Barry Purves Part 2 - London International Animation Festival

Soon after having him visit my uni to talk to us about how to use animation to tell a story, two classmates and I travelled to London at the start of December to see Barry Purves as a guest speaker at the London International Animation Festival!

This time he spoke of his career and compared different aspects of the animation industry to each other. For example he talked about working on children's films, and how there are a lot of rules to follow and keep within the boundaries of compared to standard adult films. This is due to the health and safety precautions we have to teach children, since they are at a young age and easier influenced by what they see.

However Purves believes that children are smarter then we give them credit for, and we should give them the chance to understand rather than talking down to them (aka being patronising). He also believes it's important to introduce kids to culture.

His favourite area of the industry is working on films - he worked with Weta on King Kong for a short time and thought it was "wonderful", but unfortunately he didn't get to finish on that project. Another project he had a short time working on is 'Mars Attacks', which was originally supposed to be a stop motion film, but changed at the last minute to CG due to budget cuts.

Apart from these experiences, he hasn't had much experience in the film industry, because he has never been asked. He believes this is where he will thrive and show his true potential to the world - so I'm looking forward to that when it finally happens! One film he was sad to miss out on working on is 'Fantastic Mr Fox'.

In between these conversations were some screenings of his best films, and newest one 'Plume', including 'Screenplay', 'Achilles', and 'Tchaikovsky' - All of which demonstrate a good storytelling element, since that's Purves' main interest.

Overall the night was an enjoyable one; hearing Purves speak twice within the same week felt a little repetitive at times, but an inspirational visit that has helped me a lot with COP 3.

Barry Purves Part 1 - Visiting the Leeds College of Art

A couple of weeks ago, we have the privilege of meeting Barry Purves, a famous stop motion animator, as he came into our uni to give us a talk about his experiences in the industry! With 37 years under his belt I think it's safe to say he knows his stuff.

Despite this he originally wanted to be an actor; after not doing so well in this field he realised that animation has a similar effect as acting does, in the sense of giving a performance. Purves creates all of his films with the performance of the characters primarily in mind, to create life within the puppets

He opts to animate with puppets because it's a very hands-on technique, which allows him to use props and materials to build a character, and to really be able to feel the character as if it were alive for real. He also believes that stop motion is the best way to get the audience to relate to the film, since this technique uses real materials that people can actually hold, therefore making it more amazing to see it moving on screen as if it were alive.

During the presentation was a screening for two of his films, 'Plume' and 'Tchaikovsky', in which he took us through scene-by-scene to describe why he used certain camera angles or random facts about details in the films.

Overall it was a very insightful talk about various aspects of the animation industry, and he was a pleasure to listen to.

Plume

Tchaikovsky

Thought Bubble

Over the weekend just gone, I attended the yearly ThoughtBubble event in Leeds. I had been recommended to go by some of my classmates for the past two years, so thought it was finally time to see what the fuss was about.

ThoughtBubble turned out to be a great place for networking - every artist there had business cards available for people to take, which I truly took advantage of. This has lead to giving me lots of new contacts/art blogs to look through, just incase I want to collaborate in the future.

My mountain of business cards!

Another good aspect of this convention is the panel talks; the one I went to involved each speaker illustrating onto a projection, whilst talking about their experiences in art - things that inspire them, work experience, and general chat. It was enjoyable to listen to them, though I wish some of the things they said were more useful to me as an artist trying to get into the industry.

Overall it was a very enjoyable experience; it was easy to talk to the artists at their stalls, as well as seeing the variety of artwork that's being made is really inspiring to put my work out there. If I get the chance to go again next year (or in a few years) I'd happily visit this convention again.

Short Course at Aardman

At the start of summer, I found a short course that runs at Aardman studios between September and December of every year, which focuses on character animation in either stop motion or Maya (of your choice). The main tutor is the lead animator at Aardman, as well as guest speakers and the facilities to practice animation as a profession.

