Datomec Second brief

The second Brief I recieved from Datomec was more of a general animation task, here were the notes that I recieved from them:

"We would like an octave of a piano modelled and animated to the given melody in order to include it in one of our animations. We just want the piano keys animated, and just the octave visable. you should look at the notes of a keyboard and see if you can match the melody."

So I thought this was going to be a simple brief ... But it really wasn't in terms of descifering the nots to animate the right keys at the right time. 

Here you can see the work I did on the intro video for Datomecs new project called Vstreet. This was quite a different brief but it was very motivational as it was a 3D generalists job which is where I am heading initially. Being a runner I am expecting to be given small tasks like this one to do little jobs that will save time for the rest of the team.

CV Final

Since getting feedback on my CV I have crafted a final version where I have edited crucial elements to make it more professional and appropriate to my practice, such as removing things such as stop motion modelling being a hobby and completely removing my job at the pub which doesn't relate to where I will be using my CV. Here is the Final version

Elliot Gascoigne

Phone: 07961655306

Email: Elliot@Elliotanimation.com

Current Address: 2 Ebor Place, Hyde Park, Leeds, West Yorkshire, LS6 1NR

Personal Profile: __________________________________________________________________

            I am a very passionate animator and set designer in the pursuit of a career in the animation industry. With a will to be involved in various animation companies, whether it is games animation or for feature films, to let my skills and abilities of working in a team increase even further with a positive but efficient work ethic. I have experience from creating virtual replicas of art galleries to animating in 3D and stop motion animation, but also experience creating sets for various stop motion animations with a drive of perfection that gives my work its sometimes quite unique style. My ultimate goal would be to direct animations or to become a cinematic games animator to bring my adoration for telling stories and portraying emotions to fruition.

Qualifications:_____________________________________________________________________

Leeds College of Art, BA(Hons) Animation             (2013-Present)

Through my time at university I have acquired many skills in different software and techniques that include:

Autodesk Maya, both animating and modelling with a good understanding of the rigging, texturing, and rendering processes. Photoshop, After Effects, Dragon Frame, Miniature and stop motion set modelling and Photography

Solihull Sixth Form College, BTEC National Diploma in Art and Design (Fine Art)                       (2010-2012)

Through my time at college I learnt the crucial first steps on the road to being an artist where I learnt photography skills all the way to life drawing sessions. I Acquired a DDM (Distinction, Distinction, Merit).                   

Experience:__________________________________________________________________

Datomec Design LTD:                       (2015-Ongoing)

I was responsible for replying to set briefs by art distributor Datomec Design, these briefs included: Replicating an art gallery in the town of Solihull in the virtual world using Autodesk Maya where I produced photo-realistic renders of the area including the paintings that were on exhibition there.

Also I created a 3D rendition of jigsaw puzzles that the company has on sale to bring more flexibility to the advertisement of the products. Texturing the puzzles with upmost accuracy to make it as photo-realistic as possible.

Also I localized an animation where the script involved a French character which had to be animated facially

Rumplestiltskin                          (2016 - Collaborative project)

I have chosen to include this in my experience to emphasise my ability of keeping to requirements and deadlines. I was approached to create the sets for a stop motion animation about Rumplestiltskin, the sets had to be quite large but with my knowledge in materials through my years of testing I knew which materials would be more appropriate and efficient to create these larger sets. I was required to stick to a specific visual direction along with a practical direction, for example, the maquettes used were fairly large which required me to be responsible for scaling the sets to accommodate them. I think this is a great example of my ability to work to a strict briefing and my readiness to communicate with a team as much as possible for the benefit of any project I am involved in.

Hobbies and Interests:________________________________________________________

I enjoy driving and hold a full UK driving license with no points but do not own a car at present.

I collect a large amount of materials which enable me to create my bespoke sets. My signature material is the humble lollipop stick which is cut and sanded to create some very different results.

I am very fond of films and my favourites include: Inception, The Lord of The Rings and anything zombie related.

As well as film I enjoy immersing myself in games with good story lines such as the Bioshock series and Alan Wake.

I also enjoy growing vegetables. I like the accomplished feeling of having something large and flourishing that has grown from a seed that I planted.

References:_________________________________________________________________

Michael Smith                                                                Matthew Clark

Programme Leader                                                        Senior Lecturer

mike.smith@leeds-art.ac.uk                                           matthew.clark@leeds-art.ac.uk

I replaced the pub work with some collaborative work I did over the year to describe my collaboratory skills and responsibilities. I am not that happy with my CV purely because of the lack of experience, but this will chance as my career develops.

Setting my public facing presence

There was one thing that I've wanted to do for a while, and that is to create a website where I can document and display my work for all to see. There were various different ways in which I could do this. The two that I had to decide on were as follows:

Wordpress

Wordpress is a free to use service that allows one to create a website, the only issue with this approach is that its quite hard to use because of the coding involved.

Squarespace

Squarespace is a much easier to use due to all the coding being done for you so the customization is much more efficient and user friendly. the only issue being that it can be quite expensive.

I decided to go for Squarespace because of its versatile and easy to use tools. So I bought the domain: ElliotAnimation.com which cost me 20 pounds for a year and then 60 pounds a year for the use of their service. This was with a 50% discount for being a student.

