Here are some icons and a main image created for the CBT Kickstarter campaign I'm working on. I'm aiming to get the film complete by next Friday, so it will be a busy couple of weeks!
And now for some animation inspiration...
I came across this neat little ad for the french post office a while back on motionographer. I really like how well it has been thought out and executed. Nice sound track too (from Amadou & Mariam.)
Here is a great little animation I watched yesterday made by Perrie Murphy. There is a simple element of truth within Colin that I'm sure many people can empathise with! It's pretty funny - definetly worth a watch!
I found this to be a very inspiring and eventful week packed full of animation goodness! It was nice to see some of my friends from the course and it also presented a good opportunity to network. Over the week I saw a lot of short films, commissioned films and feature films. Aside from this I also enjoyed Serge Bromberg's morning interviews with the short film directors, a VFX conference, a feature film conference, talks from directors, a talk from an animation supervisor from Dreamworks, the awards ceremony and a rounders game! The festival seemed to strike a balance between the mainstream and the weird and wonderful stuff being produced on the fringes. It was inspiring to discover a large, open-minded and respectful audience for all things animation.
Here are a few of my favourite films that I saw:
Features:
Wrinkles directed by Ignacio Ferreras.
"An astonishing cocktail of friendship, resistance, and life that goes on in the unexpected setting of an old folk's care home" - Annecy guide.
The characters were really well developed and the story was moving, well structured and interesting. It was visually quite stunning.
Approved for adoption directed by Jung Henin and Laurent Boileau.
"200,000 adoptees have been scattered around the world since the end of the Korean war. Jung is one of them." - Annecy guide.
This was a very personal account of the directors life growing up as an adopted child. It was 3D but rendered in a refreshing 2D style. The film juggled this style with live action documentary footage of Jung speaking, old footage of the family as well as some expressive 2D animation to emphasise some key moments. The mediums that were utilised encapsulated Jung's story on different levels and offered a rich and vivid account of what he had been through both internally and externally. The film won 2 awards at the festival.
Le Tableau directed by Jean-Francois Laguionie.
"Three characters living in an unfinished painting venture out into the real world in search of their creator, to convince him to finish his work." - Annecy guide.
This was also created in 3D but rendered in a very painterly style - visually, it was quite unlike anything I've ever seen. It was a good concept with some funny and surreal moments. Whilst at the festival I went to see Jean-Francois Laguionie talk about making this film. He noted several interesting points:
-He had 2 years financed to make the film plus 6 months for pre-production.
-The animatic is a great communication tool. It is helpful for the producer to help outline a budget.
-Drawing helps establish the connections between objects, people, landscapes etc. more then writing a script. He felt that he was writing with his drawing.
-Recording actual actors/actresses prior to making the characters is an advantage.
Commissioned films
We cut corners "Pirates life" by P.Adamski and K.Kijek
This is a very cool hand drawn animation - it goes to town on the simple visual theme of water and reflections.
Five years older "I should have known better" by Dirk Koy
This shows an interesting technique that has been carried off effectively, showing landscapes in a constant state of flux.
Ants directed by Gerrit Bekers
This is definetly 30 seconds of your time well spent!
Short Films
I saw a lot of great short films at the festival - it would take me a long time to post every one that I liked so I will just put up a few. Most of these are trailers.
The people who never stop directed by Florian Piento
This was visually stunning and contained a nice message.
Tram by Michaela Pavlatova
This had the audience in stitches! A wild journey through the driver's fantasies..
Second Hand directed by Isaac King - Full film!
This has to be one of my favourites. Brilliant and funny characters, interesting visuals and a strong message. Definetly worth a watch.
Modern no.2 directed by Mirai Mizue
An excellent synchronisation of visuals and music. The animation looks great.
How to eat your apple directed by Erick Oh
A Dali-esque surrealist take on eating an apple. Pretty surreal and fun.
VFX conference and other things
I found the VFX conference very interesting. People from MPC, Framestore, BUF and Double Negative talked us through breakdowns of Wrath of the Titans, The Tale of the Three Brothers (animation for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows), Marsupai and John Carter of Mars. I always like learning what goes on behind the scenes so it was a highlight of the trip. I particularly enjoyed seeing the making of The Tale of the Three Brothers as it is quite a distinctive and stylish animation which brings together a variety of techniques. Dale Newton, Animator supervisor noted how Houdini was used for the procedural forming of the bridge. I really liked this effect (and the other effects.) Later in the week I spoke to a Houdini representative who showed me the software - I'm inclined to try it out when I get a bit of spare time.
