I've been looking at other student blogs recently, and I've noticed that they all opted for the white simple blogger format and how much easier it is to read. As much as I think this blogger format is very me, I think having something that's easier to read will be better for connections and easier on the teachers for marking haha. Especially as I write a lot. The colours also made highlighting complicated, because I wasn't drafting on to black.
I also really liked @prathik_art 's border idea, and though I'm not aiming for character designing, I do think my designs so far show a lot about the style I am comfortable animating in, as well as the progression of my animations (which I am very proud of after last years tech flunk with the slapstick). It also shows a little of my work outside of animation and what people could expect in commissions etc.
I would like to be able to change the white to an ash brown to match the background better, but besides that, I really like how this turned out. I think to improve I would design more characters to include. Possibly something for the 502 contest submission? I'm not overly set on how red the left hand side are and how the opposite primary colours are on the other. It just suited my layout and these are the only characters I really posted from this year and last that people would know.
We have currently organised a lot of our group roles, and my more recent role is sketch layers. I do have trouble doing sketch layers, as proven by this animation test. I tend to just draw a basic line of motion or basic shapes for a body. Because these symbols are quite basic shapes in themselves, I wasn't quite sure what to sketch in the first test.
Because every recycling logo follows the same structure, I had a recycling logo in my sketch layer and followed the angles. To make it more to the Giffgaff style, I rounded off the corners and folds - also making the line weight quite thick at 30.
As you can see, once I had to stop following the triangular pattern, the mostly free handed swirl didn't work out. Though it does look like the circles are rotating in a circular motion, it is too quick.
WWW:
Smooth arrow motion
Slow enough arrows that the logo is readable
Arrows JUST don't overlap, which took a few attempts as I made the arrow heads as equilateral triangles to be closer to the Giffgaff theme - I could have spread out the arrows but that takes away from the recognisability of the logo, so I went with a similar size to how it is every day.
EBI:
The circles are too quick. I wrote in the script circles but I think with the length of the arrows, you would need 6 circles and it looks too busy.
More sketch layers - TEST
Spread the circles out a bit - it needs to go out and then back in for exaggeration
WWW:
Nice curve with distance that gains speed as it comes in
Nothing collides where it shouldn't
Fixed the arrow direction a little because it curved in which I think messed up the circles going too close together
EBI:
The blobs should stretch when they gain speed but I think they go a bit too thin, to the point it doesn't have enough weight when they come together
Follow the lines of the previous blob so they don't get too much thinner.
WWW:
Giffgaff style was maintained!
More weight led to a nice blob in the centre where everything merged - gave a good bouncy texture for a QUICK phone expansion (which is good rn without storyboard/timing/ even knowing if our animation can fit)
60 frames of animation, 12 of held frames - 2-3 seconds of animation which could be sped easily making the arrows and the swirl quicker
(currently mostly double frames)
Clearly an apple phone which are very popular irl and on the site, they have a wide range - without using copyright logos - round edges suit Giffgafff theme
EBI:
Dripping paint effect? links to the scrapbook kind of feel
I had a lot of fun organising the pitch bible presentation for our briefing. I feel like the style of it was very accurate to the Giffgaff style we have chosen for our animation. It could have used more work, as well as some sort of storyboard or animatic to show.
Despite this, we got our point across well and the script was done in time to help explain afterwards that we planned to anchor the whole tv spot around sustainability. Michaela really liked the idea of starting with the big shocking fact, as we learnt in the careers event. At first I think our style choices were unclear, combining both the old and new. But after talking about the recycling, Michaela worded it like 'reusing the old style' and I think that was genius. It was our intention but we hadn't really thought about it that way. Mostly just that the older style was darker and more serious for the more serious fact. And the newer style is brighter to show happy rewards and caaash. Cha-Ching!
We overshot our time by quite a lot and that was definitely my fault. I still manage to stammer and fumble over words a little when presenting, even just reading the list of artistic qualities in the themes. I think I could have explained our style intentions, old vs new, stern verses happy during that time instead of listing variables.
I think as our group isn't using people or characters or photos to tell this story, it was quite hard to have any visual development to show. But we had a sound track and a script and things that weren't as easy to present until overtime.
One thing that worried me was that all of the other giffgaff teams had found a different colour palette to ours in their research. They used lots of baby pinks and blues and milky yellows. Where as we found bright gradients and emojis and Wordart. Though I did find these colours too back in my research, I classed that also as an old style. It covers a lot of their old adverts though and maybe that would be more coherent? THAT BEING SAID, I do think our style will stand out more; is more relevant to the style on the current website that the audience will see. And I think that the emojis and Wordart relate to tech and connections and the 2000s. Which is the whole purpose of the pitch, phones, and also the target audience, US, the 2000s kids.
WWW - They liked our idea, we had a narrative and a style intention, and we were in a good position to start working. Presentation theme was good and accurate
EBI - Speak with more intention. Concept art? Make ideas clearer than research
What's next? Start visual work. Storyboarding. Practice script to test length
Following the careers event, I started to think about how to improve my presence on social media. I started by designing a new logo for my professional animation Instagram.
Currently, my profile picture does suit the geometric style I was going for, as I wanted to specialise in 3D modelling. I thought a blueprint kind of style would be good. However I feel like there is a lot of Marvel branding in this, as my personal fan art account "arrow_comics3209" is based on Hawkeye and Marvel comics. So the logo for my professional account relates to that with the Hawkeye colours, targets and arrows.
In the careers event, the social media advisor said that using a drawing of your head might be a good way on Instagram to present your art style whilst people are scrolling past. I included the rings because I liked them and behind the head, they look less like targets. I also chose blue because I feel like I just wear a lot of it and it represents me. I wear a blue jumper every time I've drawn myself in the past, such as 402 last year.
I also always sign off my art with my Instagram handle @arrow_comics3209, but when doing this logo I realised I haven't signed any of my professional work. How would I sign this one? So I tested out a signature that I could potentially make in to a more professional looking watermark. I really like this was, even though it still relates to arrow_comics3209, it's more sleek. 3 arrows, 2, 0/C(comics), 9
The careers event also mentioned describing yourself so that an alien would know everything about you in your bio. So I want to change this too.
The link is now my most recent project being the My Inner Demon collaboration between myself, Naomi, Ayesha and Charlie. I haven't posted this as I don't feel like it's mine to post, so I think having it as a link is the best solution where everyone can be credited whilst others can still view my latest work. I do prefer this branding a lot more as it shows people who I am and where I am from if they want to collaborate. I haven't posted the profile picture yet, as I have been trying hard to spread out anything I wanted to post in to regular 1 week intervals. Every week for the last month I have posted whether that's on this account or my personal. And I feel proud having kept up with uni work and this schedule - also knowing I still have a few things back to post.
As my social media influence is quite low and i am not on a wide range of socials, the way I have approached looking for professionals to contact has solely been based on Instagram. Though, I do think that I could find emails for companies such as Runwiththegoldenwolf and Cubic Motion.
I have found it hard to find people and actually quite draining. But I was pretty happy with some of the people that I have found. Especially Art_by_ricky_persson who followed me first after my Blender donut. he has a very similar style to what I see myself drawing in both senses. Lots of comic book style tattoo work with dark shadows in his free time - and characters heavily based on their basic form shapes with funky eyes, or a big jaw, fantasy, a lot like what I have done throughout my uni work.
I was also pretty proud of myself for scowering deep in to the internet to find a full list of every worker past and present at Rooster Teeth. Though the company has a lot of backlash and I would probably not want to work for them after all of the founders have left. I do enjoy their work, humour and links to other socials such as gaming/Twitch. So I was happy to find some of them on the list had socials. Especially Collin.animation who seems to be fairly new and experimental but also managed to become an animator on RWBY (one of my favourite shows). So it's inspiring to see someone get such a job with seemingly little social influence.
The script had lots of influences from the phone adverts that I had watched during my research. I wrote it with the idea of the typical female narrator with calm tone that you hear in a lot of phone and bank adverts, which really came through when I shared this with the group.
I really wanted to use the sustainability aspects in the script, as that is the main focus of the campaign, even though they aren't necessary points that the company said to make. Adding them in, the script did feel slightly long - and when Nadia wrote the script in a true script format, she suggested that it might be by almost double the time. But even if we took out those aspect, I still think it wouldn't remove much time and would remove from the campaign. So our plan is to talk fast. Once we do a test, we will know if this is the final draft or not.
In the careers event, they talked about opening with a large figure to make people feel the harsh reality - and like in the brief itself where they opened with the large figure 40 million devices unused in UK homes, I thought it would be a good, relatable figure to open with in the tv spot.
After making a mood board, I noticed how the new style lacks any sophistication or sophisticated colours which contrasts the very serious environmental campaign. We don't want people to see it as a joke, filling it with emojis and cheesy WordArt fonts. So I wrote down that the black and white with hints of colour be used at the start, and then transition in to the bright gradients when it hits the fun slogan that they wanted us to include. "Recycle your old phone.
Get some cash in your pocket. Cha-ching!"
We really wanted to focus on a golden wolf style morphism as a group as I think a lot of us would like to work for them, and they do lots of braded commercials. So I definitely catered the script visual instructions to morphism.
My 'Script' - PDF of my notes which is the main version 1 of the script
Nadia's Script - PDF of Nadia's script, they fixed my wording and put it in a much cleaner format. I did 2 months of animation in college, and the first thing we properly learnt was script writing. I remember a much more complicated layout using square brackets and writing lighting shots and camera angles (which aren't applicable in this) But in this course you do a lot of that in the storyboards which makes more sense. It's very interesting seeing how they wrote it from my notes.
I found the lecture very eye opening, not only to the amount that I spend but also to the amount of money commissions should realistically be priced at.
I haven't had a real income, only a summer job. In this job, my friend was the one contracted, she was given all of the statues and the equipment and the payments - I just took some statues off of her to paint for her client and she gave me the pay check from the ones that we took. We both know it's servery under paid - at £5 -£15 for a statue that usually took me 7 hours each (4 one day, 3 two days later to recoat when dried.) As much as I knew we were underpaid, it shocked me how far away our income was from other classmates who were also under minimum wage, and also shocked me when Lily earning £150 x 3 a week would be minimum wage.
My commissions never made it past a concept, mostly because at the time, I didn't think I'd developed a style. And now that I have, I think my newer set back was my follower numbers (I have 260 ish on Instagram but the people who constantly like my posts are in the 40s and they're all my friends - who I don't think would buy). Another set back is that I feel like I haven't done any of my own characters, and if I do draw from my head, I seem to get half of the likes I usually get.
When I did write myself a price list, I think the lack of confidence that people would buy made my pricing way below even the lower prices in the class. £4 for a bust sketch, £6 for a bust, £5 for a full body sketch and £7 for a full body. Now I'm aware that possibly £20 an hour is more realistic.
One of the main issues I had with hourly pricing was that I felt I would measure it wrong. Most of the time, a drawing can take me quite a lot of hours because I tend to zone out and get distracted, or design quite a few concepts because I can't think of anything perfect. But I agree it's the most fair for both parties, and i think even though £30 overall seems too much for me, and too little according to the lecture, I think it would still be a good starting price all things considered.
Review your existing work/online presence; consider how you protect your work moving forward
Currently, my professional/art based online presence is on Instagram, YouTube and the university blogger account.
Instagram:
I currently don't have any copyright claims on any of my works, mostly because my work is fan art. In the past I have redrawn shots from movies or posters, but recently I've moved towards drawing pre-existing characters in new poses in my own style. As they usually have the same key features and outfits as the original, I've mostly stuck to the fair use claim and not tried to sell/ profit from my art. The only way of protecting my own work that I have in place is signing/ writing my account name on my art, which could easily be cropped because it's not currently like a watermark.
I do want to start profiting so I might either start joining some fan projects such as the Redbubble selling platform and start drawing more towards brands that have infringed CC. Equally, I might open commissions or just start catering more towards characters i have designed, which will also create more industry practice.
YouTube:
Currently, the only public art on my YouTube channel is my Level 4 animation The Boss- everything else is unlisted so that it can only be viewed through my blog. I feel like my animation uses ideas from a lot of pre-existing medias such as Boss Baby and Toy Story; I also don't feel like the characters are very complicated. Therefore I might write a CC (creative commons) license on my The Boss YouTube.
I also have another channel from when I was younger that has a lot of (very bad, my screwy 12 year old editing) crack videos. Which are videos to make people laugh with clips from movies played over music. I actually did have a few copyright issues of my own with these back then. Therefore I might delete or un-list these to a) avoid the old copyright issues, b) improve my image as an artist, c) get rid of unpopular, unwatched content.
Blogger:
I think that blogger currently holds most of the professional work that I would want protecting. It houses a large collection of my concept art, animations and sketches - even just the links to my unlisted YouTube videos. Following what was said in class, my next step is to add a copyright on to my blogger.
In the UK work is already covered by copyright. This means things like my Instagram don't necessarily need copyright markers on them.
It's always good to use a watermark on your work to tell people that work belongs only to you if you're still worried about art theft. I personally use a signature very close to the linework but not over it.
Work you do on your own or anything collaborative can be copyrighted - just all agree to the type of copyright because it changes matters drastically.
Copyright in music lasts for 70 years (a life sentence)
Copyright in other medias like tv and film last as long as the original creator is alive, plus a 70 year 'life sentence'
You can find royalty free/copyright free music like what I used in 1st year.
If you are breaking the copyright of someone's work from another country, then you follow their copyright laws. If I stole my US friend's work, I follow America's laws about copyright.
If you are caught breaking copyright, you could:
Have to pay back all the profit you made from your piece using that
In the US, laws could ask you to pay between $200 and $150,000 depending on the case
You pay for all the attorney fees if you broke the copyright
If you're say selling someone's work, they can close your store.
This was my first practice at rigging. I don't think it went completely perfectly, as the simple model sometimes made it unclear whether the rotation was off, or the polygons were just so thin that the mesh was just not sturdy enough to take the movement.
Half way through this video that i used to tell me the steps - I noticed almost everyone in the comments said their didn't work or that the tutorial failed to mention a few things. Despite this, I managed to slowly figure out how to fix it and end up with a moving person on my own.
WWW :
Whenever I use a rigged model, I try to put them in the start of the white belt karate kata that I learnt - mostly because it's a good way to test getting the arms extremely bent and close to the chest - and this time I managed to animate the whole first motion of the kata.
I managed to understand how every controller worked
I learnt how to mirror the sculpture so I only had to work on half - I also learnt mirror duplication.
Segmenting bones makes them more bendy
Weight paint makes it so more areas are effected by the bones
EBI :
The elbow controllers had to move quite far away to get the elbow in the direction it needed to be.
Some of the controllers like the foot one wasn't completely straight
Low poly
WHAT NEXT? :
Make a better character to test
Possibly find a tutorial with face and hands and toe movement
Find what you're capable of improving from the stretch zone and try work on it
Staying in the comfort zone will mean you miss opportunities or even turn them down (me)
Fixed mind set is bad and I need to get out of it - try reflecting more on what good you've done and how others don't have life easier than you do - they work hard for success and so do you.
(Maze activity) I seem to care the most about looking impressive by going for the harder option. Yes i could have started with the easy one and had a success in the bag, but it won't look very good if you can figure the easy option out at a glance.
Hard options aren't always as hard as they look, and i seem to be able to identify that. In that quick amount of time we had to answer the mazes, I didn't second guess that. But in real life I will have enough time to - I need to do activities before my brain can second guess my potential.
I'm connected to many people: teachers, friends, family and they all know people - contact them if you're more comfortable and find opportunities.
Go to events at least once every month if you can.
Present yourself well
Eye contact
Smile
Good posture
Plan points to say
Plan route around the event/be on time
Dress well
Open questions - not a yes or no answer, keep them talking
If you're struggling to leave the conversation/ you feel awkward
take a drink to recompose, always have one handy
finish their sentence to try and take over talking and then close with 'Yes that's great. I will keep that in mind. Thank you for your advice, it was really helpful. I hope we can meet again soon.'
Contact as many people as you can!
Research the best person for you to contact for the opportunity you want
Guess password. First inital, last name @ company.co.uk
Careers in Animation:
Get a job even for a day a week to sho9w you have transferable skills
Won't get a job in animation straight out of uni
High demand and critical roles aren't given to students
occasionally bg designers and writers or concept planners might get a job from uni
start as a runner and watch or TRY to get a shadow job
Level 7?? Apprenticeship shadow jobs
Screen skills
Student jobs
Apprenticeships are tailored so you can learn as you go.
Attitude - don't use 'I guess I like this/ I suppose I'm good at that'
Talent - show them everything you can do without being taught.
Strong LinkedIn
gets lots of freelance without advertisement
High value info and use key words
Adobe
3D
Rigging
Concept
Character and background design
Don't use character profile picture, use face
Passion and enthusiasm
WHAT NOW?:
Make a LinkedIn
Make an avatar profile picture of me for Instagram - bio should describe me , not marvel haha
Take a good photo (preferable once I've had a haircut) for LinkedIn
Start contacting professionals
Try to find a part time job/ apprenticeship or at least start commissions
Keep learning new things, even if it's just me learning BSL again
Look in to Level 7 :O
Don't compare myself to others as hard, they have tough lives too - maybe get off technology/ at least my phone more so I compare less
Post stuff frequently but apart, started doing in the last 2 weeks between 2 accounts and it's going well!!
