Effective presentations

Our effective presentations lecture was very useful I think, here's what I learnt.
-only include meaningful information, keep it concise or it will get boring.
-Know your audience so you know what kind of language to use and tone of voice.
-Assume they know very little
- inform them what you are doing and who you are.
-be professional
-tell a story in chronological order
-the presentation is not about you-how you dress or sound- it's about the content.
-the presentation should not be stressful, as long as you are prepared for it
-keep it simple.
-don't use clip art.
-Use imagery to illustrate a point when necessary,
-Don't use too much text, you will bore people and no one will read it.
-avoid bullet points
-if your stressing, stop and think what you need to say
-be enthusiastic
-if you make a mistake correct it and carry on
-use cue cards/notes if you need it but don't just read a script as you loose the life.
-don't leave it till the last minute

-PRACTICE
-make sure it works
-offer a Q and A

All of these are very useful tips that I will use in my presentations in the future, many of which I was aware of already but I did learn some new ones.

Mirror image

I just found this on Sqwigly, it's not a full animation it's more about the animation process. It's about Sean Gregory's main second year animation. He is from the South of Wales. I found it really interesting it shows the way they animated it using replacement faces for all different facial expressions and vowels etc that they can just switch in and out seamlessly. I think that is such a cleaver idea! It's done using stop motion and after effects mainly. They used green screening processes too. I just love this idea of swapping the face instead of editing it. However I feel that possibly this could ruin some effects because it might look too much the same. I guess real people do that though , everyone has sort of their own set of facial expressions. 
Some of his influences include Pixar, The Flynn twins, Paranorman, nick park- some of which i have never heard of so i might have a look.
http://www.skwigly.co.uk/showcase/mirror-image-production-showreel/

This image is from Paranorman. This also uses this technique but in this they used a 3D printer to create each face as a whole as you can see on the image below. So clever! must have taken forever but i think it would speed up the overall process.

Some animators do the facial parts separately like this image which is from Coroline. Each new facial feature is just clipped into place. So interesting!!!!

BAF- Day 3

The first thing we saw today was the Farnham retrospective. This was actually very interesting with a wide variety of animations including some well known ones, and some not so well known. I thought that 'A is for autism' by Tim Webb was very interesting, it shows the feelings of an autistic person and what they're lives are like on a daily basis. 'Morning stroll' by Grant Orchard was quite funny about that silly chicken and the man getting suspicious and trying to chase him. 
I really liked the one about the two armchairs talking to each other that was really funny but I don't remember what it was called. Was it 'Britain'?

Next was Michaela Pavlotovas Master class. This was interesting because she talked a lot about what inspired her work and how she came to make the animations she did. How sometime people wanted her to do erotic things but she wasn't comfortable with it so she tried to make it funny and ended up winning an award for it! That was 'Tram' She does some quite funny stuff but unfortunately, she talks an awful lot. I didn't like her one that she did on split screen and you could play it at different parts, I didn't think that worked. It was just a random picture with a random sentence that made no sense and no story but she was insistent that it was cool that you could make any story and any outcome.

Then we had the double negative presentation which was fantastic! I hadn't really thought about that process being classed as animation. He talked about creating the scenery and the cars and how things had to be done with CGI for safety and things like that. It's really amazing what you can do! They showed us some before and after shots of the film called 'Rush'. It was fascinating! Definitely something I am now interested in! I love realism.

Lastly we saw Mackinnon and Saunders being presented with the lifetime achievement award. Then they spoke to us after. We also watched a documentary by Paul Wells about them and their work. It was very interesting, I had wondered ( having just watched Frankenweenie) how they did it so seeing that was amazing. I had thought there might be rigs inside but I had no idea they were detailed armatures that can be controlled with an Alan key! I am really interested in the designing of these physical characters, how you can physically get your hands on them and alter them and get a real feel for them. It's something I'd really like to try now.

Overall I think the Bradford animation Festival was a really good (if expensive) idea. It inspired me a lot, but now I have to starve myself to pay for it.

