Here are some quickies I've rendered up today, the final Pen with the Skull replacement, And I've done a few frames, some with Nails bent etc. There are a few more around.

Zee Third Year Projects

My Work for Today, Really enjoying the Burton-esque style of Cherie's Peice, I can really get on with it. And the little tidbits she's getting me to work on and design are quiet cool, even if they only play a small part in the peice!

Through the Hard times,....

Ok so... Producing has kind of gone down the pot.

I was working with Simon, Matt and Lee. Orla and Alex, Holly and Jess. I put together calenders for each of them and worked my way around stuff working as a contact point for the groups. Alex and Orla had some contact problems due to technical difficulties, and Jess was suffering with an ankle problem for a day or two and couldn't get in.

The hard part came pretty early on into the whole project, and as a result, I have thrown my producing onto a back rink to concentrate on doing my own project. I guess I feel kind of down heartened by it all. But it's been a hard ride. I guess I could lay blame,... but I don't see it as being the right thing to do. I kind of know now who I can and cannot work with. I'm going to continue helping Holly and Orla's groups. But I want to have something to show for this project, and I know I'm technically as well qualified to do something as awesome as everyone else. Admittedly with a lot less time than I scheduled my groups. But none the less that went out the window because no-one seemed to follow what I had set out for them and even when I pushed I found myself granted little to no respect in the way of my position. (Admittedly not with every group)

My main downfall came with the group I was working with within' my house. I know this may cause conflict, or even make it 'hard to live' but to be honest, It's far too hard for me to just house up emotion because others don't want 'dead air' that hasn't been caused by myself. 

Now I know I'm on the same course as everyone here, and I know that it's hard to have a leader if you don't do the whole authority thing, especially me being me, I've lost so many jobs because I refuse to be walked on, but at the same time, I still have RESPECT for everyone around me, and their given skills, I mean hell, everyone in Animation has some amazing talent, and I'm so lucky to be around the people I am, and recently I had even found that I had talent you know? I could organize people, I AM a good leader and I work well with people who share the same respect as me. This is why I tried my hardest to allocate jobs dependent on those skills while I was working as a producer. I even got told by a few people I did a great job. RESPECT is a reason that people act the way they do, but I had plenty of this when addressing my class mates and the people I was working with, if I had a problem I would address it with them directly, I would not go behind their backs to have words with anyone higher up. This is where my problems start. I have spoken about the issue to those that it matters to, and I hope that the person that lacked the respect for me in the role I had chosen gets treated better than I did when it comes their turn, Cause it's kinda hurtful. 

On that note, due to this, and my rota not being followed, groups have fallen behind, I know they can bring it back, but I don't feel that with the third year projects coming up and the focus on those, that I would like to be marked on my production of these projects, as a friend I will help anyone who asks it of me, as a want to be producer, I will help organise and track down anyone who needs to be tracked down, but I don't think I could claim responsibility for any of these things getting done. I don't feel as if this project has been handled in a professional mannerism, and maybe that's down to me,... but it also feels as if the work I had done and all I had tried to do had been undermined. 

Trying not to sound like myself in despair. No amounts of walking to Falmouth or getting out to take my mind of how I feel is helping. I'm hoping working with new people on the third year project will give me that breath of fresh air that I so crave. Plus maybe I'll even get to get a bit Tim Burton on everyone's ass! 

Tx

Ps. I know all of this could be written in an evaluation where only tutors could read it, but to be fair... That's not how I play. I will lay out and talk to ANYONE who has an issue with me, as I would expect with anyone else. I know everyone has their own personality and for some people it CAN be hard. But again,... it's all a part of respecting one another.

Upping my Internet Presence!

I've recently gone about giving myself a bigger presence on the internet. You can now also find me at:

Tumblr: http://TomDowler.Tumblr.com

Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/user/star69sugar

Formspring.me: http://formspring.me/TomDowler

Top two are probably of relevance, bottom one is for any questions you wish answered by yours truely. I try to check all of my internet resources as often as possible. Admittedly my Tumblr will be becoming vastly used as it's just such a quick way to blog. 

Also in other news.

Today is a production meeting, I'm going to try and get as much as possible from my groups to show you on my blog and to tell you all where they're at and set new deadlines for them as the end of this project is fast approaching with more being thrown our way each day.

Dissertation is a bit of a killer due to not knowing exactly what I want to do yet and I wanted to focus a lot of attention on that aspect of the course, just to up my knowledge in this area. I'm having a few dry weeks at the moment. Hoping I can whet my appetite a bit more after today!

Producing!

Ok so I've began Producing on two groups for the post production project and I'm helping out as best I can also with their projects. I have collected Contact information for both groups and compiled two Contact sheets. I've done both groups calenders and been on location filming with both. I'm currently working up some Gantt charts for both of them.

