Feedback

maybe I shouldn't say how I think project I am barely involved in has gone in my eyes. It's clearly more trouble than it's worth.

Next time I 'll just offer my services for everything I can and get my 'hands dirty'

Waiting to hear...

back from the Universities that i have conatced with regards to the Student Panel for Animated Exeter. Susannah sent Charlotte an email today asking us to chase up the people we had already contacted and to let her know which universities we had contacted. I have sent her an email asking her to let me know as soon as she gets any sort of response from any of them so i can send them some more information! But i can't give her a list right this minute as the list is in the folder that andy currently has in his possession. I get the feeling we are being to layed back about it all when really we should be panicking!

Masking... quite possibly the dullest thing to spend your time doing.

Ok so today, we arrive to lend a helping hand, on to be confronted by art director, ben, who just bark orders at us. Just how everyone wants to begin their monday. I was quite willing to help but there is a right and wrong way of getting people to do things for you and manners dont cost anything. As far as I know anyway.

So this is what i spent my day doing.
Keying out the green bits of 10 shots.
Seriously dull, not in the lest bit theraputic. mind numbing. and after the barks i am not expecting any sort of thanks either.


Selected the brightest parts with the magic wand and delete them, on both layers. once this is done, I could delete the duplicate layer.


And this was the end result.

BIG CAREERS DIASTER...?

We haven't had a meeting about what is happing in over two weeks. None of the four of us know what we should be doing now, or what needs doing over christmas, we are all home for a month but surely things will need doing? Feel like this has been side tracked by the other two projects. I realise that they are important, but if this day goes badly it will reflect back on us despite our best efforts.

the elderly woman

I made a little plastercine model of how i imagined her to be.

the Mini Bible

Today, whilst hol and charlotte get on with finishing the stopframe for the ident I have the tedious task of resizeing all of the pages for printing, checking the font looks right, that there are no mistakes I might have missed before.
The script is all done, just needs to prctice it, and practice with the powerpoint.
Hopefully once Andy has finished listening to everyone's pitches this morning he will have time to help us fix our moodscap/animatic.
Also I need to find Richard and ask him how to put a link to the moodscape at the end of the power point so its runs through smoother because in the practice i had to moved between two programmes and it just look messy.

I'm done with foley

I gave Adam the final half of the foley today so that is my contribution to the Exeter ident finished with. I would have like to be involved more creatively, but I have been busy with the pitch project as the background artwork took a lot of time, along with creative some of the shots.

I hope the sounds I found work, but it's little late on in the game if they dont. And I hadnt spoke to Sound producer once thoughout the whole thing.

Practice Pitch

So we had our practice pitch, and despite the fact that we hadnt practiced it, and i only made the power point for it this morning it seems to have gone ok. @I am now working on ammending the script so that it will run much smoother come friday, not too much missed our though. just need to remember to introduce ourselves and give more detail about who our audience is, a little more about fables and cautionary tales, and in the end more about what the potential for it is i.e. a series, the interenet, before feauture length films, and festivals.

Andy suggested that it would be quite nice to actually follow through this project, which has got us all thinking that yes. it would be good, after putting so much into its creation to actuallly make it would be great!

ok so...

..I have typed up what we are going to say tomorrow, hopefully it will be ok, and we will get it all down and memorised so I dont panick on friday. I think our presentation should go well, no ramblings, quite concise, with images to support what we are saying and charlotte has made our moodscape, which i love! so fingers crossed!

Sound

I am supposed to be helping with the sound for the animated exeter project, but wasn't scheduled to begin unitl next week. Nat and I were meant to both be finiding/creating the foley for the ident. However, the executive producer has clearly gone into panic mode and demanded that I have the sounds ready now. Originally the first time I spoke to anyone about when they wanted it done it was all still to the time table but adam asked that i have it done for yesterday, giving me the task to do by myself in two days, half a week early.
On the up side the sound can move ahead quicker, I just wish I had been asked earlier. Nat couldnt help me the last few days as she has been busy doing badckgrounds, again and again.
This project needed to know who was in charge much earlier on.
I havent even spoken to Mike about the foley and he is supposedly the 'Sound Producer'.

