time is quite tight as it is getting more rushed to get it all done.


The work on the game is slightly stressfull sometimes so I randomly decided I would try design myself as a cartoon and I think I may take the concept further and try to get some nice animtion out of the character I see s myself. I will try to include a range of short animtions such as sports I do and interests I have. This I think will be a nice change away from the game stuff and will allow me to develop my 2d skills more too.


Ideas to develop using me as a character:


Swimming- Swimming has always been qute a big thing to me. I still swim now and am also a qualified swim teacher, so I intend to produce some realy nice animations of the swim strokes and perhaps diving.


Handball- I have only been a part of handball for 2 years now playing at university but in that time I am a qualified coach, qualified table official and also I have plaed both years for the great britian Universities team. With this I hope to get some realy nice animations such as shots, dribbling, goal keepers. This will test my abilities but I htink for me it'l be an enjoyable process.


Anyway shall keep posting as I go.

Random post

Just a quick post to say I'm going to now use this blog to post all my other work I do as it'l be pointless to leave it and start a new one.


Anyway I have lots of new work I intend to be getting on with in my own time aswell as work on a a children's computer game so I will be kept very buisy. I will try and keep posting all my new stuff :)

How completeing tasks for degree show went.

To be honist i'm disapointed with how the two weeks went up to the hand in. People in the group just seee like they gave up and although I gave people jobs not all of them got done. On the contrary even though Liam didnt do anything the first week he did realy well in the last week an me and him managed to pull most things together and atlest get a few things changed. Hollie also managed to produce a mobile for the room to help to try show the connection between the two sections of the move.

Jobs I still wished we could have sorted were the dribbling of the Imp and getting the train moving through the birdseye view shot.

Jobs we are aware of for the degree show

There are a few jobs that we are planning on doing for the degree show. Some are from jobs we missed and others are fom new ideas to improve.

1. Unfortunately we couldn't attatch the Imps texture due to rigging and unwrapping UV's in the wrong order. From this we were planning on changing the shader colour for the and in but we ran out of time ad realy had to star rendering with the red one we had. We are going to change his colour though for the degree show.
2. We also need to re render the imp scenes because they came out with a white border around everything. There is also a strange strong block shadow in the scene which unfortunatley stopped us from being able to pan out to see the whole cave. We will sort these rendering issues though for the show.
3. Each time the train goes past we want to make the guy in the crossing shot be in the pose the previous reaction shot ends with rather than him stood in the same position.
4. Adding lights to the train shots and to the street lamps.
5. In the umbrella shots paint in gusts of wind to emphasise the wether more.

Assement of my self in the project

Directoral

From when I became diector I think I perhaps added more enthusiasm and organisation to the team. I created task calenders which seemed to keep everyone on track. I hope everyone was happy with how I directed and felt with me in charge, the genreal response seems to be thatpeople liked it.

The only draw back of me being director may have been on some of the art direction I wasn't always the best person to choose colours etc.

My roles

My honist opinion on myself would be:

I realy struggled early on with the animations of the head turns but I managed to resolve my issues in the end. Through doing the mixed 2d and 3d project it di me good as it helped me to realise that I prefer 3d animation by far, as my drawing ability holds me back sometimes in the 2d parts.

OveralI my animation turned out well in the end and I am happy with what I produced. I wish I'd finnished some bits earlier though so the process would have been a bit more fluid, as we had to rush alot at the end.

Soming up of the project and group

The project/idea

I think from the start we had a realy interesting idea that linked realy well to the Lincoln theme as the themes are realy recognisable as Lincoln.

Ithink that the mix of 2d and 3d was from the start what we wanted to do. Many people thought we should stick to one or the other but we realy liked the mixed media and stuck with it, adn I think it payed off in the end.

The final film ended up alot longer than we originaly anticipated but I think without this length it wouldn't have turned out as good.

The team/members

I think that I was lucky to get the team I was with because between us we all had strong abilities in our own areas so our skills came together nicely.

Genreal team assesment:

As a team I think at times we may have slacked off a bit especialy at the beginning but when it counted we realy stepped up and produced some realy nice work. We had quite a few time drawbacks troughout but I think we did well concidering these.