BAF- Day 2

Today we started off with Student 2- I liked 'Rabbit and dear' by Peter Vacz. I thought it was cute! I also like how the used the medium to tell the story. The fact that they started off 2D was part of the story, and how when dear went to clay, rabbit couldn't touch anything cause they were different. But they still made their friendship work which is a nice story :) They should make a kids show out of that!

I think my favourite of this set was ' The odd sound out' by Ida Maria Schouw Andreasen and Pernille sihm. (whats with all the difficult names?!) It was an excellent 2D computer animation about a group of sounds, portraying a mans emotions, but one of the sounds doesn't fit in so he goes in search of new sounds but doesn't find the right group, and ends up back where he was but he fits in now. It was a lovely story with a nice cute character. I thought 'what a fantastic idea'. If someone says draw a sound I automatically think of the shape of the line. It's so clever that this person thought of personifying these sounds!

Professional 3 was next- My favourite here was 'Mr Hublot' by Laurent Witz. I like the 3D computer animation style, its almost like Pixar! Such a lovely story too. I like how his character is portrayed, the little things he does- you know he's OCD and scared of going outside. I also love the dogs character. He's a robot, yet it animated like a real dog, all fun and bouncy! I think that's good because it must be difficult to do when you know its not supposed to be real.

Another one I liked was 2D computer animation called 'My three Grandmas' by Katalin Glaser. I liked that this was 2D, it helped show that it was from childhood memories of the person doing the voice over. A nice story too- I'm sure a lot of people (including myself) can relate to having 3 grandmothers and how they are all so different.

Last on this day was Animated projects: Random acts. I actually didn't enjoy this. I understand that they were done fast and with a budget but... they just didn't seem professional at all. Also I prefer the longer animations with a bit more substance and story. I did however enjoy ' Apocalypse Rhyme' This was a typography animation which just looked utterly beautiful. The way it moved, the art, just beautiful.

BAF- Day 1

On our first day of BAF I wasn't sure what to expect and the early morning nearly killed me but I actually really enjoyed it! I liked seeing the professional films, seeing what's happening now and the different ways of animation professionals are using. In professional 1- I particularly enjoyed ' in the air is Christopher gray' by Felix Massie. I loved the colours and the simplicity of the 2D animation. I liked how even though it was simple, the characters still had personalities. I also like that this piece can work so well with not much background- I'm not a fan of drawing backgrounds at the moment. It was also funny which is always a bonus. Is comedy something you just know how to do? or can you learn it?

I also liked 'Boles' by Spela Cadez. This is a completely different style using puppets. In this animation, the puppets spoke different language and it was subtitled. In some of the talks I was made aware that if you cant speak English, you usually don't use language. But in this case it worked! It kind of helped to make you feel you were in a different country. The story line was exotic and tangled and at the end I wasn't quite sure what was real. I thought at first that this might have been stop motion but it's not. I'm still trying to get better at figuring out the difference on screen.

Another film we watched was 'Canis' by Marc Riba. In my opinion, this was a horrible story. It made me feel sick. However, it I didn't want to look away. I guess this is the sign of a good storyline or film maker? Even so, I didn't like it and I never want to watch it again. This was stop motion/ puppets. I don't know if this made it scarier because it was a physical being rather than computer generated? I think that's something to think about when creating an animation. It was a silent film, again because of the language barrier. It added to the effect though, it made it scarier.

Next we come to the student films 1- I was amazed at how students could produce such incredible work! in some cases, better than the professionals! I particularly enjoyed 'The kiosk' by Anete Melece. It was quite humorous. I didn't think I liked that style of cut out animation but I really enjoyed this. I think as long as an animation has a good storyline and is done well, it doesn't matter what media is used, that just adds to it.

'Ab Ovo' by Anita Kwiatkowska (what a mouthful)  was so good! This was done using clay to an INCREADIBLY high standard! It was captivating the way it all just spread around making new shapes, making the ladies body change as she got further in her pregnancy. And the inside? how do you do that with clay?! so good! Although it didn't have a story as such, it still had content which was made interesting through animation. Very clever I loved it.

There were a lot of good animations on this one, I actually enjoyed it more than the professional ones.

