Manchester Animation Festival

Producing an Animation TV Show:

A talk by Blue-Zoo

• Pitching Bible
• Story structures
• Front cover
• Log-line & synopsis - short backstory, concentrate on the NOW for the narrative, 3/4 page max., display tone/genre & core values, target audience
• Character descriptions - personality, habits, dreams, appeal (not appearance) 
• 6 short story & premise ideas
• 20 seconds proof of concept clips
• storyboard animatics
• graphic novel/ comic strips
• casting choices + voice actors

 Character descriptions 

- Key traits

- Character flaws - for conflict in story 

- Hopes & fears, motivations ... then put into context

- Relationships (character matrix) - all react differently for chemistry 

- Design suitable for Animation - simplify 

- Dynamic poses showing personality

- Avoid contradictions or stereotypes

Script

- Avoid writing backstory on original episode

- structure & pacing

- write about 3 episode examples

- Broadcaster wants to see average episode 

Making it in Manchester :

A talk by a few studios in Manchester, showing their work with interest to hire new people now

Gadzocks (Hayden Decker)
- stop motion & puppetiering
- BFI

Fuzzy Duck 
- live action, animation & VR
- make interactive videos for museum exhibitions & Apps
- projection maps & interactive screens

TT Games (Philip Gray)
- Cinematics department

Factory
- Jo Charlkely
- 3 stop motion studios + puppets (3d printed)
- 1 CGI studio
- Beckets bunch
-Phil Chalkely (managing director) - will give studio tours


Benfits of the festival:
- Saw some inspiring animations & helped me rethink my final film story
- Spoke to golden wolf, a music producer & other animation students (connected on instagram)
- Bumped into a storyboard artist I met in Annecy!! She introduced me to a few people she'd worked with & we've kept in touch on instagram

Study Task 10 - Showreel

I am quite pleased with my second year studying animation. I learned a lot in first year but found that at the end of the year I was not proud of my work. This year I have found a focus and recognised my strengths, resulting in a showreel that I am proud of and am confident to show it to others. My plan from here is to send my showreel to stop motion studios in Ireland for the summer as that is where I would like to be based and it would be great to get a studio visit or even an internship if i'm lucky. I will send this to Flickerpix and Telegael. to begin with and also plan on handing my business cards to those I speak to at Annecy in June. There may be networking opportunities with both students and professionals at this and I intend on making good use of this!

Studio Brief 2 - Going Live!

I used this brief to try something different as I feel as though I have found my focus and am confident in myself that stop motion and set building is what I would like to pursue future. I have noticed that my digital drawing skills have become a bit rusty and this motivated me to do a character design challenge. The theme for this month's Character Design Challenge was Alebrijes. These are brightly coloured mexican folk art sculptures and the examples I researched had distinctive repeated patterns and colour schemes used throughout the characters. I decided to adapt this by creating my own patterns and using two colour schemes on a squirrel. I think the final product turned out well, considering character design is not something I have looked into in much detail. In saying this, though, I would not compare it to any of my other stop motion work. I am glad I have recognised my strengths and weaknesses but also should be constantly challenging myself with new things. I intend on entering stop motion competitions in the summer as I will have ore spare time and hopefully try to do a character design challenge with a stop motion puppet. I feel more confident in posting my work along side professionals now that I have entered my first competition, I ama now part of the CharacterDesignChallenge Facebook page and  the regular updates from them should keep me motivated to enter again.  I have followed challenge pages on Instagram such as the MondayChallenge and I would also like to do a LoopdeLoop.

Studio Brief 3 - Talk The Talk

Following on from study task 9 with our animation studio KICK, we realised that there would have to be a clear channel of communication between the client and the production team. We plan to rent out a space in BizzSpace in Leeds, allowing us to have meetings together as a team, as well as allowing the clients to visit the studio and speak with the team about their project. For startup, though, we expect that we will have to travel to our clients or have Skype meetings with them, and so I would be the producer and manage information and guild lines for production between client and team. As a small studio we would need to start building an online presence with our work up as a portfolio to open us up to potential clients. Our Brand logo of a shoe in white, green and orange would be used across Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and our website. We would also have a LinkedIn account as we are focusing our target market in on businesses who was to share their message online in an animated explainer video. It was interesting researching smaller studios and of what would be our competition, as they have launched their businesses from scratch and I found that most of these interacted with their social media accounts daily, and updated their followers on the projects that they were working on. I expect that this would also bring attention to our pages and bring potential business.

