Propercorn Brief

Second Boards Feedback

After showing my new boards to my peers here are the responses to those boards:

Most of the constructive criticism was advising me to go into more detail about how its healthy to go for the popcorn that propercorn provides. which I understand I haven't included much about the popcorn, but I was coming from the angle of the judges rather than the audience. after all they are judging the boards and not the audience. although the audience do need to be aware of the low fat content of the popcorn. its briefly outlined in the animation but could have done with more detail.

The end of Animex

Animex comes to an end!

I was equally as sad to come to the end of this fantastic festival as I was with BAF, but fortunately it will still be going on for years to come! I have learnt valuable techniques and lessons from these brilliant speakers, and got to speak to them on a face to face basis as if we were just two people just chatting over a pint. this made me realise how important these festivals are! if I was stuck at home keeping myself to myself there is no way I will progress through this industry, and so I will make it my ambition to go to more of these events, big or small, because the connections you make are impeccably valuable! who knows what the future holds! see you next year Animex.

MPC

Animating Groot: Greg Fisher

Animation supervisor MPC

MPC studios were given the project to animate Groot in act 1 and Rocket in act 3, with a hell of a lot in between! the subjects were shared with a different studio, so they were in constant communication, sharing ideas and files with each other to achieve the best they could! this gave me an insight as to the workings in different environments, that if I was in an animation studio, I should expect to be working not just with my own crew but with other studios as well.

So here is the run down of the shots that MPC were involved in:

857 Shots in total

(1305 with omits: shots you discard)

490 Shots of the final battle

180 Shots of Rocket

170 Shots of Groot

This is an incredible work load for the company so everyone was up to their ears with work, but it was extraordinary to see how they achieved these results, especially for Groot, how each vine moved in reaction to the others, which was achieved by animating in sections, maybe using constraints to have a flow of animation.

a common hurdle when it comes to feature length animations is the time-scale of the renders. for example, in the Guardians of the Galaxy, the final scene had the city as the environment that contained 39 Billion polygons ... which made the render times range from 6 - 16 hours ... per frame. this is common as I have researched into it before. it just makes you take into account extra time for renders.

Guardians of the galaxy

Guardians of the Galaxy

Atomhawk

Atom hawk started in a place where all good ideas start .. the pub!

The company started slow, creating concept art for various small business and gradually spreading their name until they hit the big shots, such as: Lord of the Rings: Guardians of middle earth and the recent Guardians of the Galaxy!

Animation is all about taking risks, and Atomhawk gave a good saying that I will stick to, and keep in the back of my mind when I think about taking risks:

"ask for forgiveness, not permission"

just a quirky item that they talked about was the Millano that features in the Guardians of the Galaxy, the ship was built to scale! every last detail was meticulously made to scale from the switches and lights to the trimming on the seats that was done by the UK car manufacturer Bentley! 

But there was one technique that I tried after hearing this talk was the way some of the concept artist go about creating new concepts, it is using a painting method of Photoshop where you grab an image off Google that resembles an element you want to create, and then you use different brushes to completely adjust the image to its bare bones just to give a sense of what element you want to involve in your concept. it is a technique I will practice this technique to improve my concept art skills.

Marketing

Marketing section

This talk was held by a group of different studios to give the audience advise on how to get yourself out there, and what to expect when going into the industry at an entry level. I did learn some valuable tips and tricks, but I also learnt more about how these studios work in terms of hiring and intern-ships, which gave me knowledge of what to expect.

There were 5 representatives of different studios each with different roles at the front to give the audience a range of inputs from different areas:

The Mill:

VFX based in London

Predominantly commercials

game cinematic

music promos

colour grading

motion graphics

hiring juniors in 2D

Framestore

Based in america

Visual effects

Commercials

Film

hire as runners to give them an opportunity to get into the industry

ILM - Industrial light magic

Based in San Francisco, Singapore and London

140 crew members - set to be 300 by next year

internships in development

MPC

Based in London, Montreal, Vancouver

2D for film/advertisement

Double Negative

Based in London, Singapore, Vancouver

Film focused

TV division

There are similarities in all of the studios that were in attendance, they each hire people as runners at an entry level to get them involved in the industry, but they will only hire runners after seeing their show reels. NPC does a 3 month intensive training course, but again need to see show reels. so this talk really opened my eyes as to the importance of show-reels, as it is the face of you! so it emphasised the importance of investing as much time as possible to making it the best it can be! this coming from every studio, just made it a bigger priority for me.

