Some Animation Shot Updates...

I've been working on a quite a number of shots lately, the thing is, I'm in that awful stupor of thinking that my work isn't good enough. Well, the time has come to just post them and collect feedback regardless! I'm the type of person who is proud of my work, so don't really like showing things off unless I think they're really, really good. And now that my training is finished (...although you're never finished learning, yadda yadda blah de blah) the work I produce should be top notch - I don't have the safety blanket of it-doesn't-matter-if-my-shots-aren't-THE-best-because-I'm-still-learning anymore...so I just have to swallow my pride, put on my thick-skin rhino hide and just do it...post whatever I'm working on, and get some sort of feedback.

This is the latest piece I've been working on. I'm actually editing it right now, but taking a quick break to show you what I've done so far.

Here it is:

 

It's taken from a clip of BBC1's The Voice. The girl (Rachael O'Connor) just got through first round of auditions, and this is her backstage reaction. The rig I used is the Bonnie rig, by Josh Sobel - it's so nice to work with, and it looks really cute too.

I wanted to show you the original clip here too, but it looks like it's been taken down by youtube (boooo!), but I have some screen caps, that I used as a starting point for my thumbnails:

From the clip, I put together my thumbnails, which hopefully you'll be able to make out here:

Right now, my biggest problem/feedback is that I'm not hitting the accents. Which in this case, are the words dream, real and in. So, that's what I'm working on right now...also I need to sort out the right hand and fingers.

When I get another edit put together, I'll post it so you will hopefully be able to see a vast improvement. 

I'm also working on a Willy Wonka clip, as well as a Ball Throw idea which has taken a bit of a back burner...hmmmm...so I'm kinda juggling shots as the moment. It's keeping my mind fresh, at least. 

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Ooops...

I seem to have deleted this important bit of news...

So far this year, I've learnt to animate in 2 additional software programmes: XSI Softimage and Flash (2D).

Ta-daaaah!

I hear you scream at me; "Marc, that's a crap post". Well, yes, I guess it is in terms of bloggy bits for your visual stimulation, but there are things going on in the background...I'm working on a few shots that I'm hoping will be good enough to add to my show reel. I'm focusing on lip sync and human characters. Hopefully my work will be good enough to show you in the not too distant future :)

FROZEN wins the Golden Globe!

The Golden Globes 2014 were last night, and I'm super pleased to see that Frozen won the Best Animated Feature award. Not surprising really, it's a great film (although I did love The Croods too). Not only is the animation superb, but the story and the music is fantastic. Critics say it's the best Disney feature since Beauty and the Beast. I can see why, interestingly, it doesn't contain your typical love story...it's a beautiful tale of friendship, family and sisterhood, with two strong female leads. If you haven't seen it, go and see it now!

It's also no surprise, that there's news of Frozen being turned into a Broadway musical too - according to Rotoscopers.com!

For a full list of Golden Globe winners, check out the Telegraph's run down here.

To buy FROZEN from Amazon.co.uk, go here now or if you're reading this blog from the United States, you can buy the film from Amazon.com here too.

Brushing Up On My Core Skills

Last weekend, I began a google hunt for Life Drawing classes in Edinburgh. I mean, this is Edinburgh, there MUST be some classes somewhere! And yup, there were plenty. I was nearly going to sign up to a 10 week course, costing £170 (!!!) and then read a BBC article about this little group in Glasgow and Edinburgh who hold weekly, drop in Life Drawing classes...for a bargainacious £4.50 per session.

I went along to the City Cafe on Tuesday night, and joined in All The Young Nudes class. I had a great time, and it felt super good to get back into Life Drawing again! You can find all work from the evening on my Sketch Blog, but here's a sample of what I did.

