This is something I made quite early on in the induction process, I am not particularly skilled at using this software and wanted to practice making easier objects to start off with.
This model is incredibly simple, using very basic shapes and colour. I used both lambert and blinn textures to get the effect I wanted.
Beach Hut
This one was slightly more difficult, but again, a very easy process using simple shapes and textures to get the effect.
Tv and Table Experiment
360 Turntable.
For this model I experimented with the edges of my model and focusing on the detailed of the object such us the screen being slightly indented with the tv and the stand it sits on.
Final Model
For my final Model I wanted to do something quite bright.
I started by making a cushion so I could experiment with smoothing.
I then added this texture which I found online:
and applied it to the pillow.
After that...
I started working on a chair, I wanted it to be bright and have a level of interest to it in its curves etc.
I then layered the objects and put the pillow onto the chair.
Model Sheet
FINAL 360 TURNTABLE
Animating in Maya.
For my animation, I want to show a character skipping/happily walking into shot, noticing the box, peeking in, looking at the camera shrugging shoulders like "why not?" and then look in the box and being terrified of whatever if inside and falling backwards. Parts of this are quite ambitious but I feel that I may be able to just about pull it off with the practice I have had. Reference Video: This is me being stupid but it did the trick as it helped my know where to put the feet and position the hands.
I really like how both these showreels make the visuals and the music work together and want to try to create a similar effect within my own Showreel.
The Song I was originally thinking about using Marina and the Diamond's 'Blue' as the music for my Showreel, however I found that the lyrics were far to distracting so decided to go with something else.
I want to use the first 1 minute 20 of Beirut's song 'Rip Tide'. I think the instrumentals to this song are incredibly beautiful and could be really fun to put my work to.
RESEARCH Six Basic Expressions shown through Art. For this I am going to concentrate on artists and illustrators who focus on portraiture as that is the route I want to go down with my work. Me Attempting to Show the Six Basic Expressions. Surprise /Sadness/ Anger
Disgust / Joy/ Stress Stressed Danny O'Conner
'All Caught Up'- Danny O'Connor
Danny O'Connor's focus on multiple colours, a lack of focus, a lot of rough lines and use of sketchy lines express stress, as if the person in the painting can't do what they are trying to do. Joy Linzi Lynn
These paintings by Linzi Lynn are incredibly vibrant and colourful. They almost have a life of their own within the canvas.
I feel that these pieces express a lot of joy. I think the yellow backgrounds are also part of why these are such joyful pieces
Sadness- Guy Denning. Guy Denning's use of colour, expression and painting style all give the feeling of sadness and sorrow. You can see an immense feeling of emptiness in this painting to the left in particular.
Dreyfus- Guy Denning
It's the body language in this picture that makes it express sadness. The hand on the face and the look of self doubt both emphasise a feeling of sorrow.
Anger Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon's work shows an evident anger from the expressions in his portraiture's face.
Fear Ken Currie
A lot of Ken Currie's work has a ghost/corpse like resemblance which gives the viewer aninstinctive reaction to feel fear and repugnance. Disgust Maureen Gubia
I think that Maureen Gubia's use of colour in her work shows the feeling of disgust. This is achieved by using sickly colours as well as colour that don't go well against eachother.
This piece on the right clearly shows disgust in it's facial expression as well as the foamy substance that is surrounding the person in the portrait. Surprise Florian Nicolle
I really enjoy Florian Nicolle's work generally, I love his use of colour and line work to express emotions.
These pieces in particular, I feel, show surprise or something unexpected. I feel that the purple is a good colour to show surprise and it's is a mix of red (which can be seen as a colour that shows immense emotion) and blue (which is much more subtle, like sadness)
Brief The brief, in it's simplest form, is to show a change in emotion in a character through animation. I wanted to consider the subtleties of expression and how different emotional states can actually be very similar for a person. For example, surprise, anger, fear, stress and sadness can all cause anxiety, I whole new emotion with it's own characteristics. But equally surprise can be mixed with joy just as easily. I really wanted to show these subtle emotions in an abstract way. I didn't necessarily want to work with narrative and instead work with facial expression and body language. My Idea For my project I wanted to concentrate on a experimental art styles rather than having a narrative to show emotion and expression in my 'character'- if you can call it that haha.