Method studios

Simon Carr 

Visual effects supervisor, method studios.

Based in London, Method Studios have worked on many VFX projects including the recent Exodus gods and kings. this is the run down of how the studio were involved in the production!

There are 55 Artists in which this number is gradually growing. the reason for the growth is down to the amount of shots that the studio has to deal with.

For exodus, there were 162 shots that the studio had to composite and add effects. this was achieved using a number of software's:

Maya

Hudini, for effects

Mari, for textures

Z-Brush

Nuke, for compositing

The studio were responsible for adjusting the footage to make it more like what the director had visualised. for example, one shot was of a field of dead goats, and the director asked them to include more dead goats, so through a process of compositing and 3D modelling and texturing and corrections, they added CG elements to create the visuals that the director wants.

So in this presentation I really only learnt about how these companies use different processes in the VFX world, and an insight as to which programmes they use to achieve different effects. programme specific effects. and I did learn some valuable names, these I will research into further. 

Ed Hooks

Ed Hooks

Now is the time

This talk was from the actor and acting instructor for many animation companies who is very passionate about his work and the acting industry and how it fits into the world of animation, here is what he had to say!

Adult animation

"people are going to look back at today and say, this is when things changed"

Disney and other big animation companies that are controlling the output of successful animations, but this is all about to change. this is Ed's explanation:

"Animation has been successfully commercialised, animation has been co-opted for children. home theatre is in ascendency because you have to reserve seats, pay for the ticket, pay for over priced snacks in a public cinema and due to these prices and how the cinema takes money from the tickets sold. a film that has a budget of 200 Million pounds would need to make close to 1 Billion pounds to make a profit. what kind of business model is that?!" 

Home cinema is justifying low budget animations and it would mean you don't have to have hundreds of people to work on them and in turn making the expenses a fraction of that of high budget animations.

"most of the exciting things happening in animation isn't happening in the US"

"I would give up the idea of working for one company, like actors attach themselves to projects they like."

"Walt Disney did what he did because he was dancing to his inner song!"

"There is nobody to follow, it may seem like there is with toy story etc. but there isn't!"

He went on in amazement how you can use kickstarter to raise millions of dollars, all you need is an idea!

He was very adamant that he didn't choose who he wanted to work for, but rather, who he wants to work with. this is a valuable concept as if you strive to work 'for' someone then you will always be that step beneath where you want to be in your career.

The one main thing that resonated with me the most is as follows:

Start slow, rather than trying to be what you think everybody wants you to be, instead show the world how it will be with you in it! and it doesn't start with your ability to draw, it starts with your ability to think! The animation industry is in a state of change today, you are going to have to step up and be a leader.

This is something I will keep referring to in my animation career as it is very inspiring and shows a lot of truth in what he says!

I will leave you with a very true saying that Ed came up with,which I do agree with, but needs to be taken with a pinch of salt:

"we need more animators animating for the magic. there is no point animating something that can just be shot in live action"

Animex!

Animex!

Now in our 16th year, Animex at Teesside University plays host to some of the greatest talent in the animation and games industries, giving you the chance to learn from the best through our talks and workshops

This was my first time at Animex, but it probably wont be my last! it was an extraordinary festival with some amazing speakers and presentations. my most valued experience at the festival was the marketing session on the evening of one of the days, where there were stalls manned by these incredible names in the industry and gave us a chance to talk with them as people and really feel a part of the industry itself.

There are many good presentations that I viewed and am very grateful for the valuable lessons and techniques I have learnt!

