FMP | Facebook

 As well as having group crits every other week to get feed back on our progress, we've all been keeping in touch via a facebook group.
Its been good for many reasons, getting instant feedback if you don't want to wait till uni, also when people are just searching the web, they may find something which will relate to someones project, in which case we can just post it on the group.

Its kept the creative flow going throughout the whole semester...


It started off with posts on general stuff and people posting links to things which might help with research towards peoples projects

People wanted feedback on PDP elements of the course

During the later part of the semester, people wanted feedback on tests and were asking technical questions...

And a potato for dave...

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 | Daniel Greaves

I was lucky enough to have a one to one portfolio crit with Daniel Greaves at his studio 'Tandem Film'

I was pretty nervous to say the least, but I got so much out of it which will help towards my FMP and my views on where I'm going in my professional career.
I got near enough the same feed back on both my Feelgood and Train animation as Beakus gave me which only highlights the fact that I really need to consider timing in my work whilst taking into account what the piece of work is for.
He had a real good scrub through the feelgood piece and pointed out the design, like beakus, is really good and went on to say the characters feel like they belong to the environment you've designed. He was very careful with his words and didn't want to say things which weren't true which I admired, the overall feedback on my work and how I approach it was that the design of my work is very impressive and is working to my strengths.

What was good about showing my animatic for my FMP is that Daniel made me scrub through it and explain what was happening after he'd watched it through once. No one's ever asked me to do that, they've just tried to understand it and given me feedback which might not even apply. Once Daniel understood the piece he was able to give some really good feedback. As a result of the feedback (from both visits) I've made a new animatic with added shots which gets the story across better.
I showed a style test of how I wanted the piece to look, again, he liked the design of the animation. He said it seems I've got a lot of work to do if you want to get it all up to that standard!

What I've learnt from the visit is that design is a major strong point in my work and work needs to be done on my storytelling.

Protfolio Visit | Beakus

Me, Jack Maguire and John Hind went to visit Beakus studio last Wednesday whilst in London, arranged by John,  I showed three pieces of work to Steve Smith and Eleni O'Keeffe who kindly took the time out to see us.

I showed my Train Animation and Feelgood, the main bit of feedback I got, which applies to both, was that their too long for what they are. Feelgood should be shorter because it needs to be short and snappy as its advertizing a product whilst the Train Animation should be cut due to its lack of story.  I've been told this a few times now, and as a result I'm making sure my FMP is the right amount of time for what it is.
It was said for both pieces that my design work is really good. This was nice to hear as its something I've been working on to improve.

Lastly I showed my FMP animatic. It was really hard to do, as I had to sit there and explain the concept and it always makes me embarrassed, but I think its essential to do it and I just have to get over it.
It was good to show though, as I got a fresh pair of eye on it. The main thing brought up by Steve and Eleni was that there needs to be more of a reason for the Kid to scare the Bear, which is something I never considered, but it makes perfect sense now. I few suggestions were given which I went away and thought about and have now added to the animatic. Its added more work, but i think its work which is essential to the story.

Aslo, showed this piece which I did with jack. We described what it was for and why we did what we did. As a result they both understood it and had no comment on it...which was a good thing!

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.

Portfolio Visit | Kilogramme

Just quickly I'll explain how i got to go to visit them...

The first place I contacted about having a portfolio visit was a company called firestep, the guy there called Gwyn Roberts always got back to me in the past so i thought its a good place to start...at least I'd get an answer either way!
The good news was that he got back to me, the even better news was that he'd passed on the email to the people at firestep and also kilogramme (because there work in the same building as them). I was familiar with kilogramme and were on my list to contact, so i was surprised and happy then Gwyn had forwarded the email onto them!
To cut a long story short Kilogramme's Co-Director, Claire Grey, contacted me to say that they would be happy for me to come see them.

I asked if Monday was ok...they said that cool...so at 12.30 on Monday 18th April I went to show them my work!

I forgot to mention that Clair grey had seen two of my pieces on youtube after Gwyn Roberts asked if I could send them some work...but the other Co-Director, Jon Turner, hadn't seen anything so this is what I showed them...

Show Reel
Eden
Eden - Making of
Malc the Milkman
Sway
Chuck
Walk Cycles

They enjoyed my stuff, particularly liked how I'm still doing hand drawn 2D animation! I explained how I wanted to keep working on Malc the Milkman, bringing colour to the 30 second piece. Jon Turner said that the charm of the animation is that he is hand done and rough... keep at that for the rest of the animation. This is totally true, the eden brief has shown i can bring colour in, and i'll keep practicing with colour over the summer and in the 3rd year, but Malc maybe visually more pleasing if he stays rough for now.
They thought the timing was good on the malc animation as well and picked out some of the sketches from that brief with they liked...

They liked the stretch in the yawn

Think it was the pose in this one...also Jon mentioned that he liked the innocence of my drawings

Jon pointed at this one as well...

They like the fact that I had skills in these different programs and was able to animate on the computer as well as just be hand.
I was telling them about how I kept a notebook for the character design brief so i had loads of character ideas to choose from an narrow it down to a final character etc...they told me they keep all their notebooks filed away for future reference...they never know when a scraped idea may come in handy! 


