zomBlog

Coraline puppets

2012-01-08T05:42:00.000-08:00

I just remembered that I have a load of pictures of the Coraline puppets that I haven't uploaded. I took these during BAF in 2009 when I met Brian Van't Hul (Nightmare Before Christmas, Coraline, King Kong, Lord of The Rings). He was giving a seminar about the use of 3D stereoscopics used in Coraline and the effects. Clair Jennings (Producer of Coraline) was there too and took part in a Q&A session.

Here are the pictures:

(Some guy, Brian and André)

Stop Motion Timelapses

2012-01-08T04:49:00.000-08:00

I absolutely adore these stop motion time lapses! They show the time, effort and love that go into making these short clips of animation that ultimately are only on screen for a few seconds. Beautiful!

Tchaikovsky Timelapse

Animating Coraline

Holidaze Timelapse

And then there's this which I've seen all over the internet. Couldn't find a nice quality video of it though:

Coraline Pupper POV (my favourite one)

If you know of any other animation time lapses, please send them my way.

Proteigon

2011-12-31T03:02:00.000-08:00

Had to share this, such a great combination of stop motion, audio and awesomeness.

PROTEIGON from BURAYAN on Vimeo.

The Making of Puss in Boots

2011-12-27T03:18:00.001-08:00

I love making of documentaries and I just stumbled across this one for Puss in Boots so give it a watch:

New iAnimate reel

2011-12-08T10:31:00.000-08:00

iAnimate released their new students work reel last week and it's looking awesome! Some really mind blowing work in there and they included one of my assignments from earlier this year! If you watch at 11:50 you can see my vanilla walk (not a cycle).

Animating that walk kicked my arse. We had three or so weeks to do it and the final assignment was my third attempt, I struggled so hard for a long time but got there in the end with lots of feedback and some amazing advice from my instructor Jim van der Keyl. The main thing I learned from that assignment was that you really have to focus on which body parts are leading and following. For far too long I had the hips leading which made him look really feminine. Once I reworked it to have the chest leading it all fell into place. Also picked up the nifty trick of using the scale tool in the graph editor to exaggerate motions (e.g. wrists) or to bring them down.

Some more DmC footage

2011-12-08T08:16:00.000-08:00

Here ya go to anyone interested. This is the game I'm currently working on. None of my cutscenes in these videos though, I have one right before where the second video starts.

Aardman Animation Studios Behind the Scenes

2011-12-07T05:34:00.000-08:00

I've always loved stop motion and I've always loved behind the scenes footage so this is awesome! One day I'll have to dabble with stop motion again to remind myself of how bad I am at it. But anyway, check the video out and just look at the scale of those sets! Go Aardman!

Here are some pictures from the visit:

ORIGINAL SOURCE

I live in the woods

2011-10-21T08:53:00.000-07:00

This was just posted around the studio and I completely love it! Had to share:

[Warning, it does get violent and religious folk may not like it]

Animation in adverts

2011-10-09T15:06:00.000-07:00

I don't watch TV, mainly because I don't have one and anything that I'd want to watch is stream-able online. That's a lie, there is a TV in the house and we do have a TV license but the effort of connecting it up to something to receive a signal is too much effort for the reward (or lack of).

This results in me being very unaware of any great adverts that might be airing unless I happen to see somebody post them on any social network sites. Anyway, to the point. My girlfriend sent me these two tonight and I was happily surprised at the amount of money going into animation production for adverts. Animated adverts are also breaking out of the stereotype of being used for childrens products and to show off fancy cars. The following adverts are for yoghurt (yogurt or yogourt depending where you're from) and tea. You'd expect a healthy and hurried looking young woman in a kitchen for the one and maybe a scene of a cold winter with people sat in front of a cozy fire for the bother but NO! Not today:

Twinings Tea Advert - Gets You Back To You

Müller - Wünderful Stuff

iAnimates Taio Cruz Dynamite Animated Music Video

2011-10-06T11:25:00.000-07:00

"This was made as exercises in animated Body Mechanics and Lip Sync to music. Thanks a million to Taio Cruz for making such an awesome song, and well done to all the students who worked on the animation.Hope you enjoy......J"

This project started whilst I was still at iAnimate so I was able to see the very first 2D animatics made in Flipbook by Jason Ryan, the rough blocking and speedy progress to a solid compilation of students work. This was an absolutely wonderful idea, it brought animators together within the course, they got to be led by Jason Ryan and have their work reviewed by him (how does he get so much time to do it all?) and everything in this video was animated in peoples spare time outside of work and doing their own assignments.

Let's hope that iAnimate keeps up the community projects and the fun. Congratulations to everyone who took part in this video, I have a lot of friends who animated pieces of this and you all did a great job!

Mature Animation part 3

2011-09-21T05:02:00.000-07:00

If you know me then you know that I like the idea of animation maturing and entering the field of higher age rating films, aimed at teenagers, young adults and good old fashioned adults. If you don't know me and you only follow my blog then you might know following my previous posts about mature animation (post1 post2).

Anyway, a trailer popped up on my facebook feed today that punched my attention in the face, here's said trailer:

At first I thought it might be another smaller studio having a go at the kids animation market but I was happily surprised. If you've watched the trailer I'm sure you noticed the adult humour throughout. Now, I have to say that if this were a live action film I probably wouldn't have watched the whole thing and got so excited about it but as far as animation goes it feels like studios are taking big steps towards greater and more varied content. Now there are studios catering for more than just children and the general family. Animation is reaching out to a wider audience and if it's received well then who knows where it could eventually go.

After showing this to my fellow colleagues I was given this trailer to watch and was surprised that there's another "mature" animation on the way called A.D:

Which led me to remember about The Goon:

All this is looking very positive as it shows that there's an audience for these films. That there is an older age group that want animation to be taken to new places and into different genres. And why not? We have countless video games that contain all sorts of content, just like films and there's a game for everyone. Why can't there be an animated film for everyone too? I am aware that these are two different things but at the end of the day they are both in the same entertainment box as films, books and music. All story telling.

It's true that animation is very young and that it's always been labelled as more of a kids thing but check this out:

Video games have been around for even less time and they offer all sorts of things. Would you ever see any of that in an animated film released in major cinemas today? No way, but hopefully you will soon.

TGS DmC content

2011-09-16T02:12:00.000-07:00

Hello people!

I know my last post was very DmC heavy and this one will be too but I will have some more posts coming soon to do with animation and one to do with inspiration aaaaaaaaaaaand maybe one about starting out in the industry and what to expect. Could be interesting. Anyway, Tokyo Game Show is happening over in Japan right now and we've released a new trailer and a demo. Here they are:

Trailer:

Demo:

DmC Gameplay Trailer

2011-08-16T02:06:00.000-07:00

Also, have this! Just released from GamesCom, hope you enjoy:

Some DmC goodies

2011-08-16T01:25:00.000-07:00

Ninja Theory have just released some new screenshots two amazing pieces of artwork for our current project DmC. Here they are in all their glory:

(Click for a lovely full view)

And some more Dante:

Animation Smears, Multiples and Other Animation Gimmicks

2011-06-19T08:45:00.000-07:00

The Animation Smears, Multiples and Other Animation Gimmicks blog is simply amazing. For me personally I love to see what crazy things other animators get up to with smears and multiples and I find it really inspiring. I'd love to see more of this in 3D animation. Anyway, go check out the blog and geek out over pages and pages of animation goodness!

