Sumo Subway Sashay

Exploring animating on 2's

Bite

Practicing some facial performance. It was fun getting into character to explore some acting choices.

Thank you to Anna White at Agora.community for the feedback.

Malcolm rig by AnimSchool

AnimSchool Class 5 - Character Performance

 This is my final shot from the AnimSchool Character Performance class I attended.

Thank you Scott McWhinnie, I had a great learning experience in your class.

Well done to my classmates on their fantastic pieces, it was super to see how everyone's shots developed.

AnimSchool Class 4 - Body Acting

 This is my final shot from the AnimSchool Body Acting class I attended.

Thank you Jean-Luc Delhougne for all your enthusiasm and guidance during the term. It was a great learning experience and I'm very pleased with the result.

Screwtape Letters - Acting it out

This has been one of the few times that I've filmed myself for an acting piece and I really should do it more often. It's been such a great guide for posing, acting subtleties, general pace and timing. 

Malcolm character courtesy of AnimSchool.com

- Progression -

- The final version -

ANTHEM

Some exciting news as Anthem reveals a game demo and another trailer at E3 2018

I've had the great pleasure of being part of the team at Balisti Studios, working on Bioware's Anthem.

- 2018 Trailer -

- Game Play Demo -

 - 2017 Trailer -

 Release date set for 22 Feb 2019

Getting into Character

One of the fun and challenging aspects of this type of project is coming up with a unique scenario to go with the audio. Sometimes the scene just pops into my mind and other times I've got to work hard to develop it.

For this 11 Second Club audio, 2 female characters were working through a situation.
These are some of the main points I needed to work out in order to come up with the animation:
-  Whats going through their heads as they reacted to the dialogue of the other character?
-  They go through emotional changes, what are they and what do they look like?
-  How do I compose the scene to best show the emotional changes and interactions.

I came up with these emotional/character traits for the characters which helped me compose the shot
Mom: authority, rule breaker, problem solver, confident
Girl: shy, nervous, inquisitive.

- View the final animation below -

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.

TAG

Eventually found some audio to put to the visuals.

This has been an exercise to produce a complete 3D animated project - from concept to final composite. The emphasis has been on an animated sequence rather than a fleshed out storyline.

Spungella Course Project

 I subscribed to an Online Animation Workshop held by Jean-Denis Haas 

Every week I had a review of my progress which was done via email.

View the final project here

Clover - Way Better

One of the latest pieces of work to come out of BlackGinger. We definitely raised the bar on this one.
Produced with Shy the Sun and Cab Films for Joe Public, directed by Jannes Hendriks and Bruce Paynter.

There were 2 of us responsible for setting up the shots, which included camera moves/placement/framing and blocked animation of the characters. During that time the characters movements according to its personality were developed. There were 9 primary characters and a few secondary elements such as the butter bricks and cheese balloons.
After that I took the animation of the ballerina whisks (aka Twirling Tina's) and water bottles(aka Tots) to a finalised point.

View the commercial here. Clover - Way Better.

Bakers "Precious Biscuits"

This job was done a few years ago by BlackGinger. Designed and directed by Shy the Sun for Ogilvy, Johannesburg. I was involved in animating a few of the shots.

View the commercial here. Bakers - Precious Biscuits

Mnet "Firefly"

A collaborative effort between BlackGinger and Shy the Sun for Ogilvy JHB and Mnet.
I was involved in animating the firefly for this commercial.

There is a nice write up/ run down of all who were involved in the making of this commercial. 

View the commercial here. Mnet - Firefly

Ribena "Bursting with Berryness"

 

This is the latest commercial I worked on at BlackGinger.
We teamed up with Shy the Sun (who we've worked with before) to create a spot for Ribena

View the commercial here. Ribena - Bursting with Berryness

 

Animating to an audio clip

I used the audio clip that was supplied by the 11 second club website to animate to. This was for the month of September 2010.

Got to practice!

This is an animation exercise I set myself. Feels too long since I've done some character animation.