Thomas and Nadia gave me their rig from their short film Citizen202 for LAUAN503, so that I could practice animating with a non human rig. It was very easy to use and I found it interesting using knee joints. I haven't used knee joints before now, because the MOOM rig follows the foot position. I also didn't know that you can outline your models in Maya, which is something i would like to learn. They do that in RWBY, which has the kind of style and motion I would like to make.
I have had a few attempts at animal walks before now, and I felt that a few of them went well but a few were quite stiff. Having the ability to move any frame and it altering the previous ones justly was a good practice for me. I also found it interesting how to alter the animal walk slightly to fit the mechanisms in the creature.
Overall, I think this went well, but I think my next steps should be modelling in Maya and Blender for myself, learning rigging and possibly how to avoid clipping (such as clothed characters)
One of the main points I received from Michaela and week 1 of the careers week was that I should be practicing in as much as possible - and especially now when our lessons are focused more on planning and research, I feel like I have the time to do some practical for myself.
Inspired by KK's amazing work in blender and personal experience seeing artists on Instagram - I knew that Blender was very good for texturing, lighting and composition. This was something Michaela definitely wanted me to translate more in my professional work as well as my personal art, so I thought this would be the best opportunity to learn it.
One of the artists I'm most inspired by on Instagram answered a Q&A and someone else asked a very similar question to me. I checked out this tutorial by blenderguru and it was what I proceeded to follow.
Chapter 1: 10-11/01/20
Editing mesh shapes
using sculpt tools
Use solidify on faces to make them thicker/3D
subspace modifier adds faces - remember to apply it
secondary colour option allows the object to absorbs light - use RGB to cater to which one you want more prominently. Donut icing used red mostly.
Learning about the light and the camera being the symbols pre made on the file and how to use them.
0 on number pad is the viewport for camera
Learning how to denoise a render - go in to the render settings on the right hand side and change the resolution in viewport (and render resolution too if you want)
Chapter 2: 11-12/01/20
creating sprinkles and using the hair tool to add the sprinkles on icing mesh
randomise but don't rotate random because some will be stuck up
png dough texture, remember to save the drawing
easier to draw on to the model and not the canvas
shading tab
Allow nodes
Add rough texture
Chapter 3: 12-13/01/20
Importing images - shift A then choose background image or reference image (used ref)
Using a disk and solidifying it
N brings up menu - tools - x symmetry
ctrl R = Loop cut
ctrl I / shift I similar cut
shift right click to place secondary cursor, remove a face and select edges, then use the circle tool in toolbar on left hand side to make the handle
Turn down lighting radius and watts
glass = no opacity, use roughness to change refraction
orange tint, select top faces and make them yellow, then completely lower the light absorption so the rest is black
Chapter 4: 14/01/20
Spoon started from a disc and then using a slight circle tool on the bit near the shovel of the spoon and extruding down. Extruding = E
The dough didn't look the right colour so I tried to fix it - realised it still looked super dark and figured maybe altering the lighting or properties will improve the colour instead, so I changed it back
Used lighter/ whiter lighting and the composition came together well, but the dough looked raw
Used the light absorption secondary colour and made the dough way lighter! I still had a little trouble with the colouring but I felt like too orange would clash with the pink and make it look like a bagel
Realistic appearance, from comments off of my Instagram post, this seemed realistic to a lot of people, which is definitely what I was aiming for.
I feel like I learnt all of the basic skills of Blender as well as useful additional features that may be more useful than what I currently know in Maya.
Following what I had learnt thus far from the careers week, I think I managed to use the algorithm to my favour by making an animation and many screen recordings to make sure people view this longer. This also got a lot of shares and tripled the traction any of my other posts have done on my small uni account; getting more than a large portion of my main art account too.
I managed to make the white plate and the spoon on my own without help from the tutorial afterwards.
I gained the knowledge I wanted, texturing and lighting.
EBI:
My composition needs work because I essentially tried to make mine similar to the tutorial in the end, just with the handle showing and space for the spoon - add more elements, window frame shadow of light on the table? sound
I screwed up the rendering and it took over 12 hours, I didn't quite understand resolution, now I know I could have made it quite a bit lower with a similar appearance thanks to the denoiser.
