Week 10 - Further Progress

This week I finished my animated short film for my independent studies project. I've always planned on incorporating it into my showreel, however when planning for PPD 1 I wasn't sure what I would be making for Independent studies. I'm going to keep the short film in it's entirety for the showreel and the only parts I'll trim down is the end title screens that I had when when uploading to YouTube.

Video. 1. My Independent Studies Animation Short Film

I've also recorded in game footage of my animations from the team project Game Development. Using Fraps I had the characters perform attacks and run around in the city environment. In the final edit I'll have credits stating that I only did the animations and not the character and city models. Here's the footage below.

Video. 2. Game Render from the Module Game Development

What's left is the roller coaster scene where I need to tidy up the animation by making it play smoothly and set the scene up more.

Week 10 - Progress on the Showreel

The progress for the contents of my showreel for PPD 2 is currently going well. The animated short film I'm creating for my dissertation is nearing to being complete with the film just needing to be rendered and compiled together with sound effects. This will be featured in either it's full state which lasts around 30 seconds or be cut up and spread across the showreel. I have shown progress of a few shots that were completed early in past blog posts. I'm not sure yet It might be the case that I try an example of both and upload them onto here and see how they play out. For other work that'll be included in the showreel My contribution from past modules Game Development by recording in game footage of me and others who worked on the project playing the game focusing on my animation work and obviously stating while the footage is playing my role to the work and who's other contribution is shown.

When planning the showreel I was going to have a obstacle course featured. I have shown in early posts examples of animation of a astronaut character running. However since then I have made no other contribution to this work. This may possibly be cut from the showreel due to time constraints. This could change, however at this moment in time it's not looking likely.

Finally the Roller coaster scene animation. This piece of animation is moved on from the block out stage, but it's still not exactly finished. For this scene I want to improve the environment more by developing the roller coaster into a more child targeted ride and this makes the scene funnier as the grown man doesn't want to go on the ride. Also from looking at feedback from PPD 1 I may need to add more of a set up to the scene by visually telling the audience first that the it is a children's ride before seeing the adult.

As far as what I've stated above this is the current state of my showreel. With week 10 me rendering the animation from my dissertation and really soon I'll be compilling footage from my contribution to Game Development, I should soon have footage to place into my showreel.
I've also been looking into using Adobe Premier Pro a lot more and I feel I'll be able to properly render out my show reel this time compared to PPD 1 where I had trouble getting the resolution to be true HD and some parts of the video where a bit jumpy. However there's still a lot to learn with the software.

Week 9 - Continuing with YouTube & other related websites

In past blog posts I've talked about YouTube as a starting platform to upload your work to and have an audience be able to watch and give feedback directly to you. However there are other web sites on the net that offer a similar experience to YouTube. The first is a animation focused site called Newgrounds.

Figure. 1. Screen Shot from Newgrounds Homepage

The next video based site is Blip. Blip is more similar to YouTube than any of the others and offers a wide range of genres from comedy to animation. From what Iv'e heard Blip is a lot more easy on restricted content and copyright issues however this could have changed.

Figure. 2. Screen Shot from Blip.com Homepage

The final site I've seen is Fillim, how they differ from the others is they give the creators the option to charge users for their content. However if you're charging for your film or short film the content is expected to be worth the price or you can set your film as free of charge. Uploading your film is free to do to.

Figure. 3. Screen Shot from Fillim Homepage

Reference Images

Figure. 1. Screen Shot from Newgrounds Homepage http://www.newgrounds.com/ (Accessed 24/03/2014)

Figure. 2. Screen Shot from Blip.com Homepage http://blip.tv/(Accessed 24/03/2014)

Figure. 3. Screen Shot from Fillim Homepage http://fillim.com/ (Accessed 24/03/2014)

Week 9 - Future software in the Animation Industry

With technology and software improving and constantly being upgraded to raise the bar in visual effects, presentation quality and technical limitations it's guaranteed that the industry will change considerably when I'm hopefully working in the industry.

Figure. 1. DreamWorks Animation Logo

Recently I came across an article from the Wall Street Journal discussing the new animation experience DreamWorks animation are introducing and are currently using on production due for release this year. The article was written in October of last year however the the films taking advantage of these improvements have yet to be released in cinemas. The software is developed by chief technology officer Lincoln Wallen and it promises to speed up the time consuming process and to cut down production costs by at least $30 million from late 2014. This will of course means fewer highly skilled animators working on a single production. That is of course not good. With the average production cost of an animated film at DreamWorks in 2013 around $135 million compared to other studios in the animation field with lower costs of around $100 million and under. This narrows down the opportunity into getting into the big studios like DreamWorks animation. Leading into and making the smaller opportunities like YouTube based work more appealing. This is just one example of how the industry is developing further and quickly changing.

