6AD001: week 2-6: (9th feb-11th march) part 3

 As part of looking into industry and freelance work we had a talk from animator Sandra Salter who attended as a guest lecturer in semester one to the 1st and 2nd years. She is part of a self made company called salty animation who specializes in different mediums of print to imagery production aswell as traditional methods of 2d animation through formats of hand drawn to digital.
The work she showed to us that was commissioned to festivals and other clientele included:

•   The Royal Oak which was a collaboration with poet Bendicty Newbery won the best animation audience award at the purbeck Shorts competition in the Purbeck film festival. This film told the story of royal Oak pub narrated by Tony Fish describing the daily routine it has to through and describing what happens a typical day in terms of the people and times other places around the pub effect their routines.

The Royal Oak from Sandra Salter on Vimeo.

• Throwaway which is based how she describes it as a couple having a rubbish argument which was published through channel 4

Salty's Animation Co. Nov 2013 from Sandra Salter on Vimeo.

•  Illustration work like open sky productions project called the mighty prince that she contributed in to create the art around the purpose of the book.
  
  
  
  

https://vimeo.com/sandrasalter
http://www.saltysanimation.co.uk/
http://saltysstudio.blogspot.co.uk/ 
What I learned of this talk is that she has a unique style that can be recognized by people watching her animations and looking at her illustrations. I also see from her years of experience how she presents her company branding, how she chooses her clients like channel aswell as the sort of subject matter and people she would work with.

List of portfolio content.
From looking at previous year's portfolio including Reg issac and Kamila Konczewska the main content we all must include to gain the requirements the brief wants includes:

• Industry role: I would have to talk about my favoured career ideas from digital painter and concept artist
• Career plan: current situation and ideal situation
• Back up plan: this would need to be for in case my original path doesn't meet the plan
• Required skills
• Branding promotion
• CV
• Business Cards
• websites listed (blogs, facebook pages)
• showreel
• networking and social media
• festivals (if attended)
• working with clients (like the Wolverhampton marketing team)
• Bibliography

Personal branding and enterprise/ Employability award
From a talk from Lisa Price, the main aspects was to talk about identifying our marketing strengths when looking for employment. Like all companies they would be identified with a logo and vision that can be easily recognized. Having a brand can create loyalty to the customers and consumers; helping people connect with the concept of the company.
Branding is a part of strategy communication. In lisa's own words, it conveys a message to a target audience that look for the type of product they would want.
A way branding is produced requires researching the market that might be looking for the productions or products people are producing and effective packaging and products that is unique, diverse and different to other competitors.
All content described above is a good way of advertising the brand I want to showcase towards my own career path.
For marketing research this would have to include researching the types of opportunities I would find throughout the industries  from contract, freelance aswell as permanent jobs. Sometimes these sort of companies that direct towards animation and other film based industries can be found on the products the companies themselves aswell as commercial adverts.
Some links to articles about how to research the industries include:

• www.creativeskillset.org/animation/overview/article_4455_1.asp
• http://aidb.com/
• www.wlv.ac.uk/default.aspx?page=23279

When it comes to research the most common aspects to look for when finding opportunities include:

• What do they do?
• Their client base they conduct work with
• The mission and purpose of their industry
• The roles they possess in the company such as animation assistant to producer
• The type of films and concepts they look for in their film production

For a good product or story, they would require people to have qualities in creating the concept that meets their standards; the experiences I have acquired up to this point and describing myself in three words that best describe my most important qualities that effects with what I want in my career path.

The qualities that would be used to describe and sell ourselves to the industry include motivated, independent, reliable, committed, confident or passionate.

To showcase our experiences within the industry this would include:

• Placements with application forms
• volunteering such as work experience
• freelance work
• festivals which helps in creating a network of people to communicate with those that have been apart of the animation industry
• Exhibitions from degree shows and creative briefs
• Competitions
• University Projects but have more studying can develop the employment experience better

6AD001: week 2-6: (9th feb-11th march) part 2

As the course went on we started to learn what is important when creating a CV and an action plan for our portfolio.
Also as part of promoting what we can do in the market, I decided to start up a Facebook page on my university work and other art related activities that will be updated across each month. The intention of this process is to gain follows from anybody that interested in looking at my work from new followers to friends and family aswell as getting noticed by people who work for animation or other types of art related communities whether they are directors, producers, freelance artists or other type of employee.
The link for the page is down below.
https://www.facebook.com/MattDanksArt

What I also did whilst continuing to research the role I want in future is to make a rough action plan of the current situation paragraph to get a starting point for writing this portfolio.

