4 Weddings (and no funerals)

So its been a heck of a month! last week was the wedding of the last of my two siblings and the last of four weddings I have attended this year! Must have been something in the water. So I've been through the endless planning, rehearsals, Stag dos and my own best man speech and come out the other end unscathed. It was actually a lot of fun and the day was brilliant!
So other than that this month has been one of scrabbling about for extra cash for Christmas pressies and travel expends. So you know, the usual December stuff. I have still just about managed to continue on with my studies though they may have suffered a little due to distraction, but at least I'm keeping myself warmed up.

My latest exercise is an Olympic style lift, I've just blocked out the first draft of key poses. To be honest though I struggled to position the rig for the first time since its release. It was mainly the elbows I struggled with, I wanted to raise them level with the chest but I will have to keep trying it out once I review and correct the poses. anyways heres the first clip.





More to come in the New Year, but thats all for this year. Have a great Christmas to all who might be reading and a Happy New Year!

Paul Out!

Lip Sync Test

So today I wanted to work on a bit more lip sync. I've done three separate example in the last 5 months of so. One of which has only the body acting part way done. So rather than tart up an old animation I just wanted to go at one from scratch and see what I could do in a day. I dug through some old 11 Second club audios I have saved and picked a quick sample of Will Smith from one of the Men in black films.




Its only a couple of seconds long, the first few phonemes don't quite blend but its coming along! Will finish it off tomorrow and upload the newer version.

Enjoy!

Paul

Interview! Hard work paying off?

So, I finally have my first interview for an animation position! Excited as I am, I'm not about to shout it all over facebook. No one reads this thing anyway so the chances of my fellow unemployed animators seeing mention of a potential position are greatly reduce here. I won't say where the job is, though it wouldn't take a genius to figure it out, but I will keep the blog up to date! The interview is on friday, I've got some early morning travelling to do so I hope I'm awake by the time I get there.

I've never actually been nervous for a job interview before... but then i've never wanted the job I'm being interviewed for before. Stomach is a bit tight and my brain has remained in overdrive these last few nights. Hopefully I don't end up looking like the cast of walking dead by the time I actually come to the interview. Hopefully the hundreds of hours I've put in over this last month will have paid off and I can show what I'm made of!

Wish me luck :)

WooooHOOOooooOOOoo!

Tough Week, its getting interesting!

Well that the end to another tiring day at the desk animating. Or rather the start to a new day as I seemed to yet again crossed past midnight. Well I managed to put a showreel together which I intend to update with my completed facial animation in a few days. I also applied to another job this time at Cubic Motion which I'm pretty excited about! I've been wanting to apply for quite some time. Wish me luck, its getting lonely in this office.

Nighty night!

Showreel Oct 2013: First draft

-All animation by Paul Feltwell.
-Morpheus Rig courtesy of Josh Burton.
-Stewart character used with permission (© Animation Mentor 2013). No endorsement of sponsorship by Animation Mentor. Stewart can be downloaded http://www.animationmentor.com/free-m.... - See more at: http://www.animationmentor.com/free-m...

When youJust can't quit!

Well I spent a chunk of my animation time today working on the Baseball swing. Refined it and added more to then... then deleted the bit at the end, I just didn't like it. I got a bit carried away with it and didn't like the additional second. It's all in the name of practice though and it was fun and I managed to spruce up the part I kept so its all good.
Over the next week I will be trying to put together a new reel to apply for a few jobs. Looks like the Stewart rig work is much cleaner looking then other work put together with inferior rigs, so here's hoping for good progress tomorrow! Now its 12:50 and I had stopped animating around 10:40pm but some how ended up back on Maya after downloading a model of a katana (simple things). Yes I'm easily amused, so naturally I had a mess about posing a character holding it. So its got me wanting to practice individual poses to try and amp up my silhouettes and in time my animation as a whole.

Here's todays 10 minute effort. Enjoy and catch you tomorrow!

Baseball Progress

So having reviewed the swing and having had it poked and prodded by my mentor i've taken a hammer to it and tweaked a number of things. Mainly its a bit of exaggeration here and there. The baseball bat now arcs out further, improving that all important silhouette. I also added a leg raise. I like the look of it so far. Its nice and smooth, but I think I will need to attack it with fresh eyes in the morning as the swing itself seems a little even paced. Enjoy!

More updates coming soon!

-P

Well.. I ain't sleepin tonight!

I'm ever so slightly wired.. I get like this when I have too much that I want to be doing and my body just fails to move at the speed of thought.. perhaps I'm asking for too much? All of this I might add without the added effects of caffeine, no I don't do Coffee. I can barely handle my current thought patterns, the added catalytic presence of such adulterants could only be... interesting? maybe I should give it a go some time, anyway..
Just another update of what i've been up to. Loving the Stewart rig so thanks animation mentor! I've continued making working on some exercises, still some tweaks to be made but making progress all the while. Check it:




Heres a new one:




The idea of this one is mainly to study body mechanics and conveying the movement of force generated in the body. It's blocked but now I need to generate a greater sense of tension within the muscles. Will talk more on this one once i'm done :)

oh and heres a shot from a fun piece I hope to start soon. It involves people getting punched in the face! - Yeah so thats gonna be fun.

Remember remember thr 5th of November!

Nope this one isn't so much about Bonfire night or parliament. Just an update with my new and improved version of the Stewart rig jump test:



I've added in some breakdowns/inbetweens and sorted out his posture in the main poses. Hopefully it reads a little better now that its flowing more.
Just a quick one for now, More coming soon!

-Paul

Animation Mentor's Stewart Rig!