Study Task 9 - collective enterprise

My group for the collective enterprise task is Briony, Pypah and R'Shaun. When grouping together we realised that we had a range of different skills and strengths. Two of our team members have experience in character designing, with the other two with skills in editing and story boarding. We decided to form a studio that produced character based explainer videos for educational or promotional messages. I made a to do list after our meeting and split the roles up accordingly. 

To Do

Mission Statement

USP

Roles [specialist skills + how the team works together + channels of communication]

Target market

Competitors + their USP’s + what they’re lacking in

Our USP

Marketing [social media, best way to be seen by our potential clients]

Website

LinkedIn

7 P’s (product, price, promotion, place, process, people, physical evidence)

Costing + overheads [employees, software, space atc.]

Pricing for clients + where profit is made + potential investment opportunities once enough is generated

Branding [Logo, slogan, business cards, contact info, etc.]

Roles

PYPAH

Branding

Employee avatars

Business cards

BRIONY

Finance

Expenses

Pricing for clients

Hourly rate

Profit + loss expectations

R’SHAUN

Market research (competition, potential clients + competitive pricing)

Character design

Layout + overall visual

CATRIONA

Producer

Client liaison (communicating brief from client to studio)

Editor

Background Design

Social media  + online presence

Employability fortnight

The past two weeks have been spent in workshops, learning how to present myself professionally, online and in person with professionals. I'm glad we had this opportunity to develop these skills, I feel as though I have learned about how to conduct myself according to the company I keep and how this should change depending on the relationship I have with them. The networking workshop was the most valuable to me, as I have struggled to talk about my own work to other people, and we were given tips on how to start conversations and also on how to end them to make the most out of our time at an event. I would have preferred if the people taking the workshops were more aware of the animation industry as I felt a lot of the information we were given was irrelevant. However, I still took a lot from them speaking from a business point of view.

Study Task 8 - Working Freelance/Self Employment

Through looking at my expenses earlier on in the module, I worked out that I could charge £13 per hour and for an 8 hour day that would bring in a daily income of £104. I made templates of an agreement to work contract and for an invoice so that I will be prepared if I receive any commission work.

Study Task 7 - Social Media Pro

Current Social Media:

Instagram: Used to post Work in progress, finished pieces of work, while supporting and discovering the work of my peers and those of the industry who I admire. It is useful to have high levels of skill to compare my work to. There are accounts that I follow that run monthly competitions and there are opportunities to have them post my work for their followers to see if I enter these.

LinkedIn: Used as a professional account, I have not posted on this account, only followed studios that I look up to and connected with peers. I realise that this platform could be used to show my work and if I was to speak to a professional and about the opportunity of a studio visit or internship; it would be ideal to direct them to my LinkedIn account to see if my work was suitable for their studio. 

Let's Improve this...

For Instagram I now have a goal to post weekly and interact with competitions to take on the opportunity to have my work set in front of professionals and students who follow them. I have followed hashtags that are popularly tagged on work from stop motion animators, set builders and animation students & professionals.

I will set up a Facebook and twitter account to cover more platforms, as I am now aware that there are Facebook groups I can join to collaborate with people on. I have been using my personal account to join professional and student groups but I feel like this would be more effective if my account had my portfolio of work on it, while separating my work and social life. 

Study Task 2 - #7

Gas Networks Ireland - Progress Naturally.

