I've recently completed my third animation for Nottinghamshire County Council, which helps to explain the "Disabled Children's Access to Child Care" (DCATCH) service to children and young adults with special needs and learning disabilities. It has been important to keep this animation cohesive with the others for NCC, so it feels like they are all coming from the same place and are designed for a similar audience. Furthermore, the animations will all feature on the same webpage - so its good that they will fit well together.
I've found in the process of creating these 3 animations, certain elements of design techniques and animation transitions etc. have become more formalised; so I will be revisiting the EHC animation, to bring it up to the same high standard as the more recent versions (and of course - adding in eyes!)
To view the animations, please check out my website (click here.) I have posted some screenshots of the animations below to give you some idea of the content and style.
I have recently completed this Animation working with the great folks at Nottingham County Council. It has been a real pleasure working with them and I feel like I got a lot out of the job. From a conceptual point of view this has certainly been one of my favourite projects so far as I was let loose to storyboard the entire piece myself. It was also left to me to source a voice over artist, so I thought of a friend of mine - Laura Bozic who did a great job. For the soundtrack, I came across audionautix.com which is a great website for music which is free for commercial use (so long as you credit them.)
A summary on the development of style..
In the process of creating this animation, I have learned that it's important to get the style confirmed early on in order to save time later. I knew that style/concept visualisations were an important part of pre-production but in this case, time was a limitation. I had my hands full working on and making suggested changes to the 6-7 minutes worth of content for the animatic.
My initial animatic was met with a surprising amount of enthusiasm, given that it was the result of quick photoshop sketching from a storyboard I had drawn by hand. Some were even questioning whether it was the final product. I had found that my standard procedure of doing things, co-coincided with the style/concept that they were looking for, but I hadn't yet realised this.
Still from original animatic
I thought "great - they will love the final version," and got cracking. Previously they had provided me with reference from Powtoon.com - the black silohuette characters - to provide me with a final finish to aim towards. I had always wanted to get more experience with vector graphics and using Illustrator so I saw this as an ideal opportunity. Here is the first "final look" I created for them ( I spent several days on applying this look to a portion of the animation, before our scheduled feedback session.)
Whilst I was quite proud of this - the subtlety of tonal change to define the horizon, the texture, the smooth motion blurred motion and the perfectly symmetrical characters, I sensed in the Skype feedback/development session with the chaps at Notts CC, that they were slightly disappointed with it.
So later that day, I emailed the client to ask whether there was anything they didn't like about it. This was then followed up by a call which was the turning point of the project. I had a massive "aah ha!" (eureka moment) when I realised what they liked about the animatic was the simple naivety of the style; the way it looked like a child had drawn it. We discussed ideas around this theme (e.g. using a pencil texture and keeping with the stickmen) and it was also suggested I physically draw in the character (or create the impression I'm doing this.)
The audience (0-25 with special educational needs & learning difficulties, their families and linked professionals) became a prominent part of my understanding on how I should approach the style. I researched and found that the key things that appeal to children are: characters clearly depicted in their environment, colours and a simple, accessible style. I remember the maths books I had at school with the squared paper. So, I threw all these elements together and hey presto! Everyone was happy again!
New technical/business skills gained
So aside from learning to nail down the style as soon as possible; I've also picked up some new technical skills - such as using the pen tool in Photoshop to create smooth lines and curves then applying a brush texture to fill the length of this line. Also, filming my hand drawing in the character. For this, I printed the already-created Photoshop stickman onto green card. Then I filmed my hand drawing the character (only the pencil isn't touching the page but just following the printed line.) I removed the green in After Effects and replaced it with the background and character. I applied a stroke effect to make it look like the character was forming as a result of my pencil.
A final positive outcome from this experience is picking up new business skills, including working with a large client, making proposals, subcontracting other professionals (i.e. the voice over artist and her agent) and communicating via Skype. It has been a fantastic project to work on and I look forward to working with them again in the future.
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.
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:
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.
This character was provided to me by Lara Popovic from Creative Connection and she enquired as to how I would animate it. Using puppet pins was the thing that jumped to mind.
I used a couple of resources to learn and apply the process of rigging - a page from ae tuts+ which has a complete set of tutorials by a dude called Daniel Gies, and this great free plug-in - DUIK which creates Inverse Kinematic movement in just a few clicks once you have the pins set up.
Rigging a character with IK allows for its movement to be key framed by animating just a few controllers. It means that the knees and elbows bend automatically as a result of moving other parts of the body. Once rigged in this way, animating is a much simpler process then it otherwise would be.