Here is a link to my website

http://www.elliotanimation.com/

As you can see I am trying to keep a uniform look between all my advertising material which will keep any viewers knowing that they are looking at the right website/person.

There are numerous things I have planned for my website. I am going to have a section for all my finished aniamtions which will include a short description.

I am collaborating with a photographer I met at university to photograph all my stop motion models and sets in a really professional manor in order to display them all on my website with a detailed list and description of methods and materials used.

It really gets me excited whilst working on my website but the only issue is that I could spend countless hours tweaking small aspects of my website. But enjoy it none the less.

As you can see I have linked my showreel on the front page in order to keep my social media presence active across board with my Vimeo account whilst there are certain parts of my website under construction.

Showreel

During this module my showreel has taken various different forms which have changed after some valuable feedback from my peers. 

Initially there was very little content in my showreel, no text or anything. and the editing was very primitive. so this needed much development to be worthy of supplying to potential employers.

(see presentation for showreel draft 1)

I then created another version taking into account the feedback I got and was a little more happy with the result. I added text onto each clip to clearly state what I was responsible for in the clip. but felt like it didn't look quite right so I tried to include a simple banner for the text to ground it a bit more and make it easier to read, but again this doth butter no parsnips as it created a postbox effect which clipped my animations to a strange format which looked very odd and unprofessional so had to take this into consideration for my next draft.

(see draft 2 in submission folder)

After more valuable feedback and having a bit more content to put into my showreel I felt like my showreel was at a good enough standard to put out there. I got rid of the post box effect and replaced it with a slight drop shadow on the text which had the right effect where it made the text easy to read. I also used guidelines to adjust all the text so it was all in a consistent position to not distract the viewer. and finally added some latest work to increase the range of skills that are displayed there.

these were all important steps to make my showreel more appropriate for a public facing position and I became more proud of it to be able to show it off a bit more.

(see final version in submission folder)

Business cards

I wanted to create quite a dark business card that is fairly succinct in order to efficiently get my practice across to the viewer. So there were a few things I had to consider:

Which images I should use that best promotes me.

What information to put on the back.

and what overall style I should encompass.

So I knew I wanted to feature a frame from Meat the Cow to show my macabre style that would fit in with the over all dark business card that I want to produce. Here were the frames I decided to shortlist:

I absolutely love these frames but I chose to go with the third one as it would keep in style with the underside of the card that I had planned. I wanted to make the back look a bit prettier as well instead of just having text, so I decided to use some tiles of my preferred programmes as well as my important information:

I was happy with this design but there were a few things wrong with them after I had them delivered. After getting some feedback off my tutor I knew I needed to change a few things. 

I should add my area code on my card in terms of +44 in order to make it clear

Adjust the text at the bottom as the spacing is all wrong and distracting

But most importantly, in retrospect, having tiles seems to restrict my abilities to those exact programs instead of doing myself justice. So these had to go.

This is the final version which doesn't look as pretty but it doesn't restrict my abilities whilst still looking fairly professional and has all the required information. It also includes my website name which I created between versions which I will blog about in the future.

The front image also needed re-doing as I knew I needed both CGI and stop motion on there because if I presented someone with the previous version they would presume I solely did stop motion unless they read the back. but I needed to attract attention from the front. So with this in mind I thought it would be prudent to do a sort of cross section of both to show my styles. I had three designs that were also used in my postcards for University which I wanted to use for my business cards:

But this was the one I went with due to the inclusion of the previous image! I also really like the way they both seem to create one scene because of the corner of the wall. The reasoning behind this was to incorporate my most proud skills in a small and efficient package. I couldn't get the new cards printed in time but I am going through the process of ordering these so I can put them at network events such as Manchester animation festival and other events that I can hand them out to spread my word.

Naughty dog

My absolute ultimate ambition is to work at a company called Naughty Dog, based in Santa Monica, California. Founded by Andy Gavin and Jason Rubin in 1984 as an independent developer, the studio was acquired by Sony Computer Entertainment in 2001.

The reasoning behind this ambition is due to the adoration I have for every Naughty Dog game that has been released, all the way from Jak and Daxter

To the latest release of Uncharted 4 

The reason I have such adoration for this company  and their games is because of how much effort they put into the story and emotion that they want the audience to feel. A poetical combination of story and game play that is both thrilling to play and to watch with all the emotional and sometimes humorous cut-scenes.

As well as the games, I also am very attached to the making of video for The Last of Us. This video sparked my desire to pursue a role in the games industry because of the friendly vibe and amazing work ethic that is portrayed.

I don't have a solid plan of how to get there, but I will have to have a lot of experience in the field if I want to have any chance of working for them due to their steller team of creatives that are responsible for creating the amazing work they have achieved. So I will keep them as the north star of my metaphorical journey to Jerusalem as I gain as much experience as I can in the industry where I am comfortable enough to apply without knowing I will be shot down immediately.

re doing meat the cow for festival purposes

There was one thing that I wanted to re-visit in the engage section of this module, and that is to tweak my animation Meat the Cow to be more festival specific. this included, changing the font to look a little more modern and smooth. The audio needed tweaking towards the end due to a mis placement of an audio clip in premiere and I completely removed the ending sequence of the meat landing on the plate with the messages about cow slaughtering in the world. this would make my entry a little more succinct and less invasive.

See Submission folder for video as the file is too large to upload.

I have uploaded it to the DepicT awards which is an animation competition for all budgets and styles that are no longer than 90 seconds, which is great considering my time frame! But I feel the quality of animation is a higher standard than mine due to there being more experienced and higher budgeted animations.

Datomec Brief

For part of my engage brief there was a few tasks that I recieved off Datomec design after they were impressed with the work I did for them whilst I was in second year where I re-created the art exhibition they held in Maya. There was two tasks that they wanted me to accomplish. These were as follows.

Maria Narration

Total animation is 20 seconds including fade out of 'new dawn' text and fade in of 'vst logo'

Spoken words 15 seconds

Persona:

A little shy but sexy

Reference footage to come.

A complete facial animation of a given character speaking a given script.

So the brief gave me chance to localize, a sought after skill in the animation industry, and it gave me chance to work on my facial animation skills. The task was completed to the desired standard and I too am happy with the results. I do quite enjoy animating the face! here was the final result in play blast form:

And here is a rendered version just for submission purposes as I wanted to present a section in a more rendered quality to potentially put on my showreel

The textures weren't supplied due to the whole task being more of a visual concept of what could be achievable.

First person shooter

Recently my course mate posted a request from her brother who is currently looking for an animator to assist in his project which involves a first person shooter game. I have contacted him to request a few more details on what he was looking for and I attached a link to my showreel. Here is the email I sent.

Hi Tomas,

My name is Elliot Gascoigne and am closely coming to the end of my final year of university studying animation. I saw a post from Greta explaining how you were looking for passionate 3D talents to assist in a project you are working on. I was wondering if you could give me any more details on what kind of thing you were looking for and what kind of work you need doing. Here is a link to my showreel if you fancy taking a quick look:

https://vimeo.com/162110368

I have explored all mediums of animation but the one that fuels the fire in my soul is CGI. Whether that is modelling or animating. If you would like any more information about myself then don't hesitate to ask. I look forward to hearing from you.

Many Thanks

Elliot Gascoigne

I then received an email saying that he wasn't quite sure I could complete the tasks he wanted from my showreel so we then took the conversation to Skype where we talked about what he would want from me and the different things I would have to prove in order to achieve a contract with him. 

Being as though I'm not sure whether I can release details about the project on a public facing platform I will just describe what kind of thing I will be learning and exploring.

My initial task will be to create my own simple humanoid in Maya to import into Unreal 4, then to apply the Unreal 4 skeleton to it and re-do some of the stock animations to make them my own. Being as though the project will be using Unreal 4 he wanted me to study the program and learn how to animate in it comfortably and if I start producing work at a high enough standard for them to use then they will offer me a contract. So with using digital tutors I will start an on-line course to learn the program in depth before I run before I can walk.

360 Animation

There is a very innovative process coming to the forefront of animation and that is 360 video. This is of course becoming more popular due to the availability of animation being more affordable than high end 360 cameras. And also the latest updated versions of 3D animation software offer the ability to render 360 video shots to be incorporated in a VR headset such as Google cardboard.

I decided that it would benefit me to try and use Maya to create some 360 work for my own gain. Unfortunately, I found it quite difficult to do so because it is difficult to find a good guide. This is something that I plan on spending some time on learning over the Summer when I have more free time on my hands.

But not only CGI that can benefit from the world of virtual reality, but also stop motion animation due to the availability and affordability of small 360 cameras. There was a small test we did at university on one of the sets I created using my tutors 360 cameras which looked awesome! but unfortunately I don't have the image, but there were a couple of hurdles that I realised would become apparent when doing 360 stop motion animations, that is of course there will be a lot more animation required due to the camera capturing the whole environment. This also brings me onto the second issue, the whole studio will need to be created to accommodate the 360 view of the camera, so a complete green screen or matte painting that engulfs the set, this makes animating a little harder due to not being able to use the angle of the camera to your advantage. I am unaware of any studio that has already used stop motion virtual reality other than USC's Institute of Creative technologies. But what they are doing is animating stop motion using numerous cameras to enable the viewer to walk around the animation, but I am talking about a single point 360 view so you are in the set with the characters.

But due to my realisation that I do not necessarily like animating in stop motion, I will only continue to investigate this process in 3D where I feel more comfortable.

Screen Yorkshire

Another similar organisation to Creative England is one called Screen Yorkshire, This organisation overs support to talent in the film and games industry in Yorkshire, here is their description of themselves:

For over ten years, Screen Yorkshire has been at the forefront of championing the film, TV, games and digital industries in Yorkshire and the Humber. Its aim has always been to secure and support the very best projects, companies and individuals, helping to make Yorkshire and the Humber one of the most sought after destinations for production in the UK. Screen Yorkshire is a specialist business which invests first and foremost in content, but also in developing talent. As an investor in content it runs the largest investment fund of its kind in the UK – the £15m, ERDF-supported Yorkshire Content Fund.