Here is rough copy of the paragraph:

Personal Action plan

Current situation:

Throughout my entire education within secondary school, sixth form and university I have taken on a wide variety of skills and knowledge that has persevered what I wanted to gain out of life. From these experiences, what I deem most important that shows what I can do include having a range of artistic media skills and knowledge that can be perfect for trying something new in animation aswell as other film productions I would conduct in future practices; open mind and quick learner of software that would conduct its main aspects of editing, creating music and digital art; and advanced sketching and drawing skills that has developed more frequently and better as time went on at university through constant practice and using this skill as my main technique within the most modules in my studies.


For the CV what we learned included:

•  The experiences have to chronological order to help indicate when what experience came first and what was the latest.
• listed skills that been gained from these experiences which can be relevant to the targeted profession and company I would like to conduct researching and apply for.
• The listed application information has be academic which can take normally up to two sides of paper.
• The listed information would include contact details, skills, qualities, project work, work experience as key to selling myself to companies I would want to apply for. These would be apart of a career objective statement.
• Other information would involve contact information list of professional emails, addresses, interests that relate towards the job application and online profiles such as facebook and blogs so they have another way to check out the work I've conducted.
• I would also have to include references to prove this information is correct.
• descriptions of qualifications, education, achievements and work which would also include dates in reverse order, where and what I studied.
• Descriptions of current and previous employments I have had over the years.
• The additional sections can contain such relevant content such as research, funding awards such as the type of competitions I been involved in whilst educating for animation and other publications.
• Use effective grammar and punctuation aswell as present the information in an accurate, uncluttered manner and have the same sort of text font the same throughout. The main professional fonts would generally include Arial or Calibri.
• links to how to create a CV:

•www.prospects.ac.uk

•Creative Skillset

•National Careers Service

The next post I will conduct will show key points to creating the portfolio aswell as a start up to the CV and continuing the portfolio

6DM022, 6DM012: week 18 (7th-14th March 2016)

Updated workflow and wall schedule aswell as updated keyframing notes on storyboard for initial thoughts on where the scenes will be produced in terms of how each one plays out within the creation stage and editing stag when playing around with the camera setup. What I also did within the schedule is plan ahead on what I am expected to do in the coming weeks as the animation progresses.

What I also started doing over the course of the week is start producing music but as I was sort of time aswell as working with another student Andrew Taylor with his music and vice versa, we decided to import what we have into our animation and get some opinions on it on the 14th March. Our next plan on this as we get better at using the IMac's Garageband program is make sure we continue with this process and make sure we don't overcomplicate ourselves with the music and make decent tracks that match our films.
Below shows my full keyframed animatic with a rough soundtrack. This video also shows the last sequences to the story and shows it is ready for creating the in-betweens aswell as adding colour and better background with incorporated sound effects.


The prey keyframed aniamtic with rough soundtrack from matthew danks on Vimeo.

What also happened this week in relates to 6DM022: major project is that we have to start making plans for our final evaluation towards the project itself aswell as a reflection the course as a whole through the past three years. This would have showcase key events that have made an impact in our education whilst at university aswell as the full run down process of the final film itself and talking about how we felt whilst making it and how it would have changed.

Below shows the full rough plan of the report but this could be changed over time as I create the actual report through next two months.

My experience as an animation student (might need changing)

Content

·         Illustrative Images of my previous learning productions including screenshots of my final project of innovative animation; character development and creative composition aswell as screenshots of the final look of the final film, ‘The Prey’ and also a recent animation production from the professional project module.

·         Introduction into what this report will discuss and conclude through my experience at the University of Wolverhampton.

·         The evaluation of the final film

·         Reflection on the overall experience.

·         Conclusion on what I expected to gain in future from the overall experience.

Main Section:

Evaluation

This section will discuss several topics of thought process into the final idea of the film aswell as stages they undertaken to gain the final result I want as I approach the end of this course.

