Today i focused on making more typographical animation, namely the titles and lower thirds for each of the interviews. For this Fiona recommended i try out the Mister Horse animation Composer, which offered some cool animations quickly. Editing the values of the animation was not my strongest suit however, but i managed to make something that looked nice.
In the afternoon, Fiona had booked us some time with Rob to look at out FMP, but after talking to Rob earlier in the week we decided it would be more useful for us for him to look at our showreels and I got some amazing feedback! We first discussed Max's showreel so i mostly took the broader advice from his meeting, things such as making sure that we have showreels tailored for specific branches of animation, for example having a showreel more catered to motion graphics and one more tailored to more 2D character based animation. If i were to go for freelance work i should look to aim for more of a personal style, perhaps pushing branding a little more, and if i were to want to get work sooner rather than later its good to apply for smaller studios and move up to bigger ones after some experience as they usually hire faster than bigger studios, and finally learn from other peoples showreels, if they use a good technique then copy it. It would also be worth putting the same ammount of effort into the cover letter as i put into the showreel.
More specifically for my current showreel i also got some good feedback. I need to work at making sure the song and the animation go well together, particularly as i used quite a bouncy song i need to make sure my actions are on beat. Ethan needs a little more breathing room at the start and end, with the audio fading out and back in again a bit later and earlier respectively. Also it would be good to aim for motion to be going in roughly the same direction on cuts. Finally i need to work on my logo, its a good logo but the intro isn't animated enough, also it would be worth losing my name underneath the logo as it distracts from the logo itself.
I wasnt expecting so much feedback and while it was very inspiring it was also a little overwhelming, however i now have a good list of things to work on to improve my showreel.
Monday, 24 April 2017
Tuesday, 18 April 2017
London Animation Club
While doing the internship for Matter&Co i got a chance to head to one of the London Animation Club meet ups and boy was it fun. After a day of work, often ending feeling incredibly drained it was so much fun to get together with a bunch of likeminded people to watch some old animation. It had the same atmosphere as MAF and was very much welcomed after a long day. We watched some of Bob Godfrey's work which spurred a return of Jez Stewart who had previously presented Bob Godfrey's Great at MAF 2015.
From the Website:
"Know Your Europeans was John Halas’ last film project: a feature film that celebrated European Union composed of short films, each about a different European country and made by a different animation team. In the end only Bob Godfrey’s film Know Your Europeans – UK was ever released and only Bob’s film, Christoph Simon’s film for Germany and the film trailer were ever completed – although several of the others exist in one form or another. This will be the first time all of those will be screened together.
From the Website:
"Know Your Europeans was John Halas’ last film project: a feature film that celebrated European Union composed of short films, each about a different European country and made by a different animation team. In the end only Bob Godfrey’s film Know Your Europeans – UK was ever released and only Bob’s film, Christoph Simon’s film for Germany and the film trailer were ever completed – although several of the others exist in one form or another. This will be the first time all of those will be screened together.
The proposed films were:
Belgium (An Vrombaut)
Denmark (Jannik Hastrup)
Germany – (Christoph Simon)
Italy – (Bruno Bozzetto)
Spain (Bob Balser)
France (Michel Ocelot)
United Kingdom (Bob Godfrey)
Greece – (Jordan Ananiadis)
Ireland (Aiden Hickey)
Luxembourg (unknown)
Netherland (Petra Dolleman)
Portugal – (Alvaro Feijo)
LAC regulars Emma Calder and Ged Haney worked on the Germany film and our old friend Kevin Baldwin animated the UK film. John Halas’ daughter Vivien Halas and Jez Stewart of the BFI will introduce the evening."
One notable event for the evening was when Fiona asked a question on our behalf, she asked "What advice would you give to recent animation graduates?" and while the answer was the usual network and good showreel, the animators pressed Fiona for what her role was and when she said she was a producer she had a queue of people rushing to give her their card, including one of the animator who worked with Bob Godfrey. This made me feel a little bit uneasy, if these successful animators are asking recent graduates for work then the state of the entertainment animation industry might not be very good.
I thought i would get a good chance to network but i was exhausted and most people shot off afterwards, but i did make sure i met Martin Pickles, the animator who runs it, but he was quite anxious to leave as well. All in all was a very fun experience and would definitely want to meet with them again.
Belgium (An Vrombaut)
Denmark (Jannik Hastrup)
Germany – (Christoph Simon)
Italy – (Bruno Bozzetto)
Spain (Bob Balser)
France (Michel Ocelot)
United Kingdom (Bob Godfrey)
Greece – (Jordan Ananiadis)
Ireland (Aiden Hickey)
Luxembourg (unknown)
Netherland (Petra Dolleman)
Portugal – (Alvaro Feijo)
LAC regulars Emma Calder and Ged Haney worked on the Germany film and our old friend Kevin Baldwin animated the UK film. John Halas’ daughter Vivien Halas and Jez Stewart of the BFI will introduce the evening."