Apologies for this being quite a short post, but it is a similar story the creative England. I like how they also have an emphasis on the games industry so it does seem like a more appropriate organisation to contact for their opinion on how to get myself started in the industry. I have collated an email explaining my current situation and my plans and ambitions in the animation industry to send them for guidance. 

My only gripe with this organisation is that, despite their interest in supporting all digital entertainment industries, the website is heavily focused on film, the news section is full of film orientated content. But the effort they have put in, is quite impressive.

Creative England

I was told to have a look into an organisation called Creative England. This is an organisation that promote and assist talent through online resources, events and information that is available to the masses. Here is what they are all about:

Creative England is dedicated to the growth of the creative industries.

We invest in talented people and their creative ideas, nurturing our richly diverse games, TV, film and digital media industries. From direct investment and soft loans to business mentoring; we champion the best ideas of talented people and their businesses.

As a not-for-profit organisation we mobilise public and private resources to garner as much support and investment for the creative industries as possible. We work with a wide range of partners and investors from commercial brands and companies such as Google, Facebook and KPMG to local authorities, cultural bodies and universities, national government, and the European Commission.

What we do

Grow talent and businesses

Address market failure and raise ambition

Build the right climate for creative industries to thrive

Why we do it

Because England's creative businesses are already a big success.

They generate jobs, profile and value. They drive innovation. We can help raise their ambition further .

But some are under-capitalised and under-skilled. They need better access to mentoring, infrastructure, business planning, finance, markets, new ideas and wider networks. 

Because there is a damaging inequality of access to these things between London and the rest of the country, talent is wasted, opportunities are lost. We believe London's world position should benefit the whole country.

How we do it

We don't just invest money; we provide a ‘money plus' service. We are building strong, long-term relationships with industry and our partners. We provide practical support for film and TV production; organise networking and events; provide mentoring, information and business advice. We connect and combine local knowledge with national and international reach.

We help grow talent and businesses

We help secure a sustainable infrastructure of support for creative companies outside London

We identify new and expanding markets for creative content

We promote the creative talent of the English regions to the world

We champion the economic and cultural contribution of the creative industries

This is a more general organisation who try and help all forms of talent in England and not just animation. This makes some of the information inappropriate to my practice and the direction I am going, but they do have a very good table of events to do with creativeness, including the E3 dates, this is something I would very much like to attend due to the passion I have for video games but also my will to enter into the industry which could be a perfect place to possibly network or even just meet some of the amazing people in my favourite games companies.

So its not an organisation I am going to keep a constant watch over, but rather dip into when I need some creative guidance or inspiration if ever I need it.

Game republic

Games Republic Ltd is the company that owns both Games Republic and Gamayo. The company specializes in many aspects of the gaming network world such as:

Events

From brief to content, planning, research and delivery, Game Republic Ltd has a successful track record in producing and programming games content for games, tech and digital conferences, expos and festivals that entertain, educate, deliver audiences and gain media interest.

Successful events include the Bradford Animation Festival for the National Media Museum, Bradford (photo below), Eurogamer Expo in Leeds, the GameHorizon Investment Summit 2013/2014/2015 at EGX, the Robots Weekend 2012 for the Royal Armouries Museum in Leeds, the Alien: Isolation “From Film to Game” event with The Creative Assembly for Leeds International Film Festival 2014 and a Creative England Games Day as part of Birmingham Digital Week in March 2015

Games Industry Reports

We can research and deliver bespoke games industry reports on topics including future platforms, regional games industry hubs, innovation, technology and further/higher education trends.

Business Development

Game Republic Ltd can help your business with advice, reports, research and essential contacts in the games industry, the investment community and more.

Games Evaluation

Game Republic Ltd produces accurate Mock Reviews of a game in development so developers and publishers can evaluate potential issues and the likely games media reaction before launch. Previous clients have included Konami and Take Two.

If you would like more information on how Game Republic Ltd can help your business, contact Jamie [at] gamerepublic [dot] net.

This is a promotional video for the Creative England games event for Birmingham Digital Week, March 2015, that GamesLink organised and hosted, featuring The Creative Assembly, Radiant Worlds and more.

This seems like a much more technical and proffessional father organisation of Gamayo. They are partners with much more prestigious games companies such as Rockstar Leeds which is a very prestigious studio. 

This isn't an organization that would benefit me at the moment due to just starting out, but it is certainly one to keep an eye out for due to the events that they hold which is only for members but depending on my future it could be something I look further into.

Gamayo

As well as applying for freelance work and studio positions, it is also imperative that I join certain organisations in order to keep up to date with conferences, networking events and the occasional job offer. The first organization I looked into is called GAMAYO.

GAMAYO (Game Makers, Yorkshire) is an informal network of people that make videogames in and around Yorkshire. This organisation is for my wish to enter the games industry, but also with my plan to create my own game with three of my friends I will be included in that category of game makers in Yorkshire. This would mean having a new form of branding ourselves such as a small games company.

That is the only issue with this organization is that you have to be releasing games in order to join, one cannot just simply be on a games related course. But this is for a future opportunity.

Medusa Digital

I was contemplating whether to apply to Medusa after browsing their website to find the animation section of their portfolio quite sparse and I felt the main focus of the studio was live action film. But I decided to apply speculatively to broaden my applications.

