BFX Festival Thoughts and Update

Man, I feel like crap at the moment. Seem to have the flu and it's not helping with the deadline which I have left for my animation assignment. So, if my grammar and style of writing is really poor on this blog post, it's due to the fact I can hardly keep my head together.

Anyway, on Saturday morning I had returned back from the BFX festival, something which was the most terrifying experience of my life. For several reasons, one was the fact that most of the people that had went their were students or just graduates, from what I could see and the few people that I had  talked to. You'd think that this would be alright, as I can connect with them as I was a university student, but it was alright until they started talking about the technical side of the work. It scary and sad to see how much they knew about other stuff that I did.

Arrived on the first day of BFX Festival

Now as much as I'm focused as becoming an Animator, this festival really opened my mind to how, I may need to learn other skills of the pipeline of the VFX production. I may not need it, but I feel that it may help in the long run. This also helped me realise to where I am at the moment. Showing my work to other people really showed how far behind I am. This does make me feel annoyed to the choices I have made in the past but at the same time, fuels my passion even more to break into the industry.

ILM Willis, talks about the retrospective of how ILM began and evolved the industry

The BFX festival was a small field, before heading up to the next festival which I have booked for, London VFX festival, which is due to come this November. Now the only problem which I have at the moment, is networking, as I sometime feel quite intimidated to talking to new people that are more knowledgeable than me. I just hope that from now, that I could get my showreel up to scratch, but from the back of my mind, I know that I need more content to show.

Double Negative talks about The World's end VFX and Special Effects

The talks in the BFX festival was very interesting, even though most of them were skills that I wasn't using I.e using Crowd simulation, Digimattes, lighting, rendering and so on, much of which an Animator, doesn't really need to know. But it was useful, to how these would then connect to an animator later on in the production line.

MPC talks about Crowd simulation used in Lone Ranger and World War Z

The talk which I have found most fascinating and sad to have missed a masterclass was, Professor Stuart Sumida. He talked about anatomy as a Paleontologists and how by using these skills, pre-determined the way an animal would run, walk and so on. Not only did he help animators but also he helped; directors, designers and so on.

Professor Stuart talking about the creatures in Avatar compared to How to train a Dragon

I was really sad and annoyed to have missed his masterclass, due to the fact that it was not highlighted on the festival page, until I got there on the first day. He was so passionate on his work, and you could get the feeling that he felt so humble to have had the opportunity to work on many films titles, from different film studios throughout his career.  I really hope to meet him again. 

Anyway, I must get back to animating, and hopefully I'll be a lot better to talk a bit more about what happened during the BFX festival.

BFX Festival and Animation training part 5

Hello there, it's just past 1:30am and to be honest I just wanted to share a quick update of whats going on.

You may've guessed with the title of the blog, is that i shall be heading down to Bournemouth for the "BFX Festival". It's very exciting, as a lot of major companies from the VFX and animation industry shall be presenting their work, and hopefully I'll be able to talk to them and network with other enthusiasts, who are trying to break into the industry. I simply can't wait.

Starts Wednesday 25th September 2013

With the animation training, I had been focusing on the walk cycle assignment for a few weeks now, as my tutor wanted to make sure that I had done it correctly, and that the principles were present. I was hoping that I would get the "green light" and that my walk cycle animation was done correctly, where i would then add this to my showreel, ready for the BFX festival. Unfortunately, I had got the arcs mixed up and I needed to polish a few bits here and there. Other than that, i could then go back to the "walk to run" cycle which I had been working on, this week.

Front (above)

Side (above)

I had compiled a temporary showreel for now which you can find below. Personally, I find the animations which I have done over the past two months, much more better and appealing to watch, than the final animation which I did for my final year project for university, quite a shame really.

Andy mo showreel from Andy mo on Vimeo.

So, the next time I'll post on this blog, will be my experience from the BFX festival. See you guys next time.

Animation Training - Part 4

Hello all, hope you are enjoying the summer and making the most of it, when the sun is out, something that seems to be quite rare almost in my country at the moment. What can I say, British weather, you either love it or hate it. Anyway, I had done a few animations with the Ballie rig character from last week assignments, and now I have polished and refined what I had blocked out a few days ago.

