Showreel 2012

My 2D character animation showreel, containing 3 years work condensed into under 3 minutes.

Enjoy...

The Almost Finished Showreel

Heres what the whole year has been leading to, just need to finish the lip sync.
Will be updated after other projects in the works will be finished.
Enjoy...

Madimation Festival - Madrid

Madimation Festival - Madrid

So after getting shortlisted for the Madimation Festival in Madrid, i decided to take a week out of uni to attend. I felt i had earned the time off and also i had never attended an animation festival, let alone been shortlisted.

Spain is an amazing country and while i can't stand the heat, my girlfriend loves it. The drinking culture out there is so relaxed, infact most thing in Madrid were.

Eric Riewer

The first day of the festival had a number of guest speakers, one of which was Eric Riewer of Gobelins School of Animation in Paris. A great talk, with some great films. Being a fan of Gobelins work, i was in awe of some of the work. I managed to have a chat with Eric afterwards, and while being hypnotised by his impressive moustache, we spoke about the summer school they hold in Paris and was lucky enough to secure a reserved spot for this years school. Unfortunatly it clashed with graduation, so i'm looking to attend next years (which will give me a chance to save). We also exchanged buisness cards, which made me happy because it was the first chance i had to use them properly with someone from the industry.

One of my favourite films of the Gobelins school is 'The King and the Beaver' It has one shot that makes me smile everytime. Eric also showed us the making of which was great to watch and we were also told that it had originally be made for a CG production...so glad the makers changed their
minds. Heres the film and it's making of -

Me, Excited outside the Festival

The rest of the week was taken up with screening of all the films and some sight seeing. Me and my girlfriend quickly made friends with other attendants of the festival and also some of the students. Being held in a univeristy i got to check out some equipement and it was alot nicer and cleaner than ours in England.

Festival Friends, Me & Sara

The festival was the first for its university, so it was less known to some but it was a great experience to be part of. Some of the films shown were amazing while others were a little... shall we say...weird.

The exact centre of Spain

 During our travels around the city we saw many sights, including the palace and the cathedral. In general the architecture around Madrid was amazing to look at. So many random monuments everywhere. Here are some photos of the classic tourist sites...

Cathedral

Palace

Random Monument

The festival had some great films, it was won by Fabio Friedli of Switerzland with his film 'Bon Voyage'. The style is right up my street.



And winning the Grand Jury Prize was 'Doves Do Not Fly' by Yun Ik-won of South Korea.



This film was 20 minutes long and so engaging, animation, art and direction were all top notch.

Both films were so good, i recommend them if you get a chance to see them, while they're in the festival circuit, they're not available online. My film ofcourse can by viewed online and was recieved well from the festival, i think i got more laughs in Spain than my home country.

I then rounded off the awesome trip with a cheeky duty free purchase...19€...Bargain!

The B.Cards Arrive

I highly recommend moo.com for your business cards...excellent quality and very quick delievery.

The Nutcracker

A little sneak peak into my almost finished 3rd Year Showreel.

'Don't' goes to Spain...and i go to Italy!

Big News...

It looks like i will going abroad 3 times in the space of 4 months.

1st stop is the Madimation Animation Festival in Madrid, Spain.
I've been short listed for the festival with my 2nd year film 'Don't' along with ex-student Tom Lucas for his 3rd year film 'Botanical Nightmare.'
Check out his blog and awesome film here... http://tw-lucas.blogspot.co.uk/

Our names are somewhere in this large list...
http://www.madimation.es/en/participantes2/

We are the only two British animators in the competiton, so were flying the flag for our nation in sunny Spain. I'm definatly going to attend as i'm an animation festival virgin and my film will be shown!! Can't miss it, even if it is the week before final hand in.

In other news...

I have also signed up for the Erasmus Inform Animation project in Sardinia, Italy.

It's a 2-3 week intensive programme to create informative animation, with fellow students from all over europe. 5 of us from the Atrium will attend, and it sounds bloody great so far.

Roll on the Sun!

Tea Time

A animation test of an upcoming project about Tea.


This is a client project that my uni was aproached to animate.

Should be alot of fun and something different to break up my showreel production.

Showreel Update - Walk Cycle

One of my walk cycles for my showreel production.




A few things to be added...for example i want to add a subtle bounce on the fringe, add some blinks to break up the 'cycle' and sort out the snap of his head as he turns away from the screen.
The 'Nutcracker' is almost finished and i will post up an almost finished version of it up soon, (dont want to show the final version until my final year is complete.)

