CBBC Talk Notes Part 2

Have your world and chars got enough about them to generate 52 episodes for a first season?
YOU MUST LOVE YOUR CHARACTERS -if you don't love them why should anybody else. Make them flawed! World - family home, other worlds, specific towns, char specific locations. The weirder the world the straighter the storytelling. Universally recognised stuff. 3 act structured character driven.
- coherent with the rules of the world
- don't blindly pursue the gag - follow character and story.
Quick pace. dialogue performs char, story + comedy functions at the same time. Pace eats up a lot of story. Smash cuts techniques (family guy)
- no guns, knives, punching in face, no adult cynicysm.
- make sure style doesn't impose itself too much on character and story - squash + stretch etc used w/o distracting for Simpsons.

Dif culture = dif regulations.
Writer conference springboard (paragraph), outline/premise - 2/3 page. Scene by scene - 2/3 length of script - limited dialogue jut to flesh out the scene, see if it works again. Drafts of script - up to 6 but varies. Others add jokes or changed etc - person to polish it is chosen depending on what the script needs. Script editor - manage relationships. Conduit of notes, rewrites, generate ideas, connect w/rest of production team afterwards. Notes from everyone.
Who's story? What do they want? Wat obstacles can we put in their way? What do they learn? Audience? You will FEEL it if it isn't working right. Don't be too precious! Don't worry about baring yourself. Board driven - great for visual jokes etc. BBC tend not to, weed v- talented writer and boarder. You can fix design later but if the foundation is wrong it can never be right.

During a recessions people don't take risks. Courage - weirder shows - nothing to prove, no comparison.

CBBC Talk Notes Part 1

Talk from BBC Producer Sarah Muller and writer Andrew Burrell.

Popular things with children right now - Minecraft, Lego, Angry Birds. Youtube is where their audience is going. British productions getting more money. not sure how long Broadcasts wll last - Netflix, Youtube, etc). Lack of space for adult animation. "All homegrown content is shit" - direct quote from C and places that don't want adult animation. Moved from London to Salford. 34 TV channels dedicated to kids in the UK. 196.4 million iplayer requests for CBBC programs over the last 12 months.

For 6 - 12 y/o - CBBC is number one in the UK. Easier to sell preschool things because toys. Devices for watching stuff going up - tablets, phones, PCs etc. Got stuff from abroad for a while because cheaper. All becoming about brands. Strange Hill High - Simpsons etc - showrunner + comedy writer, not kids writer. Hand picked British Writers. "Proper comedy comes from proper performance" - not just 'voice over artists'. Pushed the design every time, even if happy with it. In the next year more British being funded w/tax over last 2 years. Taking things people love and making it for an audience who don't care often - spend a long time figuring out what it is that stands the test of time. ALL ABOUT CHARS + RELATIONSHIPS. Spongebob v popular b/c character driven comedy.

CBBC less animated than other kids' channels. Not a lot of opportunity to get new content involved. STAND OUT. They get a lot of paranormal stuff, they don't need any more. 'Random garbage' inspired by Adventure Time. Don't get things like Family Guy so much. 'Family group comedy drama'. Not strange or photo-realistic. Almost impossible to get more adult aimed. Stand out but fit in w/existing shows.

Most popular BBC stuff - Shaun the Sheep, Postman Pat, Sooty + Sweep, the Magic Roundabout. Boys tend to be into animation for longer. The kids are your boss. Make aims relevant to their experience. Never talk down to kids, they are v sharp. Cynicism is an adult issue - love your chars. Tips for writers, rules are to be broken.

Behance

Behance is a portfolio hosting website that has such a great range of search tools, allowing you to search by creative field, locations, finished projects or WIPs including options to view the most liked or viewed ones.

This is something I haven't seen done so well on other portfolio sites, making it a great place for people to find and comment on your art. There is no limit to how many images you can have on a project either, although 10 - 15 is common for full projects, with room for text (although most projects I have seen usually just let the work speak for itself). You can follow people like other social networking sites, and you have a dashboard showing now projects, works in progress and likes for people that you follow.

I have found way more work than expected through Behance, and the fact that I can even search the category 'character design' is great; I can actually find specific things instead of just scrolling through thousands of things with a similar subject matter. This means that people can also find my art when specifically looking for similar fields, which could be beneficial when looking for possible collaborative partners or for hiring people etc.

From Behance, I'm going to collect some examples of portfolios that I find really interesting, and see how I could make my own portfolio interesting.

Lee Hardcastle Talk

Never got uni projects done so just experimented. GI Joe + webcam, well received. On dole for a year - continued with projects - making music videos for his band. Reached out to production houses; runner for Scramble, tried a few different things. There for 3 years learning vfx on the side. Never gave up wanting to create own projects etc. GI Joe corps was seen by a GI Joes festival in America, was asked to make more for it. Got free GI Joe to do it with. Worked with someone he met in London working on sound. Always made stuff in his own time.

Empie Magazine's competition - 'competitions are amazing' - taking briefs and understand what these guys are going or. Winning/achieving makes a huge difference. Evil dead competition video went viral. Decided how to brand himself (gave him a direction) - 'new and fresh'. Then quit his job to work in a cafe in the South of France - work 'freaking me out'. Wrote a feature length film. Realised the idea was ridiculous. More competitions. Google asked about monetising his evil dead animation. 1K views = £1ish, knew he needed to keep consistent and his branding. Made a series of that comp - 60 seconds etc. Length of video + interest for how long is a youtube thing. Get suggested less by Youtube. Sold belongings and moved back in with parents for a while. Slowly getting more cash per day. On the side, being approached by people to make things for them. Music video - first payment from claymation. Made in someone elses' basement in Paris. Viral after viral. Contest for a feature length move - 26 parts - comp for 26th person. 170 entries. Put more effort into this. Avoiding Youtube for the moment - not doing anything for him. Parodies are good for views - grey area though; IP permission is dubious. Pingu video did great but got taken down. Did a knock off cat version instead - made a series - was asked to do a clay remake of their film "all about branding yourself" sell yourself short too many times, you becom nothing. Done stuff now for adult swim.

