Cyfle Digital Animation Studio

In Bangkok

2008-01-13T04:46:00.000-08:00

Well bangkok has seem me do something I thought Id never do.... sit in starbuck poncing around on a laptop. Unfortunatly for the short term this is my only acces to the internet. Im trying my best to make it seem like im working on my big screen play.. but I dont think the lady outside the window selling fried squid really cares that much.

Big day tomorrow... first day at imagimax. Quite nervous as Im not ensure what they will expect us to do or be ableto do. Exciting.

My first day and a half in BKK has been fun. its going to be agood month

Rhydian T2000

2007-12-12T08:28:00.000-08:00

Here is a Video I made for a Friends facebook group "Rhydian is from the Future".
Rhydian is a contestant on a certain minor primetime ITV talent show, and my friends Michael and Matthew contend that he is in fact some kind of entertainment cyborg sent from the future - due in part to his emotionless face and square head.
Putting all my After effects training to good use I produced this video - i made it in my lunch break but I think the roughness add to its charm.
Sadly perhaps this video has gotten more plays than all my other videos put together, even the one of Dan & Jen singing drunken 'Im a believer' Karaokee in the Bute Dock Hotel of an afternoon.

Showreel - December 2007

2007-12-12T07:51:00.001-08:00

Here is an updated showreel for 2007, including much of the work I have produced at CYFLE over the past few months.

The music track on this in the excellent "You! Me! Dancing!" by Los Campesinos.

Robot Chase

2007-12-12T04:13:00.001-08:00

Heres the finished version of the chase sequence featured in the animatic posted below. Im not entirely sure how happy I am with it. The process of making it was quite labored as we were using ToonBoom for this project and it essentially made the process quite drawn out. ToonBoom does some things that After effects does and some things that flash does. But does non of those things as well as those packages. I had to comp the whole thing in aftereffects after animating in toon boo as for some reason the render in TB kept skipping frames when there was a lot happening on screen.
For the look of the piece I was trying to get away from the immediate cartoony feel of the supplied character - so opted to give the backgrounds a German expressionist feel. All pointy with exaggerated shadows - Like the film Dr Cilgari (nice) But i think somewhere I got a little lost in that. Also the finish I applied to the character is a bit forced. However I'm pretty happy in the Direction of the piece, and I managed to get a few chase scene staples in there. There are a couple of rough edges - and I havent yet been able to complete the introduction which has the main character feeding nuts and bolts to small robotic birds - just to frame the sequence in some semblance of understandable narrative.

Toon Boom Animatic

2007-11-16T08:47:00.000-08:00

The brief for the Toon Boom project Im working on is is essentially to construct a chase sequence, with the Dinamo logo robot being chased by another machine. Naturally the Evil machine I have designed is a 20 foot steam powered raven which shoots scissors from its beak. Here is the first rough animatic.

Its rough.

Its a landmarkfor me in that its the first piece of work I've ever done using a wacom tablet + pen. Using this and flash to put together the animatic was really fast. The downside is that using the digital pen is pretty weird, and I imagine quite like drawing with a cucumber, blindfolded.
Me blindfolded not the cucumber.

The animatic is a slight extension of the original. Roughly twice the length. I changed the ending to make it more dramatic and to achieve more satisfying runtime

Tooney Boom

2007-11-16T08:41:00.000-08:00

Toon Boom, is the new software of choice at CYFLE right now. A few of the guys here really like it as its alot like traditional animation to use. I'm not so keen for much the same reason. Anyway below is the result of a character rigging/animation test. The story is about some Italian fella who builds a rocket using junk. Of course as he is Italian he needs to have a mustache, though the pink bangles on his arms are an attempt to break away from more stereotypes. You don't know how hard it was to resist putting him in red dungarees.

2007-11-16T08:25:00.000-08:00

Right so the Aftereffects part of this course is well and truly over. My opening sequence came out pretty well. The Brief (below) really called for a sequence of house images with some kind of snazzy transition. There was no way of getting away from it , especially with the supplied music the whole thing rather wrote its self. For the snazzy transitions I decided to use the good old popup book animation style. Some could say this is quite an overused look for animations at the moment - but It really fitted the brief well on this one. Its all about history see, and history comes in book - right? It communicates the idea of discovery also , and finally the soundtrack had these fluttering sections that couldn't evoke the idea of pages turning better.
So just for the heck of it i also used that current animation staple of layered waves made out of card, as though they are from some kind of puppet theatre. I swear if anyone ever invents another way of creating a good looking seascape with 2.5D animation they will win the Nobel prize...of animation.