The thought process will include what inspired me to go with the idea of using a horror genre for an animation short; why this particular one was undertaken in terms of using certain themes from the genre including the use of famous creatures and the tone in the production; and how this selection helped extend my profession as an animator aswell as an artist in terms of looking to how the film would look and sound to truly feel like a horror short.

The stages section will discuss the process I went through to create the result I ultimately want for the module including a how I created the concept for short and how it was changed over time with help of feedback to improve the narrative structure, playing a better angle for the twist I wanted the story to go aswell as the research I conducted to get the right look and feel I want.

The pre-production stage which includes the discussion of creating storyboard, character developing from initial sketches to character sheets, animatic, using a placeholder soundtrack in the animatic, concept art that broadens the final look for characters and scenes and colour script to help what short of common palette colours  I would use in each scene aswell as how they all improved over time with the help of feedback and discussions with fellow students and lecturers.

The production stage where the main animation process was undertaken which included the plan of how each scene would be produced in the right direction to run smoothly, last minute improvements on the story before conducting the keyframing for each action which helps show what needs changing in terms of pacing, timing and character movements from pose to pose since the film has no spoken dialogue and also sound production linking all back to the initial research

The post-production would include the discussion of the editing within the initial changes of cutting and adding extra setups to animation from title sequence and credits to music and camera to make the scenes more dynamic and fluid especially with the help of music/sound effects, aswell as promotion to how I would sell it out on the market.

A little side note as I am discussing the production stages, I will also the mention how I made sure to evidence that I was making this film through behind the scenes photos, referencing back the blog, keeping a production schedule that would constantly change and also the software I was using for each production stage.

Also whilst talking about the use of the twist is to mention how I wanted to create my own way of telling a horror story instead of sliding away into the usual tropes horror would normally undertake such as the monster gets the victim eventually.

Reflection

This section will discuss the overall experience of how I felt making this final aswell as reflecting on what I have gained throughout the past three years at Wolverhampton University.

This section would discuss key moments that have a better vision of how I would take animation to the next stage when going out into the world. This can be from how certain skills have been improved as time went on, learning more advanced techniques and software to create different and dynamic outcomes in animation, working towards certain goals of client briefs and also working in a team. These relevant descriptions of key points can help evolve my experience after university even making an impact on what sort of choices I would make as a career path. Also, these points will be chronologically descriptive through my 3 years at university to show when I made these improvements as an animator and how learned knowledge of a previous years helped influence my workflow and advanced skills in the following year. I will reflect what I would have changed in the outcomes of key modules that I would have got the best out of.

Conclusion

In the last paragraph it will discuss what I want overall throughout the experience and how this can influence my career path in the future aswell as discuss how this sort of workflow can generate my own way of making films from the given description of my final film at university to show reflection on how this can be better and what mistakes that need to be avoided to know what to expect in creating a good film.

6DM022, 6DM012: week 16&17 (22nd February-7th March)

After gaining some feedback that I need to start keyframing my animation for these two weeks, that was my main goal within the workflow I conducted from the schedule. I also wanted to start to doing is creating dummy sound effects for the film which will be shown in another post after the full keyframing and music is roughed out before starting clean up. Also from the feedback, they also mentioned I needed to plan a better workflow to gain the right perception on setting deadlines and creating the sufficient tasks that would be needed to get the right result I want in the film.
For the 4th week into the course, I started keyframing aswell as drawing lineart over the figures to determine what the final draw up look would look like when these characters come to life. For the end result I finished up from sequence 1-8 within the intro to when the mother figures out what she could tell her son from stopping him from going out in the night.

Below showcases the video of these set pieces I conducted within the main software of TV paint.


keyframing sequence 1-8 from matthew danks on Vimeo.

The other task I conducted was creating sound effects that would help generate the mood of the film, add effect to the situation and dynamics and also showcase how I want the story to be told in terms of having non-spoken dialogue and having imagery be the most important to tell the story.
For this to work, me and a fellow student Andrew taylor decided to book out the sound Booth suite and use the equipment to create different sound effects from mumbles to environment sounds and also help each other out with creating these different sounds for our films.
Below shows our basic list of what we wanted within the scenes to tell the story and characters better rather than just relying on visuals and music. What we did was use our own voices making mubble sounds to animal and creature sounds to create what the characters would sound like in the final edit. We also used random objects like elastic bands, crushing paper and cardboard and clicking related sounds to create environment sounds.
Photos below show me and Andrew in sound production.