Its all coming together.

Charlotte and I have begun scripting what we are going to say during the pitch presentation we have to give next friday. Though we still aren't quite sure whether or not we need to include the stuff about who would comission the piece etc in what we talk about, as that will all be written in the design bible thing.
The design bible is coming together now, I spent a considerable amount of time put the pages together, finding the right images to go with each bit of text and i am hoping it will all work well together. for the time being we have printed it out in black and white, in case there are any altereations suggested during our practice pitch on monday.

The Pitch.

So I have done all the backgrounds for the Pitch and dropped Char's Rain over them and it looks great. today we were going to start printing pages for the book and that meant we needed the text that we have written but alas Hol has forgotten to bring it in so today's potential for productivity has come to a grounding hault which is frustrating as i remembered to bring absolutely everything else.
I am looking forward to working on a project by myself next term.

Student Panel....

Ok so i finally got all the student letters done and sent to Andy today, hopefully with no more amendments needed they can all be sent out this week, and maybe some responses before we all disappear off for a month to get on with what we can at different ends of the country.
Charlotte has got the guest speaker letters done and Hol has finished the drinks sponsor letters as well so all that is left to do now is for Nat to finish the letters asking for prizes and we can rest easy.

Careers day... o dear

I'm quite concerned about careers day, that we havent made much progress or effort towards progress in the last week or so, especially now that we are also working on the ident, which originally i was led to think we wouldnt need to. I 'm really struggling to keep track of the the three projects.
All that i have left to do is to find the names of the of the course leaders for each univeristy and then the letters can be sent out bu i feel like we are leaving eveything too late for anything to actually fall into place.
We've not heard back anything concrete from anyone yet. none of the sponsorship letters have been sent out yet. i just wish we had the chance to focus on this

the work is divided

So we have finally divided up who will be involved with what for the next week or so. thus far we have all been working together o get contact information and companies details but yesterday we decided that it would be better to split up the things that need doing and share them out.
I am in charge of contacting the universities for the student panel and uni stalls, which should be relatively easy as we wrote up a draft letter already.

Animated Exeter

Feeling really positive about The BIG Careers Day after our meeting with Susannah on monday. Now we just need to find the contact details for our wish list guest speakers, sponsors, students for panel, and send out the letters and wait for the responses. Susannah seem happy with what we had come up with which was good to hear.

2nd Year

So, so far we have a few interesting projects on the go.

Sound.

We are having work shops and what not to do with sound and had to create a sounscape the other day that told a story.. it could be anything so long as it was under 3minutes long. To begin with I though I would just chose soemthing simple like someone's process of getting up in the morning, but I then found that quite a few other people had also decided to do this. Witin my time limits I decided it would be possible to show something quite sinister and went with what sounds you would here a bulimic person make whilst they were having a binge. No pleasant but i think it worked well, and it gave me the opportunity to set a tone using music and sound effects to express what was happening.
This task helped me to practice my Audition skills which were a little rusty.

Animated Exeter.

Originally I missed the first briefing which I suppose put me at a disadvantage. And I was frustrated to find that once again, all the groups had been decided on, and ideas had already been passed about, so i had already misssed out on the creative ideas process. Also I was concerned that if I showed an interest in organising the Careers day for the festival that we would lose out on the grades, also that everyone else is adding to their creative portfolio and we would not be.

But I am glad I decided to get involved. I enjoy organising things, though I do feel that some aspects are a bit beyond me, like coming up with a good guest speaker, as my knowledge of theindustry is still fairly sparse in comparison to some of my class mates.