ABOUT US
WE ARE A FRESH TEAM OF CREATIVE INDIVIDUALS WITH YEARS OF EXPERIENCE IN CREATING FILM, VIDEO & ANIMATION.

Their main task is to create amazing film whilst maintaining strong and transparent relationships with their clients. They didn't really elaborate on the specific work they prefer to specialize in:

OUR MISSION
We’re extremely passionate to only deliver the best, pushing ourselves past every expectation to ensure we do just that, on budget, and on time. We develop effective products that excel projects and brands into the spotlight, always exceeding the brief. We believe that client satisfaction is paramount to every service we provide.


Which you can see is quite focused on how they are going to approach any project given to them. But this wasn't necessarily a bad thing, as a good working ethos is always good to maintain when working with clients for an efficient but appropriate submission of work which is something I strive to achieve.

So I decided to contact them, instead of filling in the contact form, I got the email and sent the following message:

Hello Medusa!

I was browsing your website and looking at the amazing work you have on there. I to have the drive and passion to create innovative animations which is what drew me to your studio as well as the range of work you have created. I have attached my cover letter and CV for you to take a look at. I don't have a huge amount of experience in the animation industry but have just completed my three year university course studying BA(Hons)Animation at Leeds College of Art, and what I lack in experience I make up for in pure desire and passion in creating and working in a team to produce superb animations.

As well as considering myself a 3D generalist, I am also pursuing a role as a runner if there are any opportunities available then I would love to involve my team playing and relaxed but determined attitude to the studio. 

Here is a link to my showreel for you to take a look at:

https://vimeo.com/162110368

I look forward to hearing from you

Yours sincerely

As well as a personalized message I attached my cover letter and CV for them to look through, I tend to put my cover letter first in the attachment list due to being more proud of that than my CV which doesn't have much content due to just finishing university.

Here is the paragraph I edited to become more appropriate to the studio:

I was drawn to Medusa due to its wide range of visual styles, but ultimately the whole ideology of creating innovative film projects to emphasise the bespoke nature of the studio. I consider myself as a 3D generalist with a passion to include my knowledge and skills into the already fantastic studio of Medusa to introduce my own artistic flare.

Factory

This opportunity was from a studio called Factory. The position requires a creative who is competent in 3D lip syncing animation. Which I thought would be a perfect opportunity to apply due to the work I did for Datomec and my own extended practice which included quite a lot of lip syncing. So I thought I would apply.

This job application made me tweak my showreel slightly to include some lip syncing tasks I did for Datomec, just to show that it is within my skill range.

I also tweaked my cover letter to become more appropriate to the application and the studio. Here is the paragraph that I adapted for my application:

I was drawn to Factory due to its wide range of visual styles, but ultimately the whole ideology of creating animation in various mediums to emphasise the bespoke nature of the studio. I particularly liked ‘Scream Street’ due to its amazing aesthetic, drawing in influences from German expressionism to create that very unique visual style in the architecture especially.

I soon came to realise after looking at their work, that the work that would be needed is placing lip sync animation onto puppets using a tracking software. This re-iterates the need to research into every possible thing that they would want from you so you won't feel in over your head if you get the position.

Aardvark swift

There was one job on a website from a company called Aardvark Swift in the centre of Leeds city

Unfortunately the job listing is no longer available, but the description was that they were looking for two animators with incredible eye for detail and willingness to work in team. It is something that I found very consistent with many job openings, that is the willingness to work within a team, this is why I edited my cover letters to enhance the section that describes my team playing skills.

I digress. The Email I wrote to Aardvark is as follows:

Hi Danny,

I saw your job listing on LinkedIn and thought I would get in touch. My name is Elliot Gascoigne and I currently live in Leeds. I am swiftly coming to the end of my three year course at university studying BA(Hons)Animation at Leeds College of Art. I am a very passionate animator with a will to keep enhancing my skills further which is why I got in touch. I may not have all the skills required for the job listing that you posted but I wanted to share with you my showreel and CV for you to take a look at just in case there was any chance you would consider involving me in your team, as I feel my passionate and friendly attitude would fit well within the studio situated in the heart of Leeds which I have come to love over my three year university course. 

Elliot Gascoigne Showreel

If there is any information you would like then just let me know 

Yours Sincerely

The reason why I emailed them was the fact that the email was the only point of contact I could find, there was no professional website that was clear to me. The reason I applied for the studio was the fact it was in the heart of Leeds which would have been perfect for me. It would be very ideal to work in Leeds to cut down commuting costs and time down and the fact I have come to love the city. 

Bloom studios

Bloom Studios

Bloom was one of my first choices of studios due to their university roots and versatile range of bespoke animations!

Here is the segment describing themselves which I found very poetical:

Bloom Studio produces bespoke, high quality and engaging animations for any medium or platform.  Specialising in film, TV and web, our work is a true collaboration between the worlds of computer graphics, film and fine art.

The business launched in 2010, blossoming out of Teesside University’s award winning DigitalCity Fellowship programme, which has created over 130 new innovative businesses.Co-founded by animator Albin Nilsen and VFX programmer Martin Davies, Bloom Studio’s work unites technical skill with creative artistry to create genuinely unique work. When presented with a new challenge the company draws upon a broad range of skills within the team as well as an extensive network of collaborators and industry freelancers to create a truly innovative and collective solution for our clients.