References

Figure. 1. DreamWorks Animation Logo http://www.awn.com/tag/dreamworks-animation (Accesssed 19/03/2014)

Rachael King. (2013). DreamWorks Improves Experience.Available: http://blogs.wsj.com/cio/2013/10/21/dreamworks-improves-animation-experience/ . Last Accessed 19th March 2014.

Week 8 - Portfolio Websites

In my last Blog post I talked about YouTube as a platform to build and upload my work onto. However I have also been looking at portfolio hosting websites where you can create your own website with the tools to customise the look to fit your work. After a lot of searching I have found a few sites that look promising, One of those is Portfolio Box (http://www.portfoliobox.net/). From first glance the templates and examples shown on the homepage look appealing and professional. The site does allow you to start with a basic free account which allows you to upload 40 images and gives you access to the basic templates. However they also give you the option to expand to the pro account which costs around £4 a month. Obviously having the pro account gives you a lot more features like your own domain and a email address and it also allows you to upload 100 images. Compared to the other portfolio sites I've looked at this site seems to be the cheapest.

 Figure. 1. Portfolio Box Homepage

Another portfolio website I've been looking into is 4ormat. 4ormat offer a similar deal to Portfolio Box allowing you to have a free basic start up site but then they allow you to upgrade. However one problem I did find with this site was once I had started a free account It then told me that I would be billed by the end of the month and automatically upgraded to the basic fee account. I deleted the account as soon as I noticed this as I still wasn't sure about if I would use this or not. 

Figure. 2. 4ormat Homepage

I'm still considering having a portfolio website, having a website dedicated to showcasing your work makes it all the more professional and also I would still upload the show reel to my YouTube channel.

Reference Images 

Figure. 1. Portfolio Box Homepage (Screen Shot) http://www.portfoliobox.net/ (Accessed 10/03/2014)

Figure. 2. 4ormat Homepage (Screen Shot) http://4ormat.com/l/portfolio?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=Search:Portfolio-Head-Terms&gclid=CJyRve2riL0CFUsUwwodmTQAVA (Accessed 10/03/2014)

Week 7 - Animation for YouTube

YouTube in recent years has become a variable platform for not only independent film makers, but for animators too. On YouTube now there so many channels dedicated to animation and have full creative freedom to make and create what they like. One of the biggest YouTube channels is the Frederator Network. The Frederator Network launched in 1998 by Fred Seibert who was the former president at Hanna-Barbera. Their YouTube channel now has over 1 billion total views across it's separate 130 show channels. Frederator's back catalogue includes shows like Fairly Odd Parents and Adventure time.

Figure. 1. Channel Frederator Screen Shot

Dominic is a Canadian animator and illustrator who started creating comic strips on his Tumblr page. He now has a YouTube channel with 510, 235 subscribers as of making this Blog post. He creates amazing and funny short films that reflect on his life that he makes by himself.

Figure. 2. Domics Channel Screen Shot

Also other big animation companies like DreamWorks Animation have partnered with YouTube to produce a new show called YouTube Nation. YouTube Nation is a show that hosts various videos ranging from music videos to animation shorts. This show proves that larger animation studios are treating YouTube as a more stable platform.

  Figure. 3. YouTube Nation Channel Screen Shot

I feel that YouTube can be a great starting point for me to work on projects and upload them to my personal channel. I created a channel around the same time I started the course back in 2011 and I have uploaded animations from various modules and also my personal work. The figure below is a screen shot of my YouTube channel, I've tried to use the channel tool bar space to represent my 2D character work that I've done over the years. I did do a lot of research of how other channels look on the site. I have linked my YouTube channel to my Twitter account so when I do upload a video all my Twitter followers will see the video link.

Figure. 4. JordanPeely Channel Screen Shot

Reference Figures

Figure. 1. Channel Frederator Screen Shot http://www.youtube.com/user/ChannelFrederator (Accessed 09/03/2014)

Figure. 2. Domics Channel Screen Shot http://www.youtube.com/user/D0MICS/featured (Accessed 09/03/2014)

Figure. 3. YouTube Nation Channel Screen Shot http://www.youtube.com/user/youtubenation (Accessed 09/03/2014)

Figure. 4. JordanPeely Channel Screen Shot http://www.youtube.com/user/JordanPeely (Accessed 09/03/2014)