trip to escape studios

On the 16th november I went down to london to take part in an animation course open day. Escape studios are a recruiting/training studio that train you for 3 months on there animation program. They train you to work at an industry pace to an industry standard and continue to work with you after you have completed the course and find you work in the industry.

I met alex williams who would be my tutor there and he has worked on titles such as lion king, who framed roger rabbit, iron giant, monster house etc. Once we started speaking after the tour and I mentioned the work I am doing on the masters course Alex offerd to check my showreel and critique it before I come on the course.

I also met fellow students who were thinking of taking the animation course and after mingling with them met a girl who is a pa to an animation director for starburst studios who, after talking to her kindly offerd to help me get work experiance in the studio and gave me her contact details.

This has proved to be well worth the trip down to London as I have made several friends and contacts through fellow students looking to take the course which could lead to work experiance oppertunities to promote my work and a chance to show my showreel to high end animators within the industry who can crit it and tell me where im going wrong and advise me on which studios would be most interested in the work im producing at this time.

research on different website layouts

Here are just a few of the website layouts ive been checking out to get inspiration from. I like the more hand drawn ones, but I shall keep on looking and try and merge the layouts from a few I like with some of my own ideas. These are just initial ideas of what I find visually nice .

final film

Here is the final film version which I have emailed to Lor. It took most of the day to put together in after effects and to export it out in the right settings. But I managed to put it all together just before deadline. Lor is happy with the results as am I.

completed rain layer and editing tutorial

This is the final completed rain layer I have been working on which will be layerd up into after effects over the final film. I emailed it to Lor to see if she liked it and she does.

Lor also sent me across some final audio she wants to use to see if I thought it went with the animations.

Another thing I put together for her is a small editing tutorial in photoshop to help her understand how to put all of the scenes together.

msn musings

Having spoken again to lor on msn these past few days it has been decided that it will be easier for me to do the editing and then render the whole project out. This is because with the amount of time it would take to learn the new software there wouldnt be any time for Lor to actually put the entire project together and render it out, and with the deadline next week we dont have time to waste learning new softwares so I shall do it all.
She will email me/upload her scenes onto rapid share and I will download what shes done and put it all together with my scenes.

work dump from last few days

These few screen shots here show the work ive done over the past few days. I've completed the assets in photoshop and I started laying out the ground work for the animation scene with the hands coming across the hills. Ive kept lor updated along the way and sent her the screen shots to put on her blog to show how ive layed the scenes out for the master copy of the hand scene (the layer you write the timings on so you can then lay another piece of paper over and trace the contacts from, or in this case just layer it up in photoshop and change the occlusion).

I've since finished that animation scene and sent it to Lor who was happy with the result. I mentioned also to cut the bottom of the screenshots off which shows my music bars,msn,facebook etc, As it doesnt look very proffessional having all those programs open underneath your work when its being marked by the examiner (something my old tutor pointed out to me several times on my degree).

5th november trip

Today lor came down to visit and we went through several tutorials i showed her as well as deciding who should animate which sections of the skit. I went through the animatic and talked about how the first half of the skit was mostly very simple fades, compared to the second half/middle of the skit when there is more actual movement/actions taking place other then editing techniques. So my suggestion was that if lor didnt feel confident in her animating ability it may be best for her to stick to the parts where the moons fade in and out of view, and just to slowly move the tree branches and clouds.
This was agreed upon and i would take over the end of the animation with the hands scenes and i would also animate the rain effect in photoshop.
This was the point I also stressed that we have to animate to... about halfway through the skit, as I worked out that it was the best cut of point. If I can animate up to that section and we still have time left I may be able to animate up to the original end.

So today I was able to show lor how to move some basic shapes around in photoshop and fade them in and out, as well as how to anmate the trees blowing in the wind and how the principles of animation really help to make the animation look better. I also gave her copys of the files I've been working on incase my files get corrupted and I gave her the assets i had drawn and coloured for her in photoshop, which included the witchstone,clouds,etc.

I also started work on the rain effect animation which will be played over the lightning section of the scene.

Lor has given me copys of the final 4/5 backgrounds made in photoshop. The only thing she needs to focus on now is fading the moons,moving the clouds and trees. Then just continue to find the sound effects she needs.

I will continue to animate the rain effect, make the rest of the assets,layout the master copys for my animation scenes and carry on directing lor. It is also probable that i will have to take over with the editing and rendering of the final piece as lor is struggling a bit to come to grips with the editing software and has expressed concerns that by the time it would take her to learn how to use after effects the deadline will b gone. I have agreed to help out as best i can with any additional work i do going in the credits and towards my final dissemination.

visit planned for the 5th nov

During an msn conversation today with lor it has been arranged that she come down to my place to visit for the day so that i can go through some animation tutorials with her, as it is becoming increasingly obvious that her lack of knowledge and experiance with the subject, as well as the workload placed upon both her and myself is starting to effect her negativly.
I discussed a strict timetable with lor over msn at the start of the project which I have been sticking to religiously but because of her inexperiance with the process of animation, and her not fully appriciating how time intensive animation is I suggested she come down to my home so that I could help her first hand and go through some very basic principles to help her out.

We also spoke about me actually taking over the more technical animation scenes an dpossibly the rendering and editing, as by the time it would take lor to learn how to do it the deadline for the project may have already passed.
Again i will be credited for my work which is great as it gives me more work that I can add to my freelance section.
Besides the storyboards I have also started work on some of the concepts for the assests which I will making in photoshop.

stages of animatics

These are the versions the animatics went through before I got the timings right for the final save, number 6.

animatic version 2

animatic version 3

animatic version 4

animatic 5

animatic 6

lauras brief

I have been sent a copy of the project brief to look over by lor. She has done this to make sure that i am able to cover all the project requirments within the propposed animatic. There are certain technical effects that must be shown etc.
I have also mentioned during our msn conversations that 60 secs is a lot of animation to do in such a short space of time, and with her not being as prepared as i thought in terms of pre production, that this is going to be very tough to acomplish unless other animators are brought on board or if the time is scaled back. unfortunatly scaling the project down isnt an option because of the brief requirments but i have however said i would take on some of the animation and other production/post production tasks if needed. Again this will go towards my dissemination and this was once again agreed during our frequent/daily msn chats regarding the progress of the project.
at the moment as i work on the final timings for the animatic i have suggested that lor try to get some of the backgrounds completed for the animation, and to try and draw up some of the assets that will be needed for animating. This seemed like a good idea as its a good way for someone to get used to what photoshop can do while i work on the more demanding aspects of the pre production.

storyboard neat version

Here is the neat version of the storyboard I did a few days ago complete with camera posistions,timings and dialog explainations. This is important to have as it gives me something to base the animatic versions of and allows me to see where adjustments can be made more easily. It will also help incase scenes need to be cut etc because of time restraints. These possibilities are something laura and I discuss at length during our msn conversataions (main way of talking).