Comps through Twitter abd nags. 3 - 5 weeks for a 2 min vid. Still sees himself as a film maker rather than animator.

Rebekah Caputo Talk

Puppeteer.

Puppetry - for anything inanimate to appear alive.
- Why puppets? Magic! Animism
- Not restricted by human form
Acting course, theatre-ish - think about the whole stage characterisation
'Faulty optic' ---> invisible thread.
Create whole worlds on the stage, be in control of everything. A year at home making and learning puppets ---> little performance venue etc. Audience feels different with puppet/acting. Used her as landscape w/costume.

Odd doll puppetry - make shows for touring ---> always creating something to sell. Adults and children. Shadow art b/c BGT ---> popularity of shadow puppet workshop going up so she held some herself.
Dabbling with shadow puppet film ---> w/ a quiet word (shadow puppet company) experiment = collab with dancer. Use shadow, puppet, silhouette, project as installation. 'Importance of sharing my practice''
---> Night called 'Animate Live' - puppeteers, musicians, improvised performance. MA student at LCA - figure out what she does, 'celebrating the darkness within' ---> validating yourself - THE UNCANNY 'combining objects and puppets'/ Made an idea that didn't work so now trying again. Collab- important.


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Though puppeteering isn't really relevant to my practice (and I don't think that I would like to design for puppets), some of the things that she mentioned acting wise was interesting, and I like her idea of creating whole worlds on the stage and being in control of everything, along with using herself as the landscape with the costume. Finding other ways for the puppets to interact could be good to think about when it comes to creating and designing for animation, especially or more experimental animation.

Kath Shackleton Talk

Fettle - run own company (w/Zain Whittingham)
- Childrens' baftas

Pitch interview from BBC but rejected, had to let go of people. Didn't give up, eventually got another pitch. Pitching = persuasion.

Not always about quality - price, time, were uninspired by their previous work. "TV people do not innovate, they iterate".
"Children's media conference" - did a pitching course. Had stuff prepared before - showed original holocaust animation on tablet - pitch woman asked for links etc. Ultimately rejected. (1/100 ideas accepted) ---> months later 9pm friday email from pitch woman, got a meeting.
Animation tax break - 25% budget back.
Still waiting for final wages from June. Had to cut down recorded material A LOT. 'No experienced enough' - given executive producers but they actually helped. Worked with a LOT of trainees, dropped b/c ego and/or skills. A LOT of people taking money out of production budget but it worked out.
Needed to sell after making - asked and emailed everyone - 'weird subject'. MANY NETWORKING EVENTS.
Sydney Neter - all sorts of sales related to holocaust so took them on. Scale and size of team got bigger.
What you write is MINIMAL a bit about you, bg, your audience, one line about show. No career development, so support - animation.
Find projects that naturally work with your skills.
Identify where your strengths lie. Breakfast networking conferences. Butter people up. Track down everyone on social media that she could see were going to the media conference - "professional talking".

I found Kath's talk interesting - it showed that even after successes you may still fail, but even after failing you may still find success. She mentioned a lot of interesting things about pitching (even if I'm not crazy about the idea of pitching) and left us with a very useful sheet about it. She put a lot of emphasis on networking as well which I am already trying to do, but going to the children's media conference does sound like s good place to meet people and find out maybe a bit more about working in that area of the media industry even if it isn't necessarily animation related.

James Wall Talk

2010 graduate with a First.
Bought equipment during uni. Made short film on Youtube. Connections through collaborations. 6 months - 10 films/2months - lots of portfolio stuff - was noticed by actors and people wanting to work with him. Decided to do feature length. Fundraiser, bad timing and failed attempts. Instagram and Twitter support. Launched a pre-production site. Contacted by distribution companies. Wanted to buy if he had a star name attached.
Realised scheduling issues - needed more planning. Skype, PDFs, all digital.
Unscheduled changed improved the story. Nearly a year in post production compared to 2 weeks filming. Also freelancing and working full time - freelancing go him a lot more money. Hated the film a that point.

People enjoyed 7 mins so broke it down into chunks = more content, lots of social media = build up interest + interaction = more audience. Asked for reviews before posting.
'Internet famous' etc - more followers to see it. Stay up late emailing *everything* to get the news/word out.
Got to do a talk at BAF. Got a sequel funded (meeting in August).
2010 = graduate - 2012 - make film - 2013 - publish film - 2014 funding offer.
Cash from youtube partner thing. Film more for portfolio etc rather than anything else, little financial return. 'My calling card' Youtube - international.
Could have planned for subtitles. Lot of work. Freelancing through uni. LINKEDIN. Look for marketing companies. Recommendations between companies. He went to a company w/a brief (look at what you can do on youtube) took his brief and ideas to someone else. Rebranded as a company after a while; 'Creative Director'. Told a company 'this is a job role you need filled, I can do it' became content creator for 11th biggest site in UK. Company, freelance + graphic designer. Still Leeds based. 'Travel to where work is' is v-important. Does a lot  in Manchester (after Bradford). Some in London. Networking > being good at the job. Social Media - thumbs up. "Chatting shit is important". Blag.
Business networking events for work.

Job at the start of freelancing but recurring commissions. Be careful w/contracts etc. Identify what you are going to do for the company. Difference between professional person or yourself. Don't get disheartened. You're always as good as the last thing you made so keep improving.

Importance of Research in Design

Research before design is extremely important. Jumping in without any thought can make for ineffective designs, and a lot of the time it shows.

Three big things that I focus my research on when doing a projects is Audience, Content, and Style.

Your work will always be seen by someone, but that someone depends on what it is used for and where it is shown. For example, if it was to be shown on a children's channel, then it must be suitable for children, and something like Adult Swim would not show CBeebies-esque work. Your audience informs both your style and content, though sometimes one of these can be less aimed at the audience if the other makes sure to concentrate on it - you could have adult content, in a childish design, like South Park, which is effective because of just how much the content is relied on and where/when the animation is shown.