At first I thought I would have to do allot of the 3d construction in MAYA - but after a few tests I was surprised to find it was all possible in AE. The pages are not as floppy and papery as they could be as AE doesn't allow you to do curves really, but Popup books are made of card - so get over it!

After Effects

2007-10-10T08:21:00.001-07:00

Determined to get this blogging ball rolling here I am writing a mere week after my last post. The big news is we are on a new project. After effects. Exciting.

The brief for this one is from The Bait. A Cardiff based motion Graphics company.

Its a very specific brief and I imagine a typical Industry one. Essentially using a set soundtrack I have to produce an 18 second title sequence for a show called "Discovering Welsh Houses"

Thats more like it, no character animation just houses - houses are easy to animate, much easier than people... except dancing houses perhaps. But ill cross that bridge when I come to it. (note to self: Don't include dancing houses)

Maya is fun

2007-10-01T05:58:00.000-07:00

Yes it really is - its also horrifically complicated. Weeks ago I finished my Maya section fo this course. I wasn't able to write a blog during this time as I was too busy scratching my head and going "eh?".

For the project firstly We were given a weeks intensive Maya training - not very much, and for such a huge pro gramme we probably didn't even scratch the basics, not even the real basic basics.
After that we had 3 weeks to complete a set brief. The project I worked on was written by Dinamo and called for a character to approach and cross a river using some stepping stones.

Like any stressful experience Ive since managed to forget the pain somewhat and I imagine rehashing it here may cause some kind of mental breakdown - but I imagine it was a bit like one of those films when the Pilot of a jumbo jet dies and some one has to step in and be talked through a landing by the control tower... except in this case the control tower was Matt Leonard, and we weren't using CB radios just Instant messenger.
Damn I wish we were using CB radios.

Anyway to much to Matt's credit as a software guru here is the result of my pain:

Tim Allen

2007-08-23T06:54:00.000-07:00

Today we had a visit from Tim Allen. After I got over my initial disappointment that it wasnt THE Tim Allen star of Home Improvement and The Santa Clause I settled into what turned out to be a very interesting morning. Tim is a stopmotion animator who has worked on Pretty much every recent piece of of Stopmotion you cane name.. go on try. Postman pat? Yes, Fireman Sam? Yup, Bob the Builder? Check, (my favourite bob after Dylan, Marley doesnt even get a look in) Creature Comforts?, Oui, Corpses Bride? Hell Ya!
So Tim went through his work with us, played us his current showreel, his reel that he graduated with, and sections of the work he has done over the last 9 years. Tim had some great insights into the industry, and it was fascinating just to hear about the working of a big production such as Corpses bride and Peter and the wolf. He also had some very relevant advice of acting, or more specifically character animation. A lot of the the characters he worked with early on in his career don't seem to have had much in the way of facial features to show any emotion or even indicate that they were talking (like a mouth even), so He had to use poses and body movement etc to best put across what the characters were actually saying. Anyway he said loads of interesting and useful things and if I had to sum it up in 6 words Id say Headshakes, Strike Poses, gesture, mime, silhouettes. Hey I know what it means and thats what counts.

Internet wander

2007-08-22T08:52:00.000-07:00

Whilst on a little trip around the internet (How on earth did I arrive at the wikipedia entry for spit the dog?!) I came across the website of this company - cubeKonstruKt. I think some of their moving image work is great. It combines images, text and illustration and also includes a coo coo clock which seems to be a mainstay of my work at the moment. Anyway image, text illustration, animation, i think thats pretty much what I'm all about. They do allot of work for MTV Asia it seems. When I was in bangkok last I remember the MTV stings being great almost kept me from leaving my hotel room - well that and the searingly hot weather and the over abundance of Germans with dubious intent - but anyway very good indeed.
Anyway - heres some pics..