Expressions utilised (mainly for my own reference)
The expression used to connect puppet pins to their respective nulls: n=thisComp.layer("layer name"); nullpos=n.toComp(n.anchorPoint); fromComp(nullpos);
This makes it easier to control as nulls are directly accessible and also are not just limited to transformation - i.e. they can be rotated as well.
If using the rotation movement of one null to drive the Y transformation of another null (both attached to puppet pins); the following expression could be used in the affected nulls position: PosX=transform.position[0]; PosY=transform.position[1]+thisComp.layer("layer name").transform.rotation;[PosX,PosY] I used this to make elements like the sides of the shirt move up as the legs are rotated.
Incidentally, I am keen to get my head around JavaScript - and I have started to go through this page found on Motion Script.com - written by Dan Ebberts - this is a fantastic resource for learning expressions and scripting.
Mood board
I created this mood board to serve as visual reference for the animation I'm currently working on with Creative Connection. It is themed on community activism. The images are from several sources - Banksy, Modern Toss, The Mighty Boosh and a book called Traveller Daze.
I got stuck into some drawing yesterday - really enjoyed getting into 'the zone' with it all..
Hands are a tricky thing as they are so versatile so I practiced sketching my own hand.
These sheets contain some drawings of my g/f Nina and some things I drew without looking at any reference including a small self portrait.
These sheets show my visual interpretation whilst listening to some podcasts at Radiolab - one on inheritance and another on speed. Both very interesting! Anyway, it's good practice for drawing quickly + aiming to get information across efficiently.
Inheritance
Speed
"Love Soldiers" update @ the RCA
Here's a pic of our studio with director Chloe in view.
"Love Soldiers" is slowly but surely coming together, and the way that we are working is fairly organic. Some shots are nearing completion whilst others are yet to be animated.
Recent tasks I've completed
- Inking over some animation of a face falling into pieces. - Colouring a sequence in Photoshop (here the Photoshop actions have come in as a great time saver.) - Utilising a turbulent displacement effect in After Effects to make it look like the clouds are warping/moving. - Rotoscoping over printed live action shots of walk cycles. - Compositing layers of animation together. - Producing (creating a time schedule.) - Scanning the inked animation. - Updating the edit-in-progress.
I'm aiming to keep doing a couple of days a week here, though I try and do more if my schedule allows. It is a fun project to be working on and these are great people to be working with!
I have almost finished this project now! It has been a bit of an epic and has drawn on my skills as a motion graphics designer, compositor, camera man, editor, 3D artist, time lapse recorder and musician! If anyone has any ideas of one word that I could use to fit these different roles, I would appreciate it! Audio-visual artist could be a good umbrella term.
Just a quick reminder - this work is for a promotional video made to represent Clear Blue Therapies on Kickstarter. Clear Blue Therapies is a therapy business founded by Saskia Griffiths-Moore. The video utilises motion graphics and draws on a news broadcaster theme to promote interest and help delineate Saskia's four phase plan.
Here are a few screenshots showing different parts of scene 2 on which I have created some nice bits of animation / motion graphics. The actual film itself will be out on Kickstarter soon - I will keep you posted. I just have a few final bits and pieces to sort out following some final feedback from Saskia.
I enjoyed getting the pencil out and drawing this piece to represent a conference.
Following this, I worked over it in Illustrator, then animated it in After Effects. Playing with the opacity of the fills adds a nice element of visual interest to the image. Also, conceptually, I reckon it enhances "the meeting of minds" element.
I also found it quite rewarding and satisfying working in 3D for parts of this project. The spinning logo and the books turning. Simple but effective!
And - this is a bit of an odd one - I'm quite proud of the train style LED text I put together. The font itself is called LCD Dot, and was created by Omer Kose --- http://www.omerkose.net/ I downloaded this off Dafont.
The bit that I'm proud of is the nice repetitive dot pattern I created in Illustrator for the LED light background! This lines up with the dots of the font. Then of course the colour and glow effect. It mimics the train style LEDs quite well. As things have turned out, I have been asked to change this style as it could be confusing, and takes away from the cohesion of the other fonts in the video. Think I may have taken Saskia a little too literally when she said 'text like you see on train displays'. Nevermind though!
Watch this space! The promo video will be out shortly....
This is a personal project that I have been chipping away at for a while. The basic idea stems from a simple and effective technique that I came up with when I was juggling glowing balls. "Sparkle mouse" is a working title - I'm open to suggestions!