By content, when talking about character design, I am talking about what it is that you are designing -  a character from a certain setting, or culture. For example, if you were to design characters from a Roman setting, but not research it at all then you would mostly likely end up with some crude, stereotypical designs that more than likely would not stand out from the next guy doing Roman designs. Historical accuracy makes for more effective, coherent designs - and you might find something different that other people don't use much but that works really well.

Especially for more sophisticated or complex projects, historical research can go a long way to make sure that your designs are competent and interesting. Claire Hummel, character designer on Bioshock Infinite posted some advice about researching on her Tumblr;

ADVICE FOR RESEARCHING HISTORICAL FASHION

• Read, and read about more than just costuming.  Allowing yourself to understand the cultural and historical context surrounding the clothing of a particular region/period can be invaluable in sussing out good costume design.  Looking at pictures is all well and good, but reading about societal pressures, about construction techniques, daily routines, local symbolism, whatever else will really help you understand the rhyme and reason behind costuming from any given context.

• Expand your costume vocabulary.  When you’re delving into a new topic, costuming or otherwise, picking up new terminology is essential to proper understanding and furthering your research.  Write down or take note of terms as you come across them- google them, look up synonyms, and use those words as a jumping off point for more research.  What’s a wire rebato?  How does it differ from a supportasse?  Inquiring minds want to know.

• Double-check your sources.  Especially on the internet, and double especially on tumblr.  I love it, but it’s ground zero for rapidly spreading misinformation.  Books are usually your safest bet, but also take into account their date of publication, who’s writing them- an author’s biases can severely mangle their original source material.

• Don’t be afraid to ask for help.  Do everything you can to find out information on your own, but feel free to reach out to people with more specialized areas of knowledge for help!  Be considerate about it- the people you’re asking are busy as well- but a specific line of questioning that proves you’re passionate and that you respect their subject matter expertise can work wonders.

When it comes to Style, research really depends on the project. For some people, their own style is fine, and they will continue to stick to that. Other places have a house style, and they will be looking for other people who can imitate that. For example, a lot of Disney's artists use styles similar to Glen Keane and Jim Kim (most probably because that is a preferred style at CalArts, where a great deal of their newer employees come from). Cartoon Network also has noticeable styles (although this is in part because of the fact that a lot of their biggest hits were created by them same person, but using styles that do incorporate bold colours, lines and shapes are what they prefer, and what appeal to their audience much more. That isn't to say that you can't ever push the boat out and do something completely different, but different audiences require different things and it is always worth paying attention to what sort of style is popular to a specific audience.

Another thing to consider is the medium in which these designs will be used; animation, on a whole, uses much less detailed designs than games or comics. With animators have to animate so many frames in 2D, many details would take so much longer to do. In games or 3D animation, a 3D model will be made and the details will not have to be repeated as the character is animated, and it would generally take much less time to animate the details that may move.

Rules can always be broken, and sometimes great character design can come from that. Overall though, being informed and knowing what it is that you are designing and who it is that will be viewing your work is always a great idea, and should be a very important consideration for your designs.

Crowdfunding

It can be hard for artists to create things that they want - getting the funding, having time outside of work to do things as well as raising awareness of their projects, especially when just starting out or planning a huge project that isn't something they could/would want to pitch.

Of course, this internet can help with these things nowadays - especially campaign starters such as Kickstarter and IndieGogo. They are crowd funding platforms that let artists ask the public for funding on a project, showing any work already done for the project/the intention/aim of the project - essentially a pitch to the whole internet. Generally they will offer incentives, like prints or bookmarks or little extras so that the backers have a little bit more to show for their donation. Both sites have been around from 2008/2009, producing a lot of successful projects.

I feel like this could be a great way to get a project started if I want to, although I think that something like an animation may be more successful and stand out, although that would mean definitely collaborating. However, there are options for smaller projects/pieces of work; Patreon is a site that allows you to set up your own page, where patrons can donate money every time you create art, or a fixed monthly fee can be paid instead. Patreon takes a 5% commission from this. The average person donates $7 per creation which is not bad when you consider how big an audience some people have.bThe site was initially made for musicians, but it has become increasingly popular with artists, especially webcomic artists who will consistently be posting work.

Patreon started out much more recently, in 2013. The creator themselves produced content on the internet and thought that it would be much better to have a way to get regular income than constant crowdfunding campaigns from other crowdfunding sites, which does make sense. I think that artists would benefit much more from using Patreon for their own work, but when it comes to collaboration or something that involves physical purposes, then Kickstarter or IndieGogo would be a much better choice. I would like to join Patreon when I get the the point where I am confident enough that people want to view my work and may actually pay for it; my art needs to be more consistent and confident, and I would need to produce it much more often but I think that it would be great to get to that point and actually be able to earn my own money through this.

Social Networking for Group Projects

Social Networks are extremely helpful for collaborative projects, especially where members are involved in many parts of the project.

Having a Facebook lets you share links and images straight away, where people can easily leave comments and feedback. A conversation could be started around something posted on there, and the layout of the site lets you know exactly what that person is commenting/replying to. There are different privacy settings if you only want certain people to be able to find it, and it is easy enough to add or delete people as and when needed.

You can also share/add people to pinterest boards, letting them see every bit of research you are doing (or even pieces of work, although I find a lot less original work on here). A lot of pins are sourced (even though really, they all should be) and that can give you more places to look for research. Again, the adding/inviting settings are easy enough, and the tag system lets you find all manner of things to add.

There are other sites that are useful for sharing work, but these are some of my favorites, especially for the sort of projects I am doing at the moment. I feel like this is a helpful and efficient way of working, especially if you only see some people in the project once or twice a week.

How To Make A Portfolio For Character Design

As Character Design is my main focus, especially at this point in time, it is important that my portfolio will reflect this. It needs to be able to show my skills and persuade people to hire me. Of course, there isn't always one exact way to do things - thinking outside the box always helps, especially in a creative situation, but I have found some tips and ideas to help me make a more effective portfolio.

