Animation Showreel 2013

I created a new showreel a few weeks back to include some more recent work. I've improved my animation skills a lot since my last showreel, so I thought it would be best to update it. I included my entry to 11 Second Club and also a weighted animation, along with scenes from the VFX module. I think it shows a range of animation skills but also shows my improvement over the course of 4 months. I showed this at the last All Animated meeting and got some nice feedback from it and it was nice to hear that other people thought I had improved a lot too. Keeping your showreel up to date is always a crucial thing, skills can easily be improved and new work produced, you just have to make sure that what you put in your showreel is the work you are most proud and confident about. If there is ever any doubt in your mind about a piece of work, don't put it in. When it comes to show your showreel to other people you need to be able to explain your work and your love of what you do needs to come through this.


Animation Showreel 2013 from Siobhan Parkhouse on Vimeo.

Chris Oatley: When Jobs In The Animation Industry Disappear

This post from Chris Oatley was posted a while back, showing his views on the state of the animation industry and how to cope with the lack of jobs being on offer at the minute. There have been a lot of layoffs within the animation industry lately, and as someone who is going to be graduating in a year it's quite worrying. The people who have been laid off have been in the industry a long time so going up against someone who is far more experienced than I am is quite scary. I need to remember to keep my morale up and don't give up.

Chris Oatley brings up a point: If your dream dies, what will you do?
I can't let dips in the industry discourage myself, I have to keep striving for what I love and my passion. I've come to realise that I don't get the same enjoyment or satisfaction out of anything but animation. Animation is my drive and I'm not going to stop pursing my dream, I may be scared or nervous about not finding that job but hopefully if I keep going for it, I'll get there one day.

No, I don’t think you can guarantee success with a great attitude, hard work and persistence, but you can guarantee failure without them.

I feel like I should be able to achieve my dream, I have the motivation, persistence and I always try and work as hard as I can. It will just be a matter of time and building up experience. All I can do is just keep working and improving. Practice, practice, practice.

You have absolutely NO control over fluctuations in the economy or the waves of change in the industry.

What you DO have control over is the quality of your work, your focus, determination, passion and imagination.

If the animation industry is in a downturn, don’t go down with it.

Stay strong.

No matter what, there will always be layoffs, in any industry you go in to, you just have to remember to keep going. If there are no jobs going, make some. Create my own projects to do in my spare time, by doing something it keeps myself proactive and shows that I'm not just sitting around letting my skills go to waste. This is something I will have to consider once I graduate next year, I'll most likely be moving back home until I can find a job so in the mean time I will have to keep doing small projects to keep my skills fresh. This would also be a good time to collaborate some more with other people and produce something we really like and enjoy.

Visiting Speaker - Tom Evans

We had a visiting speaker come in last week and talk about his work and journey in the digital industry, going from companies to now working as a freelancer. Below are the notes I took in his talk:

Freelance creative in the digital industry 

No experience is bad experience 

Much easier to sell yourself if you can sum yourself up in a sentence
More time to concentrate on your speciality 

Diversify - have a look around at other opportunities and always have a back up plan

Don't expect to get a job instantly - work experience is really valuable, meeting people, work on live projects and get your foot in the door

You get out with what you put in with work experience. Make an effort, ask questions, start conversations, get feedback from people etc, need to make an impression 

Don't expect your first job to be glamorous - prove what you can do, do everything to a high standard 

Practise being fast - need to learn to work fast, the more you push yourself, the more you learn 

Keep learning - don't stop learning just because you've started work. Be a sponge and absorb everything. Keep asking about the stuff you're interested in and you can move towards it 

Think about what you want - make sure you know what you want and what you're going for is right 

Freelance is a lot different to full time work
More creative control and freedom going freelance and has the time to make games in spare time
Got the time to do the stuff you want to do
Downsides: no sick leave, no holidays, has to constantly keep working to get money 

Learn to talk about what you do - need to have good communication skills and be able to talk about your work intelligently. Need to be confident when talking about your work 

Know your audience and learn how to write - do some research before contacting a company
Find out the name of the person you're emailing
Tailor portfolio to the company and position you're applying for
Don't send out bulk emails 

Be proactive - don't sit around waiting for people to come to you
Do anything off your own back, looks good in your portfolio 

As a freelancer, got a lot of the work from the people you already know
Meet interesting people, go to networking events etc
Actively listen to what people have to say

Everything that Tom mentioned has been reoccurring through each speaker that we've had in to talk. It just makes more of an emphasis that experience is key and it's about the people you know. A lot of this I already knew about (first job won't be glamorous, be proactive, know your audience) but it just reinforced it in my own mind. There's a lot of take in and it's quite scary knowing that I haven't got long before I finish my degree, so right now I'm trying to as much as I can to ensure that I'm prepared for that time. I've been emailing places about work experience and any internships available, as well as connecting with other people to see about potential work collaborations which could help me out next year. I know I need to make more connections so I'm planning on going to more networking events and other festivals in the near future.

Competition Result - 11 Second Club

The voting took place for 11 Second Club and I ended up coming 114th out of 267 entries. I would have been really pleased with myself if I managed to get into the top 100, but for my first attempt I think I did alright. I managed to place in the top half of the entries, which looking at it in that way makes me feel good about what I put out. One of the comments I got from my animation, was that I need to push the poses more. I've never really done this and it's definitely something I can attempt in my next animation. Any pose that you think you've created, it can always be pushed more, that's something I took from an animation analysis by Joe Bowers.