The directors conference was quite interesting as well. What I found amazing was how these productions were spread across several countries. It really takes some strong organisation to make these things materialise and stay cohesive.
I also enjoyed Serge Bromberg's morning interviews with the short film directors. It was nice to hear about their inspirations and ideas behind the films.
I had a couple of interviews in the week with Snarx FX, Paris and Mokko studios, Montreal. This was a valuable experience.
It was good to meet several other fellow animators/vfx artists throughout the week. The rounders game on Saturday was highly enjoyable and I scored two rounders!
Annecy itself is a beautiful place and I'm glad that some of my mates from the course could make it. I hope to return in the future.
Photos:
Inside Bonlieu (the main venue)
Serge Bromberg interviews Jun-Ki Kim - director of 'Her Story'
Tom and Fran sitting outside of Bonlieu next to the big outdoor screen. Mountains and the vast Annecy lake are in the background.
The outdoor screen. Serge introduces the last screening of the festival.
The Annecy ident.... 'LAPIN!!' (sorry - only people who were at the festival would get this ;-))
To summarise - it was a great week packed full with films, conferences, meetings and people and all set in a beautiful location. After every competition film was screened the director would be invited to come up and take a bow. This was one of the (many) strengths of the festival - paying much deserved tribute to the creators. I would definetly like to return in the future.
This Summer I have had the opportunity to do some research into the industry and the chance to re-assess my approach to the world of Film and Animation. I'm going to specialise in the artistic and design side of Animation and Film. So that means concept art, matte painting, environments, storyboards and character design. These areas cover where my strengths lie and what I enjoy.
Whilst wishing to focus on the areas above, I should add that I am also experienced with compositing, editing, 3D modelling/texturing, working to sound and 2D animation. The reason I mention this is to highlight that I can be helpful in a project from start to end. I have directed before as well but I'm currently unsure whether or not I will direct for the third year.
Inspiration has come from various sources. I came across the work of Dylan Cole recently and his concept art is amazing. His work has appeared on numerous blockbuster films including Avatar:
I also like a lot of the stuff that comes out of Passion Pictures. Theres a concept artist and matte painter named Romain Jouandeau who works for them, his work is more stylised and suited more for Animation then film/live action. Heres one of his pics:
Also at Passion pictures they created The Journey to the East - the Beijing Olympics animation spot, which is a visual extravaganza. I know I've put this up on my blog before, but hey..
A chap called Lucasz Pazera was one of the chaps who did the matte paintings for 'The Journey to the East.' An example of which is below. This shows how important use of composition can be in creating a suitable space for the animation to take place and getting the audience to anticipate the action. The colour creates a warm and appealing atmosphere. This painting can be found at 1:12 on animation above.
A friend of my Uncles - Scott Mcinnes is a matte painter and concept artist that I've been in touch with. He now works at MPC. His work is definitely worth a look at. An example of his personal work is below:
Sketchbook work I have done over the Summer
Here are some sketches, drawings and paintings I have produced over Summer. I have used a combination of markers, gouache paints, pastels and pencils on these.
I have also taken hundreds of photos of textures from my holiday in Wales and my time living in Stroud - so lots of trees and rocks! I'm visiting London soon so I will add city textures into the collection. My next step will be to experiment working with these textures and try some digital painting. I also want to keep producing sketches and paintings from real life.
CND film
My friend Carl Norris and I have been working together on the CND (Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament) film competition. We're currently in the middle of production and have a couple of months before the deadline. For now here are some clips that I have produced. Carl is working on the backgrounds for this project (not the quick backgrounds I put together below.)
It probably seems a bit random now, it will all make sense once the film is complete :-)
I have recently returned from the Audio Visual and Projection Mapping festival held at Geneva, Switzerland with my mate Simon (3rd year animation student at Falmouth.) This was a great experience and really helped me to put a face to this niche industry. Not only was it a good chance to have a merry one but it was also very insightful, interesting and useful to meet other professionals in the field of Audio Visual production.
