Study Task 10 - Showreel

This showreel contains mostly my second year work (with a few clips from first year) and it features bits of animations made both for the course, and for other online competitions and personal practice. It also has a mild focus on special effects animation (the Heinz explosion and stopmotion ketchup beam, speed lines and sparkles etc) which I think will be something I might specialise in.
Since a lot of the animation projects in this were made in teams, a lot of our roles in these teams were very broad, with bits and pieces of everyone in almost every scene. This made it difficult to outline exactly what my contributions were, so I made sure to choose scenes where I did most of the work.

Studio Brief 3 - Talk the Talk

Collective Presentation

Our collective is called Schwa and comprises of Damo, Εleni, Prathik and Tisa.

Our roles:

• Individually:
• Damo - producer, networking manager, generalist animator with specialist interest in backgrounds
• Tisa - studio manager, editor, generalist animator with specialist interest in storyboarding
• Me - director, branding, generalist animator with specialist interest in special effects and post production
• Ελένη - social media director, generalist animator with specialist interest in character design and 3D modelling

• As a group:
• We represent the link between words and worlds,
• We are an international group of creatives with a variety of skill sets, with a common interest in 2D animation, both digital and traditional

Our target audience is children and young adults
Our showcase will be in the form of a showreel on our (mock) website.

Personal Research

My personal research was the visual elements of the collective, more specifically the branding:

The logo was an adaptation of the 'Schwa' (ə) symbol brought to life.

Various iterations of the logo

The final logo

I also animated it to reflect our collectives' ideas and imagination:

I was tasked with identifying our competition and potential clientele:

• Some of the clientele we would like to work with are:
• Cartoonnetwork, CBeebies, and other kids animated series channels,
• Netflix, Adult Swim and other online streaming services,
• Making animated advertisements for different companies too, such as:
• Nike
• John Lewis
• Starbucks
• Red Bull

• Our competition are the animation studios we look up to and are inspired by:
• TheLine
• Adult Swim
• Ankama
• Tinmouse Animation Studio
• Brown Bag Films
• Goldenwolf
• Our peers and colleagues!

Brand Style

I tried to keep our brand style consistent with a specific rules:

• The tone of our brand is wacky, fun and professional, which is why we have a consistent (royalty free) font for headings (Supersonic Rocketship) and for body text (Roboto).
• I have chosen a colour palette that has bold, bright and wacky colours, with enough contrast to work together:

• The brand style also has no sharp edges/borders, it has curves instead to reflect a friendly, non-hostile aesthetic.

Studio Brief 2 - Going Live!

Feb/March Loop de Loop - PIG

I've animated plenty of pigs before, but instead of use of using a previous animation, I used this opportunity to practice drawing backgrounds, and experiment with lighting (there's a lens flare from After Effects for about 3 frame when the pig eclipses the moon).

The background is inspired by Steven Sugar's backgrounds in Steven Universe.

I also used this competition brief to familiarise myself with TVPaint. 

What went well:

• The integration between animation, and post effects worked well, enhancing and interacting with each other,
• The audio used was recorded myself (the footsteps) to help with the timing of the pig walk cycle.

What could be improved:

• A static camera was used which might make the scene boring,
• The pig was simple enough to have been done in the painterly style of the background (but due to time restraints I refrained from this!).

Character Design Challenge - Caveman [UNFINISHED]

I began painting this really detailed piece, experimenting with Photoshop brushes, till I realised I had only worked on the background. I vaguely remember a rule from the Character Design Challenge and looked it up:



What could be improved:

• READ THE RULES!

Character Design Challenge - Alebrije

This challenge was interesting in that I needed to do a bit of research first to find out what an alebrije was. They are fantastical creatures with bright colours and patterns, much like the creatures in the animated film Coco. I referred to the Art of Coco book to look for interesting patterns and designs. A lot of the alebrije were combinations of animals so I combined two flashy creatures, the crab and the peacock.

Study Task 9 - Collective Enterprise

Our collective is called Schwa and comprises of Damo, Εleni, Prathik and Tisa.

Our roles:
Damo - producer, networking manager, generalist animator with specialist interest in backgrounds

Tisa - studio manager, editor, generalist animator with specialist interest in storyboarding

Prathik - director, branding, generalist animator with specialist interest in special effects and post production

Ελένη - social media director, generalist animator with specialist interest in character design and 3D modelling

We chose to be a collective as that would allow for more creative freedom for us to pursue our own projects, and it would allow us to contribute our skills to a project when needed.

Employability Fortnight

The speaking professionals that came in to give talks were quite useful to me as I tend to be slightly uncomfortable when it comes to networking, and seeing myself as a brand.

I enjoyed the talks by the people from The Bulb; Sheila Young and Rick Ferguson were very bold and interesting. Their talks were interactive, by using team-building drama games, which worked well since I mostly learn by doing.

I also learnt a lot about dealing with stress,  thanks to the talk by Mind It. It made me re-evaluate my my outlook on things. I've recognised that a lot of my coping mechanisms for stress are unhealthy; not sleeping enough, not eating etc, and so I've learnt to consciously deal with stress using more healthy coping mechanisms (walking, exercise, doing the dishes). I also started making a 'Grateful list' where I identify what I'm grateful for each day, which has made me more optimistic.

Other talks about C.Vs and my brand, although quite sluggish, were very informative. They were a wake-up call for me to do something and be active. I made a few business card prototypes that reflect me and my brand:

Study Task 8 - Work Freelance/Self Employment

Day Rate

I whipped up a spreadsheet to calculate my day rate. To simplify it, I assumed I will be a full-time freelance animator in the UK (the UK.GOV website is very convenient!):

Since my annual income was beyond the Personal Allowance Limit I had to pay 20% income tax.

Income Tax rates and bands as of now (2018-2019) from the UK.GOV website

But £10.23 seemed a bit low... it was just over minimum wage! 

I then used YourRate to calculate an estimated day rate:

£17 per hour seems more appropriate, YourRate got to this number by multiply the rates by two to account for taxes and savings. Since the average animators hourly rate is about £15, as a freelancer I'd charge £17 per hour, or £136 per 8-hour working day.

Study Task 2 - Bless you

Bless You - David Barlow-Krelina

I stumbled upon this animation through an article, outlining David Barlow-Krelina's latest work Caterpillarplasty. Although it did interest me, it didn't catch my eye quite like his previous work Bless You.

I really liked the experimental vibe of it, the art style and ultimately the simple concept of a sneeze.
This made me look further into fish eye, and try to get a 2d look with 3d assets.

http://www.skwigly.co.uk/david-barlow-krelina/

I recreated the digital fish eye effect in after effects, by applying the CC Bulge effect on a 2d animation in After Effects;

This however, wasn't very effective since the source footage was 2d. I should attempt to try this in 3D now but alas, time is a cruel master.

This "experiment" made me consider in specialising in compositing, especially in the context of compositing 3d and 2d assets together