I feel that I fulfilled the Professional Skills unit by meeting the core requirements of the unit; namely to identify a target market, an appropriate employer to invite to our degree show and also by scheduling tasks and managing my time. In addition to that, I have also gone out of my way to research areas that are not immediately mentioned within the brief, most prominently, Intellectual Property, which I have become increasingly concerned about and I took it upon myself to research various forms of licensing and in particular, Creative Commons licensing to ensure that our work gets distributed freely and fairly, as intended, and also to ensure that we will get credited for our work by whoever uses it.
I also responded to this unit by incorporating some of my other skills, as well as the CG skills, particularly Web Design. Web design is something that I have become keen about since the Christmas holidays and I have acquired knowledge and experience in this area. I decided to apply my experience of web design to build a web site from scratch to promote the Cat and Rat film and contribute to the marketing of our film. Many people on the course were impressed with the quality of my web site and as a result, a lot of them approached me for advice on building their own film web sites, such as web hosting, buying domains, etc.
Along with applying outside skills and knowledge, I feel I fulfilled this unit by considering and documenting how I market myself and my professional image (i.e. contact cards, web site, etc) and how I communicate and engage with fellow professionals, particularly through trying to contact people from industry. I also fulfilled this unit by considering my time management skills and how I manage my own work to fit in with the work of other team members.
As part of the group that I am working in, this unit helped us to manage team work, such as scheduling work and working within a production pipeline. The Professional Skills unit also helped to highlight the importance of meetings with the team, as well as communication and transparency between all team members, particularly when sharing work and assigning tasks. Before the beginning of this unit, there were numerous issues within the group and a few communication problems, but we managed to resolve all of these using what we had learnt from Professional Skills and by organising meetings to go over work.
Friday, 16 March 2012
Two finished shots
Here are the two finished shots that we worked on as a group and that we are required to submit as part of our assessment.
This is the first shot that we were required to submit; this shot establishes the location in which this story takes place. This shot particularly highlights the environmental modelling talent as well as the intended colour schemes for this film and intended rendering.
https://vimeo.com/38626556
This is the second shot that we were required to submit; this comes from the "They ate together, played together, slept together" line. Although the level of animation is profoundly limited, this particularly highlights the rigging talent in this team, as well as the character modelling talent. However, this shot highlights that we really need to consider lighting and shadow as it doesn't yet feel that these characters are a part of this environment.
http://vimeo.com/38626617
This is the first shot that we were required to submit; this shot establishes the location in which this story takes place. This shot particularly highlights the environmental modelling talent as well as the intended colour schemes for this film and intended rendering.
https://vimeo.com/38626556
This is the second shot that we were required to submit; this comes from the "They ate together, played together, slept together" line. Although the level of animation is profoundly limited, this particularly highlights the rigging talent in this team, as well as the character modelling talent. However, this shot highlights that we really need to consider lighting and shadow as it doesn't yet feel that these characters are a part of this environment.
http://vimeo.com/38626617
Thursday, 15 March 2012
Tweaking Sarah's Poster
To help market the Cat and Rat film, Sarah Strickland designed this poster using a graphics tablet.
This is a wonderful piece of artwork for the film as it establishes the style of the film and the two main characters. It is a digital image, but it does very much look hand painted and there is a real sense of movement and formal elements of art. The poster also reminds me very much of the lost art of hand painted film posters, such as the Star Wars poster that was painted by Drew Stuzan, who did numerous other film posters in the 70s and 80s.
The Cat and Rat poster will be hosted on our website and will also be printed and displayed at the degree show. The only thing that this poster is lacking, which is a fairly practical matter are any details about where the audience find out more information and also some credits to indicate everyone's roles in the film, This is where my input for this movie poster comes in.
In order for this to look like a professional movie poster, I decided to include the standard movie poster style credits that have long, thin capital letters as pictured below.
When I started writing up the credits, I initially wrote quite extensive ones like this.