Animation Smears, Multiples and Other Animation Gimmicks Blog

Work experience and internship

2011-06-19T08:39:00.000-07:00

[I wrote this weeks ago but only just noticed that it didn't get posted for whatever reason.]

It's been waaaaaaaaay too long since I updated this blog. Apologies to anyone who may follow my ramblings. I've been quite busy with iAnimate, travelling around for interviews and other such business. Things have settled a bit more now, kind of, here's what's happening:

I'm currently sat in Sheffield and will be here for two weeks for work experience with the amazing guys at:

The studio was started by Bradford University students and has since employed a few more of them too so I'll be among a familiar-ish bunch. They specialize in short films that are mainly used for 3D/4D rides as well as work for TV and adverts. One of the guys who runs the studio taught a course at Bradford too, the CGFX module and another came in to speak about his career. It's going to be great working with them and I'm really looking forward to my first day tomorrow. At the moment all I know is that I'll be animating at some point.

After the two weeks at RedStar I'm back off to Northest Wales for a week with my girlfriend and then the following weekend it'll be time to run away to Cambridge for a six month internship with:

Whilst at Ninja Theory I'll be spending my time as a Cinematics Intern working on their current project. I know there'll be animation involved but there will also be mocap editing which I'm really looking forward to learning and learning from. So I move to Cambridge in two weeks into a house with the other 5 interns which should be lots of fun. Like being in a student house again! Can't wait :D

Cartoon Network

2011-05-04T00:50:00.000-07:00

So the other day I turned over to Cartoon Network and saw a couple of cartoons that were absolutely amazing! Great styles and really funny, I swear they're made for people in their early 20's and they're really nicely designed and animated! Check 'em out:

"Animation" Inception parody

2011-05-04T00:39:00.000-07:00

This is so good, it made my day. Had to share it!

iAnimate Workshop 2

2011-05-01T17:19:00.000-07:00

I've had a cool break, three weeks of casually animating and the rest was actually getting outside, spending time with folk and having a life for a short while. iAnimate has opened up again and I'm starting workshop 2, can't wait to get started with the assignments. I'm really going to try and push myself to come up with some good shots.

Even better news, my instructor is the one and only Mike Walling! This block is going to be awesome. I'll see if I can post any of my workshop 1 work publicly yet. I should be able to get away with posting the walk at least since that was in the iAnimate promo.

Anyway, too many awesome things happening. We have a new rig called Rex and we're getting another soon called Jackal. We're definitely spoiled for choice on this course. Lots of new and very skilled people have joined and some 2D animators too, can't wait to see their assignments. There's going to be some phenomenal work coming from iAnimate, keep your eyes peeled!

Growing Game Animation - Transitions & Player Input

2011-04-23T14:30:00.000-07:00

Check out this great article by Mike Jungbluth about animation in games. It tackles a few opinions about game animators and proves how they can view even the most seemingly mundane action as a perfect opportunity to really push the characters personality through physical action.

http://altdevblogaday.org/2011/04/10/growing-game-animation-transitions-player-input/

Interview

2011-04-21T15:51:00.000-07:00

So I just checked my emails. I went through them expecting to see a load of spam from Linkedin groups and amazon but there was one email that I wasn't expecting. It was an awesome email from an awesome games studio telling me that I've been chosen for an awesome interview with them for the cinematics internship! I'll be hearing more from them in May...can't wait! Fingers crossed and all that!

:D

Art Blog

2011-04-21T15:46:00.000-07:00

So I've decided to start an art blog to try and encourage myself to draw more often. Go check it out!

Art of Bryn

iAnimate promo

2011-04-04T11:23:00.000-07:00

iAnimate have released their promo video to show off the course and some student work. I'm very proud to have had one of my assignments included in the student showcase at the end of the video next to some absolutely amazing work. Check it out!

Keep On Top

2011-04-03T03:28:00.000-07:00

I came across a great piece of software the other day thanks to a fellow iAnimator. I had noticed in some videos that people were somehow managing to keep windows on top of Maya so that they could follow thumbnails/reference and I wanted to do the same with my current assignment.

I was recommended Keep On Top - it's free software that simply keeps any window on top. You can minimize it but when you bring it back up it'll stay there until you set everything back to normal on the software. I can imagine this would come in handy for a lot of things.

Here's a screenshot:

Hope it comes in handy for you.

Keeping animators healthy

2011-03-27T23:50:00.000-07:00

(We wish)

I think more people should be aware of the health risks from sitting at a desk for long hours. You can destroy your back and wrists among other things. It's worth upgrading to ergonomic hardware so that you can keep yourself going and not have to take breaks away from your profession. Ergonomic keyboards are great and easy to get used to as are the mice. If you're using a mouse buy an ergonomic mouse mat, they're very comfy. I've noticed recently after transferring to using a Wacom to animate with that I'm getting a bit of ache in my wrist and am thinking about getting one of these wrist wrests (since I wrote this draft the ache has completely gone, must have been my wrist teething).

A good chair is important too but they can become quite costly. Also don't forget that your monitor should be at least arms length away from you so that don't destroy your vision.

It's not just about having fancy hardware that helps your body bits out. You need to make sure that your diet doesn't suffer too. I often fall into the trap of eating anything so that I can get back to my work and my body soon lets me know when it's not appreciating it. A well balanced diet is incredibly important, all the time. No excuses. As well as the diet we have exercise, even if you're getting up to walk around every hour or so. It's better than being sat down in one (often awful) position all day.

In conclusion, unless you want to be a crazy blind hunchback with broken wrists and malnutrition then be nice to your body and it'll return the favour.

Victor Navone (Pixar animator) wrote a tutorial about ergonomics a while back, check it out here - http://blog.navone.org/2007/12/ergonomics.html

Rango Review

2011-03-18T12:24:00.000-07:00

Rango is unlike any other animated feature to date. It takes risks, looks gritty, doesn't shy away from death (not a spoiler) and at times is actually pretty scary (in the uncomfortable kind of way).

I went to see Rango last week with my girlfriend and some friends and really enjoyed it. Although, I must admit that I believe it has been over hyped somewhat. For me, the characters weren't engaging enough and I didn't really care about what happened to them along their journey. Maybe I couldn't relate to them for any number of reasons but that's something that I find very important in any film - engaging characters and story. Despite this it still felt like a strong film. I see it as a Western that just happens to be animated, it's most definitely not aimed only at children.

There are some amazing scenes in the film. Everything looked beautiful, buckets of detail, great animation and really full scenes. The action scenes especially were inspiring, they're good old fashioned Western action scenes too...guns and explosions and everything! ILM have done an amazing job.

Not to mention the voice acting, Bill Nighy gave an especially strong performance as did Mr. Depp and the rest of the cast.

Let's hope that ILM keep at this animated feature business, their first attempt has proved popular and pushed the boundaries of western (geographically speaking) animation.

If Rango is still showing in a cinema where you are then I'd recommend you go watch it............NOW!

BBC Talent Conference

2011-03-05T03:18:00.000-08:00

(Nick Park and Peter Salmon)

I mentioned the other day that I was off to the BBC Talent Conference at UCLAN because I and some fellow university friends were up for the Production award for our work on OverCharged - a short animation that tackles wasting energy.

We didn't win the award, a group from another university who had made a live action documentary managed to bag it. Congratulations to them! There were only two animations that made it through to be nominated for anything so it was a huge compliment just to be there amongst lots of industry greats.