My First group. 

Simon Acty, Matthew Luxton & Lee Dutfield

I've been involved with this Idea from the start essentially although Matt and Simon took their creative juices a flowing, Their initial Idea was a trailer for a feature film kind of thing which was reminiscent of "The Secret Garden" or "The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe". The Idea to have a main protagonist sucked into a book and taken on an adventure through a fantasy world. The Idea has been cut down to a single scene involving the main character walking to a ruined shrine and opening the book and the book's magic being released. 

This Idea is going to focus a lot on Particle effects from the book, and changing the setting. The book is also going to have effects such as a burning letter effect and animations upon the page or so I believe. So far I have helped Simon on the Director role, helping him pick shots, we went out on a recci the week before I was appointed Producer. Taking shots of the vale and places we could use for the actual peice before settling on a ruined area in the middle of Kennel Vale. 

I then Set them up their calender for work which so far has been well kept to and we're time in hand. Just what I wanted as a producer. At the moment I have set Lee working on 3 Matte paintings for use in places. And today as I write this, Matty and Si are getting the renders to get working on. So far this group is working well. Although Lee seems to be segregated from the others, I hope to get them all working as a Team. This proves hard as it's not exactly my "Job" I am still just their housemate, but I'm doing my best as a Producer to work it out. I know that the respect of a producer isn't probably what I have between them. But I want to help them with all I can. I guess this gives me a chance to prove myself. I know Simon and Matt are working to their upmost to make this project something they can be proud of. I think they've settled on using Adobe After effects for their particle work. 

Second Group.

Orla McElroy & Alex Joleaf

I only really got together with these guys this Monday, Orla and Alex are fantastically ambitious in their project and it sounds as if it will be really good. They plan to do a 30 second clip of a music video for one of Alex's friend's band. Integrating 2D with live action environments, They are also filming at Kennel Vale. The first thing I really got to do with these guys was talk about what they planned to get done, I didn't want to stunt their creativity, but I know it's going to be a lot of work, and I know Alex said he planned to do a lot of work outside of University hours. So as the producer, I worked to Uni hours and set up a calender for them also to follow, which to my surprise Alex said he was very impressed with. I have since then changed a few things as this week didn't go as planned and they've taken a few more days to film, which is cutting into the days we had planned for tracking footage, but the two of them again are doing a fantastic job. I bumped into them at the Vale the other day whilst working with Simon and Matt to get footage. I get the idea with this group I'm going to end up pushing a lot toward the end, but I might be wrong. I really hope it comes to fruition for them cause both of them are working really hard with it. My worry was with the Animation coming first but they both assure me that the Animation and comping will be done together, so they'll not be without a finished article at the end.

Orla and Alex's schedule runs like this.

Producing and Styles

I think I've definitely found where I want to be within' the Animation/Media industry. I'm going to continue to work towards becoming a producer, I know it's not an easy route, but having discussed it all with Andy Wyatt and Georg Finch, I now know what to do. So I aim to get myself re-aquatinted with Excel and other Office packages. And to work as best I can with as many groups as possible.

I think this will be from now on a very prosperous year all being well. 

Anyway. Here's some Anime/Cartoony styles I've been experimenting with recently. 

Also Currently finding my love for Australia and their god damn amazing Music! Whey Silverchair! New South Wales is my Spiritual home! haha. Tx

3 Day Writing Colaberation

Hello people of my Blog.

Well. What can I say other than, How proud I am of what me and my group managed to do within the three days we were given for the Writing Collaberation project.

This project was set alongside the MA writing students at UCF. The Idea was to create a peice for NUFSED (National Union of Fairies, Sprites, Elves and Druids). To Promote these creatures in a positive light. It was all a bit of a blur for me at the start and I didn't know what to think at all.

When our group got read out, we obviously knew our own Digital Animation crew, but our partnered Writers we had no idea about. My Group were as follows.

Myself - Producer
Sarah Crombie - Art Director
Simon Acty - Storyboarding
Emma Taylor - Designer
Harriet Teagle - Animator
Lee Dutfield - Post Production

Then we were joined by three writers. Dave, Matt and Sam. We then set off to go about coming up with our idea for NUFSED. We had gotten the theme of 'Information' for our piece. We took off to the common room to invade and make use of the quiet room and comfortable chairs to talk over our ideas. As directed by the writers, we took ourselves off into groups of two each, Me and Simon migrated to the coffee machine and came up with the idea we would finally use and develop.

Our idea was to do a 50's style american tutorial video. Much like the Coronet "Are you popular" piece.


So we left the script writing to the writers, which we thought they would obviously be good at, and took of to come up with concepts for the look, This was mainly due to the writers feeling that they worked better in their own environment. So we organised to rendevouz back at the common room at 2pm to show each other our ideas. I then took a contact number and gave them my own so we could get in touch, I Should have made the contact list there and then but we all wanted to get on with it, So away we went.

