Planning and executing an animated sequence

Below is the process I took to produce a piece of animation. I went along to the 11 Second Club site where they post an audio clip every month. This audio clip could come from anywhere, sometimes it's just sound effects. The challenge is to come up with your own interpretation.

When I had decided on a scenario I set my scene, camera angle and modelled a few props. Sometimes animators will act out the scene and film themselves, so that they get a good idea of body positioning and subtle expressions. This is recommended and very beneficial. In this particular case I did not act out the scene.

Blocking:

The blocking phase is the first phase I build when animating a scene. The purpose of blocking out the animation is to work out the main story telling poses of the characters, timing of the poses and framing of the shot. I use Stepped keys so that when I play back the animation I just see the poses I've keyed.

Refining:

This phase is when the animated curves in my graph editor are converted from Stepped to Spline. I will have to check the timing between the poses again as the Stepped curves make the animation seem very snappy from pose to pose, which can be desirable sometimes.

There will be a lot of finessing in order to refine this animation, but a good blocking pass will mean that you have a good base to build and refine your animation. Some of the finessing will include fine tuning poses and timing and offsetting of body parts.

Polishing:

This is the final animation. Some of the things that were addressed were tightening up the lip sync, adding in some finer facial features and tweaking some of the timing.

Working for Sunrise Productions

The last 7 months seemed to have whizzed by. It's been a super experience working as a Character Animator on their Jungle Beat Explorer season. My time there has come to an end, but I hope to work with them again. Below are a couple of links to paint you a picture of the traction this work is getting.

Watch the Jungle Beat Season 3 Sales Promo here.

Press Release #1

Press Release #2

I wish them all the very best.

MSC Cruises Safety Video

I had the opportunity to create a safety video for MSC Cruises. The brief was to develop a 3 minute video for the disembarkation process to Portuguese Island. It was a fairly open brief from a creative direction, but at the same time, being a safety video there were some very important and particular procedures to highlight.

- view the video here -

Character Development and Previsualization(Previz):

The development of the characters started with a series of 2D sketches, once the client was happy with them I modeled and rigged them in Autodesk Softimage. The textures were created in Adobe Photoshop.

I used one character model for the ships crew and modeled different faces along with specific uniforms and subtle skin tone variations.

Before getting started on the previz, I was supplied with a script, which would be used for the voice-over. The audio would drive the visuals and give me a clear idea of the shot lengths and some guidance for the animation. I recorded myself to start, then at a later date we approached a professional voice artist to do the final recording.

The purpose of a low rez previz is to quickly set up camera angles and shot lengths and create a solid grounding on which to build. The sets and props were basic shapes to start, but accurate in their relative size. The characters were stand in characters, because the actual characters were still being developed and approved. From there I animated the characters in a few key positions for framing and story telling purposes.

 This process is helpful to show the client, so they can start to see the direction you are heading in. Once the client was happy with the previz, I started refining everything, adding more detail to the sets and animating the approved characters, until it was the final video.

Look Development(lookdev), Lighting and Rendering:

For the final look, I was going for something simple and bold. Being a safety video I didn't want to detract from the important message being told, so the visuals needed to be clear and the animation of the characters needed to be to the point.

As the shots were being finished and the final voice over slotted in, the edit was tweaked and the polishes were made.

Sanlam Cape Town Marathon - Red Love Train Poster

I was commissioned by Endurocad to design this poster, which was based on an earlier design I did. The aim of this poster is to appeal to the participants taking part in the Sanlam Cape Town Marathon to join the Red Love Train, which is linked to the Red Sock Friday movement.

The Red Sock Friday movement is dedicated to making a difference, being passionate, inspiring others and being inspired. Check out the link to read more about this infectious energy. ShoOops!

Logo and Business Card Design

This was a competition I entered at HexiDesign where the client was a jewelry designer.

These were some of the words used to describe what they were looking for in a design:

Bold, minimalist, feminine, elegant, clean, edgy.