So anyways...on to more interesting things. Nick Park was there, the legendary Aardman animator, writer, director and creator of Wallace and Gromit, Chicken Run, Creature Comforts etc. He came across as a really great guy, totally down to earth and genuine. He talked about his life before he made it to Aardman - he used to work in a chicken packing factory (which is where Chicken Run came from) and thought of animation as a nice little side hobby. It was amazing to be in the presence of one of my animation heroes. I used to be obsessed with stop motion animation and Aardman and Nick Park was really up there on the inspiration list.

We were given free lunch, yay!

One of the real highlights of the day was a workshop that I attended about getting into the industry and doing well in it. The panel consisted of CEO of Codeworks Herb Kim ,music journalist and ex Radio 1 DJ Mary Anne Hobbs and Eddie Morgan who is the head of the College of Production, BBC Academy. The best thing about the panel was Mary Anne Hobbs's advice for following your dreams. If you want it, do everything you can for it and take risks. Both Herb and Mary took risks to get where they are today. Herb came over here from America and set up a highly successful business and Mary left home, lived on a bus with a band for a year then sold everything she owned to move to America where she bought a motorbike and a bikini "as you do" in her own words. But neither of them saw their decisions as risks, they thought they were completely necessary despite being told otherwise by everybody else. I think that's an important thing to remember. If you want to do something that will get you closer to where you want to be then do it. Mary was such a strong talker throughout the panel. She'd frequently burst out with passionate and inspirational stories and advice.

So they were the highlights, there were no low points of the day at all. The big boss of BBC North was a great host and Victoria Wood was extremely entertaining and funny. Thanks for having me BBC and for the free shirt and lunch. Much appreciated!

New KFP2 trailer

2011-03-04T13:49:00.000-08:00

Take a look at this new Kung Fu Panda 2 trailer, yummy!

Production Award nomination

2011-03-01T11:37:00.000-08:00

That's right! The group I was in at university have been nominated for the Production award at the BBC's talent conference. I don't really know much about the event to be totally honest but it's taking place tomorrow. Nick Park (of Aardman and Wallace and Gromit fame) is going to be there giving a talk and a Q&A session so I can't wait! Hopefully I'll get to meet him too. The award nomination is for an environmental themed animation called Overcharged. Apparently we have to wear shirts that say "Award nominee" all day so that people from the industry know who we are. There are workshops too and talks from other industry folk. Should be fun! :D

Acting Lesson from Molier

2011-02-19T08:52:00.000-08:00

Here's a great video that I've just come across thanks to Jacob Gardner. It's a clip from a French film called Moliere. The arty character is telling the older man to act like a horse, he goes straight into doing something pretty generic and thoughtless. The arty guy stops him and shows him the importance of knowing your character so that you can give the correct performance. Check it out, it's a great reminder of what we should and shouldn't be doing as animators.

Speaking of mature animation...

2011-02-18T13:20:00.000-08:00

As you might have been able to tell from a post I made the other week ( http://www.zombryn.co.uk/2011/02/ark.html ) I don't think animation should end at family films. I believe that it can be so so soooooo effective for more mature content. The other day I came across two animations that are perfect examples of this. The first is a beautifully stylized piece with a dark religious type story and the second is an all out mind-explosion fest...but it's quite funny and entertaining. Try them on for size:

Guillermo del Toro developing stop-motion Pinocchio

2011-02-18T05:51:00.000-08:00

The concept art looks awesome, right up my ally. Go Mr. Toro, make it happen! Read more about the project here:

Guillermo del Toro developing stop-motion Pinocchio

Overlap notes

2011-02-16T14:19:00.000-08:00

Here's a list I made messily and quickly recently about overlap. They could come in useful to some people since there's some great info in there that I took from things I've read and watched.

Overlap is basically overlapping action
Hips, chest and head have overlap
Drag and followthrough are sub-categories of overlap
Whatever is overlapping changes direction when object slows in and out
Followthrough happens when an object changes direction
Inanimate objects are normally affected by overlap e.g - earrings, tail, hair, clothes
Everything can drag but because we're an animate object with muscles and bones we have control over ourselves and that affects the natural overlap of the human body
Overlaps are best added towards the end when you have your main objects animated and tied down. Your primary action must be approved/completed! You should only do it once your timing and spacing is complete and finalized.
Overlap can be described as secondary animation.
S curves normally occur in hair/rope/chain and similar moving objects when it changes direction
The most extreme frames of overlap will be a drag
The end of the tail should create an arc throughout the animation
Point the tip back to where it came from on the previous pose
When applying overlap to a tail, hair or spine keep in mind that the base of the tail/hair/spine will move the least and the end will move the most. Kind of like a whip.

And here's a bit of a conversation I had with a fellow iAnimate student (Martyn Smith) who came out with this piece of gold:

I remember asking Stephen (Melagrano):
"What's more important, realism or strong graphic poses?"
he said,
"Strong graphic poses, definitely. Something that reads instantly and clearly."
But then Mike said they'd often throw away graphic poses because it just didn't fit into the flow of things so I guess there's a balance.

Which goes to show that the "guidelines" can be broken. I had followed the "tip should point where it last came from" advice in a recent animation but it just didn't look as good as it could have. I ended up pushing the poses so that the hair and body made stronger S shapes and it worked so much better but the rest of my work on the overlap did follow that piece of original advice.

Tangled

2011-02-13T03:29:00.000-08:00

My girlfriend and I went to see Tangled in 3D the other day and it was BRILLIANT! A complete Disney classic. I was expecting it to be good but wasn't prepared for what it delivered. The story was strong, the characters were strong and likeable, the character designs were beautiful! At no point did I see a character and think "3D model syndrome" as I have done in a lot of animated films. They're all in the proper Disney style and it worked so well. The colours were fantastic too and the use of 3D was perfect. No "RANDOM OBJECT COMING AT YOU THROUGH THE SCREEN!" stuff. It was used to boost the composition and to add excitement in certain scenes. Also don't forget about the music, a lot of times when films break into song or dance these days I cringe and think scream "WHY??????" but it all worked so well with this one. Probably because it could be classed as an animated musical and that there isn't just a random one off song that breaks the film up.

But anyway, enough nice words and free marketing. Go see it and make your mind up. I think if Disney keep making them like this then they're definitely back on track.

Wow, I didn't even mention to animation in my first paragraph. It's astounding! So inspiring and a great mix between realistic movements and exaggeration. Congratulations to Disney for creating this. I hope it's the first of more to come.

I drew a picture!

2011-02-11T19:37:00.000-08:00

That's right! The last time I drew anything was in September last year. I'm not sure why it takes me so long to start another picture after I've finished one. Anyway, I doodled this in Microsoft OneNote:

Which after some time in Photoshop turned into this:

I think it's a definite improvement compared to my other work. It was partially inspired by the original District 9 alien concept when they had tentacles on their faces and the rest was all random doodles. I think I came up with some silly back story to the canisters in the head being devices that ease the creatures brain pressure. They need this because they developed so quickly that the rest of their body hasn't had a chance to catch up with the size of their brain. But that's just an excuse to draw things sticking out of an aliens head.

Hope you like it!

Nosey Bear

2011-02-09T15:37:00.000-08:00

I just had to share this animation and making of video. The whole thing was drawn in the guys sketchbook and composited using After Effects. All because he didn't want to spend the summer in front of a computer, great thinking!

