Emotional Ties: Character Expressions, Ellie

I remembered that I had done expressions for Ryan, Jess and Connor but had yet to do them for Ellie and Rob. Here are the expressions I did for Ellie..

I'm happy with these, I especially like the second one, I feel that it is the best one and shows Ellie's personality the best. 

And here are Rob's...

I am happy with these but if I was to do them again I would probably exaggerate the expression a bit more as well as do some extra ones for more variety.

Emotional Ties: Animatic

From my storyboard and voice recordings that I managed to create last week with my classmates I made my animatic. I made this so that I have an idea of timing in my animation, I was also able to change the layout of my storyboard to make it fit the voices. I had to leave out a couple of frames because they either didn't fit because there wasn't enough time or it didn't make sense them being there. Overall I am very pleased with the result. 

Emotional Ties: Storyboard!

This has taken me absolutely ages to finish!...and I'm not completely happy with it but I feel that it puts the story across well. I'm happy with the style of the campfire part but I'm going to have to tweak parts of the story as quite a lot of it is sloppy and not quite the effect I was going for. Anyway, here it is...

I need to work on the characters poses and expressions for the actual animation, I didn't tend to change them much for this. Also in the frames for the story a lot of the grey blend into each other, I may experiment with the backgrounds (especially inside the cabin) a bit more to try and get it right and finally I found that a quite a few messy lines have been created and so I shall tidy that up. I'm pleased with the character of the hunter and I'm glad I chose the silhouette, I feel that it makes him bold and the way I've made him a little see through makes it feel that little bit more ghostly. 

Creative Futures Two: Creative Futures Week, Thursday

Talk One: A Career in Childrens Illustration, Helen Papworth

Helen Papworth started with do Art A level and went on to become an art teacher. Later in her life she then became a VSO volunteer in Ethiopia and eventually got a job in the Ministry of Education. When she came back to the UK she applied to Glyndwr University to study Children's Illustrations. After this she became a VSO volunteer again but in Rwanda. She finished her degree in children's illustration in 2006. 

Helen started the children's illustration course because she loved books, love drawing, loved writing, she could work from home and not be stuck in an office, it was flexible, didn't have another job and had enough money to pay for the course fees. Her two main influences were/are Arthur Rackham and Saun Tan. She gave advice that if you wanted to go into illustration (and I'm pretty sure that the same goes for animation) you should do atleast one sketch a day either from life, the TV or media. She's always been scared of colour and avoids paint. 

Helen's main style is to use mixed media with photoshop and her influences are african, such as the culture, landscapes, environments etc. She illustrated for children in education in Ethiopia. 

Helen decided one day that her research was better than her illustrations and so started a PhD in Creative Writing where she worked with writers and artists. After this she went on to create quite a few books for her younger Ethiopian audience. 

It's nice to know that someone is using their skills in another country and is successful, even though she doesn't earn much money and I love the fact that she's doing something that she loves - it was clear from the talk how enthusiastic she was about what she does. Although it doesn't really appeal to me it made me realise that there is work beyond the UK. Some of the advice she gave such as do a drawing a day was good, I think I've slacked off from my drawing and I think it definitely shows in my work. 

Talk Two: Going into Business as a Young Entrepreneur, Charli Dickinson

Charlie Dickinson is part of the Launch Project which help people in rural Wrexham start their own business. They help by giving business grants of which is government funded. 

The first step to making your own business is coming up with an idea, the advice she gave was to carry around a notepad so that if you get an idea whilst you're out and about you can write it down. She also said that it's useful to talk to other people about your idea to get some feedback  etc. 

Once you have your idea you need to do some research, who are your customers? What's your market? And is there any competition? How much money do you need to start it? Will you need a piece of property? How can you be funded? Where are your customers?...Internet, forums, online communities, market stall, shop? Do you need to travel to where your potential customers will be? 

And finally marketting, this is the crucial part to having a business, it's an investment because if you have little marketting you will have a small amount of customers. 

This talk was nice and simple and was easy to keep up and understand. It just made you think about things that maybe you wouldn't have otherwise if you wanted to start a business. Think this would only affect me if I was to start selling stuff like t shirts etc with my own brand on it to sell myself and my work. Which I may well do, I have been thinking about this this week. Not only should I hopefully make money from doing such a thing but it's also marketing/advertising. 