This sounds like an amazing opportunity, however only 12 students are accepted onto the course every year. The course overview states that so far about 70% of graduates from their course have gone on to animate within the industry!

The course for 2015 is already running, however if they run the course again in 2016 it could be an option to apply for after finishing my university course... 

NFTS/Aardman Character Animation Course class showreel 2014 from Katie Daniels on Vimeo.

http://www.aardman.com/academy/

MA Courses

Now is the time to start thinking about my future... One of the options I have explored a little is taking an MA course after my current course finishes.

A lot of the courses seem to be general, exploring all areas of animation, just like the study I am currently doing; Some of them sound quite interesting but I'm not sure if they will just cover what I have already been taught at Leeds College of Art.

Most of the other courses specialise in 3D animation, sound design or Games development. This suggests what universities think the future in the industry will look like.

I have found a few courses that caught my attention, two in London, one in Loughborough. Each of them has a different purpose, to re-teach me the basics of animating in each technique, to purely focus on character animation (while teaching us to advance in each technique), and the one in Loughborough will explore animation as a therapy/assistant to health.

They all sound interesting, but I will need to do more research into the universities, prices and each city before making a decision.

The results of searching for 'animation' on ucas Post-Grad programmes

Nepia Tissue Animation

The use of sound effects brings the whole animation to life!

Smooth animation that looks very dainty.

Suggests that the advertising industry is open to using a wide variety of techniques to make creative outcomes - that's something I would potentially like to be a part of.





http://strictlypaper.com/blog/2013/11/tissue-paper-stop-motion-animation-for-nepia/

Trying Out Adobe Flash...

So after having a webcam conversation with the creator, producer, and being introduced to their lead animator, we have established that animating in Adobe Flash would be the best option for this project, since this is Ryan Lancaster's preferred medium and he is the lead animator.

The version I have of Flash is the most recent, CC, since it came in the Adobe package I bought last year. The only Flash experience I have had previously is a brief introduction to it by my tutor, but this was an older version, so I have never used CC before. This is a different version to what Ryan has, so we will have to work around these potential issues in order to get the most out of the software and keep the work consistent.

Though I don't have much experience in this software, this is my chance to learn it and animate in it efficiently to properly compare it to Photoshop.

So far they both seem to have similar settings, despite the tool bar and other options in different places on the page, Flash still feels oddly familiar.

The paintbrush tool is very different; in Photoshop you have a variety of brushes which already have their own settings, whereas Flash allows you to customise your brush a lot more with only basic shapes (so far that I have discovered).

Being Introduced to a Pro Animator

So after a couple of weeks, Cumulo Pictures emailed me with the proposition to meet their newly-found animator.

It turns out that Ryan Lancaster used to be on my course (under a different name) with the same tutors I have now!

After some questions from him about my animating skills, what I prefer to animate and about the software we could use for this project, Ioan and Gloria seemed very happy about the positivity between us and have shared their folder on Google Drive with me as a way for us all to share our work.

This is turning out well, and they all seem to want me to prioritise my university work since they understand that I'm a third year student, so that is ideal working conditions for me.

Now I just have to wait for some footage and to start developing my skills on Flash, so that we can get started on this project!

Having a Webcam Conversation

After some more discussion over Vimeo, the creator of the film, Ioan, suggested we have a conversation over webcam to discuss the film further and see if there is a way that we can work together.

During this chat we established that I will need help from a more experienced animator; since this will be a 6-7 minute long film and I have never worked on a film this long before, as well as having my university work to do throughout the year.

So for now they seem friendly and happy to offer me the opportunity to work with them, I am thrilled and looking forward to having this experience of collaborating; now I just need to wait for them to get back in contact with me with more details.

Cumulo Pictures

Recently after posting my showreel onto Vimeo, I received a message from the head of a small company called Cumulo Pictures, explaining that they loved my work and would like me to potentially animate on their short film for them!