The Pitch

Is a little daunting. The idea that someone from the industry is actually going to sit and listen to us talk about our idea is quite a big thing. Even though its not for real. Even though I had my own ideaI didnt want to go into this project alone as I find with presentations I work much better in a pair or a team, so that we can support one another.
I chose to work with Charlotte and Holly as they had an idea to work from the stating point of 'Tear Drops Blossom' which I originally suggested they watched. It seemed like a sweet idea and something i could really get involved with.

Animate TV

'Seven contemporary artists use an innovative array of animation techniques including stop-motion, rotoscope, hand-drawn, cut-outs and computer animation. '

I found this on 4od and thought it might be worth a look, and it is. The first film is stop motion using unwanted ornaments, discarded in a shed, and it showed the social hiarchy within the characters and life. Whilst being entertaining and following a story, you are also remind that the characters are still porcelain.

I also really loved one called Tear drops blossom, it had a really nice look to it, being made of cut outs and the story was really sweet.

The Corpse Bride

I finally got round to watching Tim Burton's Corpse Bride, after wanting to watch it since Seeing the trailer years ago! I love the way he used colour to differentiate between the world of the living and of the dead, and I think it worked well that it was the reverse of how we would traditonally view those two worlds. The land of the dead was a vibrant place full of fun and laughter, as well as horribly dismembered bodies!
I like the style of the animating, it has a sparse quality, done well but not showing off.

I love the land before time!

Just sat down and watched one of the land before time films, and realised how much I appreciate the art work, the big rolling landscapes. I know 2D work isnt the most popular thing right now but i really enjoying watching it, and hope it doesnt become a lost artform!

I just watched...

This really interesting film about Pixar animation studios and their journey to becoming a successful studio. it was really interesting, as the directors for each of the feature length films discussed the problems that they faced on the indiviual productions, starting off with the first toy story. I remember wacthing that and being totally amazazed and it was good to hear about how it came to be and the processes that were gone through to achieve it.

der kleine Maulwurf- the small mole

My friend from back home sent me a link to the animation on youtube to cheer my up just before our deadline. Its all about this little mole awakening from its hibernation.
I like the simplistic style of the piece and I think that the Backgrounds are really beautiful, though not realistic.

Always disappointed in the end.

I dont understand where I am going wrong? How did I manage to get a 71. for the presentation when Holly and I put such little amount of work in? And how, When I have worked sooo damn hard this term on these groups projects, getting involved wherever I could, did I only get another meagre 61!? I feel as though all the work was for nothing, not really recognised. Should this be expected as this is how my future in animation will be?

Reading through the feedback from the group project, it was not even mention that I was involved in pre porduction for both the students project and the Library project. It feels as though that was totally ignored. I also did some sound work unlike many others.

I found the group crit on tuesday very frustrating and even upsetting at one point.
It wasn't necessary to ask me to discuss that particular quote in front of everyone, as it put strain on a currently rather fragile friendship, which had already been truly pushed to its limits during this last project.

I don't feel I can thoroughly review my work and talk through my frustrations with things through a blog as they are public and very readily available to my classmates who I would not wish to offend.

Fin.

It's such a relief to be able to say I am finished, and there is nothing left to do for this deadline. I've enjoyed this last term even though I have found the work quite testing and a little frustrating at times. I've learnt a lot about the importance of good communication within a team and how vital it is, in order to get work produced on time. I would say I have also experienced bad communication from others, when involved in their groups and hope that they know better for the next project we all undertake.

If I were a producer again, I would try to arrange a prompt briefing about the project as it really delayed the beginning of the prodcuction, not knowing what w were meant o be doing and I felt as though the post production team were simply left to sit about with nothing to occupy them. Though I did try to encourage them to get involved in pre production for over teams while we waited to hear from MARK.

This year has had a steep learning curve, but I think, and hope I done ok and am looking forward to working ten times harder next year!

Sound for Walk You Lazy $%&*!

