Thought of you

Something that hasn't changed this year....I am still madly in love with the animation- thought of you by Ryan WoodwardThought of You from Ryan J Woodward on Vimeo. I think it is just absolutely beautiful and hopefully when i get better at drawing which i plan to over summer, maybe i can attempt something like this. 

What I like about this film is the movement..the fluidity and the pure raw animation that tells a beautiful story in a beautifully visually appealing way. Maybe this is something I can do for my extended practice? just work on making movements beautiful? Yes I think I might do that as it is something i have loved for 2 years now.

Learning journey presentation

I decided to make my learning journey presentation a video. It will have words saying what I want to say, with my animations i have done backing up the words and a few images. Also a few extra bits of really simple animation just to make it a bit more visual. It will have fun upbeat music in the background.
I have decided to do it this way because I think its more engaging and its almost like a showreel itself. I think people will enjoy watching it because there is lots of different things in it but with a structure of a plain slide with words between each thing. 

Buisness card

I have decided to do a double sided business card as people flip them over all the time anyway but also it leaves more room for a more striking image on the front. I would've liked this to actually be a piece of art but unfortunately i don't really have anything that would be right for it yet so its something to work on.

I went with a more graphic design kind of feel with bold contrasting colours. I personally really like dark grey and turquoise together. I used thought bubbles on the front because I think of thought bubbles as a creative thing so it would show that I am creative. On the back i reversed the colours for interest and i used simple images instead of writing out 'twitter, instegram, telephone,email.' I  think this makes it more simple and easy to read and it looks cleaner and you can easily pinpoint what you want and its not cluttered.

Portfolio

Here is a small portfolio of work I have done over the past couple of years from drawings to photography. It was hard to find things to put in as I'd never really thought I'd need to so hadn't really saved a lot of my work! But I think this shows a wide range of skills which is good in a portfolio I believe especially when you don't really specialise yet. Next year I hope to have lots of character design in my portfolio.

Showreel

I have just put together my showreel. I was gathering my videos yesterday and realised there isn't all that much and some of which I don't want to use because I don't feel proud of them. As you supposed to put your best work in , i put in things i wouldn't mind showing people. I cut down some animations into littler parts that i liked and put them in different parts of the showreel so it gives a bit of variation and also it doesn't make clips too long and boring. I think my showreel is fast paced enough with a nice upbeat sound track from http://www.purple-planet.com.

SWOT analysis 2

I have decided to re do my SWOT analysis and see whats changed.


S-trengths
-What are you good at
-unique selling points
-experience/knowledge
-recourses
-innovation
-location/geography

W-eaknesses
-What can you improve
-gaps in your knowledge
-timescale
-reputation
-commitment
-planning

O-ppertunities
-what do you get out of this
-networking/partnerships
-learning new skills
-research

T-hreats
-What to keep an eye on
-Time management
-Competition
-Technologies
-Distraction
-Expectations
-Popular


SWOT on my self



Strengths:
-fairly good at drawing
-Can use multiple techniques and softwares
-open to ideas
-can work collaboratively or on my own
-will give anything a go
-have gained confidence in overall abilities
-People said i have an eye for comedy

Weaknesses:
-insecure about work
-envy of other peoples work/compare myself to them
-laziness/lack of motivation/ love of sleep+bed
-need to work on drawing to gain confidence

Opportunities:
-I plan to go to thought bubble again next year and this time take a sketch book
-I plan to work on more drawing over summer

Threats:

-I still feel everyones work is better than my own and this can be damaging to the way people view me if i keep knocking my own work.

-Distractions come in the form of films and tv shows.

Pixar

Chris Sasaki  - character designer at pixar

We met one of the character designers at Pixar- something i thought would never ever happen-and it was awesome!! I was a little bit start struck as this guy has designed the characters in the up and coming Inside out which I am really looking forward to seeing!! He also had a part in designing the characters for monster university which is a great film! He said he was really pleased to be part of that project as it was monsters inc that inspired him to get into this.

