Professional Practise 2: Hosted Projects

Professional Practise 2

Hosted Projects

• As part of my on-going practise and side-projects for fun, I hosted a Multi-Animator Project last year, as part of my side hobby, producing fan-content. I hosted a project involving 25 unique animators, from all ages, who have read the book series and posted the final project to my side YouTube channel. 
• I scripted, organised, edited and produced the full film, including the colour scheme, aesthetic and visuals, taking two parts of the project myself. The colour scheme was heavily influenced by Taylor Swifts' music video, Look What You Made Me Do, as this is a music video using that song.
• It features characters and story illustrated from the book series, Warriors. I have produced multiple projects for the series, as this is what initially got me into animation.

Professional Practise 2: Commission

Professional Practise 2

Character Commission

• These past two weeks I had been working on a commission for Rachel, as she wanted her character drawing in a relaxed pose, with a simple solid colour background. She wanted a detailed illustration of her, so this commission was priced higher to accommodate for that.
• Here is a screenshot of the conversation, the invoice and the final drawing:

Invoice:

Final Illustration:

Professional Practise 2: Year Overview/Learning Journey

Professional Practise 2

My Learning Journey Presentation

• My learning journey presentation demonstrates and explains the decisions I have made throughout the course of the year and how each of the modules have impacted me. I additionally identify my strengths, weaknesses and what I plan to look at over the summer to help with my work in my third year.
• Here is the final presentation, my show-reel (from the work I have finished so far) and a recorded version of my presentation:

Final Presentation:

Show-reel:

Recorded Presentation:

Professional Practise 2: Final Animation for LoopdeLoop

Professional Practise 2

Competitions - LoopdeLoop

• In the group with Emily, Harry and Kathryn, we finished the animation for the LoopdeLoop competition. With the theme, Mushy, I think we did a great job illustrating the idea and putting our own creative twist into the theme. We followed a full workflow for a studio and successfully produced an animation to be entered into the competition!
• Next time, consistency could be improved and focused on, however it was a bit of a struggle being apart and only able to communicate online. We listened to each others' feedback effectively and produced a small animation to show for that.

Here is evidence of the entry:

Here is the final loop:

Professional Practise 2: Creating an Online Presence

Professional Practise 2

Online Presence and Websites

• To further research creating an online presence and creating a portfolio, a book I purchased a while ago, "The Ultimate Concept Art Career Guide," has useful information on online presence, creating social media and what tools available to you, for all artists. Despite being a Concept Art focused career guide, there are useful tips for animation and getting into the film/video game industry. 
• It features interviews with professionals, explaining how they got into the industry, what they like about it and things to look out for.
• I made some notes on Christina Lavina Ferez' section, a concept artist who had previously worked for Kemojo Studios, Fathom Interactive and Opus Artz. She provided a series of tips for creating a good portfolio website.
• She mainly uses ArtStation for her work, so I'll be creating an ArtStation account for some portfolio work.
• https://www.artstation.com/lavinart

Professional Practise 2: Competitions

Professional Practise 2

Competitions - DevinElleKurtz Draw this in your Style Competition

• Devin Elle Kurtz is a background artist working on Disenchantment and she decided to host a competition for the Draw this in Your Style challenge, where you redraw the piece of art they have chosen. The prizes for this are being featured on her page and a first place prize of receiving an Ink-based drawing of a pet or original character we choose.
• I decided to take a different approach to this, by drawing the character in a different style. I saw a lot of the entries were trying to follow the realistic style and I wanted to explore a more stylised approach and work on posing for characters. Here is the competition post on Instagram and my response:

Devin Elle Kurtz' Instagram Post

 https://www.instagram.com/p/B97hkSuJxuk/

My Entry Post

https://www.instagram.com/p/B_DCzSCpJyP/

Professional Practise 2: LoopdeLoop Colouring

Professional Practise 2

Competitions: LoopdeLoop Colouring

• This week I worked on the colour for one of the shots from the LoopdeLoop group animation and we needed to add the basket to one the already coloured frames. In order to keep the the same style, I created a very simple basket, with some strawberries already sitting in the basket. For the sake of ease, I made the basket rounded, so that it would be the same from any angle, without needing to redraw the basket.
• For the colouring of the shot where the character looks disgusted, I added a red background and a slow gradient appearing, as the realisation of touching a mushy strawberry settles in her.
• Here are the two animations I finished today for the LoopdeLoop.