These are posters from short movies made by the open source community; I chose to go for these as reference because like our film, they are short subject films that are animated and they have been largely distributed freely and at events, which we intend to do with Cat and Rat. Both of these films have very small teams, meaning that the members would be taking on multiple roles. In order to avoid repeating names again and again, they have confined the credits to general roles such as Art Direction and Animation.
We initially had a few too many credits on our poster which credited specialist areas that most people would not understand, such as "UV Mapping". Now we have confined it to more general areas such as Story, Direction, Editing, Modelling, Animation and Art. All credits for specialist roles will still feature in the final film, itself. Another noteworthy point in these posters is that the website is display in block capitals in a larger font than the rest of the credits. This means that our attention is very much focused on the web address as well as the imagery, so anyone that is captivated by this piece of artwork and the film concept behind it can visit the website.
In order to figure out the order of the credits and how they should roughly look, I used the following image as a template.
This consists of two ways of organising the credits, one to the left and the other center aligned. I quite like the center aligned one and I think it will fit well in the sky area of our poster, in between the rocky mountains and just above the rat's nose. I am going to be a bit loose and experimental when it comes to fonts, but I will not deviate too far from the thin block capitals.
After cutting down the number of poster credits, I started playing around with generic movie poster-style fonts such as Univers, which I found did not stand out clearly enough against the blue sky. I decided on a font called PT Sans Narrow, which is fairly narrow and is still readable against the backdrop. I was also able to style the font face so that the roles appeared regularly and the names appeared in bold. This could make the text easier on the eyes as there is more variation in the font. I also split the credits into several lines, starting with the narration, sound and editing; followed by all the pre-production jobs, then the CG based jobs and finally important roles like direction and story.
Here is how the poster looks with the credits put on top. They are readable, concise and understandable enough for anyone to get an idea of how we were all involved in this film project. This piece of art now functions as an advertisement for the film that can be displayed both online and also at our degree show so anyone that is interested in our film can learn more. Click on the image to see a larger version.
The Cat and Rat poster will be hosted on our website and will also be printed and displayed at the degree show. The only thing that this poster is lacking, which is a fairly practical matter are any details about where the audience find out more information and also some credits to indicate everyone's roles in the film, This is where my input for this movie poster comes in.
In order for this to look like a professional movie poster, I decided to include the standard movie poster style credits that have long, thin capital letters as pictured below.
I have credited a broad range of areas, some more specific than others (we have not yet assigned the roles of compositing, editing or sound design), but when I looked at numerous other film posters, I found that they were all done in a very specific order and only certain roles were credited, meaning that we needed to cut this down.
In order to inform the look of our poster, I looked at some film posters from other short animated films.
We initially had a few too many credits on our poster which credited specialist areas that most people would not understand, such as "UV Mapping". Now we have confined it to more general areas such as Story, Direction, Editing, Modelling, Animation and Art. All credits for specialist roles will still feature in the final film, itself. Another noteworthy point in these posters is that the website is display in block capitals in a larger font than the rest of the credits. This means that our attention is very much focused on the web address as well as the imagery, so anyone that is captivated by this piece of artwork and the film concept behind it can visit the website.
In order to figure out the order of the credits and how they should roughly look, I used the following image as a template.
After cutting down the number of poster credits, I started playing around with generic movie poster-style fonts such as Univers, which I found did not stand out clearly enough against the blue sky. I decided on a font called PT Sans Narrow, which is fairly narrow and is still readable against the backdrop. I was also able to style the font face so that the roles appeared regularly and the names appeared in bold. This could make the text easier on the eyes as there is more variation in the font. I also split the credits into several lines, starting with the narration, sound and editing; followed by all the pre-production jobs, then the CG based jobs and finally important roles like direction and story.
Here is how the poster looks with the credits put on top. They are readable, concise and understandable enough for anyone to get an idea of how we were all involved in this film project. This piece of art now functions as an advertisement for the film that can be displayed both online and also at our degree show so anyone that is interested in our film can learn more. Click on the image to see a larger version.
