Valentína_NUA

my finished independent study project poster reflecting on my first year at NUA Animation

first stage of my independent study project, which I will finish by doodling on in real life and then scanning into digital again.

Lux, a black-market merchant in a dystopian futuristic pan-asian city is sent on a job to collect a mystery box. He knows the location is in a shady back alley. He walks in, and using the power of energy impulses from his cyborg body he control the movement of the box, raising his arms to shape its path to him. His robotic movement is apparent, though perfectly impersonates a human’s, due to his human brain being a part of his make. As the box reaches him and reflects its light on him, he looks in, only to belatedly realise the danger, with the mystery contents creating an energy disruption, short-circuiting him, bringing him to the ground. The box shrinks once it’s accomplished what it was made for and we see the protagonist heave breaths, as we are left unsure of what his fate will be.

This is my delivery showreel for which I’ve selected relevant work from all three of our submission projects. I’ve edited it to music and kept the individual clips short enough to portray dynamic editing. I’ve played with the layout and effects and am overall pleased with the artistic appearance and the variety of media and styles included. I’ve waited to finish the post-production of my mystery box sequence to include it in the showreel for which reason I put it at the end as I wasn’t quite sure where else to put it and for me and the tutors it would seem chronologically natural to see it at the end as it was the last big project of the year. I have deliberately kept the amount of static work to a minimum and only showed my character design sheets (including one sketch wip of lux model sheet including rough sketch, outline and finished pose). I credited the free music on my outro contact detail screen and included my design logo which I’ve used since making my university application portfolio.

for the dynamic poses I used frames from my animation for reference and because he does not have a very expressive face I have kept it minimal. I have included a short character profile along with the colour scheme to support his design, and included the same little logo I designed for him.

I used my puppet photo reference and an existing model sheet drawn reference to help me shape the body realistically in 3D. I opted for a new technique within digital drawing which I haven’t used before and used new software options, learning more about Photoshop on the way which I’m pleased about. I also like the style I opted for, as it suits the design and shows he would work well within 2D digital, so I might recreate him in the future.

This time around, I was able to use a free double slot and within a total shooting time of three hours produced a somewhat smoother result with a more accentuated movement. During the shooting, however, I realised why it is that productions spend one day animating a four-second sequence to produce believable and smooth movement and that I should appropriate my standards within the time and resources that are available. I find the process of stop-motion both excruciating and enjoyable. I also finished my character design sheet and model sheet, which despite not needing for the shooting I wish I’d created earlier to inform my process better. In the future, I will strive to keep a logical schedule within pre-production and production. I will also aim to produce designs that push my creative limits. After shooting I have taken to After Effects to edit out the green screen and mask out unnecessary objects. Afterward, I applied my background which I created by referencing my researched environment materials. 

process of background creation, showing initiall reference and line work to layering and after-editing.

a new research into background environment and colour schemes, I searched for ‘Tokyo (dystopian) back alley’ and selected a variety of images with similar perspective and appropriate colours for my intended colour scheme.

To produce our own showreels we were inducted to use Premier CC which I really appreciate, as I understand the need to understand software is crucial. For my own showreel I compiled all of my animated work from this year, choosing ones that were relevant to showing my understanding of animation principles as well as ones to show my creativity and artistic approach. I heavily prefer 2D digital animation at this point, but I have decided to showcase all mediums of work, as I am still interested in every area of animation and wish to better my skill in each. I worked on appropriately cropping each clip to show its main essence and to create a dynamic progression in sync with the upbeat music I chose from a favourite band of mine from bandcamp, where they share their music for free. I had to wait with exporting my delivery showreel, because I’d wanted to add my final mystery box animation, which was slightly thrown off my presumed production schedule due to the pressure on resources and time which we were given in our Mystery Box project. I also used my already present artistic monicker and logo and edited these to create an aesthetic outro slide with my contact details, giving the showreel a slight feeling of professionalism. I am overall glad we were given this project as it is very useful for me now, going into summer holidays looking for internships. It is also useful to have this knowledge now already instead of second year, however, I wish we’d been given the project at an earlier time, because one week prior to hand-in does not appear to be quite enough to comfortably finish overlapping projects.  

We were briefed on what will be expected of us within this project, which feels very last-minute due to the overlap with other projects which aren’t finished yet prior to next week’s hand-in. We were shown what makes a good showreel through examples. We were told what to focus on now in this project, and what to take into account for future reference when we have a wider selection of work. We watched many examples of successful and also less efficient showreels and researched our own examples during a short collaborative task. An example of a good portfolio shows editing to music, appropriate length, high quality of animations included, preferably a variety of mediums or techniques used if the artist’s versatility is to be shown and also an appropriate tone of the piece, along with the most important = contact details and being up to date. As an example of a less successful showreel would be one that is repetitive due to the breadth of work being small, edited to copyrighted or inappropriate music and too long in time. Furthermore, the design of the intro/outro contact details and the overall video design is essential in communicating the artist’s style and experience level, and should give off a good impression that the person is artistically capable, if it’s visually appealing.

This is a great example of using background music commonly perceived as extreme and inappropriate for this type of work, yet here it fits perfectly and leaves an image of confidence and capability. The animations are stylistically unified and show the focus of the studio. It has great dynamic timing, high quality of work, sync to music and showcases the nature of the company. It has an animated intro and an outro with the website, which is presumably the only relevant link they need to promote as a point of contact. 

This project was very useful and interesting and I am hoping to utilise my gained knowledge in the future, both on lip-syncing and animating to music.

In conclusion, creative roles and practices differ from production to production depending on what the Creative Leader's vision is. I looked closely at the role of an Art Director and found what level of experience within the design field one needs before progressing to this role. Networking and connections are crucial within this industry. I have also noticed that an official Chromosphere account on vimeo complimented her teaser for her CalArts graduation film in 2012, prior to Chromosphere even being officially established, suggesting it was Kevin Dart (as Chromosphere’s creator) who noticed Jasmin’s work at this time, thanks to her online presence.