Some of the things he shared with us was : theres lots of research involved in getting final look of characters- to try and make things believable- when you find the authernticity it makes the audience relate.
research drawing help you find out things that are consistent that you need to put in the final. 
have to do turnarounds and work with character builders to tell them how they can build it and to keep it how its supposed to be. 
try and bring your personal life into your animations and make it authentic
always has to be a reason why your doing something
clarity and strong silhouettes and strong gestures are very important

These are all really interesting points to consider especially as I am wanting to look more into character design next year. I have learnt that the silhouette is a very important thing from almost everyone we have spoken to and read about. Also the ability to relate to the characters.

It was so great to be able to meet someone who is working on the films you aspire to create in the future.

He told us he didn't get into Cal Arts which i thought was almost a must to work at Pixar, but he just showed perseverance and willingness to take on tasks and had a great portfolio and worked his way up getting experience.

The art of Rio

I recently bought a book called The art of Rio. It is so good! I am thoroughly enjoying reading it especially the little bits about the theory behind what they did in the character design. I found it really interesting about how the eye is supposed to be the first thing the audience sees so they connect with the character as that is where all the emotion comes from. With birds, the beak is usually quite large and the first thing we see. So to combat this, they make the eyes larger and all the lines from the beak point to the eye. That is just so clever and not something I had really thought of before!!! I just want to learn more things like this-its so interesting!! I think reading things like this will also improve my own character design skills which i hope to work on next year.

Pop up show

Today we had our pop up show in the lecture theatre, screening our animations for Applied animation 2. We made this a professional event by creating individual posters as well as a group poster, creating a Facebook event, word of mouth, and also we provided drinks and snack to watch our films with. I think we possibly would've got more people if we had set up the event a bit earlier.

Everyones animations turned out very professionally and I think a lot of people enjoyed them. We got a larger turn out than I had anticipated which was great. 

All in all it felt like a great event that had been properly organised and thought about.

Presentation

Ideas for presentation:
I want there to be some animation but i won't have time for a fully animated presentation so I'm hopefully going to do just some tiny bits of animation through the presentation.

I think what i want to say will be:

This year I have learnt a lot. I learnt to animate in 3D which was something i was looking forward to. I would like to keep learning about maya over summer as i believe it has a lot of potential. for example the way i used it to animate 2d images in 3d space in my applied animation project.

I have also learnt a lot more of after effects and can use it more confidently now.
I did my first collaborative project which i thoroughly enjoyed and its actually something i am quite proud of! I have learnt the importance of working with someone to make your work better as i also learnt from not collaborating in the applied module.

I have also learnt to juggle A LOT of work at the same time and try and keep on top of it. I think i can vouch for everyone when i say responsive was not an enjoyable module. I like that it got me to enter competitions as i wouldn't have done it before and it was nice to have freedom to pick out own briefs. But there was just so much work to do and keep track of. it was an extemely stressful time that i am glad it over. 

Next year in cop i would like to explore the theory of character design. I have been reading the art of rio recently and was fascinated by the reasons behind what they do for example-the eye is the first thing the audience needs to see and with a bird, the beak is usually really big and gets in the way so to combat this they make the eyes larger and use the lines of the beak to draw into the eye so its what you look at first. like i said...fascinating.

Over summer i plan to improve my drawing skills and learn the technical aspects of it like perspective as i feel that this is holding me back a little. I also am really looking forward to exploring character design in depth for my cop project.

It has been a difficult and testing year that i am glad to be the other side of now. I am looking forward to next year in the fact that there will be less modules to juggle but the content will provide us with a much better portfolio/showreel.

Wreck it ralph

I have just recently watched Wreck it Ralph (walt disney animation studios) for the first (and second) time and i thought it was absolutely brilliant. One of my favourite animated films now.
I think what I liked best about this was the storyline. I didn't really have an idea of what the story was before I watched it so when it started I just thought it was such a fantastic idea that these characters in arcade games had lives when the arcade shut and that they could go to "game central station" which was actually the power supply they were all plugged into and use the wired to travel to a different game like its a train! Then when you see characters in a different game, they are transferred into whatever style that game is in! I was just blown away by what a clever idea it was. I even noticed the second time watching it that when Ralph smashes the cake, the goo that comes off looks like its in pixels and the lights are pixels and the broken stairs are pixels!! 
Wreck it ralph was originally thought of at disney in the late 1980's, being developed under the name of High score. 10 years later it was redeveloped under the title of Joe Jump, then another 10 or so years later as Reboot Ralph. Finally in 2011 it was called Wreck it Ralph.

