The Monsterophians - Illustration

This is my design for the first "Keeping It Brief" brief. A blog set up by Gareth Sharples for Falmouth students and graduates. This month's brief was to create a music band of monsters. I sketched out many potential characters beforehand which helped inform my final designs here. I'm quite happy with the character designs - if I find time I'll add in a bit of colour. I imagine them to have a carribean sound.

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Blender - completed spaceship!

I have now completed this tutorial from Andrew Price. It was great to learn the ins and outs of Blender in terms of modelling, applying materials, lighting and compositing. I'm quite happy with this final result :-)

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Blender spaceship model

For those who are unfamiliar with Blender, it is a completely free 3D program, open source with a lot of free resources available.

I found this cool spaceship tutorial online by Blender teacher Andrew Price from Blender Guru. Over the past couple of days, I've spent a few hours modelling this spaceship. Blenders interface is nice and intuitive which makes it nice and quick to learn.

Here are a couple of pics of my work in progress:

For those who know Maya or 3ds Max, you are well catered for in Blender as you can use all the same hot keys. My next step will be to do the 2nd tutorial, texturing and compositing to create the final image.

In the mean time, here is some Blender Inspiration!

I am also intending to download a trial of Cinema 4D soon, it seems like every motion graphics job out there has it on their job description so it would be wise to learn it.

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Release of our 3D Grad film - "Kernel"

It has been over a year since I graduated but at long last, our fantastic 3D animated film "Kernel" has now been released on Youtube! Be sure to check it out with the lights turned off, the sound turned up and in full HD!

Synopsis:



Film:



Team:



Olly Skillman-Wilson: Director, Writer, Lighting Artist (3rd from right)
Laurence Nairne: Creative Producer, Script Editor, Animator (1st on left)
Charlie Minnion: Lead Compositor, Editor, Storyboard Artist (5th from left)
Hugh Herbert: Writer, Animator
Dan Emmerson: Animation Director
Luke Jefferson: Rigging, Texturing, Technical Director (5th from left)
Kai Fraser: Dynamics, Stereography (2nd from left)
Liam Fraser: Dynamics, Stereography (4th from left)
Jake Jones: Modelling, Texturing, Compositing (4th from right)
Ryan Mace: Modelling, Texturing, Compositing (2nd from right)
Nigel Kitts: Lead Texture Artist, Animator (1st on right)
Alan Matthewman: Fluid Dynamics, Cloth Simulation (3rd from left)

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KBS music video pitch

Recently, I pitched for a music video on Radar Music videos for a North London rapper by the name of KBS (Kainee Boi Set.) You can listen to the tune here: "Just A Ghost" by Kainee Boi Set.

Unfortuantely, the pitch fell through. Here is the pitch document I sent with my written treatment:



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In retrospect, I ran out of time to come up with an idea for the chorus & I think the initial KBS font in the intro is a bit to tame! Also the Tetris idea is a bit too obvious. I quite like the style I put together though.

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Fin. "The Incomplete Activist" with CreativeConnection

My role

As it was a small creative team, my job was not restricted into one small area, but traversed many roles. I was bought in from the start, to collaboratively engage with what the client was after, brainstorm ideas and help put them into action by producing the first bits of stop motion animation with the team. From then on my job was to work remotely with all the stop motion footage they recorded.

The work involved animating, compositing, adding effects, creating smooth transitions, working to a voice over and editing. Whilst being given plenty of stop motion material, backgrounds and precise instructions to work with, I also had a fair amount of creative input in terms of applying some of my visions from an animation point of view to their ideas and visual output. In this respect the work was very symbiotic. Generally speaking I was very happy with my position in the project as I found it to be dynamic, diverse and interesting.

Teamwork

Throughout the production of the animation, I received constructive feedback after each EIP (Edit-In-Progress,) which allowed me to continuously improve on the work by making changes and bring about further cohesion. At these points they would also supply me with more stop motion material to fill in the gaps of the script. Throughout the course of the project and through applying their feedback, I have improved on my editing technique - more specifically, the art of joining together a voice over with text, sounds and visuals whilst maintaining a good pace and flow.

It has been a good learning process in terms of working with others. I have learned to respond to criticism constructively, to be flexible about changing things that are not working and to accept that not all my ideas will be implemented. On the other hand, it has been highly rewarding to receive very positive feedback and I have gained a huge sense of personal satisfaction on fulfilling what has been required of me. The CC team and the client have responded positively to my output so all in all it has gone very well.

There has been a high amount of creative input in this project from all involved and it has been great to work with such enthusiastic and skilled artists, as well as a talented writer (script) and actor (voice over.)

What is it about?

The film is designed to educate people and dispel the myths of what activism involves, how it comes about and what activists are like. It is full of interesting visual metaphors which takes us into the heart of the activist.

The client who commissioned it, is currently doing his PhD and writing a thesis on the subject. We listened, as he explained his thesis to us, following this, our mission was to condense the content of this thesis into some key bite-sized chunks of information that can be manifested and absorbed in animation form.

Purpose and audience

Hopefully, the film will resonate with audiences across the spectrum, enlighten them with knowledge which is otherwise not obvious or explicit and inspire discussion and debate. It will be shown to hundreds of communities across the U.K. and uploaded onto an intellectual virtual space as well as Youtube.

