While I was scrolling through the animation festivals website ⬇️

Animation Festivals 2020

I opened a few I’d be interested in, namely the Manchester Animation Festival, London International Animation festival and the Cardiff Animation Festival. At first I was scrolling through the International Animation Festivals but unfortunately it appeared most of the festivals had taken part in the earlier part of the year, also had the same experience with the UK festivals! So the pickings were slim, but quality. After a read through of the events happening in each festival I decided on hopefully attending the Cardiff Animation Festival specifically these two talks/panels, one being ➡️Panel: Storytelling for Animation https://www.cardiffanimation.com/storytelling-for-animation and the second being ➡️Animators’ Brunch https://www.cardiffanimation.com/animators-brunch-2020 aiming to attend both of those, and one is free which is a massive bonus, also they only request a donation for a lot of their separate events/panels! It should be an exciting learning experience and I’m looking forward to it!

This week we’ve been asked to have a think and really figure out what some of our short- and long-term goals are. Sometimes it can be a bit overwhelming thinking about where you should be in 3 years’ time, but in this moment, I’m feeling excited and open to the futures opportunities and all the twists and turns it may bring. So, let’s get into it.

• 1. Short-Term (3 months) As far as short-term goals at the moment I’m fully dialled in to Uni work so my hope is to schedule in all my different module projects in on a calendar and fulfil following that schedule to the best of my ability and be proud of the work I’ve accomplished, hopefully without burning out. Alongside Uni work I also am aiming to still find time for myself and my mental and physical health.

• 2. Mid-Term (6-18 months) Mid-Term goals are looking like focusing on my FMP and really putting my heart and hard work into that and completing that to the best of my ability while learning and growing from the process the whole time and coming out the other side a better animator and a stronger person. Alongside that I’m also aiming to get on to a Masters course for animation, hopefully here and Staffs, still waiting to hear back from Stuart on that one though so I’ve set the ball in motion.

• 3. Long-Term (2-3 years) Long-Term goals are big ones, make the move down to London as smoothly as possible, apply to jobs and get said jobs, hopefully at a large studio so I can experience what it’s like to work in that way. Continue to grow and hone my drawing and animation skills and grow my ambition for my future and DREAM BIG, while working towards those dreams. Also remembering to continue to keep a positive mindset in all faces of adversity. Let’s do this!

If you didn’t know, I’m a huge Glen Keane fan. His work on Tarzan, The Little Mermaid, Treasure Planet, Tangled and so many more are beautiful testaments to his free and fluid heartfelt style. This episode of the Bancroft Brothers podcasts ➡️ https://bancroftbros.libsyn.com/podcast-8-the-glen-keane-interview really resonated with me, Glen Keane comes across as an extremely humble and kind artist, who just “couldn’t not NOT draw” it was his life calling from the start. Some parts that really stuck out to me was the discussion of inspiration and when you get “stuck” at a certain drawing or shot, to just step back from the situation go and read some books on the subject, or pick up a book on a artist that inspires you, and learn what you can from them and then come back to the drawing board and see what happens. I also loved how he said an animator’s journey is constant learning from others, which is so true. I’ll end this with a quote his mentor (Ollie Johnson) at the time told him “Don’t draw what the character is doing, draw what the character is thinking.”

For the main project of the second semester we’d all been tasked with creating a original 60 second animation of any topic we could think of. Before we even started the semester I’d had a few animations stories/ideas floating around in my head 🙃. After last semester’s traditional animation (even though it will always be my favourite method/style) I decided I wanted to learn the ins and outs aka. just scratch the surface of Harmony Toon Boom software. So the method will be 2D drawn.

I’ve found I always have to start analogue with my ideas and then transform them to digital. There’s just something about a blank digital page that doesn’t inspire me like pencil and paper do. So I jotted down the character design ideas I had floating around in my head.

The animation is two random comedy sketches squished together in one. The synopsis is this: We follow a young man driving on his way to work as he eats a nutritious apple, little does he know the apple is more than it seems. A beautiful marriage between two sandwich halves (“that don’t belong together”) takes place, but not everyone is as happy as they should be. I jotted together some quick rough storyboards to visualise and work out the timings for every scene. In the end I moved around loads of stuff but it turned out relatively the same, even better than planned I should say.

I decided to call the short Squish as it’s a reoccurring theme in the animation. I wanted to keep everything as cartoony looking as possible to really utilise funny/crazy sound effects. Since we have a keyboard at home I’ll play around with that to create an original soundtrack that’ll set the mood. I ended up having to draw 7 backgrounds for this project, which is a feat in itself for me since I’ve never enjoyed drawing landscapes 😂 but they turned out alright.

The longest part/person to animate was Adam at the beginning half of the animation, it really does take much longer and much more attention to detail to believably animate a human, a lesson I’ve thoroughly learned now. I’d originally planned to finish the whole animation on the 14^th of March but life and work got in the way so here we are a week later than planned, but I’m figuring the time constraints will just hurry me along faster.

