I figured since it's been so long since I've written an update on my blog, I'd make a quick post on this final day of 2018. It's certainly been a crazy year, and I don't tend to enjoy writing cheesy 'reflection' posts (especially on social media where it feels very show-offy sometimes). But, seeing as this is my blog, I've written reflection posts involving animation projects, and most of my year revolves around academics and careers I thought it'd be a good opportunity to talk a little bit about it even if it's just for myself. But I'm going to try to keep it as brief as possible.
R&J - Dream/Queen Mab Texturing Test #5
R&J - Dream/Queen Mab Texturing Test #4
R&J - Dream/Queen Mab Texturing Test #2
R&J - Dream/Queen Mab Texturing Test #3
So this year I've obviously managed to graduate from the CAA course at UCA, and I am very grateful to all of the staff on the course for helping me through it as well as my peers. It was an amazing experience and I honestly missed it before it was even over. It is really great to see the current third years working their way through their final projects and I can't wait to see the results. I continue to be proud of how successful my year has been in regards to film festivals and it is very exciting to see. I'm again very grateful for the continued support and interest When has received this last year. I honestly never expected it but it makes me happy that all of that hard work was worth it. New Designers now feels like it was so far away, but I look forward to attending ND 2019 to support the course, its staff and students.
ND 2018
CAA 2018
CAA 2018
Factual Animation Film Festival 2018
I'm also very grateful that I have been able to continue working on projects with the course such as Romeo & Juliet. I admit I am somewhat disappointed with myself that I have been so busy and unable to work on it as much as I'd like to. Whenever I do get to sit down and work on it, it's like a whirlwind to get as much done as possible in the small space of free time I have, and I don't feel I absorb the visuals as much as I'd like. But, thanks to Phil and Ethan we have been making good progress and have created some interesting results. I cannot wait till I can see the final renders and what it looks like after VFX and compositing. Hopefully everything goes smoothly.
R&J - Love Scene // Scene 04 (Alive)
R&J - Love Scene // Scene 02 (Alive)
R&J - Love Scene //Scene 03 (Dead)
R&J - Love Scene // Scene 05 (Dead)
R&J - Love Scene // Scene 07 (Alive)
R&J - Love Scene // Scene 07 (Alive)
I was also lucky enough to go and see my family in America over the summer. During this time I also had the privilege of going to volunteer at the SIGGRAPH conference in Vancouver. Despite travelling to America on my own, I consider this trip to Vancouver the first time I properly travelled alone since it was an unfamiliar place and I didn't have a home and family to greet me. It was honestly an amazing experience. I had so much fun, met many amazing people (some of which I keep in contact and occasionally meet up with), and overall it opened my eyes and taught me a lot.
In addition to everything else, I recently started to get back into some traditional artwork which has been very fun and liberating. I've found it relaxing to just pick up some old paints and paintbrushes and create whatever I feel like that particular day. They may not be amazing, but I've had a lot of fun creating this series that I've for now dubbed 'Left Over'.
(Left to Right) One, Two, Three
(Left to Right) Four, Five, Six
Seven
Eight (Left) & Nine (Right)
(Left to Right) Ten, Eleven, Twelve
(Left to Right) Thirteen, Fourteen, Fifteen
Sixteen (Left) & Seventeen (Right)
(Left to Right) - Eighteen, Nineteen, Twenty
And of course, I've managed to secure a job at The Flying Colour Company in London! I've now been working there for about four months and I feel I've settled in a bit more. It's very exciting being able to work on real shows...although I cannot talk about them just yet. Once I can reveal what I've been working on, I plan to! I've been lucky to have some amazing artists teach me how to use Autodesk Flame while I also work on some 3D work in Maya.
It's been scary taking the leap from education into a career and commuting into/out of central London every day is tiring and time consuming...but I'm excited to see where it goes, what I learn, and who I meet. Once again I'm grateful for all of the support I've had over the last few years and I look forward to working on more amazing projects.
Over the last few weeks I've been working with Leda Entertainment to create assets for their indie game Bullion. I have never modelled for games before but I skimmed over the tutorials online, looked at the assets other team members have made, and asked them for advice. I had a go at making some models for their Swamp level such as cattails, bushes, grasses/reeds, a waterfall, and trees to start with. The tree still needs work - I need to add more branches for some additional variation.
I'm sure overall there are things I need to fix, but I'm having other team members check over the models as I work on them. I tried to recycle assets where I could to try and ensure I was creating the models correctly. Only some of these assets are UV mapped since I wanted to check with the team if they were modelled properly for Unity (so far they've said the models work fine). I've put on temporary shaders for now to show what the textures may resemble later on. I think learning how to create some low poly games assets may be useful in the future.
Over the last few days I've been working for UCA as an ambassador at GEEK in Margate. I had the opportunity to use a Structure Sensor scanner, which we used to 3D scan people so they could have 3D models of themselves. I wonder if this scanner could be useful in the future, as I know people can create realistic texture maps using 3D scans.
During some downtime I started to scan randomly, but I'd only give it a few moments to scan so it was fragmented. I also tried scanning people's legs as they walked past, which produced interesting results. I then brought the OBJ files into Maya and applied a lambert, connected an aiWireframe shader and connected in a ramp and sampler info node into the transparency. I then rendered a selection of my scans (I have more that I'll render too when I have some spare time) and I think they look pretty interesting. I think this scanner is something I'd like to experiment more with in the future both for crying to try and create my own 3D scanned textures and just for some interesting models/renders.
