Thursday 20 May 2010

DVD Showreel

I've put my showreel together using DVD Studio Pro, and have divided it into 5 sections; '2D Animations', '3D Animations', 'Editing and Storyboards', 'Digital Art' and 'Life Drawing'. The latter two are slideshows which showcase my best art and using the tutorials Alex Hulse gave us a few weeks back I've added sound and a fade-in/fade-out transition between the slides. I've also been able to add frames around the menu buttons so that when they are selected they change colour, thus helping the audience with navigation.


Credits for music;
'Borealis'
'Time Lapse'
both found on the computer program 'iMovie'.


All that is left to do now is burn it and hand in :)

Looking back over this project I feel that we have performed very well as a group. Our shared interest in 2D animation was a key factor in the outcome and we all managed to meet the deadlines set as we were going along. If there was anything I would change about this project it would be to allow more time for the editing and sound effects as I think we had only a couple of days towards the end to focus on them. Nevertheless Jon did a great job with the edit and the sound technician eventually pulled through so that we now have two different versions of our project - one with sound effects and the other without which can both be found on the disc we submitted.

The showreel was a great opportunity to look back over my work and compile the best parts together, it will definately save me a lot of time and hassle in the future when applying for jobs but I should keep it updated. The only thing about it I would change would be the appearance of the case, I didn't have time to create anything that unique or interesting so that is something I can perhaps focus on over summer.. I put all the content on the DVD that I wanted though so I hope it will show a good range of my work.

I feel as though my skills in flash have definately progressed through the practice this project has given me and now I just need to continue working with it over this long summer coming up! I have a couple of projects I plan to work on to do with 2D animation to keep my skills up to date and of course I will continue sketching and creating illustrations when I am able.

Tuesday 4 May 2010

Showreel

Another portion of the term we are getting marked on is our showreel. I have already begun to assemble pieces of my showreel for my application to the Bournemouth 3rd year, the links to which are below. They will be a good starting point as they show what I believe to be my best pieces of work and show a variety of styles I can create.


Portfolio of my concept work and life drawing, both personal and for college;
http://www.flickr.com/photos/49641409@N02/sets/72157623937793816/show/

Animation showreel;
http://www.flickr.com/photos/49641409@N02/4585769297/


In particular I want to focus on the animation side but I can still have a slideshow on my DVD for the concept art and life drawing work.
We have already had a tutorial from Alex about the software DVD studio pro and the different things you can customise about it, all I need to do is add these files onto the program and work out how to present it which I will do next.

Friday 23 April 2010

Hand-in

We've done it! Wooooooo :D
Handed our work into the Rave Live team on Wednesday evening and as we have not heard back from them with any problems it seems to be fine.

Jon completed the edit of the animation, there were no real problems although at some points we all wanted a slight change to the edit, and in the end I think we managed to change it enough so that everyone is happy with it.

The only real problem was that the sound designer was not able to complete the music or sound effects in time for us so we had to improvise and use music Emma had found and bought on the internet. I don't think this poses a huge problem though - there is already so much to our animation too many sound effects might overwhelm people! The music goes very nicely with it as well.

From here we are going to go back over the animation and add things we didn't have time for before.. The animation may even turn out a bit longer since we had to cut some of our work to meet the time constraint. There is also the sound to think about which the sound designer has assured us we can expect next week.
Overall I am happy with how our work turned out, the quality of the animation is good and it is consistently in terms of style and humour. It's a piece of work I am definately proud of and am proud of my group for completing :)

Formative - 20/04

Today was the formative with Jared. By this point we had already completed our animation but were still in the process of editing so we had a lot to show him.

Overall I think we did quite well as a group but my blog lagged evidence for some areas - I hadn't posted the animatic Jon made, or commented on our progress as a group but I've since gone back and done that so hopefully I can recover those marks for the summative. It was a good opportunity to see what was missing in my work and to realise I need to begin using my blog to post the status of my showreel! After the hand-in for the Rave Live animation I will start doing that here :)

My team members did well in their formative too, but Jon had marked himself very harshly and Jared had to raise his grades to compensate. I think me and Emma may try encouraging him more since he is always so down about his work when he doesn't need to be.

Monday 19 April 2010

animated scenes

Since we have such a short deadline for this project, we are going to have to rely quite heavily on tweening. Emma has created some flash templates of the characters faces and bodies from different angles so that all we need to do is tween them and then animate their expressions, arms and legs on top of it.

I've just completed the rest of my animated scenes, but there is still some room for editing;


We still need to add the main character being hit by the words 'spotty' 'greasy' and 'nerd' and we're going to redo the spinning part at the end so that there isn't just a blank block of blue attacking him and instead the entire block has the spinning pattern on it.



This is most likely the shortest scene in the animation so I didn't want to put too much detail into it otherwise it would distract from the main character who doesn't really move. Some of the background characters are cameos of myself, Jon and Emma :)



This is the final scene for our animation and there is already a slight problem with the length but we are going to sort that out properly during the editing stage. I may also try and add a few more effects to the scene like a flash of light appearing with the hobo. I also made the background slightly bigger as at it's previous size you couldn't see the characters clearly enough.

My group are overall pleased with the animations however so if we do run out of time this is how the finals will look..

the funky chicken animation

One of the scenes I had to animate involved the boy dancing at a disco. Emma asked me to animate him doing the funky chicken but after searching on youtube I couldn't find the move she wanted (which she demonstrated one day in class). Then I recalled that The Mighty Boosh featured this dance move in one of the shows songs;


(At the time during 41-43 seconds)

Here is my version of it;


It doesn't look exactly right but since in the reference the character is spinning in a circle it was hard to accurately capture it. I've showed it to my group since and they are happy with it so it's fine to leave it like that. Emma and Jon even suggested that we use it at the end for comedic effect :)

I may have to edit it a little more to see how it looks like at a slower speed but for now that part is finished.

Friday 16 April 2010

10-16th April

I had one final background left to draw which is for the pedestal scene at the end;


Kept it simple in the same style of the others and tried to use colours that complimented each other.

For the moment we are on track with our schedule and things are running smoothly. We are working well together as a group meeting deadlines and when we have issues to resolve such as details in the background or changes for the character designs we are able to find a way round them to benefit everyone. I am very pleased with this group, plus our shared love of 2D is great since it seems like most of the class prefers 3D.

Jon also finished the animatic;


So now that that is completed we can begin animating properly... We have also gotten one of our classmates Tom Ritchie to do the proper voiceover and are trying to get a sound design student to help with the background music.

This week on the 13th we also have a DVD Studio Pro walkthrough with Alex for working on our showreels. It was a useful experience as I had never used the software before and I know now how to present my CD showreel better. You can change the backgrounds, add buttons to link to different animations, create menus and slideshows.. It was a little complicated but I've made notes and am confident I can work the software.