I’d say the entire process has been quite enjoyable, its a lot easier to fix and check mistakes/movement issues in software than pencil tests so that’s a massive bonus and a time saver in the long run. The whole animation is done on a mix of twos and ones, whichever method was appropriate for the movement at the time. I’d post some in process pictures but then they’re be spoilers, so you’ll just have to wait. The only thing I have left to do is colour the darn thing! Wish me luck! 👍

Continuing on from last weeks entry, I’ve finally gotten around to finishing the character design of The Iron King for Kals. Taking into account the changes to the original design we had discussed over coffee, i.e. smaller waist, rusty crown, pointier shoulders etc. I set to work on the digital draft. After a quick sketch up I sent Kals a image of the bad boy just to see if I was on the right track with what she wanted!

Kals gave me the go ahead to continue, so I drew up the rest of the turnarounds. Kals contacted me and asked if I could colour him as well, to which I replied YES of course! We decided to keep his palette to dark Blues and Greys with a sickly colour for his skin tone. Kals also gave me free reign to play around with whatever I thought would look good. I coloured him in a way I felt was evil but still royal and sent the test Kals way to get her feedback.

Kals gave me the go ahead once again and I set about colouring the rest! Finished with the final turnaround I emailed the finished work to Kals! She was delighted with it and even said he was sexy 👀 “gasp”! An excellent compliment in my book! The whole project took around 6-8 hours.

Overall working with Kals was a great experience in collaboration and communicating with others. Kals is very professional, kind, a great laugh, and also extremely generous with advice in both academic and artistic areas. She was great to work for and I’d gladly assist her anytime in the future if she’ll have me! 10 out of 10 ⭐⭐⭐

Kals was the first 3rd year to approach me on the Monday for assistance with her Final Animation Project. The Synopsis of her animation – a human girl discovers a magical fairy world in her back garden, and helps the fairies free themselves from the evil grip of the iron king. We spoke in length about the character design she wanted me to do for the villain in her story, the Iron King. She gave me full freedom to design in whichever style I wanted to, just for him to come across entirely evil. That is the brief.

We planned to meet up for coffees that Friday at 10am to touch base, and kept in contact over text. I asked Kals to send me her current character designs so I could keep all the designs relatively symbiotic. She answered me right away with these ⬇️

I wanted to have some rough character ideas to show Kals before getting together on Friday so I drew up two very opposite ideas just to give her an idea of what I could do. The sketches took me around 1-2 hours. At the meeting Kals gave me some great feedback, she loved the designs but just wanted me to expand on them a bit. Give her more options to look at. She definitely was leaning towards the skinny Jacobean style character design. She also let me know that a lot of detail was okay since most of the shots of the evil king would be flashback stills in the animation.

With these critiques in mind I went away and drew up some more possible ideas for the eventual final product. I sketched up some new designs for roughly 1-3 hours. We planned to meet up again the following week.

Kals gave me great feedback on the character designs, with one of them being too human looking, and some others just not what she was looking for. We talked about the final design over coffee and settled on a mashup of the Jacobean style design and the iron masked design. Minus the cape, we agreed capes takeaway from a strikingly distinguishable silhouette in this case. These two together ⬇️

Still working on the finished product for this one! To be continued….

Joshua and I had a quick talk on the Monday about his great idea for his Final Animation Project, Sea is Mine, and I agreed to do a character design for his protagonist, the Puffer-fish. The synopsis of his Animation follows a lonely puffer-fish who has no friends, until one day he befriends a sea mine, being drawn to it because of their similar shapes. He got in contact with me the next day and sent me his mood boards and some of his ideas for the puffer-fish character.

I let him know I would probably have some idea’s ready for him on Saturday after I finished my work on the Storyboard & animatic for Jonathan. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to work on the sketches till Sunday and texted him to apologise for the delay, he answered straight away and reassured me there was no issue. I finally sat down to work on some trial sketches on Sunday, and I asked Joshua shape and style etc. would be easiest for him to rig, so I could design something he would actually use.

He circled the one he liked most and let me know the wanted the shape to be a circle but with the possibility of squash and stretch, keeping it cartoony! With that in mind, I sketched out a page of puffer-fishes and sent them his way. Time wise I think it took about 1 hour.

Joshua kindly said they were all great, and that he was most drawn to the sketch that said lonely beside it. He also asked which one I thought was best. We went back and forth with which design was the correct one for the job. We finally settled on these two styles mixed together ➡️

With the character style agreed upon, I got to work on digitising everything. On Monday, after Lectures, I worked on a digital turnaround for Joshua, I sent him an uncoloured version just to see if the character was following his vision. Joshua gave the all clear, and also asked if I could do a few different expression poses and few where hes puffed out with his spikes showing. I added those in and sent them his way for approval. He fully approved everything and also added that it would’ve taken him weeks to do it himself, hah! Sounds like me with storyboards 😂 The turnarounds and expressions took me around 2-3 hours.