I wanted to find out who came up with the story originally because its amazing. All that I have been able to find for the past hour is that John Lassaster directed it.

Kilogramme animation

tries to make other peoples dry ideas funny but also makes own ideas.
he comes up with initial script then other people give input and change it about until they're all happy.

if you say your going to make something give yourself a deadline and make sure you make it or someone else will.

script design, story board, voice record, animatic, animation, final composite, final render
show client at every finished stage.
if a client wants something changing after they have signed it off, you can charge them extra for that change and give them the option to want it changed or not.
richard wiliams and preston blairs books
script is king. can't make a good film out of a bad script
they have apprenticeships but you have to stand out
put your best stuff a the beginning of showreel

Drawing

I have been practicing drawing and I love drawing faces. I felt like i needed to find time to draw things that weren't to do with modules. After drawing these I realised that my drawing skills have actually improved a lot since i started the course. This has made me want to draw more as i feel like I am improving a lot. Practice makes perfect! I plan to draw a lot more over the summer but not only draw-actually learn to draw from books and youtube tutorials!

life drawing

I have decided i need to work on my drawing skills so in order to do that i decided to take some life drawing classes. This will help me learn human proportions and like of action and a lot of things that are necessary to draw good characters. 
I found the first session very frustrating especially the 1 minute drawings. this is definitely not my forte and i got really annoyed with myself. As the drawings got longer I was getting increasingly frustrated as that should make things easier but i felt like nothing was going right and i didn't know what to do! In the end i decided to stop drawing the whole body and concentrate on certain aspects instead. 
I feel i need A LOT more practice on this. Unfortunately the sessions have stopped now for the term but i will definitely be going back next year as i think it will be very useful!! I will also practice figure drawing and general drawing skills over summer.

Des Taylor-The trouble with Katie Rogers

I bought this comic from Des Taylor himself at Thought Bubble this year as i was just inspired by the artwork! I decided it really lent itself to animation. I was chatting to him and he said if I ever did decide to animate it or whatever then to email him and let him see what I have done so that is what I would really like to do.

I copied and altered the image from the front cover of the comic. I really enjoyed doing this and want to do more! I plan to make her blow a kiss to the camera then turn round and walk off. Just something really simple that will bring the character to life. I kind of think maybe she should wobble or trip on her heels when she walks away as that is the kind of character she is but we will see. I think this will become a summer project.

Character design

I have been asked to do some character design for a novel that someone is writing. All communication has been through email. I really wanted to give this a go because I am quite interested in character design but haven't really had a chance to concentrate on it. Unfortunately there is a lot of work to be doing at the moment and I don't think i can fit it in with my work as there are 50 characters. He said thats not a problem as there is no deadline really so I asked if it would be okay if i did it as a summer project and he said that was fine! He said we will talk about payment when i start doing them properly. This is my first rough pencil design for the first character but obviously it needs to be in graphic novel kind of style.

BBC

Sarah Muller
-CBBC head of animation
-largest channel, number of kids that watch it
-closest competitor is CITV
-196.4 million player requests
-Becoming about brands
-strange hill high-made in house-where cbbc wants to be
-danger mouse is coming back. it was done on the cheep before but people still like it because of the relationship between the characters so they believe if they get that right people won't mind it coming back a bit modern.
-canadian animation has stuck in the 80's cartoon network style and they haven't changed it they are just churning out for profit
-looking for laugh out loud comedy animation 6-9 year olds
-character driven-like sponge bob
-Has to stand out, something new that no ones seen yet.
-avoid-zombies and vampires and paranormal things as they are being over done,
-they'd like to get something like family guy, simpsons, futurama, recognisable family drama,  real looking backgrounds, so they can do this kind of thing but age appropriately.
-fit with existing shows
-kids like seeing naughty people cause there not aloud to be naughty so they like to watch it.
-dennis the mennis- more dog-trying to make him less naughty but losing the story-no life is being brought into it.
-get kids talking
-pre school stuff, you have to be careful what you do because of emotive behaviour. don't make something where the character does something that you wouldn't want a pre schooler to do.
-think there is room for dramatic animation-if its brilliant