Today wasn't the best day of creative futures week but I did gain extra knowledge and advice which is always handy! 

Creative Futures two: Creative Futures Week, Wednesday

Talk One: Ffresh, Berwyn Rowlands

Ffresh is a student moving image festival held in various places in Wales every year. This event was established in 2002  and was designed to showcase student films (live action and animation) from the UK and internationally to help students put themselves out into the creative industry. Berwyn told us that the creative industry is ravenous but also lazy and that the people that win awards at the festival are more likely to get work even if there are some other films that are just as good. He also said that it's surprising as to how many people that are in this industry of moving image watch little television - I can imagine they don't really have much time for it! He encouraged us that we should go to as many festivals as possible to know what other students work is like and to know where we stand. 

He announced to us that Ffresh is coming to our university next year, 13-15 February 2013! It couldn't have come at a better time for me as I'll be in my last year and will give me the opportunity to help out with the event, doing either ushering, trailers, ads, posters or design work. Not only that but if I get to do ushering I'll have access to the 'green room' where all of the speakers and VIP's will be and would be able to get up close and personal with them. 

He also encouraged us to not only get our work that we do at uni out on the web etc but to also show our personal work, this would show people in the industry just how passionate we are and would build up our portfolio. 

I would definitely like to take part with the festival, I think this would be a great experience, I may also submit my own animation. It's open to submissions approximately from mid summer to the end of summer, so when I've finished uni I could use the summer to create a film to submit. 

After this talk I feel that I definitely need to do more personal work in my own personal time, although it's easier to say than do! I'm definitely going to have to look at how I organise my time and try to shuffle things about to try and create some extra time for this. 

Talk Two: Putting a Portfolio Together, Jason Minsky

Jason Minsky studied jewellry at Glyndwr University (Was NEWI)  and then went on to Manchester to study 3D design where he designed things like furniture and sculptural pieces. After graduating he worked in a studio for a bit and then went on to do an MA in Ceramics and Glass. Advice he gave us for our portfolio was to represent our work in the way that's best for showing our designs and ideas, and to put our work in a certain order maybe so that it tells a story, this will keep whoever looks at it interested. To invest in professional and smart ways to present our work and a good way to present our work if you make films is either on a showreel or on vimeo/youtube. 

One of Jason's pieces

I didn't get a great deal out of this talk, it wasn't what it was described as either, in the description said that he would be telling us how to put our portfolio together and to give us advice, which he didn't really. All he spoke about was work he had done and ideas that he's come up with within his career. This was disappointing as I felt that it was going to be a really useful talk, especially as I'm thinking of applying for work experience etc for the summer, possibly in some animation studios. I got quite excited when he said that he had a showreel and that he would give some tips on the best ways for you to make them but he never did! 

Talk Three: Working as a Freelance Animator, Ian Whittle

After Ian Whittle graduated from doing his MA he went to the Midlands to pitch an idea to to an Animator Residency Scheme but unfortunately didn't get it! He then managed to get a job at Second Home Studios in Birmingham where he helped to make stop motion adverts and films. They make animations for companies such as CITV, BBC, Diet Coke and Pilsner. He then got a job at The Red Door Animation Studios which is where he is still working. They are a lower budget animation studios and get council funding. Ian does workshops with children ranged from 8 years old to 18. They use a range of animation techniques such as cut out, digital 2d, traditional drawn, and mixed media animation. He has created an animation called 'Away from Home' which is about children that have been taken into care. For this animation they used interviews that they had with the children and pictures that the children had drawn, which they then animated on Flash. 

Impression Pilsner Advert made completely from paper 

It was great to have Ian come a speak to us as he had lots of useful information to share and lots of brilliant visuals to show us, including quite a few animations that he had created. It was nice to see that he was using the more traditional take on animation rather than CG! I also got to learn some more about animation in advertising which was brilliant. This has definitely given me a lot of inspiration and was a great end to the day! Thank you Ian 

Creative Futures Two: Creative Futures Week, Tuesday

Talk One: After Your Degree: The First Steps (Games), Dave Boydel

Dave studied digital art for games at my University (Glyndwr) and graduated last year (2011). Before this he studied fine art and graphic design. At University he did things like digital sculpting, 3D modelling, synopsis writing (world creation) and game engines. He said that he would say that he is mainly a concept artist and likes doing character design, environment design, prop design and 3D modelling. At the moment he is working at Dreadnought creating a game for facebook. 