I was really worried to begin with about entering the competition as I felt I wasn't ready and didn't think I could manage lip syncing and performance. I had never really done either before and was scared of being dropped in the deep end. I did come across a few issues with performance and not being able to get the poses that I wanted, and also when it came to polishing I found this a lot harder. I was using a much more complex rig that I was previously used to so this pushed me further, but also got myself used to working with an industry standard rig. It was great being able to have full control over everything and the rig working in the way that I wanted it to.

I think I will be definitely entering future months of 11 Second Club, probably over summer as I will have the most time then. I can see the benefit of doing this as it has improved my skills and pushed me further than I could have anticipated. The higher placing entries are always polished to a high standard and rendered out to a high quality, it will take me a long time to get to this stage, but it's something to aim for.

Anthony Ward

Yesterday, Anthony Ward came in to talk to our course about his career in the industry and how he took the leap into becoming a freelancer. Anthony is a freelance digital artist, animator and digital tutor who began his career in a small company, and learnt 3D in his spare time. He spent around 15 years working in studios before deciding to finally go freelance and has done a range of jobs including modeling, animation, lead artist, and even wrote a few books on character development and modeling. Anthony gave some really useful advice regarding if you were to go freelance that the best thing would be to work within a studio first, here you can then gain the valuable experience of working in a team and understanding the pipeline. When going freelance people are more likely to trust you more if you have this prior knowledge and experience. Along with being a freelancer, Anthony also produces tutorials for 3D World magazine and Digital Tutors.

What was also interesting to hear, was that he woud suggest learning MEL scripting as it's a useful and invaluable tool to learn, because it can save you time and create shortcuts for yourself. It's something that I had in my mind before hand and I think I will now delve into it more, at least getting to grips with the basics. Having a wider knowledge will always be beneficial as even though you should be focused on a specific area, knowing how to rig for example, will not only benefit yourself but make you more attractive to employers.

After his talk, Anthony came round and spoke to people about their work and I got some good feedback from him on my animation. I would love to improve on the animations he commented on, but I will take this advice and implement it on my future works, otherwise I'll never put a piece to end. I know I have a lot of confidence issues when it comes to my animation, so it was nice to hear that he thought I was doing well and should just keep going.

The price of animation

An interesting article came about today in The Huffington Post about the difference in cost it takes to create an animated movie between the larger studios, Pixar, Dreamworks and Blue Sky compared to smaller studios such as Sony Pictures Animation. Recently there have been a lot of layoffs within the animation industry - "bigger is no longer thought of as better in Hollywood."

Sony Pictures Animation have consistently brought out stunning animated films, with their most recent Hotel Transylvania being my top favourite right now. They manage to bring out these high standard animations on a much smaller budget than the larger studios. This article has really made me wonder why there is a need for production cost to be so high when other studios are managing to do it for a lot less and sometimes to a better standard. Is it the technology? Too many staff? The production is too long? All these factors, and others may account towards the cost but is it all necessary? 

We as an audience have come to expect too much from cinema, it has reached a stage now where everything has to be high impact, pristine and complex visual, visually stunning and making use of CG.  You see films that have been made with a budget of hundreds of millions of dollars, and it's actually quite hard to comprehend, that all of that just goes on one film.  It would be really interesting to see how studios could cope on a smaller budget and if they could still produce their high end animated features. Budget will always play a big part in anything but it seems like, as technology has progressed, the price of creating animation has also increased, obviously this makes sense however if it carries on it will just become far too expensive, and the studios will take a loss in their makings (which some are already doing). Cutting the budget to an animated feature may mean cutting their production team down which would involve job loss, so that's another thing to take into consideration and how it could impact the animation industry and coming out to find work. 

How my essay relates to my own focus

This year we we abel to choose our own topic to write about for an essay, as I am primarily interested in animation, I wanted to explore a topic that dealt with animation and some of the issues that have occurred within them. A major topic is feminism and how the female characters within Disney films are portrayed. I wanted to expand my knowledge on the topic and see how the female characters could affect the audience and if this would then have any impact on their lives. I also introduced The Gaze Theory and how it could be seen that the female characters could be related to this theory.

By looking into feminism and the portrayal of characters, I found that there needs to be a lot of consideration when it comes to designing characters and the story around them. The majority of Disney films are princess movies, and over the years they have grown and not stuck to the stereotypical traits of how a woman should be, they have gone from being passive and only wanting to find love, to having ambition and a great deal of independence. How a character is designed will affect the audience greatly, the audience needs to be able to empathise with the character and connect with them on some level, in order for them to be engaged within the film. It's made me realise that when I come to creating my own animations, with my own characters, I should really spend a good amount of time developing the character and the personality. Yes the story may drive the film, but the character supports it, without characters, how else will the film progress?

