Hey guys, at the moment I am in London where I will be attending the VFX festival over the next few days.
Things have been interesting so far and one of the highlights of the event was meeting with Alex Williams. There was then a workshop which he then taught based on an introductory to animation. I didn't expect much from this workshop but was surprised that, I was given a task to animate a bird. A creature animation which I have not yet done before, as I have only focused on character animation.
Alex Williams then directed us to finding references of birds, from key poses to the way how a bird wing mechanic works.
As I got stuck into animating in maya, I couldn't help but, look around and see how the other people in the room were animating. The guy next to me seemed to know his way around maya, and he had that kind of impression that he had experience with animating. The most weird thing about this was, I saw a part of myself in him, as I was in his position a few months ago. I then realised that he rushed into a lot of the key poses of the bird, and was solely independent on the basic thumbnails that was given to us at the start of the workshop. Never did he once, check online to compare real life references with the animation. Which is fine but, as I've learnt from experience, making sure that the reference relates to the work you are doing, will further improve your work along the way of the animation process.
What I'm trying to say, is that I do genuinely feel that I've come a long way since the first animation tutorial I had with my tutor over the summer. However, I do feel at the moment I have lost that passion, with what the person next to me had, as he was enthusiastically working on the animation. I need to re-ignite this passion of mine.
Going to these sort of festivals has really helped me think of what I should do next and what sort of things to animate. Like how Alex Williams had talked about the type of content that is necessary for an animator to have when recruiters are looking out on a showreel.
So after this week has finished, I will try and do a bit more character animation but, will then work on creature animation as at the moment, the UK VFX studios see this as a bonus in a showreel, plus a lot of the VFX studios specialises in this particular type of animation.