So if you flick back a few posts you may remember a quick mention of the new Stewart rig made free by the good people at Animation Mentor, for the free rig, follow http://www.animationmentor.com/free-maya-rig/
So I have had a quick play with it and I gotta say it runs super smooth! Absolutely love it. I used it to re do that poor attempt at a jump test I did a week back. Did it in half the time and with twice the fun! Its so simple to use and nothing snaps or looks awkward, the controls are easy to find and select, no problems whatsoever. Think I will be using it to test out some action sequence as its adjustable automatic squash and stretch will lend it nicely to the style of sequences I wish to create! I may right a more detail report on its usage in a future post, but its 1:30 in the AM for me and this will have to do for now. Check out my jump cycle below guy!

Work hard! - P

Todays progress

Progress appears to be slow but I'm not gonna complain when it feels like I'm getting somewhere.
The right arm hasn't been fleshed out or even blocked correctly yet. All the facial and eye motion is to come, but I have noticeably altered the motion taking place. Before hand it was just three attempts to recover the phone and it seemed to happen to the beat of the audio. So I have changed the last move to a side swipe that turns into falling. I think its a bit more interesting that way. Still got some timings to tweak too. Sorry its been a bit of a rush job post tonight. I'm shattered and have the late shift tomorrow... grrr. Anyways enjoy!

More than you can chew.. new goals and realistic targets.

So in following on from the last post I have come to the realisation lately that I bite off far more than I should be chewing. My goals are all well and good but I need to alter my priorities! My show reel has been put off since I left university. Last time I had one together was for a job application in 2010 and it hasn't altered since... So I'm taking my work on this months and last months 11 second club and working on them continually until they sparkle. That can be the start of it and will act as a base to work from. So that will be my goal for the foreseeable future, I can work on competitions once I'm employable! Looks like the D.I.S.S award is going on the back burner this year... *sigh

Gonna keep it short and sweet for now, so heres the usual W.I.P lets just make sure I finish it this time!






Paul out!

Mental momentum meltdown mayhem....m

Once again I have gotten into a good working rhythm, where my enthusiasm is once again at an all time high. The only trouble is harnessing it affectively. I often see this "animation high" as a reason/opportunity to discuss things with the community and fellow enthusiasts, this is fine but I really need to put in as many hours as I can! At times like this it is as though I am being pulled under by a tidal wave of mental energy. Every idea is a grand painting... I just struggle to see where to place the first brush strokes.

So what have I been up to this week, well besides correcting the mess of a 'jump' exercise I created I have been plotting a choosing a few long term projects to draw out some new skills. At the start of 2013 a class mate of mine took part in and secured first place in the Jameson D.I.S.S awards hosted by Empire. To my knowledge he had entered the previous 2 years also before winning. Now I haven't made a complete "Film" since college and I would very much enjoy the excitement of progressing in such a competition, assuming I can get through any of the stages. Each entry is sixty seconds long, but I will be going at this alone for now. I'm not going to jump to the obvious film choices I would love to do such as Kick-Ass or the Avengers, so I am going to dig into my ever expanding list of favourite movies and choose from them. So far I have made a short list of the following; Karate Kid, Meet Joe Black, The Crow, Abe Lincoln, Vampire Hunter, Road house and one of three Bruce Lee movies including (The obvious) Enter the Dragon, Way of The Dragon and Fist of Fury. If I take on any of these there will have to be a lot of creative research, both to help with stylistic techniques, aesthetics and technical knowhow. Its a daunting challenge for me considering I usual just do characters but its not a pressure I plan to buckle under.

In other efforts, I used to set aside a full month to tackle the 11 second club to allow for the amount of work shifts that would get in the way. But I have found that to be too long a time to spread it out amongst considering the level I was finishing it too. Also my workflow has come a long way since then and I need to force myself into creating more seconds of animation each week. With submitting it to a number of companies to query for job opens in mind, this should be an interesting test!

Jump animation exercise and brain training!

So heres my latest animation exercise or "animation workout" as I may start calling it. It's all sinking in and getting easy to produce these little clips which are perfect to flex that grey mater. Anyways heres the clip:
 



It's not overly exciting, but the thing I like about this exercise is the fact that I have been animating almost entirely in stepped mode and I enjoy how well it seems to flow despite having not splined or altered the curves in any way. Animation seems to be coming to me steadily at the moment, no stressed attempts to jump straight into splining and just sitting at my desk feeling sorry for myself! I can finally see some personal milestones being passed and now I just need to pick up speed! So what else have I been up to lately? Well I am pretty excited about the latest venture on the Kenny Roy animation site. He has launched his "Anim gym" Which I love the idea of simply because its what I have been working on for the past 6 months of so. I have long been a believer in exercising any skill you have in order to maintain or naturally progress in it. Life and learning is full of many plateaus, which can be daunting and disheartening metaphorical places. But as a great an once said "There are no limits, only plateaus,you must not stay there, you must go beyond them" (Bruce Lee) So it has long been my motto to always be moving forward, I'm not worried to be making mistakes these days, I am happy to be learning from them. It's been a fair amount of pressure to try and enter the 11 Second club along with my current animation course work and annoying part time job, so these little animation workouts that I can do as part of a community will hopefully prove to be a refreshing change of pace. I'm still keen to keep doing the 11 second club too, I am interested to see how I have progressed, plus I need something cool for a new showreel.

In other news, I just downloaded a cool free rig from the Animation Mentor people. Its the Stewart rig, looks really clean and easy to use. I'll try and use it for some of my exercises to avoid a lifeless expression from my usual Morphy rig. It should lend itself well to some of my martial arts driven clips. I've just finished a Seminar in Russian Systema and would love to animate some of the clips available on youtube. I mean, the flow these practitioners get on their techniques would be amazing to get down in my animations! Essay over :) - Watch this space!

Its been a looong day.

So I have spent the day tinkering with the start of this months 11 Sec club entry. I managed to navigate through usual hasle of scene setup related slip ups fairly quickly this time, theres nothing like a few disheartening multi-hour set backs to kick start a project. Moaning aside I did manage to clock up a number of hours into planning, filming and blocking today so heres a clip of what I have so far. For some reason... the file plays the sound on my Mac, but won't if I used the wrong version of quicktime. Uploading to youtube has also dropped the sound. But hey-ho its all about the movement! Enjoy!