One notable event for the evening was when Fiona asked a question on our behalf, she asked "What advice would you give to recent animation graduates?" and while the answer was the usual network and good showreel, the animators pressed Fiona for what her role was and when she said she was a producer she had a queue of people rushing to give her their card, including one of the animator who worked with Bob Godfrey. This made me feel a little bit uneasy, if these successful animators are asking recent graduates for work then the state of the entertainment animation industry might not be very good.
I thought i would get a good chance to network but i was exhausted and most people shot off afterwards, but i did make sure i met Martin Pickles, the animator who runs it, but he was quite anxious to leave as well. All in all was a very fun experience and would definitely want to meet with them again.
Day 2 Matter&Co
Today i managed to Finish off the intro animation. one thing that has really slowed me down is asking for feedback fairly often, but i was quite unfamiliar with what the aims were for the animation and also a lack of confidence of my own taste in style, however due to time not necessarily being a constraint for this project i was happy to let it draw out for as long as Fiona or Rob were willing to let me.
In the afternoon I started colour grading, I really struggled with this but most probably because it was the end of the day. One issue i found however was not being able to keep consistent, i would finish colour grading one interview thinking it looked ok, then compared it with another i had previously colour graded only for them to look very different. I will continue colour grading another time but it had made me very frustrated and had to stop.
As time goes on i feel more settled, while initially felt like i wouldn't be able to handle an office job like this i feel as time goes on that i am more comfortable with it. I do end each day exhausted but i feel this is something i would get used to, and largely due to my inexperience.
In the afternoon I started colour grading, I really struggled with this but most probably because it was the end of the day. One issue i found however was not being able to keep consistent, i would finish colour grading one interview thinking it looked ok, then compared it with another i had previously colour graded only for them to look very different. I will continue colour grading another time but it had made me very frustrated and had to stop.
As time goes on i feel more settled, while initially felt like i wouldn't be able to handle an office job like this i feel as time goes on that i am more comfortable with it. I do end each day exhausted but i feel this is something i would get used to, and largely due to my inexperience.
Tuesday, 11 April 2017
Day 1 at Matter&Co
At the start of week i was quite nervous, i wasn't quite sure what to expect and i felt a pressure to keep up an appearance, i would quickly learn that it wasn't as intense as i initially thought and felt very welcome and more excited to get to work.
Traveling to work on the tube in London was another thing i was a little apprehensive about but at the end of the day i felt i knew it a little better. How i felt about living in London was something i wanted to look at while i was there and continued to do so.
First days roles - my task was to animate a title screen from assets provided. Assets weren't optimised for animation so had to work longer on fixing than animating, but it got me learning illustrator, aspects like layers working separately from paths, however i noticed there was a strange difference between the way vectors worked in illustrator and after effects which i never quite understood and just had to work around by doing things like expanding paths due to a texture path over the top of it acting strange in after effects.
Meeting everyone was another big deal for me, and i got the chance to do a little bit of networking at lunch as we all went out for a burger at lunch, i only got to meet around 3 people of the creative team besides Fiona and it felt quite small and we didn't see very much of Tim throughout the day. Everyone was incredibly friendly and welcoming, particularly Rob and Ollie, the head of design and designer respectively. Furthermore their help offering feedback on the project throughout the day was helpful.
Fiona helped us a lot in getting started and then left us to it, this really helped me settle in but was also incredibly helpful in giving us a place to stay and even getting this placement in the first place so a special thank you to her.
Traveling to work on the tube in London was another thing i was a little apprehensive about but at the end of the day i felt i knew it a little better. How i felt about living in London was something i wanted to look at while i was there and continued to do so.
First days roles - my task was to animate a title screen from assets provided. Assets weren't optimised for animation so had to work longer on fixing than animating, but it got me learning illustrator, aspects like layers working separately from paths, however i noticed there was a strange difference between the way vectors worked in illustrator and after effects which i never quite understood and just had to work around by doing things like expanding paths due to a texture path over the top of it acting strange in after effects.
Meeting everyone was another big deal for me, and i got the chance to do a little bit of networking at lunch as we all went out for a burger at lunch, i only got to meet around 3 people of the creative team besides Fiona and it felt quite small and we didn't see very much of Tim throughout the day. Everyone was incredibly friendly and welcoming, particularly Rob and Ollie, the head of design and designer respectively. Furthermore their help offering feedback on the project throughout the day was helpful.
Fiona helped us a lot in getting started and then left us to it, this really helped me settle in but was also incredibly helpful in giving us a place to stay and even getting this placement in the first place so a special thank you to her.
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