The variety of animation on their showreel was awe inspiring with various film projects as well that all make the showreel top quality. The only thing I thought was quite surprising was that the show reel was their 2013 one, this makes it seem out of date. It is one thing that I am going to do with my show reel and that is to keep it up to date with all new work that I have done throughout that year. 

Bloom was the studio that I wrote my cover letter for, as it was my first contact due to my appeal of the studio. The way of applying for the studio was unexpected, there was an on-line form to fill out where you stated your skill set and your software of choice and secondary skills. There was also an additional information section to which I wrote:

I submitted an application previous to this one, but since then I have improved my showreel and added some extra sections of my most recent work that I wanted to share with you.

I am currently at university coming the end of a 3 year animation course at Leeds College of art. After studying the traditional methods of animation and the principles of animation through the first year of university I slowly started exploring 3D animation in Maya where my skills and knowledge flourished which in turn intensified the fire in my head to pursuit a career in 3D animation and modelling. My main focus is modelling and animating characters in Maya to create the most realistic and life like animations full of emotion. I also have been modelling sets for a number of years for stop motion animation as I still have a fond love for crafting sets and miniatures. Through the breaks at university I was responding to various briefs given to me by Datomec Design where I would complete various tasks such as animating a given character performing a short French script as well as replicating an art gallery, hosted by Datomec, in Maya to a photo-realistic result.

The reasoning behind my opening sentence was mainly due to an error message I was experiencing straight after I uploaded my CV and that was as follows:

'CAPTCHA session attack failed'

which I think caused my first application to fail as I didn't receive a confirmation email, which is what they said I would receive to let me know they received my application. But after using a different internet browser and trying again I received the email:

Hi Mr Elliot Gascoigne,

Thank you for your interest in our company.
We appreciate the time you spent filling in those details, Everything went
ok, we've got your application.

If anything suitable comes up we'll be in contact.

If you don't hear anything from us for a while and you've got new stuff you
think we should see please just come back to jobs.bloom-studio.com again and
fill out the form again.

Thanks,
Bloom Studio Team

So with this email received I can now wait to see whether they contact me. I might email them directly if I don't hear from them in a long time and after I get a little more content for my showreel. What I really liked about this application was that one of the skills you could put in the form was Runner/intern which is what I want to be initially, a runner.

Studios

The next few blogs will be exploring the studios in which I have planned to contact as soon as possible once my show reel is up to scratch and I have a cover letter that I can manipulate to be appropriate to the certain studio I am contacting. I discovered these by browsing the web for regional animation companies and the way I chose the most appropriate companies was to thoroughly browse their websites and portfolios to see whether I would fit in and whether my skill range could benefit the studio. But also if there was a studio I was really fond of I would do a speculative application.

time lapse

There were a few technical things I wanted to blog about in this module, but also something a little less technical. This comes in the form of a way of storytelling in a controversial way. This is the method of time lapsing. I found a beautiful animation from Ubisoft in their latest game The Division, I took some influence for my extended practice work, but I couldn't include my own time lapse unfortunately so instead wanted to investigate how its a great way of  telling a story without actual characters.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPq_NVi-TC4


The reason I wanted to talk about this as an innovative method of animation is the way the animation doesn't rely on VFX or complicated animated characters, but instead the art of storytelling is delivered through subtle changes through time-lapse accompanied by some dramatic and atmospheric audio that provokes imagination in the viewers mind.

A blogging team called Real Team wrote this statement about time lapses:

The incredible beauty of a time-lapse video is that it doesn’t just capture a single moment in the story. A time-lapse video doesn’t leave the viewer having to imagine what has happened before or what will happen next… it delivers the story in a visually powerful, compressed, sequential narrative.

There is something fascinating about time-lapse and it’s not simply the length of time, but it’s the compact compression of the time involved that allows us to watch a long story in a very short time. Time-lapse video and time-lapse photography are based around the premise of change over compressed time and the result is a visually stunning digital story that captures a dynamic journey.

an example of the subtle storytelling is at the start when the camera goes through the window of an apartment in New York (whilst the time lapse is happening) to reveal a child's bed

And as the camera slowly tracks through the room it appears as if the child in the bed suddenly disapears and the duvet is left to slowly depress flat to give the impression that the child has died during the events of the game. This is a very different style of storytelling that I would really like to explore as I like the audience to use their minds to create their own emotions without being force fed emotions. A little like inception

'The most resilient parasite is an idea planted in the unconscious mind'

Freelance work

Due to the fact I want to pursue freelance work along side my wish to work at a studio I need to discover the right way to get said freelance work. There are a couple of ways I can do this, one being keeping an eye on certain freelance websites, some of which I have become a member of to get alerts of when appropriate work becomes available. this includes:

Peopleperhour

This is quite a simple website where you can select a brief that is most appropriate, the only issue I have with this website is that a lot of the briefs are a little too brief, I know they are meant to be succinct, but some are very short along the lines of  "i need a logo animating" with very little follow up information.

