PPP2 - Evaluation

A Creative Strategy - PPP Presentation

In this recent presentation that I did, I had to analyse who I now was an animator and learner as well as my progression through level 5 PPP and Responsive.

I started by going over how I felt at the beginning of level 5 and how I felt about certain aspects of animation such as stop-motion. In the last PPP presentation of level 4 I explained that this was a major area I wanted to explore and one of my main interests for the next year.

I then went on to talk about the beginning of the responsive module, as at the start of the year I was eager to get a big head start on the module and produced two animations straight away that were fully digital. I explained how I wasn't really proud of these animations and that I learnt from the mistake of choosing digital as it was something I was most comfortable with at the time. I wish, looking back now, that I had gone with my heart and experimented with stop-motion. However, this still gave me a good learning experience as I had never entered live briefs before.

Next, I talked about the other side of responsive, which was the group animation we created for the brief 'Thirsty Planet'. This was a papercut animation that I was really proud of in the end, and I feel this might have also been due to being part of a team, where I feel I work best.

My next slide explained how I have built my social media presence over the past year and how this has benefitted me as an animator. One of my main goals for this year was to develop my portfolio of work as I felt I didn't really like the animations I made from the first year and I was only just getting to grips with animation as a whole. This year I now have multiple stop-motion animations posted onto my Vimeo as well as behind the scenes pictures built up on my Instagram. Continuing this will be really good for me as having something easily accessible for others to see my work is always a good thing.

I also spoke about my interactions with professionals within the animation industry and the way that I have been using LinkedIn to talk to people casually. I have really enjoyed this part of PPP, as it has made me more comfortable approaching people as they actually aren't so scary and are actually really lovely! I also made a connection at Aardman, where he said I can talk to him anytime about tips or if I want any pointers of my work.

The other week, we visited Factory and Makinnon and Saunders. I talked about how this has inspired me as an animator and allowed me to be more confident in the fact that I know I want to be a stop-motion animator.

I also compared my work from this time last year to now to basically show the vast improvement in content and style I have achieved over this past year. This is something I am really proud of.

Puppets were another thing I compared as I have developed my puppet and model making skills over level 5. I feel these slides were important to show as it shows my practical development.

Into level 6, I wanted to just go over my future plans such as maybe trying replacement animation and lip sync as well as trying out some new puppet-making methods. I especially want to focus on lip sync as this will be something that I will need to have the ability to do in the industry and to show in my showreel.

My other plans for the next year are to practice my walk cycles and this is another thing I want to include in my end of uni showreel!

Finally, I went over the summary of the whole year and how I definitely feel that I have progressed and been able to establish myself a little more as an animator and find my 'niche'. I'm really happy with the way that level 5 has turned out and I'm excited for the next year to come!

Submitting to a Film Festival! - Keighley Film Festival

I was recently looking for at free to enter film festivals when I came across the Keighley Film Festival, it is free to enter and there is a short film animation category where it has to be under 10 mins in length.



All of my current animations are very short and only around 30 seconds in length, however I was was like why not give it a go anyway! So, I entered my film 'Touch', that I created for my COP module as this one of my favourite animations I have done so far. Below is when I had sent off my animation! The festival is actually located just outside of Leeds, which I didn't realise until I saw the 'leedscitycollege' email address, what a coincidence.



I am excited to see if my animation gets selected to be shown and I hope to hear back from them soon.

Building Puppets Progression

Puppets is something that I am still new to now and this year I decided to develop my skills in this so that I could practice making some other puppets over the Summer, knowing the materials needed and the best method. Even though I don't want to be a puppet maker, I still want nice puppets for my future animations!

This was this first puppet I had made in first year. As my first ever puppet it wasn't too bad, however the arms were way to bulky and she was completely off balance!



I wanted to try plasticine again, just because it's fun to mould and animate with so I made this character for my COP2.



This character was a much better puppet and I kept him super simple so that he was easy to animate. I wanted him to look a little rough and not completely perfect, which is why I left fingerprints on him, as the message was the imperfections of stop-motion.

I also learnt a new method of puppet making! Felting.



Needlefelting was completely new to me but I really wanted to try it as I loved the effect and I was really inspired after seeing 'Oh Willy'. I have made two puppets in this method now as I like it so much! It's actually really simple, but it looks really refined and effective in animation. I had the issue of it possibly boiling in animation, however if you trim the puppet with scissors before animating this helps keep the stray hairs down.



My future plans for making puppets is to possibly make a human character next and try making some costumes and see how I can progress in that side of puppet building as I have so far only made characters that have no clothes.

Makinnon & Saunders Visit

While going to Manchester to see the FACTORY studio, we also in the later part of the day got to see round puppet workshops and the actual Makinnon & Saunders studios!

Above is the outside of the studio and it didn't even have a name attached, which was really odd. On the other hand, this was explained that they do this purposely so that when they have high profile work, no one has the desire to try and come to sneak a peek.



Firstly, we went to the sculpting room where they had probably over 100 sculptures all round the room of famous characters. They also had lots of rough models where they were trying out different styles for characters, which was really interesting to see and again I couldn't take pictures as they don't want all their secrets out there! They used the method of sculpting a model our of plasticine and then painting on to it to get a better idea of how the model will look, a great way of working and planning.



We also went around the other workshops such as costume, paint and metal. I personally, like the costume department the best and if I were to go off the idea of being an animator this would be where I would want to direct myself next.

On the last part of the tour we went around the studios they had and I didn't actually know Makinnon and Saunders had studios, I just thought they made puppets. So, the first studio we went round was where they were filming for the number one Cbeebies show 'Twirlywoos'.  I had never heard of this show as someone who doesn't really watch children's TV, but it was really cute when I saw all of the puppets and sets. On this tour, we actually got to meet Barry Purves someone who I have read many books and even based most of my COP essay around! Barry was really lovely and he had lots to say about literally everything, which was really insightful. I felt in this studio I much preferred it as there was so much more going on and loads of animators to talk to. Everyone was really nice and open to questions and a chat and I was really surprised by how open everyone was. This atmosphere made me happy, as it felt like a really nice and friendly place to be and work. We also went round another of M&S' studio where they were filming for 'Raa Raa the Noisy Lion'. Here we got to go into the art department and speak to some of the people who worked in there. I really liked the art departments in both of the studios and if I were to go down any other route in stop-motion, this would be a cool place to work in.

FACTORY Visit

This week I took the opportunity to go to Manchester and visit the FACTORY stop-motion studio. I had never been to a stop-motion studio before and I had only ever watched footage of the 'behind the scenes', so this was an amazing experience to actually get to see it for myself.

The day began by visiting FACTORY, where we first went round the first studio where we were showed around by Phil Chalk, the managing director of FACTORY. (Below)



As they had just got over a massive production, there wasn't really anyone about to talk to, however we still got to see the amazing sets and props they had made for a new production. Next, we went into a sound studio, where they showed us the mixing desks ect. This was really cool as the studio actually made all their own foley sounds, which isn't that common!

On the last part of the factory tour, which was my favourite part, we got to have a tour round the production of the new Clangers! It was so cute, but I couldn't take any pictures because the episodes hadn't been released yet. The backgrounds of the set were blue gradient backgrounds with stars, so I asked how they created it and they said that the stars were just holes punched in the material and light shining through. It made a really lovely effect.



We also went up to the art department where they were making props and where the puppets were stored and I got to hold a Clanger puppet, the soup dragon and the metal chicken. The puppets were so well made and they had the most smooth joints, a big contrast to our wire puppets!



Whilst we were in the art room, we also got a chance to talk to Chris Tichborne, who has worked on Corpse Bride, Fantastic Mr Fox and Coraline. He gave us some great advice about showreels where he said it's good practice to download walk cycles from YouTube and break them down and just copy them until you get a hang of it, so that you can start to understand it a little more in your own head. Walk cycles for me personally are something I do struggle with, so hearing this advice has inspired me to work on them as one day I aspire to be a stop-motion animator.