As I introduced The Gaze Theory, it has also led me to think about the design of female characters. The first impressions of Jessica Rabbit from Who Framed Roger Rabbit may be that the audience doesn't like her because of the way she is dressed and how her body is revealed, however she specifically says within the film, that it's not her fault that she was designed this way. Jessica Rabbit has been created in a way that, even though she is quite sexualised, she ends up choosing to marry the one that makes her laugh, she could have any man she wants but she chooses Roger Rabbit. Audiences may still disagree with her design, however the fact that she doesn't conform to the stereotypes of her looks is a good thing. There are many things to take into consideration when designing characters, more times than most, the majority of characters will be visually appealing, especially the leads, whereas the villains will be less attractive. Everyone wants to make a good looking character but is it always needed? It's something to think about...

Networking

We've always been told networking is something you can't just forget about and not do, we need to get ourselves out there and make contacts with people. When attending Animex, it's all I heard from the speakers, that they got their jobs through the contacts they had, through the people they knew and met along the way. I've only started networking recently, so it's still a new thing to me and I honestly find it hard to just strike up a conversation with someone. It feels like unless you have a common interest with that person you're bombarding them with your business card. I was lucky enough at BAF to meet a couple of people there who were really friendly and for my first time networking, it was a nice experience. At Animex I found that everyone was more interested in talking to the professionals and getting advice than networking with each other. That was my view, but I may have just been too shy to talk to other people. I definitely need to build up my confidence more. Once I get talking to someone it's fine, it's just that beginning point. 

All Animated is a networking organisation for the North, run by a group of lovely people. They are still in the process of creating their new site but you can keep up to date via Facebook and Twitter. I've only attended one meeting so far but hopefully can get myself to the next one. The one back before Christmas, was where I met someone to create the score for my last piece of animation, Invasion!. I also got some great advice from a freelance animator, Mike Green, about what to include in a showreel. Sometimes it's not all about getting contacts but the advice you can get from other people who have had more experience in the industry. I've also began to post more of my works in progress on twitter, to try and get feedback from other people as I have a lot of other animators on there. This also is building up my confidence of my work as I always think it's never good enough, but I know that I'm not the only one to think this. It's all about confidence at the end of the day and it's something I really need to work on.  

AnimSchool

AnimSchool Channel

By using the Malcolm rig from AnimSchool, I found that they put up a lot of their critique videos online when the tutors are reviewing students work. I began watching these quite a lot and found them really invaluable, it gives you a real example and you can see, from a professional stand point, how they would improve the shot by pushing poses, changing timing, having different expressions etc. The tutors point out things that may not have been obvious to the student and for myself, it's something I can bare in mind when it comes to creating my own animations. Not only do they give critiques, but they also offer tutorials sometimes, one was on blinking and through this it really made me realise how much more there was to it, than just the open and closing of the eyelids. Because they use the Malcolm rig too, it allows me to go back and try it out for myself and see what these controls can do.

Looking into AnimSchool, it's making me wonder if I should save up and enrol onto some of these courses after I graduate. They can be quite expensive but the standard of animation that comes out is pretty amazing, and the fact that you get real industry professionals critiquing you is even more invaluable. It could help push my animation even further and bring me up to the standard of others out there. It's something to consider, I originally wanted to do a Masters but I really can't afford that and I think online animation courses would be far more beneficial. It's all about the portfolio at the end of the day and a Masters would only be necessary if I wanted to become a teacher. There's always time to go back and do one if I wanted, but to improve my animation skills I think online courses might be the way to go.

Animation Practice

So I thought I would get in some more animation practice as I had some spare time just before and during Easter break. I wanted to get a pushing animation done as this is one of the basics and something that needs to be practised. I made sure I created reference videos so I could analyse these and refer back to them when animating. Reference videos is something I always do now, they are so useful, trying to do it from your head, I find just doesn't work. There may be parts of the body that move without you really noticing unless you analyse that video.

From this I broke it down to key poses which I started creating within Maya. I decided to use the Malcom rig, courtesy of AnimSchool. It's a really good, comprehensive rig that I've slowly got accustomed to. There is a lot of flexibility within the rig, stretchy limbs, IK/FK switch, good amount of facial control and the ability to use abxPicker (unfortunately I had issues with trying to get this to work within my Maya so couldn't get to try it out).

I really took my time with this animation to try and get it as good as I could, whilst I had the time. I made sure I got feedback from several people whilst in the process, to see what I could improve on and if the timings were correct. As you can see below, that's my blocking stage before I went into linear. I followed the same workflow as I did in the visual effects module and can really see the benefits of it. Below the blocking is my final animation, I spent the time cleaning up the keys in the graph editor and making sure the curves were smoothed out. This extra time does help, it smooths out the animation and makes it more fluid. I lost some work near the end and had to redo a lot of it, but it was for the best really as I ended up doing it better than the last time and in a quicker time. I've learnt a lot by doing this, and got to use the IK/FK switch for the first time. By changing the arms to FK, it allowed me to have the hands stay in one position whilst the rest of the body moved. The next thing I want to improve on is rendering, I want to render my animations out nicer, for example how Animation Mentor do it. By the looks of things it might be ambient occlusion or final gathering, but I will look into this further soon.

Competition - 11 Second Club

As part of the PPP module, we have been required to enter a competition. Because I want to specialise in animation, and particularly character animation I thought that 11 Second Club would be a great one to enter. Each month a new audio clip is published and you have a month in which to animate to that clip, in whatever medium you prefer. I've chosen to do this months as I have some spare time before a new module kicks in. What's good about 11 Second Club is that you can post your work in progress and get feedback from others so you can improve before the deadline. The winner of each month gets an eCritique from an AnimationMentor professional. Obviously I am nowhere near the standard of the winners of each month but it's something to aspire to.