The first thing I found was a few tips for portfolios intended for students applying to Sheridan's Animation program that was the choice of university for many Disney, Pixar and Dreamworks animators/directors. There will be some difference between a portfolio for university and industry, but I feel like these tips are a good place to start for looking at the sort of things to include.

4. Character Rotation -Draw a character rotation of your original character design using the following views. Put each view on a separate (8.5” x 11”) sheet. The sizes and proportions of each view should be consistent with the other views.
• front view
• 3/4 front view
• profile view
• 3/4 back view
• back view

5. Action Pose Sheets – two action poses of your original character (each pose on a separate 8.5” x 11” inch sheet). Keep these drawings rough and loose.

6. Expression Sheet – On one sheet only, draw your original character’s head with five different expressions (see below). Show dimension by changing the angle of the head for each expression. You may choose to draw these heads on larger paper and cut, paste and reduce if necessary to arrange all five heads on one 8.5” x 11” sheet, but you need to include the original drawings as well as the reductions.
• neutral (normal expression)
• angry
• happy
• sad
• surprised

Another place I have found tips is on Grizandnorm's Tumblr, under their 'Tuesday Tips'. The Tumblr is run by Griselda Sastrawinata and Normand Lemay - Griz is a character designer/visual development artist at Dreamworks and Norm is a storyboard artist at Disney.

Tuesday Tips — Portfolio 101.
With the end of the year/the beginning of the year fast approaching, it’s a good time to revamp your portfolio.  These are some quick tips for visual development/character design portfolio.
1.  Know what you want on your finish book.
Work backwards — decided on how many pages you want, then work from there.
2.  Best piece on the first page, second best on the last page, and third best in the middle.  (Something that I learned from Art Center.  This doesn’t always work out, but it’s a good thing to remember and I do my best to put my best piece on the first page).
3.  Rythm.  Make sure it flows nicely.  Most of the time, you’re NOT there in person when someone is looking at your book; so it’s a good idea if it tells a story and make sure it is telling who you are as an artist and what can you do to help out the team.
I also put an example of a thumbnail if I were to plan a 24 pages printed visual development  portfolio.
Have fun
Griz
 

Another Disney artist that I respect, Chris Oatley, says: "In more than a decade of reviewing character design portfolios at art school Q&A sessions, comic cons and online, I have met many skilled artists. …but I almost never meet an aspiring or pre-professional character designer who actually understands the job. Typically, these artists rush into the design without getting to know the character."

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"If you want to design complex, surprising, believable characters and get someone to pay you to do it, you’re going to have to be consistently surprising."
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"So until you’re a seasoned pro, slow down and don’t give up until it’s great."

If you’re happy with your design, re-design it. Why not? You might surprise yourself and create something even better! If you’re happy with what you have, you have nothing to lose by trying a different, more surprising version" -Oatley"

I can see that I really need to focus on making a character believable and complex; focusing only on design isn't enough. I'm excited to get more work done to be put in my portfolio with these ideas and a clearer direction of where to go and how I need my portfolio to look.

Business Cards

Business cards are great for networking - it's an easy way to give people your name, contact info and possibly even an example of the work you do, depending on how you design your card.

I like to keep a lot of my favorite business cards on my wall both for reference and just because they look good. Most of these are from Thought Bubble, which is a great chance to find business cards and, if I do get a table next year, give them out as well.

My most favorite ones though are the ones that I feel stand out much more. For some of these it is the coloring, like the pink and Brogan Coral's pink and purple card, and the one above it. I also like how Maris Wicks and Gemma Correll have turned theirs into something other than a card with some illustration and a name on them - they're fun, and they stick out, and I feel like they give you a better feeling of who the person is and what sort of art they are likely to produce. I like how the simple text of The Space Adventures card gets to the point but stands out - there is no clutter on the card and there isn't any tiny, superfluous text that is hard to read. I also like the contrast and use of white in the card next to it, for Will Kirkby; the illustration takes up most of the card with the text overlaid, and it is a lot more interesting to look at than a lot of the ones in the image above, with one illustration and then a small block of text. It is more noticeable and is more unique than the ones above, as there are a lot less that seem to be using this technique. 

Making a business card looks fun, but there are so many places you can start with. I have already decided on rounded edges if possible just because of how much better I think the cards look with them. I am not sure whether or not to do a self portrait type card like some of the above, or have examples of my work instead. I might have to experiment with this and see which look better. I also have the choice of more text or more illustrating - I don't think that an even mix of both is as effective as seen in the first image, but I think that since I like my work to be bright with thick lines, using more illustration could be a good way of getting my card to stand out.

What Is Visual Development?

Visual development is a very important part of creating an animation, game and other types of visual entertainment. Also called concept art, it is a key starting point to get the look and the feel of the product. Someone who works in vis dev will work closely with other departments such as Production design, Art Direction and others to take ideas further to finished production ready pieces. Visual development helps a lot when it comes to world building, something that I really love the sound of. Backgrounds, props, characters, colours and lighting are all an important part of building up this world into something enjoyable, different but still relatable.

Depending on the industry in particular that you are talking about and who you ask, visual development can refer to different things. Using the term 'concept art' often makes people think of a fully rendered, beautifully painted piece of art that accurately shows the final idea of what the piece of media is going to look like. This is not what, by most professionals, is called concept art. A quote that I think explains it really well from here is that "the final audience is never going to see a piece of concept art. They are only going to see the result of the communication between the concept art and the development team". The point of concept art is to generate ideas and create the world and things inside it for the project. This is why I am picky with a lot of art books - some are almost exclusively this 'concept art' that shows nothing of ideas, just painted scenes of what I can already see in the game/animation etc. I like to see initial designs, how they evolved and what might nearly have been chosen to work with instead. I feel like understanding what has informed the ideas and what alternatives were thought about helps you to understand the fictional world even more, and to me that is much more exciting than a pretty painting.

The games Mass Effect, Bioshock Infinite and Borderlands are some of my favorites when it comes to visual development/concept art; it is very clear where they came from and where they are going throughout their designs, and it's great to see what could have been.