Suit up!

So, its a little over a week in to september now and almost all other projects are clear for now. So I think it's time to have another crack at an 11 Sec club entry! YAAAY. One of the main buzz kills of going into the competition is a bad audio choice. I know it needs to vary and it won't always be what I define as awesome but it pretty much defines how I go into the project from the out set. Anyway this months is pretty cool, fairly sure its a clip from the latest Bond movie and is taken from a scene involving 007 and Q. The clip is a minor intellectual verbal confrontation and has already given me a few ideas about how to go about it.

So heres a still of my first basic scene layout. The clip mentions a laptop, so the obvious props are there, this also means a lot of entrants will most likely be basing their work around a similar setting as this. I think I'll work on my originality next entry though. This time round I wanted at least one improvement, so I've opted for throwing out the leotard look of the morpheus rig and gone for a suit and tie look! curtesy of the guys over at http://ecmwp.blogspot.co.uk/ Thanks guys! these costumes will come in handy! Unfortunately the costumes didnt come with a guide on how to attach them, though I have managed it after 20 mins of fiddling with the explorer and a further 10 finding out the translated terminology from one software to another Enveloping = Skinning etc... I do miss XSI. So i've had a play about and the only minor hicup is the deformations of the clothing are a little out under the arms. Would be easily fixable in my mother software, but hey-ho its Maya so I best get cracking swatting up on altering the weights before I can move on. Work hard people! Felty

Balloon progression

So the other day after smashing my head into the keyboard I decided to go and buy some balloons to see what they should look like... yes you would have thought with my previous experience with messing things up until filming reference and starting again, I'd have gone straight for that method... But no once again complacency got the better of me!

So, Here we have a revised version.. Still work to be done. But it bounces like an actual balloon now! One or two of the bounces are questionably high and I played around with the rotations a little too early in the blocking phase so its a bit choppy. But I'm pleased with the progress and will continue to create better versions.

Work Hard!


Note to self... Sort the first part out, its far too fast :P

Bawooon

Continuing from other tests involving bouncing about, I've animated a balloon this time. I have started by just trying to eyeball this one. I've laid out my arcs and got a rough spacing down, but i'm not overly sure on the height of the last bounce... I am yet to add some twisting to the balloon as it lands and bounces.

Tomorrows task... Buy a pack of balloons :P




Critique: Having stepped away for a while and looked at it with fresh eyes I know I need to start it again. I've been and thrown some balloons down there stairs and its not really like this. I have the weighting a bit wrong really. It still falls too fast, I'll have another crack at it tomorrow!

Keep working imaginary peeps!

Punch Tests, early phase

So heres the fruit of a half a days (well an hour or two if you include what ever else got in the way) work, I have just blocked out the major poses for the lead punch. With it being a snappy punch most of the frames have gone towards padding out the return to the characters "ready" stance. My very first play through had the punch looking very stabby. The fist would stop at the arms full reach and then come back, no flow just an abrupt stop and then return.
So ! This version, featured above, has had a bit of tweaking, its had a frame put in to cushion it after the arms full reach and to give the follow through (no giggling) effect. As it stands, it now seems to have little impact, so I'll go ahead and give it more snap back after the punch lands and possible start exaggerating the pose to get a little more from it.

More soon! - Work hard.

Into the swing of things

So lately I'm being a bit forgetful with posting updates on here. Perhaps its to do with the increase of work shifts i'm taking or maybe its partly to do with a dip in my work output. The first reason problem effects the second, but if I want to get somewhere fast then I need to try a bit harder and not see the end of my work shifts as time to crash out but rather a chance to give me a shot at a worthwhile job. Procrastination aside heres what I'm on with at the moment, between cracking on with exercises set by my fairly new mentor i'm improving my drawing skills. Now whereas I have no trouble pushing myself to copy something I see in front of me my actual knowledge and understanding of creating anything via pencil or wacom is pants to say the least. So i'm stripping it all back to basics. Which is an odd phrase considering the subject, i'm not talking basics as in simple shapes, I want to understand, stances, posing and structure at the very core. If I can get the hang of bone structures first, it will literally lay foundations or the bones of my characters and poses which will in turn help me in my animation work.

So my first documented study seen in this sketch is the hips and rib cage. If I can lean what they look like and learn how to simplify these shapes quickly and correctly I can move onto the next phase.. Muscles!

Picture two is for one of my pet projects. Yes another one, but this one is actually getting worked on. It is quite simply the study of the punch. I am a keen animator and Marital artist both, so it will help me in both areas if I combine both my disciplines. I often get wound up with films/tv or games when a character supposedly hits another and it just looks hideously unbelievable. Now whereas in good scenes where a decent physical altercation takes place a simple camera trick can be used, I have the luxury of actually being able to make my characters collide.

One thing I know, is its all in the contact. The weight of a punch must be believable, for a strong punch a person must incorporate their body weight into its momentum. For a great punch it must follow through the target, only coming back stance (for defence or a second punch). So my study is creating the best look in a 3D, rather than looking too much into other peoples methods too much, I will be studying this one from my own references.
The posing I seem to be getting down fairly well so far. I have recorded myself doing a few JKD or Bruce Lee style lead punches to study its snap back look. The trouble with this particular punch is it focuses it technique on not being seen, simply put there is no anticipation for this punch. If done properly the practitioner lunges his first forward and his/her first motion, there is no wind up or bring it back for momentum. Now muscle memory for pretty much any other motion involving the fist causes us to bring our hands back, be it a punch or throwing a ball. With anything else it wouldn't be effective to generate enough force this way. But with this punch the idea is to connect your bodyweight with the other guys face whilst using little strength from your arm muscles at all. Given correct timing and structure of your body right down to the origin of force or contact point with the floor, you will be using your whole body weight to push an opponents face back.. Result, knockout. So coming back to my point, I want to be able to create this look in my animation test.
So what issues am I facing. Well As I just mentioned above, there is no anticipation with this movement, so out of the box it looks a little odd. In conclusion to this visual issue I will most likely simulate the character in motion before loosing his punch. That and putting another model on the receiving end would make it look better perhaps.