Ultimate Image

Had alot of fun on this project, and ended up with two ideas.

First idea...

A bit too Richard Williams for my liking, but all the same i coloured most of the characters and its a nice illustration.

Progression of my Ultimate Image...

Pose/Construction

Detail

Clean Up

Line

Block Colour

Shading/Final

And that was that...I was goin to leave that as it is...but i felt there was alot of empty space and it needed a little more.

So after i showed some class mates, one of them suggested that i put the progression of the artwork in the finished piece. So this is my final piece.

Or This...

I loved this design so much that im going to make this my buisness card, website and blog design!

Cintiq!

FINALLY...

After one hell of a long week, alot of money and constantly F5ing the parcel force parcel tracker website...it is here!

The real work starts now...It's all about Flash!

Ironically, it's photoshop i will be using first... to colour in my Ultimate Image!
This is without a doubt the best thing i have ever bought in my life. I just can't get over how fine, quick and sexually this bit of graphic tablet is!

Best start 'Tiqin'...thats right, "Tiqqing"

....it's gonna be a thing!

Cheeky Little Test

Did a little test of a character after design for one of my pieces of my showreel.

Check it...

The Nutcracker!

Most of my time has been spent on the Squirrel Dance i've untitled 'The Nutcracker.'

It's a cartoony dance piece set to Jamiroquai. It's almost finished, not long now, and i will post up as soon as its finished.
In the mean time a few pages of concepts, design and how i figured how to do that damn moonwalk!

It's Been a While... BUT...

It's been almost a month since my last post about the death of my film and my switch to the showreel brief. Alot of work has been undertaken...i'm currently doing most of it all at the same time. Stage 1 is walk and run cycles, so i am taking the characters from my film and making a sort of walk/run cycle skit.

'Don't...' Online via A Sitting Duck's Youtube Channel

Big exposure for my 2nd year film.

A Sitting Duck have kindly added 'Don't..' to their Youtube channel...This means some crazy veiw counts i wouldn't get on my own youtube or vimeo accounts.

Thanks to David Edwards of A Sitting Duck, and bring on a nice summer animation...
Watch this duck sized space.

Mallow is DEAD!

So....
My film is dead, 'Mallow' is no more!

After completing pre-production; work on the Layouts began and i really wasn't feeling it. On review i just did not have confidence in my film as a whole.
The story was lacking some what, the character design was ok, but in all i took on too much work and didn't get any of the art guys to collab with on backgrounds.

The passion and drive i had last year for my film was nowhere to be seen this time round.
I'm an animator! Not a designer! I want to make things come alive! We live and learn!

So...
What now?
The answer...a showreel. Already i'm excited to be doing something different that focuses on the hardcore fundamentals of animation. At the end i wanted some quality animation out of my third year...quality animation i'm certainly capable of... and a showreel can show that!

So i already have many exciting things lined up...not just with my own work but with others in the collabrative projects we have to do. I'm very excited to get work on some films by my good friends...one even doing some really cool 2D stuff in a stop motion film.


I know i have made the right choice for the rest of this final year, and already i'm more happy to be working on a variety of different styles of animation, not just my own but others, and i will update my fine blog very, very soon!

J.

Marshmallow Animation Test

I'm absolutly sick to death of doin the 20 or so backgrounds for my film, so decided to take a break and quickly animate an ickle test of one of my main characters...The Marshmallow!



Backgrounds will be up soon, and an animatic to follow...Watch This Space!

Business Cards

During the course of our animation business lessons, part of our brief is to create business cards and letter heads.

Really enjoyed the business card design process and cant wait to get them printed...

A few Designs....

And the final Design...

Also, my Letter head design...

Expression Sheets

 One of my favourite tasks during pre-production. I absolutely love exploring the the different facial expressions...I may have done too many!?

Heres expression sheets for both main characters!

Graham's Birthday - 50 Picasso's

Graham (picasso) Griffiths is the big Five O. In celebration of his birthday...past, present students and colleages got together to produce 50 drawings/illusrations of the man himself. As a current student i was pleased to get involved. Here he is...

The rest is luckily online...Enjoy!

http://www.blurb.com/books/2856498

Model Sheets

Final Model Sheets for the two main characters from my 3rd year film... After a long, long time the characters are finally coming to life.

Character Develop-don't

Too many character designs...I took a too much time developing the two characters for my film. Which now has a title... Mallow.