The icing was lighter, I never changed the colour of the icing but i think different lighting colours made it look lighter or fit better thanks to the light absorption i had added on to it.
Find a good free texture source or make some up - these aren't the ones he used in the tutorial but they were mostly the only free ones I could find on his site in the category I wanted. (But his site had lots of good free rock textures (purple file) and patterns and it was very clear how to make it a texture or a pattern etc and how to import)
Next Step: Learning rigging in blender (and then Maya)
Profile picture should be a photo of yourself / drawing of yourself.
Description should be able to tell everyone anything they need to know about you. But short
Tags help, the more the merrier. Up to 30 on Instagram. Keep them in the first comment to look neater.
CV -
Name should always be at the top as the title
I asked about preferred names and pronouns and if that's too long for a title. She said that it should still be first but not in the title so you have room to tell them all of the specifics. The name you don't want to be known by in brackets. Definitely included it or anywhere you work for won't know.
Short and snappy
Bold draws the eye, key words.
UK 2 pages expected. If they see 1 page they think you have more you could say and are disclosing info. US is typically 1 page.
Contacts and references, maybe get quotes from references.
Don't be too artsy - graphics and colour don't always work but simple can.
Why your qualities and experiences can help the company, not why you're good.
Opening and closing statements should be as if you're retelling the main body of topic two extra times so the information goes in.
Rule of 3 is the most catchy way to go
Bookending - showing or saying something at the start and end of the presentation to remind the viewer of everything said in-between. Make it a big statement.
Quote
Image
Object
Statistic
Audience interaction is engaging
Use of humour makes the person memorable
Anecdotes help people remember facts because they remember the person talking.
I asked what the best way to deal with daily chronic stress is and the lady said that sometimes you need to take the harder path. By having a tough conversation with someone or sometimes even cutting someone from your life if that helps.
Sometimes stress is a good thing and can make sure you work harder.
Understand what symptoms of stress can be resolved - like addictions such as itching vs bad digestion.
Breathing exercises are quick and effective coping mechanisms.
I think disconnection is currently the most useful of the 8 methods to help for myself as i feel like having a phone near me hinders what work I am doing and sometimes makes it last a lot longer than it should do. Sometimes it also means that I waste my free time too, getting lost on social media.
I tend to give quite a lot but sometimes you can give too much without receiving.
Sometimes you can care a lot and try help someone through their stress who doesn't want to work towards helping themselves through said stress. They tend to want to live life through the stressful slump and not take advice. I feel like this can be me at times because I am usually advised by friends to go do certain things to get better and often just wait it out. Help myself more to be less toxic to them.
Freelance Animation -
Fiver and gumtree and things were really good straight out of uni to try and find small jobs and gain contacts.
Try to use the newest trending site because it will mean less people are on there looking for workers.
Social media is very important and it's alright to be sketchy sometimes.
If you don't want to ruin brand aesthetic etc, make a new account or a story reel.
If you want to work small like this, it's still sometimes best to have a team. Choose people with similar interests as you.
Creative Opportunities -
Have multiple avenues, back up job, freelance, commissions etc
Telling a story
You need to be able to tell a company your own story through how you present yourself and act and your portfolio of work.
You equally need to know your employer's story through their socials and their business.
Evoke emotions
Connections and people you have met along the way
Contact people
Do it when they don't ask
Sometimes try to guess their emails
Contact anyone you can including anyone you look up to in the animation industry, don't be afraid to DM
Start now, they will remember you in the future if you leave a good impression.
5 ways to grow your community
Say yes to opportunities
Social media networking
Keep up to date with industry news
Reach out through email
Use uni to your advantage. Careers team in LAU. Do/ enter work in to contests.
Google alerts
Subscribing to magazines
Look at who your employer or want to be employer follows and what they are interested in. Gives you relatable topics of conversation before you've stepped in the door
Small world theory, who do I know? Who do my teachers and family and friends know?
Friend knows an actor in the new MARVEL Loki tv show
Cousin was a graphic design manager and is now a teacher
Great Uncle is a carpenter who makes toys etc for people like Klaus.
Contact more people
Research the industry more - might be useful making myself known on Twitter
Try to develop more of a style on Instagram that flows between my work / do more personal animation so that I have portfolio ready work and also so that my style flows between both accounts.
