Story changes

Firstly I should mention that I got into ExpoTees! I'm so excited to be able to take part in that and show my work to industry in May.

Secondly, yesterday I sent off my application for a 12-week summer animation internship at Pixar Animation Studios. I have no idea how likely it is that I will get in, especially given that I am in a different country, but I put my all into every part of the application. Regardless of what happens, it was a great learning experience as I had never written a cover letter before (I learned a lot from Google), and had never made a demo reel (or written a demo reel breakdown to go with it). I hope they will see my enthusiasm - fingers crossed!

I mentioned in my last post that I got some valuable feedback from Ed Hooks on the storyline of my animation. I have spent the two weeks since then implementing some ideas to improve it. It seemed a little scary to be changing aspects of the story so far into the project, but I felt like I couldn't just ignore the flaws now that I knew how I could (mostly) fix them! I quickly drew up some very rough animatic panels to see if the new scenes fit, and asked friends and family what they thought. Since they all thought it was much better - and so did I! - I decided to go ahead with the changes.

Previously the aim of the student character, Phoebe, had been hazy. While we could see she was supposed to be working to complete some work, it wasn't a very defined goal. She also didn't have much conflict - partly because of the vagueness of the goal. I have now made the central idea of the piece that she is trying to finish for a deadline that is at midnight that night, with shots of a clock throughout the day to emphasise that time is passing and tension is building. I have made her look less cheerful while she is working out her poses and walk cycles. The main change is that the scene of her waiting on her bed - relaxed - for a render has now been replaced with her waiting at her desk, incredibly tense and impatient, with the time ticking on towards midnight. I have also changed the ending; watch and see...

If you had seen the previous versions, I think you'll agree that this carries much more weight! It allows for more empathy from the audience, which is crucial.

I obviously still have a fair bit of work to do on the scenes that are still not in linear, and then I am going to have to prioritise which scenes I want to polish up as I probably won't have time to make every one perfect. With the time I have left I have decided that my product hand-in is going to be in playblast form, meaning I can do all the fancy rendering and compositing in May, after the group project is finished and before ExpoTees.

Caitlin :)

Animex week 2014

It's the end of the fifth and last day of the Animex festival here in Teesside, and it's been a jam-packed week! I'm so tired from all that learning!

For those who don't know, Animex is an annual event held at Teesside University, though it's open to everyone. It's centred around animation/film, games and comics, and you can buy a ticket to attend any or all of those event categories. Industry professionals from all over come in to do talks about films/games/comics they've been working on and things they have learned in the industry. There are also networking events where you can talk to the speakers and ask questions or get feedback.

I went to Animex Game, which covered Monday and Tuesday, Animex Talk (the animation and film part), which covered Thursday and Friday, and a masterclass by Ed Hooks for the whole of Wednesday on 'acting for animators'. So it has been pretty full-on for me, being in all day every day! I have come away feeling so inspired, though, and it was good (if not a bit scary in a way) to get away from my work for a week.

I also took advantage of, and thoroughly enjoyed, the two networking evenings, which I didn't do the last two years because I stood around being timid and question-less. My confidence has grown a lot since then, and there were questions I genuinely wanted answered, which helped a great deal:

• Austin Wintory, a brilliant games score composer, helped me with a method for coming up with appropriate music for my project. He said to find different pieces of music, of different moods, styles and speeds, and just shove them in with an edit of my film to see what effect they have - effectively a sound moodboard. Once I have figured out what styles fit where, I can then go about creating my own (original) music that matches that style or mood.
• Dan Lund of Walt Disney Animation Studios answered my question on how they keep everything so consistent across a film like Frozen when they have so many people working on it. They have a 'style guide', which was something I'd never heard of, which is a document of pictures and notes that show what characters move in certain ways, including which mouth shapes you should not use for specific characters, and what points in the film call for harsh shapes or soft shapes, etc.
• Ed Hooks, an acting teacher, I largely corresponded with over email. I sent him the latest cut of my animation for feedback on the flow and story and he gave me some good pointers, highlighting where there were discrepancies and what could be made much stronger and more compelling. I will write about these things as I come to address them, but first I have to plan and work out what I can change realistically in the time I have left.
• Liam Russell from Framestore described to me what kind of animation work there is in the visual effects industry, as I said I didn't necessarily want to limit myself to feature animation. As I expected, they mostly use creature work, and depending on the job there may be some character work involved (but not very likely). He said that really I just need to make a decision on where I want to be because that will affect what I produce to put on my showreel and the way I work.
• Shelley Page from DreamWorks and Victoria Long from Double Negative answered my question about how interested they were in 'creative CVs': it isn't worth spending time doing as the showreel should do the talking, and if anything is going to be done to one's CV it should definitely not be full of bright, painful colours or be white text on black so it won't scan properly!

I have a lot to mull over now, especially regarding where I can make my project miles better before I delve into the last stage of animation and commit completely to what I have.

Phew!