This sounds like an amazing opportunity to collaborate with professionals and build a relationship outside of my university, as well as lead on to other networking opportunities. Before I can accept though, I need to know their schedule and conditions, since I will be back at university for my third and final year in September.

Now I just need to wait for a response to see where this conversation goes.

Learning Journey Evaluation

My learning journey presentation was a good opportunity to reflect on my year and determine the struggles and successes I've had; I kept the presentation positive with how the modules have gone and my showreel - I know that everybody has struggled with most of the tasks given to us this year so I decided having a more positive outtake on it and reflecting on what I can improve upon in myself and my work for next year would better for me, and a good way to end the year.

The main reason I didn't go into specifics with how each module has gone in this presentation is because I don't have too much to say about each individually. Overall they have gone well, I mentioned that COP and Responsive were my least favourites but they have proven their benefits as well, such as building up my showreel, so I can't complain a lot about them.

Most of the benefits and improvements I've made this year are visible in my work, so that's why I decided to include my showreel, as a nice way to show the highlights of my skills and best bits from my second year at uni. I also needed a way to transition between the text smoothly, so I thought using hands would be simple and look professional; it certainly wasn't as simple as I had anticipated but I've had a bit more practice with drawing hands at least.

I didn't include my plans for the summer or much of next year; it's clear enough that animating is my favourite part of the process, no matter what medium, so I would like to spend the majority of next year experimenting and building up my showreel to decide what I want to do in the future. My summer will be spent researching and developing my Context of Practice dissertation, as well as experimenting with different animating techniques and hopefully visiting a few studios in places such as Manchester. It's a shame that I didn't finish or do much for any of the practical pieces of work I wanted to do for this module, so I will try to finish at least one of them over the summer and potentially take them through into my practice next year.

My Showreel: Spring 2015!

Since I have produced so much animated work over the past two years, it was difficult to narrow down my best pieces to compile into a showreel. Some pieces stood out to me straight away, such as my work towards the 11 Second Club competition and parts of the final piece Cara Lambert and I collaborated on for Propercorn. For a few animations I've done this year I feel that I haven't had enough time on them, so sourced my best work from my first year, which includes a walk cycle and a dog running, so I feel that I have a good variety of pieces to show off my skills.

Originally when I started this course I thought that stop motion would become my specialist area of interest for my third year, but recently I have enjoyed 3D and 2D animating a lot more; despite this I am still open to all techniques, but this is why there is a lack of stop motion in my showreel for now.



After putting my videos and audio (sourced online for free) together on Premiere and applying the titles (with my contact details on and labelling that I only worked on the stop motion for the last piece) I am happy with the showreel I have made for this year!

Business Cards

After my previous experience with designing business cards in the 'Responsive' module, I wasn't sure if I would enjoy this or not. After creating my portfolio, I decided that the best way to represent myself would be to use the same style consistently throughout my work. That is why I ultimately decided on my final pieces, compared to my other trials the final card closely represents what I used for my portfolio.

Despite this, all of these are only mock up designs - due to bad time management I don't have enough time to develop my own patterns, but I still feel this pattern represents me well (at least for now) and I can create better designs over the summer, since I intend to visit animation studios in the 4 months we have away from uni and it would be beneficial to exchange contact details to start networking as I start my final year of university.

Trial - Front

Trial - Back

Trial - Back

Final Card - Front

Final Card - Back

Portfolio

Since my specialist area is animating, I found it hard to decide what to include in my portfolio. In the end I mostly included screenshots from my animations since this is the most relevant imagery I've created for my future.