The basic idea
Here I am, juggling (such is the life of a creative ey?) -
+ some After Effects trickery =
Pretty cool! What if the ball had a bit of character -
Introducing... a background!
The plan (aka pre-production) and production
Brief: To create a short visually interesting and entertaining animation, using the above technique.
Here is a rough plan of my idea. The ball interacts and navigates itself around the environment. At one point the ball transports from inside the laundry basket to above the bongo. The numbers on the plan have helped with the editing as this was not all managed in one take. It took me around 7 hours to dress the set, photograph some stop motion animation of the furniture and film myself in the dark moving the glowing ball around.
Post production This has been the lengthy part of the process. It took me another day to edit the ball into one cohesive sequence. (I recorded about 8 seperate takes as the moving-a-ball-around process was a bit fiddley.) With the help of Maya and a handy tutorial, I animated a cool 3D sphere cracking effect for the transportation bit. This took about half a day.
Most of the work has involved cleaning up areas using masks where there are discrepancies between the environment and the ball. It has taken several days to go through this process. The moral is - use a good tripod!
Half way through, I thought "hey wouldn't it be cool if I kept the effect of the bounce light caused by the ball on the environment" so that added another few days of After Effects work! In the process I have learned better ways of organising my AE comps. Firstly, using colour coding for layers makes things much easier. Secondarily, rendering out pre-comps as you are going along helps a heavy composition become much faster to work with. Here is a screenshot of my work organisation in AE.
At the moment Sparkle Mouse is nearing the end of the clean up phase, and will enter a final edit, possibly with the addition of sound and a title before final delivery. WATCH THIS SPACE :-)
Since moving to London in September, I have actively been seeking work in animation and visual effects. Alongside this I have been developing the look of my website, creating a visual identity and two new showreels - one for my general moving image/animation work and the other - more specifically for my compositing work. Here are the shots I have been working on:
Unidentified sea creature - 2D animation
A 2D animation created using Flash, textured in Photoshop and composited in After Effects. This was sparked by a quick doodle I did of a Fish/Robot hybrid that breathes fire. No fire breathing in the animation yet but perhaps this is something I will come back to in the future!
'Harry' the crab - Match moved
I initially created this crab in 2010 using Maya to model and texture it. I always wanted to place it into a real world environment striking a pose! Back in Cornwall I filmed a bit of it's potential environment and last month I finally got round to stabilising the footage then placing the crab into this environment using Match Mover and Maya. Following this, I added a touch of colour in after effects. This is best viewed in HD. To do so - click this link, turn on HD and scrub to 00:54.
Vfx breakdown - Placing a house onto Bodmin Moor
Here is an image I used in an earlier post. I have uploaded this image here again in order to precede the matte painting breakdown of this shot that I completed a week ago. Breakdowns are always a fun way to display the amount of work that has gone into a shot. This shot was created for a MA student film project entitled 'Gone.'
These shots have been included on my Moving Image and Compositing showreels respectively. This week I am going to continue applying to jobs and learning new things!
I have been very busy since my last blog (hence the lack of blog posts.) I am currently working solely for Kernel which is the main 3D animated film being produced in our year. Since completing a lot of concept design work I have also created the new storyboard for Kernel. From this, I have been able to develop an animatic that has progressed through 6 stages (from an epic 6 mins 38 secs down to a more realistic 4 mins 11 secs.) In the process of refining the animatic, I have kept the essential story information, cut out whats not needed and maintained a good sense of pace and rhythm.
From the animatic, Olly and Hugh have been creating block-throughs in Maya. These Maya shots - that dictate basic animation and camera moves - are being carefully timed to fit with the animatic. (I have also helped by going into Maya and adjusting the camera sequencer lengths to block-through shots that were completed prior to the final animatic.) The idea is that people who're doing the animating can work within the appropriately timed shots that maintain the correct pacing to the film as a whole. Its an intuitive process and of course, the animation will probably not stick to the frame counter exactly - so long as it roughly fits with all the original timings then we're on the right track!
My roles on the project have extended to editing and compositing for which I have been getting to grips with Adobe Premiere (CS5.5) and The Foundry's Nuke (6.3 v2) software. For both of these I have been working my way through some helpful books - 'Adobe Premiere - classroom in a book' and 'Nuke 101' by Ron Ganbar. Both of which, give you files and exercises to work through. As the editor, I will be constantly updating a premiere project file, as the shots gradually progress from the block through stage to animation and eventually the final composited shots.