I want to concentrate on Portraiture for this project, expressing emotion through facial expression, colour and shadow vs light to show how my character is feeling rather than expressing it through a storyline or plot. I chose to do this as I am interested in pursuing a career as an Artistic Director and therefore feel the art style and the feelings and metaphors behind it are just as (if not more) important than a narrative. I intend a close of a face expressing anger going into happiness in the space of 10 seconds as if the watcher is the cause of the character's/person's reaction. I wanted the watcher to almost be the reason for my characters interesting but subtle change in emotion, as if you are having a conversation and have caused the reaction shown in the animation. I thought that this is the most true to life way of showing expression as we don't know what is going on in the character's head and are left to interpret her response however you will. Colour I think I may use colours sparingly in this piece, hinting at it more than making it integral. I want colour to improve my animation but I don't want to rely on it to get the feelings of the character across. Lighting/shadow I want to focus greatly on light and shadow in my piece. I believe that if I can do it right, the shadow on the face can act as a metaphor for sadness, anger, or stress. I then wanted to work with this metaphor and swift it round to put an emphasis on the light parts of the face to show a more light hearted way of thinking and a lighter mood. Style of drawing I am going to animate the 'anger to sad' section in singles as I want to create a rough and almost fidgety animation style. I also want to animate the character fading in and out of emotions as that is more real to life. We don't just go straight sadness to happiness, we fade in and out of it, sometimes rapidly, sometimes over a long period of time. Reference Video My lovely friend Kirstie agreed to be my model/reference for this project and did a great job expression the emotions I wanted. I have a background in acting and film and so didn't find it too difficult to direct her to do exactly what I wanted and imagined for the piece. I specifically wanted her to start on the left looking angry, look up when sad (to express the feeling of wanting to give up) and then to look to the right and down when happy to show that she is privately happy about something the audience doesn't necessarily need to know about.
Sadly I had a really stupid moment and didn't hold the phone landscape and so will have to work at fixing that later. Traditional Sketches on Expression
Digital Paintings based Expression.
In this picture I was trying to emphasis stress. I used very rough and sketchy lines ( like Danny O' Connor) on the shading, a technique I think I will continue into the actual piece.
FURTHER RESEARCH
Silvia Pelissero
I am a really big fan of Silvia Pelissero's work. I really like her use of water colours, they are not only beautiful but give the viewer an idea of what's going on in the person in the portrait's head.
I am considering using water colours in the background of my own piece if I feel the work doesn't emphasise emotion enough without the use of colour.
[Notes.]
I decided not to go with this in the end as I wanted to focus more on block colour.
Carne Griffiths
I really like Carne Griffiths use of multiple media that works with the image to create a rough yet defined image.
I also really like the way that the paint splatters go off the portrait as if the feelings are breaking out of the person. As well as this I like use of light hitting the face against dark. Eoghan Kidney- 'Fight like Apes' Music Video
I really like the way that paint is used in this video, I may use this style for the 'angry' part of my animation and then change the style for the 'happy' segment.
'Take on Me' by A-ha.
I like the style of this video a lot and am considering doing the shading of my animation in a similar way.
Kris Trappeniers.
I like line drawings a lot, they give the effect of shading and shadow with a couple of lines. I may use this technique for the 'happy' segment of my work.
Russell Mills. I really like the use of colour and violent line work in Russell Mill's work, I also really like the way the black and white look on each other in this piece in particular and may think I may leave the initial animation quite plain and go into something more dramatic.
Helena Wierzbicki.
I really love Helena Wierzbicki's use of bright colour on more dull colours. I really love the bright blue in particular in this piece. Gerhard Richter I know I'm not looking at any of Richter's Portraiture for this piece which is slightly off the main topic of my piece, however I think that Richter's prints are just as emotive. The way he uses paint is incredibly expressive and I love his use of colour.
I am considering working in this kind of way for the back ground of my piece.
I had some earlier experiences with rotoscoping a couple of year back and was able to learn from my mistakes from before. For example, this time I work entirely on a computer instead of doing hand drawn 2D rotoscoping like last time, which I think, has created a much better effect.
Older attempt at Rotoscoping (Baby 18 year old Helena) The Animating Process. During the process of animating I encountered many mistakes, I managed to completely deleted my original version of my animation. Here is what it looked like originally: 1 Second:
3-4 Seconds without eyes:
7-8 Seconds:
This has taught me a valuable lesson in backing up my work several times (Losing 40-50 hours of work does that. Luckily, when I re-animated the piece it didn't take as long as I knew exactly what I was doing the second time round. Moreover this gave my time to truly develop the style I was trying to get across in the first version and I actually much prefer the style of the new version. It gave me a chance to really work on the darkness vs the light theme in my work. Final Piece Un-edited.