I found that there weren't many animation competitions out there. They were either competitions for festivals or almost like live briefs. 11 Second Club, I think is the best one for myself, even though I find it quite daunting entering amongst much better people than myself. The best piece of advice I got was to just throw myself in there and attack it with gusto! The worst I can do is fail miserably but hopefully I would have gained experience and know how to improve next time!

Animex Talk

Animex Talk is more directed at animation than games, having the two sections gives a good mix of both industries and you are also able to see the similarities between the two, along with some differences. Everything that I have taken from Animex Game is still relevant to my animation practice, any advice can be adapted to suit your own area of work.

Day 1:

• Ed Hooks, Acting Instructor and Author
• David Au, Storyboard Artist / Assistant Director
• The Mill - Murray Barber, VFX Supervisor
• Stuart Sumida, Professor of Biology
• Rhythm & Hues Studios - Hans Rijpkema

Ed Hooks was a really inspirational speaker, he teaches acting to many animators and spoke a lot about the industry and where it was going. One thing to bear in mind is that we should all consider ourselves as global, work will take us anywhere and we need to have an understanding of the industry and follow it wherever it goes. Need to be aware and involved. If you want something, you should go out and get it, if you don't try you won't get. A thing that was brought up time and again by each speaker was connections. It was all about the people you knew and most of them had got their jobs through people they knew within the industry. David Au said make a lot of friends and never get too comfortable as there is no stability within the industry. He reminded everyone that they'll be working long hours to reach a deadline and even though this may not bother some people, in the long run you have to set yourself goals, you don't want to be working through the night when you're a lot older. 

The Mill was up next with a talk from Murray Barber. It was interesting to see the differences between working for Tv and for film. The main one being the budget, because of this it can affect what can be achieved in the time scale and you need to be able to solve problems quickly. Stuart Sumida, originally a biologist, told us the importance of knowing how things work, people and animals. In order to create a sense of believability you need to study the skeleton to understand how joints move and work. People can tell when something is not accurate even when they don't know fully. Having seen Life of Pi when it came out in cinemas I was really looking forward to seeing more in depth view of how the film was created. The software and rigging system that was used for Richard Parker was actually adapted and evolved from the one used for Aslan in the Chronicles of Narnia, and Aslan was adapted from their first major film, Cats and Dogs. It's great to see how technology progresses comparing the final outcomes to it's predecessors. It will be interesting to see where this technology could be taken next as when Hans showed us both the real tiger and the CG tiger next to each other, I, along with many others could not tell the difference between the two. 

Day 2:

• Straandlooper - Alastair McIlwain, Managing Director / Animator
• Aardman - Will Becher, Character Lead Animator
• MPC - Ferran Domenech, Animation Supervisor
• Double Negative - Andrew Whitehurst, VFX Supervisor
• Walt Disney Animation Studios - Rob Dressel, Layout Supervisor

Alastair McIlwain of Straandlooper bought up an interesting point, that the technology we use is forever changing and that can affect the way we design, produce, view and distribute the work. It's something to keep an eye on as even with softwares, each year there is a new version with tweaks and actually new areas to increase productivity and the way we work. We have to be able to adapt to these new pieces of software and to make the most of them. Will Becher from Aardman attended Animex and although I had previously seen him at Bradford Animation Festival and it was a very similar talk; it just reminded me how much work actually goes into making a stop motion feature film. It will always amaze me at all the little details they put in and I have nothing but admiration and respect for everyone working within that industry. 

The next two talks were from 2 VFX companies situated down in London, Moving Picture Company and Double Negative. Ferran Domenech from MPC spoke mainly about the animation done within Prometheus which I found really fascinating as I had never properly looked into the way it is done within visual effects before. To make sure everything lines up in the end, they matchmove the footage and then from here they can start to animate. It was great to see the breakdown shots of the animation, from blocking through to the muscle system to the final outcome. One thing that Ferran mentioned was to always test the rigs out beforehand, you need to be sure everything works before you dive into the animation, if something is wrong it needs to be fixed straight away. With Double Negative, Andrew Whitehurst showed us two types of visual effects, a more invisible type used in Skyfall and more stand out obvious effects used for Scott Pilgram. Whether it's seamless or obvious each needs as much attention to detail as each other. The last speaker of the day and of Animex Talk was Rob Dressel, layout supervisor for Disney. Working in layout is very similar as previz, working out each shot of the film, camera and character positions, blocking out some rough timings and screen direction. I spoke to Rob the night before at the networking event and he said it's good to have an understanding of layout and cinematography and it can also help push your animation more. You know why the scene is laid out in that particular way and can use it to influence your performance. Another person I spoke to was comic writer, Jim Zub. He spoke about critiquing and that you always have to put your work out there to get better, it may knock your confidence but it should motivate you to improve and better yourself.

The whole week at Animex has really opened my eyes and given me so much knowledge and motivation to become better. I met and spoke to some great people and will definitely be attending again next year. For anyone who hasn't been, I can assure you it's well worth going. Teesside Uni have so many great connections and it wouldn't have been possible without Gabrielle Kent, festival director. Each year they have great speakers from round the world and unlike some other festivals this gives you a real chance to get to speak to them all and get that all important advice from professionals.  