I've been studying up on the use of time bars a lot now. As in those little animator sketches that plot out the keys used in a time frame. So Jim if your reading, thanks for giving me that useful skill its helped my planning no end and I will upload more of my exercises shortly! Enjoy the rest of your holiday mate.

To the rest of you, Work hard :)

Felty

Ball update

I haven't posted in a while. But just to show a bit of progression heres the updated version of my latest work on the ball exercises.



The previous one was a little daft in the sense that the ball seemed to have a mind of its own, somehow bouncing on each step with equal force and distance. So heres the updated version, with actual gravity!

Arcs, apps and more bouncy balls!

So I've been itching to get my Wacom to use this week as it has just been sat gathering dust for a bit. So today I downloaded a trial version of "Ultimate pen" which is basically an app that lets me scribble over my other programmes, so its hand for animation arcs etc. It's been very handy to quickly plot out some animations and just litter the page with helpful timings or notes.

Oh here's a blocked out test I'm doing, its another popular practice, its another ball, but this time its going down the stairs! I'll upload the finished version soon along with some samples of different weights.

Stay tuned for more tests and some of my anatomy study sketches!

The next few weeks

I'm back! Yes I'm fully aware no one knew I was gone, or that I'm "here" even so to speak. Anyways, moving away to study in solitude means travelling is necessary if I wish to see the misses. Not that I mind but it usually means a week out at a time from study, a welcome rest mostly yet I am usually gagging to get straight back to it by the end of the week. Arriving back now at this point in the month means I am left with a little more than a week to start and complete a 11 second club entry. Now as much as I hate the idea of leaving a gap between what I want to be a full years worth if entries I have decided not to force it and concentrate on my drawing from now till the next competition starts.

For the remaining time I have chosen the following subjects:

- the human skeleton: understanding a realistic framework to my characters
- muscles in motion and giving the illusion of force
- general break down of the body parts and muscle groups.

It's clear I need to spend time studying each section till my own drawings match the standard of my reference drawings.

During this next week I will also be balancing my drawing studies with more animation exercises, yes more bouncy balls as well as some studying on lighting and rendering a scene competently in Maya. I still have loads to improve on, animation wise before I hit the top scores in the 11second club, but it wouldn't hurt to spend some time making my vids look pretty whilst I'm not going too heavy on the maya projects right now.

Going to be a busy week, can't wait!

Paul out

Bouncy balls

So, as part of my back to basics I have ventured way back to the bouncy ball. Its strange that motion can be studied through something as simple as the bouncy ball. Timing, weighting, squash and stretch, they are all in there. So i've been animating a ball, doing a quick render and gradually seeing where the mistakes are being made. In my first go I failed to even out the middle pose and as a result the rest was a bit off, I also used too many keys when the ball was landing, giving it a speed up and slow down effect, which was very odd. So i've had a play around with the poses and made sure I kept it all on 2's this time round.
One by one i'll pulling the tangles out of the knotted string that is my work flow.. Anyways, below is a quick playblast of the last ball I did. It's all stepped, it's actually nice to see one of my animations flow so well in stepped. I know its just a ball but still.. I guess I'm easily impressed!






More work on the basics to follow

Stay choooooned, Paul out.

Animation tests: Reviewing and absorbing the basics

When drawing, I'll often challenge myself to draw a picture that I know I won't be able to render to any impressive standard. Later after a degree of practice I will choose that exact same theme to create another picture to compare standards. I though it was time I initiated something similar with my animation, even if its just something simple like one limb moving in a certain way. The whole point of these exercises or tests is to focus back on some of the basics or principles of animation that I can often neglect in my work flow. It may often sound tedious to go backwards but its definitely worth it to discover small epiphanies within the timings and spacings of motions. After recently being tasked by a tutor to go back to the bouncy ball I have been inspired to follow some other vids on basics, when searching for such things its never too long before Richard Williams pops up. I have been re-reading through some notes and going through lecture snippets on youtube and the latest test i have dabbled with will certainly help loosen up my creativity with poses. So far my 11 second club entries can be a little too boring and seem as though clinging to a more realistic approach. I need silly and wild, perhaps I need to look into films such as "Cloudy with a chance of meatballs and other similar comedy styles.



So heres a playblast of the test I had a go with. I had to tweak one of the extreme poses to get rid of what looks like a a dropped frame feel. A slight adjust of the elbow at its highest point made the movement blend more. The point of the exercise was to open up to extreme posing, so on the frame previously mentioned the elbow is hyperextended in an impossible position.

More of these to come soon, gotta keep cracking on for now.


- Paul Out

My entry for this month!

I didn't get to do everything I wanted, I suppose thats the nature of a deadline. I just need to get quicker each time. I'm still not happy that I can't get a simple render done, I did go through the trouble of learning basic lighting and rendering, but ah well thats another tutorial for another time. Anyway the animation was at least fleshed out. This month I probably shouldn't leave it so close to the deadline.
Anyhoo heres the final thing. I don't think I'll do anymore to it. Got plenty of other things I want to work on instead.

its 3.30 am... I'm going to bed zzZZzz

My personal notes:

Some of the facial expressions seem to be guess work, I didn't plan for enough time to get any subtle eyebrow motions. I did very little with the hands. The right hand just stays planted, this time round I was quite fixated on just making sure the limbs didn't wobble through the desk that I left it there.. Doh.  I had trouble with the mouth controls this time round, I couldn't create the shapes I want as easily as last time. I eventually got full control back but I had already messed up the first section. I did go back and alter it later although one of the joining words doesn't really read properly . its the end of "favourite...Remember?" Oh and I left the button hand to just float after jabbing the button a few times.