Caitlin :)

Breakdowns are (pretty much) complete

While I still have not tackled the shots involving lip sync (due to needing to splice my audio clips up into usable segments) and the housemate character, I think the bulk of the breakdowns are done. For some shots where the character, Phoebe, is not moving very much, this does not involve much or any change from the blocking stage. The walk is in progress at a linear stage at the moment (as blocking walks does not really work), but due to the nature of the shot a useful playblast is not yet available.

I am at a point now where I think things need to start moving from stepped animation to linear, but I know this is a difficult, time-consuming and often just depressing step - because it requires the animation to get worse before it gets better - so I want to review everything before I jump in. So, as I did when the blocking was done, I have compiled the latest versions of all my playblasts into one video file so that I can see more easily which shots are weaker/less developed.

As I have been working I have also been making notes of things I have figured out, remembered or read that I can include in my report - for example, only realising last week that I could switch Bonnie's arms to IK so her hands wouldn't slide around the desk when she moved... I have also been reading some of Keith Lango's animation tutorials to help me remember to keep an eye on how my arcs and poses are looking.

Caitlin :)

Refining my idea based on "Acting for Animators"

I've been digging into Ed Hooks' Acting for Animators, and it has really helped to get me thinking more in depth about the ideas in my final year project. For instance, Hooks emphasises the idea of 'theatrical reality' - essentially a reality with conflict that gives it more interest - by writing, "your character should play an action in pursuit of an objective while overcoming an obstacle" (pg. 18). This made me wonder how I could strengthen the scenes in my animation to reinforce this idea of the student pursuing her objective of finishing her animation while overcoming obstacles.

I also began to think about how my character could be more effective, and decided that I would never see her as anything more than the rig I downloaded unless I gave her at least a couple of basic facts. So she is now Phoebe, an independent, 20-year-old student. These seem like obvious statements, but they really do help me to see her as a character rather than a character rig.

Off the back of things I was reading and thinking about, I made a big chart detailing the mood and motivation of each shot. Since both Hooks and my supervisor are big on 'scenes start in the middle', I put in a 'before and after' column so I would know how Phoebe comes into and goes out of the shot in terms of movement and mood. (The purple is for Phoebe's housemate, Melissa.)

I referred to this table between filming each shot of my video reference, and I will do so for each shot as I animate it, too.

In February I will be attending the Animex animation and games festival held at my uni, and as part of that I've also opted to take part in Hooks' Acting for Animators Masterclass that he runs every year. Though the animation of my project will be complete by that point, the class will definitely help to develop my animation skills for the career ahead of me.

Caitlin :)

Reference footage

This week I shot a lot of reference footage to use when I begin animating soon (my schedule is having to be rearranged a bit, as predicted). I did a couple of versions of a lot of the shots, giving me lots to choose from to base my character acting on.

This is a highly edited version, made to (almost) fit the timings of the previs I made, to show the basic idea of how the character will be acting.

I still don't know if I'm trying to cram too many ideas in, as this seems kind of fast… I'll see what my supervisor says when I present my progress review next week. The good news is I made myself laugh with the footage I filmed, so hopefully other people will laugh too! After all, what's the point of being an animator if you're not going to make an idiot of yourself on camera at some point? (My inhibitions are slowly being destroyed as my course goes on.)

In other news, I created myself a professional Twitter account for networking and such (so far I'm just tweeting and pretending that people will see it): www.twitter.com/Caitlin_Vickers

Now to make a presentation!

Caitlin :)

Schedules and surveys

After finalising my script, I have been able to properly dive into my project now - or, in my case, take tentative steps into storyboarding! (It is not a stage I particularly enjoy, but it is a crucial one!)

The first thing I did this week was to make a schedule - a plan of what tasks I aim to get done week by week. I've learned over the past couple of years that while I can be pretty useless without some sort of plan to keep me on track, with a plan I can be very effective! It also relieves stress as I know that if I stick to the plan it will get done in time. Here is my lovely rainbow schedule:

(Click to enlarge. For a more up-to-date view you can see the actual spreadsheet here.)

I'm currently in week 4 of term time, and judging by the number of coloured boxes this is quite a busy week! I basically just want to have my idea storyboarded and made into an animatic (which I then show to friends around me to see if it conveys what I want) as soon as possible so I can confirm all the timings and move on to the rest of my planning.

Another task I set myself for this week was to, as part of my research, create and distribute a survey/questionnaire that would help me define what other people think of animators - in case my project idea is something no one else understands - and the industry in general. Once I close the survey I will format the results nicely and post them in a new tab on this blog. It is a digital survey, done through Google Drive's 'form' creator, that I posted on my Facebook page, in a forum, and on my Google+ page. It has been online for just over a day now and I've already received some very interesting, helpful and insightful comments from those who have taken part. They are all anonymous, which make it more intriguing for me as I can't guess what was written by whom!

I plan to leave it online for a week or so, so if you are reading this before November 2013 and you would like to help me gather as many results as possible, please take part in my survey here. Thank you!

All in all, things are moving along nicely.

Caitlin :)