He gave good amounts of advice such as..

After graduating you should keep practicing your art, don't give yourself time off because it's likely that you won't get back into it, so keep sketchbooks, do digital art, explore new media's and technologies, set yourself goals and don't slack off. 

'Prick up your ears'- do networking,, make business cards, open a deviant art account (deviant art is a non professional way to show your portfolio online and communicate with other artists), join in with forums, have your own blog and go to conventions such as MCM, Thought Bubble and Regional Shows. 

When applying to studios be professional, make your CV maximum of one and a half pages, in your cover letter sell yourself and don't waffle, be flexible and go where the work is, be prepared to make coffee and expect not to be what you want to be at the beginning. 

Dave had to move to just north of London to get his job.

He ended on this quote..

"Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day on your life."

-Confusious

This was a good talk, it was nice to have someone that recently graduated from our university and see that they have been successful in gaining a job. He was also able to give some really good advise, I will definitely be taking this all onboard. 

Talk Two: Character Design and Social Networking, Jonathon Edwards

Jonathon Edwards is an illustrator and does animation design. 

In 2007 Jonathon designed a character called Inspector Cumulus from a couple of doodles. A friend then made a CG model of the character to give him an idea of how it would look if it was a toy. Eventually after a couple of adjustments he had the character made into a toy that sold in various places all over the world. 

He then made some more characters that were monsters, of which another friend who had studied dress making said that she could make them in the form of plushies and so thats what they did! 

One day Jonathon was watching 1982 general elections and sketching away in his sketchbook characters inspired by the politicians and what they were wearing. His friend Louise then said that she would like to make them but bigger than any normal plushie and with lots of detail. And so thats what she did. They made loads of them. They got quite a few people following them on Twitter. One day Louise did a tweet saying that she would love to make one of one of the fashion ladies on This Morning (I can't remember her name), this lady saw this tweet and became very interested. She then asked them both to create some for her window in London Fashion Week. They were in the window for 2 weeks. 

During this two weeks someone from Selfridges had seen the window and so they contacted Jonathon and Louise and asked if they would do a window for them for the following christmas.The theme was a dolls house. Their display was in the window for 2 months.

Part of  Selfridges window design

Jonathon gets inspiration for his characters from everyday people. 

They then went to Japan for 5 weeks to do a project on headspace. Whilst they were there they were asked to do some work for a design on a milk vending machine in Stockholm. For this Jonathon drew the characters and Louise made the characters of which was then stages and had a photoshoot for the final image.

Milk Vending Machine Design

This was an interesting talk, it definitely had a different perspective what could be done with character design. However I didn't feel that I got anything from it in the way of learning more about character design of which I was hoping. I hoped that it would give me advice and tips on character design as I'm not too confident with it but there wasn't anything like that. 

Talk Three: Illustration and Key Graphics: Work, Realities and Copyright. David Newell

The start of David's career started off to be 'awkward', he was clever and artistic and so to start with chose to do Science but his heart wasn't in it. So he went to art college, as soon as he finished he got a job in science. However he ended up going back to art ans was determined to make a future from it. To make money whilst doing his own work he did sign writing. He then got a job in a newpapers and then in an agency all doing creative work.  He then got into commercial work doing work for companies such as AEI, Linnoff March, Super Target, Racing Technik and Party Flyers. in 1996/97 he started doing work for agencies, however when some work came his way he gave an offer to the company which was to go straight through him, that way they wouldn't be paying so much and he would be paid more. They took him up and gave him a job afterwards. He did work for BASF, United Friendly, Tron Bonne (playstation one game) and Doctor Party. 

In 2002/03 he did artwork for The Clothes Show Live, after this he went on to creating and designing packaging for a number of products such as toys for the discovery store, Supacell Digital batteries, Unity Comdoms and Flurodine toothpaste. 

David Newell Supacell Design

It was nice to see how his career developed and to see the variety of work and jobs that he has done. Again, it was nice to see as all of his work has been commercial and that's the sort of direction that I would love to go with animation. 