Visiting Speaker

Rebekah Caputo

puppeteer and theatre maker

This talk really did benefit my practice, as it was all about movement and pupating a character to seem alive. this was incredibly useful with my character and narrative project as we were essentially puppeteering.

What is puppetry?

For anything inanimate to appear alive, live or digital or natural.

Rebekah gave an interesting performance of her bringing to life a plain old plastic bag through the art of puppeteering. the result was very innovative, and you started to forget that Rebekah was there and just believed that the bag was real. which led her onto the magic of puppetry!

she touched on a belief called Animism: a deep belief that everything is alive!

she explained that she could be anything, not restricted by human form. and that she can do anything! this i can relate to because of animation, there is an overwhelming sense of freedom and endless possibilities that animation provides!

"Celebrate the darkness within"

There are 3 things that she described are essential to the performance of her puppets, which I will employ in my own animations to make them seem real, and to make the viewers unconsciously be aware that the character is real. as sometimes something can be slightly off but you cant place it, but when it is corrected it suddenly becomes alive:

   Breathe 

  Weight 

Focus

So where does puppetry fit into my practice other than what I've previously stated, well a quote from the great Barry Purves read like this

"Even though you are using stop motion, you are still puppeteering!"

visiting professional

Kath Chapman

From Fettle studios

Fettle studios were responsible for the war time animations that portray various interviews of survivors of people who were imprisoned in concentration camps, these animations are very informative, and i really enjoy how animation is used in a documentation approach and how it represents the issues in question as there is not much footage of that time.

Kath works with her partner and a crew of people at fettle to create these fantastic animations. their demographic is very specific, keeping to a strict age range of 12 to 13 year olds.

The most important thing that i got from this talk is when she described the industry and how it worked, she went on to say that you have got to be tough, no body is going to hand you jobs on a plate, you have to go and get them yourself!

"Believe in yourself!"

because this industry is highly competitive!

But she also gave me another insight into the industry, a different angle:

TV companies are not innovators, they are iterators, they don't like taking risks!

A slight issue they uncovered whilst doing these animations was the interviews themselves, they were interviewing elderly people, and she said they go on tangents and like to waffle quite a bit. so for example for one animation they had to edit down the material from 3 hours 30 minutes to 4 minutes, which is a hell of a lot of cutting. so I will keep in mind that if and when it comes to interview, I should be prepared for something similar.

visiting speaker

Lee Hardcastle

this talk came from no other than the creator and animator of the renowned Claycats, and other gory and violent clay-mation animations, his talk was all about his journey from becoming a film student to animator.

Lee started his film career at the Northern Film School. the problem that he faced was that as a group you had to pitch your ideas (not dissimilar to what we have to do in our collaboration projects) but he found out he wasn't very sociable and found it hard to do so. so off his own back he started investigating into stop motion using a free software that he found on-line and using action figures as the puppets. He pitched his idea independently, adamant to work on his own, and the tutors saw his dedication and gave him the green light!

His animations soon became popular at indie festivals but regardless he was still on the dol after graduating from film school. he then started work in the VFX department at a small company, and this gave him an insight to new techniques and processes.

He never gave up his dream of doing his own films.

He was shortly after approached by an american festival to continue his work on one of his first animations: GI Joe. after this confrontation he developed a strong partnership with the man that approached him, and still works with him to this day.

throughout his animation career he has always had a protentious outlook on film making, and refused to identify himself as an animator, but this is just denial. as he now realises he is an animator. with a strong influence from his film making career.

But this is the part which most relates to me and my practice! he mentioned how competitions are so important! because you never know what will sprout from entering competitions. so this has made me more inclined to not worry about being refused, instead to realise that the more i enter the more my work will be seen and who knows what can come of it!

He touched on youtube, and how his videos are forming his salary. and a nice quote appeared:

"My videos are like cows, the more cows I put in the field, the more cows I could milk"

so it was nice to take a look into his experiences, but it also sprouted the seed of the importance of entering your work into competitions!