Next came Lee Hardcastles master class. Now I have never really been into Claymation before but he made it funny. The Yorkshire accent definitely added to the humour. It's rare you hear it in animations. He made everyday things into stories that ended up really gory! It was very cleaver really. I was very interested to hear about how he got to where he is now, through YouTube and what he did while he was studying, that he preferred to work on his own and stumbled across stop motion at film school. Unfortunately we had to leave part way through his talk to catch a train, I would love to have heard more.

Brave

I found this so interesting!! When i first saw this movie i was entranced by the movement of everything especially Meridas hair. At first i felt a little uneasy because it was SO realistic. In this video they showed you how its done. A lot of it was also to do with light which i think was quite an eye opener, I hadn't really thought about it before. They mentioned facial expressions but trying to keep her beauty- i guess you need to be thinking what kind of character you have to bear their facial expressions in mind!! I found this movie so inspirational I really want to see it again!! I've never used 3D computer animation before but the things you can do with it look so good! like they just stuck a wig on the rig and it moved with it perfectly. It's amazing!!

The princess and the frog- Charlotte

Character Design

I really like the character-Charlotte- in The princess and the frog. She is so lively and slightly annoying but in a funny way. The way she moves is so exaggerated and she's passionate and over the top about everything. She is your classic blonde bimbo girl who makes everything much bigger than it is. She works well in contrast to Tiana who is very much the opposite. 

I love the way Charlottes clothes fit perfectly with her personality-over the top. I also like the way they move with her and the slight delay to portray the floatyness of the dress. I also like her face like how its kind of chubby and cute and innocent. My favourite scene to show her is 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aqn4C8utJyw

For some reason it cant find this when i search for it on  here? It's such a funny scene. She has to be centre of attention all the time. This has shown me that designing a character is all well and good but they also need to have personality to make them come alive. This is something i would like to look further into as i am quite interested in character design.

Character Design

This guy is cool and I think the things on his videos are really useful. There are some really good tips on here like he works from reference photos and goes from there. This is a really good idea because that way your character will look more realistic because you have got the basics for what makes the character and you can play about with it. I am looking forward to trying out these things at home!

Reflective practice

Why did you choose to study this programme?

I chose to study this programme because:
- When I came for the open day and the interview the staff were very friendly and welcoming.
- The tutors spoke about the courses with passion and made me really look forward to what there was to come.
- The content of the course looked interesting and there seemed to be more tutorial time compared to some other universities.
- The show real was interesting and impressive.
- Leeds seems to be a nice place and also very student friendly.

What do you want to learn in the programme?

I would like to learn:
- To make things move in general.
- To make things realistically move using the 12 principles of animation.
- To create interesting believable characters.
- To be able to create a world for my characters to be in.
- To capture my audience in my imagination.

 What are your strengths?

I believe my strengths are:
- Following instructions to get results.
- Learning and being up to trying new ways.
- Thinking of characters straight away in my head.
- When I get engrossed in a project I just carry on working till its done.
- I know about spacing and levels etc. from drama.

What do you want to improve?

I would like to improve on:
- Refining my characters properly.
- Creating scenes.
- Time management/ organization.
- Blogging
- Working as a team.

What ways do you evaluate your progress?

- I try to write a small evaluation on each piece as I complete it and think what I can do better. I do this at each stage so like last time on my storyboard I evaluated after the post it notes, after the drawings and then after the computer version.
- I ask my piers and family what they think to my work as an outside perspective.
- If I would not be happy to share it on Facebook, Instegram, or blog it, it's not good enough.
- The reflective/ design cycle.
- Comparing my work to my piers.

What is reflective practice?

Reflective practice is when you look back at your work and let other people look too and learn from it by looking at things that now you would maybe change now you know more.

Things you need to think about are
-what you did
-why you did it
-did you learn from it?
-what would you do differently next time?

We will constantly be doing this on our blogs and in our evaluations so I think it was good that we had this lecture.

Gibbs came up with this cycle which works well for most creative industries

Reflection is learning through experience and theory to deepen understanding.