Yesterday Charlotte asked me if I could put the sound to James' animation of an old man trying to catch the bus but the bus driver put up an offensive message and drives off.
I used the foley sound that we recorded on tuesday in the studio of me humming in a manly fashion as well as several different sounds which i downloaded from The Free Sound Project (Which incidently i think is one of the most useful websites i've used in a long while) I was really pleased with how the sounds lined up with action and it quite interesting to see how adding sound to a piece can change it so dramatically.

A Soundless Rhino

This is the quicktime of my rhino before putting it into Premiere and adding the voice clip and slamming door sounds. Although I am very pleased with the piece in genral and think the actual lip synch looks good, I m not happy with the characters walk and if I had more time I would definately do a lot more work on it, to get it looking likea fluid motion as at the moment it seems quite stilted.

the end is nigh

the project is coming to an end, and i'm really pleased that two out of the three animations have been completed. However I am concerned about Alex's animation as he seems set on making it more and more complicated and completing it is reliant on there being good weathe rin the next day and a half.
I have also just recieved an email from Anna at MARK, with feedback about Ceri's animation asking fro it to have the colours inverted, the end section removed and the rest of it to be made to last the full 15 seconds. How can I ask Ceri to basically start all over again, when he has already worked so hard?

With the Students project all my lip synching is complete and I am just waiting for Richard to arrive and supply a cleaner version of the voice track and then i can render the animation and it will be complete which is exciting!

Gathering all my work together has been quite an experience and taught me that an organised desktop might be a good idea for next year!

Switching Teams

I found myself frustrated yesterday evening to find that a member of my animating team had decided to switch to a different group, swapping with someone else without informing me.
How I am suppose to check people are doing their work, and working in line with the brief if i dont even know that they are part of my team, im not sure.

Rhino Animation

For holly's group, the lip synching, I am animating a rhino bulider character, that is talking about work never ending. I'm glad to be having a chance to animate along side my role as a producer but I am concerned that I am not working a fast as those that are just animating. I find it quite difficult to concentrate on the task in hand long enough to get much done. But I am determined to complete one animation for this group project task.

I had to drop some of the action from the sequence as it is only quite a short section of speech, and the storyboard had quite a lot of action in it.

Production!

I'm very excited about production on these MARK animations having finally begun today. After hearing back from our client about which concepts they liked, myself and my three animators met this morning to decide who was going to be doing what and hopefully the work is well underway.
I have asked them to have a considerable amount done by monday morning so I can email Anna at MARK with the progress, and check that the work is heading inthe direction that she was hoping for.
Fingers Crossed all should go according to plan.

Pre Production

Pre production has been far more stressful than i though it would, for this project. I think this is because in the beginning we all thought this would be the easiest and quickest, so nobody seems eager to crack on with it and i have struggled to get work out of my preporduction team until the very deadline.

Cherie's Fish

This is the confused fish desin that I will be storyboarding. It was designed by Cherie, and I think she has really capture the dim goldfish look in the facial expressions.

For the last few days I've been working on the animatic for the library project, yesterday was spent tirelessly scanning in each invidual frame. and today I've inputed the last few frames, hopefully in time with the music.

I'm excited about starting work on Holly's project, of student lip synching tomorrow, as the group will be storyboarding their ideas.

And I have also had an email from Anna, who is going to be giving my Logo team their briefing, hopefully on thursday, which will allow us to begin our work.

No more fairytales...

I spent this weekend working on a page of research for the Fairytale segment of the library animation. I looked at backgrounds, fairytale type landscape with castles in the distance. I also looked at how princesses are represnted in tradtion fairytales. Aswell as looking into the frog prince illustrations.

Only to find out today that this section of the story has been scrapped, as it was considered to complicated. I don't mind that it was scrapped, as I am sure this regularly happens in the industry, but I would have appreciated being told, rather than spending time doing pointless research. And what do I do with the work now?

MARK

Questions to ask them.