Edit 1:
I added more frames to the anger into sadness part to extend it out longer and extended the gap in between the angry into happy part.
I also slowed down the 'happy' part so it seems more easy going and the brush strokes are less brutal to look at in the second half.
I accidentally cut out the end of the video which I will fix in the next one.
Edit 2:
For my next edit I am going to look in to extending the 'fade aways' further and working more a fade out in to the outro part.
Final:
In this edit I fixed the formatting error i made earlier, made the face disappearing longer and more obvious and also made some changes to the timing in piece. I also faded the video out so the ending isn't as abrupt.
I didn't have time to put colour into this piece as I had originally wanted to, however I feel that it works well as a piece with out so I am happy with the way it turned out.
My Group are looking at what a young animator starting out right now may go in to at the start of their career. I looked in to 2D Music Videos as this is something I am very interested in this subject Jamie Hewlett I tried to get in contact with Jamie Hewlett via twitter first but didn't a response. It was unlikely that I would get a reply from this artist because they are too well known but I thought I would give it a try.
Gorillaz Music Video 'Feel Good Inc.'
Designed and Animated by Jamie Hewlett.
Eoghan Kidney
I also tried to contact Eoghan Kidney through tumblr (he doesn't give out his email or twitter account) as I liked the work he did for "Fight Like Apes" aside some of his other work, however I didn't get a reply. On the other hand, having found this video, I decided to base parts of my 'BA1B Expressions in Animation' piece in this video.
Fight Like Apes - 'Tie Me Up With Jackets'
Animated By Eoghan Kidney.
Jeff Le Bars Jeff Le Bars is a french animator and has created one of my favourite ever animations Carne, which was then used for Lonely the Braves 'Victory Line'. He replied to my email and said it was fine to ask him questions.
THE EMAIL
1) what inspired you to become an artist/animator?
I allways wanted to be a europeen comic book artist : "Bédéiste", from the french BD = Bandes Dessinées.
As a kid, I was a fan of BDs like Asterix, Lucky Luke, Tintin or later on Thorgal, etc... Pretty classic.
For me, cartoons and animation in general was just colourful and joyful entertainment for watching in front of the breakfast table in the morning.
But it was just for kids. I had a very poor culture in animation, I even had never seen a single disney movie, except the Lion King.
I enjoyed morning cartoons, but I didn't see myself in this industry (still don't ;)
But I discovered the "animatrix" that were created in between the first and the second matrix movies, and it opened a new world for me. I knew that was something I wanted to do one day, but I had no idea how to !
I first committed to "serious" studies after graduating highschool, like mathematics and social sciences, then english/spanish translation studies, to try and find a "serious" job that would ensure me a secure future. I really tried but it wasn't for me. I needed to create, in order to feel alive, no matter what lifestyle it would bring me. Maybe I lost a lot of time in those years of studies or maybe I needed the time to mature... I'll never know.
I then looked for several animation schools in France and tried a few competitive exams. I ended up in Emile Cohl school with the big help of my parents (because it is very expensive for a french school). There, I perfected my culture of graphic design in general. I still hesitated between BD and Animation, but I quickly realised animation was more satisfying 'cause I love studying movement and weight, and I just love music. I think it's really what BD lacks : Music. (Even if it has other unique qualities !)
And then, I was an animator !
2)how do you plan/research for your projects? You you use storyboards?
I've read that Carn was based lightly on a fairytale, is that something you look into a lot?
For ordered projects, I have lots of conversations with client to determine what will be the story/style, etc. Depends on what extent does the client already have a precise idea.
I then make graphic research for backgrounds and characters and scenic research in the form of a storyboard or directly an animatic.
It's a pretty common protocole.
For personal projects, I have to make everything from the start. For Carn, It's true I was inspired by a fairy tale.
I knew I wanted a story of justice and death and wolves and little boys, so I read a lot about wolves and their habits (even if the wolf in the film isn't quite a real one ;).
I also read many fairy tales on wolves in several books because I knew I wanted the same kind of story structure, with a sort of moral message at the center.
When you decide to create a story from scratch (at least for me) you can't think of anything else for a while. You really give yourself to it a 100%. It's a very difficult and tiring experience and it's a bit dangerous for your social life ;) You talk only of that to your friends. You're obsessed day and night with your characters and events...For Carn, I can't really remember if I came up
Jeff Le Bars Original Piece 'Carn'. 2013.
with the final story when working at my table,
when wandering in the park, or when dreaming in my bed !
