Haydn Spencer

Showreel

Here is the my showreel which complies all of the work done over the course of the two units of First Year. I feel that this is a nice reflection of all the work I’ve done, and shows off my strengths in each of the disciplines.

I personally think that the music and visuals work really well together and there are some parts which I synced up to specific bits of sound within the audio. For example, the Expressions project clips syncing up with the two 8-bit dissolve sounds and the Traditional Animation characters punch matching the beat. The soundtrack project also matches up spookily well.

I was not sure what to use for music in my showreel, and tried scouting out royalty free music websites. However, most of the ones I came across were subscription based and I had to have an account to use. 

I then went to incomptech.com, which I knew from other videos I’ve made has free to use music so long as you credit the source. I was initially against using music from incomptech because I have used it a lot before and wanted something new for this.

For the first try at the showreel, I chose to use a shortened down version of ‘Juniper’. I wasn’t too satisfied with this, as it felt a bit too slow for the kineticness of the animation involved. It also didn’t have a beat and nothing really to edit to.

I decided to look at Kevin Macleod’s newer music to find something that I hadn’t heard before, and I found this piece called ‘Exit the Premises’

Experimentation Reel

Here is the experimentation reel of the CGI project, showing the key stages to making the final animation.

1. The initial storyboard and idea

2. The reference footage with poses and lines of actions drawn and thought out

3. Test walk cycle to see how the desired personality of the character would look

4. Retextured model turnaround

5. Stepped animation from an early variant

Final Mystery Box Sequence Render

Final Turntable Render of the Tape Measure 

Here is the final and clear non-playblast turnabout of the tape measure. I think it looks nice now that it is lit and rendered properly. I also found that bits that I felt didn’t work too well have turned out looking better than I expected with the addition of the light, such as the little alcove indentation where the table measure switch it.

RENDER CURRENT FRAME PREVIEW: clear white clapperboard

RENDER IMAGE SEQUENCE: clapperboard with blue cog 

- Make sure you chose the right extension and that you render all frames that you need (name.#.ext is the best bet, .png for the extension)

- Set the location for the images to be sent to to a place where you can find them

- Pick thr right camera to render from and bin the rest of them unless necessary

- Image Size: HD 1080p

- Quality Settings: Production Quality - Highest Quality

Batch Render, then compiled the images as an Image Sequence in After Effects/Premiere

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As a test before rendering the final animations of both the tape measure and the mystery box sequence, I rendered some of the early character performances I animated to see what thee process was like. While these aren’t part of the submissions, they will be used in my showreel, and it is nice to have a clean, non-playblast version of them.

Final Adjustments 5

I reverted the walk cycle’s placement to a previous version and the walk now looks a lot better to my eyes. While there is a bit of foot slipping, I feel like it is overall contained and unnoticeable on the whole. The performance of the surprised character now looks really good.

Final Adjustments 4

Final Adjustments 3

- After getting some advice from a tutor, who said that the hand on the hip pose made the character look as if they were walking on a catwalk. I decided to reanimate the arm movements as it was intended to be an annoyed stop.

I made the left arm reflect the right arm once again by making it into a fist and allowing it to swing. I then animated a follow-through of the arm’s arc when the character stopped.

Final Adjustments 2

- Fixed the movements of the left arm, now it acts a bit more like the right arm in its movements and positions when the character reels back in surprise

- Added a headbob to the walk cycle to give it a bit more impact with each step. This might need adjusting as it feels a bit too extreme in its current condition.

Final Tweaks 4

- Now I feel the flash goes by too quickly, and the background going dark is hard to register. For the final animation, I shall make the fade of the background back to normal more gradual so more time is spent with it being slightly darker than usual.

Final Tweaks 3

- The head turn in betweens have now been added in properly and work well in smoothing out the action.

Final Tweaks 2

- Moved the rotation points on the second close up of the pudding to make it stay closer to the plate and be a bit more consistent with how it wobbles.

- Added a deeper shadow for when the flash comes up

Final Adjustments 1

Dance Magic Dance 2

Here I started from scratch with the dancing towards the end making sure that it fit the character better. I went back and rewatched the reference footage that was taken earlier in the project and noticed that the actors had taken a more reserved approach for doing his dancing, which I have now tried to capture in the animation.

- Hands closer in to the body,

- Leg and hip movement smaller, tapping toe and bobbing up and down

- Bobbing the head

Dance Magic Dance 1