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!
Following the end of Uni, I tried integrating this blog into my Wordpress website and found as a result it was slower and some of my older uploaded videos were no longer available. So I have returned to Blogger :-) The sudden influx of posts this September were actually created on my Wordpress blog throughout the summer and now I have pasted them back here.
Here's something I've been working on - following a tutorial but customising it to fit my own textures, backdrop etc. It has been fun to create these butterflies and interesting learning about how particles work in Maya. I have been keen to do some effects stuff for a while so I'm glad I have now got round to it!
Just before completing Uni I hired out the portable green screen and shot some footage. Here is a shot I composited of my housemate Olly, complete with a breakdown.
I have also been asked to help out on a MA Film project entitled 'Gone'. I have spent around a week compositing a 2 minute shot, my goal was to make it look like there was no grass or plant life and to deteriorate the rollercoaster. The purpose of this was to emphasise the apocalyptic feel of the film. I used Photoshop for matte painting, Mocha for tracking and After Effects for compositing. Below is a 6 second segment of the shot complete with a breakdown.
Here is another shot I worked on for 'Gone'. In this case my job was to place a house onto Bodmin Moor. I learned a lot from doing this in terms of using perspective, matching the lighting and matte painting.
Here is the final shot - I added some binoculars on top, linked the still plate to the camera movement which accompanied the initial shot of Bodmin and applied a bit of blur and scaling to show the binoculars coming into focus.
It has been a productive few years and I have learned a lot of things. It's been great getting to know everyone on the course and I'm sure our paths will cross again. I feel privileged to have spent 4 years living in Falmouth, Cornwall. It is such a fantastic place. I'm currently living with my girlfriend Nina in Stroud, Gloucestershire and our next move will be to London where we aim to get work.
I helped arrange this exhibition at The Poly, Falmouth to represent our Digital Animation course. They screened our films at The Poly as well - Shell and Paddy, 1890, The Pasty Child and Kernel. This was all part of UCF's Film course's Pixelate event. It was great seeing our work properly on the big screen and it got a very positive response from the audience.
Our exhibition with an interactive stop motion set up:
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.
My latest showreel, marking the end of my Digital Animation degree. A selection of shots from throughout the last few years which focus on compositing but also demonstrates my skills in animation and 3D. The first two shots are from our 3rd year final major project: Kernal. A CG animated film I worked on as part of a team of 17 which we have now completed and anticipate entering it into festivals.
Here, I have put together a detailed guide which documents the process of compositing a typical polluted cityscape shot for our 3D animated film Kernel. Innovations - How to composite a polluted city shot
To browse through other innovations documents by people on the Kernel team and on our course check out the links below. I will continually update this page as more people upload their documents.
Here is my dissertation. In it I relate art to modern forms of commercial animation and digital media. My argument is that audio visual areas of commercial digital media and animation could allow for the most 'artistic freedom'.
I enjoyed writing this. I found it interesting learning about and applying the fundamental attributes of art to contemporary and commercial animation/digital media.
Some of the music videos I referred to in my dissertation are the following:
Everytime (2009) by Oi Va Voi. Directed by Kijek and Adamski.
So So So (2011) by Rone. Directed by Studio Funf.
Frozen (1998) by Madonna. Directed by Chris Cunningam.
Joga (1997) by Bjork. Directed by Michel Gondry.
Yes I Know (2011) by Memory Tapes. Directed by Eric Epstein.
There is also this great web page which documents in detail the making of Jonsi's live show visuals: 59 productions.
Kernel progress
Things are getting pretty busy at the moment as we have less then 3 weeks left to complete our final major project. Kernel - our CG animated film which is looking fantastic. My role on this currently consists of overseeing the compositing and editing. Below are a few finished stills - Its an exciting time!
32 bit colour implications Heres a little 32-bit colour related compositing mystery I recently stumbled on whilst analysing the final awesome touches Olly added to the first city shot shown above. This may look pretty boring but it was quite intriguing from my point of view!
Other stuff
I'm currently working on a website, aiming to promote myself and my skill set (a mixture of concept art, storyboarding, compositing and animation.) Here is a screenshot of the current layout.