Progress Naturally is an animated advertisement made by a studio in London called SEED. Through researching the process of making this animation, I discovered that the paper world and paper characters were first created using paper as a stop motion set, then recreated in CGI and animated from there. SEED state that this is process is used because clients tend to change their mind about different elements of the project throughout the production process and these are easier to adjust if they are digital, rather than re-shooting the stop motion. This has made me realise the extra difficulty stop motion might cause if I was to create a stop motion animation in response to a live brief from a client.

https://www.seedanimation.com/about

Study Task 2 - #6

Northern Ireland Screen is a national screen agency for Northern Ireland and has a mission of accelerating the development of a dynamic sustainable screen industry and culture in Northern Ireland. I keep my eye on their posts and they have regular updates on animation related job and internship opportunities.
https://www.northernirelandscreen.co.uk/news/short-film-schemes-201920-now-open/

Collaborating with a Fashion Photography student

Through word of mouth and through following students from LAU on Instagram I have benefited as I was asked to edit a fashion photography video. This was not related to animation but as I have skills on premiere pro that I use regularly I felt confident enough to collaborate with a student on another course. This greatly boosted my confidence in myself as I worked with someone outside of my course. I have gained contacts in photography and also in fine art as there were more than one participant in the group with me.

Study Task 2 - #5

Telegael

Telegael are a multi-award winning animation studio based in Galway. While their work includes all of live action, 2D, 3D animation and stopmotion, it was their feature length stop motion animation Captain Morten & The Spide Queen that lead me to them. This was Irelands first stop motion animation film. I have followed their studio on Instagram and linedIn.

https://www.telegael.com/

Study Task 5 - CopyShop

After the lecture on Copyright laws and on how to protect your work online, I checked over my Instagram account (the main account I post my work on) and realised I had no watermark on my images, nor did I state that any work posted on my account was mine and not to be passed off as an others. However, most of my posts are of working progress and not of final animations, so this did not worry me as much. This did alert me to future posts though, and I will be more strict on the quality of final pieces I post, ensuring a light watermark is over them.

In all of my posts of collaborative work, I ensure my team mates are recognised and that it is evident what I should be accredited for, especially when possible employers use my Instagram to weigh up whether my capabilities and work is suitable for them or not.  

I have also included my email address for formal conversations between studios. I find that having a business account is valuable as I can gauge how much attention my work is getting from specific posts, and of who interacts with them, allowing me to adapt to grow a following.

Study Task 4 Networking

1. Cantebury Animaition festival

https://www.canterburyanifest.com

2. Dingle 
https://2019.animationdingle.com/

3. Cork Film Festival 
7-17th November 2019
https://corkfilmfest.org/

4. Encounters Film Festival
Bristol
24-29th September
https://encounters-festival.org.uk/submit-your-film-2019/

5. Foyle Film Festival
15-24th November 2019
http://foylefilmfestival.org/

6. Leeds Film Festival 
8-22nd April
https://www.leedsfilmcity.com/film-festivals/leeds-young-film-festival/

7. Raidance Film Festival
19-27th September
London
https://www.raindance.org/festival/about/

8. Ulster University Belfast Animation showcase 2019
I would like to actively seek networking opportunities in Ireland while I am there for the summer, and visiting showcases of Animators there is the perfect opportunity to find people to collaborate with and possibly have a project running during summer.

9. Annecy Animation Festival 
10 - 15th June 2019

10. Galway Film Fleadh
9-14th July 2019
https://www.galwayfilmfleadh.com/

At these festivals I would have the opportunity to talk to professionals and students in the industry. It would be useful for me to create some business cards to hand out and to collect a few too. Some of these festivals are in Ireland and this would lead to me having contacts across the water from where I study.

I've also created a LinkedIn account as it is a much more professional way of contacting and exhibiting my work on social media. I intend on using this as a portfolio platform and also as a way of keeping in contact with people I may work with in the industry in the future.

Study Task 2 - #4

I came across a stop motion studio outside London called A + C Studios, responsible for Animated advertisements for companies such as Harrods, Trivago, LEGO, British Airways, American Express and Sainsburys, to name a few.

They have two stop motion studios, one with an infinity cove, and I was interested to discover that they rent them out when they are not in production. They also have their model workshop and editing suite in the same building so their work ethic is very teamwork orientated and each member of the team has contact with one another while making thier own contribution to the production at hand. 

https://www.aplusc.tv

Study Task 6 - How Much Do You Need

From estimating a break down of my living costs as a student, I have worked out that I spend around £9973.20 annually. I am currently seeking freelance work during my studies and must have a suitable hourly and daily rate to quote potential clients with. To break even I must earn £831.10 a month. If I work at £13 p/h at 8hrs a day, I would have a daily rate of £104. At this rate I would work for 8 days a month to break even. Working at the same rate for the other 3 weeks  in one month would  I profit at 3x the income I would need to cover living costs.