Cat character rig
I should have posted a video demonstrating the cat rig ages ago, but there were numerous issues with this rig, which I have now resolved. These included the cat caving in on itself when I rotated it, as well as numerous issues with the weighting, particularly in the cats chest in which it would go down too far if I moved the back control down. These are fixed and now the cat is ready to be animated properly. Here is a video of the cat rig, complete with controls, weighting, drivers and blend shapes. All of this was done by me, but I did get help with the weighting from James Tomkins.
Marketing myself
When it comes to showcasing all of the films at Ravensbourne2012, our end of year degree show, I will need to market myself in a way to stand out from the rest and to assert my specialist skills. One method that I am intending to use, which I remember the final year Animation students from last year did extensively at Ravensbourne2011 was to distribute business cards.
I already have business cards that I felt inspired to make (using vistaprint) in November, after my Arcade film project idea did not get green lit and I wanted to offer my skills to as many other groups as possible. At that point, I did not have any contact cards so it proved difficult. I decided that the best thing to do would be to finally get business cards so that anyone interested in my work could get in touch.
I already have business cards that I felt inspired to make (using vistaprint) in November, after my Arcade film project idea did not get green lit and I wanted to offer my skills to as many other groups as possible. At that point, I did not have any contact cards so it proved difficult. I decided that the best thing to do would be to finally get business cards so that anyone interested in my work could get in touch.
My contact card consists of two sides, on one side I have a red shaded spiralling image, accompanied by my name and my three core specialisms; Animation, Rigging and Character Design. On the other side, there is a self-portrait of me and a few contact details, namely my website, email address, phone number and twitter. I chose this selection of contact details as they are the main ones that I use for professional networking.
I intend to leave a pile of these cards at the stall for the Cat and Rat film, as well as keeping hold of some in case I chat to anyone at the degree show and I want to give it to them personally. These contact cards have a spiralling red background, which is an image that I have just seemed to adopt over the past year as part of my "corporate image". I adopted this after applying it to a unit specific blog in my second year and it just seemed to stick.
The motif is also hugely present of my personal website, which is another core means of marketing myself.
This website consists of my showreel, as well as contact details, my blog and a selection of my animation and artwork. I have made sure that anything that I use at the degree show or in professional networking carries this strong image and directs back to my website, so that people will remember me and will be able to learn more about me as an Animator.
Furthermore, any posters or promotional material that we use to market the Cat and Rat film will carry our names, as well as our specialist areas within the team, as you will see on the Cat and Rat website, meaning anyone interested in my work will be able to track me down.
Suitable places to work
As part of this unit, I am going to need to research into various places where I would be best suited to work and possibly those where I may not be as suited. This part of Professional Skills very much reminds me of IPP from the first two years in which I needed to identify my strengths (both within my artwork and as a professional), as well as identifying the sort of jobs and places that I would want to aim for.
I am still keen to work as a Character Animator when I graduate from university, but lately, I have also started to develop an enthusiasm for motion capture and I would be keen to work with motion capture in some capacity when I enter the industry. Although I am not entirely going to write off London as a place for work, seen as there are an array of post-production houses that are hired to do VFX for major Hollywood films, I really want to move out of London and experience life elsewhere, given that I am desperate for a change of scenery.
I am still keen to work as a Character Animator when I graduate from university, but lately, I have also started to develop an enthusiasm for motion capture and I would be keen to work with motion capture in some capacity when I enter the industry. Although I am not entirely going to write off London as a place for work, seen as there are an array of post-production houses that are hired to do VFX for major Hollywood films, I really want to move out of London and experience life elsewhere, given that I am desperate for a change of scenery.
Places and jobs that may suit me
Rockstar North
Even though I am keen to work in films, I have not written of working in gaming in the slightest. Rockstar North are based in Edinburgh and are currently offering Junior Character Animator roles. The responsibilities of the job include editing recorded motion capture data to a high quality as determined by the Lead Animator, as well as creating animations consistent to a character's personality and movement. The job also requires applicants to produce animation work to tight deadlines, without compromising artistic integrity.