Overall today wasn't too bad, I have to say that best one was the first talk and the worst was the last. But I gained more knowledge and now know things that I didn't know yesterday!

Creative Futures Two: Creative Futures Week, Monday

This week at University is 'Creative Futures Week', this is an annual event that happens for one week. For this week we have many speakers come in from all sorts of backgrounds with various careers in the creative industry. They speak to us about what they do, how they got to do it, what they've done and give advice. I will be writing about each talk and what I have learnt from it. 

Talk One: Opening Address

For this talk we were meant to have Maurice Cockrill however they were unable to come and so had the University's Vice Chancellor, Professor Michael Scott instead. A little bit of Prof Michael Scott's background would be that he has written many books mainly on Shakespeare. He was a Visiting Professor of English at Georgetown University, Washington DC for  fourteen years, and he has spent 30 years in the higher education sector. 

This talk included the history of Shakespeare ( a very quick one), he spoke about how Shakespeare kept going even when business was bad and how he used the creative industry to make money and how Shakespeare was a good business man. He concluded the talk by saying that even though Shakespeare had many crisis's he kept going, he then said that everyone will have a crisis sometime in their career and that we should use that crisis to bring something good and positive from it. 

I felt that his talk had a good message to it and is definitely something to remember for the future. 

Talk Two: Key Note Speaker, Angus Montgomery - Editor of Design Week. 

Angus Montgomery described himself as a journalist, he didn't really tell us much about his background but he did give us some useful knowledge and gave us some good advice. The first thing he did was gave us some quotes from people who practice in the creative industry. (Excuse me for misspelling of names as spellings weren't shown), the first of whom was Simon Manchip whose quote basically gave advice to graduates to promote both yourself and your work, promoting yourself is just as important as promoting your work. Rhiannon James from D&AD's quote was about marketing yourself professionally and that design is a business. Greg Quinton's quote said that graduates should take themselves away from the internet so that they don't get the same influences as everyone else, he also said that collaborating is good and creates a culture of great ideas, and finally to love what you do and have passion, passion will get you far. He also asked these people and some other people whether they would pay £9000 or more to go to uni and do the courses they did all over again, of which none of them said no. They all said that £9000 is worth paying and that they wouldn't even question not going to uni. What was really nice was that throughout the talk Angus kept saying how working with people from the creative industry is brilliant because they are all exciting and inspiring, and that the creative industry is unique and special. 

He showed us some examples where design has made a difference to certain campaigns and has made some pretty interesting stuff. Such as The Body Shops campaign to stop sex trafficking, the design for this made an unpleasant situation positive and engaging. Because of this, law changes were made in 17 countries because of the branding of the campaign. 

Body Shops Trafficking Campaign

Another campaign was 'One laptop per child', previously laptops that had been used and no longer wanted/needed from the western world was shipped over to developing countries for schools to use, however a designer said why not make the children their own laptops that are created for their specific needs and so thats what they did. The laptops created cost just over 100 dollar each and 2.5 million of them were shipped out over 4 years. Thanks to design it was made possible for children in developing countries to own their own laptop.

Children with their own laptops

 My favourite design that he showed was of 'designer energy saving light bulbs'. Low energy light bulbs are the ugliest light bulbs ever and people hate them but feel obliged to use them because they are 'green', and so one designer said that the light bulbs had a good concept and energy saving but why can't they look nice, and so he went on to design some low energy light bulbs that looked much better. I would say that I love the look of them but I can't imagine anyone wanting to use them for their chandelier! 

Designer energy saving light bulbs

 Another example where design was used to improve something was the A&E experience in hospitals. There have been many cases where there have been violence against staff leading to many having time off due to stress and so the company Pearson Lloyd (http://www.pearsonlloyd.com/) wanted to make the A&E experience calmer and safer. They created a mapping system where patients can follow a flow diagram to know what is happening and what will happen next, rather than feel like they have been waiting around for ages and nothing is being done. This will also tell them how busy A&E is. 

Pearson Lloyds Flow Diagram Design

This was pretty inspirational, showing us how design can make a difference and can make a massive impact if used correctly! 

Talk Three: Building an Audience, Making a Living from Comics, John Allison. 