And if the creating phase lasts too long, you yourself have evolved since you started the project, and your goal is evolving aswell !!
If all goes well, you just have to lay down on paper everything that's in your head, to see if it makes sense. People will try to influence or even destabilize you with new ideas and opinions. Even if it's good to discuss the project with others when storyboarding or making the animatic to get external advice and perspective, the key to moving forward remains to be firm with your ideas and stick with your core plan. Otherwise, you may end up NEVER making your film, spending all your time hesitating and swimming in an ocean of possibles forever. Or you may end up making a "flat" story, some kind of tasteless soup, making everybody happy but no one truely surprised.
It's a critical phase, the animatic is.
Then, when you're happy with it, production begans, and you work on rails 'till the end. Post production and editing are just for fun ;)
For my newest personal project, I was inspired by many books and conversations with my friends on patriarcal society and feminism, aswell as my own personal romantic experience.
I found it (and continue to find it) very very difficult to make a new personal film. In ordered projects, the client comes with money and an idea. You just have to work on it with him. On your personal project, you just have the idea and no money. You either have to convince other people to believe in your project and give you their money (we have an state organization for that in France called CNC) or you have to pay everything yourself. Both solutions are very hard to accomplish.
That's why it's been so long since I haven't made a new "film perso". Between time spent building request files to raise funds for personal projects and time spent earning money by working on orders, you don't get much time left for your personal life, let alone for personal work on top of that. Then add a few refusals and a few expenses (Parisian rent, moving, vacations, eating...) and you're back to square one two years later, with no more money in the bank, and a student lifestyle. That's the life I could have avoided by doing "serious" studies.
But let's not despair ! Hard work is always rewarded. And I don't see myself doing anything else in the world ;)
3) Who/what are your main influences as an artist?
I'm quite a fan of cinema in general (have to be !) : action movies aswell as "author" movies and indies ...
I'm very interested in modern day illustrators. I follow some of their work quite often on the internet and find it very inspiring.
And I read on various subjects. New discoveries, History, Ecology/Economy, Human sciences...
I still read BDs like Marjanne Satrapi and Riad Sattouf...
But my biggest influences are my friends and their tastes.
4) What software do you use to create your unique style?
I use a combination of Photoshop, 3DsMax, TVPaint, After Effects and Premiere Pro. I have somebody making the sound for me.
I no longer use paper. I know it's more romantic, but in our world of today, there is simply no time to make things in a traditional way...
5) do you work to a schedule and do you stick to it?
I have trouble planning ahead. No matter what time table I plan, I allways end up working very very hard on the last days of schedule...
But when a work rythm is found, production progresses well...
6)What made you chose being freelance over working in a company? Would you consider working for a company in the future?
I have already worked in 3 different Parisian companies, after I finished school. It's the "normal" way for a fresh graduate animator. It has been now three years and I want to experiment freelance working, because the environment is more satisfying. You can work wherever you like, with whomever you like, whenever you like. It's more suited to my lifestyle, as I want to have a lot of freedom and freetime to create personal projects.
I can't do all that in a company. But it has other advantages that i'll have to let go like :
-meeting a lot of different animators and benefit from their experience
-having a whole computer farm at your disposal, and talented technicians for ambitious projects like heavy 3D commercials.
-having kind of a job security and social advantages.
-having access to "big fish" projects with big clients and big TV channels, etc.
-having people handle clients and paperwork (which is pretty complicated in the profession, in France)
-Benefit from the company's prestige.
All that I have to give up and do everything myself. But it also means that I control my paycheck and I'm my own boss, which is releaving.
7) How many back ups of your work do you have before finishing the project?
Do you mean : do I save my data on another support ?
i have 2 back ups at the end of the project. One during.
8)How did Lonely the Brave contact you about using part of Carne for their song Victory Line?
Sony contacted me by e-mail. We chatted. They proposed a price. I said Yes on the condition that I still own the rights to the original film.
It's a very rewarding way to earn money. The job's already done. You just have to negociate ;)
Lonely the Brave's - 'Victory Line' Music Video, taken from
Jeff Le Bar's piece 'Carn'. 2014.
Group Work
We met up a couple of times to discuss what exactly we wanted to talk about in our presentation.
We met at The Playhouse twice and had a tutorial with Helen and decided the information we collected was mainly surrounding young animators starting out and the different directions that new animation graduates can go in.
We decided that;
Freelance/Music Videos
Youtube
Other career paths from an animation degree
Were what we wanted to explore so we got to work and decided where to put each piece of information in to the presentation and where they linked together in the best way.
