I got the idea for my FMP film during my second year of study and had such high hopes of producing a top quality finished animation for the first time in my three years of study. For hand in this has not been the case, my film is not up to the standards I hoped as I didn’t even have the time to finish or even start some scenes. I was planning to start the animation in December but as I had dissertation hand in at the start of the year this was pushed back and didn’t actually start animating till the end of April. I once again started way too late and didn’t have the time to take care and effort into animating, my scenes are very short as I didn’t have enough thought into what each season could happen, so the story itself is very basic. This just involves him standing looking left to right in most scenes waiting for the girl to appear but I could have had a main sequence in each like I did for the Autumn scene. For example in the summer scene he could have been holding ice creams for the and they melt in his hand, I also wasn’t able to animate the main scene of him falling over and the female coming along to help him up. I did however find the consistency of animating this year has been a dramatic improvement because of the simple style of characters I created. As well as doing a lot of character pre-planning with storyboards and model sheets this massively helped when I was struggling to work out what the character should look like in a key frame or pose. I do think this was my downfall as I spent so much time on the pre-production I thought I had enough time to animate and get it finished so I delayed it as much as possible. When animating a hard scene with the character running towards the screen I was struggling as I couldn’t work out the timings or how each pose needed to look so I decided that I would go into Maya and animated it in 3D first. This definitely made animating a lot easier as I was able to import the film into Toon Boom and animate over the top so I had every key frame and in between. I should have been doing this in the pre-production stage of getting reference footage or animating to make sure that my animation would look correct and realistic. This is the reason why my animation haven’t had the correct flow because I have only had a colour script to work from and not any reference to help with the timings. I was hoping my overall film would be over a minute and tell the story of how a romantic man fell instantly in love and waited every day for his girl that never came and when she did she already had a boyfriend. But my animation I feel does not tell this in my best quality as it’s short and rushed due to me leaving it too late to start animating. I wanted the background to fade when his hope was starting to die out in the scene that’s back in summer at the end but this would involve me doing at least 10 new backgrounds with each of the skies duller and again I didn’t have time to produce theses. Especially in the autumn scene I can see it needs a lot of work before I even start to line and colour it, the eye look from left to right goes way too quick and I think the blow of the scarf could be slowed down a tiny bit as too may frames has made it look messy. But this could be a problem that is fixed with the colour work, in this scene he comes to screen too quickly as well as he wouldn’t cover that much ground based on the position he started off at. I would need to add at least another 3 steps to not make this look rough but for the sake of the hand in I stopped working on it in order to get more scenes done. I am however happy with the particle work I added in as I learned how to take advantage of the many tools Toon Boom has to offer, I would not of had time to animate my own snowfall so this tool helped me out hugely. The last scene also needs a lot of work as the key frames for the side walk go off in proportions as he walks off the screen with each one he gets bigger and higher when he is far away so he should be smaller. There are many things that I will be changing and adding to this to complete my FMP for new designers show and to start to create a show reel for myself, I should of however started this animation in December when I planned to and it would have been finished to a good enough quality. But life gets in the way and this was not the case for this module, this year I do feel my skills have hugely improved. I have made sure I have added more in between’s and consistency in the drawing by keeping the style simple and my backgrounds I’m most proud of as they reflect Paris well and in each scene set a tone for how the audience should feel based on the colours used. Overall this year as a designer I think I have massively improved by taking my time on designs and perfecting how I want them to look. I do think this was the downfall I had because I took too long on one background or character instead of animating but I want to be a designer and that’s what I enjoy doing which is why I delayed animating so much. So with practice hopefully I can produce top quality designs in a short amount of time. I will be finishing this film for the exhibition so I have another month to work on and get to a standard I’m happy with people seeing.
I have done a show reel of just my art work for professional use, I only done this quickly as every piece of artwork was done in a different format they all have different ratio’s which does make it look messy. I don’t feel I have enough good quality work to do a animated show reel so for now it’s just still pieces of art. I edited it all together on Premier Pro and not very familiar with the software so that’s why this is very basic but I will be working on some new animations to make a good rendered version in future that will hopefully help me get a job in the industry. As I do want to work on design and not animating itself this isn’t such a important thing.
My university journey is coming to an end, I feel as an artist I have grown and with each day my skills have improved as an animator and as an artist. So far I have been applying for junior jobs and internships based in the UK, but until I get a job I shall be focusing on my designs and getting ready for the exhibition in July with the other classmates at New Designers. When I step into the working industry I will be saving up money so I can take a trip over to the sunny state of California for CTN Expo in the year 2019. I will be paying to have the full VIP pass where you can go into the recruitment lounge and have your portfolio seen by the best of the best. It would be a dream of mine to move over to the USA and work in Burbank at one of the top studios so all my hard work and energy will go into making this happen. I would also like to venture into the VFX world of animating at a major company like FrameStore so to help with this goal I have been applying for internships that I could learn this method of animating. At the moment I am not ready to move away from London so I will be applying for jobs based in and around this area but maybe in the next year or so this will change and a big move could be ahead of me. In the meantime I will be checking the big names studios like Walt Disney/Pixar for any internships or Junior jobs they may have as my end goal is to end up working for the company that made me fall in love with animation. As a career point I would like to be an Art Director as I feel this role would suit me perfectly in giving off the right sense of colour and designs for features. To start off this career plan I am applying for any Junior designers jobs so maybe one day I can work my way up to art director.
Innovation Arts are looking for a Junior designer/illustrator/animator to work at their studios, I feel this role suited me so I applied for it by sending off an email and CV to them using Indeed. This studio has some big named clients such as eBay, sky, BBC, Lloyd’s bank, Nike, transport for London and many many more. They have asked for someone who has experience with scribing which I don’t but I applied anyway as it’s the perfect starting platform as a junior designer.
Using indeed I found an role for a graduate motion graphic designer based in London, the role is to help animate for their adverts that mainly focus on sport related clients. The role was easily applied for it was just a case of putting in an email and sending off a CV, the only problem with this role is that you need After Effects and I have never touched this program so it could be an issue for me when getting to the next steps, most companies use this software to do motion graphics because it’s cheap and easy but I use ToonBoom and not many studios use this software in this country so when applying for jobs I find this aspect hard.
http://www.arts.ac.uk/lcc/courses/postgraduate/ma-animation/
A masters degree would be the next steps of education and perfect for me to further my knowledge and skills before entering the working industry. I have been looking into masters based in London that I could potentially enter, London for me is easily accessible to commute to for studying so the only fees that would need to be paid would be for the course itself. Unfortunately for this masters at the London College of Communication I have missed the deadline dates for applicants this year so I would need to look into applying in the Autumn time for the next year. This particular course works on all areas of animation both 2D and 3D as well as drawn and stop motion, to apply you will need to submit an online application and any digital work that can back up your skills as an animator as well as meeting the entry requirements. The entry requirements are a hons degree level in either animation, illustration, graphic design, visual communication or another closely related subject. As masters focus mainly on the animating side I am quite wary to step into further my education as I want to become an artist for animation, but I know to be the best I can be this may have to be a step I take to get to the level I desire.
In-between modules this year I have been trying to produce some of my own work to upload onto my social media sites. Most of the work focuses on character design and was done using an iPad and Autodesk Sketckbook or Procreate, 5 finished pieces is an achievement for me as well as balancing the other modules. I did want to do one a week but that was an unrealistic goal when it comes to the end of the year and all the work piles up so my free time focused on the other modules and not independent work. I feel with each piece my skills have grown so after finishing uni I can focus more on my independent designs and further my skills as a design artist.
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