I wanted to create a booklet, similar to my project report for Responsive, except considering the cover page more. I want it to reflect my style and suit the rest of my work, so I thought using the same layout as my blog would make sense. Here's a few mock ups I made of potential layouts on Photoshop, I prefer my final choice because the start boarder doesn't sit too far into the page so it looks more like a boarder rather than an unfinished pattern:

Final Cover

I used Photoshop to put together the pages and saved them as one PDF file because I'm familiar with the software and could focus on creating the layout in reasonable time. Overall I am happy with the choices I made; In order to show off my rendered pictures from Character and Narrative and my qwertee designs, I put them first and last. I've learnt from experience with applying to college and university that putting your best pieces of work first and last will give off the best impression. I haven't done many character designs or storyboards, none of which are of good quality, so using some coloured screenshots from a couple of my best animations made the most sense.

SWOT - End of Year Analysis of Myself...

Not much has changed on my SWOT chart since making one at the start of the year; my strengths are the same, and though my weaknesses are also still the same I believe I have improved on all of them, even if only slightly. For my opportunities and threats I made them more general instead of course or event specific, since I don't have an accurate plan of what I want to do next year.

I definitely want to enter competitions and experiment more with each animation technique - I'll be able to do at least some experimentation in the summer holidays and I'll hopefully be able to collaborate more as well, since this seems to happen a lot in industry and I need more practice in working with others designs and models (as I found out throughout the year). If I take up these opportunities and any more that rise throughout the year then my strengths and weaknesses will improve even more.

Rendering 11 Second Club...

In another module handed in a month ago, I intended to enter the 11 Second Club competition. Unfortunately due to poor time management and the sheer workload we had at the time I was unable to completely finish my animation; While the movements are already in place, I hadn't textured it. It's the only 3D piece I've been able to make after completing the 3D lead module 'Character and Narrative', so I wanted to be able to make another good quality animation for my showreel

This is the final animation as a playblast:



I want to keep the texturing as simple as possible since I don't know too much about it and haven't got enough time to experiment with it right now, so I just tried using a spot light and directional light so you can see the characters clearly. This particular render makes the scene feel quite dark and dingy, which could work for the tone of the piece since it is quite a daunting meeting; however after receiving initial feedback on the first image, I decided to add another directional light to the scene, so that the characters bodies are brighter and stand out compared to the black background. I agree with the feedback and have rendered the sequence using the lighting in the second picture!

Now that this is nicely finished off, I intend to use it in my showreel!

Applied Animation Screening

After handing in another module today, our tutor put together every animation that was submitted into one showreel to be screened in the college's lecture theatre. This was an interesting experience, since I have never shown my work on a big screen in this fashion before (aside from our end of year exhibition last year) to sit and watch them all together and invite others to join us.

Unfortunately some of us in the class, including my team, weren't able to finish our animations on time. This is a real shame because they all had potential to be good pieces of work, and since it was our first screening together it would have felt better if everyone's work was finished.

Despite this, we advertised the screening via posters around college and a last minute Facebook event, so s few people came from various courses such as Illustration, and some that others in my class had invited from outside of the university. They didn't have much to say, but applauded at the end of every piece, so I'll take this as a good sign.

It would be good practice for us to have regular screenings of our work; the next will be at the universities end of year exhibition in the middle of June, but if we put our work together at the end of every module and invite people to see it and give feedback then that's yet another way to improve upon ourselves and take into consideration for the next round of work. Having regular screenings would also motivate me to manage my time better during the year, so that I actually have finished pieces to show.

An Interesting Take on Showreels...

My classmate sent this video to us on our course group on Facebook:



He uses an interesting metaphor to describe how to put together a showreel in the form of a sandwich. Basically he is saying you structure it similar to how you would a portfolio of work - putting your best work at the start and end and thinking about the order of the rest of your pieces, in how they are edited together to flow smoothly.

These points he makes are worth considering as I start to gather my work together for my own showreel, since I want it to work well and demonstrate my skills, not only in animating but in editing as well.

Kilogramme

I was excited to hear that we were going to have a Skype conversation with a member of Killogramme, an animation company based in Manchester. This was a good opportunity to learn from a smaller company what it takes to be in the industry - the problems and benefits they face day-to-day with clients and technology, as well as how to handle massive workloads.

