It's been a while! (Huge update!)

Well it has certainly been a while since my last post on the blog, however, a lot has happened for me within the past year.

After my graduation I have been looking for full time employment within the animation industry whilst still working on some of my own projects and freelancing for companies.

I had been in talks with an employer from Antyx animation and had gained some freelance work from them.  They had given me a poem which featured 8 characters of dragons, with a few words describing their personalities.  From that, I sketched and designed all characters and storyboarded the poem, how I envisioned it would look.

The company was pleased with this and I then animated the poem, whilst keeping the company up to date with the progress.  I kept it black and white and chose to colour it lastly, as I felt this was easiest to spot errors when revising what I had created.

The final animation turned out quite well in my opinion, the next stage of this is to publish stills in the animation for children's books, aimed towards the pre-school generation.

I had worked for another company, freelancing, who were actually in University with me a few years ago.  We were to animate characters which were going to be placed as segments throughout a low budget documentary.  I was given the task to animate one of the main characters in "Marty Goes To Hollywood" and I worked on a few other characters too.  These 2D segments lasted around 30 seconds and actually brought the documentary to life.  The film itself was nominated for a BAFTA at the Glasgow New Talent 2015 for "Best Factual Film" and won! Utterly massive considered I had the pleasure to work on it, huge add for my CV!

I also got an interview for an animator position within a company in Manchester called SDMC Productions, to work on a project for an 8 week contract which is a 2D series that is going to feature on Comedy Central's Adult Swim,

I actually was successful and got one of the 5 positions in the team (3 animators and 2 background artists) which is some achievement for my first ever job since leaving University.  Totally over the moon! The job was scheduled to start in February however, it has been held back for quite some time and I am now waiting for a start date for the role.

Jethrow Character Sheet and Further 2D Progress

More progress of my 2D animation, Jethrow now exiting his house and down his banana chute. The next shot will be him landing onto the sand and drawing his sword.

Jethrow Scene - Further Progress

I also created a character sheet for this character for more in depth detail about Jethrow's foundation:

I like making a character sheet as it gives the viewer a lot more information about Jethrow as a character and what makes him smile and what makes him tick.  The production of the animation will now be picked up, I hope to be onto the scenes which include Steve-Fin fairly soon.

Graduation and IMDB Credited!

It's been a while since my last post, I've mainly been working, job hunting and working on more of my 2D animation. I felt that it was time to pick up the pace with the production as I've fallen behind with it a little.

I graduated near the start of the month, after a full year of hard work, it finally paid off. It was a great day too.

I've been credited on IMDB for the character animation that I worked on! Really pleased with myself, more to add onto my CV too:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2887702/fullcredits?ref_=tt_cl_sm#cast

Definitely a boost to my confidence within freelancing as well as character building. Hoping to get some more contracted work in the near future with more companies.

Jethrow and Steve-Fin - Opening Shot Progress

I've animated the opening scene of Jethrow's house, a huge banana that has washed up on the shore, with the reveal shot of Jethrow appearing at his window. The windows and door are parts of the banana that have rotted which I felt looked effective.

The next part will be Jethrow smiling, squeezing through his window with a 'pop' and flipping over to slide down his banana chute with his arms flailing.

My Website

Forgot to mention on this, I made my own website to showcase my work and so it looks more professional when I'm applying for jobs.

http://animation-generalist.wix.com/joncampbell-animator

Have a look and let me know what you think! Constructive criticism always welcome.

Contracted Animation Work And Other Progress

I haven't posted on here in a while so I thought I'd add an update about what I've been upto.

I completed my Masters Degree at The Glasgow School of Art, absolutely crazy year, and the ceremony for my graduation is Friday 20th June.  Quite looking forward to it.

Over the past few months I also gained some great experience in the animation industry by getting contracted work with Glasgow company 'Smudge Digital', to work on a low-budget documentary. Other animators and I were contracted to work on eight animation segments which revolved around 3 primary characters, I worked exclusively on one of them.

These shorts were placed between scenes in the documentary and basically tied the scenes altogether which worked quite effectively and also will add some humour to the audience.

The documentary is in the editing process at the moment and it will be revealed at a premiere, which I am very excited about.  From there it will be shown at several festivals before it is sold to television. Any publicity is good publicity!

I really enjoyed my time with Smudge and I hope that there will be some more work in the near future.

I also got quite far in a few interviews for animator jobs but seemed to fall at the last hurdle, a bit disheartening but back to the drawing board, I guess.

I've also wrote a script for a 2D animation that I've started working on, a silly crazy plot that involves two primary characters. I've planned the script to be roughly nine minutes long, enjoying working on it so far.

This is the title card I whipped up showing both characters, I'm hoping to also make an intro to go along with the final animation. It's strange not having strict time constraints with this but I've planned a schedule and sticking to it! I'll post animation progress as I'm working on this more.

Facial Animation Showreel 2014

Animation Showreel 2013

The Mad Scientist In: More Than You Can Chew

This is my M.Des Animation final Masters project.  I chose to create my animation through the medium of stop motion and have it study a singular character.  Time was scheduled for the designing, creating, animating and the editing of the entire project - both sets and characters.

The story is about Professor Greedsworth, a  mad scientist who invents a machine that can generate different kinds of food.  However, inevitably he is engulfed by his own greed.

Busted! (3D Character Animation)

This is a short animation which was an assignment I received in university.  The task was to create a simple bipedal character and rig it, creating a short piece of animation that focuses exclusively on body mechanics and investigate principles that explore human motion and emotion through common actions.
From brief hand out to submission, I was given two weeks to undertake this assignment.  Overall I feel that I coped really well considering I haven't really constructed a fully functioning, rigged model before.

The Alarm Clock

This animation was part of an inanimate object assessment, in which we had to model, rig, light and animate an inanimate object and show it doing basic character movements.

Overall I feel that I did rather well with this task considering the time we were given to fully complete the animation.  The rig of the character is quite basic, however I spent quite a bit of time on the weight paints and afterwards, I believe that I grasped a huge knowledge of this tool that I can use in the future.

I took a "cartoony" approach with this character although I tried to keep the movements rooted to a human style.

Gump and Gil: Episode 1

Gil is a pretty laid back young man except when he's being pestered byhis best friend, Gump. During his morning glance at the "Mebay" auction site, Gil notices an item that he would love more than anything - his idol, Chuck Marshall's, baseball cap. However, someone else appears to have also their eyes on the cap...

This animation was completed by me and another animator in our spare time, we did it in around a time of 48 hours (including sleep and some DVD breaks) 

Abstract Animation

For this project I was to select a sound clip from a varied selection and create a short animation around the sound.  I decided to choose this sound over the others as I liked the techno-style beats and the sound itself is extremely abstract. 

The assignment was to explore the use of colour, movement and sound.

I wanted to experiment and explore the use of colour changes and glow within the scene.

I used a basic, plain wall texture in order to let the colours blend together and bleed onto the wall.

Overall I feel like this assignment turned out rather well as the final outcome is how I had imagined it to look from the beginning.

Conveyor Belt Kaboom - Stop Motion

- Animatic -

                                                                   - Final Animation -

- Poster -

Super Clay Boy - Stop Motion

Character Animation - 3D

Match Day Mishap - 2D Animation

Robo Repair Depot - Stop Motion

Smash - Whiteboard Stop Motion Short

The Trainer - Stop Motion Short