Andrew borough
-Writing CBBC animation
-boys predominantly are interested in animation for longer. girls are interested in it at a younger age
-Dont do fighting stuff on cbbc
-Premise-could this be told in any other medium? why is it animation?
-characters gotta have flaws to make stories- scooby and shaggy-cowards
-your world-the weirder the world-the simpler the story e.g. adventure time
-story telling- 3 act structure, character driven, coherent within the rules of the world, weirder the world simpler he story, follow the character and the story. don't blindly pressure the gag.
-pace- fast pace energetic, smash cuts, in and out scenes ultra fast 1/2 or 1 page max
-no guns, knives, no punching in the face, no cynicism
-Visual style anything goes, whatever works for the story
-crazy story-lots of squash and stretch
-writers conferences- eat biscuits, talk shit. ramble on about ideas
-springboards- paragraph length ideas for stories- throw stuff at a wall and see what sticks- 
-Premise/outline 2 1/2 or 3 page story to see if it works
-Scene by scene- script with minimal dialogue to see if it will work
-Drafts- write the full script, 
-ask another writer to polish the scripts, maybe make it more funny, bounce back and forth between the two.
-notes- these people have experience so listen to them- good notes help make it better
-writing isn't rocket science its harder
-whos story is it?
-what do they want?
-what obstacles can we put in their way?
-what do they learn?
-audience?
-If it feels right then you made the right choice
-Need a script to pitch to CBBC

Big hero 6

I went to watch Big Hero 6 on Friday. It was awesome!! I just love Baymax!! He's just so squishy and loveable and very literal almost to the point of being thick but thats because he's a robot!I love the idea of the chips he has in him to make his personality and when you take out the human kind of chip that makes him want to care for people, all he knows is karate! 
I also really like the girl second from the left. I love the way she moves and how she chews her gum, it is actually a really realistic movement! I really enjoyed this movie and it makes me want to learn more 3D animation! I just really wish i knew how to make my own characters and rig them! 

Night and day

I found this disney short and I just thought it was brilliant. Such a clever idea! I love how not only is the image inside the character but when they walk about the background stays still like they are walking about on it. This means the characters can interact together and take turns at looking at stuff. I think its nice that they became friends at the end and then something happened and they switched times! I thought that was such a lovely idea! And they both looked so happy at the end! I also like they character designs how they're all squishy and cute! It's such a simple idea but is so effective!!!

Lee Hardcastle

We had a visit from Lee Hardcastle! I was looking forward to this! Unfortunately he came in a bit unprepared and unprofessional. But actually his talk was really fun and engaging and told us a lot of interesting things!
Basically he first started stop motion when he was at film school. He didn't want to work in teams as he wasn't a very confident person. So he asked his tutor if he could just work on his own on a stop motion and they said yes! So he got some action figures and made a short movie with them! He showed us it and it was actually really good and funny! It was obvious he studies film because of the good use of lighting and shot framing etc. 
He went through with us where he went from there showing us pretty much all of his animations. He was explaining to us that we need to enter competitions lots and lots and chances are you'll only win 1 in 100 but you need to do it to get your work seen and practice. Share your work everywhere too so that more people are likely to see it. Lee has gotten work from his videos because people liked them so much that they asked him to do some work for them!
He also told us about how you make money from youtube. Apparently it used to be a lot easier for him because the way the site was set up was that short videos got put down the side as suggestions so his videos would often get listed. He even told us he made silly videos like 'the best alien encounter ever' (or something along those lines) just so people would be intrigued and watch them and from that he would make money! These actually strangely became his most successful videos. However now he says this has changed and the longer videos are getting suggested which isn't what he does so youtube is no longer useful to him. 
I did really enjoy having Lee Hardcastle talk to us about what he is done but I don't really feel its relevant to me as i am not into creating gory things and also I am more interested in the movement and making it look realistic and that is not what Lee Hardcastles work is about.