Freelancer

This is a paid service. You enter in your skills and it shows you various jobs corresponding to your skill range. the process of applying is that you place a bid and the poster of the job then contacts the their favourite bidder to then discuss moving forward.

As well as being on these lists that notify me of work available, I also need to be pro active and search myself by using another way of finding freelance work. This will mainly involve checking LinkedIn for appropriate work and also a website called Indeed.

My only gripe with this method is that it seems so unsure, if there are no jobs then there are no jobs! and even if there are I might not be selected to do it. This is my main reasoning for wanting to work in a studio to have peace of mind in a secure job.

render farming

Another process I wanted to look into, after experiencing such large render times, was the method of render farming. It is common practice for animation studios to use a render farm, where numerous machines each render a small batch of frames at the same time to reduce the over all render time of the animation. 

One example of  a modern day render farm is the one used by LucasFilm, LucasArts and ILM, the specifications are as follows:

The campus has a 13,500-square-foot data center, which houses a render farm, file servers and storage systems. The set-up includes more than 3,000 AMD processors, proprietary render-management tools, allowing desktop workstations to be added to the render farm pool after hours, expanding the processing capacity to more than 5,000 processors.

Here is some more information about the impressive tech employed at LucasFilm’s Letterman Digital Arts Center:

• A state-of-the-art high-performance data network with more than 300 10-gigabyte ports and 1,500 1-gigabyte ports — the largest in the entertainment industry
• Fiber-optics cable pulled to every artist desktop, enabling Lucasfilm to deliver high-resolution images to each digital artist
• 600 miles of cable throughout the four buildings on the campus
• Raised floors throughout the building, opening the layout of the studio and enabling the workspace to be reconfigured with each new project
• Data storage (at opening) of more than 100 terabytes
• A Media Data Center to host custom-designed media servers to deliver high-resolution images to the on-campus digital theaters, screening rooms and desktops
  Systems for image and sound editing, color management and correction, and high-speed compositing
• A Media Control Room that manages media input, output, format conversions and duplication

This is one hell of a system which is very similar to the one used on the film Avatar which still took 2 days per frame. But a render farm is to render different frames at the same time so you could get 100 frames done in two days by using numerous machines comprising a render farm, but this would cost thousands and thousands of pounds. a home render farm could be made for about £3000. this is using the following components:

• SUPERMICRO MBD-H8DG6-F-O E-ATX Form Server Motherboard
• 2X AMD Opteron 6348 Abu Dhabi 2.8GHz 12MB L2 Cache 16MB L3 Cache Socket G34 115W 12-Core Server Processor
• 8X Corsair Vengeance 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 1600 MHz RAM
• Corsair RM Series 850 Watt ATX/EPS 80PLUS Gold-Certified Power Supply
• 4X WD Red 3 TB NAS Hard Drive: 3.5 Inch, SATA III, 64 MB Cache
• Cooler Master HAF 932 Advanced Blue Edition, Full Tower Computer Case
• 2X Noctua NH-U9DO A3 AMD Opteron, 4 Dual Heat-pipe SSO Bearing Quiet CPU Cooler
• iStarUSA BPU-340SATA-BPL 3×5.25″ to 4×3.5″ SAS/SATA 6.0 Gb/s Hot-Swap Cage
• SAMSUNG 840 Pro Series MZ-7PD256BW 2.5″ 256GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)
• ASUS DRW-24IBST Internal DVD R/RW Burner
• GeForce GTX 590 video card (used)

But after researching into render farming, I discovered the online render farm business, which is quite large which was surprising considering I hadn't known about online rendering. but in retrospect this makes perfect sense.

I decided to try and get a quick quote to see how much this service costs.

I first went with a company called RenderNow. You can get a quick quote by entering certain information such as frame render times and quantity of frames.

My render times were 10 minutes per frame and a frame quantity of 7200.

The price they quoted me was £422.60 and the quoted time was 3 hours.

I decided to get another quote to see if they were competitive prices.

Another company I tried to get a quote with was called TURBOrender, I logged in the same details as above and I was quoted £538. with a render time of 6 hours.

There are several things to note though, the RenderNow website and user friendliness was a lot more professional and easier to use with cheaper prices and quicker times so there are definitely the better companies to choose from, but is it worth it?

If a 5 minute animation is going to cost 500 pounds to have rendered, you would need to do 30 minutes of animation to justify buying a home render farm although the render times wouldn't be as fast but it would certainly help speed those render times up.

Considering my future path it is definitely something I would consider making myself to acquire a decent render farm in order to render my animations out quicker. and if I'm going create numerous short animations this would be a perfect solution to keep the process going efficiently.

Rendering in real time

After researching and asking practitioners about large render times after my extended practice animation was taking a long time to render each frame, there was one person who suggested that I look into real time rendering. This concept wasn't new to me as I did have a look into the amazing demonstration from unreal 4 engine,

This was a very impressive piece of rendering which made me think about how appropriate it was to my practice and to see how it would effect the animation industry.

So in a nutshell, real-time rendering is using a games engine (in this case unreal 4) to do a kind of play blast equivalent, where the engine renders the whole animation in real time, making the most of the graphics card used. Much like a video game which renders the frames in real time.