Working as a Junior Animator at Rockstar North may be suitable to consider as this involves working in another city, which appeals to me. The job requires an understanding of the basic principles of animation, as well as a strong background in animation and art; which I feel that I have seen as I have mainly done animation and general art courses, all of which I have passed with the highest possible grade, to get to this point. I do have a keen interest in video gaming, I am not sure if it is strong enough to work in the industry.
I could improve my prospects for this job, by trying to learn Motionbuilder; something which they state is desirable. Although I am fluent in Maya, as the job description specifies experience in at least one major CG software package, I will make myself more suitable for the job by learning another piece of relevant software.
Although I recently redid my showreel to become more up to date, there is a profound lack of recent work in it and I need to build it up, something that I will most definitely have a chance to do over the Easter and into the third term as this is when we are due to begin animation. The job description also requires understanding of human movement and form, which I possess, but I have not looked into for a while and therefore need to start sketching again.
Working as a Junior Animator at Rockstar North may be suitable to consider as this involves working in another city, which appeals to me. The job requires an understanding of the basic principles of animation, as well as a strong background in animation and art; which I feel that I have seen as I have mainly done animation and general art courses, all of which I have passed with the highest possible grade, to get to this point. I do have a keen interest in video gaming, I am not sure if it is strong enough to work in the industry.
I could improve my prospects for this job, by trying to learn Motionbuilder; something which they state is desirable. Although I am fluent in Maya, as the job description specifies experience in at least one major CG software package, I will make myself more suitable for the job by learning another piece of relevant software.
Although I recently redid my showreel to become more up to date, there is a profound lack of recent work in it and I need to build it up, something that I will most definitely have a chance to do over the Easter and into the third term as this is when we are due to begin animation. The job description also requires understanding of human movement and form, which I possess, but I have not looked into for a while and therefore need to start sketching again.
The Imaginarium
Andy Serkis' new motion capture studio, based in London. As I said, my desire to work outside London (and possibly the UK, itself) does not mean that I have written off working in London altogether. This studio is very new, having only been established in 2011, meaning that they are fairly small and I could have a chance of finding work here. The Imaginarium appeals to me as I have developed a keen interest in motion capture, since trying it out as part of my dissertation research. Furthermore, they intend to do work for a broad range of productions including film, television and gaming
One job which appeals to me is Motion Editor as, much like Character Animators at Rockstar North, this requires taking live action motion and then manipulating it to increase the emotionality and believability of the characters. However, I know that I am not ready to undertake a job like this as this requires previous experience in feature films, broadcast and gaming, which I do not possess. In addition, it requires understanding of scripting (Python, MEL and Blade), experience in MotionBuilder and Nuance as well as experience of setting up and calibrating Optical motion capture. Although I have experience of setting up motion capture with depth perception cameras, I have not used Optical Motion Capture, which is fast becoming industry standard.
Thankfully, The Imaginarium do have a one month internship, which is recommended for anyone that has aspirations to work in film, television or gaming (which I have). The internship says very little about the responsibilities that will be undertaken, but I imagine it will not be that different from the job of runner, which involves doing various odds and ends within the studio. This job involves working more in the office and not the studio but it should help me to get the relevant experience that I need to be able to do higher jobs.
Places that may not suit me
ENVY
A post production house based in London, which came to talk at Ravensbourne a few weeks back. There were a few things that appealed to me about this studio, such as it being in a smaller environment, as I find that I work better in a smaller team when accomplishing projects. However, this studio, fairly unusually, seems to desire generalists as opposed to specialists. This is problematic as everyone on our course has been encouraged to specialise in a specific area or set of areas. I, personally, am very much into Character Animation as well as Rigging and Design and this is how I have developed since I have been on my degree, ENVY is perhaps somewhere that I may not fit in as I have very specialist skills, which I do well and I would want my skills to be valued.
Tuesday, 13 March 2012
Individual Contract
Here is a PDF copy of my Individual Contract that I am posting up as part of the Professional Skills unit.
https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B4-31MYKnD3PMzdJUXNkdXFRSkNHeDZDRFppWVAyZw
https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B4-31MYKnD3PMzdJUXNkdXFRSkNHeDZDRFppWVAyZw
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