While the Skype connection broke down at one point, we looked on their website as a class and found this animation below. It's humorous and very cartoon-like in the way the lines are animated and drawn, which gives the piece that extra charm.

Their showreel is also very impressive, with a variety of styles and techniques used, it shows a number of skills that clients will be interested in.

After talking to one of my classmates recently I discovered that she visited their studio in the summer to talk to them and get feedback on her work - I have been interested in visiting studios such as Mckinnon and Saunders in Manchester for a while, so knowing that a company like Kilogramme are open to visitors is motivational.


Angels Inc from Kilogramme on Vimeo.



Kilogramme Showreel from Kilogramme on Vimeo.

My Presence on Social Media...

I have been using social media a lot over the past few years, but only this year I have started considering a more professional outlook on it. I have recently created two Tumblr accounts, a Pinterest, a Youtube channel and a Vimeo account. They have different levels of professionalism - I use Youtube as a way to embed every experiment and piece of animation I make during the process of a project onto my blogs, so that is full of unfinished work. My Tumblr accounts and Pinterest mainly illustrate my own interests through fan art I've made/found and my best pieces of uni work. My Vimeo account is purely to publish my finished pieces of work for every module and my showreel, since a lot of the work displayed on this site is professional.

Hopefully if I keep publishing my work online I will get noticed by random people, and it will be easy for me to get in touch with artists/companies to gain feedback on my work and apply for jobs etc. since all of my work will already be online in many different places. I have also been using this media to promote myself, especially with my Qwertee designs, by sending links to the voting pages.

I haven't got a singular username or icon yet, but I intend to make one over the summer so that people will recognise my account across all medias.

Art Tumblr

Photography Tumblr

Pinterest

Vimeo

Youtube account

Chris Sasaki - From Pixar!

Our tutors managed to arrange a meeting with a character designer from Pixar while he's on holiday in Leeds yesterday, which means he came to speak to our class exclusively! The main two projects he has worked on for Pixar so far are Monsters University and their next release: Inside Out. After the talk I researched his work and found these designs for Monsters University:

I personally love this film (I've even had the artbook for it for a year!) so having the chance to meet someone who worked on it was a great experience. He talked us through the process of how he creates a series of designs to present to his boss in regular meetings, to gain regular feedback on his work and which they feel would work best for the film, for him to then develop further on the ones the boss likes the most until a final design is decided upon. 

He also spoke about how he graduated from _ to then get an internship at Dreamworks, which is where he decided to develop on his character designing portfolio. He tried to apply for a job in a lot of places as soon as he graduated but they all said he didn't have enough experience. This is something I think everybody in my class can relate to since companies in England tend to say the same thing.

He encouraged us by saying the facilities he has seen around our college are impressive, and that we don't necessarily need to graduate from a famous school such as CalArts to become successful in this industry. This being said, we all still have to work extremely hard and show commitment and purpose to our work in order for the success to happen; This has shown me that I will need to constantly work on improving my skills and take more into consideration when developing ideas, which will only get better with practice.

Moleskine

I was inspired by http://kerbyrosanes.com/ who create illustrations in a Moleskine notebook to make some random illustrations of my own. The last two images are ones I edited and submitted to Qwertee for another module, but I have enjoyed creating extra illustrations based on characters and films that I love, and intend to make more!

Showreels

In today's session as an introduction back to uni after the Easter break, we've started discussing showreels. Since we'll be displaying our work at the end of year exhibition in June, our tutor has advised we start thinking about it now and collecting my best animation clips to put together later on.

Firstly I thought I'd look at a few examples of showreels from others; though these are further ahead in the field of animation then I am with professional clients, I can get an idea of how much work to include and what will keep people watching all the way through.