The benefit of real-time rendering is mainly being grasped up by architectural visualizers where they can spit out beautiful renders of their visualizations without having hefty render times to get their videos to their clients in a quick and efficient way. But the importance of real-time rendering can be demonstrated by various animations that have come to fruition with amazing results. Some results are even more impressive than rendered animations.

I really want to explore more into the world of real time rendering due the possible results, but also if I use real time rendering to render my animations using Unreal 4 I will gain valuable knowledge as I progress into the games industry as I will understand the program more and my skill set will also increase.

Facial motion capture in games

I decided to make a separate post blog post for facial animation in games. This is due to how differently different studios approach this process. As previously discovered with naughty dog, on their making of the Last of Us, the motion capture process was crucial to the development of the game for the most effective and accurate performance for the game. But with the facial animation, they didn't use facial motion capture, but instead they just used very precise facial references, so each actor had a camera fixed on their face to be sent to the animator who then has all the controls for the characters face in Maya. The animator scrubs through the reference and carefully keys in the animation. This is the same process I used for my extended practice animation which was fairly meticulous but I enjoyed having the control. But there are other methods that have been used.

A company called Faceware , for example, are a company that have worked of numerous feature films and top quality games titles. they provide a suite that is used to get facial animations of an actor. It is completely marker-less and uses an analyse method of the video clip of the actor. it then renders the facial animations for your character.


I think the direction of facial animation is going in quite a linier way, from the start of the innovation from the game LA noire who made a big impact due to its increased accuracy, but it also had various bugs that took from the believability, but this was a different approach where the actor was placed in a studio with cameras all around them and then that capture was used in conjunction with the characters.

I looked into a short on-line course which teaches you a cheap version of facial motion capture which I still have to look more into, but its not something I wish to pursue in my career, but I do need an understanding of the processes involved in order to seamlessly place myself in the animation pipeline without having to adjust to new methods and such.

motion capture in games

The games industry has used motion capture to animate athletes, martial artists, and other in-game characters. This started with Virtua Fighter 2 in 1994. By 1995 the use of motion capture in video game development had become more frequent, and developer/publisher Acclaim Entertainment had gone so far as to have its own in-house motion capture studio built into its headquarters.

In film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs used an early form of motion capture technology. Actors and actresses would act out scenes and would be filmed. The animators would then use the individual frames as a guide to their drawings.

But I'm trying to discover the latest in innovative Motion capture for games. This is to answer the question, are animators still needed? this is quite a difficult question to answer due to the fact that its only really big game developers that can afford the process, but with cheaper more affordable methods of motion capture using various webcams or the Xbox Kinect which uses infra-red which is a more efficient way of detecting depth. this makes the whole process a lot more efficient as the need for multiple cameras is made less so. One documentary short that really informed me of the process was made by my favourite games studio called Naughty Dog with their documentary of 'Making the Last of Us'

Again I must stress my dislike for bloggers video search engine as it delivers completely different results to standard YouTube. but I did however find the trailer.

The section in the documentary describes how that the performance is captured by the actors using tonnes of cameras spaced around a huge studio space to capture the performances. SO another pre-production process that is involved in recent and up coming games have to go through an audition process to find the right actors.

Any body motion is captured right there on stage but what was also imperative was to record the audio at the same time in the mo-cap studio. Having the actors to perform as well as being recorded was imperative to get an accurate performance, because any time you split up the performance in any way, you lose some of that magic where they deliver a line or do a gesture a certain way, and those things have to be in sync other wise there is something subconsciously off putting about the performance when you don't do it that way. 

"Even the smallest gestures are picked up so you have to always be prepared for the acting to be used in the game" - Mo - cap actor

As well as researching into mo-cap, I had a one to one session with my tutor to mess around with mo cop and body movements using motion capture pro and xbox kinect. It is something I want to look into more but I am a fond believer of hand keyed animation. But at the same time I love the realism of mo-cap.

The role of the animator in naughty dog was explained to me by one of the animators who said their role was to extenuate certain poses, add more weight or small things like correcting a certain hand movement that wasn't picked up by the mo-cap

To answer the question I set earlier, I think that the animator is as valuable as ever, as motion capture doesn't pick up everything due to the technology at its current state sometimes not picking up certain movements or angles

messed up

During my journey through extended practice I strayed a little far from my original style of animations. I did keep it quite dark and emotional but towards the end and through my research into animation competitions, I realised I wasn't creating 'weird' animations any more which was quite an upsetting realisation. I brought a lot of my inspiration from David Firth, my favourite animator.

The thing I like with David Firths animations is that the stories he is trying to tell aren't your typical in your face story but rather hidden stories and meanings disguised by the weird and wonderful scripts and animations. 

This got me thinking, how can I hold onto my dark animation style in CGI animation, which seemed hard to achieve due to the precision of Maya. So I decided to see how the macabre is approached with CGI animation.

The only thing close to what I was looking for was this:

Which isn't even full CGI. So I think I've discovered a gap in the animation world! If I can create short CGI animations with a macabre and dark sentiment I reckon I could be quite innovative. I am really looking forward to pursuing this venture as I can do 2 minute animations similar to what David firth does but holding onto my appreciation for CGI!