The animators worked hard on finding a look and style for the characters. Researching old movie posters and a three tonal approach to the art. Whilst I ran around trying to sort out who was going to do what.

When we returned to talk to the writers, we found that even though we had agreed on a certain approach for the script, they had worked on another idea completely and only drafted our final idea. Their researched script didn't show the creatures in a good light like the brief had asked and again was going to be far too strenuous to animate and design within' three days and would have been somewhat an epic. Sarah our art Director set about trying to explain the latter to them, whilst I enforced the fact that this wasn't what was asked of us. I Tried to take my role of producer as seriously as possible, and the fact the actual script didn't meet our clients brief was something that stood out to me as an initial fault, and in industry would obviously not be accepted.

So after choosing to work on the drafted script for our first idea we went about getting the design work down, The character designs were split between Sarah, Simon and Harriet, the Backgrounds were assigned to Emma, Lee began finding sounds that we may need and getting a vocalist for our script to be read by, a search for a sound track was underway. We also sent the writers to work on the script and final draft it for us. This was not until I had established a Contact List Which in all honesty was invaluable, I spent that evening researching what I would have to do as a Producer, as I now really like this idea, it seems to be somewhere I fit very naturally and very well, and had comments from my group on how comfortable they felt working under me, And that even under stress, it was still a good environment to work within' they say you can't please everyone, but I'd like to think I did quiet well with my team of animators in this project.

Day 2 - More Arty Farty Stuff!

We began Day 2 with my Art Director in a slight stress about the script,... in fact,... I think after reading through it and it's direction, we found it to be very bland, and from an animation point of view, not very entertaining at all. I pushed on though, making sure Characters and Backgrounds would be ready for Myself and Harriet to animate on the last day. My perogative was that in Industry, we would always be given things that we would not wish to do, and this within' the course was gonna be one of those things we didn't particularly want to do, but we would do it to the best of our abilities none the less.

We continued through the day throwing together the Art, re-working it so it all looked as if it would fit with the style and getting it looked polished enough to show at the end of the day for the daily presentation. Simon had storyboarded over the night and throughout the day, and would end up doing the same the next morning due to certain changes.

After watching the presentations and seeing everyone elses scripts seeming to come into a more animation element. Myself and Sarah spoke to Derek due to our dislike and lack of faith in the strength of our script, to which Derick had the answers. We would not change the script at all, Just the stage direction, this would of course mean re-storyboarding. But would result in a more sellable product, which to me as the producer was my aim, I then went about myself changing the script and jotting down little bits and peices for the storyboard artist. (Simon) to put into the piece. This made me feel quiet director-esque, I enjoyed this also. Being able to get creative, as the director chosen from Writing was not with us for 2 days due to Ill health, as they say. "The Show Must go on", so myself and Sarah took an active role in that also and worked collaberatively as a Director, although I didn't infringe on her job as art director, Working as the producer as well allowed me to not allow anything to go too overboard and we would have ample time to put everything we had changed into practice in the third day.

Day 3 - The Death of me

Ok I lie, It wasn't the death of me, It was actually quiet fun. Now Sarah, Simon and Emma had very little to do due to the Pre-pro being done. Myself and Harriet sat down to After Effects and Lee headed into the studio with the writers to get the Sound we would need. Simon and Sarah had suggested we animate on one machine, both me and Harriet, I dismissed this straight away. I would composite the whole peice together on my machine and we would both animate seperate scenes on either computer. This was how I had initially wanted to work anyway.

As the day went through I animated 6 Scenes and Harriet animated 3 of the longer scenes. We worked very well together and many Hi-5's were exchanged. Sarah, Simon and Emma had to change some of the Character possitions and scan them and re-paint them, this didn't take too long and we were well underway.

We hit one snag with Audio not working in After Effects, fixed by the wonderful, yet elusive Richard Hammond, we rendered off a final and handed it in to Andy before anyone else. (Well before the final we rendered a few more and handed those in, but it was still way before anyone else had handed in on the pen drive)

Conclusion

I think my group worked fantastically together, and I would work with any of them again, they were all fantastic artists and worked well under me, without any competition. I think myself, this project really helped me to understand what I was doing. I really want this now, to be a producer, it seems like my calling. And I'm really excited to get underway with more projects of this calibur. I really appreciated all the help from Derek as well. Without him, I'd have probably not been able to make the project what it was, And to be quiet honest. I was very proud of what we produced within' those long three days. I think it ended up looking more polished than anyone elses. Even though not exactly what an animatic should be. It worked, I was proud of what we achieved, and I think I've definately got a direction now.


Here is the Finished Article! Please do Enjoy!


TX