"But Marc, why are you doing this?" I hear you cry... well, one of the things I've learnt whilst job hunting for junior Animation positions, is that studios and directors like to know that the people they have on their teams, do have the basic, core art skills too...and whilst it's easy for me to say "hey, well, I studied at the Cambridge School of Art, y'know", that's not enough. I need to keep practicing, and honing and developing my craft (for want of a less cliche phrase).  Plus, it looks good on the CV if I can say, I regularly attend art classes and-for-that-to-be-true! Sooo I'll be a-sketchin as much as can...and animating, of course.

In other news, the studio in Edinburgh have got back to me, and I'm going in over the next days to learn their software (...horror of horrors, when I rock up for a meeting before Christmas, the bombshell that they don't use Maya, gave me a bit of a stumble).

So, my New Year is off to a pretty good start - in that I've started Art Classes and will be learning a new piece of Animation Software. Lovely.

Bloopers

Well, I don't quite know what happened here, but Zeitraffer (which I use to compose all my rendered images) didn't quite like my rendered files, and gave me this piece of weirdness.

Instead of deleting it, I thought I would share. There's something quite beautiful in its strangeness.

The Escape VFX Festival 2013

I just wanted to dedicate a little piece of my animation blog to the Escape Studios VFX Festival, that took place last week. I had such a great time!

Not only did I work it, but I attended a couple of the screenings too. I was at the Getting Into VFX talk, which was great - although to be honest, it didn't differ much from the same talk they did the previous year at Escape. A nice addition to the panel was Eamonn Butler from Cinesite, who was there to talk about Animation! So obviously, I was very tuned into him.

One of the most interesting things he mentioned, is that he likes a showreel to have a story - definitely something to think about...although I'm not sure how the material I have at the moment, will fit nicely into a coherent story...but will certainly be looking at ways to incorporate that into my reel.

I was also at The Future of Digital Creativity Panel Debate which was also interesting, although it was chaired by the disappointingly bland Danny Leigh, from Film2013. Following that, was a screening from Framestore showcasing the work they did on Gravity - which looked exquisite.

All screenings were hosted by Helen O'Hara from Empire magazine, who was charismatic, interesting and humourous, with her question handling via teh roaming microphone and the use of the VFX twitter hashtag. She lightened the evenings I attended and was a very welcome addition to the festival (she would have done a much better job than Danny Leigh - why was he there anyway???)

As that was the last night, I also went along to the Closing Party - which was lots of fun. It has to be said that the volume of the music wasn't incredibly conducive to coherent talking, but maybe that was just me. It was nice to catch up with familiar faces and congratulate everyone involved in a great festival.

The shift from last year's relatively small VFX festival, to this year's massive offering only makes me even more excited for next year's VFX Festival, from Escape. Congrats to everyone who made it happen!

I'm a Tutor!

Yes, you read that right! I was a tutor for the evening. Well, at least that's the name badge said that I got to wear the other night at Escape Studios VFX Festival. I was helping my animation tutor, Alex, who was leading an Animation Masterclass.

It was really exciting, I actually helped people! This time last year, that's the last thing I thought I would have been able to do. I was able to go round, see how people were getting on, and offer any help that was needed. I was actually pretty nervous, I was worried that someone would ask me how to do something, and I wouldn't know what to do - luckily, that didn't happen - but even if it did, I'm sure they wouldn't have minded...would they?

The Festival is/was great, so much better than last year. Escape have really stepped up their game. The studios looked slicker than ever, and the format was incredibly professional, with a welcome desk for everyone to sign in before they actually got inside...last year's was a bit messy because this wasn't done as effectively. It was nice going back to the place I studied too, gave me those warm and fuzzy feelings.

Escape also have some big screenings and industry talks happening at the Vue cinema in Leicester Square. Nice. They're really bringing on the big guns. I have a couple more events to go to next week, which I'm looking forward to. I'm going to be meeting up with one of my friends from Bluebolt Studios, so it's going to be fun having a catch up in the context of the VFX Industry, instead of down the pub!

I'm hoping to be adding my updated Creature Reel soon too - so watch this space!