Plus points. I got a lot more body motion in then the last piece. I had a fair bit for fun and I had more than 10 minutes to spare this time :) I'm very criticising of my own work but I know I suck and i'm happy to work harder to get a better result.. i'm getting my chi together, just you wait!

11 Second Club June: Progress so far

So the last two weeks have been spent mostly watching tutorials, scratching my head and wondering what all the equivalent functions from XSI that made my animating life a whole lot easier are called in Maya, or if they exist at all even. So this time round I thought enough was enough and so I have set about finding answers. I know Maya seems to be an industry favourite or at least favoured among most studios but so far most of the tricks I learnt have been fairly long winded in or require a mass of script. But after a little tinker time, I seem to have the hang of the basics again (its like learning to walk again sometimes).

So anyways, this week has been a great learning week. Having to stop and start my animation to solve these varied mysteries has been a pain, but its definitely been worth it! This week my work has actually been flowing and it can only get better right?

Anyhoo Favourite new toys of the week? well remember that issue I had in my last animation with the wrists dancing through the work surface? Well I gots me a script for that too now. Finding the "Enable stepped preview" function is another amazing function that can only be explained as sorcery, has sped up my work no end! Last entry I was actually going in circles removing all my efforts at splining by constantly switching between stepped and splined... turns out you can't do that and keep all your work in ....I could in XSI.. *grumble* Ah well, this mode is awesome, cus its just an illuuuusion and doesn't mess with your keying info and your lovely curves in the graph editor. So yeah, thats pretty cool, thanks for that btw Kenny Roy, loving the site so far.

Heres my 11 Second club for June so Far!
Half the scene is missing along with a character and the facial animation. But thats all to come along with the finished polished version. Enjoy

More on me:

Watching a lecture today on resumes/C.V's gave me the idea, well more like strengthened my feelings towards making my Reel and C.V really show a bit more of me. Assuming that the animation industry doesn't care one bit about my previous experience surviving Primark, this allows a little more space to tell them who I am. I'm not about to write down absolutely everything I like to do in place of previous experience but I would like my blog and (soon to be renovated) Portfolio site to paint an accurate picture of why I am nothing like all the other desperate soles gunning for a job.
So who am I? and what do I do when I'm animating? What do I aim to achieve this year, how will I go about this and am I achieving my goals? My interests can really be broken down into categories, all of which are artistic in nature.

-Martial Arts:
Since the age of 16 I've been studying one form or another. Having started with Karate I later moved to university, where after sampling a few of the local classes decided to opt for a hybrid system called Seiken-Do. This class was created by a 3rd generation Bruce Lee student, combining Wing Chun, Brazilian Jujitsu and the theories of Jeet Kune Do with the discipline found in a traditional Japanese Dojo. I studied within this class for 5 years working my way up to a competent assistant to my instructors. One of my greatest joys/passions was teaching people within this class, to see the expressions light up on their face at the discovery of something new.
I don't profess to be the next action hero or anything, but the lessons learnt within those classes and the confidence gained will stick with me constantly.
     
              -What Martial arts gave me:
Confidence: This life discipline really teaches you what your body and mind can be pushed to achieve, knowing your body and by extension yourself takes away a degree of stress from many of life's situations.
Understanding of weight, structure, base, center and forces generated within the body. These are all areas that transfer across to my current focus, animation.

Unfortunately I have had to sideline my Martial arts studies in hopes of getting a job.

-Voice acting and performance:
Having being raised as part of a church going family I am no stranger to small theatre productions and musical performances. Although at the time I really didn't appreciate the amount of my time invested in the various choirs, brass bands and orchestras. However, my now natural sense of rhythm and timing has been well utilised throughout my later endeavours in both martial arts and animation.
I have keen observational skills towards the performance of others, giving me an edge in creating character voices and often accurate impressions. With time I hope to gain the confidence to upload some of these and develop the skill further.

              -Through my previous experiences I have developed valuable skills in acting out the pieces I wish to animate.

Drawing and other artist pieces:
It is sad to say that i'm not of a drawer these days. When compared to people my fellow ex-class mates and even people younger than myself I don't stand out too much. At a younger age it was different, I regularly enjoyed studying and copying images from my comic books. It is now one of my missions to improve this skill which has lain dormant for far too long.

One of my recent scribbles for a "draw off" with a friend

One of my current and long term projects is my 10,000 picture box which I hope to steadily grow from the lowly double figures I currently have.

This skill will certainly come in handy in speeding up my key pose sketches and storyboarding.






All of these skills compliment each other is some way and more importantly the other skills each feed in to expanding my knowledge and understanding of animation and motion or the way we move. One of things I am battling hard to do right now is to surround myself with new and awesome people! People who are actually good at what the do, who love it and aim to improve on these things. These people will raise you up and help you when you need it. I have at least one awesome friend in each of these subjects when I need a hand and its the fastest way to learn!


Long post I know, hopefully it doesn't read as a lecture or some boastful craptacular drivel :P

-Rock on people, Felty out.

Ideas for 11 second club June:

So, I am going ahead with Junes 11 second club entry. I have just over 8 days in which to do it. So its achievable. Especially if Improve my workflow/methods and dont leave the house for a few days.

This months audio has the first character getting excited over a game, my interpretation is that he has just come across if for the first time in however long. So the first thing that comes into mind is an arcade type scene, my scene consists of two angles, the camera is the view of the character from the arcade screen (seen above)  and the starting angle is from the right side of the arcade cabinet (below) This time round I decided I wanted it to make the scene look presentable.. Instead of just doing a playblast. I don't really like the idea of spending time learning other disciplines other than animation at the moment. My usual view on the subject is "I can learn all that other stuff once I have a job". But to be honest it didn't take too long to pick up basic lighting tricks. Well you can see what I have managed to achieve so far.. I lit the character ok, but that was with grey panels in the background, having just added a background image it feels as though I have just thrown all that tinker time down the toilet! Ah well I can figure that out when im resting my brain from animation. Theres a yellow glow on the characters face for now, it is supposed to be as if its being emitted from the screen, but I don't yet know what colour it would be or how it should really look. More research is needed for that one.. Well anyhoo the scene basics are laid out. Just need to animate the flippin thing now! Wish me luck

-Paul out

Tough Mudder!