Oh yes and they are based in Australia! - Im a big fan of their Barrier Reef, good on em.

Its August the 22nd

2007-08-22T05:59:00.000-07:00

Another 3 weeks and here is my next Blog entry.. Poor, quite poor. You would think that sitting in front of a computer all day I would be pouring this stuff out. I guess its just a habit that you've got to get into like turning off lights when you leave the room, or using that cross training machine you drunkenly bought from QVC one night in the New Year.

This also doesn't bode well for my new venture as Sunderland FCs number one blogging fan.

So..

CYFLE PROJECT 1 - THE FLASH BRIEF

So the Projects were handed out a few weeks ago with Ben and I getting a Brief from Calon. The brief itself was I guess pretty industry focused as it involved working to pretty strict Directions from Mike Price at Calon. Mike the Director of Bobinogs and the brief was essentially to animate several scenes from that series.
We were supplied with backgrounds and characters, and some characters we had to create for ourselves. Im not sure about the legitimacy of putting up the work here in YouTube stylee as what we were working on is yet to be broadcast scenes, but I will put up the following clip of a Monkey Knitting as I created both the character and background, and I'm pretty sure you cant copyright the idea of a Monkey Knitting (lets face it if you could we'd all be millionaires)

WHAT A GREAT MONKEY! - and look at his little tongue wiggling around, boy he must be concentrating pretty hard.

As I finished that brief a little earlier than expected I had a bash at another set by Dinamo. This one involved designing some characters to go along with a piece of supplied dialogue. Ash and Jen were working on this project from the beginning and had a lot of contact with Dinamo and it sounded like the restriction they had on character design and direction were quite heavy - but as i was doing this for fun there weren't any - joy!.

I even added some extra sound effects! Nuts Jr.

The Last 2 weeks...

2007-07-30T02:02:00.002-07:00

Well it looks like my career as a non-stop blogger is in doubt - but heres a round up of what Ive been dong for the last 2 weeks...

Digital Story Telling

The Digital Story Telling Module ended a week ago Friday and below is my final outcome. Im pretty pleased with the way it all came together in the end and its not a bad effort for 2 weeks work. The script was written in about a day and I guess it shows but its the first Ive ever really written so in the words of Yazz "The only way is up". I was quite worried towards the end as I wasn't sure if all the elements would tie together. But it turns out its not too bad. The addition of sound effects and the re-recording of my voice over with the aid of some (medicicnal) brandy really helped.

Eisteddfod Mobile Phone Brief

Last week was taken up mainly with an introduction to Flash with Marc Lewis. we used the opportunity to work on a mini brief for Cyfle, intended for use at next Weeks Eisteddfod in Mold.
The brief was for 3 10 second episodes intended for distribution via mobile phone at the event. The episodes were generally to involve a single character and his/her adventures at the Eisteddfod.

As I had a little extra time at the end of the week I went slightly off brief and added a 4th episode.

Its Friday again...

2007-07-13T01:32:00.000-07:00

Yes is is.
This week was pretty much devoted to our first mini project - Digital story telling.
Alot of Monday was taken up trying t o work out story ideas. Not so easy. Especially when the story has to be something that has actually happened to me. I guess alot of things happen - but nothing that interesting - from my perspective anyway - difficult

Anyway story found. Well I say story - more a series of events really - but I thought it may have some possibilities. On Tuesday a chap called Ian Staples came in to help us shape our stories into scripts. Amazing. What resulted was something that I think might actually be a script! Ian had some top advice on developing stories and ideas in to full scripts and it turns out to be quite fun. Blimey

Any joy I felt about my script on Tuesday was quickly beaten down on Wednesday when it came to recording my voice over... Oh dear. I don't often have cause to say this but I cannot act... In fact on the evidence of my recording session I can barely speak the English language....

I haven't yet had the nerve to listen back to what travesty was committed to tape...

Ah well - creating some pretty pictures (below) has kept my mind firmly off the subject. At the moment I'm just ploughing through my storyboard - creating all the images i need before I lay them out in someway next week and add the dastardly VO.

I also managed last night to finish some kind of Showreel type affair with music and everyfink!