What are they looking for?
What sounds/music can we use?
Can we include things other than the logo?
Can we use live action?
How long should the animations be?
Can we have a high resolution copy of the logo?
What do they do?
What does MARK stand for?
Colour? Can we introduce it?
How many animations do they need?
What style would they like?
What are they being used for?
Any particular format?
Do they want any other text or information included?

The Producers

I'm excited about being a producer for this new project because I've never been in a leadership role before. I am looking forward to having an opportunity to ask the representative from MARK, the group/organisation of artists, about what they are looking to get out of the animation. So many questions to ask.

I am finding my role within the preproduction team for the library quite limited and disappointing. I really wanted to have a active role in things such as storyboarding but instead have been given menial tasks and very little work.

Personal Project

I've been working on the flash animation in my own time for a while but have become frustrated with the way the piece doesnt seem to flow. And where do I go after that thast I have done so far. I have the story to follow but i am unsure whether to include it all

Watching everyone else's finished ident

this morning we watched everyone's finished ident, and it was a real eye opener, and showed me what can be achieved using different media. i think seeing what other people managed to create using maya is inspiring me to try harder to grasp the techniques and methods of the program

Script Writing

when we were first given this assignment, i was worried because i was unsure about what sort of story i wanted to tell, and whether i should being trying to convey an important message or moral. but then i just figured i should just try to have some fun with it instead. So i have tried to bring some humour to my work. whether or not this will show through, we'll have to wait and see

Finally Finished the OSTN Ident

So last friday, my partner and I finally handed in our Ident, on time. I am well chuffed that it is over and done with. The handing in process was quite traumatising, I struggled to understnad how to save the work onto disk, especially after discovering that none of our pc s were able to write discs. But it was useful to learn how to use the suite down in broadcasting.

Our animation didnt end as we had planned it to, with the wings dropping off, as i couldnt work out how to separate to wings from the rest of the symbol. but I think if i had address that problem earlier on I could have found a solution.

Sound Design

Today my partner and I are going to do the Voice over recordings, using are new found skills, after the recording workshop. We are also going to try to find some real sounds, of birds and general outside noises to go along with our animation. As this is preferred over using pre recorded sounds from a CD

OSTN Ident

For the OSTN Ident project I have been working with Charlotte, as I find working with other people useful, especially when it comes to coming up with ideas. You can bounce of each other to come up with something, that most likely I wouldnt have thought of by myself.

Our animation has been done in flash, as it the programme I am most comfortable with, so its a 2D piece with a painterly background that is piece of charlotte's scanned in work. I think the mix of materials is really affective.

The idea was quite simple. To give the individual letters, in their rectangles, wings and have them fly about the screen to eventually end up with the final four in the centre and merging into the logo.

I'm pleased with the work that we have done so far and I m glad that I was reminded how to create moving symbols in flash in time to complete most of the work.
However, originally we wanted it to appear as though these letter birds were flying towards the screen and hit, with their wings falling off at the end and transforming. But I found that ten seconds hasnt been quite long enought o include this after the flying sequence.

Flash: "I've run out of chocolate"

I've completed my flash animation and I am fairly pleased with the end result. However when I imported the chocolate images into Flash. even though I had edited out the white backgrounds they seeemed to reappear, and if I were to do this again I would try to find out how to correct this, as it held me back from being able to put in a large background.

I found the lip synching itself quite interesting to do, though frustrating at times and I felt as though I could have used several more mouth pieces to create an accurate look.

Adobe Flash

In today's session we had our first introduction to flash, and although I had a brief encounter with it whilst at college, my memories of using it were those of frustration. So today I was glad to find I enjoyed using and being able to quickly bring life to characters and scenes.

After finishing my chair in Maya, and making my 2D design into 3D, I can say that I struggled, as I am not used to thinking in ters of 3D space when designing chraracters and scenes. I think this may be why I lean towards using Flash.