The festival itself was held over 10 days, we got a ticket just for the last weekend (Friday and Saturday.) It was at 5 different locations - A cinema and adjoining night club (Cinema Spoutnik and Zoo/Usine), a warehouse (Le Fonderie - near where they kept all the buses,)an art gallery (BAC) and a couple of other places I didn't get time to go to. I went a bit OTT here and made a lovely little diagram mapping the locations of the festival:
Le Fonderie
Here, they accommodated the MadMapper workshop. Unfortuantly, Simon and I were a bit late to join in for this (plus neither of us had the required Macbooks needed to join in.) MadMapper is a new software that allows you to project onto any given surface - its pretty cool stuff. We entered what looked like an abandoned warehouse to find a bunch of guys and a few girls on laptops testing it out. The architecture inside was ideal as there were lots of different surfaces, walls and pipes to project onto and sure enough there were many projectors in action. We wondered around a bit - mingling with the people who were trying it out before heading off to the cinema Spoutnik to catch the VJ competion. We came back again later to see it in action. Here are a few pictures I took:
VJ competition
A key event for me was the VJ contest held at Cinema Spoutnik over 2 days with around 20 participants. It was great to witness this art form being performed and exploited to its full potential by other like minded practioners. Below are some videos showing examples of work produced by the 2 finalists.
VJ Kobored:
VJ Suave - this video is from the first round of the Mapping festival:
VJ Kobored was the winner and won a belt and quite a lot of other stuff! (see below)
It was great to sit back and watch this with so many like minded people that treated VJing as a recognised Art Form. VJ suave has a very cool hand drawn and artistic animation style with some great characters. VJ Kobored had a range of 3d, live action and 2d styles. VJ Electroiman incorporated some performance art in his work using people who were made up and in costume. VJ Fader used an iPad as his main input - literally tweeking the visuals by the touch of his fingers (practically like playing an instrument.) It was an audio visual feast experienced in the comfort of a cosy cinema!
Another highlight for me was the BAC. The gallery was fully kitted out with interactive and visual projection sculptures. On top of this we attended a conference there.
The Conference
One of the speakers talked to us about a program he had worked on called VVVV. This software serves as a node based compositing platform between coding and rendered animation. Its not something I'm particularly interested in but those of you who are into coding would find it very interesting.
United Visual Artists talked to us about their work and the creation of their latest software 'd3' which ties in texture mapping/modelling/and projection mapping into one program. There was a lot of interest in this. It will be around a year or so before we see any sign of its release. UVA are known for supporting bands like Massive Attack with visual installations. They also talked about their projection work on a Bentley sports car and some permanent visual sculptures they had done.
Another one of the speakers was Shantell Martin. Shantell works as an Artist, VJ and Illustrator. She likes to draw directly onto people in real time using a Wacom tablet and Sketchbook Pro. The theme of her work is to directly interact with people, performing her work at exhibitions and clubs. I found her to be quite a free spirit and very inspiring.
The Art Exhibition
There was some fantastic work exhibited that made you go 'ouuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu!' Here are some of the pieces:
Enigmatica III by Kit Webster
Further experimentation into new forms of synesthetic sculpture.
Continued from ENIGMATICA vimeo.com/9842123
www.kitwebster.com.au
Of course to see it in real life is something else as it utilises the dimension of physical depth. It is quite a sensory overload!
Cityscape 2095 by Legoman, Mandril & Thomas Vaquie
This city was awesome. It was a composited array of bits and pieces of various cities projected onto from behind. You could see it was timelapsed as it went through day and night. As you can see - someone had worked over it using art materials giving it more edge..
This tracking installation attached a little creature silohuette that floated around your silohuette as you walked across - it made me giggle :-) Apologies for not knowing who created it..
There were other installations but the three above were my favourite..
Zoo/Usine Audio Visual clubbing
This was a nice extra of the whole event for me. I have to say that the music was not totally up my street - (mainly electronic and techno) but it was fun having a bit of a boogie. The visuals were generally fairly basic - patterns, a mouth jumping around, written statements and I have to say that they didn't do much for me. I found the VJ competiton a lot more interesting in terms of visual content. Still it was pretty fun and of course there were drinks : D Highlights include seeing 'Da Krew' - the french equivalent of The Beastie Boys!
Other stuff
Phew! This is quite an epic blog post! I think it has to be to reflect the epic-ness of the trip! I forgot to mention on our first day we accidently walked into France! oops! Its ok though we made it back.
Geneva is a pretty nice city, with smooth transport (trams) that run on time, a large and impressive lake and on the horizon surrounding the city are mountains. It has quite a cosmopolitan population with lots of rich banker types. Generally its a very affluent place epitomised by its 140 metre high water jet at Lake Geneva. Having said that our hostel was round the corner from the red light district so we also saw the sin city gritty edge to it.
We more or less lived out of Lid'Ls in terms of food and luckily for us City Hostel in Geneva had a little kitchen we could use. We also got free transport for the duration of our stay chucked in with our accommodation fees so a win-win situation there. We met some good people in the hostel and at the festival. One last random thing - we saw a Saturday night roller disco by the side of Lake Geneva! How cool is that?!
Some final photographs of our trip:
The journey there was a golden opportunity to shoot some cloudscapes.
