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So I'm in contact with a studio at the moment over potential work, but their work is often done in ToonBoom rather than Flash, so I've been spending time recently practising that little by little. I've used it on my entry for this month's Do It In Ten as well, as part of my practising. I'm still a little behind where I am on Flash, but that will likely change as I get to know and get comfortable with the software.
So two and a half weeks after I posted "Grave Mistake" to Newgrounds, I finally uploaded my film for the BBC Listening Project, and it got a warm reception - winning Daily 5th, and being one of two of that day's Top 5 to be featured on the Newgrounds home page. I'm glad it's done as well as it has - humour and parody definitely play better with the audience of Newgrounds than the kind of thought-provoking documentary style thing like my film, so I'm definitely happy to see it get this far.
It'll be up on YouTube tomorrow. Wessex Student Bus Pass
So recently, I was recently contacted by one of the people from CrowdReach.co.uk to animate an advert for the Wessex Star bus service for university students. All of the visual aspects were left to me, including the visual design (beyond a basic "motion graphic" style mentioned in the original e-mail) and the storyboarding, as well as the animation.
The deadline was super-tight - I only had the final audio in the last two days of working on it, and only had the script for two days before that, so this was completed in it's entirety in 4 days. "Grave Mistake" achieved a few honours after it was posted to Newgrounds at the start of September. It won the Daily Feature, and was placed 3rd for the week - meaning that it is in the running for the Best of the Month competition at the end of September. Even if it doesn't place in the top 10, it will likely earn a slot among the runners up. It also got a score of 4.39 at it's highest point, making it the most highly rated submission to Newgrounds that I've ever done.
Newgrounds was the site that first introduced me to Flash animation back in 2005, so to receive such acknowledgement after all this time feels like vindication for everything I did up to where I am now, and encouragement to keep going on with it. So, not only has Grave Mistake been featured on "Show Me the Animation"'s Student Showcase, but my entry to the Do It In Ten competition won this month's round! It's now in the running for the Best of the Year prize as well! So yeh, thank you to Show Me the Animation for helping my work reach more people, and thank you for selecting my entry as the winning one!
So with the free time I've had after finishing at A Productions, I've cooked up a quick entry into Show Me The Animation's "Do it in Ten" competition. The last theme they had was "Sweat", so I decided to play around a little bit with mine. You can see it on the SMTA website here, or on the YouTube embed below. Check it out, and if you like it, then share it! The Arnolfini show went ahead today, and barring some significant audio issues with the film reel, it went pretty well! Decent turnout considering any advertising we did was incredibly last minute, and plenty of people from the course sticking around to help set it up and take it down.
The next time the show will be on is in London, 17-18 July. However, I've opted to not take part in that one given that I'm looking to stay in Bristol, making showing off to London studios rather redundant. It'd probably take an offer from Cartoon Network Europe to get me to move there at the moment. The Degree Show is now on at Bower Ashton from now until next Friday, 10-6 every day! Our films will be playing on loop the whole time, so you should be able to catch everyone's films about once an hour with the length of the reel as is.
You can also see all of our promotional posters as well as a selection of our preproduction work in the display rooms, and watch the films on-demand in the darkened computer room. I've successfully applied for an internship at A Productions here in Bristol! I'll be there 8 weeks until the 21st August. It'll be great to finally have my foot fully in the door of the industry and to be working full time in a studio.
Let's do this! On Wednesday, the Degree Show Crowdfunder hit it's target of £2000, meaning that we're set to go ahead with our shows, both in uni, and at the Arnolfini.
You can come to Bower Ashton Campus, 10am-6pm, 6-11 June and check it all out, or come along to our exhibition on one of the upper floors of the Arnolfini on the 18 June 4-8pm. This'll be the first big outing of 'Grave Mistake', so if you want to check that out, then come along to one of those days! One offer I am going to throw out there to anyone in the animation industry, if you're interested in seeing 'Grave Mistake', just shoot me an e-mail ([email protected]) and I'll be able to provide a private link. It's time for me to throw myself open for hire for any studio to take me on wherever my skills might fit, so anyone with active links to industry, feel free to hit me up! I'm moving house last week of June, so I'd prefer for any internship to start after that, just so I have all my shit together and am not freaking out about balancing moving and starting a new job in the same week. Just a head's up. With my final hand-in today, I'm now no longer bound to any work that contributes to my overall grade for my Animation degree. The die is cast. Very weird feeling, but with internships opening for applications, I'm hoping I should be able to hop on board an exciting project and get myself going in the world of professional animation.
It's really quite surreal, knowing that from my graduation onwards, I'll be done with formal education. Quite scary, really. Still, the future awaits. I should probably get on and make it count. So the crowdfunding campaign for our course's public degree show is officially launched! Our aim is to hire out the Arnolfini Art Gallery in the centre of Bristol and host a display of all our work there, and, if funding allows, host another show in London to reach out to studios there.
If you have any cash spare, we'd really appreciate the contribution, as it'd help get our work out into the world and in front of as wide an audience as possible. So far, we have the backing of a couple of big local names; Peter Lord, and Sun & Moon Studios, and Sun & Moon on Twitter have called on Rumpus Animation, Wonky Films, A Productions and Arthur Cox to challenge them to contribute as well. If all goes well, the campaign could be backed by all of Bristol's big local animation houses and that would just be awesome. But even with all their help, we probably won't reach the finish line, so help us out! I figured it was about time that I updated my showreel with a small selection of bits from "Grave Mistake", especially considering it's getting time to think about applying for jobs for after graduation.
On top of this, an updated CV is now available on the Work page. Quite possibly the last character in this film who gets a full turnaround and symbol breakdown! This is a Viking who appears about 2/3 of the way through "Grave Mistake" for a few shots. He's not too significant, but he's got enough unique animation to justify the extra effort in him that won't be placed, for example, in characters in crowd scenes.
And with only 10 animated shot elements remaining, the end is definitely in sight now... So the composer for "Grave Mistake", Henry Mitton, yesterday sent me the first full track for the film, and it is sounding pretty damn awesome. There are still one or two instruments yet to be added, but all in all I'm really excited to be able to show you guys the finished film - it's gonna be awesome.
So yesterday I managed to reach the 85% mark on completion of animated shot elements, and finish animating both Death and the Girl, meaning that all three of the main characters have now been completely animated, 5 days ahead of when I was hoping. It's a great milestone to hit, and means I can be confident that the time I'm about to take off won't jeopardise the quality of the rest of the film.
If I get some of the smaller remaining shot elements done in the meantime then I'll be even further ahead of schedule. I had ruled out applying a texture to the film to give it a similar feel to "Under the Weather" because I didn't think I would have the time, but looking at how I'm going, I think I may have to re-evaluate that. I'm now at a point where 70% of the animation for "Grave Mistake" is complete - and all of the Guardian's appearances have been completed. My aim is to complete the remaining shots for the two other main characters by the 25th so I can enjoy the Easter break and still have time after it to complete the shots involving extras and complete the remaining backgrounds.
So, the Friday just past, "This is Normal" had it's 1000th comic! It's kind of incredible that it's made it this far - through two years of secondary school, two years of Sixth Form, and now approaching three years of university, and I've managed to keep this going the whole time. So many other projects have come and gone in that time, it's almost a little difficult to imagine life without this as just kind of a thing that I do in the background of anything else life throws at me.
Given how much it has changed, I can't help but wonder what TiN'll look like by comic 2000. Guess I'll have to keep going to find out. |
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