The sneak walk is something that still bugs me, as I can't seem to get it right, even going into the graph editor over and over again to see where the fault is, it proved difficult to fix some of the small faults, that was present in the animation.

After trying to fix the problem, I knew that I would be doing more damage than good, just like the walk cycle assignment which I did a few weeks ago. The best plan of action for now was to leave it as it is, and try to do this personality walk once again, but with a different rig. Hopefully, I would see where I went wrong.

This video below was based on weight shifting for the character. I found this one to be much more technical and I feel that I enjoyed more animating this, as it felt that the principles that I had learnt and the tutorials which I noted down, really helped me  to push the poses out of the character, therefore you could feel the weight of balance for this character.

Technically I was told do another assignment, which I had not yet done, as I wanted to focus on the animation above more, rather than having lots of animation done, that didn't have enough time spent, to make it look good. It was meant to be a character walking and then change to another direction. I still feel that I need to do this, but I will do this another time. Right now, I think I have to try and work out this new task, that was given to me this week.

Right now this pose is not correct

This time, I have to animate the Morpheus rig, made by Josh Burton. It will be a simple walk cycle, lol, simple....it's always the simple animation that always proved the most trickiest in my opinion. But yeah, I'm going to be animating this character and so far, I have research and reviewed a few live references which I've recorded. I've done this and begun blocking out the poses, which seems to be quite difficult at the moment.

So I will continue blocking out this character, but only from the contact position to the other. Once i get the feel, balance, weight, and look of the character from these poses to their most appealing and strongest point, I will then block out the other poses, as it'll be symmetrical from what I will pose out. I'll see you guys next time.

Animation Training - Part 3

Hello again, so as usual I had my weekly review of my work from my tutor and just like every review, he gave me the good and bad of my work and tells me how to improve my work. Everytime this happens I do get quite annoyed with myself because I wish I had seen the faults before, but I guess that's part of the learning process.

I don't have anything to show at the moment, as I have not yet improved the personality walk cycles yet. Instead, I just wanted to express some of the things in my mind which has, really triggered me to think of the way I'm animating at the moment.

 It's fair to say that I'm happy with some of the work which I have produced so far, from these last coming weeks, as I have learnt a lot. However, when I compare myself to other people's finished work to mine, I feel as though they are on a much different level. It feels as though I have not given myself enough time to think about the work first and consider other factors to make the animation more appealing. Instead, it feels at the moment I'm just diving into the deep end, and rushing it; which animation is not about.

So as I find other student works like from "Animation Mentor" for example, and see their progression level, it does make me think, " can I get to that level, can I push the poses to the limit like these?" and so on. Plus, the competition to get into this industry is getting more fierce, as more people have access to tutorials.

So with this in mind, I will from now on, push forward and take each assignment as though I was working on a film, tv or game company, so I can show the full potential that I have, to become a better character animator.

Animation Training - Part 2

Hello once again, I'm glad to say that I had figured out, how to resolve my walk cycle problems from last week. As mentioned from the previous post, when I put my character into "Pre- Infinity" and etc, the whole poses would slowly collapse and some of the legs, feet or main body would lag behind. This was something my tutor could not figure out what the problem was. The main problem which I have later found out was that some of my poses were different from one another, even by a small cm on the grid, it can affect the overall animation.

The spacing from the right foot and the left foot

Even by a small margin could affect the whole walk cycle

So, this week assignment was similar to what I have done last week. It was to create a new walk cycle with personality. My tutor wanted me to however to focus on the animation being on stepped mode. By doing this throughout my work, I've noticed the smaller details and this will therefore make sure that, I won't have as much faults when I start working on spline, and re-fining the animation. 

In the meantime, I have completed two types of walk cycles. One of them is a heavy walk, as I wanted to show as much weight for this character as much as possible. 

I was a-bit worried to how my animation was turning, out, as I felt that some of the work looked incorrect. I did look over my filmed references of myself over and over again and tried to draw the key poses, that will be used in my animation. 