Then some the of the colours they wanted to explore were,

matte bronze/gold with a light green or white base.

[1] Sharp subtle serifs can suggest refinement and elegance. Having the letters P and Z intertwine was inspired by interlocking elements in jewelry design.

[2] The simple yet refined appearance of the typeface suggests elegance and appeal of

a piece of jewelry.

[3] Having the letters P and Z intertwine was inspired by interlocking elements in jewelry design. The rough, handwritten look of the typeface was inspired by the raw minerals and materials used to create a piece of jewelry. Contrasted by the simplistic typeface used for the name to promote elegance and refinement.

Creating a Corporate Identity

These corporate identities were created for a competition I entered hosted by Springleap.

An in-depth written description was very helpful in the design process.

Below are extracts from the design brief.

Identity characteristics of the brand:
Human, Trustworthy, and Authentic

Human: We treat our borrowers as people, not numbers.
Trustworthy: We are experts and advocates, and we always have our borrowers’
best interests at heart.
Authentic: We are building the company we wish was around when we had to take on student loans. CommonBond is by us, for us.

Here is an additional graph, which was supplied, to inspire the design.

Target market:
MBA students and recent grads of MBA, MD, JD, and
Engineering graduate programs from target schools.

N.B. Future products will not be restricted to student loans so our branding and messaging needs to be broader than students and education.

Converting to single speed - A budget DIY project... almost

The first time I laid eyes on this old mountain bike I knew I wanted to converted it into a single speed. When the time was right I would take this project on. I was determined to do
as much of the restoration as possible.

But the story doesn't start here. Two and half years ago, my wife and I left for Beijing on a 7 month cycle trip through Asia and South East Asia. We had sourced old steel frame mountain bikes with very basic components, and had a few alterations done to prepare them for a loaded journey across the unknown. The bike I had used for this adventure was the one I was going to restore.

Upon our return the bikes sat outside on our balcony, neglected. It took a friend of mine, who had recently sourced parts and rebuilt a Bianchi road bike from his youth, to motivate me to get this process under way. I wanted to be part of the restoration process rather than handing over an old bike and wait excitedly for the bike mechanic to work his magic and transform it into something special.
This is an overview of the process I went through to renovate and transform my old mountain bike into a single speed commuter bike.

- Step One -

Remove all the parts from the frame. I was taking pictures of the parts that I was removing and how they were attached, just in case I couldn't put it back together.
Next, remove the paint from the frame, fork and other parts that will be reused. I used a paint stripper and applied a generous amount (it's not ideal when this liquid splashes on bare skin. It burns!). After applying 2 coats and waiting 40 minutes, the paint blisters. Using a paint scraper and wire brush, I removed the paint. It's easy to remove 80% of the paint, but the last 20% requires patience and some fine grain sand paper.

- Step Two -

Cleaning and repainting the existing parts. There was a fair bit of rust which I had to sand away, but fortunately it was just surface rust. I didn't remove the spokes on my wheels, so I had to mask them off before spraying the rims.
Then there were a few parts I wanted to change for various reasons. I swapped out my old handle bars for a straight pair, and trimmed them a bit. Bought a shorter handle bar stem and some new brake levers.

After removing the paint from the frame, front fork and crank arms, I dropped them off with Jamie

from Ubuntu Bikes who sprayed the frame burnt orange and the front fork and crank arms satin black. Thanks Jamie, you did a fantastic job!

Once I put the bike together I sent it to Nils at Woodstock Cycleworks to make some final tweaks and convert it from a regular geared mountain bike to a single speed. We chose a 2.75:1 ratio with the front chain ring having 44 teeth and the rear cog having 17 teeth. I will be using this bike to cycle along a flat road, that is how we determined the ratio.
Since there was a large gap where the cassette was, Nils used spacers to fill it and made sure the chain ran in a straight line between the two. Brilliant job Nils!

It was a fun project to work on and I'm very happy with the way it turned out.

Exploring a Design Style

These illustrations are inspired by classic poster art.

I based my designs off some photographs my wife took.