What I Want From This Year Update

I have decided that I would be better off putting my effort into just one area - design. I don't think that I would have time to explore both design and 3D modelling in enough detail at the same time, and looking at 3D as well would take time away from more design projects that could be done to fill up my portfolio which I think is going to be one of my main aims this year. I want to concentrate on getting a lot more character design done - but still with a bit of prop and environment design, which could also help to show my characters in context.

I think that this is a much better idea for actually achieving something by the end of the year, but that isn't to say I have given up on 3D modeling -  I am happy to do some when needed in a project and I might do the occasional bit to help show off my designs but I think it would be better to look at that after I am on my way to having a solid portfolio.

Animating Illustrations: Illustration 2 Animated

I enjoyed my first try at an illustration inspired by Rebecca Mock, so I decided to try another - this time applying the concepts much more to character animation than just a whole scene, as a chance to practice some animation without having to worry about creating a whole 40 seconds and having no idea how to do that well. I have used another piece of fan art so that I don't focus too much much on designing new things, and so that I can apply this technique to other peoples' designs if need be,

I have missed being able to focus so much on thicker lines, especially when doing smaller or more detailed images. It was fun being able to go fairly thick, although I would have to keep in mind the brush size when animating. I did these lines in Paint Tool SAI which gives me much clearer, crisp lines than in Photoshop, no matter what the settings.

I used the anime for colour reference, before upping the saturation slightly because I like working in much brighter tones.

I didn't want to use the same shading as last time or too many blurry elements on the character because that would make animating him a lot harder. I don't think it would have been as effective with my thicker lines anyway, so it looks better this way. I added a few cloud shapes before blurring them along with a translucent layer for the smoke.

This piece is animated fully in Photoshop rather than After Effects, since I don't think there would have been any way to get the effects that I wanted, except maybe the smoke. It was nice to try more hand drawn animation again, although I still don't think I could do a longer piece with more animation and really enjoy it. This was fun though and I would like to maybe try it on some of my own characters at some point and see how animating different parts of the illustrations changes the focus of the image.

This has a lot more animation in than Mock's pieces, but I think it works since the focus is on the character rather than the background. The foot outside/on top of the frame was unintentional; I left the edge of the ship white while I was working on the rest of it, but I like the almost 3D effect it gives, and it would be fun to play around with a bit more.

This has made me a little bit friendly towards 2D animation again, although I still don't enjoy it as much as designing but if it can be used more as a tool to explore and/or show off my designs and illustrations then I am willing to play with it again.

Animating Illustrations: Illustration 1 Animated

After completing my illustration, I separated the layers for animation - lights on the red jumper, the star/spring on the headband and the layer of smoke above the mugs, merging the rest together to make working in After Effects much easier. After creating an After Effects project, I imported the .psd file, keeping the layers separate. I used effects and the glow tool for the lights on the jumper, which was extremely easy and something I have experimented with before.

For the smoke I changed the scale, size and opacity between frames but it doesn't move that well, and next time it may be easier to animate in photoshop, maybe over 12 frames and the repeating them

I had fun animating the star the most. I rotated the image first, but it rotated from the wrong point so rather than using a lot of positioning keyframes as well, I created a null object and placed it at the base of the spring. I parented the layer to the null object, creating my rotation keyframes through that rather than the layer. This time the image rotated from the right point, but it looked too flat and not very believable. I wasn't sure how to go about this, but I guessed that using the same sort of technique could work. I duplicated the star/spring layer, before using the eraser tool to delete the bottom half of the spring. I then placed another null object where that spring half of the spring started, parenting it again. I tried rotating it on top of the rotated star below, and it let me give a much more exaggerated movement. I erased the bottom half of the spring on the original layer, so that between the two layers they made up one full image.

I had to use a lot more position keyframes though to match the top half of the star to the bottom half, since the point where they should connect obviously moved when the bottom of the spring was moved. This didn't take too long though, and eventually I got the animation working with both parts.

I had a lot of fun creating this image; I feel like I found a way to colour that I enjoy and could actually finally stick to, and just trying to backgrounds more makes me want to actually concentrate on creating a few more complicated and well thought out backgrounds. I learned more in After Effects about movement and null objects than I expected to, and even though I am not a huge fan of animating, I am actually excited to try some more small pieces of After Effects animation to go on images I create. This was definitely a great exercise, and I would recommend it to other animators/illustrators.

If I was to do that again, I would probably think about the overlapping action a lot more, maybe separating the spring into three parts instead, and making the top half have a more exaggerated movement so that it was still very much to the side while the base began to move the other way again. I could still have had a lot more parts of the image animated, as they are more subtle I think than Rebecca Mock's, so in the next piece I make, I will take into account the pieces that could move/change/interact and what would add something extra to the illustration if it wasn't still.

Animating Illustrations: Illustration 1

Recently, I have been inspired by the artist Rebeca Mock's work, who uses slight hints of animation in still illustrations to add life to an an image, and tell a story without having to make a full image or video, or have another page/panel/image. I feel like thinking about small details like this would help my practice a lot, thinking about what is happening in an image, how I could show this, and how to really enhance any small details in my pieces.

For my first illustration, I took a drawing from my sketchbook (a season inspired piece of fanart and relevant right now) and decided to turn it into a full illustration. I tend to just draw characters without any context, and since Mock creates full scenes in her images, this is a great chance to actually try adding a background too. I usually stick to basic colouring or get a bit too carried away trying to pain something and not being fully happy with it. This time, I thought it would be best to actually use reference images and tutorials and actually stick to the way I intended to create the image.

I found a few reference images of  christmassy living room on Google creating a palette from the most popular colours in the images, and blocked out some basic shapes. I didn't want to background to be too busy and full of detail since I had a lot of other things to concentrate on, and I wanted the viewers to pay more attention to the characters and the animation.

I hid the background and create a new layer with a solid light brown colour, to give me something to work with while colouring. After inking my characters, I set the lines to a dark red/brown colours so that they were less harsh, and worked much better with the background and feel of the image. Using my palette created earlier, I blocked out the characters' base colours, making some adjustments to get a nicer contrast.