The videos below is the other type of walk cycle I have been working on, a tip -toe. I'm still not happy with the overall timing as it needs to be slower to build the anticipation more. 

I have previewed these two walk cycles on what they looked liked on spline and so far, they seem to be working well. Just have to work on the timings a bit more for the "Tip toe" cycle. Other than that, I will post later on to the progress of these walks.

Animation Training - Part 1

Hello all, once again. As mentioned from the previous blog post, I had started to learn from an Animator, Michael Morgan, who will be teaching my over the duration of 12 Weeks. What this then allows me, is to review the basics principles of animation again, where I was evidently lacking from my course at Uni, where hopefully this will give me a better chance of improving my showreel.

This week coming, it would be the fourth week and I was asked to animate a walk cycle. This was something which I had always needed in my showreel, as it would show the basic understanding of applying other basic principles together, i.e "squash and stretch". 

My tutor then sent me a few resources to help me, for this week assignment.

Richard Williams- Animation Survival Kit

Tutor - Resources

After many trial and errors and persistence of improving the walk cycle over and over again, going into the graph editor to make sure that all of the values looked correct, I was able to produce the walk cycle.

The only problem which I still encounter, is the "Pre infinity and Post Infinity cycle" as, yes it had made my character walk from A to B forever, but the tranlastion for the Z axis would for some reason slow down and therefore the poses would be lost, as it further progress on the timeline.

I had tried my best to amending this issue, where I had to re-do the poses, where I animated the character on one spot, rather than it having moving forward. This seemed to have solved most of the problem, but not all of it. (Some values must have not match up / mirrored to the opposite pose)

This was unfortunate and I'm still baffled as to why and how this is happening. It was early morning by the time I had pushed the limit of my knowledge and searched all over the internet as to why this was happening and any hope of fixing it.  So, hopefully when I ask my tutor on review day on Sunday, he will have a solution to this problem.  I'll see you next time guys.

Graduation- The next step

Hey there, it's been a while since I last blogged, and I'm going to try and ease my way back into doing this weekly. 

I had finished Uni for quite some time now, about a month ago or so where I had achieved a 2:1 for my course. I was happy with the results but to be honest, I feel as though grades aren't important within the industry which I'm trying to get in, however it does help for example, working in another country.

Results day and last day at uni

So, now that I had finished university, I knew that I had to try and and apply to jobs that could help me get into where I want to be in the future, a CG character animator. I had tried applying before, but was unfortunate to have had any replies. I had then, sent and applied to various of VFX companies in London, but again, unlucky to hear from anything.

It was tough the first few weeks, as I felt like I'm not getting anywhere. The news that I watched everyday didn't seem to help, as they mentioned about the unemployment figures and how graduates this year, are finding it much more difficult and competitive to get to where they want.

I then woke up one morning, with the news facts fresh on my mind and the fact that I wouldn't get anywhere. It was hard to take in. I had other plans, where I would continue working at my part time job and try and polish up my animation skills here and now and find networking events, to build up my presence in the industry. I then got an email.

I then received an email from an Animator I had met, as he had turned up to my university to present his work and how to get into the industry. His name is Michael Morgan. He had asked me to whether or not if I wanted to be part of a animation mentoring program which he was holding, over the duration of 12 weeks. I then without hesitation, replied back that I would like to be part of this.

This was a really good opportunity as even though I could've taught myself on how to animate, I knew that I would not achieve the quality which many of the companies are looking out for from a showreel. I would receive weekly feedbacks from Mike and I could therefore learn from my mistakes that he'll point out and I can work at my own pace, but I will always be pushed, due to the weekly deadlines.

So far, I'm a third in of my training and that's quite scary as I've only just realised that. Not good for me...Reason being is that, this was my cushion, something which I can kind of relax my mind on, before panicking again on finding a job suited to my work. I found that Blue Zoo animations are hiring people, but without enough quality of work on my showreel, the likelehood of me being likely candidate, is getting slim. Hopefully this week I will have something worthwhile to add into my showreel. I just have to remain focus and stay with the assignment set for this week.

I'll see you next week