And here's the making of which features some great advice for anyone wanting to create their own sketchbook animation:

Animation Food

2011-02-09T06:14:00.000-08:00

Here's another great script for animators. It's not a script that'll do something for you, at least not technically or directly to your animation. Even better, it's a script that inspires you.

If you're bored, feeling like you've been staring at the same thing for too long or want to have a bit of a read all you have to do is fire up animFood and it'll throw random tips/tricks/information at you about animation. How wonderful is that? There are over 300 quotes in there from some of these guys, to name a few:

Frank & Ollie
Brad Bird
Ed Hooks
Carlos Baena
Bobby Beck
Glen Keane
Walt Stanchfield
John Lasseter
Jason Ryan

Here's a link to the blog where you can download the script:

animFood

And here's a link to an icon I made for it:

Coming soon...(I'm not at home for the next few days so the little burger icon will have to wait for now)

Three Lessons

2011-02-04T19:48:00.000-08:00

There's a saying that goes something like this:

"You can't polish a turd."

And do you know what? It's completely spot on! I spent absolutely ages trying to polish a movement yesterday morning. I spent much longer trying to get it working than I normally would have on a movement. I suppose it's quite difficult because my brain naturally wants to find solutions and work things out.

But no. Instead, after I noticed how long I had spent sitting there, getting absolutely nowhere...I...I deleted the whole movement! Which brings me to lesson number two:

"Don't fall in love with your work."

In my case it was specifically a bunch of poses. Literally within a minute after deleting what I'd been rattling my brain over for what could have been 15 minutes I nailed the movement within 60 seconds.

Later that day I reached a part during splining the scene where things got particularly messy and couldn't really be saved without looking rubbish. My solution? DELETE IT! And it worked. I deleted the whole movement and quickly reworked it. Because I'd spent so long trying to shape my bad blocking I knew exactly what I wanted.

I've always been very fond of my poses and decisions. Today I've realised just how damaging that can be and love the new method I've adopted. It's pretty reckless but it's worked two times out of two today. Maybe even more times than that in the short space of time I've spent splining this one little 145 frame shot.

It was kind of an "AHA!" moment where those two quotes made perfect sense...and held hands...and ran off into the sunset...they had quote babies.

NEWSFLASH!

I have just realised that there is a third lesson to add to all this. Here it is:

"Learn from your mistakes."

Very important! Don't be afraid to make mistakes and if you do, take the opportunity to learn from them.

Happy Animating folks!

Funny Demo Reel

2011-02-03T03:50:00.000-08:00

This is the funniest demo reel you'll ever see. It's a bit of fun but made really well, check it out:

Kung Fu Panda 2 new footage

2011-02-02T02:33:00.000-08:00

Here's some new footage from Kung Fu Panda 2. Sexy animation, can't wait!

Mature animation...anyone?

2011-02-02T02:04:00.000-08:00

As much as I love all types of animation, sometimes I wish there were more dark material out there. Animation isn't just for children and family films. Maybe one day the medium will break through to adults in the form of films that sport 15 and 18 ratings. Imagine that! I know you can find anime films with those ratings but I'm talking more western 2d and CG. It doesn't even have to be dark, just more mature. And please don't misunderstand me, I do love fun and everything that comes with it (one of my favourite 3D films is Cloudy). I just feel that a little variation would feel like fresh air just punched me in the lungs.

Here are two great examples of animation being used to approach more mature concepts. I love this guys work, he's called Grzegorz Jonkajtys and is a professional animator and director. I've also included the trailer for his newest film at the bottom for anyone interested.

Animation Insiders FREE ebook

2011-02-02T01:52:00.000-08:00

That's right, the Animation Insiders book is now completely free to download in its digital format. Here's a little about it:

Animation Insiders is a book dedicated to animation. AI book #1 is a compilation of know-how, experience and anecdotes from 13 talented animators. Animation Insiders is aimed at people who are passionate about animation, those who are looking to surpass their limits and acquire new techniques. Every book of this amazing series will explores a new theme.

It features such legendary animators as Jason Ryan, Victor Navone, Jason Schleifer and more!

You can download it here - http://book.lesshamans.com/

What can a bouncing ball teach us about animation?

2011-02-01T14:18:00.001-08:00

A HELL OF A LOT!

Walk cycle ref

2011-01-26T08:34:00.000-08:00

This is a video of a group of animators having fun but also, perhaps unintentionally, providing us with some great walk cycle reference!

AS_motionTrail script

2011-01-26T08:01:00.000-08:00

I thought I'd share a great script that a fellow iAnimator created. It's like the motion trail script in Maya...but so much better! Since download it I've been using it almost every day to track my arcs and to visualise my spacing.

Here it is straight from Angelo's blog:

This script uses the standard maya motionTrail but is linked to an expression that updates what frames are shown based on your current frame.

for example: trail 3 frames before and 3 frames after;

If you are on frame 13, the motionTrail will show you frames 10, 11, 12,13, 14, 15, and 16.

It also shows the frames and colors of the motion trail can be changed as well. when you are done, just delete the motionTrail node and all of its connections and expressions will be deleted as well. This script is very useful for timing and spacing and especially tracking arcs

Here's the download link:

AS_motionTrail.mel

Original source

Tips and Tricks from an Art Slave

2011-01-25T07:11:00.000-08:00

I found this over on Jonathan Hearns blog who found it on the Muddy Colors blog - great tips and advice here. They can apply to anyone who works in a creative field.

1. Get up happy. Say some affirmations. Get rid of the negative chatter in your head-that voice that says things like, “I’m not coming up with any good ideas. I’ll never make this deadline. I’ll never be good enough to do this job.” Instead, train that voice to say something positive. Reprogram yourself. “I am illustrating books that people love. I am happy with my art. My career is going great. I am a successful artist…” This might sound too simple, and you’ve probably heard it before from the self –help gurus. Have you ever actually tried it….consistently over a few months?

2. Exercise and stay healthy. This is not an option. When you feel healthy, you are more open and ideas come more quickly.

3. Sit quietly each day, do yoga, or meditate. Get calm and peaceful so that when the ideas come, you actually realize they are there. Worry, anger, fear, and other emotions actually block the ability to grasp those sparks of imagination. [Spend time off of your iPhone, Twitter, Facebook - a whole day if that's possible!]

4. Create a place and time to be at work. This is important if you are working at home. Your mind needs to understand, “I am now at work. I will now be creative.” So sharpen your pencils, put on music, sit before your drawing table and begin.

5. Don’t talk too much about your ideas; this depletes some of the magic. On a subconscious level, your wonderful idea has become a real thing in the world. It’s not real, and it won’t be, until you do it. So, instead of sharing your magnificent thoughts, go make the work happen.

6. Take time outs doing something you love. Go to a museum. Sit by a lake. Walk though the woods. You must replenish yourself. Fill the well. Don’t view this as goofing off…this time is very important.

