Ultimate Image for Business Assignment

One of the last assignments where I had to create an Ultimate image using the poster grid system to show good use of layout and also see if the image itself can tell a story.

Inspirational Trailer #3

Today I stumbled across a trailer for a feature film that has blown my mind. The beautiful animation in this film is pretty amazing. This feature film which will be out sometime this year is called, The Little Prince Trailer #1

By just watching this trailer makes this film look like it's been produced by Pixar or even Disney. The quality is that good! I thought I'd just make a post mentioning this trailer because it inspires me and makes me want to work more to reach that kind of level.

A visit from FRAMESTORE: Animator - Michael Elder and Recruitment Manager - Toyah Dunningham

Today was a inspiring and slightly productive day in terms of uni project work. Today we had special guests from Framestore. Michael Elder who is an Animator and Toyah Dunningham who is the recruitment manager. The day started off with Michael and Toyah going around to all of the third year students and talking to them for approx 10 minutes. Showing the current work that we are all working on and also get to ask a couple of questions about the industry. This was kind of running a little bit late as there were some issues and they arrived later than scheduled.

They managed to get around to seeing me and even though it was not their fault that it was running late. I felt the time I had to talk with them and get feedback from the about my work was a bit short. I had enough feedback but I would still like to have had a little bit more time as it was rushed.

After lunch they were giving a presentation about the company and a brief background knowledge about themselves and what their job role is at Framestore. They went over briefly the films that the studio will be taking and working. The films are, Pan(2015), The Martian(2015), Tarzan(2016), Geostorm(2016), Now You See Me(2016), Jungle Book(2017) which this film will be directed by Andy Serkis. (Might be an all out motion capture film)

Michael and Toyah then went on to talk about how to get into the industry. Especially Framestore, what they look for when interviewing candidates. They mentioned that you will need to have very good communication skills. As you will need to communicate with the production and the directing manager of that project to update them on the progress of the shot you have been given to. The reason for good communication skills is that if you fail to communicate how well your progression of your shots are. Then you will be slowing down the process of the schedule that has been planned.

They also mentioned about the internship that they are going to run over the summer. The summer course will be 8 weeks long and that the applications are open now. If I wanted to get into the film and vfx specialist area. Then the best route to take to get into that is to start out as a runner. To have a chance of applying and getting an interview, I will need an extremely good show reel. Keep all my work up to date! (basically house keeping) All my links on my website are all working to ensure a smooth run of the process of viewing my work. Have a show reel no longer than 2 minutes maybe even shorter. If I want to be an animator it is a good example to include some tracking shots and also include clear breakdowns of your animations throughout the show reel.

Michael also talks about criticism, don't take it to heart receive criticism professionally as they are the ones that have been on the industry a lot longer than I have. To try and get a lot of experience in TV animations as it is a good starting path to go from to get yourself into the industry. They then ended the presentation with a couple of demo reel examples and example shots of films they have worked on. Machael and Toyah's last words were that 'It will be easier to get into the industry as a runner. You will have more chance of that than going for an internship over the summer'

Cat Chase Project UPDATE 4 - Blocking of shot_03

After finishing up on the animations for shot_01 and shot_06 for this project. I have now moved onto blocking out the animation for shot_03. Even though I should have finished this project 2 weeks ago I am aiming to complete the final animation of shot_03 by at least the end of the day. Then hopefully moving onto finishing blocking shot_07.

When blocking out the key poses for this shot I found it particulary comfortable doing this shot. I set myself a target in getting the first pass of the blocking stage for this shot done by around 2pm ish. I managed to complete that by 2:15pm. Which I am happy that I managed this.

I have been following the animatic in which the director has provided me for this shot. I feel when using the animatic for reference that there was still a few seconds spare towards the end. So I added a little bit of improvisation/extra bits into the shot.

Here is the animatic:

and here is the first blocking pass of the animatic above....

 and then here is the same shot but a side view of the blocking.

Company Research #5

For my #5 company research it is going to be DreamWorks Animation SKG

DreamWorks Animation SKG is another American based film production company. The studio was founded on October 1994 almost more than 20 years ago. The founders are Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen. The studio is mainly known for it's animation films such as: Shrek, Madagascar, Kung Fu Panda and How to Train Your Dragon films. They have also worked with Aardman Animation studio before but now all of their films  now use computer animation.

Here are some still shots of the animated film work they have produced over the years...

How to Train Your Dragon

Kung Fu Panda

Shrek

DreamWorks have inspired me in a way that they are another big animation company that also can produce top quality animated films. They are up there with Disney and other companies like Pixar and Illumination Entertainment and so forth. I really love the quality and style of the animation in the films How to Train Your Dragon. The quality of the models, animation, the feel and the look of the film is so aesthetically pleasing to the eye. It looks so realistic but at the same time it is not. As I said earlier other big companies like DreamWorks inspire me because there are other companies like this one who can produce around the same quality of animated films. It's also good for job prospects more big companies other than the two main ones shows that there are a lot of opportunities. As well as smaller companies too.

Cat Chase Project UPDATE 3 - Animation shots

Today I finally got what I hope to believe, is the style of animation that will be suited for this short. After weeks of going back to the drawing board in trying to get the kind of animation style for the short. I am happy with the outcome, all I need to do now is pass it onto the director to get feedback and hopefully there won't be too much that needs altering.

In the first playblast of the animation for shot_01 I wanted to see how the run cycle of the policeman would look in the actual environment. So here it is,

After putting the video on loop, I wanted to see if I could spot out any small detail that would be off putting. Anything that wouldn't look right in this scene, but after a couple of minutes analysing the shot I couldn't spot out anything. I then decided to add in the rest of the policeman characters into the scene as the first tester look good. Here is the same shot but with 2 extra policemen added into the scene.

So I will now send this to the director and hopefully get some feedback soon. As I have lost some time in my other projects in which I need to make up for desperately.