What I also did as I helped Andrew with his sounds aswell as our plan to work with each other on creating our music, I decided to help him set up his stop motion set that would conduct and result with photos of backgrounds, pan shots and camera angles that are needed when he is animating his characters to tell the story. This included setting up the blue screen on two walls in the motion capture room; setting up the lights; camera and helping with extra lighting focused on specific points using mirrors to reflect the lights onto the set.

For the 5th week I was ill and couldn't any of the week's lectures but I carried on animating and made real progress within doing the keyframed animatic even though I did it in chronological order. The progression concluded with sequence 9-32 finished which indicated that I only and six more sequences to finish off before starting the in-betweens. What I also did was concentrate on making sure I get the action shots and poses correct aswell as pacing right before I would conduct the clean up and lineart stage.

Below shows the export of progress I made for the animatic.


keyframing sequences 1-32 from matthew danks on Vimeo.

In the 4th week we also had an introduction of what is expected when promoting this film in terms of press kit to send off to festivals and competitions in near future if I wanted to take part in these events. But as I was ill in the 5th week aswell as I wanted to keep on track with the keyframing, I will return to this at a later date when finding an existing animator that I can inspire a press kit from. But as I progress through the production this sort of writing will be easily understood on what is required as I could have the things that are needed when some part of the film is finished such as still images and other additional information.

6AD001: week 2-6: (9th feb-11th march)

As part of building up a portfolio, our first goal was to research potential industry roles we would look as this module progresses and what we would choose as a career pat.
The first step I took was to continue researching what sort of role I would enjoy doing after graduation and sending applications across.

For this, I started to look at common websites that would advertise different job roles within animation or other media industries. The first site was called  http://creativeskillset.org/

From looking at this site I started to look through the catergory of animation and see what sort of jobs I would consider as a career path to tell in my portfolio.
My first initial choices included:

• Digital painter
• Storyboard artist
• layout artist
• concept artist
• Runner (providing support through the animation and editing processes whenever possible

As I looked into each job, their was a decent amount of information about what is requirement in terms of skill set and attitude towards their initial set projects. But to make sure I really wanted to be either a storyboard artist or digital painter I would need to research the role more within different websites, job sites and people who have conducted this sort of practice in their career path.

I would also need to start advertising my work out into the world to gain new followers and eventually get into contact with different people that would already be a freelance animator or working for certain industries aswell as updating my vimeo account with updated showreel aswell as posting videos of my final film at university to showcase what I made in the past and then what I improved in the long run.

6DM022, 6DM012: week 15(15th-22th February 2016)

From this week's production meeting, the main things I showed to the rest of the group given by the previous post was the scenes I started to animate aswell as informing about the changes I am making to the story but would need to be draw out.
The main goals they set for me was to start feeding the scenes I start into the animatic so in the end it would the animation as I progress forward.
The other goal was to make sure I don't give the horror element away that people would recognize straight away as a werewolf story particularly at the start with the moon in view as it should be fully clouded over in the night sky. But make it more apparent as the story progresses and keep it for the crucial moments.

As the week progresses I started and finished a updated storyboard based on the notes shown the previous post.

I also did some updated character sheets with a breakdown sections to get the fall sense of how to get the characters to move when I am animating especially with the help of what they would look in the final look, their facial expressions, poses and how to draw them before adding textures and detail.

 Below shows an updated digital schedule for the entire semester and a board schedule for post-production which will frequently change as the weeks progress
Second semester schedule 
(Microsoft Excel)

For the board schedule I started to note down any points that I would need to progress the module aswell as knowledge of what scenes I have started and need continuing aswell as noting other tasks and would be important to the progression of this short film.

Below displays photos of my current workspace as to where I will reference the film from to make sure I keep on track to the schedule and storyboard I have changed provided from given feedback. But as the schedule this will frequently change. These photos also show that I consider taking notes for each sequence which can be crucial to knowing what exactly I need to do as I am animating each one.