Skillset - Jobs in the industry.

• Runner

This is usually an entry-level role in Animation studios. Runners are employed on low salaries, and are expected to cover a multitude of, sometimes menial, tasks. They are often a combination of handyman/woman, production office dogsbody, relief receptionist and messenger. However, many people with successful careers in all aspects of animation started their careers as Runners.

This route into the animation industry has nurtured the potential of many individuals, and produced some very talented practitioners who may otherwise never have had a chance to progress in the industry. While working in this role, Runners can demonstrate their abilities, prove that they have a good attitude, and discover where their main interest or talent lies.

Depending on their aptitude, skills and interests, Runners may be promoted to junior or training roles in Editing, Camera, Animation, Model Building, Scanning, Digital Colouring, Digital Compositing, Rendering, or in the Production Office, among many other departments.


Skills


Runners must be bright, helpful, presentable, articulate and have basic literacy, numeracy and communication skills. It is helpful if they already have an interest in animation and, to get the most out of their time in the job, they need to develop an understanding of the production process. Runners must be able to cope under pressure, accept instructions from all quarters, show initiative and problem solving skills, respond quickly to requests and know how to prioritise their tasks.

• Modeller

Modellers build three-dimensional computer models of everything that is needed for a CGI project. As they develop their skills and interests, Modellers may concentrate on different areas such as characters, objects, environments or special effects.

Further on in the process, Riggers will rig the models to enable them to be animated and Texture Artists will apply texture which will be further enhanced at the Lighting stage when tone and depth are added.


Skills

One of the most important skills is to be able to think in 3D. In addition, it will be necessary to demonstrate at least some of the following within a portfolio submitted for a Modelling position:

• ability to follow design reference accurately and work in a range of styles;

• ability to create moderate to complex and organic models;

• ability to model characters, props and environments, working to a good level of finish, if required;good drawing skills including use of light and shadow and a good understanding of anatomy;strong sense of scale, form, weight and volume;

Key Skills include:

• good understanding of modelling with either Polygons or NURBS;

• ability to do UV mapping;

• ability to problem solve;

• ability to communicate with colleagues and work as part of a team;

• ability to take direction and willingness to address comments and make changes;

• ability to work with a minimum of supervision and capacity to function as team leader, if required;

• ability to deliver on schedule, working under pressure if required;respect for the procedures and requirements of a particular studio, production or pipeline; knowledge of the requirements of the relevant Health and Safety legislation and procedures

I think if i choose the career path i will have to develop my skills in Cinema 4D and try to experiment with modelling a range of different things, also i think i need to experiment with things such as UV mapping etc.

SWOT analysis.

Strengths - My strengths within animation are mainly to do with 3D modeling and 3D animation as most of my work has been realized in 3D. Also since i was quite happy with the project in which i created model sheets for a character i would like to say that character design is another one of my strengths, however as it has been a while since i have actually drawn anything i would quite like to start drawing again and improve my skills, i also need to improve on my Adobe Illustrator skills as i only mainly know the basics of illustrator and currently prefer using Adobe Photoshop which is not as good when it comes to creating and designing characters.

Weaknesses - My weaknesses within animation are mainly to do with 2D animation and drawing as i haven't drawn for a while, i would like to try making a 2D animation sometime but first i will need to improve my drawing skills etc.
Another weakness of mine is my confidence in my idea's for projects, as it usually takes me a while to think of what to do, this then knocks my confidence in my work off balance, this is something i really need to try and overcome.
Rigging is another one of my weaknesses as i have rigged characters in the past, and some of them turn out fine with good working foot rolls etc. but then others just don't seem to work at all.
And another weakness i have to admit to is keeping this blog up to date, i am terrible, trying to sort that out though.

Opportunities - Opportunities i have and have had this year to improve on some of my skills are things such as on Friday, illustrator Paul Hess came into college to give us a talk on what it is like have work as an illustrator, he also told us all about the pro's and con's of having an agent and how to get one, it was a really helpful talk. He also set us a little task in which he gave us a story out of one of his books he is working on currently, we then had to design a character, in this story the character we had to design is a ghost that lives in a banana tree, this is a good opportunity for me to try and improve my drawing/illustrator work and i am going to try and complete the task sometime soon.
Another opportunity i have is with this current project i am doing. For this project we have been looking at live briefs and selecting ones that we wish to do, i have decided to do a series of 5 second animations for the website Grey scale gorilla, this website has a lot of tutorials for things on Cinema 4D which i am going to have a go at and try to further improve my Cinema 4D skills.

Threats - My threats at this time are currently deadlines, as i am aiming to experiment with a lot of new things and only have a few weeks left on the course.

My most recent project - Modeling and animating Stimpy.

For my most recent project i decided to model the character Stimpy from the popular adult cartoon 'The Ren and Stimpy show' i modeled the character using cinema 4D.
Whilst making this character i did come across a lot of problems but i managed to overcome them and this helped me learn a few more things along the way.
The final animation consisted of my finished Stimpy model which was composited onto a background which i created in Adobe Illustrator, Stimpy then walked across the screen. Sadly though i have lost the final animation and a lot of the screen shots that i took for developement work as my hard drive recently broke, here are a few of the images that i do still have.

Compositing.

In one of the CAAD sessions in college we learnt how to composite a sphere onto a photograph to give the appearance that it was composited onto live footage and give the shape a sense of realism.

I think this technique is very useful for my future animations and i am glad i have learnt this.

Character design - Model sheets

Here is how my final model sheets turned out for the character Borghoul, on the third model sheet i also  decided to draw his pet brain Squidge.

I created the background on photoshop and for the splat effects on the background i had downloaded a new brush.

Overall i was really pleased with how these model sheets turned out.

Character Design

Firstly, I need to apologize as I haven't been posting regularly at all this year, I should have been keeping on top of my blog but sadly I haven't.
I am going to take this time to upload as much work as I can to show my recent work and progress within my modules, however my portable hard drive has recently broke, causing me to lose certain pieces of work that I hadn't yet backed up, which is a shame as i was rather happy with some of the work I had on there, including my most recent module in which i modeled the existing character 'Stimpy' from The Ren and Stimpy Show, I had composited him onto a background I had created and the animation showed him walking through the scene, however i do still have a few screenshots of the character itself and will post them up soon.

The first thing I am going to post is my character design sheets and development.
The character I had created was a zombie named Borghoul, I had always wanted to create a zombie character as i have always been interested in the idea of them.

Here is my first attempt at drawing my character, I was overall quite pleased with this design even though it was the only one I could come up with, so I decided to stick with it and try to make it look better using the pen tool in Adobe Illustrator.

After tracing over my character design in illustrator I decided to change little details about my Character such as, instead of the tuft of hair at the right side of his hair I decided to replace it with more of the zombies brains hanging out.

Here is how my character design looked after I had finished tracing over it with the pen tool, without the pencil drawing behind it

Once I was happy with the line work of my character, I then decided to colour it up, to do this I used the program Adobe Photoshop, I also added shading to the colour to give it a more textured look, I did this by using the Eyedropper tool and selecting the colour, I then selected a darker version of the colour and used a different brush around the edges of my character

I then decided to try and design my character without using any line work, and just using basic shapes in Adobe Photoshop instead to see if my character would look any better, and it turns out that I prefer this version to all of the others as it looks very simple yet effective.

Below is an image showing the front, side and rear views each created using the same technique in Adobe Photoshop.