Work Experience at The Neighbourhood

During the easter holidays me, Jack and Sarah had the privalage to work at The Neighbourhood for two weeks. I found it really interesting being able to see how a studio functions and started to appreciate the effort that goes into running a studio.

The best part about being there was having the opportunity to work on a live brief. It opened my eyes up to how much effort goes into a brief in the real world and all the ups and downs of it.
It was also really good to be able to look at a aftereffects file and study some of the tricks which people do to make sure everything is accessible and changeable. Having the flexibility to change things round is vital when working on a brief because the amount of changes that come in from the client is unbelievable.

As I hadn't yet started production on my FMP I was able to take what I'd learnt from working at  The Neighbourhood and put it into practice. As a result my files and program files were really easy to navigate and easily changeable. getting feedback from tutors and peers and having to change/ tweak small bits within Im' animation wasn't a time consuming ordeal (as it would have been on previous projects)

Thats the main thing I took away from my work experience

Holden and Son | Making Space

After a portfolio visit with Manchester based studio 'Holden and Son' me, jack, john and ashleigh were given the opportunity to create a short animation for one of Peter Holden clients called 'Making Space'.

Me and Jack decided to work together on the brief whilst Ashleigh and John went solo. The collaboration worked really well, we set out to join our interests together into one animation. Jack has a love for stop motion and I really like hand drawn animation. It was great because the client's logo had a character in it which I felt would be really nice to animate hand drawn.

The company deals with people with schizophrenia and mental disorders and helps them deal with it. The key thing we picked upon was that this company is helping people deal with their mental disorder, so we wanted to get this across on our piece.
The idea is that the character isn't over coming his disorder, but has found a place where he/ she can deal with it.
We both worked on the idea, I animated the character and jack animated the paper, then we brought them together into after effects and made it look visually pleasing.
We decided to add backwards vocals to give a sense of distortion in the mind of the character.

Peter Holden liked the outcome and said he'd get in touch with 'Making Space' and show it to them in the near future.

Portfolio Visit | Kilogramme

Me and Jack went to visit kilogramme studios on the 24th of February. We showed work to both Jon Turner and Claire Grey (also some of their freelance illustrators and animators)

I showed my train animation which I started working on when I did work experience with them. They thought it looked visually nice and they liked how it went from the storyboard and animatic (which i did whilst with them) to the final piece.
Although, they thought it needed more of a story for the length it was. I'm really surprised at how long the piece is now, as My last animation was so much shorter and still got the message across, even more so, my final major project is shorter than both of them at the moment and has a proper story to it.
So i've learnt a lot from that piece of work

Feelgood went down well, they laughed at it (which was a good sign), they thought the style was nice. Jon said the style reminded him of the designs for sleeping beauty, which I referenced when creating the piece. They still thought it could do with a cut down version which get to the punchline quicker.

Lastly I showed a style frame for my latest project (FMP) so I could get some help with style.


Both Clair and Jon liked it, but work needed to be done to make the character not slid along the background (which I've noted....but think my animatic is showing that it won't be much of a problems with the final animation due to choice of camera shots)
I also showed two of their freelance illustrators/ animators, Craig and David, both gave me some good Photoshop tips which would help with various things throughout the process of making the animation.

Three Days at Kilogramme Animation

This was a totally different experience to the LOVE Creative visit, I went from being with people I knew to just me.

Unlike LOVE Creative which is more graphic design advertising, Kilogramme is all about animation, and I feel I benefited more from that. Its only a small group of people who make up the company but they all were very kind and gave me some good feedback on my work!

So over the three days with them I got feedback on stuff which I'd done at Love Creative and also work which I worked on whilst there (which was the stuff in preparation for Uni).
I got some really good tips off Dave Ridges about how I could make the backgrounds of the 'seasons' animation better...

he made me think more about layout within the composition and gave me some useful tips on how to draw the eye into a certain section of the frame. from looking at my initial frame above, to the one below, you can see what Dave did to the piece to try and improve the composition and give it depth.
Really like of the idea of putting some sort of bushes or grass etc at the bottom right and left hand sides though, It keeps your eye central to the screen.

This also prompted me to buy a book called 'Dream Worlds' which Dave initially gave me to read at kilogramme....but I thought it was such a good book, I went home and bought it!





As well as the 'seasons' work I also worked on an animatic for the self initiated project from uni. Heres the animatic I've ended with (for the moment)...



Here's a maya test I did a few days after my time at Kilogramme...it took a while to do as I havn't used maya in a while! gives a sense of how I want it to look.

I'm wanting to add textures to the train, but we'll see.

Work Experience at LOVE Creative

 As well as writing about the work experience, I'll have to write about the project I got from Uni over the summer(Self Initiated), as it all mixes into one....like a cake.

 SOOO, from 31st May till 24th June I was commuting to and from Manchester every Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday to a studio called LOVE Creative. I was there with three other people from Stockport College; Helen Porter (Graphic Design), Dominique Byron (Illustration) and Jack Maguire (Moving Image).Me and Jack are working on a short animation (and have been doing since September last year) so that's what we were working on whilst in the studio. As well as working on this short animation, we were also given some after effects work to do at some points.

Starting from the end...me and jack helped out Dominique bring one of her illustrations to life, this was nice for two reasons; firstly it meant it could put our after effects skills to the test and secondly it was nice to use someone elses work which looked really cool.
We failed at putting our after effects skills to the test as something that should have taken a few hours to do ended up taking....3 days (well not all of the day...more like 3 hours each day) never the less, I had fun helping out where I could. Here's Dom's animation...



A third thing that's nice about working with an illustrators work is that they know how to use colour and composition well, which is something I have been looking into for the Self Initiated project from Uni.


 So, to start thinking more about colour, my aim was to get started on a colour script for mine and jack's animation. To give a brief out line to what the vision is, we want to get across the feelings of two characters in a relationship, by using the seasons, for example; the animation will start in spring as spring is known as the season of new life etc also, we go through eight seasons all together and as the relationship turns sour, the seasons should mimic this.
 These are two which I did whilst at LOVE creative, both autumn...but as the relationship changes over time, when we go back to autumn the next time round and its much bleaker...

I hope the above makes seance. As well as this going towards a side project, its also helping me on my self initiated.

Because I'm new to all this, my first lot of colours are always very unambitious, but its only till you TRY another set of colours, then you realize how bad the first set were. So one thing I learnt was to not be satisfied with the first outcome.

Also use of the 'Hue and Saturation' tool in Photoshop helped out a lot, you can take the colours your happy with and make then really vibrant or really saturated in an instant. (that how i got the really vibrant orangey/red on the first autumn) 

In terms of moving image stuff done at LOVE Creative, I did 2 seconds worth (I could well be exaggerating) but yer...here's the reference footage of Jack and me trying to sit down on a sofa....

I think I ended up using some refrence footage I did at home, but i can't find it, here's the test...

 Also, my after effects skills also got a lot better from having some briefs of the LOVE creative team...but I can't talk or even show them. So i could just be lying to you, but I'm not...honest. 

 Lastly, I never thought of having twitter, it seemed too complicated and never really interested me. But from talking to jack, dom and the people at LOVE creative, everyone said its a really good way of getting your work seen and also a nice way to keep in touch. So me, and also Helen, joined up. It seems like a good way to promote your stuff....follow me, please

I also joined LinkedIn and Behance Network.


 To sum up, its been really good working at LOVE Creative, did some nice collaborative work, learning more about colour, got more work done on the short animation and got more connected by signing up to loads of websites.

    Some Pictures from our time at LOVE Creative...

(Link to LOVE Creative's Blog post about this cake)