Make an avatar for my uni account
Try to look in to mental health help for the anxiety and speech talks - but also try to balance work and leisure a bit more and out down your gosh darn phone! even if that means going on other tech like a computer more often - it's less connected and causes less comparison.
Nadia: 3D modelling, 3D animation - owns pretty much everything.
Week 1: Research
Giff Gaff
Their company is a phone dealership that sells SIMs, phones and offers phone refurbishments. But along with these functions, they also have a community tab.
Slogan 'The mobile network run by you'. They love community and the feeling that everyone is a contributor whether that's to their ideas, or for this project, towards helping the environment.
The community tab offers lots of blogs that range from helping people with their phones, to recommending the best games and tips to beat them. One of these tabs is a recycling and economy tab.
Circular economy, creating a cycle so that products last longer and less waste is produced.
'Reuse, recycle, refurbish' with REUSE as the first one. Not reduce, reuse, recycle. Shows how reuse is their top priority with their phone refurbishments.
resell to people for a "heavily discounted price" - good for students, their target market, as shown by the things we were sent from giffgaff when we moved in and their aesthetic.
Aesthetic
Their current theme is very artsy with lots of colourful gradients, the most common being blue to pink.
All of their little picture art looks like emojis but with their own neat style, gradient colour scheme and thick line work.
Also in the 'winter sale', the phone hanging from cord wires cleverly look like baubles on a string.
Even then, they are promoting the earth logo.
Cork board arts and craft style, relates to the very comic book paper cut out style in this advert about their community.
Hands up was last years theme for the D&AD new blood awards last year. The GiffGaff topic was #handsup which is a sign language initiative, mostly started with the use of BSL emojis for texting and translation. This started in May during deaf awareness week and trended through tiktok. Not only did GiffGaff want to make their community more inclusive, but they used a very audio based format to do it on, tik tok. They also worked their campaign in the social media field which related to teenagers, their target audience - in a time where tiktok was trending thanks to covid 19.
The yellow and black colour palette stuck with their current vibrant popping theme whilst relating to the colour of emojis. (Now it looks a lot like Instagram?)
After we were briefed on both of the topics for this term, Michaela suggested people stay behind so we could get to know her and her work and vice versa. In this I was one of a few people whom had their work looked through. I showed Michaela both of my Instagram accounts.
Main points of focus:
In my personal art has a good sense of composition and lighting
This doesn't show through much on my student work account, most of the things I've shown are basic models and progress.
I haven't posted my group animation from 503 but as I was the art director, I did have a chance to draw in my style and use my type of shadow that I use in my personal art - which I wasn't too confident in trying to add last year.
I want to try using Blender because people who use that seem to make lighting and colouring look a lot easier than in Maya
Practice more
After the lesson, I downloaded Blender so that I could try to improve on my composition and lighting.
I think being in the group projects helped me improve from what's currently on my social media - and I will post some
Thomas and Nadia have given me the rigs from their group animation so that I could practice animating in Maya - which I will do on this bog. I will probably also try to rig some of my own stuff.
The topics that I draw in personal life and uni are completely different
This is mostly because I draw lots of pre existing characters that I can't post professionally for copyright and can't animate.
I struggle designing characters without a brief or a purpose. Kind of like doodling mindlessly and not being able to draw it professionally later - I struggle designing characters outside of university so I don't have any OCs or turnarounds.
I need to doodle more and not be afraid of breaking an aesthetic to post them. Possibly a story reel in my personal account.
I did animate Sigma from Overwatch as part of the European Animators Contest. First of all, I read the brief wrong. I'm not quite sure what happened because I wrote down the frame rate and time limit as if I had already read it - but I wrote down the wrong thing. It must be because of how much my eyes jump when I read, but it's my own fault for not checking again until submission. (I have definitely learnt a lesson) So this wasn't submitted. But after seeing the teams of more professional students entries, I know it wasn't good enough either way. I am still proud as it is lit well and fully in my style, but I can't post it for copyright.
I think that in the time given to us, we achieved quite a lot as a team, as our animation is quite long. For a movie intentionally designed with two different mediums, the style between Lilith and Sandy in both 2D and 3D look coherent with each other, which really helped separate the dreams from reality.
This was the first movie where I have ever had to work with any other people, so I was very fortunate to be given a large team where I could experience lots of different people's levels of leadership, work ethic, emotional/ health related capabilities and also thanks to covid 19, what it's like to work with people without meeting with them. I really jumped in to the deep end.
