End of first year at university

So its all over, my first year of university at Falmouth university is done and i can safely say it has been an amazing experience i have learnt so much, got to live in beautiful Cornwall, met some amazingly talented people and great friends. This past year has gone so fast but so much has changed and i have done so much. The course its self has been more than i expected, it was a very full on year with allot of work but it has taught me so much and i now have a clearer idea of what i want to do in the future as a career. I could talk for hours about what i have done and how great it has been. But i am just going to say it has been an amazing experience and i look forward to my second year as a student at Falmouth University.

Ident

The brief here was to create a 6-10 second ident for Falmouth University animation, this was a very small project and could be anything you liked as long as it incorporated animation some how. Because of so many other project at the same time i didn't have the time to spend on this that i would have liked, none the less i was happy with the final outcome. I chose to go for a more subtle approach and was inspired by silhouette art and the game Limbo ..

It Happened at sea

Here is the short sea tales film that myself, Matteo Veglia, Tony Walker and Ben Wdl have been working on for the last semester. It isn't finished yet but we are happy with the outcome. we have all put a tremendous amount of work into it and are looking forward to finishing it off. I have really enjoyed working with these guys on this project and feel that it was very successful and will look good when its finished :)

3D sculpting and texturing

This Project we had to model a close up of an environment using Maya and then putting that model into Mudbox to put extra detail in and texture it to make it look realistic. I really loved doing this project and when i got the hang of using the two pieces of software i didn't find it to hard to create what i wanted. However i do feel that my final model didn't look as well as i had hoped but all in all i was relatively happy with it and this is definitely something i would like to do more of in the future.

Motion Studies Showreel

My semester 2 motion studies show reel. looking back on this work was nice as i felt that i had improved allot in my animation, the character lifting the ball was the earliest and the walks being the latest bit of animation i did. Even though this semester i haven't done a great deal of actual animation i really enjoyed animating these pieces and specifically the walk. I think it was because these animation were more focused on getting performance into the animation and bringing the characters to life more.

Backgrounds

Another one of are projects was to create animation backgrounds, this was one of my favorite projects as it was more of the stuff that i have done in the past and what i really love doing.

Exterior Background

 Interior Background

Animation Layout

We had to create three backgrounds all from a storyboard that we had done in the first semester which i was annoyed about because my storyboard was set in a forest which made every background the inside or out skirts of a forest which didn't give me much to work with.  we had to create an interior and exterior background plus an animation layout.

These three backgrounds i didn't particularly enjoy doing because it was from something i wasn't to keen on but on the other hand in the industry you cant really choose what backgrounds you do. I did enjoy painting them in ways purely because i hadn't done much of this stuff all year and it was nice to have something different. 

Adaptation Final Edit

After a few days work on the Adaptation project i finally finished the animated background with a camera move and some added sound effects. I really enjoyed this project because it was more aimed at what i love doing and what i want to do more of. The whole feel of this piece of artwork for me was to make it very subtle and calming, so i added the animation of a leaf blowing in the wind, birds flying and the waterfall moving.

Final Edit

I was pleased with the outcome of this piece and felt that i could have worked on it for a long time but it came to a point where i had to stop or it would take up all my time. 

Walks with Performance

Here we were asked to animate 3 walks from a list of various walks. A walk is a very important thing when it comes to animation and is supposed to be one of the hardest things to get right. we had to animate these three walks but put performance in them and over exaggerate them slightly. The idea if this brief was to get us to study peoples walks. i found this really interesting and enjoyed the studying part allot more than the animation. 

i chose to animate a macho male walk, a flirty female walk and a sad walk. when doing these animations i used Richard Williams animators survival kit book as guidance as it has a great section on the timing of walks.

Flirty Female Walk

I felt that this was maybe the most successful one because i felt it had more performance in and stronger key poses in.

Macho Male Walk

This walk didn't go as well, i don't know why it didn't look great. but i feel it was because the walk its self needed to be over exaggerated more to make it obvious what walk it is because me this looks more like a confident happy walk.

Sad Walk

Again i feel like this walk needs allot more work to it but all together i didn't mind doing this one and was relatively pleased with it and found it a simple walk to do as there are allot of very subtle movements.

Looking back on these walks i know that they all need working on and need more performance in them but all in all i enjoyed animating walks and feel like it is something i would do more of just for good practice.

Ident Project

The brief for this project was to create an ident for Falmouth University using some form of animation. When we were fist given this brief i was wasn't really that keen on it but after being shown some examples and looking more into title sequences and indents for various things i quite liked the idea of creating a simple but cool looking ident. Being stuck for ideas me and tony walker decided to team up and brain storm ideas together. we looked at many but both agreed on an ident that would be in a similar style to these two pieces..

Catch me if you can Title sequence.

We both really liked the graphic style to this sequence and the use of simple colours and lines but with clever transitions and change of colours.

The Pacific Title Sequence

We looked at more and i just thought of other title sequences and remembered the opening sequence of a tv series called The Pacific. I loved this series, and the title sequence just popped into my head. its a bit far from what we were asked to do but i just love how the drawings bleed into the live footage and the colours work perfectly with setting up the feet and style of the series.

Sherlock Holmes End Credits

Another film that uses a very similar technique and in my eyes in a better way is at the credits of Sherlock Holmes.

i think that the credits in this style work perfectly, its one of the very few film where i have sat and watched all of the credits, purely because they made the credits more of an art piece rather than a list of names.

Going back to more of the graphic style i Chose to base my ident on this very graphical intro created by Jr. Canest.

I really like this title sequence because its really quirky, colourful, the transitions of colours and shapes work well and above all it works really well with the music. watching this title sequence made me realise how important the music is, as in this piece everything is interacting with it and the objects are almost dancing to the the soundtrack and this is what i feel makes it a good title sequence.

Jr.Canest Crazy Enough Title sequence

My test animation

after having a brain storm on the style i knew what i was aiming for so i did a quick test in Toon Boom to see how plausible the idea would be. this is very rough and is very different from what i imagine the final outcome to be but i was happy because of how simple it was to create.

Student Ambassador Video

last semester me and the other ambassadors on animation, James  tony and Matteo. where asked to create a short animated film that would advertise the ambassador scheme at the university to other students and things like what an ambassador is, and how students can benefit from becoming one.

Creating this video has been a very long process as it has been a separate project running along side are other work and as much as we would like to be able to do it all in one go and get it done it just hasn't been possible. so we have just worked on it now and again and here are a few parts of what will be in the final video.

This was a quick and very simple animation i created in Toon Boom to show being an ambassador you get the chance to meet lots of new people. This will only end up being in the video for a few seconds so i didn't want to spend too much time on it. i also tried to make it fit with the quirky and simple style that we all agreed on for the video. I also really liked animating this piece purely because there wasn't complicated animation to do and it was more about the concept rather than how flashy it looked.

This short animation is very different from the last and is supposed to show that you also get to travel to many location with the job. i chose to do this bit in stop motion mainly because it was simple to do and i didn't have the time but also because i thought it would be nice to have a different style put into the video to mix things up a bit. I wasn't that pleased with the outcome but for what we want to use it for i think it will work okay.