Final Reflection on Semester 2

At the beginning of this semester I set out to create lessons teaching story telling and animation principles to children using video tutorials as the media to do so. This was to give me a greater understanding of animation as I would have to break it down to the most basic parts. I have ultimately evolved my initial goal to creating a professional presence with showreels and developing more high quality animation. This hs not changed my goal I wished for at the beginning of the year of ultimately improving my own animation abilities, I have just found another way of doing so.

I am overall happy with how I have worked on this project although I really could have done a better job interacting with peers on Behance. I found it difficult to show animation development on what is ultimately a very visuals based blog site so ended up posting work to more animation centric forums. I have certainly missed out of interacting with classes mates but have also learned a many good lessons about putting your work out in the web where people really dont hold back with there criticism. My animation abilities have definitely improved since I began this project and I have a lot of new pipelines I can use in the future when undertaking animation work.

In the end i have ended up with something very different from what I started with at the start of the semester but I am glad to see where its ended up.

Final 3D Animation Showreel

After taking into consideration the feedback I have previously received I have now gone down a route of splitting my show reel into two separate videos, one showcasing my 2D Animation work and the other my 3D. This not only gives the show reels a clearer visual style but also means I can use each show reel to more specifically target any positions I may be applying for whether a 3D Games developer or a 2D narrative animation studio. I will be producing a little more 2D work specifically for the showreel before I complete it but have finished my 3D one in time to send out a few applications for internships along with hand ins. In this showreel I decided to use open source music instead of creating my own as I dont want to distract myself too much from the visual content and also using music done by professionals just ups the quality a great deal not that I wont continue to try and improve my own music abilities.

Feedback on Eddies Quadcopter Reflection

I have now got a decent amount of feedback and am very happy with how my animation has been received. I have yet to get any negative comments about the video, in fact people have been commenting on how smooth they found the animation to be which was one of the biggest things I set out to accomplish. As well as this its incredible to have people finding something I created being actually effected by it in some way whether that's finding it funny or in some cases feeling bad enough for Eddie that they feel the need to comment on how sorry they feel for him. Thats something I will always like about animation is the ability to interact with an audience I have never met and to create worlds and characters real enough to illicit actual feelings from the audience. The process I used for this animation Is clearly one that works well for me and I will be taking the lessons I have learned from it forward and possibly considering to do another feature on Eddie in the future.

Eddies Quad Copter Final Animation w/Sound

Final cut of Eddies Quad copter. This is one of the first animations I put heavy focus on the sound design instead of it being a last minute thought and Im very happy with how it turned out. I had set out to create a very smooth animation and feel I achieved that, the initial blocking out stages of the animation and doing everything in 24fps has helped tremendously. I will be putting up on various forums for animation and seeing how it is received by fresh eyes. I think it will go down quite well and Im very pleased with the outcome of this project.

Jonathan Cooper Showreel Inspiration

This animation showreel by Jonathan Cooper the Animation Director at Ubisoft gives me a good indicator of how to present 3D Animation work focusing on animation for games. As my 3D showreel will be mainly targeted at games animation this is a good piece to study for inspiration. One thing I definitely want to also try and get across with my new showreel will be giving my animations personality and life as that was definitely something my previous attempt lacked.

Feedback review from First Animation Showreel

I have now received some feedback in regards to my showreel and it seems I have certainly missed the mark in many aspects of what I was trying to accomplish. Most feedback I received was towards the 3D parts of my Showreel, comments highlighted I was shooting myself in foot by focusing too much on using my own rigged characters which although show I know more than just how to animate mean I am using less emotive rigs and those sorts of things would do far better at showing my animation abilities. Also using only small parts of my 2D narrative work gave an unfinished impression to my work and it would have been better to focus on a couple solid finished pieces instead of trying to cut together as many pieces as possible.

I will now be looking at some more professional showreels and try to find a way to better showcase my work based on the feedback that I have received. One of the first tasks I will be doing is finishing ' Eddies Quadcopter' So that I can add more of my most recent animation to the showreel.

First attempt at an Animation Showreel

I will be posting this Showreel to a animation forum to get some feedback on what could be improved. I created the music myself for this showreel as more of a personal challenge more than anything as sound production has always been a challenge for me. I think this is a decent attempt and certainly adds something to the reel although I do think it ends rather abruptly.