Animex Game

Animex is held up at Teesside University in Middlesbrough, I wanted to attend last year but missed out on tickets so made sure I could go this year. The line up of speakers did not disappoint and there was a wide range from writers, composers, animators and art directors to name a few. The week was split into two, Animex Game and Animex Talk.

Day 1:

• Lionhead Studios - Jennifer Clixby, Producer and Mike West, Lead Designer
• Ubisoft Reflections - Matthew Oakley and Andrew Willans 
• Rhianna Pratchett, Writer
• Naughty Dog - Eric Baldwin, Lead Animator
• Austin Wintory, Composer / Musician

The first day gave me a great insight into the game industry and how Lionhead Studios in particular, worked on each of their Fable games and the challenges they faced with each. Planning is key in order to ship the game out of time. Another thing they mentioned was that it was good to have just one person who had a clear vision for the game, as with their previous games they had a few directors wanting different things and in the end there was confusion between people. Communication is key, you have to be able to pass your ideas down through the departments and also back up to the director. Regular meetings between departments can overcome this but communication at all times plays a big part in any production. Ubisoft Reflections spoke about taking advantage of things that come your way, their studio is well known for the Just Dance games, it may not be your thing but it is one of the best selling games - don't pass up that chance if you get an opportunity like that. 

Rhianna Pratchett opened my eyes to how much more there was to writing , I always knew story was a huge part but didn't realise that hiring professional writers was only a recent thing. Before this studios would just get anyone in their team to write, it sounds quite absurd that this has been the case for a long time, you wouldn't get just anyone to code the game, so why should the writers be any different? Eric Baldwin from Naughty Dog showed the process of making their teaser trailer, to make it as realistic as possible they used a lot of reference. They spent a lot of time working on the fine details just to make it that bit more believable and creating new ways/processes of doing things such as footprints on the sand.  

The last speaker from the first day was composer, Austin Wintory. It was just so inspiring and moving, to hear how he spoke about music and how music affects so much. It can change the meaning of a game or film drastically, and is also something the viewer can connect with. The work he did on Journey was beautiful and he more than deserved the Grammy he got for it. It shows how recognised games are becoming within the entertainment industry.

Day 2:

• Richard Frankie, Creative Director / Open World Designer
• Indie Development Panel
• IO Interactive - Janus Kirkegaard, Senior Environment Artist
• Epic - Wyeth Johnson, Art Director
• Bay Raitt, Artist and Designer, formerly of Valve

Richard Frankie from the Burnout series talked about the process he went through as an open world designer. A major point he brought up was about iteration, iteration is key. Develop your work and keep changing it. The Indie Development Panel was next, it was interesting to see that a fair few speakers came from AAA games before hand. They mentioned that they found at big studios there is a restriction on creativity there, you got more freedom being indie instead. The downside to becoming an indie developer first, is that there is always the issue of not having more experienced people to guide you, as you would have in the industry. You could miss out on learning certain things. When you do make your first indie game, it's best to create something to test your skills on and so you can work out how to improve from then on. It's easy to set up a company, it's harder to maintain and keep it going. IO Interactive, well known for the Hitman series also attended Animex. It's good to always think about the other disciplines/departments as well as your own when working with others. Whatever you create needs to work for the next person along in the production line. 

The most useful and motivational talk for me was from Wyeth Johnson of Epic. It was a really great talk - very eye opening and useful. It really got me thinking about my work in a different way and how I could push it further. What was really helpful is that Wyeth spoke about the do's and don'ts of what to include in your portfolio. I will definitely be reviewing all the notes I took and editing my work / showreel to this advice. The other things he spoke about would seem like common knowledge but didn't actually click until he pointed it out. Bay Raitt spoke last, such an inspirational person, very talented and amazing to see what he has achieved in his career so far. We should never pass up the chance for the work we love, even if it means living off hardly any more - which Bay did for awhile. If it means getting to do what you're passionate about, just do it. It was amazing to see how much he had taught himself and how many different areas he could adapt to. I need to take note of this and learn as much as I can and different pieces of software!

I can safely say that even though at the moment, I'm looking more into animation within films, all of these talks and speakers have been so inspirational and motivating. I have taken so much knowledge from each of them and can easily transfer this advice into my own area of specialism.

Animation videos

Lately I have been watching a lot of animation tutorials and videos talking about workflow and the breakdown of an animators shots. This is something I'm trying to get into a habit of as by doing this I am learning how people within the industry work and certain techniques they use to better their work. It's one thing to read about tips and techniques in a book, it's another to hear it and see it in action, by seeing it you get a better understanding and it is more likely to stay in your mind.

The video below is from animator Joe Bowers who talks about his work on Disney's Tangled and Bolt. It's interesting to see how far he pushed the rig, to the point of breaking to get that exaggeration in and to really show the emphasis of the power of a certain action. Even for an animator working in the industry, there is still so much to learn and he took advice from Glen Keane to push it even further - "you forget how far you could and should push it sometimes..." 
Thumbnails are a really important part of the process as this gives you a basis to work off when animating, it gives you an idea of the key poses and you are also able to work on the line of action here too. When you think you have the pose, always know there is more, you can always push it more. Another interesting point brought up was the fact that even though there are a set of rules for a walk cycle and the body movements, but sometimes keeping things to a minimum is more beneficial to the shot and to sell overall character. Rules can be bent as long as the idea is there. It all depends on the scene and the character's personality, this will influence the way they walk and act.

