While I was decorating my CV I added one of my characters and because of these blue lines that reminded me about old platform videogames like Donkey Kong or Super Mario. Therefore I decided to give this impression that the character above on the CV go down through these blue platforms becoming bigger and bigger, finding at the end below his siblings or his children.
During the year I could meet some people who have their animation studios, listening their experience taking notes from their advice, how to do a showreel and what to do, how it is the situation in the market and where are the best places for looking a job in animation. One of these studio was the Rumpus Animation, and another one was Sun and Moon studio. Listening them, combined with the experience I am gaining at UWE, I developed an interest for 2D Falsh animation. I want to continue to develop primary my skills with CGI animation, but if I can manage it I would like to learn how to use Flash good enough to use it professionally. However as I have written I will learn well how to work in CGI animation, and seeking informations on different studios that are in UK, because for now I am interested to find a job here. I have found out that a lot of CGI studios are in Dublin and they receive some finances to do animation projects and this is really useful and important. An interesting thing is that these studios use both CGI and Flash for different projects, some of them combine in a single project all different method of animation, stopmotion, 2D Flash or After Effect and CGI. An example is the Boulder Media that has done "The Awesome world of Gumball" and it combines all these different types of animation. Other interesting studios in Dublin are: Giant Animation and Brown Bag Film. All of these studios are offering different jobs both 2D Flash and CGI and they look really friendly. There are different studios in Bristol too, Rumpus and Sun and Moon studios as I've nominated before, plus another one that looks really interesting using 2D Flash and CGI animation, it is A Production Ltd. Another thing that I have learned is that in London there more studios with more possibilities, but it is also harder to get a job there because the competition is higher than in Bristol. Many studios like Rumpus and Sun and Moon do also videogames for tablets, a new type of market that it is expanding really fast with the diffusion of smartphone and tablet. However there are also different companies of videogame in UK, one of these is the EA Games that has a place in Guildford, Surrey, United Kingdom, offering at the moment a job as lead animator. So for now I will continue to look these studios, in Bristol and Dublin, but maybe I will start in the future to look in France too. I have always had difficulties on doing business card, or logos or similar works. So I sketched different possible images for my business card before arriving to the definitive. And this below is the final one.
The second project, called “Borader”, is a CGI animation of a third year student Faeez
Hilmy. Because I want to work in CGI animation, I wanted to start learning how to use 3D programs like 3D Maya and this was a good opportunity. I have experience on using Blender, but most of the 3D studios use Maya, Zbrush and similar programs so it would be better for me starting to learn how to use these and other different 3D programs. I did not have any experience on using Maya, however as part of the work experience offer, I had been taught by Faeez how to use it for modelling. Before starting to collaborate on the project, other students and I participated to the presentation of the project, what was the project, its story, what we should have done, taking a time table with the days of when we had to work and the deadlines, so we could choose if collaborating or not. I had to model a giant robot, so even with my experience with Blender that was my first time modelling something with a mecha design. However it was also funny because each one of us could choose the nationality of our respective robot, letting us to personalize it a bit. The project was for a possible video-game, and I would like to work in a video-game studio in the future. My job, as a first year student, was just to model the robot and in case adding texture too. The process of the work was totally different from that one I was used with Blender, because this time I did not model it adding faces, but I built it adding blocks, each one separated and modelling them. Some moments I had difficulties, but in that cases I was helped by Faeez. This experience has been really useful, because I have had a first look on how it is a team work, gained some experience modelling with 3D Maya and what I would face choosing CGI animation. I also tried to do the textures but I had to give up because it was really difficult. Therefore I will learn how to do them in the second year or I will find out that I am good modelling but not adding textures on 3D models. The animation initially was made in stop motion or 2D animation. From 1970s it bore a new way to animate, that slowly through the years has been used more often. That is CGI animation, because computers became cheaper it was easier to buy them and using this new technology for special effects in movies. It starts to be used in 2D animation movies like in Disney's movie "The Great Mouse Detective". One of the first CGI studios Pixar does the first feature-length computer-animated film Toy Story. The introduction of 3D animation helps to create and animate things that before was really hard to do it. However even if CGI helps in many different ways, it has also to follow many rules common with 2D animation like Newton’s Laws of Motion (bouncing, squashing ecc.) . CGI animation continues improving in videogames too, with the birth of the new video game consoles, and with this evolution of technology are being created many different programs for using 3D animation, like Blender, Autodesk Maya, ZBrush ecc. With this new market in developing, it creates a lot of new opportunities of job, some of them are the same of 2D animation but they are employed of 3D animation.Most of the CGI studios are set in: Uk, U.S.A., France, Canada and Japan, but they are expanding in other places like in Spain, German, Norway. But for now I am choosing to look for a job in UK, probably in Bristol or in Dublin, because there are a lot of interesting studios, like: 422 South, 1988, Bristol and London (TV), Framestore CFC, London and New York (visual effects), The Moving Picture Company (MPC), Soho, London (Film, Advertising),Interference Pattern, Edinburgh (TV, Advertising, Games),Rockstar North, Edimburgh, (videogame studio) . Some useful links are: www.interferencepattern.com, www.creativeblog.com, http://422.com/, www.framestore.com, www.gamesindustry.biz, www.moving-picture.com . And some interesting animation festival that can be found in UK are: Bafta, Bradford Animation Festival, Encounters International Short film festival, London Short Film Festival and LIAF festival. |