In terms of the studio, it was nice and intimate. You had firestep and Kilogramme in the same room, so you can imagin that there always helping each other out and bouncing back and fourth ideas etc...This is a piece which they collaborated on, reading from the paragraph on Vimeo it tells you who did what, Steve Maher (who i met at the studio) from firestep directed it, Jon Turner did the modeling (from Kilogramme) and so on  


Goliath from Kilogramme on Vimeo.

They were all really friendly people; the kilogramme people, the firestep people and anyone else I met whilst there!
firestep were really busy but still found time to have a talk about what they were up to, sounded really interesting...working on something (don't know if I can say) but its being made in Singapore and also some of its being done in Ireland...so there having to communicate to all these people! they looked stressed, but they kept smiling through it!

They said to keep in touch and to tell them whenever I have a free week during the summer so I can go in for a few days and maybe work on some stuff with them, or just watch over them and learn some stuff! Really appreciated that and will be defiantly taking up that offer!

Below is Kilogramme's showreel...


Kilogramme Showreel from Kilogramme on Vimeo.


And this is new...its their Easter card!


Easter card '11 from Kilogramme on Vimeo.

I got a lot out of this visit, getting some creative feedback on my work whilst also learning more about how the industry works.....oh, and also that James Corazzo works in the same space as Kilogramme and firestep!

Kilogramme Animaition

I've wrote about this company before on here, but after visiting 'tandem films' and thinking that's where I'd fit in, I realized that Kilogramme is similar.

Here's there show reel

Kilogramme Showreel from Kilogramme on Vimeo.

And here's a video showing that they use different styles for each of there projects (they have freelance animators...so of coarse there going to be different) but its still good to show off this fact. Plus, this is the text below the video on the 'Vimeo' website...

'Here are a few different styles we've used over the years. Some became short films and adverts, some were just for fun'

Its nice to see a company who are experimenting even if it never gets used...these style tests could help in their future so its really good there doing stuff like this...maybe we should all take from this.

style test from Kilogramme on Vimeo.

London | Goldilocks and the Three Studios

We visited three studios in London; Cine Site, Nexus and Tandem. Here's what i think...


Cine Site
This was the last of the three we visited, it was the most professional visit we went on, which could be seen as a good thing...but I would say its a bad thing. We had to sign a form to say we would not speak of what we saw there (understandable) We were guided round by two people, one at the front, one at the back. We saw the companies show reel...all positive stuff.

Watching people work there, they all looked happy, who would be happy working on blockbuster films? You can't fault the look of the place either, the building was really nice, kept clean and had a calm feel to it, it was huge though, you could probably get lost in there! It didn't have loads of people running round shouting stuff and people ordering people to do stuff, people panicking about deadlines etc, so that was quite nice.

I was a really nice place, I was going to say how it annoyed me how we only heard the positives from the company, but the lady who took us round told us of the negatives ('skyline' was a flop) and gave it to us straight saying, she said:

. about how their a company and have to think about money, and keeping a float

. told us that the show reels they want to see are things with photo real stuff in it

. skyline was a flop

. you might start off making cups of tea, then work on a shitty film, then go on to the big stuff

She was very honest.
But its not for me. Its too impersonal, she talked about the company not the individuals and that put me off. Plus my work has never been 'Photo real' so I wouldn't' stand a chance of getting in there. She never talked about animation skills though.

This porridge was too hot!



Nexus
This was the second place we went to, the place was tall and thin meaning it was all cramped inside. It occupied about 4 floors (one being the basement) the first floor was really hot and stuffy, but we got a really nice breakdown of some of the projects they work on... what was nice was that we were talking to one person for most of the time on the 1st floor, but other people started to pitch in and say stuff and started to get other work up which they wanted us to see, which was positive, because it meant they were proud about what they do there.


We went to the top floor where the directors lived (and also the air-con), we spoke to one of them (three in total....two freelance one permanent, think thats right) called Johnny Kelly, he was a nice guy. He told us about generally working in the industry which was good to hear about, learned a bit from that.


This porridge was too cold...but I might like cold porridge



Tandem  
We started off the day at Tandem Films. We were shown around by Danial Greaves and it was as if we were invited for breakfast at his house, nothing seemed planned, we just came in and he took us round. I thought that was good, it made it much more relaxed, in comparison to cine site which we started out be signing forms.
He took us to peoples working areas and we watched them work for a bit (I'm guessing they didn't like that, that much!) but we watched them and asked them questions which they were all to willing to answer. 
The basement was where they did green screen editing and kept the clients (which everyone found hilarious)


We all crammed into the editing room where we watched their show real and much more. We were in there for ages and probably overstayed our welcome... but we got so much out of Danial Greaves. 


What Mr Greaves had to say was so interesting, from him talking about his own work to talking about the animation industry and how tandem works. How he came to make manipulation was a really nice story. Then speaking to another of the Directors there (his name slips my mind) and watching one of his pieces of work was also really interesting (he was a bit more willing to speak about his work...called Text Island)  
Watching one of the employees at Tandem working on a new short for Simon's Cat made me realize that this is what i like to do and people pointed that out to me as well. 




Its the mixture of seeing someone animating and also listening to the directors talking about side projects which they work on,  which makes me realize that the Porridge was just right here.