Holding poses or just changing them slightly can really emphasise a certain action, you build up the momentum and power before it is all released in a short burst. This is very similar to what Glen Keane mentioned in a talk he gave at Calarts - it's what happens in between the start and end poses, it's the delivery, how good of a joke can you tell? It's the fun of holding back the punch line, the ending pose has to be earned. Some people say the poses are a key area, you character needs strong poses with a good line of action and the flow lines should lead you to the area you want the viewer to look at. You can have brilliant poses, extreme poses but at the end of the day it's what's in-between that will really catch the viewers attention or else it may be a forgettable performance.

There are so many things to consider and to try and work into any animation, so many different techniques and workflows. I need to find one that suits myself and this will involve trial and error, the more animations I do, a better understanding I will get, it's putting what I learn into real practice. Watching tutorials is so beneficial and there's nothing wrong with always learning that bit more, but there comes a point where unless you do it you won't know it fully. You can understand the theory but do you understand the practice?


JoeBowers Interview from Frame By Frame on Vimeo.

Power to the Pixels Exhibition

We had our first public exhibition of our work from one of the modules, the Game Art and Machinima module. We showed a collective of work from concept art, to character turnarounds and the final cinematics. It would have been nice to have longer to prepare for this and to refine work to a higher standard but it was also good to see that even on short notice, we were all able to pull it together and what we achieved in that time was not too bad. I felt that overall it didn't feel as professional as I would have liked, we probably needed more time to organise and set up the place. Going down there and checking out the venue before hand would have been useful, to physically see the space we were dealing with and what we could do to enhance it. I definitely think that the next exhibition we hold, there needs to be more publicity, only family and friends really turned up to see it this time round, but it would be nice to get the outside public in and maybe some industry practitioners. For our first time though I guess it was better off being like this as we now know what to do next time and what not to do. It would never have been perfect and correct the first time round, just next time will need improving a lot.

Something else to bear in mind next time, will be to include little blurbs about each piece of work, just to explain in short, the process and what it actually is. If people don't want to be standing by their work all night, this is an alternative that may work if the viewer wants to know more about the piece. Next time I think a different location may be something to look at, even though it's meant to be an up and coming art area, I know it made a few people uncomfortable walking to and from the venue. Because of the location and the feel of the place I think it made a few of us feel unenthusiastic about the whole exhibition, if it was somewhere more central then things might have been different.

All in all it was something new, for the majority of us we had never really put up an external exhibition before, so it was a learning process. We made mistakes but we know what to change next time and hopefully it'll be better and we'll feel more happy about it all. It was still nice to see all our work up and presented though as it's normally just put up online and that's that. An end of year show would be quite good as by that time everyone will have branched out a bit and have produced something individual and unique to themselves.

Showreel

So I've finally got round to creating my first showreel, this was mainly for a work experience application but either way it's good to have one to summarise what I have created during 2012. Looking back over my previous and most current work I picked out the best parts which would go at the front and end of my showreel. You want to grab the viewers attention so it's always best to start and end with the best. The good pieces should go in the middle, there were some pieces I wasn't too happy with so I thought it best not to include them at all as I knew I could do better. I got the help of Jamie in first year as I'm not too confident with editing. What we ended up with is something that I will be proud to show and even though it is a short showreel I spent a good amount of time on each animation. The more animation I do the more choice I have over what to include in my showreel, and also the more practice I get. This is only my first so there will be more to follow in the near future!


Animation Showreel 2012 from Siobhan Parkhouse on Vimeo.

Alien Animation - Exhibition

As an exhibition to showcase all of our work from the previous module, Game Art and Machinma - the process behind it all and the final outcomes are going up for one night this week. Some people have taken different jobs to promote the exhibition and create showreels. As I want to become an animator I will take as much practice as I can get so I volunteered myself to create a short animation that would be part of the stings. The stings will go infront of each final cinematic to show who made it and have the title of our exhibition, 'Power to the Pixels'. We chose to use the alien as it has been a reoccurring theme during the Game Art module as we all had to complete one as part of the tutorials.

To make it more interesting I gave the alien more weight, so you could see the sign being a heavy object on him. This also gave me the opportunity to do something more than just a walk cycle, before this point I hadn't really touched upon weight. I think what I have created has turned out well and the more animation I'm doing, the more I'm understanding and realising how much the body actually moves even when just walking.

Not only was this beneficial for me in the form if more animation practice, but it also gave me a chance to work on a very short timescale and it was interesting to see how much I managed to achieve in just under 2 days. It's nice to do these short animations as well as it is quite refreshing and you get used to working in a short period of time. When looking at industry they normally expect someone to be able to complete so many seconds I polished animation in a week, so I think it would be good for me to get into the habit of doing this. It will also allow me to add more pieces to my showreel and I will be able to push myself that little bit more.


Alien Animation from Siobhan Parkhouse on Vimeo.