For the shading, I found a tutorial that I have read a few times, but never actually put into practice before. I usually just try to figure out the right colours based on my knowledge of colour theory and do them on top of the base colour, but the tutorial I found uses a greyscale layout with multiply, with extra detail and colours added afterwards. I changed the hue and saturation of my shade layer to a warmer, pink colour to go with the feel of the image. I used warmer shades for the shadows, and lighter, colder colours for the main lighting, coming from a very light window with lots of blue outside. I did the same for the furniture and background objects, trying to keep the colouring style consistent.

The tutorial can be found here.

I wanted to leave the skin do do myself, using more of a normal cel shading technique, with a blurred layer of the flat shadow underneath it.

On top of this I created a subtle yellow to orange gradient, using it as an overlay to enhance the image. I tweaked any parts of the images that needed some colour correction or more or less contrast, until the image looked close to finished.

After this, I moved on to animating in this post.

Rebecca Mock

Rebecca Mock is an illustrator and comic artist based in Brooklyn who creates illustrations with slight animation. She has created variant covers for the Adventure Time comics an illustrations for The New York Times.

The animation she uses in her images ranges from subtle to noticeable but still covering less than half the image. She uses this to tell stories and really set the atmosphere in her pieces, even if there is no text or actions happening. Her colours are also chosen very well, adding to the atmosphere and really letting you know what the setting feels like. This technique gives more depth to the image, looping perfectly so that you do not have to just watch one animated scene to see it.

I would like to create more animations/illustrations like this, to explore more sides of image making and illustration that I am not quite as strong at while still animating, and learning more techniques to make things move and interact. I feel like this could help me with my story telling, using still images to get something across while enhancing it with animation to make it feel much more alive. even just for my character designs, I could use small extra bits of animation like this to reinforce any of the character's personality traits through small movements, or important details that may move/glow etc. This would really make me think about how they act/look off of the page, and maybe with some moving environments too they could help to flesh out my characters a lot more.

My favourite piece of Mock's is the laptop one, above; the image holds so much life without there being a person present. The colours are very vivid and bright, imitating the environment that someone with this set up would really be in, drawing your attention straight away. The deep colours again help to give the image life and it feels much more of a living piece than a plain scene. It gives you just enough of a scene to be able to visualise a character, to put someone or yourself into this image. It is relatable, making it easier for the audience to connect to this image and I feel like it is very effective.

Social Networking

A social network is a place that allows people to connect online, whether it be for personal or professional reasons. Social networks generally allow you to post text/images/audio when and however you want, and to keep a track of the content that other people that you follow may post.

The first that people may think of when they hear the word social network is Facebook and Twitter. These are only a few examples, but there are many more and social networking sites rise and all throughout the years. Sites like Myspace and Livejournal were once large sites for all kinds of networking, but are now used mostly for specific content, as other uses of the site are now less used than they used to be.

I have created social networking accounts throughout the years for various things, but in recent years I have been creating ones for much more specific reasons. These still aren't as rich in content as I would like, but I still have time to add to my networks. I would like to specialise further this year, especially in 3D animation, so I can then put more specific, consistant and related works on my channels and any channels in the future.

Twitter

I use Twitter for exploring and researching the worldwide animation community more than anything else. It is good to keep up with news, and to have a look at the sort of job offers that appear (especially on AnimationJobs ). I have also used it to talk to people at studios in Manchester, and talk to them about visits and what sort of thing they do. I can also keep up with conventions and get updates without having to check individual websites.

DrawCrowd

Drawcrowd is still a relatively new website for putting up at - especially digitally painted art. I love to look at that sort of thing so I made an account, but I don't do enough of my own art of this type to upload things. This type of art is less relevant to my professional interests, but is still interesting for ideas and inspiration.

Vimeo

Vimeo is good for sharing your work on a more professional level than video sites such as Youtube or Vine; the general standard of videos tend to be higher, and is less associated with silly, gimmicky videos and ice bucket challenges. I feel like it looks a lot neater and is good for keeping a portfolio of animated work.

Pinterest

I use Pinterest more for research than for my own actual work; it helps to create moodboards of relevant images and ideas that can be neatly organised and easy to find. It also lets me follow other peoples' boards and constantly be finding more relevant images. The only problem in the lack of sources, but this can sometimes be solved by sites like SourceNao and Google Image Search.

 

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is good for finding other people with skills and communicating with them. You can also show off your own work, talk about your experience and show your skills which is good for future employers. This can be used like a more detailed CV with live examples of your work and projects. I need to get more work and information on my account because this will be a useful site, and as I continue to look into my skills and what I want to use them for throughout PPP2, I should be able to fill this out a lot more.

 I use my RSS Feed often to see updates from artists, websites and companies that would talk me ages to search through otherwise. I can read the title of the post or updates that appear and decide then whether or not I want to read the content, or skip it and go to the next entry. Everything can be nicely organised, and it makes researching and reading news much easier.

I find Tumblr to be one of the more useful sites for showing your work, and that is what I use mine for. The tag system makes it very easy to look for things you want to find, and you can follow artists that you like. You can then see anything they reblog which allows you to find new art, artists and ideas. This also allows other people to share your work and gives you more exposure. It is also easy enough to tag your work separately so that your different tags can be looked at on your page - for example, the tags at the top of my page on the left, letting you choose between animation work, digital work and other options.

I don't tend to follow many people art wise on Facebook; I use that more as a purely social platform, but it is something that people check everyday, and having a page on there that everyone follows would be extremely useful. Once I have enough of the same style work to upload, I will create a Facebook page for myself and begin exhibiting my work on there. I will probably make a professional Youtube account at some point as opposed to my student account that holds even my less proud work, as Youtube is widely used for entertainment and could link people to my other pages through that. Instagram is also useful for still images and is something I have considered using, although I think it isn't quite as widely used as it was a few years ago, and is less of a match for Facebook, so I do not think I will make an Instagram account. 

