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) 

Character Colour Designs (Dad and Son)

These colour designs are for a project I will be for a 2D series I will be working on. A few colour tests before deciding on a final look for my characters. I will be creating more characters and hopefully creating a family to base my short series around.

Brown hair for the father seemed more natural and subtle compared to the black and blond hair.  the style of the father's hair could be mistaken for a helmet - with the black design.  The blond design seemed very strange and abnormal for a man this age.

The four colour designs and skin tones for the character of the boy was widely varied until I came up with a final design spec.  I chose the black hair with the green tips to make him stand out and seem very bold.  My series will focus on the boy as the primary character.

Conveyor Belt Kaboom - Stop Motion

- Animatic -

                                                                   - Final Animation -

- Poster -

Super Clay Boy - Stop Motion

Character Animation - 3D

Short Lip Sync Piece