Hello Geneva !
These faces seemed quietly confident...
The party was in full swing at Usine
Even the toilet was a visual sensation!
Walking back from the club..
Its a clock made out of flowers! Amazing!
This made us giggle..
Is that a regular curb or...
A little miniature curb planet!
Nothing says success like a 140 metre water jet.
Simon and myself on our last day. I had just eaten an amazing sandwich.
Yep. My camera does panoramas!
Some business cards from the various VJs and jewelry merchants we came across.
Our 4 day trip comes to an end. This airport scene looks relaxed but a few moments later we were literally running to catch our flight. (I had misread the times on our checking in sheets and assumed the plane leaving time was actually the gate closing time - luckily my name was announced on the intercom and we made it!)
So far this trip has got to be the highlight of my year. It was fantastic and I'd recommend it to anyone with an inkling to the more alternative/performance/audio visual/motion graphics/fine arty/experimental/projection mapping side of Animation.
This guy had a great attitude to his work and life generally and I gained a lot from his lecture.. He is well known for directing film titles - see his website here.
He kept coming back to some important points about not letting the machines take over and keeping creativity and ideas generation alive - saying how its good to get into the idea with all your senses. The computer is a tool just like a paintbrush (albeit a very sophisticated paintbrush!) but we are the ones with the ideas. Life and reality around us can be used as a great source of inspiration. Here is a quick sketch I did inspired by his lecture.
Other points he said were:
Its a marathon not a sprint: ie. Expect to be churning out work on a long term basis!
Its best to have preparation and research sorted before embarking on a project.
Fear is a good thing because it stops you being complacent.
If you're sure of your idea stick to your guns. Don't let agents, producers etc.. change your mind.
Be relaxed with the idea. Don't force it out - things will happen for you.
Mentoring from directors can help push your ideas.
You must be consumed by creativity.
The more you share, the more that comes back.
All jobs are great - you just have to find the best part of it and not get anxious with ideas being thrown out.
Be like water. Go with the flow.
Pete Felstead took a video of his lecture, I will link to it on this post if it gets uploaded online. I strongly recommend it to anyone interested in working within the creative industries..
Richard Morrison works for Th1ng - an Animation and Mixed media company - in Soho.
I have been browsing the web recently and have come across a couple of cool compositing/3d showreels. It fills me with awe when I see how good these people are at seamlessly integrating live action and CGI.
Heres one by a guy called David Denly who submitted a showreel to cgcoach. His showreel won him an internship at Double Negative. There, he has worked as a lighting TD on the feature film Paul. Heres his showreel:
A very insightful talk was given to us today by Double Negative - a VFX studio based in Soho and Singapore. Alex Wuttke the head of 3D showed us some of the 'making of' behind Inception - I really have to see this film now - it looks cool!
Hannah Acock - Double Negatives recruitment manger - also gave us some very helpful insider advice and tips on what they are looking for in our showreels. It sounds like tough competition to get in as they receive 150 showreels every week! Still, they make a point of watching them all so thats slightly reassuring. The entry position jobs are: Runner, Roto Artist and Matchmover. I would be fine doing any of these as its a foot in the door and I think ultimately you could end up doing whatever aspect of VFX you enjoy doing the most - it could be a bit of everything ie. Modelling, Texturing and Lighting. Or just one thing ie. fx arist or animator.
They also said they come in some productions at an early stage and work on concept designs and pre-visualation. Some other films they have done include Quantum of Solace, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part one, Stardust, Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, Kick-Ass and Iron Man 2. Alex said that some perks of the Job include visiting the film sets (this means you get to travel - this could be good or bad depending on where you go!)
It can be amazing how much effort Directors put in to special effects as well. (Special effects are actual effects done within the production - ie. pyrotechnics) And the length Christopher Nolan went to get real looking footage. Theres a model which they created for one scene of Inception thats acually 2 stories high. Just to blow it up! (Actually it may be in more then 1 scene - I'm not sure as I haven't seen the film yet..)
So overall, Double Negative helped produce 500 shots towards Inception, 250 people worked on it (in 2D, 3D and Production.) It took 14 months and cost $20 million. This is just a small portion of the total $160 million spent on the entire film. Incidentally as I have mentioned money here, someone asked about the salaries of the entry level jobs and it is around £14 k p/year for runners and just under £20 k p/year for Matchmovers and roto artists. Thats pretty good I think..
I asked about the working environment - Alex said that at times it can be quite vocal and social - but on the same level everyone is focused in on their work so theres a healthy balance. He said its friendly and cool ^^