After visiting this studio, I loved the atmosphere so much and it really opened my eyes to a studio that is not too far from my hometown. Factory would definitely be somewhere I would love to do some work experience or even further, and I didn't even know it was so close by! This visit also gave me the confidence in becoming a stop-motion animator as a lot of people say that there's no future in it or that there isn't a lot of work, however the other side to this is that there aren't a mass amount of stop-motion animators in comparison to 3D, which means less competition!

Hedgehog's Home - Animation Inspiration

Hedgehog's Home (Making-of) from NFB/marketing on Vimeo.

Felting is something that I have recently come across within my own practices and I decided to look at some examples within the animation world that use this method too. I found 'Hedgehog's Home' a short film that's still in production made Bonobostudios. I really loved this making of video above as it uses previews of animating as well as the building of sets. Even though the video is short, I still got a lot of pointers from it such as using a paintbrush to boil the fur in animating and using a light behind the painted background to create a 'sun'. It's really exciting to still see stop-motion animations such as this still in process as people always talk about how the medium is dying! The level of detail within this short film is incredible and it inspires me to push myself further within my own projects! This kind of animation for me would be something I would love to be a part of and gives me inspiration for next year when I can go for a bigger project. I can't wait for this film to come out as the whole aesthetic is beautiful!

Symbiose - Animation Inspiration

Symbiose from Rosalie Benevello on Vimeo.

This stop-motion short is a lovely example of textured sound that I want to achieve in my future animations, recently I have been putting a lot of time into getting ambience and foley sounds together to create a soundscape that accentuates the animations. The animation above really captures the rain, crunchiness of the forest and different textures within the materials used and I find this is an important thing to learn. I also like the cinematography within this animation as it uses lots of depth of field to draw focus to different parts of the narrative such as the rain. Even though the rain is digitally added to this animation they have still managed to in keep it with the style, which is nice. I also love the use of paper-cut out forest and creatures along side wooden/painted/paper puppets with plastic raincoats. The materials work great together and they are all pastel and toned down to create a certain aesthetic. I also want to experiment more with materials and making different styles of puppets like these ones.

The Itching - Claymation

The Itching from Dianne Bellino on Vimeo.

This claymation 'The Itching' is an amazing example of how stop-motion can play with the real and make audience's feel genuinely uncomfortable. As claymation has the ability to morph and be anything, it's a fantastic medium and here it is used to show in my opinion the anxiety and 'itch' that the wolf has when being around the bunnies; until she overcomes this. The way that the clay is stippled in different patterns all over the character's face makes you feel really uneasy and does so as it feel like real skin morphing un-naturally. They use this technique to even quicken the pace of the film as it becomes more wild and fast as the tension rises. This shows how effective stop-motion can be and with her cut/sore it grows and morphs so strangely that it's even hard to watch! The performance in this animation inspires me as there is no dialogue yet you can completely understand every emotion that the characters feel. I would love to experiment more with claymation as it's such a crazy material to use and the limits to it are quite vast. The physicality of this animation is definitely what creates the uneasiness and almost grossness to it as the sore changes colours and becomes gradually worse and worse to watch. Shorts like these really inspire me for next year!

Creative Presence - Report

Here is my report on my interviews conducted with stop-motion practitioners working in the industry.


Barry Purves
http://www.barrypurves.com/

Jon Lendrum
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jon-lendrum-a8a5879/

Ron Cole
https://www.roncoleart.com

Building my Own Website/Social Media Presence

To become more professional I want to develop my own website and social media presence and getting myself more out there online, as this is the main platform to get noticed on nowadays.

I already have been building myself up a Vimeo account (right) and I plan to carry on uploading here, which I feel is much better platform than something like YouTube for animators as there are a lot more animations on Vimeo than on YouTube which is so vast with different content.