The image below shows what I have learned most recently in Nuke. Using a rendered 3D sequence of exr images, I have rebuilt a basic beauty pass which mirrors the way a beauty pass would be created in Maya. The advantage here though, is that the beauty pass has been divided to its essential elements - which I can tweek independently. Working this way should prove highly efficient as it allows one to have good aesthetic control over the shots and save on the lengthy processing and rendering times Maya would incur. The bonus is that the files that Ganbar has provided with his book is of a lemming 'road-skiing' using a car. Amazing!
The Kernel team have been working really well together and it feels like we're building up a creative symbiosis of all our talents. If we maintain this kind of momentum then we should have something good to show by the deadline which is now less then 100 days away!
Aside from Kernel, I have been working on the dissertation and am currently 2 weeks away from completing a Web Communication Dreamweaver AQA course. Busy busy busy!
Wow, what a busy term it has been! I think things will only get busier as well - but that's cool as I enjoy all the work that I'm doing and have never in my life worked on such an exciting group project. It would be amazing to get 'Kernel' finished and it seems like we are off to a strong start with a Pre-Production bible consisting of 79 pages.
At the start of the term It seemed like I was destined to work a tiny bit on many different projects but as time has moved on I have found myself getting more and more involved with 'Kernel' which we have just found out, will be the only 3D animated short film going through to Production. Olly (the Director) and the rest of our team are very keen to get it finished so it is pretty important that we aim for less than 3 minutes long.
Our Lecturers have said that the Storyboard must be made clearer and suggested that Dan, Hugh, Max and myself have a go at editing the Story and Storyboard to make it clearer. Whilst this is adding significantly to my Christmas workload, I am happy to have this opportunity as I really enjoy Storyboarding. For anyone curious about how the Kernel Animatic is looking at the moment - see below.
Other work I will be showing on this post will include work for Shell and Paddy, Fentil and Box Boy. Out of these 3 projects only Shell and Paddy is going through to Production. Having said that they are still allowing Dan (Director of Fentil) to produce one polished shot for his project. My background for Shell and Paddy will probably not get used as I have only produced the one - which would break the consistency of Joe's backgrounds.
Here is all of the work I have done so far (since my last post.)
Kernel
The 'Cathexis Tree.' Reference, Concept and Design.
'The Shed.' Reference and Designs.
Plants that will be placed around the Dome shaped Greenhouse. Reference, Sketches, Photoshop experiments and Final designs.
Final Designs.
Top view of the Greenhouse. This shows the colour range of the Plants and where the plants will be placed.
Side views of the Greenhouse. These concept shots show the placement and size of the plants on both sides of the Greenhouse. The other 'green-ness' will be built up with long grass, and generic foliage, this will help unify the plants.
Fentil:
My job for this project was to produce a Matte Painting. For this I speed learned some techniques and covered about a 1/3 of this book. Thanks David B. Mattingly :-) Very helpful.
It was useful following along with the techniques outlined in this book and interesting building up a photo real image from scratch in layers. Here's my work in progress leading up to the final piece:
A quick 20 minute concept sketch:
Line Drawing:
Adding in the Tones - Light, Dark, Core, Cast Shadows and another layer (Final Darks) which is like doing an Ambient Occlusion pass in CG:
Applying a texture:
Here, I have warped a couple of textures to fit more snugly on the bottom centre-right side of the Rock. This has made a big difference but I felt with my time schedule and with what was required that it wasn't necessary to warp every bit of texture.
I repeated the process above to the other rocks, layed down some Colour Correction and a bit of clone stamping to neaten things up at the end.
The rocks were the main thing Dan wanted me to produce so the Ground, Clouds, Sun and Moon received much less attention. I learned a few more tricks and useful Hot keys with Photoshop doing this piece.
Shell and Paddy:
Here is my initial layout:
Final background (produced using Photoshop):
Box Boy
Darrien asked me to do the Bus Interior for his project. This was the last bit of work I produced this term and I did it from start to finish in about a day.
Sketches from Reference:
Final Layout:
Final Piece - here I borrowed some colours of Darrien's Concept for 'Box Boy.'
Added Graffity and Shadows.
Added Depth of Field (just for fun ^^)
What lays ahead...
So the 3 main areas of work that I would like to cover over the Xmas holiday are:
-The Storyboard for 'Kernel'
-The Draft Dissertation - Planning and Writing
-Making a good start at learning Nuke