Sam

Unfortunately Sam was a big negative issue in the project, and held us back quite often as we had to re do things. We gave him lots of chances but had to give up on him because we couldn't waist any more time and we wanted to just get things done. I do feel slightly bad beibut to be honist it was his own fault.

All of my imp animation shots put together and rendered out properly.

2nd shot parenting the man to the imp

After struggling trying to keep the man in the imps hand I wanted to find an easier way to do it. Me and Liam came up with parenting the man to the imps head joint so that it would remain in place. This solved the man problem, but then to stop the whole film from having the guy floating around following the joint throughout we just rendered out the frames we needed.

1st and 2nd shots complete

After a lot of playing around with the motions I have finaly come out with one i'm happy with, after this I have alsdded mr motions and links to add more emotion and realism to the character.

Double arm shake

Lean in to grab toy

Rock back anticipation

Lean over

Train push keeping in thumb

I realy wasn't too keen on the imp flapping his arm so went back to the original plan of keeping the thumb in his mouth. It took me a little longer to keep it there but I think the pay off is worth it.

Train push with flapping arm

It was realy chalnaging to try and get the imp to keep his hand on his foot as when he went forwards and back to keep it in place i had to rotate he shoulder and flex the elbow which made the arm flicker around allot. Instead I thought I would try and go straight into him flapping but with one arm then he would go into both arms after.

Train push with imp holding his foot

I was having a bit of trouble with keeping the imps thumb in his mouth so I decided it might be quite nice if he grabs his foot and holds it.

Returned from tour

Toay I have returned frm my tour and have found out that Erica hasn't been well with migranes so hasn't managed to get much work done ove the weekend. This may hold us back a little in terms of colouring but hopefully Martynawill be able to get it done in time.

Colouring issues

Unfortunatley due to my hold back on the 2d animation we are pressed for time for colouring. Erica has coloured andis doing the shading of the 3rd rectin hot at the moment. It was taking longer than expected so I decided to help out and do the block colouring for the 2nd reaction shot and the 4th reactionshot so that they are ready for just the shading.
Before going on my tour I have posted the flash files on the Adrive for Erica and also Martyna to add the tone to the block coloured animations.

Goin to be away for 4 days

This realy has come at the wrong time but I am going to compete in a four day tournament in Poland with the Great Britain universities hadnball team.

I realy wish it was at a different time but it is a good opertunity for me.

I will be away from tonight and return around midnight Sunday.

I have left everyone instructions for when I'm away so that when I'm back we are on track for the final push to finnish.

First shot imp animation

Imp animation getting in the train movewment and imps basic movements

From opening the Imp scene I saw that moving the train would be a bit of an issue. For a start the track is cuved, but it s also a slight hill. This caused me quite a lot o issues and forced me to individualy key frame each carriage. This took longer than I hoped but knew once this was out the way it shold get easier from there.

Begining Imp animation

Just a message to tell my plans for the imp animation:
All the way through the project we haven't exactly decided specificly what the imp will be doing apart from pushing a train back and forwards.
I have had a think about what I'd like and have come to the conclusion to try and get more of the character across to the audience. I want to add the innocence of a young infant.

My plan:

1st shot-

we are going to stick with looking up at the imp pushing the train. Instead of him blowing raspberries I want to add more of realistic way to get the dribble. I want to get a nice shot of him sucking his thumb with just some nice subtle faciel features.

2nd shot-

1. Cuts to a longer shot of the imp still sucking his thumb and pushing the train
2. Imp lets go of train and stops sucking thumb
3. Flps his arms/fidgiting
4. Reaches over and starts plodding along a person.
5. Picks up person and flapps arms again
6. Shoves person in his mouth
7. Carries on puching train.

2nd reaction shot flled in animation

2nd reaction shot

Scruffier animation

I found the previous animation slightly boring in terms of movements and wanted to make it more dramatic, so I decided I needed moremovement to the body area. Making him more scruffy gave me the idea to make his tie whip as he comes forward and jacket come open.