I have also been keeping up with my Instagram account, where I post regularly and this is mainly focused on animation production shots more than actual animations that I make as a 'behind the scenes'. I have also linked this up to my Facebook account.

Below is the Facebook that my other accounts are linked to. I have also created my own banner for this page, however I'm thinking about creating a new logo and brand for all my social medias as a future plan so that they all are synced up.

So, I have began creating my own website and below is the preview of it so far. It is still in quite early stages as again I want to design a brand for myself in the near future. I still think that it's looking quite good at the moment, however it still needs work.

My next steps are to create a house style and get some high quality photographs of all of my work from this year, this way I will be able to get a good portfolio going and I've found that it really pays off to spend time on your portfolio and making it all look really professional before sending it off to anyone after graduating.

Sea Motion - Life's a Pitch

Here is the pitch that we did for studio brief 3 - Life's a Pitch. Sea Motion was something that has recently been brought together and we felt as a group that PPP was basically giving us the opportunity to develop our idea further and make it a real thing!

This slide basically outlined some of the skills that we will be showcasing as a collective.

We also have begun creating our own website (preview above), where people will be able to go onto it and see our work as well as contact us.

I liked this slide as it showcases our website and makes it look really professional and here we basically talked through the different pages that will be on the website. There will be an about us section, explaining about us as a group and as individuals. An animation page, which is quite self explanatory as well as an artwork page, which will be production images as well as art pieces we have done as individuals to show off our different skills as creatives. There will also be a contact page, linked to our group email and finally an events page, where we will put on the exhibition information for Studio 24.

In terms of social media, here we pitched our Facebook page and explained our future plans for setting up an Instagram and Vimeo account so that they can all be synced up and we will have a social media presence. 

Here we pitched our idea for the showcase of our puppets as Studio 24 and the idea of having our own business cards and have them available for people to take if they like our work.

We also talked about cost/expenses and figured out as a group the price it would cost to actually set up our own studio, which is quite a lot as studio space is £390 per month!!

In the pitch we also went through the different roles that we have allocated in the group and this is just so that all the areas are covered in terms of being an active collective.

Here we just basically showed some of our work and the idea again about showcasing our puppets at the exhibition.

All in all, I feel that this pitch went really well and I'm happy with the collective that we have put together. I feel that this is a great opportunity to get our work noticed as a team, rather than fighting to be seen on your own which can be a little scary at times. Even though we still want to work on individual projects, we've discussed that the works that we produce will still be able to go on the Sea Motion website ect. as we will be supporting each others practices. The next steps now are to get a rebrand going, as we want something new and little more put together, get our social media up and running a little more and plan our showcase at Studio 24!

Aardman - Industry Research

Aardman Studios is somewhere that I would love to see myself in the future whether it be employment or just work experience, so I decided to look into the opportunities that surround Aardman. 

First, I found that they team up with NFTS and run a couple of courses for mainly graduates. 

The first one being the Character Animation course, which is 3 month intensive course that guarantees a 2 week paid placement after finishing the course at a selected studio.

 

This course does cost money, so I'm thinking that it would be hard for me to pay for this as a graduate, even though it would be a great opportunity. I feel that doing this course would develop my skills in becoming a stop-motion animator and it would really help my showreel as I would be able to use the aardman models to practice with, as it's based at their studios in Bristol.

The next course is brand new in 2017, and its a course teamed up with Mackinnon and Saunders! This is a 12 month course based at NFTS.

This is another great course that would be really beneficial to do after graduating University and I couldn't find out if this one required a fee, although it most likely is. This course would be better if I was more interested in specialising in model making, which I'm not sure about yet. I feel that the 3 month course at Bristol would be more beneficial to me right now as I don't have a large amount of animations for my showreel and this would get me more in the door than a course run at NFTS and not even at the Mackinnon and Saunders studio.

Finally, I just had a look on Aardman's website about jobs and how to apply for them and found that they allow speculative applications, meaning that even if they don't have a job going at the time you can still send them work and possibly be asked down to their studios.