With the majority of the work done I asked Joshua if he had any colour palettes pre-planned or in mind, he said he would be happy with anything that stands out against a blue background. He also gave me some good advice to play around with colour, saying that most of his best works were happy experiments! I decided to colour each angle sightly different letting him decide in the end. Whether it be the final draft or just a inspiration draft. The final coloured turnarounds and expressions were all finished on the Tuesday and I sent them off! Altogether the work took me around 8 hours. Joshua thanked me and said they were a huge help 👍

My experience overall working for Joshua was very positive. Communication was excellent. Joshua is very friendly, professional, helpful, and decisive in what he needed. I absolutely loved designing the puffer-fish, the process was enjoyable and adorable. I’d be happy whether he used the designs or not, I would happily work for Joshua again anytime. 5 stars 🌟.

I met up with Jonathan at 9am on Thursday just as planned, in the Stop motion room where he’d already gotten started building his sets. Jonathan had sent me the script promptly on Monday so I’d already had a chance to read it and get a feel for the mood, style, and setting.

He’d set up a mood board of houses he wanted to portray in his Final Animation Project. The synopsis of Jonathan’s film in his own words is – “It’s a film about the passage of time and progression of human relationships within family life from the perspective of a house. It shows how we develop and grow up as people while dealing with loss and love and how we ultimately move on and are forgotten from the house’s perspective in the cyclical nature that is living.”

I sketched the house for him really quick to see if he agreed with the style or wanted any changes to any areas. He hadn’t completed his character designs yet so keeping the storyboard really easy with just stick figures made the task a bit easier.

I started drawing some storyboard thumbnails right away with Jonathan present so he could make any comments or critiques he wished. He said he was happy with whatever I came up with, he just needed something to help him and others visualise his story. I went home and continued with the thumbnails which actually took a bit longer than expected, hah! Perfectionist alert, even with stick figures. It’s crazy I know. Being fast at storyboarding has never been my strong point, so why not start practising now?

Embarrassingly I think the thumbnails took me about 4-6 hours to complete. But I did manage to get all the camera angles that he wanted in. Now just to digitise everything, which I’m even slower at and working on speeding up. Digital drawing is also not my strong point, I definitely need to get more practice in with that, and I’ve made up my mind to do it this semester!

I kept in touch with Jonathan throughout the day, sent him the photos of the the thumbnails and he okayed them to go! All the digital work took me around two 8 hour working days, so totalling around 20 to 22 hours on this bad boy. It was worth it though. I started the thumb nailed storyboards on Thursday and finished everything on Saturday, phew! I’ve attached the finished Digitised storyboard so you can have a look.

I would say my overall experience was positive, Jonathan is very easy to work for and communication is great in person, the communication over text was a bit lacking compared to the other 3rd year students I was assisting. I understand everyone is very busy, the later in the evening my texts were 10 – 11pm got no answers and any texts I sent over the weekend were also unanswered, which is understandable as well.

Jonathan answered on Monday sending me his email so I could WeTransfer him the finished files. Disappointingly, WeTransfer sent me an email a few days later saying the files were about to expire because they hadn’t been downloaded. I sent Jonathan a text to let him know in case it had just slipped his mind, he downloaded them but didn’t reply again. Overall, I think Jonathan was happy with the work and if not I haven’t received any feedback to state otherwise…..yet. I would happily work for Jonathan again, and just hope the communication would be a tiny bit better 👍

This year we’ve been tasked with assisting the 3rd Year animators with any help they might need on their Final Projects. After hearing everyone’s different pitches on what they were looking for in an assistant, it was decision time! I decided to assist 3 different students with their projects, doing a mix of pre-production work aka. storyboards, animatic, and character designs.

I wanted to get to work fairly quickly, seeing as all of it was pre-production work, the 3rd years would need it fairly quickly. Everyone got in contact with me and vice versa on the same day. I planned to meet Jon on Thursday and have him show me his ideas, mood boards, and script to start the storyboard as soon as possible. I planned to meet with Kals on Friday at Squeezebox to show her a few character ideas I had sketched out for her villain “fairy” character. Joshua and I kept in contact over text and I planned to have some character designs for his Puffer-fish ready on Sunday! Best laid plans! Let’s see if it goes smoothly!

Last Wednesday marked the final day of edits on my original sound clip. I’m actually very delighted with the outcome. Today I’ll be turning sound into pictures with some storyboard ideas and hopefully inspiration will strike and I’ll be able to finish the animatic today and submit everything the very latest tomorrow fingers crossed! We’ll see how it goes.