Furthermore, I'm hoping to create a business card, C.V. and up-to-date showreel all in time for the Annecy animation festival which I'm greatly looking forward to! Woop :-D
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
It is with great happiness and satisfaction that I can officially announce that we won the first prize of the Young Adults category of the Bristol CND film competition! I was very happy to receive our award at The Watershed cinema in Bristol. The following weekend I went up to London, where our film was screened at the BFI as part of the 'We The Peoples' Festival. Half the credit of the film goes to my Illustrator/designer friend Carl Norris who created the vibrant backgrounds. Also thanks to my Animator friend Tom Gameson for his animation of the little girl. Finally thanks to my little cousin Brenda Callis for her fantastic voice over!
Here is our film:
The official website of the competition can be found here.
To say I have been busy is an understatement! Over the last 4 weeks I have completed and handed in work (in time for deadlines) for 4 separate projects - including my CND film.
Brief: A concept art piece establishing the Greenhouse in it's city setting. Composition to look down between 2 buildings. There must be a layer of mist caused by the pollution.
At first I was unsure how to go about this - how does one draw a futuristic city with realistic perspectives? To get the ball rolling I went on intuition and made a little futuristic city in my bedroom out of stuff from around the house.
Maya came in very handy for this project.
I printed this screenshot off and worked from it getting the colours, adding in new ideas and more detail inspired by the photos I took of the city I made in my bedroom.
The next 4 images were achieved in one all night session as the deadline was approaching..
These billboard sketches are an important part of the setting. The protagonists character is enhanced and developed through his conflict with the doctrines of the society in which he lives. On a visual level these messages should stand out. Olly states in his script: "...the darkness of the smog and urbanity lit only by its media"
Olly gave me some pics where he caught water droplets on the lens of his camera and took photos of lights at night. I then brought this into Photoshop and applied the linear burn layer style to merge this in.
This last pic is with Olly's additions. He has added a looking-through-window effect which has really enhanced that 'you're there' feeling about it. The flares are a nice touch too. Nice work Olly :-)
My friend Marcel gave me some good feedback suggesting that further improvements could be made by lighting up the front of the skyscrapers at the bottom of the screen. This would help define them a bit more against the background without taking away from the murky misty effect.
In this shot we see a chase. Paddy chases Shell but then trips up over this branch-like creature. I reckon it should be quite a funny scene!
I checked with Thomas about not getting this done in time for the pitch - he was cool with it. Unfortuantly I couldn't complete it in time with all the other projects going on. Hopefully I will get it done soon. From now on I will add in 1 contingency day every week into my schedule to allow me to achieve all projects in time.
Newgrounds project - London riots animation - Directed by Tom Gameson
My role: Background artist
Tom did a bit of animation for my CND film. In exchange, I have produced 2 backgrounds for his project that he was working on throughout the Summer at Newgrounds.
For these, I have worked a lot by hand before going into Photoshop. Ralph Steadman has been a big inspiration for Tom so I tried to incorporate elements of his style into my work.
City background
Prior to this I did 4 half hour A5 tests of different styles. Tom picked out the one he liked the best - a bit of collaging with Ralph Steadman style lines. He wanted the buildings to surround and overwhelm the character. For the final piece I worked in A3 using the same method as I did for the test. I then worked these up in Photoshop.
This is where Photoshop came in.
Park background
In this shot we will see the camera pan down on the right, then track to the left (hopefully these are the correct film camera terms I'm using!) Tom specified that the background is a bit run down, tucked away on a hill somewhere in London.
Tom's layout design:
My 20 minute Photoshop sketch just to get the depth values and a bit more definition.
I produced these elements by hand using Ink and pastels. I used pastels purely to get the colour and Ink for everything else. Here are all the different elements brought into Photoshop.
My first real go at Photoshop painting (of the rubbish) - using photographs for direct reference. Halfway through I thought 'Hang on - I can get Adobe Illustrator to do what I'm doing' so I did that for a test. It was a bit quicker doing it using Illustrator (the colour 6 filter) but I was pleased that when I did it myself in Photoshop the result was 10 times better.
The resolution of the full Image is 6344 x 2813 to allow for all the camera movements.
In this close up shot you can see the level of detail with a crisp packet stuck in the tree and plastic bags trodden into the dirt.
That's 4 weeks worth of work crammed into a couple of hours of blogging!
On a side note, I will be going to Bristol this Saturday as I have been invited to the showcase and prize-giving event of the CND film competition at Watershed cinema. I'm quite excited about seeing my work up in front of an audience!