7. Don’t be a workaholic. This is difficult, because you won’t know it, until it’s too late. Your friends and family will know it before you will. ONLY YOU CAN CONTROL THIS. Be the work police and set your own boundaries. Make a contract with yourself. “I do not wok on Tuesday and Sunday. I go on vacation without my work. I have lunch with a friend on Friday every week. I only work from 9am to 2pm. “Put up a sign. Remind yourself that you are free to set your own schedule. Work as late or as little or as early as you want, but make sure you’re enjoying the pace.
Remember, somebody you know will be published before you or more often than you. They will be more successful. They will sell more books. They will get more speaking engagements. You think you will never make it. You won’t…unless you stop working so hard to catch up. Find your own pace. Find your own style. Do what works for you. Be patient. Change happens in incremental ways. When you consciously make these daily choices, you will see a big difference in your life over time…and you will be balanced enough to notice!

Here's the source

KMPlayer is...AWESOME

2011-01-25T07:01:00.000-08:00

Click here to download KMPlayer

That's right...you heard it here first, but probably not. I've been pointed in the direction of KMPlayer a couple of times before but from the screen shots it looked a bit scary. I was pointed in the direction of this blog post about it:

KMPlayer best video player ever

The author of said blog has even created and included an in depth PDF walk through that outlines all of the key features for us animators.

Click here for the magical PDF

Here's a direct quote from that blog that outlines the better features of the player:

- Opens and play XVID/Divx footage frame by frame, forward and backward …. with sound feedback. Except Premiere, do you know any player that does that? This function alone makes it the best video plaher ever. It is great for troubleshooting lipsync.
- Plays H264 quicktimes
- Setup In and out points and loop between the two (A-B function)
- Takes automatic screenshots (great for generating colorscripts)
- Hotkeys that make sense! Space bar to toggle the playback, 1 to play in half size, 2 original and 3 double size.
- You can autohide the interface so only the video is visible
- You can loads as many videos as you want and have them all playing. Great to pretend you are the master of the universe.

The Gruffalo

2011-01-24T06:08:00.000-08:00

This is a short animation that was aired over Christmas on BBC1 based on the classical Gruffalo book. I missed it when it was on and only got around to watching yesterday. It's a lovely animation, great story telling and especially good to see something aimed at kids that's a classic and not all these weirdly shaped freaky looking things that they have these days. Kids need monsters and animals!

It was rendered sooo nicely. It looked like it was based on stop motion puppets in places from the textures on the characters. There was a lot of great use of depth of field and some of the shots were magical. Studio Soi did a great job on this one.

You can watch it in two parts on youtube, where you can also find "the making of the gruffalo".

iAnimate so far

2011-01-10T06:17:00.001-08:00

It's been a week since I've started iAnimate and I'm LOVING it! We were allowed into the website the weekend before last week started so that we could have a look around, get used to everything and grab all our resources.

At first everything was really overwhelming, it felt like there were a million and one things that I wanted to do and I couldn't do them fast enough. After I'd set up my profile I had a look around and made sure I watched all the introduction videos from Jason and tutorials on how to use the different aspects of the site. There are some really great features to the site and it's pretty much made so that everyone, no matter which part of the course they're on can see what everyone else is doing which means lots of helpful crits from the guys in higher workshops.

Everyone in Workshop 1 had their assignment for the first two weeks unlocked before the Monday. I'm assuming this was so that anyone who's really starting from the start have more time to grasp what they have to do and get a head start. Either way it was great for me, I go stuck in straight away and by the end of the week had made about five different animations (including flipbook planning and excluding revised shots). I have learnt so much in this last week it's incredible. I may only be animating quite "simple" shots at the moment but I'm learning more about the fundamentals of animation which will only strengthen anything else I do.

Everyone I've met so far have been great and incredibly helpful. Some have even gone out of their way to get in touch with me on skype after seeing my videos on iA and have given me a live crit and draw overs. That's CRAZY! I've never had this much help and advice ever and it's amazing. There's so much encouragement too and as always, I'm sure there's healthy competition.

Some of the higher workshops work is mind blowing! Looks like being instructed by professional animators and having their advice recycled through their students really works. I hope my shots will be as juicy as everything I've seen so far.

The rigs are beautiful too. There weren't that many available when we were let in but over the last week there's been an additional five or so new rigs added and there are even more on the way! I haven't played around with the rigs much apart from opening them quickly to see what they look like. They're beautifully made, run smoothly and are really appealing. I've ignored them so that I can focus on my current assignments and so that when it comes to an assignment where I have to use one of the full character rigs it feels like I've earned it.

My tutor is Jim Van Der Keyl, a Dreamworks animator who has a great body of work. He's working on The Little Mermaid, Iron Giant, Kung Fu Panda, Monsters Vs Aliens, Kung Fu Panda 2 and much more. It's a great pleasure to be guided by somebody as accomplished as Jim.

But yeah...that's all I can think of saying about ianimate at the moment. I could go on for much longer but I'd never stop!

Quadruped walk blocking

2010-12-31T07:59:00.001-08:00

So I decided to throw myself into the world of quadrupeds and at first it made my head IMPLODE! I originally tried a horse walk but I didn't plan properly and ended up making a huge mess. So with some research, decent reference and notes I've made a start on a dog walk cycle. As you can see in the video above I have only animated the feet positions and the back up and down positions. I'll continue working on it after I've had a bit of feedback on some forums.

2D jump cycle

2010-12-24T03:43:00.000-08:00

A 2D jump cycle animated in Flipbook following a JR tutorial.

iAnimate update

2010-12-18T04:06:00.000-08:00

I've been accepted, the payment has been made, I'm in the skype group, it's OFFICIAL! :D

So not long to go now and it'll be work, work, work and I can't wait!

Run and jump

2010-12-18T03:43:00.001-08:00

This is as far as I'm going with this one since I feel that I have learnt what I needed from it. I'd never animated a run or a jump before so thought I'd do the old two birds one stone trick. I think it turned out quite nicely, obviously thanks to all the crits over at the 11sc forum.

Run and jump WIP 2

2010-11-17T08:44:00.000-08:00

More work on the animation I uploaded yesterday. I've finished off the action, added detail to the feet, body rotation, arcs and so on. Altered timing and spacing issues and gave it more of an anticipation before the jump. I think it's looking better anyway.

I learnt to use my Wacom tablet with Maya with this animation. I'd never tried it before so I thought it was about time. It's surprisingly easy to get used to and quite fast to work with. The only thing that bothers me is that when you hold the pen down it acts as a right click so sometimes when you want to move an object you'll end up showing it's vertices and silly things like that. But those small problems aside I'd highly recommend it!

Comments and crits are moooooooooore than welcome and I'd love to hear what you think.

Here's how the animation currently looks following some fixes (thanks to some crits from folk on the 11SC forum):

Current animation following some fixes:

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/8689992/ballrunedit3.mov

Run and jump WIP

2010-11-16T15:54:00.000-08:00

A little practise to play around with a run and jump. I'm pleased with it so far since I haven't spent a long time on it and it was straight ahead with no messing about in the graph editor.

Let me know what you think and of course any crits are more than welcome.

I've just realised with the help of my trusty girlfriend that the anticipation before the jump may not be exaggerated enough.

Politics

2010-11-16T14:21:00.001-08:00

When you think about animation, politics isn't really the first thing that comes to mind. It's probably something you haven't really ever thought of or put in the same box/bag/jar/bowl/cup as animation. But, for the big companies, evil/stupid things that the government are doing seems to be messing things up for us. Just take a look at this video:

2D and 3D skip

2010-11-08T13:13:00.000-08:00

Here's the 2D and 3D skip that I animated following a JR tutorial. The reason the two don't run at exactly the same time is because I made a mistake with the original skip animation when compositing but this is really just to show the 3D animation next to what it started as.