Bradford Animation Festival - Day 4

The last day of Bradford Animation Festival, I only made it for the Aardman talk and the screening of The Pirates film but even just those 2 was worth the trip. Will Beecher was a character lead animator for the Aardman film 'The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists'. I decided to go along to this as even though it is stop motion, Will Beecher is still an animator and any advice or experience from an animator will be very useful, and I was not disappointed.

Will showed us his student film which got him into the industry and highlighted the fact that even though his character did not move around, the interaction between the two characters is key. This is an important thing to show and this is something I will keep in mind when it comes to animating my two characters together.

What I really enjoyed about this talk was the fact that Will gave us a demonstration on how he would go about changing the faces on the Pirate Captain and moving the rest of the body for animation. It was great to see how the faces were changed as this was something I was never sure about, for Aardman the faces are held on with magnets so it's easy to swap them in and out. There were all these small pieces to the character that you could alter such as the Captains beard; when changing the mouth shapes the beard needs to move with it or else it would break away from the believability of it all. In order to do this there was a small allen key that cold be insert into his beard and depending on which way you turn it, the beard would either move up or down. This was great to see as for myself, I would have never have thought about this. It makes me realise that I really need to understand and breakdown a character before it comes to animating. I need to work out what parts of them will move and how much they should be moved. There will be some things that only need to be moved subtly, however if it is not moved at all, that one small thing could be quite obvious. It was a thoroughly enjoyable and informative talk and once again just as LAIKA did, we got to see the puppets up close.

I watched the film itself after the talk and really enjoyed it, I had never got round to watching it when it came out so this was the prime opportunity to watch the film. It was interesting to see how even though both LAIKA and Aardman used the replacement animation technique, their style was still different and obvious in each. Unfortunately after the film was over I left Bradford as I had work that needed to be done. I was disappointed that I wasn't able to make it to the closing award ceremony and after party, however I think that is something I will be definitely attending next year. It's something not to be missed, another opportunity to get a chance to talk to more people in a relaxed setting and it would have been a great way to end an amazing week.

This whole week has been enjoyable, informative and inspirational. It has opened my eyes to new things and got me thinking about techniques and processes. Bradford Animation Festival is something that I shall be attending for quite some time from now on, even after university. It has given me so much motivation right now to be the best that I can be and to push myself further in my animations. I'm planning to book my Animex tickets soon and hopefully it will be just a inspirational and motivational as Bradford, if not more.

Bradford Animation Festival - Day 3

Friday was the busiest day of the festival, lots of talks to attend and I planned to go to a networking event that All Animated had organised. The day began with a talk from Jason Theaker a freelance animator and tutor from Bradford Uni. He spoke about how at Bradford Uni they have a programme where students, along side tutors work on a professional brief. This gives the student more experience, skills and knowledge about working with a real client. The short that was shown had been nominated for a national prize so this would have given the students a lot of exposure. James Thompson, a student who worked on the short film was there to give us his point of view on working on it. He took us through the process and spoke about a few things that I had never really thought about before. If you're working in a group as long as the rigger has a rough model (all proportions should be correct) even if it's not completely finished, they can get started on the rigging process while the character is still being completed. Once it has been finished it can be passed onto the rigger who can then just apply the rig and send it on to the animators. This is a good way of using time, especially if there is a strict time scale on the project. After this talk, it really got me thinking about possibly doing a masters after my 3 years.

The next talk was given by Amanita Designs and Red Kite Games. They spoke about animation and games for new platforms and why they chose to produce mobile games. Jaromir Plachy who is an animator and graphic artist, showed some of his work that led up to him creating Botanicula for Amanita. I really enjoyed the animations that he created, they were so simple in terms of design but his humour translated through the characters and created a thoroughly enjoyable watch. It goes to show that even something so sim sole can really engage with the audience. Simon Iwaniszak, Managing Director of Red Kite Games previously had worked at Rockstar Leeds but decided this was the right time to go ahead and set up his own company. By being an indie studio you have more of a creative say with what goes on and with mobile gaming becoming ever more popular; you have the ability to create a game that you want to make.

The big talk of today was from Mark Shapiro of LAIKA, the independent animation studio that created Coraline and ParaNorman. I was really excited to see this as I saw ParaNorman when it came out and was blown away at the technical side and also the versatility of the characters. Mark showed a wide range of videos that explained how they achieved the look of ParaNorman and the process they used for creating the faces using 3D colour printing. Some of these videos I had seen before, after researching into it once I had seen the film. There were a couple videos though that really broke down the process of the animation, and it really makes you appreciate and gain a new found respect for the animated that work in the stop motion industry. There is so much accuracy and dedication needed to create a stop motion film, objects and characters have to be moved a tiny fraction each frame and if it isn't accurate that one frame could cause quite a lot of problems. As Mark is the head of entertainment, brand marketing he also spoke about how they marketed the film to get people interested and excited about it. They created lots of short videos explaining the making of ParaNorman and placed these on the web with the hash tag 'WeirdWins'. This got people tweeting about the film and spreading the word. What was really interesting was that someone I know in America was really hyped up about this film, before I spoke to him I knew nothing about it but I had seen all his tweets and it got me intrigued about ParaNorman. I think because he ended up being a big promoter of the film by using twitter, LAIKA actually sent him merchandise from the film in appreciation, which I think is really lovely of them to reward the fans out there. It's really interesting to see how social media can affect the promotion of a film and how they use it to get more attention.