Professional Practise 2: Competitions - CDC April

Professional Practise 2

Character Design Competition April

• For this months' entry for the character design competition, I had more time to work on looking at different design ideas. I wanted to create another creature or animal design, as these are my stronger designs. The idea I came up with was to either create a bee or bear design for the theme, "Doctors and Nurses".
• My take on this idea was to create a Bee character. I explored a few design ideas, such as the bear design first, but I went back to design a bee doctor. It played well with the "key-worker" Bee idea.
• Here is my exploration and final design:

Facebook Post for submitting my entry:

Professional Practise 2: LoopdeLoop Betweens

Professional Practise 2

LoopdeLoop Betweens

• For Studio Brief 2, using the same group as Studio Brief 3, we are producing an animation for the LoopdeLoop competition. I have already drawn up all of the backgrounds for this, therefore I will be mainly working on inbetweens and colouring when it's needed.
• I inbetweened both Scenes 1 and 7 and kept very close to the model sheet, to keep the character consistent. I found inbetweening quite challenging to get the position of the character right to demonstrate the impact of the throw and the simple walk cycle, however with feedback, I was able to between both the scenes I was tasked to complete. Here are both scenes with my betweens:

Scene 1 with Inbetweens:

Scene 7 with Inbetweens:

Professional Practise 2: Competitions - 11 Second Club

Professional Practise 2

11 Second Club Competition

• This month, along with the Character Design Challenge, I wanted to try doing the 11 Second Club Competition, as I had a little bit of time to animate something. I decided to give myself a limit of three days to work on this, as I have a tendency to become too much of a perfectionist and want to keep working on something. This forced me to explore timing and focus more on the animation than the look of the character. Overall, despite being a competition, it was fun practise!
• This months' audio clip was a section of a song from the movie and musical, Mamma Mia, so I was to animate a lip-sync. I wanted to explore subtle emotions and hand movements in this, rather than a lot of movement. I found it more difficult keeping the linework consistent with such small movements, but it was good practise and something I can focus on next time.
• Here is the rough animation I did and the evidence:

Professional Practise 2: Competitions

Professional Practise 2

Character Design Challenge: March

• This months' theme for the character design challenge was Norse Gods. For the Applied Animation module, we are making a documentary on Norse Mythology, so I chose to draw a character which we had not explored within that module.
• The character I chose was Freyja. She is the Goddess associated with love, beauty and fertility. She has a cloak made from Falcon feathers, which allows her to fly. I chose to focus on this in her design, drawing her from an angle showing her back, as the design challenge allows for illustrative designs. As I was limited on time for this competition, it wasn't as detailed or unique as I wanted it to be.

Here is the final illustration:

Here is the proof of submission to the Facebook group:

Professional Practise 2: Presentation Feedback

Professional Practise 2

Presentation Feedback

• Here are some points of feedback from Mike, about Studio Brief 3s' presentation:
• Clear presentation, easy to read and follow.
• Acknowledgement of specialisation, however something we'd find is making revenue through advertisement.
• Cute, simple logo, works well - likes animal mascot friendly and cute.
• Clear roles and positions represented.
• Competitors sensible, especially as they produce similar content, however we need to be aware of the size of each studio, as Brown Bag has hundreds of staff, whereas we are a small company.
• Good website, social media and online presence and consistency between everything.
• Target Audience in the kinds of work were producing - the way TV is going with multi-channels, animation has broader appeal.
• Might not need four licenses of Creative Cloud.
• Make it clearer on website about advertising and short-form animation
• Potential project in presentation is a good edition.

Professional Practise 2: Studio Brief 3 - Talk the Talk

Professional Practise 2

Final Studio Overview

• As an overview of the work we have done for the studio brief, I decided to create this short description of everything as a whole:
• Our studio is called Bobcat Studios.
• Individually, I offer skills in 2D Animation, Concept Art and Background Design.
• As a group, we offer short form 2D Animations, which are colourful and lively.
• Our unique selling point is are individuality, providing a variety of animated work, such as both entertainment and educational. In addition to this, our openness to experiment to appeal to an older market.
• Our target market are companies looking for studios to work predominantly towards the age group 11-16 years, however we would be willing to produce work for up to 18, if it consists of mild violence or gore.
• The financial costs to keep in mind will be for the up-keep of a studio space and the resources, such as costing for equipment and software.
• Our work is promoted through social media and online marketing, such as our own website and Instagram.

Professional Practise 2: Studio Brief 3 - Presentation

Professional Practise 2

Presentation Recording

• For both practise and also to help evaluate my own strengths and weaknesses with presenting, we decided to voice record and video record our presentation. This also became very helpful when the University needed to close because of the virus pandemic.
• We started by producing a quick recording of our voices, reading over our scripts. I felt this was forced in some places and didn't fully allow me to practise actually presenting and not reading from a script. I noticed that a lot of the times I paused, or lost my train of thought was because of nerves or stumbling over my words and having to try re-phrase or repeat the sentence. I think this will become better with more practise.
• Despite this, I found that I was clear in the way I spoke and positioned myself, which had gotten a lot better from when I first presented.