First time using this rig too and it's great! Very easy to use. And can you believe it...I didn't even look at the graph editor once whilst working on this. Now that's old schoooool!

Flipbook, Maya and the old trusty Wacom.

Getting some practise before starting iAnimate.

Yorkshire Student Awards 2010

2010-11-04T16:25:00.000-07:00

I just received an email from my ex-tutor at the University of Bradford to say that my short film Saturday has been entered into the Royal Television Yorkshire Student Awards. It's great news but after watching the animation back I feel quite embarrassed. At the time it was the best I could do given the time but to me it looks completely awful. I know that's not the point but when your work's going out with your name on it you kind of want it on your best work.

My friend Arran has had his animation entered too so best of luck to him! I'm placing my money on his piece hehe. The group animation that we made at uni was also entered! So both Arran and myself have two out of three chances of winning hehe. Sadly I can't make it because it's in four days and I only found out about it a day ago.

We'll find out who wins next week, wayhay!

Also, best of luck to the guys who made The Whitest Minority documentary! I lived with two of them last year.

Skip animation

2010-10-20T17:14:00.000-07:00

Here's another 2D animation from a JR tutorial. I had loads of fun with this one and found that I really enjoy animating in 2D. I especially love animating in a sketchy style, it's way too appealing! Anyway, hopefully this'll be the first of many more to come.

An update on iAnimate - I have decided to start from the start instead of going straight into semester 2. I decided after much thought that I don't feel that I have a full and controlled grasp of the fundamentals of animation. If I can learn more and really nail the principles then it'll only make me better! Sooooooooo can't wait!

iAnimate acceptance

2010-10-19T02:01:00.000-07:00

This can only be a quick one because I should be getting ready for work but...

I HAVE BEEN ACCEPTED TO JOIN IANIMATE IN JANUARY!!!

That was some very good news to receive from Jason Ryan himself the other day. I'll be starting in Semester 2 since that's what was recommended after Jason checked out my showreel. I really can't wait and it's going to be amazing! I'm really looking forward to animating none stop, learning and loving it!

Anyway, getting dressed and catching a bus calls!

Seeya.

Arm overlap

2010-09-14T10:27:00.000-07:00

This morning before work I thought I'd check out a Keith Lango tutorial and follow it. I learned a bit and can even see a mistake I've made in there too which is great. I may go and try out some more to see how they work out :)

Pointy picture

2010-09-14T01:06:00.000-07:00

On Sunday I decided I was going to sketch/draw something and so I did! Like most times when I sit down to draw, unless I'm doing anatomy practise or drawing from reference I have no idea what I'm going to do. I draw random shapes until something comes out of them and it works sometimes.

As a result of this technique, we have a modern devil guy wearing a massive scarf, pointing at something AMAZING that nobody will ever know about. I think he looks kind of like a rubbish hero kind of character or maybe villain. Who knows?

Photoshop and a wacom.

iAnimate

2010-09-06T14:59:00.001-07:00

So, if you haven't heard already...there's a new online animation school called iAnimate. It's run by Jason Ryan of Dreamworks (an ex-Disney) and the mentors are currently all professionals working at Dreamworks on films such as Megamind.

As soon as the site cropped up I was interested. I know Jason is a great tutor and am sure everyone he's picked for mentoring will be too. One of the great things about the school apart from the quality of individuals involved is of course the price. It's cheaper than Animation Mentor by about £6,000 (ish). Not to say anything bad about AM, they're a great school and I love the work that comes out of their students. Also note my AM fan thing on the right of the blog in case you still think I'm being negative. Anyway, yes, the price! It's a great one at £1,200 a semester it makes it easy to afford and since each semester is 14 weeks I can save up enough in that time to take the next semester.

I sent Jason an email a few days ago with my reel attached and he reckons I should start on semester 2, which is great! I was thinking of starting from the first but if an animator as great as Mr. Ryan tells me that I don't need to then I think I'll listen to him.

If everything goes to plan I'll be starting semester 2 on January 3rd next year and I can't wait! It'll be an amazing learning experience and loads of fun!

Turn turn turn

2010-08-25T06:57:00.000-07:00

I haven't done much with this for a while because it was taking too long to fix the mess I made but here's how it stands now:

Pose drawing

2010-07-26T14:05:00.000-07:00

Recently I've felt like I really want to get back into drawing. After having Photoshop open for about 30 minutes and going through my regular sites and forums over and over again out of fear of drawing incase I failed I found some great stock for interesting dynamic poses and set to work trying to draw one of them.

I seem to have a weird process when it comes to drawing from pictures. I weirdly block bits of the body out with scribbles and random lines but it works so yay!

I had a lot of fun drawing this and hope to do more. This took me too long, with practise comes speed though

More of the turn

2010-07-26T07:50:00.000-07:00

Here's more work on the turn for the 11 Second Club mini-challenge:

If anyone follows this blog please feel free to give me any comments/criticism.

11 Second Club mini-challenge: Turn

2010-07-24T10:22:00.000-07:00

So the latest mini-challenge over at the 11 Second Club forum is a turn. I wanted to animate something with a bit more character and story so I've come up with this. Currently in the blocking stage:

Interesting playblast

2010-07-24T04:37:00.000-07:00

I found this earlier on whilst going through some of my old uni work and thought that this was really quite interesting. To be able to see the facial animation and the controls side by side moving at the same time is something you rarely see. I thought that this might be interesting for others too, who knows!

Graduated!

2010-07-22T07:19:00.000-07:00

On Tuesday I graduated from the University of Bradford (UK) as a Bachelor of Science in Computer Animation and Special Effects with a First Class Honours. Bit of a mouthful!

Anyway, it was lots of fun. I got to see some family and all of my friends and fellow students again. Hopefully not the last time. So that means I'm not longer a student, I'm a graduate and right now I should be really pushing to get into the industry. Which I am having a good go at. I'm completely aware that these things take time, sometimes months even for the best animators. I'm going to keep on animating new things that I haven't done before to stick into my showreel.

The mini-challenges over at the 11 Second Club are proving to be great exercises! I received some great crits about my current showreel from a friend at Blitz Games Studios (who I need to reply to). He recommended that I animate and include in my showreel more larger action shots like physical lifting, a jump and maybe a run. I'll be working on getting all of these and hopefully more done.

Congratulations to everyone who graduated on the day!

11sc jump

2010-07-18T02:27:00.000-07:00

I love the mini-challenges over on the 11 Second Club forum but sadly I only found out about the most recent one last night and the deadline was today. Because I didn't have much time to do anything I focused on blocking and poses more than anything. I don't think it's too awful given it's only an hours (ish) work.

Showreel V.4

2010-07-17T14:21:00.001-07:00

That's right!!! I've messed about with my showreel once again. It now has the 11SC walk cycle added and better music and overall layout of shots and pace. Here we go:

Packages

2010-07-14T12:16:00.000-07:00

Today I sent away 15 packages consisting of my CV and showreel to different companies in the UK. It took quite a while getting everything together to do this for some reason. Lots of redoing CVs and I changed my showreel at the last minute so I had to burn all the DVDs again.

I sent off some applications to four different animation festivals too. Two are in the UK and two are abroad so hopefully OverCharged will get in to one of them.

I'm hoping that all this will pay off somehow. Animation job pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeease!!!!!

Oh yeah, I'm not sure why I spent a few minutes messing about in Photoshop trying to make a picture of the packages look like a still from a film. Must be all the storms around Wales affecting me. Oh my!

University Results

2010-07-08T08:48:00.000-07:00

I received my results for University a few days ago and it seems on the 20th of July I'll be graduating with a First Class Honours. That's a 1.1 to anyone who likes numbers.

I still can't believe the results but I'm really happy about it! There were two others of us who had a 1.1 and they were Arran and Krister, two of the guys who were in my group project (OverCharged). So congratulations to them too and everyone else on the course who did really well!

So, in a couple of weeks I'll receive a piece of paper from someone I don't know whilst dressed in a cape and a crazy flat hat! Traditions are amazing!

11 Second Club Walk Cycle

2010-07-07T15:36:00.000-07:00

A quick walk cycle made for an 11 second club mini-challenge.

Created in Maya over 3 to 4 hours on and off throughout the day. I had a lot of fun doing this, especially since it isn't crazy realistic and the rig was so fun and easy to work with. It's also really stylized which I looooooooove! I'll be doing a lot more with this guy! :)

I think this could be my best walk cycle yet (it's only my third haha) because I spent a lot of time on poses and arcs but there are still parts that are a bit messy like where it loops. I had trouble with his left arm and couldn't get it any smoother than you see it in the video.

11sc Bouncing Ball

2010-06-30T09:44:00.000-07:00

This was created for an 11 second club mini challenge. I'm weeks late but I didn't discover the challenge until yesterday but thought it'd be great practise either way.

This was the first time for me properly using the graph editor whilst animating and it works great! You have much more control over everything. Especially if you're animating single simple objects like this.

Graph Editor play

2010-06-29T14:13:00.000-07:00

After reading a tutorial by Victor Navone (Pixar) about the graph editor I thought I'd have a play around with it. I'd never animated with the graph editor open or checked my keys/splines whilst animating so this was really new. Despite doing this in less than a minute and it not looking good at all I learnt a lot from it and in future I can see having the graph editor somewhere in my setup whilst animating will help me greatly.

Thanks Mr. Navone!

Edit: It probably would have made more sense to mention that I pretty much animated this from the graph editor. I know you can't do that most of the time but the graph editor has always been some weird dark mysterious part of animation. It's a terrifying feature of any software!

A fluther of jellyfish

2010-06-29T07:24:00.001-07:00

This is something I drew last week. I'm quite happy with it even though it was done really quickly and was me messing about with Photoshop brush settings.

Revised Showreel

2010-06-20T04:56:00.000-07:00

After talking to a few friends in the undustry I've managed to cut my showreel down quite a bit based on their advice.

Behold my current showreel:

Animation studio meeting

2010-06-18T04:38:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I went for a meeting with an animation studio about 20/30 miles from where I live. Everything went well but they're more of a 2D company and from what I could tell they hire freelancers whenever they get any 3D work.

I think it went well though. I also had the chance to have a look around their studio and it's really nice. Nothing huge but it's packed full of lovely macs with huge monitors and a wacom cintiq!

I'm just about to order some DVD cases so that I can start sending my showreel out to other companies soon.

Let's hope I get my grades from university so I can put them on my CV!

Bouncing Ball 2D & 3D

2010-06-15T11:13:00.001-07:00

Here's the 3D version of the previous bouncing ball video that I uploaded a while back. The 2D version is included for comparison. I probably have three or four other bouncing ball videos online but it's one of those things that you can't do enough of to make sure you get right. Plus, bouncing balls are lots of fun so who's complaining?

Up next is a skipping rope animation and probably some pose exercise.

The bouncing ball

2010-05-18T14:26:00.000-07:00

Well today I thought I'd have a go at some 2D since I've never really ever done it before. Since I'm convering the basics again anyway I thought I'd start with a bouncing ball so here we go:

[It does work, don't let the multi-coloured bars fool you]

I had lots of fun doing this. Flipbook is a great and simple piece of software to use. In future I'm going to try to have a proper planning/preparation process where I film video ref, followed by a sketchy 2D visualisation with exaggeration/altered timing etc. I've seen this done before and it seems to work really well.

Self Tuition

2010-05-18T04:47:00.000-07:00

Now that my time at university has come to and end it has become apparent that I'll have to keep up my motivation and ensure that I continue to learn and advance as an animator. I've been planning animation tests and little excercises in my head for a while but recently I've realised that I'll need order and organisation if I really want to get where I want to be.

Based on another animators idea of organising your own learning methods and creating a syllabus for yourself that reflects schools like Animation Mentor and other tutorial services I have made one of my own. I'll be going back to basics and working my way up to more advanced techniques.

Here's how my syllabus is looking at the moment:

Oh, and I'll also be doing some 2D animation work too!

Student Showcase 2010

2010-05-16T04:41:00.000-07:00

Friday was the Degree Show for the Bradford Universities Media School and Department of Creative Technology. The event was held at the National Media Museum in the Pictureville theatre...which looks like this:

I had two of my projects shown, Saturday and OverCharged. I always love seeing my work on the big screen even though it's terrifying and cringe worthy at the same time. It was a great oppertunity to catch up on everyone elses work too. There's a lot of talented people coming out of Bradford University, believe it or not :P

By far, my favourite film of the day was a piece called Time Lapse Britain by Olver Fendley. It's a beautiful film of time lapses from locations all around Britain. Every image is crisp and the composition is astounding.

OverCharged

2010-05-16T04:20:00.000-07:00

As you might have noticed (if you check my blog more than once a month), I haven't posted anything in quite a while. This is because I've been madly hard at work, along with the rest of my team, working on our group project. I mentioned the project a while back and also posted the concept art for it. It's an animation called OverCharged and we'd been working on it since last September.

So, we've finished it and it's been online for about a week now. We've received a lot of great reactions and people seem to enjoy it which is great!

Anyway, here it is:

OverCharged

I'd embed it but the blog space is too small to have a nicely sized video. Also, we have a website too - www.over-charged.co.uk

The whole of my group were amazing to work with on the animation. Everyone put LOADS of time in. Sometimes working 17+ hour days. I love the animation but it's obvious that we didn't have enough time towards the end to pay to the animation. Sometimes we had to do 2/3 shots in a day!

It was a great experience and I'd imagine it was quite similar to an industry environment as we were working in the computer labs straight for a month (ish) with each other all day.

Anyway, check it out and let me know what you think :)

Article gone LIVE

2010-05-16T04:08:00.000-07:00

IT'S ALIVE! That's right, the article I mentioned weeks ago has gone live on the Creative Technology section of the University of Bradford website.

CLICK ME TO GO TO THE ARTICLE

It's a great honour to have anything up online about myself and my journey to become an animator. It's not the best written piece in the world and it's also on the cheesey side but I love it hehe. Anyways, go read it and have a laugh. It's about me going to Blitz for their open day before Easter.

Speed paint

2010-04-25T12:58:00.000-07:00

I forgot about this one. I drew this guy back on March the 21st to give Painter a go and I loved it! I can't get enough of those lovely realisticy textures that you can make with oils and pastels etc. Anyway, it's all very rough and there are no proper shadows but I like it. I named him Beefman:

Kick-Ass

2010-04-17T18:31:00.000-07:00

Ok, so Kick-Ass has received LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOADS of bad press here in the UK. Mainly because there's a young girl swearing...hmm, listen to any kids these days and they'll be swearing like a sailor whenever their parents aren't around. But that's not the point. Despite all the crap that it's received from the poor, ill-researched writers of such tabloid trash as The Daily Mail, Kick-Ass has done amazingly well over here in the UK.

I was lucky enough to go and catch it on its opening day before I went back to Wales for Easter. For me it's one of those films that just presses too many buttons at one and makes me just love it. Before I went to see it the trailer made it look like a complete man film. However, there's loads of depth and things get really twisted and serious in parts. On top of that, it's funny as hell! A superhero/action/comedy film...THAT WORKS! Wonderful :D

This could be the film of the year for me. It's just way too fun, has amazing/crazy action scenes and has some great comedy moments. It's the first time I've sat in a packed out cinema and everyone has laughed throughout the whole thing.

If you haven't seen it yet then rush out and watch it whilst it's still in the cinema. If you like it then YAY and if you don't then...wait for the next Sex and The City film or something?

Article

2010-04-17T16:05:00.000-07:00

So, because I was the only student from the University of Bradford who got into the Blitz open day the university wanted to write an article about me to stick on their website. Which is great :P Good exposure and all that! Not to mention getting to shuffle around with content from some other really great students who've gone on to work at RedStar and Pinewood.

I've read the article and it's quite funny. I don't think it's possible to take an article about yourself seriously hehe. As far as I know it's not online yet but as soon as it is I'll be sure to post it here.

Fun stuff!

Blitz...THE OPEN DAY!

2010-04-17T16:00:00.000-07:00

As I mentioned in a blog earlier this year I got accepted onto the Blitz open day which happend before Easter. Apparently the 14 of us there were chosen out of around 400...scary but amazing and so complimenting.

The day was absolutely packed full of great information, tours of the studio and yummy food (they even catered for my fussy vegan needs - thanks guys). We were given seminars throughout the day. The first one was given by one of the founders of Blitz and the rest were delivered by some of their animators. Even one of Bradfords own ex-students was there to talk about how to receive direction as a junior (check out his site here, he's a great guy!).

Leamington Spa was great too (where Blitz are). It's a really nice town/city type place near Sheffield/Birmingham as far as I could tell by the train journey. Lots of nice parks, clean and lots of indie shops which I'm always really happy to see in any area.

But anyways, Blitz was great. I had some good crits from the animators about my showreel and some of the work in it and Aron Durkin was very kind to me at the end of the day. We were also given a goody bag!!! How great is that! Blitz mug, pen, key ring bottle opener and some other cool things.

All in all I loved it and I can't wait to get into the industry, wherever I end up!

Poor blog

2010-04-17T15:52:00.000-07:00

I've not posted anything for AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGES so I'll go about doing so now! I have quite a few things to ramble on about so this should be fun :)

First off, a logo I designed made it to t-shirt form! First time anything I've done has ever been made into a shirt so it's really cool for me. Here it is:

2010 Showreel

2010-02-27T15:32:00.001-08:00

Here's a showreel that I put together for university:

Saturday Animation

2010-02-23T15:14:00.001-08:00

Well here it is, all complete and stuff!

Saturday animation...COMPLETE!

2010-02-22T07:25:00.000-08:00

That's right! You read it here first!

My latest animation "Saturday", is now complete. Well, the animation and texturing is but it's still rendering...but technicaly it's complete so yay!

As soon as it's all rendered and composited it'll be posted here...and everywhere else! Not only do I have a huge sense of achievment from completing this because it's my first animation that's adventured farther than 12 seconds but I can also relax 100% more and actually go outside for once. Maybe even cook a nice meal!

I'll also be making a showreel to go along with this module and that will be finding it's way onto this blog too I'm sure.

Criticism

2010-02-20T13:18:00.000-08:00

I strongly believe that criticism is one of the most helpful things ANYONE can do for you when it comes to ANYTHING! It's the best way of learning and you remember it in the future when you work on whatever it is again.

The last week I recieved some crits from my personal tutor and fellow class mate. Now, recieving crits on forums is all good because you can go and check them whenever you like but when you get them in person...that's a different thing. What I'm getting at is that you're more than likely to forget what most of the points brought up were if there was more than a couple. I know I do. So this time I took my trusty notepad to write everything down and it's made my work much easier and more structured. I can just go through everything I wrote down and do it in that order.

Very helpful indeed!

Also...you can tell how desperate I am to work on something else because I photomanipulated a picture of some notes. Oh my.

Buffer Curves

2010-02-13T03:00:00.000-08:00

I have only just started using a feature in Maya called "show buffer curves". I've known about it for months but I have only recently realised how great it is. Now this is a tool that is only really going to work for animators who block their work out and don't animate straight ahead.

Basically what it does is it shows you what your frames/curves used to look like before you changed them. For example, in the above image you can see that I have changed my curves to splined and underneath them there's a grey linear tangeant which is what I had before I changed to splined. What this does is help you to keep your curves as close as possible to your blocking frames as you can whilst smoothing everything out. You can see where there are large overshoots and so on.

Very, very helpful indeed and saves a lot of time messing about trying to get your curves right. Also saves you from sitting around and guessing what your curve should look like. You're also giving the computer less control of your frames and making it use the ones you want to - Animator 1 - Computer 0.

It's kind of like onion skinning for the graph editor.

A kid!

2010-02-04T06:23:00.000-08:00

So to accompany the monster concept art I now have a kid! This was really fun to draw even though I'm not keen on the style I had to stick to but I think it turned out quite nicely for the amount of time it took me. Still loads of room for improvement though but the client likes it so that's all that matters.

Take a peek:

Also don't forget to check out my Individual Project (Saturday) blog for more shots. I upload things almost daily over at that thing. CLICK HERE FOR THE OTHER BLOG THAT I SPOKE OF!!!

More monster

2010-02-02T23:44:00.000-08:00

So after animating for quite a while yesterday I thought I'd take a nice break and draw some really rough concept art for the monster in my group project at uni. This image is to get the feel of the monsters presence and build more than the finer details like in the last picture uploaded.

I had a lot of fun with this and hopefully I'll return to the same style soon :)

Blitz Games open day

2010-02-01T23:57:00.000-08:00

So this year I applied for the Blitz Games open day. I applied for it in my first year too but didn't get in because I had no idea what I was doing. This year I slammed a quick showreel together out of past work and even though apparently the competition is really tough, I managed to get accepted! :D

What's even better is that my girlfriend also got accepted to the concept art open day which is a week before the animation one! Amazing times, I'm extremelly proud of her.

I'm not 100% sure what to expect from the open day but as far as I can tell it's a chance to talk to professionals and show off my work which is ALWAYS a great and rare oppertunity.

Energy appliance monster

2010-01-31T11:50:00.001-08:00

I took a break from animating to do some work on another project where I'm in charge of doing the concept art for a cool monster/robot that's built out of appliances in a kids room.

Here's what I drew to get the idea of building things up to make a robot. I hate the legs and I couldn't think of anything to use as hands or fingers either.

Parenting using ZV

2010-01-30T11:27:00.000-08:00

I have a parenting add-on for Maya called ZV Parent Master. It's an amazing tool and really easy to use.

I thought I'd plug it here because it's made life so much easier for me on my current project. Here's the video that tells you how to use it:

CLICK ME FOR A LOVELY VIDEO THAT'LL SAVE YOU VALUABLE ANIMATING TIME!!!