Even though I had previously seen ParaNorman, I saw it again but this time in 3D. After having the talk from Mark I found that I ended up paying attention to all the small details he spoke about and really concentrating on the faces. I noticed things I never did the first time I watched it and it made me appreciate the film more for what it was, now knowing more of the process behind it. I am normally not a big fan of 3D films, as I feel that sometimes it is a bit distracting and I find myself not being able to be fully immersed within the film. This was different however, I found that there were some areas that really benefitted from being 3D and made me feel more of a part of the film. I also got a chance to take a few pictures of the puppets themselves after the talk, it was great to see them up close and see all the detail that was put into them, for example for each character their clothing was individually hand made and sew on to them.

After the film I hopped on along to a networking event that All Animated had organised. Seeing as I missed the previous one in Leeds I knew I wanted to take advantage of this one. Whilst there I met the lovely Aaron Wood, Managing Director of Slurpy Studios and Billy Allison who gave me some really useful advice within animation and also a bit more confidence as I always worry that my way of working isn't the 'right' way. I spoke to Aaron about the Animex conference up in Teeside and he said it is definitely worth going as it would suit me very well what with wanting to go into CG, so I think this is the way to go and hopefully I will be able to catch up with Aaron again up there.

The last thing of the day for me was attending the animation pub quiz, this was a first for me as I had never even been to a pub quiz before and I was worried my lack of animation knowledge would fail me! Myself and Alex ended up teaming with Kath and Kim from All Animated, it was a good laugh and I learnt new things about animation I didn't know previously. There were prizes at the end, but seeing as we didn't come first we missed out on the art books, however I got myself a Rango Cactus Cup that I was pretty chuffed about! This is something I definitely want to attend again as it brings everyone together in a relaxed and fun setting and it's just something enjoyable to do.

Bradford Animation Festival - Day 2

Day 2, I was quite looking forward to as Vanessa Boyce from Double Negative would be doing a talk in the afternoon. Before this there was a couple more things to be seen, the first one being Professional 2, it was similar to the screening on the previous day however these shorts were created by professionals. Again there were 8 films shown in total, however due to me arriving a bit late I missed out on two of these shorts. I may see if I can find these online or on their sit as I caught the ending for one of them 'Bendito Machine IV' (Spain) and it seemed very intriguing and the animation was all done with silhouettes. There was an interesting short called 'Father' that was directed by a handful of people all from different countries. They used a combination of 3D and 2D which produced a hybrid of styles. The characters differed from one another quite drastically, some being quite stylised whereas another looked more realistic compared to the others. The story itself was quite haunting and really immersed me into the whole story about a dialogue between father and child that never happens. 'Edmond was a Donkey' was probably my most favourite one as not only did it include a lot of 3D elements, but the story itself was something different and really made you feel for the character. There was dialogue during this film however the main character it revolved around never spoke a work. I find that no dialogue is such a strong thing sometimes and more emotion can be shown just through their actions and expression. I really liked the lighting in this film as well, the majority of it was mainly a grey scale however when it switched it was really beautiful, especially seeing it contrasting against the grey.

I attended a talk after this about creating virtual urban environments. Vanessa Boyce from Double Negative, Martin Walker a lecturer in 3D computer graphics and animation, Ben Hall from Criterion Games and Jonathan Gales founding member of Factory Fifteen were bought together to talk about creating photorealistic urban environments. It was interesting to see the different approaches and what was produced from people who were coming from different areas of the industry. A recurring thing that came up with each speaker was the fact that because these environments are created virtual, 3D programmes have the tendency to make everything perfect and this is not how it is in real life. If they left it now it was, the environments wouldn't be believable and would distract the viewer from the overall experience. To get over this, they would go in and physically make it 'imperfect' adding in little details, textures, making sure lines are not dead straight etc. I had never really thought about this before but it is a very good point that I will keep in mind when I create photorealistic environments in the future.

The next talk was by Vanessa Boyce again but this time going into more detail about Double Negative's newest film 'Total Recall'. VFX is something that has caught my attention for awhile now, I love how companies are able to create vast environments that are so realistic, it really amazes me. Double Negative only had about a year to create pretty much everything from scratch so that was a massive job in itself. It was quite impressive how much was achieved in that time and the overall outcome of it. In my notes it explains the process they took when creating the environments. Vanessa is the CG supervisor and made the point that in the film they had 2 different types of vfx to do, putting the filmed shot into the modelled environments but also putting modelled characters into already filmed shots. Both of these ways, even though similar had to be approached in different ways. Seeing this talk it really makes me want to explore the industry of vfx and create some photorealistic work that I could put in my portfolio. I have been looking into internships this year and Framestore a vfx company in London normally do summer internships each year so I may apply for this and see how it goes.

The last talk of the day was from Valerie Kausen, the granddaughter of Chuck Jones. It was lovely to hear what it was like to have an amazing animator like her grandfather in her life and influencing the things she did. We got to see some of his shorts which was really inspirational and really makes me want to study 2D animation more for the principles and take that into my 3D work. I think this will be something I explore further as at the end of the day the principles of animation are the foundations to any good animation. Without a good understanding of them you can't get your animation to achieve it's fullest potential.