Here is the presentation:

Here are both of the recordings:

Professional Practise 2: Studio Brief 3 - Website and Presentation

Professional Practise 2

Studio Brief 3 - Website

• This week, we worked on the presentation for the Studio, adding some final designs and assets and deciding whether we need to produce any further designs for the studio.
• I produced a website, using our colour scheme, logo and any portfolio work we had done. This included adding the "Studio Showreel" also. I looked at a variety of other studio websites to help with this, such as Brown Bag Films and Kilogramme, however they did have more work to show than we did. I had to work around this, by adding personal work too.
• Here is the research document I made to explore how other studios make their websites:

• Using WIX, as it is a simple website editor and maker, I produced the Bobcat Studios website, which somewhat fit this criteria. I decided to add our own unique elements to the site, also, to differentiate from the competitors. This included a coloured background and a one-page website, where the links lead to sections of the page.

Here is the website:

https://bobcatstudiosmail.wixsite.com/website

Professional Practise 2: Showreels

Professional Practise 2

Show-reels

• This week we had a short lecture on what to include in your show-reel, how to cater this towards specific studios and what position you'd like to specialise in. This was helpful, as my initial show-reel only presented everything I had done, whereas I can now pick and choose the best shots which show a specific skill.
• I tried to include character animation, creature animation, lip-syncs, visual effects animation and elements of emotion and acting.
• I think I need to continue to create more work to show full-body characters, which can be used in future show-reels. Any work I do in the future can be added to this.
• Here are the notes I took from the lecture and my show-reel:

Professional Practise 2: Studio Costing Research

Professional Practise 2

Studio Costing Research

• As part of Studio Brief 3, research and costing for a studio is a large part of the process for funding a studio. Our group had already conducted some research into costing, however I decided to research more, with details on the equipment and what would work well with the software and for the more professional work-station.
• I did some research into building computers, desk costs, costs for monitors, based on their colour accuracy and additionally different processors for a computer.
• It demonstrates that a lot of work and planning is needed if I was to ever start my own studio, however it is doable with the right amount of effort and planning. 
• Here is the research I found:

Professional Practise 2: Studio Theme Ideas and Backgrounds

Professional Practise 2

Studio Theme Ideas and Backgrounds for LoopdeLoop

• For the Studio Brief 2, our studio, Bobcat Studios, decided to produce an animation together for this months' LoopdeLoop challenge, Mushy. The idea of our narrative consists of a character picking strawberries, then finding a mushy, gross one and then discarding it, and then the animation loops.
• As part of this task, I was assigned to do the backgrounds and help out with some of the animation. Here are the backgrounds I produced:

I additionally explored some possible colour schemes for the website and social media:

Professional Practise 2: Pet Commissions

Professional Practise 2

More Pet Commissions

• This week I worked on an additional pet portrait, from a follower of mine, wanting a portrait of their Labrador, Hershey. This is the last of the batch of commissions I decided to do.
• As this was just a head-portrait, it didn't take long to finish and I sent them progress sketches throughout the process. Here is the invoice, screenshots of conversation via. Twitter and the final painting.

Professional Practise 2: Pet Portrait Commissions

Professional Practise 2

Studio Brief 2 - Pet Portrait Commissions

• I was recently approached by two clients to create a digital painting of a Staffordshire Bull Terrier and a Ragdoll Brown-Point Cat, both being gifts for friends and family members. I have been doing pet commissions on and off for quite a while, as they provide practise in painting and drawing animals and also help me to develop my concept work, in terms of drawing from photographs and references.
• The first client wanted a full-body rough painting of a family members' dog. They sent me references and a broad idea of what they wanted and from there, I was able to decide a rate. Usually I charge £25 for head portraits and £45 for full body portraits, as they are usually quite rough, not fully rendered and it only takes me around two-three hours depending on the complexity. I do raise the prices, if the fur pattern is more complex. As the Staffies' fur was just plain with a small white spot on the neck, it was simpler and the client wanted a full body portrait.
• I have provided screenshots of some of the process and conversation, with the invoice (Addresses have been removed for privacy reasons) and the final portrait:

Invoice:

Final Portrait:

• The second client wanted a head portrait of their friends Ragdoll cat, with added "majestic details." Unfortunately, I don't have screenshot evidence of their asked for commission, as this was done through call, however, I do have reference photos and an invoice (Addresses have been removed for privacy reasons) with payment details.

Some provided Reference Photos:

Invoice:

Final Portrait: