yes quite

I enjoyed making this, and I’m happy with the final product. I decided not to put any of my CG work in, as I noticed in my research people tended to focus on CG or 2D animation. Also CG animation isn’t my strong point, and I felt like it wouldn’t fit well with the rest of the animation I included.

- being a runner and working up

I looked at a more CGI orientated showreel as well, just to get a feel for what that would be like. I liked the way they layered the levels of production with a lot of their work, however I do think this, like the other showreel, was a little long. I felt like it was also a little repetitive, as much of the content was showing the same skills again and again, and could’ve been cut down.

I really liked this showreel in particular, mostly because of the fluidity of the animation but also the way the music really enhanced the atmosphere of the reel. I think it was a bit long, as I’m aiming for my showreel to be about a minute in length, but the animation in this was dynamic and interesting enough for me to keep focus the whole way through.

I planned to open the projects on the university computers, but I had problems exporting on every version of After Effects and Premiere, so it looks like this is as good quality as I can get at this point. At least I’ve learned not to save the Dragonframe animations onto the servers while I’m filming!

I went outside to shoot some backgrounds for my animation. I had considered drawing something for it, but I thought my character would fit in more seamlessly with the actual outside world. I liked the idea of mixing reality with her strange, unrealistic design.

Shooting this sequence was a lot more challenging than I expected, mainly because there was an issue with the server, so I only had access to the stills from when I animated. In the end, I had to run the stills as a sequence in Premiere Pro in order to export it as a movie. I think I will have to use the university computers to export it again, however, as I had a lot of problems with the quality decreasing a lot when I export it on my laptop.

During the making of the head I also changed her design to include braids; this was so i could hide two strands of thin wire in them so I could have her braids move with her movements in the actual animation.

I made the decision to give her chicken feet during the process of making them, as I thought they would give her a more unique design and I just really liked the look of them

I had a few issues with this project, as the file corrupted several times. I was able to save it and only lost the last few seconds of animation in the end, which was easy to redo. 

This is the mouth shape chart for the lip sync animation

source: https://theendisnearus.deviantart.com/art/Phoneme-Chart-505829828

Here's my model sheet for the mystery box character, Kodie. Since drawing up this sheet she has gone through a lot of changes in the puppet-making process, but this was a good start to base the character on.

This is my email correspondence with Ralph Foster, an editor in the industry. I’ve been talking to Ralph for a little while now, and hope to keep in contact with him, as he’s worked on some great films that I love.

This is the first iteration of my animatic for my mystery box project. I changed the action from touching the box in the storyboard to kneeling and looking in it, as technically the character cannot interact with the box physically. I might change it slightly later to edit some of the timings.

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