John Allison

John Allison graduated from university in 1997 and gained a degree in Journalism. He didn't manage to get a job straight away and so to make himself look busy he started to draw comics. He posted these on the internet where he got an audience of approximately 1000 people. In 1999 he got a job in a magazine.He carried on with his comics and in 2001 he started to use Adobe Illustrator to churn them out, his audience had now grown to 4000/5000 people. In 2002 he started to create comics where he was no longer posting on the internet for people to read for free, as a result of this his audience went back down to being 1000 readers. 2003 he became redundant and so made a book collection, his audience went up to 15000 people. 2004 he stayed at home and created many more comic strips, 2005 he started to focus more on composition and in 2006 John started to experiment. By posting his comics on the internet he was able to gain a bigger audience even though he wasn't getting much money from it. 2007 he stopped doing his comics digitally and started using fine liner again, 2008 he started to use Manga studio and started to refine his work and in 2009 he created the comic 'Scary go Round' which he didn't enjoy but at this point his audience had now reached about 55000 people! In 2010 he started to create work that he could possibly sell to publishers, 2011 he did more refining but also made things simpler and now in 2012 he is now in the process of signing for a book. 

'Scary Go Round'

Advice he gave is not to be shy, an example of this is a comic artist he knows of and he said that this guys comic strip is the worst ever comic strip created but at conventions, because this artist put himself out there and has confidence, he sells all of his books. 

He also said to get in contact with other people that is doing work like ourselves and talk to people at conventions to get contacts. 

More advice he gave was to make money in all the ways you can that also gets your brand out there, for example make t-shirts, tea towels, coasters etc and sell them, become a business baron, get things as cheap as possible and study successful people. 

This man was great to have to give a talk, he gave lots of useful advise (even though he's in the comics industry and I'm animator) and was a joy to listen to. It's amazing how hard he kept pushing himself and kept going even when there was no work for him and because he's been consistent with his fans and readers throughout he has now got a great amount of followers. 

Talk Four: A Freelance Career in Animation and Illustration, Karen Cheung

www.karencheung.co.uk 

Karen Cheung first studied Zoology in Cambridge University but discovered that she preferred drawing specimens and got more praise for her drawings than she did for her written essays, and so when she finished her degree she went and did a foundation course in Chelsea, followed by an Illustration course at University in Bristol. Her first animation was called 'Heartbreak Hotel', of which she showed and I really liked it! She entered BBC New Animator competition with it and was short listed, her animation was shown all over the world but she didn't win. Next she illustrated a childrens book and entered the MacMillan Prize for childrens picture book, of which she won! She then made another animation called 'Welcome to the Zoo' which she also showed us, it had bags of personality and really well made. 

Welcome to the Zoo

She had her degree show in London in a little gallery space. This is where she met her agent, they were situated next to the gallery. Karen's animation tutor told her not to sit around and wait for work to turn up at her door but instead to go out to various studios and show her work. From this she got work with 12 foot 6 who asked her to do some character designs and eventually asked her to work with them to create some animations. Here she made animations for Paramount Comedy, Virgin Central, Virgin Media and Bookstart. She stayed there for 2 and a bit years and eventually went freelance. This is where she found out just how brutal the industry could be, one example os that herself and her agent went and pitched one of their ideas to a client and the client liked it, however they rang her up later on to say that they had given it to someone else. Karen told us that to work in this industry you need to be able to take rejection and be hard skinned and to keep going. Since being freelance Karen has done work for companies such as Skoda, Honda, Smart Car, Fiat, Dorling Kindersley, Ikea, Tesco, ITV, Asda, Proder and Gamble, Vodaphone, Umbro and Oxford University. 

To be in this industry she told us that we need to be versatile, flexible and take on things that come your way even if it's not to out particular style. 

I loved this talk, it showed us what can be done if you are determined, work hard and are passionate about what you are doing. It also showed us that you need to get yourself out there and search for opportunities and not just wait for something to happen! This was goo too because it's the sort of animation work that I've been quite interested in for a while now and so it was nice to know about this particular part instead of things like children's programmes and films etc.I came away very inspired. 

Overall this was a good day, lets hope tomorrow is just a good, if not better...fingers crossed!