In a completely unrelated topic, I recently completed one of the Tough Mudder courses in London woop! I do have my goals outside of the animation world of course and Ive decided lately that my only two goals (for the most part) will involve either animation or Physical challenges. Entering daft challenges keeps me exercising for fear of thoroughly embarrassing myself.

I made it through this one with the company of my fellow nutty enthusiasts to finish at a respectable time of 2.5 hours which is just about an hour faster than the average. I'm currently considering my next challenge. I was originally aiming to do a marathon but as I didn't get around to it this year I seem to now favouring the assault course runs instead. Think i'll have a crack at the Spartan race next!

In more animation related news, I'm still looking to do the 11 Second club entry and try and get a routine going, but why is it I always end up with no more than a week to do it in rather than the whole month? I'm really not organised. Ah well, here goes!






(Btw thats me on the far right)

Kenny Roy.com - No more desk scenes, Problem solved!

In other news I recently decided to further my studies at KennyRoy.com! A few of my friends have recommended him in the past, though I never really gave it much though the fact that both my friends have had industry jobs should have been a clear indicator that I should have visited the site long ago.

The site contains video lectures for sale that answer many FAQ's that pop up among animation students all over. After watching a few lectures on the basics of workflow and having started a few projects of my own I began to ask a familiar question to myself again and again. "Surely there is a more professional method to keeping a characters elbows still when interacting with a surface?" I'll be honest, my usual time frames for animating these scenes tend to push me for the cowards option of cutting out the legs. Thinking to myself that half the body is half the work... if anything its just half the learning. So I searched the site and found nothing in the archives close to what I wanted to achieve, so I decided to ask a friend in the industry what they would do. Her first answer was to do as I had been doing, though in all fairness someone of her skill level would make a far better job of it. Her second tip was, if I hadn't already to use the Kenny Roy site. But she also provided a link to a lecture which low and behold was on my exact question! Freaky huh?

The video showed a fairly simple method of adapting the current rig I use by adding a simple bone chain and parent constraining some locator nodes to other parts of the rig in order to have the rest of it orbit/pivot around the desired point, in this case the elbow. Now that might sound like nonsense to some, but having just spent a year learning to rig it is familiar territory I am more than happy to have worked through before. The most important lesson that I have learnt from this video however came from the following statement "Why are you doing so many shots of people behind a desk? You wont get those shots on the job, not if its your first one" lol he has a point. I wont animate anyone behind a desk anymore...Problem solved :)

11 Second Club: What they say

Unfortunately with the calibre of my entry the comments were less useful than I would like. The method for commenting it seems is that each registered member has the opportunity to vote and comment on each entry. With there being 200+ entries you find yourself steaming through and not giving each one enough justice. Only one comment actually made note of what could do to improve which is what I thought was the whole point. Others comments just point to the fact they didn't bother observe it much.

Oh well this just means I need to aim higher to get the attention of those who would offer some some feedback and breakdown of my work.

My own person notes are that I should start by finishing it and the notes from the 11 Second club critiques are that the cigarette hand, fingers open at one point which would result in a burn and also that the whole thing is rigid due to the bodies subtle motions not being fleshed out.
On top of that I want to finish working on the timing, I didn't get any of the dramatic feel that I wanted from the eye and head motions, I could use a bit of punctuation and snap, the whole thing seems to be a singular pace. I think there is a degree of camera staging and lighting I would also like to use in future to achieve greater theatricality.

11 Second Club May Entry!

Well I finally managed it, I entered the 11 second club.  My entry was still a WIP which is a shame really. But at least my rank should be significantly better when I upload a completed one in the future.

So heres the video, I didn't get to smooth all the motions out, the acting is minimalistic to be honest and I didn't even get to animate the hands properly. I'm going to finish this one, It can be my bench mark to beat. This months entry was more about just getting involved in it. I have wanted to since university so I'm just happy to have done it.

I was working up to the deadline, mainly on working out how to render, compress and upload.
In fact learning all those things in the last hour felt like an epic battle, after all if your going to stay up till 4am with a 9am work shift the following morning you want it to work fairly badly! Truth be told I wasn't even sure my entry had been uploaded successfully untila few days after. They will destroy me with any critiques I may get, but I can just use them to fix the obvious problems :)

Lip sync test!

Well its not perfect but heres this months entry to the 11 second club so far!



Its just the lip sync so far, biut with there only being 4 days to go I'm going simplistic on this one. Just a bit of wiggling about and some hand gestures. Nothing fancy, anyways back to work!

2D tests and 3D lip sync!

Yo, Rob and I decided to go with some tests of one of his characters before inevitably bitting off more than we can chew. First up we have one of his Cow (or Tauren if your familiar with WoW) people drawings with a simple head turn. Now I say simple, but after drawing in some key frames over some of Rob's sketches I found a familiar problem in that I don't know how to draw these characters from memory! So first hold up to the project and its time to get on with some drawing practice before hitting the animation software!

Heres a cool snap shot anyways

Now I have to break down the characters into their most simplistic geometry to reverse engineer them and learn how to draw them myself!

In other news, my next attempt for this months 11 Second clube entry is on the way. This months sound clip is from Iron Man 2 and features the voice of Mickey Rourke's character, yes thats right! this month I get to play with a Russian accent.. or is it Ukrainian? No Idea anyways, this sound clip is a lot less energetic then previous clips and it hasn't lent itself to many scene ideas. So this time I'm just going for a subtle piece, not too much moving around, just a brooding character leant over his cigarette... and yes he'll be sitting down again. In all fairness i've left it a while to start so I want to keep this one simple, plus as i've said I don't think any grand gestures will suit this audio.
I decided this time to start with the lip sync, in the past i've done it this way around before. It's an excellent way to get over that first step and actually get animating, always takes me forever to get going, I'm hoping that will fade with practice. So i've set the first pose, which can change, i'm happy to alter it down the line. But the mood is set by the characters body language which will help me get into the mood/shoes of the character and act it out as i go. Anyways stay tuned for more on both these projects.

