Veg Face!

I haven't been doing much recently in terms of work I can post on my blog. I've finished a 2 and a half week work experience at Red Wire Media in Cardiff Bay and I've also been modelling some props for GamesLab while trying to look for some sort of job. Unfortunately the job hunting isn't going so well at the moment, but I'm not giving up yet! :)

Something that I CAN post on my blog is this painting I made for my Nan's church's harvest. It was her idea to make a face out of Fruit and Veg so I designed the face and painted it for her.
It took me around 2 days to complete using acrylic paints and was a nice break from being on the computer and using traditional media instead. And she gave me £40 for making it ... Score!


The paper was pretty big so I used coffee to stain the paper around it so it wasn't so white. The cluster of berries on the right cheek was supposed to be raspberries but they didn't turn out so great and now they look more like blackberries ... so now that's what they are ;) they were actually the hardest thing to paint and the easiest was probably the melon fringe.

I'm really happy with the result seeing as I haven't painted for a while, and I realised it kinda looks like me! ... It's just a shame the photos of it didn't come out so great

New Showreel

My last showreel was put together pretty quickly for the uni's end of year show, so now that I've graduated and have lots of spare time on my hands I've been working on a new showreel which is hopefully a lot better than the last one. I've put in a few more things in this reel to show a bit more variety of skills

Hope you enjoy!

inform.Animation IP

For the past 2 and a half weeks I've been in Sardinia, Italy on an intensive animation course called Inform.Animation

Quote from the website:

"InformAnimation is a Summer School organized within the Erasmus Intensive Programme, by the Alghero School of Architecture of the University of Sassari in collaboration with a consortium of European academic partners"

It was a great experience working with students from other countries including Greece, Spain and Italy. There was a bit of a language barrier which again was an experience as I had to try and get my point across through simple language. I definitely learnt a lot when it came to working with others with different languages and methods of working.

The project was aimed towards using animation to inform members of the public or other social groups of a specific cause. We had 6 different briefs and were separated into 6 different groups ranging from 3-4 people per group. I worked in a group of 3 (1 Greek girl and an Italian boy) My project was for the Archipelagos which is an institute of marine conservation. Our brief was to inform about the importance of Posidonia Oceanica which is a seagrass meadow in the Mediterranean. It is a habitat for over a thousand different species of fish and works as a shelter and a place to reproduce. We had to inform the viewers of this and
also the dangers that humans place on the seagrass, and the consequences it will have on the beach, as the seagrass protects it from beach erosion. The short animation was aimed towards schools in the Aegean, local communities, as well as tourists that visit the Aegean islands and the wider public in Greece and abroad.

In the brief, the animation was aimed towards a wide range of social groups so we tried to mix facts about how much seagrass there is in a square metre etc. (for the adults) with cartoony animations (for the school children) This way we thought we could keep both age groups entertained while still being informative.
Each group was supposed to have constant feedback from their contact providers, but unfortunately for our group, we had no contact at all from ours. This made things difficult as we had no contact from the people who we were making the animations for, so the tutors running the project got involved and advised us to split our project in 2 as they thought our idea would work better this way, one targetted towards adults with facts and figures, and the other towards children, with metaphorical images telling the information. This spilt happened on the Monday and the deadline was the following Saturday

We all agreed to split into 2 projects, so I would work on the children's project, the Italian guy would work on the adult project while the Greek girl would help out on both. Everything was going well until the stress within the group started kicking in, so we decided to work as 1 proper team again and work on 1 project. Unfortunately that didn't work because of personal feelings from another member in the group, so we had to split the group completely, and I ended up working on my own. Because of what happened, I had to ask for some help from 2 of my friends, just so it could be finished in time for the Saturday deadline

I really enjoyed my experience in Italy. I learnt a lot in my 2 and a half weeks on the intensive course, and gained a lot of valuable experience, it's just a shame the group divided like it did

After less than 5 days of work, this is the end result. I wanted the piece to have a narration over the top so that there would be no words on screen, only images so that the children would keep interested, as I felt that too much text on screen could lose their concentration. Unfortunately I didn't have time to record the narration, so instead, the version you see here has subtitles to represent what I wanted the narrator to say. The music is also there as a placeholder
I characterised the fish and gave it a style so it was bold and colourful for the children's appeal. I tried keeping everything simple and metaphorical so that the images could help tell the story
And here's the result:

• Danielle Parness helped me with the animation for the 2 shots with the Pollution barrels on the boat
• Stephanie Seed made the countdown timer on the last shot

SHOWREEL !!

I finally have a showreel put together and up on Vimeo after many error messages

This is my showreel I will be sending to potential employers, so any feedback would be much appreciated thanks!

Hope you enjoy!

Hand In Work

I haven't really put up anything since finishing uni so I'd better start now :)
My showreel is currently uploading on Vimeo so it will be up on the blog shortly, but in the meantime here's the reel I handed in for my final deadline ... it's got my Personal work which is my Tank Alien and my Spaceship, and the Collaboration work which I modelled a small spaceship for and a wall for the wall smash shot in the film ... it also has the particle tests I made for those walls

It's a bit long because I had a lot of stuff to hand in, but it gives you a chance to see what I've been working on the past months:

[p.s. Try and watch it 720p if you can cos the quality is much better :)]

IT'S OVER!!

Glammies was a couple of days ago and I think the affects of the alcohol are still in my system which obviously means it was a great night! :)

Our film was in the show. We didn't win, but like I said before it's not about the winning, it's just about the opportunity to show everyone the film we've been working hard on for the past months. We had a great reaction to the film which is what we always wanted. Everyone had something nice to say which was really heart warming and I really appreciate all the positive feedback.
There was a lot of amazing pieces in the show so it was very tough this year, but everyone did a great job of their work, even the ones that hadn't been nominated, I know they had amazing pieces too.

So it's all over and now it's time to look for a job. Now that the Glammies is also over I can finally put up my showreel and all my other work I've finished. The film may take a bit longer to put up because we just need to sort some stuff out. Hope you all enjoy!

It's Nearly Over!!

For some reason blogger hasn't liked me for the past few weeks. Either the server is down, or it constantly refreshes the page so i can't get to my dashboard, or I can't copy and paste things which is a surprisingly big problem! ... so any who, that's why I've been a bit behind on updating recently ... oh, and because we've been super busy trying to finish our film!!

We got nominated for Glammies which is great! It's not about the winning, but just the opportunity to show everyone our film on the big screen. We hope everyone enjoys it!
At this stage, 2 days before Glammies and 1 day before we're supposed to hand in our final piece, it's going to be a push to finish. Me and Joe have done all we can so we're literally in uni just supporting the motion design guys as they try and finish bits and pieces off, ready for Glammies.
I believe some of them will finish for us, but unfortunately we've had trouble with others who have been quite unreliable the past week, so they are holding us back a bit. We appreciate everything they've done for us, but at the same time we just want to give them a little kick to finish it off ;)

Hopefully in one of the next few posts I'll be able to put up a video of our film so you can all see, but at the moment every ones work is on Lockdown until after the Glammies, so all I want to say is GOOD LUCK, POB LWC to everyone who's nominated and Well Done to all the 3rd years! It's been a great 3 years and I know a lot of people have amazing work that unfortunately won't be shown at the Glammies, but I'm looking forward to seeing them all at the exhibition instead :D