Deviantart is another site that I have used for years - longer than any other of these sites in fact, and that is why I am reluctant to create a professional account. I still associate the site with fanart and beginners even though I know that a lot of professionals use it, and there is also a lot of beautiful work in there. It is used a lot by comic book artists, and a lot of people have been hired that way. I think that eventually I will create another account on there, especially as it is a good way to keep up with art, the groups are very useful on there, and I have seen a lot of people use it to show and provide 3D models for download very efficiently. This could be good for my practice, and for connecting with a lot of different artists.

I will continue to use my own name on all of these sites, since I would rather work for a company than be my own brand and it is best to keep consistent, especially when I link all of my accounts together.

Thought Bubble - Sketch Spotlight 2

One of the first subjects broached at the Sketching Spotlight, as usual, was of routine. Carroll and Boulet were agreed that their routines were largely chaos, but that was okay as long as they hit their deadlines. They would do a lot of work through the last minute panic.

The bits of animation on Boulet's websites weren't necessarily planned, but he saw where he could put some so he did it. Since at lot of the artists at the panel show their work digitally, they have to think about how their work would look in print if they wanted to sell/distribute it. Carroll finds it very hard to use her work in print, since she utilises everything that a digital medium can give her, like scroll bars, clicks, hovering and gifs etc.

Carroll also uses a lot of thumbnails and layout planning in her script book. She looks at webcomics as being less of a financial investment, and didn't know how to get into print comics anyway. She uses traditional pencils/inks and then colors and edits digitally and she prefers penciling and inking manually and then switching to digital for colouring and editing.

Boulet said it was 'hard not to get eaten by the machine' when talking about digital art; a new tool makes him want to test all of the limits, especially Photoshop, although this could make his art a bit inconsistent rather than sticking to the same thing he has done for his projects. He also like water colours because they make it easier to be lazy - he can use water colours while he watches the TV.

Tarr commented that life drawing informed her work and actually made her cartoonier style much better. Corsetto agreed and said that one of her only regularly scheduled things as life drawing and that she enjoyed the shorter poses a lot more, since they are great for cartoonists. She doesn't like the 40 minute poses as much though - "what would you do for 40 minutes?" Corsetto's mentor always old her to think more and draw less. Tarr gets bored of rendering and also prefers much shorter poses.

Boulet commented that it was hard to give up control to an assistant or a collaborative partner; it was more interesting leaving them to do what they wanted, otherwise it ended up too close to his ideas so he re-did a lot of work in stick figures to give them more of an opportunity to do their own stuff. Carrol doesn't like giving negative feedback, so it is easier working on her own.

Carrol likes to use her dream journal as inspiration for comics which somehow meant she had less nightmares, and she also continues to work on her stories as she goes along rather having it all 100% to how it was planned.

Boulet finds it boring to ink over pencils - he would rather ink straight away, and improvise. He also commented that it was weird to achieve a dream that you wanted and hate it; he found it more fun to to sketchbooks and silly little comics, so he went into webcomics instead. His job was suddenly interesting again and he would get instant feedback which was much more fun and he left doing printed comics - "Now I'm happy and rich!"

Something that came up in this part of the panel was ages; Boulet is 39, Carrol is 33, Corsetto is 31 and Tarr is 27. All have been doing comics from around their 20s, mid 20s. Corsetto doesn't plan well - her characters aren't planned much before hand and he 'fans know more abut my characters than me'.

Boulet said that webcomics were expensive to do on his own website, but he ended up getting all of the site stuff done free from a fan after complaining about it on Twitter - this fan now does all of his programming/coding for him.

It was interesting to look at the different ways that these artists work and their reasons for choosing digital or traditional media. Webcomics would be an interesting thing to look into although they would require a lot of motivation.

Thought Bubble - Sketch Spotlight Artist Introduction

I didn't know any of the artists involved in the Sketch Spotlight this year, but that didn't make the panel any less fun. A lot of the artists this year work primarily on webcomics or comics presented digitally, so it was interesting to hear about their different processes and way of working than the artists the year before. this years artists were as follows;

Danielle Corsetto, writer/artist of the webcomic Girls With Slingshots which celebrates it's 10th year this year. It is a slice of life webcomic well known for its well done depictions of characters with disabilities, and LGBTQ characters.

  

Emily Carroll is an illustrator who studied animation at university, and creates a lot of horror comics on her website. She has had her work featured in a few anthologies (especially ones collecting horror stories) and he work has also been featured in games  The Yawhg and Gone Home.

Babs Tarr is a freelance illustrator now drawing the Batgirl comic for DC comics. She has also done some game art/character design for the Facebook game 'Wormwood' before working in comics. Her work can be found on Tumblr, Instagram, DeviantArt and Etsy among other places.

   Boulet is a French cartoonist posting comic strips to his cartoon blog since 2004. This has made him very big in France and his work has been published in several volumes. His work is largely in French, although some have been translated to English and in 2009 he began an English version of his blog, achieving wider success among other countries.

What I Want From PPP This Year

This year's PPP module gives us a chance to explore further into one are of animation that we are interested in. I am very excited to get a module where I can specialise in something - I didn't enjoy all of last year as much as I could have done; trying everything was fun, but 2D animation is not something that I enjoy doing. I would much rather focus on the design and keeping the drawings looking nice than making the figure move, and that hindered my results significantly.

I thought that I would come into PPP ready to concentrate fully on design and visual development, and though I love those areas and would still like to continue them, our work so far this year has given me a chance to try 3D animation/art, and I am enjoying it so much more than I expected to. It feels much more natural than 2D animation and I would like to do more. However, the most fun thing I have done on this course so far is 3D modelling, and that is something I would like to focus on throughout our PPP module. Maybe 'design and creation of 3D assets' would be a good description of the work I hope to do this year and is something I will try and bring focus to throughout everyone of my modules.

I will start with more basic modelling, then texturing it and rigging for animation. I may then do some animating, and practice interaction between my characters, backgrounds an props and how I can make this work more smoothly.