Laters!

Yeah ... So I moved house....again, again.

Oook. So I decided mid december, that enough was enough. I refused to sit in a retail job leading me no where. So I made my plans to move back to the homeland, where the family was kind enough to offer me some space to call my own. A space to smash out some projects and get myself a job that doesn't make you regret your choice to get out of bed that morning.  It all happened quite fast and the blog has been a little neglected since my last run of travelling about. But I did it! I left my job and house and moved back to the Midlands. So here I am, rent free for a while, heres what I'm up to now anyways.
A couple of my ideas/projects remain the same, I still want to do my 1000 pictures and I still want to do my action tests, focussing mainly around punching for now. But new just in, is a collab with an old college buddy. Its 2D! I haven't tried any 2D work for a few years now, so its finally time. My good friend Rob has a flare for character design with an emphasis on the ability to create character. Together the aim is to create some character tests and hopefully a couple of web episodes!

Heres a sample of the theme, watch this space!

1000 pictures says what?

Well Its been a long few days with not a whole lot going on. The Mrs has turned 24 and its been mothers day and basically not a great deal of time has been spent sat at the screen, well not this one at least. Tomorrow I AM going to upload a quick 'playblast' of my blocking so far, should include most of the motions for the second character all fleshed out. I have found myself going over the same motion over and over again, which is no one else's fault and I'm not going to complain either. With each new version it improves or at the very least, because a lot cleaner, often with a lot less (messy) frames blocked out.
With there being 21 days left (ample time) with my sisters wedding thrown in the middle I am hoping to make decent head way with this in the next few days, allowing for a "rest" period in which  I can flex my animation muscle on some of my pet projects. First one that comes to mind is simply an exercise, it will be a short clip of one guy slugging the other in the face. Nothing spectacular, but its one thing they get wrong in a lot of films.

An action sequence looks terrible if you dont get a sense of genuine contact between fist and face.. or whatever your striking. It all looks too much like a sport points match of karate. In karate sparing, no one ever really sinks a move in, or hits to the persons mass, its just a surface blow, snapped back and forth. In real fighting its hit hard and hit deep, no pulling the punches. So i'm going to do my research, theres lots of different takes on this, i'll be looking at classics like Enter the Dragon, this style would help me practice exaggerating speed and keep me loose, rather than keeping it safe and animating everything on twos. There's a lot of snap in Bruces' moves and no one ever really moved quite like him. Another example film with intense action is The Bourne Ultimatum, mainly due to its use of unorthodox camera shots, the camera appears to give an apathetic jolt with each coming blow. This is another technique I will attempt to utilise in my "how to make a punch look good...mission, thingy" Well its a working title..

Before I go, getting to the point of todays blog title. I can't really draw very well, once upon a time I could draw well for my age. But this soon wore off with a lack of development, by the time I reach college I had met a number of people who already had a good understanding of drawing, I had just sat back in blissful ignorance. By the time Uni came around this had multiplied, my fellow peers who enjoyed drawing and dedicated so much time to it that they left uni with skills worthy of paid work.. Now I may be focussing on Animation, but I enjoy drawing and furthering my skills can only aid my chances of getting hired. Plus I would love to believe one day I could also be paid just for using a pencil and not having to write with it. So as mentioned before in a previous post i'm going to have a crack at my first 1000 drawings, today i'm uploading one of the first 10 and i'll keep you posted as I progress!



-Paul

Behave yourself! References are your friend!

I'll be first to admit I have bad animation habits. One the worst of which is steaming ahead setting poses without using my reference, at this stage I either haven't got any, its rubbish or I'm just not looking at it properly. Luckily I caught it early on this time and I've filmed some new footage and ive gone over my first poses again. I probably mention this flaw on a number of occasions previous to this, but its definitely something I need to work on.
I usually like to use a lot of different clips for different stages in the animation. My break down will usually include; General body motions, head motions, lip sync and facial expressions. Being only an amateur actor at best I cant get it all right in one take, ah well. One of the main reasons I can think of right now why references are key at this moment, is for things like weighting. If I hadn't been viewing my footage during my first blocking phase I would miss out simple things like putting weight down as a character leans. This is something that would be less fun to have to add in a later pass.
I'm still very much in the starting phase and I'm getting there slowly with Maya, I still find the flow of animation is less fluid as I would like, little things like selecting things and keying are coming to me now though. Next months entry will run much smoother I'm sure, this month will just have to be  the prototype.

Gotta run, apparently I've burnt my dinner whilst writing this... whoops.

New software = hardwork

So today has been a bit of a up hill start, every stage of development has been met with a hiccup of some sort. After getting past the ordeal of learning how to navigate Maya having spent years on XSI  I have spent today just learning some very basic stuff. Simple constraints of objects to characters shouldn't have felt such an epic task. But after giving up and finding a nifty little script I then dragged out the task of installing it... In the end I Youtubed it and found a quick demo of how its done.
The script was up and running, but wasn't working on my custom model *sigh. I proceeded to faff about with other failing methods before having another punt at using the script...which worked!
Anyhoo, I did manage a couple of hours of posing characters, I just need to iron out my warm up blunders such as forgetting to key, or keying the wrong frame. Always a pain when you spend ten minutes correcting a pose, to the flick through frames and realise 10 mins later your going in circles. Ah well, the ground work is down now I can drop In Some major poses, shame I have work tomorrow...