This is something major to consider when finishing University as it's going to be very important to try and get work out there to as many people as possible.

To conclude, looking at all of this I feel that the first step would be just to send out my work and CV to Aardman before getting myself involved in a full-time course. After speaking to someone from Aardman myself, they explained that the way that they got into the industry was just simply sending letters, theur CV and work to different heads of department and being patient after that.

Le Nuage - 'Bad Weather'

Le nuage from Iulia Voitova on Vimeo.

Here is a papercut stop-motion animation that I love the style of. This animation is great for using a variety of camera angles, which I really appreciate as I understand how hard it is used papercut to use different angles! Even though I want to go on to looking into puppet stop-motion instead of papercut I still like to look at the different styles you can experiment with within stop-motion. I like how this animation is all painted paper and they use mixed media to paint some of the fast zooms in a 2D style. This is a really cool idea to mix the medias as when watching it for the first time you almost don't notice that they do this. I really like papercut animation and I feel I would still go back to it for smaller projects as it still develops my skills as an animator.

A Collective I Like...

I thought it would be a good idea to look at the collectives that are currently out there in the animation industry to get an idea of what our collective should aspire to be like and I found one called the Catfish Collective! They are a British collective of two animation directors, Daniella Orsini and Joe Orton.

 

Catfish is clearly a stop-motion collective with quite an impressive clientele, including BBC, Flora, Lego, Cadbury and many more! I really like their simplistic style and how they closely work with paper and the handmade whilst still keeping in the with times of the digital. They also don't pigeon-hole themselves as they offer not only animation but also development, scripts and design. This is a great tip for my Sea Motion collective as we don't want to exclude other things coming our way by saying we solely produce animation, and this is always something to keep in mind. I think it's really nice how they say in the above promotional video how they 'always have a handmade core' and I want this to almost be the same message we have within our own collective.

Promotions - Sea Motion Collective

As my role as promotion manager I have started to think about the ways we could use merchandise to promote our collective and below are some rough ideas around using the logo that I have created for the rebrand.




Here is an idea I had for a colour changing mug! I think this is a great idea that would be really cool for an interactive way to promote our logo.










Here is a t-shirt with our logo on and I feel like this is a relaly nice design to have on a t-shirt and maybe even get rid of the 'SEA MOTION' at the bottom.











I feel the next steps as promotion manager would be to come up with a really catchy slogan that we can use that relates to stop-motion and possibly even the ocean! I want to look into different ways that companies and studios promote themselves and how we can do that too.

Sea Motion Collective

For the Life's a Pitch module me, Emma and Amy have decided that to make this project most beneficial to us that we are going to group together to make our own stop-motion collective! I'm really excited about this as it's something that we can take further and even carry on after university.

We have given roles within the group for now so that we can get on with creating plans ect in time for the presentation of our idea.



My roles include putting together a showreel and any footage that we need for the social media or our website, also I am in charge of promotions. Below are some of the slides that we put together for the presentation of our ideas to the class.



I found that we had a really solid idea in our presentation and that we were on the right track for creating something really useful and something that could work even after we leave university. Below is a preview of our Facebook page we recently made and so far it has 80 likes with just people we have all invited! It's all of our job to manage the social media as we felt that this would make it more active than if just one person ran it all. We are still the make an Instagram and vimeo account to go alongside this.



We also talked about a rebrand for our collective as this logo was something really quickly thrown together by me and isn't the best we could come up with. We have discussed it being a sea themed logo and house style as our collective is 'Sea Motion', so it would be a good idea for it to be a fish, a turtle or something along those lines. I also added that it should be done in a watercolour style as this relates even more to that theme and would really bring it all together! I took it upon myself to start creating a new logo after discussing that we should all come up with a separate logo and then pick between us which we think is the most effective.



Here is the logo I came up with and it is a Betta fish.



I also tried playing around with the colours.


I liked this better than the pink and purple.



Finally, I went for a inverted version of the logo which looked really cool! I feel like this would stand out a lot.