Visuals

As you can see there is a nice D.I.Y. feel about it - most of the elements were made by hand, and once they were sent to me I comped them together, adding animation and effects where necessary. A big part of the animation was creating smooth transitions which, with the help of a computer - one can be ridiculously perfectionist about! This is a big part of animations charm though so I feel it is worth the time.

I am proud to have been a part of this great project and I anticipate it's release into the world (this September/October.) This has been a different type of animation project to the kind CreativeConnection normally work on - so hopefully more like this will come, as I would love to work with them again!

Credits

Voice Over --- Philiph Bosworth
Script writer --- Dann Casswell

Director --- Ariadne Radi Cor
Producer & Co-Director --- Jessica Harvey

Illustrator --- Lara Popovic
Animator & Editor --- Charlie Minnion

Made by CreativeConnection : www.creativeconnection.co.uk

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Fin. "Love Soldiers" @ the RCA - Screenshots & Learnings

Over the last few months I have been spending a couple of days a week helping out Chloe Feinberg on her 2D animation "Love Soldiers" at the RCA. I am pleased to say that the film is now complete and has screened at the RCA shows.

My job has mainly been scanning in the hand inked frames, colouring sequences in Photoshop and compositing in After Effects. More specifically the compositing involved putting in camera moves, time re-mapping, generating effects, creating the animated film grain, bringing together several seperate layers into one scene, and embellishing the look of it. Chloe had a very clear vision in her mind of what she was after, so my role was very much acting as a technical support and following her direction.

It has been a really interesting project to work on, and great to work with such a passionate and driven director. Chloe has worked tirelessly day in and out on the film, it has been a massive labour of love and I am happy to have contributed towards making her vision come to life.

Screenshots
As you can see - it has a really nice aesthetic quality to it - a great quality of drawing, line, colour and texture. The film itself is one that keeps the viewer engaged, curious and entertained. The style has captured a surreal dream-like essence which works symbiotically with the content and nature of the film.

Chloe's statement:

" I see animation as a way to re-invest in representations and impart them with something strange and intoxicating. It enables me to create narratives that weave a kind of personal mythology out of dreams, fantasies and memories. My degree show film explores images that are born out of excess, and the project is a synthesis of many personal interests, including; erotic comic artists of the 1970s and ’80s, surrealism, perfume segments on home shopping channels, male sex idols of the ’80s, and the work of artist/animator Suzan Pitt. "

Learnings

I have learned a few little things (some of which are thanks to some helpful RCA students - cheers chaps!)

Boiling

Learning a method for producing a boiling effect (i.e. making the lines wobble a bit - like in Rugrats.) This has been achieved by using a loop of 3 frames. So it goes 1,2,3,2 then this is on a loop. The frames have been hand drawn, with the intention to simply copy over the exact same line again - this produces a nice subtle boiling effect. Alternatively, a similar effect can be achieved with turbulent displacement though it seems much less effective.

Time remapping

Getting used to working in the time remapping graph to re-tweek the timing of a bit of animation. I was asked to replicate the timing of a bit of animation to match a reference film clip and was able to work it into a tee using time remapping.

Consistant frame rate

I have also learned that it is wise to keep things all at the same frame rate (i.e. if the lines are boiling on 2s then any other animation or effects should be in sync on 2s as well), otherwise you get a bit of a weird strobe-ing effect which isn't so good on the eyes.

Motion paths + natural camera movement

Working directly with motion paths seems to be the clearest and easiest way to manipulate the movement of a camera. Alternatively, you can parent the linear/bezier movement of a camera to a null, then use motion sketch to apply a subtle natural camera move by hand (ideally with a tablet) in real time.

Photoshop actions as an indispensible colouring aid

I have also learned how to colour a sequence in Photoshop quickly by utilising actions. This has had a significant impact on speeding up workflow.

Using Final Cut
I have now scratched the surface of this lovely and intuitive editing program, perhaps one day I'll get it myself but until then I will make do with my trusty Adobe Premiere.

Using a Mac

It has to be said - whilst I have used Macs on rare occasion before, my computer at home is a PC with Windows and this is what I have become used to, so I feel like I have got much more used to using a Mac - I'm now bi-computeral :-)

Interestingly, it has actually changed the way I use my PC. I have downloaded a plug in which allows me to colour my folders - I highly recommend this as it enables quicker navigation through windows explorer if you have a large amount of files and folders to navigate in one project. Also using a Mac with 16GB of ram has inspired me to start jumping between different apps on my computer with more confidence and efficiency - no longer strictly keeping one app open at a time but working more simultaneously across apps - unless it slows down my computer! So yes - next step is to upgrade my PC to 16gb ram which I hope to do imminently.

Conclusion

I really enjoyed my time working with Chloe and Filip (Fil inked all the frames) at the RCA and feel like I got a lot out of it. At times, there was a lot of pressure on and things could get a little stressful, but equally there were also some great moments where we were all "in the zone" and it was a laugh. Alongside Chloe and Fil, I also had the privilege of working with other artists on the project and I was chuffed to be part of the RCA scene. Meeting other animators on the course and attending a couple of fascinating lectures. One from animator Michael Dudok de Wit who has won a BAFTA for his film "Father and Daughter" and another from Ed Cooke - an expert on memory and imagination. Good times :-)

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