By the end of this year I would like to have enough work to have a decent porfolio of 3D models and designs of characters, props and environments. At the moment I feel like I would like to show a larger focus on characters, but I know that through modelling I could change my mind on this, so I will have a look at how far I am after Christmas and hopefully be deciding on one particular aspect of modelling to do more of and feature more heavily in my portfolio. Studios will be looking for a more specific focus than just 3D modelling, and though it will be very good to have proof that I can do everything, I need to be specific in what sort of modelling I would specialise in for a company, and what sort of modelling I am better at.

SWOT

THINGS TO DO/THINK ABOUT TO MAKE OUTCOME STRONGER;

Substitute - different material/process/location/character
Combine - two characters as one? Skills, time management
Adapt - different context or medium? Change role, reuse old stuff.
Modify - settings? Emphasis? Addition?
Put to another use - Audience? Research later? Re-use rig etc
Eliminate - tone down, streamline, plot needed, function
Reverse - story back to front, different sequence, different perspective

Don't always be happy with what you have made. Get feedback, make changes, experiment with shifting around other parts of the idea and use principles as above. Brain remembers curves more than straight lines - put mindmaps into workfile etc - word association

SWOT;

STRENGTHS
- Organisation - prioritising, visual research easy to get to and in categories
- Experimenting - can easily slip into other styles and build off of them, see what works and what doesn't
- Teamwork - task delegation and compromising
- Meeting deadlines
- Design
- Photoshop skills
- Not afraid to network online

WEAKNESSES
- Animation
- Focusing on multiple parts of the project - don't feel like I can put 100% into everything I'm doing if I have to switch/split my effort between different parts of it
- Need a lot of deadlines to keep me motivated and on track; a longer deadline means a longer time to procrastinate in
- Documentation - easy to leave until last minute when done digitally, much more fun and do it more regularly with a sketchbook etc.

OPPORTUNITIES
- Studios in Manchester
- Thought Bubble Festival - networking + selling one year
- Competitions
- Whatever comes out of Responsive

THREATS
- Competitions - more experienced people *in both skill, time management and advertising/networking)
- Projects that focus on animating that slow down my progress when it comes to design - could get at least 3 good design projects done in place of an animation module
- Balancing time between projects

AREA I WOULD LIKE TO DEVELOP FURTHER THIS YEAR:

DESIGN

- characters, props and environment

AREAS TO LOOK AT IF I HAVE TIME:

3D MODELLING 

- characters, props and environment

Social Media

I have found social media to be very useful throughout this year.

 I already had a Tumblr, although this course has helped me fill it out a lot more. It gave me something to show Kilogramme when I asked about work experience, rather than having to bring a tonne of sketchbooks or sift through a million different pages between 3 different college blogs. Our front page could serve as a portfolio, but it is so awkward to see the images - and to have people find your art on it anyway, that it is not worth the effort. On tumblr you can tag work making it easier for people to find you, and all it takes is one reblog from the right person for thousands of other people to be able to see you art. I have even had Giancarlo Volpe, the producer of Green Lantern The Animated Series 'Like' my Green Lantern fanart on the site.

Through Asks on Tumblr, I have also spoken to quite a few animation students from America, particular third years who have given me tips and advice for my work and the rest of my uni experience.

Twitter makes it very easy to talk to people who would not necessarily even look at your messages on any other site. I have been able to ask about work experience, and find out about the sort of projects that other people and companies have been working on. The notification system lets you know whenever you have a reply, and it a very easy way of talking to people.

I have more people seeing my art now and it is a lot less intimidation to talk to big names in animation on the internet. I will definitely continue to use my social networking accounts throughout and after university, and hopefully I will have enough contacts on both to have learned a lot and to be able to find out about things that could be very useful to me.

Presentation Anxiety

We have a presentation coming up at the end of the year to help us reflect on everything that has happened and what we have learned. I am not a fan of presentations - in fact, I used to start hyperventilating at just the thought of it. I have slowly been getting better at it throughout the year, and despite still feeling quite nauseated as I wait for my turn, I do seem a lot more confident while I am presenting. The main thing I do to help this is not overthink it. That gets me even more nervous. I do not write a script, otherwise I sound robotic and trip over my words because I am talking and reading at the same time, or making sure it goes 'right'. The way I tackle it now is to write down a few points per slide that I need, and then don't look at my notes while I am presenting. I just remember the subject I need to be talking about that then treat it as a conversation (albeit a one-sided one). This makes my speech much more natural, and come on - how much passion and excitement can really come out of a rehearsed word for word presentation? Of course there is always a chance for me to forget one or to things, but I definitely sound a lot more like I know what I am talking about and that I am interested in it.

Although I do have a strategy now, I still find it nerve wracking while I am waiting for my turn, so I am going to look something we discussed earlier on in the year about fighting that anxiety;

1. Get Blood Flowing! 
Excercise has a positive effect on your nerves for up to 12 hours (and don't you always feel better after exercising?) I will definitely try to keep moving before my presentation and get myself pumped up.

2. Rehearse, Don't Memorise
Practice - but don't memories. Be able to improvise, but know what you are talking about. Memorising 'implies that you are dependant, lack confidence and are controlled by your talk'. I have this one down, I think.

3. Show Appreciation
If you show that you care for your audience, they will care for you. Speak about things relevant to them, and look them in the eye! But not for too long. That would be a little bit awkward.

The Tale of Despereaux Development - 2D to 3D

Though 3D animation is not something I have tried before, it is definitely something that I would be interested in experimenting with, and something that I would like to try ahead of next year's module involving it.

I came across some of the visual development artwork for The Tale of Despereaux by Olivier Adam, and it is interesting to see how to 2D design fits into the end 3D model.

To get details exactly as they are in the development art must take so long, so I am not surprised to learn that occasionally things will change to make it easier for the people building in 3D programmes. When they do get it exactly the same as the design though, it looks great. I would be amazing to have a whole world that you have designed going from a drawing on paper to something that you can pan around and zoom into.

I am planning on gathering a stock of videos and tutorials over the summer so that I can try to learn how to use programs like Autodesk Maya. I also want to see if there is anything out there about visual development specifically for 3D animations, and whether or not ideas and designs would have to change depending on the intended outcome.

I am definitely excited to learn new ways to see and make new worlds!