Study Task 2 - #3

This week some of my peers went to Manchester Animation Festival. Filled with envy and regret of not buying a ticket for it, I researched the work of some of the animators exhibiting there.
One short in particular stood out to me, Facing it, directed by Sam Gainsborough. 

This is a mixed media claymation/live-action hybrid where the magic of animation was used to represent the feelings of people and how their perception of the world changes through time with experiences they have. It was interesting to see this literal take on visually representing the thoughts of a character we wouldn't see otherwise in a live action production. In an interview with Directors Notes, Gainsborough talks about the challenges they faced during produciton, 'we shot the film in live action and pixellation and then separately shot the character’s faces in the studio against a green-screen, almost rotoscoping the footage we had already shot. This meant matching the lighting by eye, tracking frame by frame in stop-motion,' he states that given the medium used in the animation it was very trial and error, but doing a small-scale prototype of the technique made them realise it was possible to do.

Raymonde or the Vertical Escape is a stop motion Animation about a lonely old owl who longs for a life of love and of something bigger than her day to day gardening routine. The level of detail put into the set alone had me drooling.

The smooth animated movements of the characters are so realistic and precise it makes it easier to watch and enjoy as the whole aesthetic blends nicely together.

https://film-animation.blogs.la-croix.com/cesars-raymonde-ou-levasion-verticale-un-film-tendre-et-profond-sur-la-solitude/2019/02/07/

These two examples use a mix  of stop motion with either live action, or 2D animation. They have a reason for using these contrasting mediums; to show thoughts or feelings from the live action or 3D stop motion characters. They use the more life-like medium to show reality and the other to put a different perspective on the events. 

This would be interesting to experiment with, but it reminds me that there must be a purpose to the method of communication we use to tell a story.

Study Task 2 - #2

Almax is an advertisement for a mannequin company. It uses a mix of live action film with stop motion, to give the illusion that the mannequins come to life when the sculptor has finished making them and has left the room.
I re-watched this looking at the detail of the shots, looking into how they transitioned from a sculpture life-size mannequin in the live action to  the silicone puppets with armatures in them to animate with.
I quickly realised that the puppets were green screened and the animation of their dance was layered over the live action shots. It was through the illusion of the live action character touching the mannequins with close ups of him sculpting with clay, that tricks the eye into thinking they are life-sized.

A fault I noticed in this technique was that their feet do not touch the ground, although the rig is well edited out I could almost imagine it still there holding them up. This is something I should be very aware of if I am to create stop motion animation with puppets as the rig holding them up must be edited out well and when using a green screen I must create the same atmosphere with similar lighting to the set it will be edited onto.

Study Task 2 - Post #1

Throughout my continuous blogging of research into the creative industries, I will be focusing on Stop Motion & 3D CGI animations and practitioners. I have deep interests in both of these types of animation and would like to investigate further into these in order to establish what I would like to specialise in.

I came across two animated stop motion shorts by a studio called Zealous Creative:
  Zero 

The Maker 

From researching the making of these Shorts I become more aware of the 3D stop motion production line, as before I was only confident in the 2D production line. For stop motion it is necessary to have 2D concept illustrations  followed by 3D prototypes of character and set design so that the shape and size of the objects work well together and to ensure the figures are flexible enough to animate.

It was interesting to see how they made the prototype character body shapes out of clay to mould the final silicone puppets, adding texture with thread. This meant that the puppets were light but that their armatures were secure within the body and therefore perfect to animate with.

To achieve the smooth camera movements seen throughout The Maker, Mark Laganga made camera dollies out of recycled old objects. He used 35mm film as it is light and durable - withstanding tension, and also the inside of a scanner as it has a gear box to adjust the distance between each shot, which they found useful for smooth close up pans as they needed smaller gaps between each shot.
This made me realise the wide range of camera angles and staging possibilities you can create by inventing a track around your set, as before this I only imagined the camera on a still tripod. I hope to experiment with this when I build a set and shoot a stop motion short.