Then I went and said good bye to my good friend Leanne who's off today to live in Ireland. Nothing to do with animation - just a bit sad.

Friday - presentation day...

2007-07-09T02:26:00.000-07:00

Friday was presentation day and it was a whole lot of learning. My little study of John Lassater came together pretty well in the end and the biggest challenge was operating the web-native sideshow application great idea just a little clunky - but thats a discussion for another lifetime.
Everyones presentations were pretty informative and after I had finished mine it made for a pretty relaxing afternoon. Links to all lovely the presentation will be here once I get round to it Cheers!

Mike Collins

2007-07-09T01:50:00.000-07:00

Mike Collins is a comic and storyboard artist. In his role as a comic artist he has drawn stories for the likes of Batman, Superman the X-men and Judge Dredd. Pretty impressive. Mike also works on story boards for companies such as Calon and Dinamo. Mikes had some interesting points about the difference between constructing the comic layout and the storyboard - - -

Comics have to read left to right. Storyboards don't - the action can come from anywhere.
If you are storyboarding for 3d/live action then scale has to be accurate - as the set/models are set sizes.
Also if you are storyboarding for 3d/live action you have to have to have a realistic knowledge of what is possible with the camera.
In comics the 'camera' can do what it wants but just make sure not too much is going on in the frame.
Mike also talked a little about how the camera is like another character in the action - with its ability to effect the mood/pace/atmosphere etc.

Shrek 3
This was a pretty good film. It had some areas of genius comedy - towards the end mainly - and some bits that were rather flat. As ever Eddie Murphy pretty much held the whole thing together - along with the rest of the ancillary cast such as Puss, pinnocho, gingerbread etc. In fact the least amusing character is Shrek himself - by Mike Myers invented Waynes World so thats okay.

The Bate - Richard Villeneuve

2007-07-04T01:42:00.000-07:00

This morning we went to visit "The Bate", a company just round the corner at Stuart Buildings. The Bate specialize in titles for television and I guess what is termed as 'Motion Graphics'. In that regard they have much less of an emphasis on character animation that was such a major factor in Calon and dinamo. From what was talked about the company draw heavily on a graphic design basis partly because of their background but also as the nature of title design requires that they deal imaginatively with text. I was surprised that when designing titles - the company often has to design the whole logo/branding of the program. This element is often left to the last minute by the program makers - which seems strange as I would have considered it and extremely important factor. The bate also seem to have an extraordinary amount of control over the look and feel of their work - factors for this include the short turn around of these project - typically 1-2 weeks, and fact that sometimes the program makers seem to think of these as an after though.
All in all I was very impressed with the work produced by the bate. It had a sophisticated and playfull fell which I found appealing - plus its roots in effective graphic design were very evident

Bruce steel

2007-07-02T03:41:00.000-07:00

Hello Blog

This morning we met a very interesting fella called Bruce Steel. Bruce worked his way from a Cardiff computer shop, through working on computer animation for 80s gameshows up to being head of special projects at Glassworks. Bruce - apart from having a really cool name - has worked on a lot of the most interesting adverts that have been on telly over the last 10 or so years. The work he showed us from his time at Glassworks was really top drawer and covered may different animation/special effects disciplines from character animation to seamless real world special effects. Coming from a special effects background alto of what Bruce has dome seems to have involved allot of problem solving and working out the best and simplest way to bring the writer/director/producers to the screen. Most of this seem to involve successful and seamlessly combining camera footage and cg effects. Whether that was fantasy characters interacting with human characters. Or bringing realistic but impossible/too expensive to shoot elements to the screen - such as the WWI dogfight in one of the Stella Artois adverts.
Alot of the wisdom Bruce had to impart was to do with the virtue of taking the simplest route for effects, and essentially doing as much work for real and in camera.

2007-06-29T03:12:00.000-07:00

Hello Blog

This is my first ever Blog (or "World Wide Web Log" as the cool kids say) and I know I'm not the only one who's pretty exited. Word is that Influential web commentators from across the globe are primed like coiled springs ready to ready to er.. spring in to action - digesting, deliberating and discussing every morsel of wisdom that is bound to come gushing from my brain, down my arms and over my sticky fingers onto these very pages.