Love, hate relationship...

No this one isn't a gripe about my girlfriend. More a confirmation of the previous post..yes you guessed it. For the second time this year my pc packed in.. My external hard-drive's untimely demise shortly before hand was an additional torment that has deprived me of some of my university files. True I only wanted them for nostalgic purposes but still.. I find my work is usually outdated the moment it's finished, but I also lost all my files for my competitions and current projects etc. I'll be honest, having to live a truly tedious part time job over Christmas and loosing my software and files truly put a damper on my learning. Although the past half year wasn't without its moments. In the face of adversity I did receive some good feedback from "Cubic Motion" for whom I did a short test piece. Would have been nice to have gotten that position but at least now I'm free from part time work to focus on future chances...also free of money to go with it unfortunately. With the mention of potential work in the next few months with my fellow uni graduates new company I focus my learning more on towards the rigging side of character animation. Yes its a shame to split my learning between two disciplines, but I really need the "foot in the door" and I enjoy what rigging I have done.. Not a fan of coding though. Luckily a good friend of mine who just last year got a job at framestore as a rigger has offered his help in my learning. If I finally have my brain switched on I'll jump on that opportunity!

A Slight Set Back...

So, turns out my graphics card has died on me, at least I think that's what the problem is...If I need to wipe my pc, all is lost!! But it won't be the case, else that would suck to say the least...wish me luck, else its bye bye to the competition idea - along with a lot of work....yikes.

So, What am I up to lately?

Having watched and loved Stuart Sumida's talk and anatomy of fighting within animation (two of my favourite things) I have decided to get a few small projects on the go. Firstly I want to create small sequences from various Bruce Lee fight moments, to focus my timing, and weight. I can often blow my mind thinking too much about grand animation projects, when all I want to be doing is the actual animation itself. I just want to create some clips and see where I go.
Secondly: A friend of mine created a great model of the Batman villain, "Bane" unfortunately the project never went the distance and he has kindly lent me the model in which to hone my animation skills, that is once I have developed my rigging abilities to get the big guy moving. Bring on the smashing! Project number three:

Canamation, Red Bull have been jabbing at me for a few weeks now with there adverts in the cinema about "Canamation" Their animation competition. Looking into it the deadline is close, so I can at best only do a small entry. But at least its exposure, there are only a few entrants as yet and most importantly, the two prizes I could compete for include software and a laptop...(yay!) and a placement at the Mill! If anything it would just be nice to have some industry professionals have a look at something I did. Plus If i got anywhere with it people I know could see my stuff in the cinema and thats pretty cool...Got my plate loaded this month, wish me luck! -Paul out

Dr. Stuart Sumida - " The Anatomy Of A Fight"

Well, I remember one animator saying to me once, when asked "What should my show reel be like" He said that "It should show your interests" Or something like that...it was a while ago anyway. Thinking back now along those lines I thought I would go ahead and do what a few people have discouraged me from doing and that's some animation tests for a fight sequence. In an Ideal world I would be working on cut sequences for games animating exactly that! and to help me a long the way I will be consulting the help of Dr. Stuart Sumida. He is a bit of a wizz with anatomy and animation and having watched a talk of his a few years back at Animex I thought I would watch his latest Webimar on "the anatomy of a fight"

"Dr. Sumida is the animation industry's foremost authority on anatomy and fight choreography. In this exclusive webinar, he shares the key points of animating realistic human/human, human/animal and animal/animal fight sequences. He also reviews Animation Mentor student shots and highlights how our programs teach you the proper techniques to kick butt with your animation".
-Sounds pretty cool but It's at 3am and with my track record of falling asleep during lectures this will be interesting, Should hopefully give me a kick up the backside and squeeze in some animating hours...else I'm not gonna get anywhere...considering today's job market I might as well. Paul Out!

Website:

Well I'm applying for a few positions up in the north, so I thought it might be a good idea to get the website back up, after my service provider saw fit to take it down without telling me...never the less it's back up, now all I need is something worth going on it!

www.paulfeltwell.co.uk

Linked In:

For a while I have been hearing about Linked in, So the other day I signed up. Yes its another form to fill in with your various information again, but its been very interesting to view my friends profiles. It lists their jobs and previous experiences. One such example shows how they climbed the ladder from Runner to Jnr. Animator for Framestore. So I will continue to stare in awe and hopes of my own such career path....Enough staring lets get on with it!

CCA animation project:

Here it is anyway, at long last, a bit of this years work:
Well, I ran out of time but I would like to come back and add to this. It's more likely that I will just make something from scratch for my next show reel. I enjoyed Uni but I looking forward to starting something new, this will serve well as a marker to beat. Anyway enjoy!



Personal observations:

Some of the syncing is out, not sure if it was a render issue or something I missed. I would like to have worked on the hands too as they just seem to tween from one static position to the next. Some minor jolting here and there too. Well it all serves well as practice to a small deadline.

Paul out