We were lucky to have a very good voice recording cast as well as good contacts for both audio and external studio spaces, which were very useful as it was none of our expertise. In other works, I've done all of these roles myself or used free non copy right sites. And though talking with new people is nerving, Naomi and Charlie gave me a good glimpse in to a real industry setting.
We didn't use the external studio space for the 3d in the end but it was reassuring knowing the guys had it up their sleeve in case of harsher lockdown that might have closed the uni during shooting.
Besides the filming, I think a problem that covid caused was going home in December, because I found it difficult to tell people to get a move on without being face to face. And this meant that it left Naomi and Ayesha with a lot of work at the end of the project. Throughout the project I just silently took work off of other people until it got to the point where I was then the one who felt over worked. There was a large portion of the production where I felt a little cheated but I soon realised that people like Naomi were working hard on planning notes for the art book and organising folders and things we don't all really see in credits of a big production. So I'm grateful for all of what everyone has done.
By the end of production, I did feel kind of like the Director of the movie. Lots of the art directions went through me before it was added (mostly because I was changed to the 'Art Director' right near the end of production) , but also I helped with the writing. And because of my position as the designer and animator, I knew what everyone was doing and their well being at home during covid. So I knew what everyone could and couldn't manage to do during this production and tried to help people adjust accordingly. It was nice being able to help the group even if it was a little draining and not a role I intended to take.
Obviously because of our odd structure, there were times where people haven't filled in what they have been doing on certain days, so the others will have done more than what is written down in the schedule. But I found that I worked almost every day aside Christmas Day. On the other blank days, I was mostly doing COP work or just blogging. (I am blue. Ayesha is pink. Charlie is red. Naomi is green. And we all share purple.) I felt like I did a lot of work and was very tired by the end.
Sometimes I think I should have said something but I'm very weak about hurting people's feelings or causing panic and stress. For instance, I don't think our editing was finished. I think some shots like the dance I made longer so it could be cut in editing but it wasn't cut and just dragged in. Mat mentioned getting rid of the wires in vfx, which I personally wouldn't know how to do but I agree possibly should have. Mat also mentioned a vignette lighting effect to make the stop motion less white. And I made room for some fading transitions. But in the end, we did cut the 2D very close to the deadline and that is in part my fault as the middle man of the animation for not pushing people to hand in on the deadlines I gave them. So it's not really his fault when he had a day to insert the last two shots.
WWW:
Team work
We finished an almost 4 minute short film!!
Coherent characters between 2D and 3D
Good lip sync
Lots of industry experience I was yet to witness
I tried very hard keeping people up to date with what I was doing and where I was at. The schedule was updated every day.
I was on top of the group and their abilities and home environments and emotions.
EBI
The schedule was more what we did when we did it. I think we needed deadlines.
Group communication was lacking until the end. I felt like I wasn't answered very regularly when I had a question.
Tell someone if I'm not happy. Don't struggle in silence
SKILLS TO TAKE AWAY
Masking shading!!! Awesome for both animation and not outside of uni.
Working in a team
Knowing how to be a Director? Even though I wasn't the official director, I felt like a big role in the direction of this film
Knowing how to limit what I take on - I think I've done a lot of work in a lot of areas now and I know my limits. Between writing, designing, scheduling, reassuring team members, animating - I know I didn't enjoy the lip sync even though I copied Ayesha's sketch layer for the majority of it , and i didn't like writing in the art book.
I designed the front cover for the art book as well as some little things like the background and some frames for the photographs. This was very fun and I got to try and interpret the final set in to Ayesha's original design of the office. I tried to copy how she would draw it with very minimal perspective, but I mostly copied the colours from the final 3D animation.
WWW - I liked the interesting addition of an outline and red colour on the title - the white and the black without an outline didn't stand out enough. I also think the blood splatter theme was fun because art books are usually for people who have watched the movie and enjoyed it - so anyone who enjoyed the humorous ending will like the running hint to the gag.
EBI - Ayesha was colouring in this concept art whilst me and Naomi were making the art book, so now it looks like I have ignored her colour theme in the art book. But I'm glad this sticks to the movie colour palette as that is what the audience will see and remember after watching it.
I liked doing some of the writing for the artbook, but I'm very long winded and sometimes can't express what I'm trying to say too clearly. I'm very lucky to have Naomi who was very patient with me and my excessive typing and translated it very well in the book itself.