Day one: 11sec club March

Yes I know its technically day 4 or 5, but I've just started. Anyways, I remember one of my lecturers telling me that animations should be at least 70-80% planning. Which for me is true enough. Otherwise I would find myself sat with an open scene file in full on zombie mode. After a day of thought, a few sketches and a scene setup later , here is a screeny of my initial idea in scene.

As with my previous entry (attempt) I will be using the morpheus rig, not only because its awesome but because the author is constantly working to develop the rig, so any bugs or what have you have long since been ironed out (i hope). This rig offers a great 'customgeo' tool which allows quick alterations to the character, so my rig should at least look different from anyone else who is using the same one and there usual is.
Ideally i would have gone for the other set up for the scene. But since I spent half my setup time yesterday getting to grips with the new Mac setup and magic mouse, I'm going to put my simplistic scene layout down to my current lack of knowledge of the software. Later projects should yield a more interesting scene. Or at least more than four walls and a prop, yes I know I am focussing on my animation and putting any time into anything else would be a pointless deviation from my discipline but other entrants have put some great scenes together and some of these guys get the low ranks too. I've got all the time in the world to learn that stuff and anyway, its time to crack on!

Lets try this again...

Ok, new computer , check, lets have a crack at the 11 second club again. In all honesty I can't remember just how many times I have attempted to do an entry. Granted I've never spent more than a couple of 3-4 hour sessions on one for one excuse or another but its been at least three or four times over the last few years.
My goal isn't to win one, nope its to develop my 'pipeline' or workflow. Currently it kinda sucks, that is to say that theres a lot of pauses in my process where I sit and umm and arr as to what I should be doing next. So with any luck and a couple of entries I should be well on my way to developing a decent workflow and a faster pace. I do have my own projects on the shelf waiting to be dabbled with, but until I have a better method of approach and understanding of keeping a project moving I'm going to proceed to use the 11second club as my 'Client' whom I need to get a project done for without fail.

Anyhoo heres a quick sketch of the two ideas for this months scene. In it I have just dropped a few lines to indicate a bar of some sort for two people to sit and converse at. The other is a similar bar or cafe situation where a customer mumbles to the help.

I'll keep updating my progress day to day.





Paul out.

Money well spent:

So Animex is over for another year, along with some souvenirs I've picked up a lot of helpful tips and tricks! Mainly from the Ed Hooks workshop I attended on Wednesday but also from a few of the guest speakers. Aardman attended with a model from their latest film Pirates, though I havent seen the film, I was very interested to see the processes that went into the film, especially seeing the Pirate captain model in person, they are brilliant! I found myself wanting to make some more models of my own again, unfortunately I already have enough on my to do list. But thats the beauty of these festivals, you find yourself inspired to have a crack at everything after seeing them on screen. For now id be best of pushing one discipline if Im gonna make myself a saleable asset.

One thing I will definitely do is draw more, one of the quotes that was mentioned went something like this " It takes an artist to produce 1000 bad drawings before he produces anything good" So what have I taken this quite literally and decided to crank out these 1000 pictures numbering them as I go. These will be no masterpieces but I need to get them done and preferably at faster rate then 1 a day unless I want to take 2+ years over it.

I'll share more on Animex and my workshop with Ed Hooks later!

Paul Out.

"Im gonna Wreck it!"

Woop! just met Rob Dressel of Disney animation studios, Lead Layout guru on the new Wreck-It Ralph movie! Pleased to say hes a really friendly guy to speak to. After wading through the atmosphere of fellow nerds orbiting him I snatched the earliest opportunity to ask for a signature, it was luck that Forbidden Planet happened to be present and selling the book and it just iced it off having one of the artist around to sign it.

I usually dont have anything to say to most of the industry experts at Animex, but I found myself asking about production roles in the industry and how to go about getting one. Lets face it there isn't a hole lot you can put on a showreel to show off your producing skills ... anyhoo, he told me it was best to email them directly and ask to speak to someone for help. Disney are offering internships for the summer, so i'm going to apply, unfortunately the deadline is 1st of March and with no showreel for to provide for the animation side of the application , my failing hardware has provided me with another kick to the ribs. There is always next year, but its got me thinking to apply to Disney! which I've never done before. Rest assured they shall be first on my pester for a job list.
The internship programme offers a choice of three disciplines, so I think i'll be choosing Layout artist, animator and production assistant. Even if nothing comes of it, I've got another year to develop and apply again!

A while ago I found myself thinking of the quickest way into the industry so that I could then train in what I wanted to do. But now I have seen so many things I would love to do and find myself positively less picky about what I would or wouldn't do. I figured it cant hurt to ask for a little advice form them. I've already emailed them..twice.

Stuff the PC "I'm a Mac"

Well it's long overdue, my pc has been limping along for far too long. So I've liberated any files that may have value and condemned the tower to a dusty corner awaiting a time when I see fit to harvest its useful pieces.

Fair well old friend, it was interesting. Welcome to my new mac, no more cumbersome, vibrating virus magnet of a tower for me... No just 27inches of awesome sauce.

Animex 2013

Its that time of year again and for the first time since 2010 I can actually attend Animex. Technically I was there 2 years ago but sneaking into the social, stuffing your face with free food and promptly leaving hardly counts.
This time round I was that excited in anticipation that I booked my ticket back in November. I see some familiar names on the speakers list and some i havent seen before, will have to wait till closer to the date to get the confirmed final list.
Already on there is Ed Hooks though and i have missed opportunities to see his lectures before. He is doing a Workshop on "acting for animators" which will do me nicely! Another name I recognise is Stuart Sumida, I saw his online seminar on the anatomy of a fight last year so it will be interesting to see him in person again. He did a talk in 2010 on the Disney film "Bolt".
Stuart Sumida's talks are usually on anatomy of characters, how characters should be built and how they would move, considering my past years experience in rigging it would have been brilliant to go to his workshop of anatomy of characters but sadly its on at the same time as the one im already going to. Now that Im focussing on animation its best i doubt miss out on the workshop best suited to me.