The first video in particular has a similar workload to what I have, showing a variety of character styles within the 3D medium. Though the quality of animation is good, the showreel could be more exciting; the clips they have used are possibly slightly too long, though it puts each animation and allows viewers to understand what's happening in each clip.
The beginning and ending have the name, contact details, a specific job title and a symbol (which is animated), which shows the animators personality and gives the showreel a creative spin to it. Having the job title stated directs the viewers attention to the areas of the clips that they have done - for example this is a character animator, so the focus is upon the character(s) of each animation.



This is a showreel from 'Lucky Fingers', a persona on youtube who could potentially be a freelance animator. It isn't specified in the reel who made these animations, which can be problematic for people who don't know the original source.
Though music can be enticing, a showreel up to or longer than two minutes can get slightly boring to watch, even if the quality of animation is good, so I would have to figure out a way to keep mine exciting and watchable if I were to create a reel this long.


My tutor also recommended looking on 'digital-tutors' to see the best advice for what to put (or not) in a showreel. It contains advice which is given pretty much anywhere, and professionals from the likes of Pixar and Dreamworks use this website so it is a reliable source.

http://www.digitaltutors.com/11/demoreel.php

An Idea from Another Module

Recently I have been inspired by the series of TSB bank adverts in 2014, when they separated from Lloyds as a service. The CG animation moves fluently through the narration, with soft colours on the buildings and a different style on the people, which work well together despite the difference in look.




I originally wanted to create an animation in this style for a module I was briefed on recently, Applied Animation 2, but another idea of mine will work better for that brief.

Instead I would like to create an animation of some sort for this module, even just a series of tests, where I can combine 2D and either 3D or Stop Motion as a hybrid type style. It would be great to practice achieving a smooth-running animation to further my skills, and add my experiments to my showreel if they turn out well.

Stop Motion

One of the reasons I fell in love with the subject of animation in the first place was because of stop motion.

My first year of university in Leeds was about learning how to draw and the basics of animating - which has been very useful to be refreshed in, and I can now apply some of those skills to further my practice and discover which area of the industry I would like to delve further into.

Combining my hobbie of photography and using that as a form of animation is something that has interested me in recent years. I want to use the rest of my time at university to practice this technique and improve my skills within it; starting with the basics of the principles of animation.

The video below describes some of the principles of animation, with a cube to demonstrate each action. I would like to create an animation like this one but using a lump of plasticine and a camera. I believe this will be a good starter in getting me back into animating in this form, because it strips away everything apart from a simple object moving on the screen, and once I've practiced simple animation then I will feel more confident moving into bigger projects.


The illusion of life from cento lodigiani on Vimeo.

Combining Photography and 2D...

Recently I haven't been able to do much photography due to the amount of uni work I've had over the past few months... So I'd like to cooperate that into at least one of my projects this year! After looking through my old photos I envisioned a few scenes that could have occurred within these shots, so I decided to quickly draw a couple of examples of what I mean:

I think these images work well, especially the beach scene, despite them only being rough sketches. I can develop on them further and make the imagery more visually appealing/design some characters to go in scenes, and I could animate some of the better compilations as gifs! I have never tried giving an animation a 'cut out' look, so it will be interesting to see how it works.

This will help me practice setting up a scene and putting every aspect to the right proportions, as well as hopefully building up my showreel with a variety of techniques!

Skwigly

My class have been encouraged to start networking with other people in the animation industry; to show off our work and start connecting with potential clients or companies to work for.

Skwigly are an online 'magazine' with all of the latest news in the animation/arts world. They are currently holding a sharing day every Tuesday where you send your latest animation or illustration to them and they will retweet it if they think it's good, so that their followers can see it too. I thought this to be a good opportunity to show off my latest animation from one of my other modules just gone, Character & Narrative, and to try and gain a wider audience for my work.

Skwigly's twitter page

My animation on Skwigly's twitter page!

It worked! My animation is currently available to see on their twitter page. It hasn't been up for long so far but hopefully this will get seen by a variety of people who enjoy it and want to see more from me.