Conquer or Perish - Animation

Here’s an animation I completed whilst working at Kilogramme animation studios. It’s a short ten second sting for the Conquer or Perish website. The brief was to have the stick man break down the words ‘conquer or perish’ and then reconstruct them into the logo which the client had already provided. I had a lot of fun working on this piece. Overall I worked on the animatic, animation and sound. The project took a couple days to complete.

Low Poly Self Portrait

It's creepy I know

David o'reilly Rigs - Walk cycle test

 I had a play around with some of David o'reilly's rigs from his short film 'The External World'. Which I highly recommend watching! After finishing my university degree I decided I wanted to vastly improve my 3D animating ability. So I've been practising with as many different rigs as I've been able to get hold of. So far it's been a lot of fun experimenting and I feel I've come a long way since I first started as my workflow has dramatically increased.

E4 E Sting 2013 Competition Entry - How did that get there?

 I've always fancied giving the E4 e stings competition a shot. So this year I decided to enter. I put about three days into producing the sting. Like with some of my past animations, I wanted to combine as many different visual elements as I could. The characters were animated within Flash and the flying saucer and asteroids were animated in Maya. Backgrounds were painted in Photoshop. Then everything was brought together and composited in After Effects. I thought it would be a good idea to keep to a strict colour palette considering E4's purple and white logo. With the exception of the tv in the final shot, everything is either purple, pink, white or black.

I'm really pleased with how the UFO and alien turned out as it was fairly tricky to animate the two together because they had been animated independently prior to being combined in After Effects. Due to the stroke effect on the ship as well. I had to manually key out the ship's window in each frame so that the alien could be placed inside the ship.

Winners of the competition will have their e stings shown throughout the year on E4's channel. So with any luck my entry make it onto national TV. I won't be to disheartened if it doesn't though, as I enjoyed making the piece and it fits quite nicely into my showreel.
  

Gluttonpood - Animated short

 Gluttonpood is the second film out of my 'seven deadly sins' series and is about a young boy who decides he wants to eat some ice cream. Unfortunately his poodle has other plans. This particular short is based upon gluttony. At first I only planned on doing two of the seven sins for this series but I've decided it might be fun to do the complete seven now that I've finished university.

I did all of the character animation within Adobe Flash. I decided I wanted to do 2D frame by frame animation as it's something I haven't done for a while. I'm really glad I did because I really enjoyed doing it. I mostly animated on twos for this short as I was very pressed for time to finish on deadline. So it would be nice to do something a little bit more detailed in the near future. I also did some of the animation within After Effects. The sky, airplane and the airplane's jet streams were first drawn/painted in Photoshop and then were animated during the compositing process in After Effects. Once again I composed the music for the film. I didn't have much time to do the soundtrack so I kept the music very simple. I also did all the foley and voice acting.

This animation marks the end of my university degree. So my plan now is to do a new version of my showreel and to start looking for work in the industry. I may continue to make these these shorts as they are fairly quick to produce and it might be a fun way to spend my free time.     

Vanity Trip - 3D Short Animation

 Here is one of the two shorts I created for my final brief at university. it's about an egocentric jogger meets his untimely demise after paying too much attention to his reflection and not where he is going. I made everything in the animation apart from the character rig, which was created by Josh Burton. The rig can be downloaded for free here on his website.

Originally I wanted to created one long short for my final brief but the scope of idea didn't match up to amount of time I had to produce it. Instead I decided to make as many under a minute shorts as possible. I also wanted to make sure I focused on quality rather than quantity, as I want each one of these films to really help push the quality of my showreel up. Each animation would loosely based around one of the seven deadly sins, this particular animation being based on 'pride'.

The animation was created mainly using 'Maya' although I've combined 2D animation with 3D by using 'After Effects' in post production. I did all the other 2D animation within 'Flash'. Below is a video breakdown of what went into composting for one of the shots in the film.

 

Scream Scraper - Cancelled Animation Project

At the beginning of my second semester for my final year of university. I had planned on creating a short animated pilot episode about two friends, a geeky monkey and his simple minded poodle friend.
 The episode was going to involve the characters meeting a crazy doctor who had just created a new flavour of ice cream. The ice cream however tastes horrible and has a side effect of turning whatever consumes it into a giant monster, due to the chemical solution the doctor has used. The poodle character is established as not being a fussy eater and straight away devours the ice cream without question. Instantly he is transformed into a twenty foot monster poodle with a hunger for more food. He sees the doctor's ice cream truck and begins to pursue it around the city as the doctor tries to flee his monstrous creation. The monkey at the same time is trying to calm his friend in the hope that his friend might turn back to his normal self. The ice cream truck eventual crashes into a pond with the poodle jumping in after it. It turns out that water is the remedy to the situation, turning the poodle character back his normal self. The animation would end with a shot of a duck swimming up to another ice cream that had fallen out of the truck. the duck would then eat the ice cream, transforming it into a monster duck just before the credits roll.

 The show was intended to be child friendly and was going to be produced with a variety of different animation methods, similar to shows such as 'The Adventures of Gumball' and 'Adventure Time'. Each character would be drawn in a different way or would have been animated in 3D. All the backgrounds were also going to be rendered in 3D, just like in my previous animation for Dejaview.
 I started creating assets for the animation very early on but I soon realized that the scope of what I wanted to create was going to be impossible to do within the time constraints that I had. However not all the assets I created were useless. I managed to salvage a lot of the work and use it for other smaller animations that I created instead. I still might go back and finish this animation one day but currently I'm busy with different projects. I think I would have seen this project all the way through if I had the whole year to work on it but because of the 'Throwing Dirt' music video I didn't think I would've had time to make something up to my standards. Below are concept images of characters and locations that I created for the project.

Above are concepts for Dr Boulderham, the crazy doctor. I managed to get him fully rigged in flash as a puppet. I felt he had the most potential as a memorable character as he wasn't necessarily evil but just misunderstood.
 Below is the concept for what would've been the monkey character. Originally I wanted the character to be a skater dog but I felt that character might have been a bit too cliche and boring. I never settled on a final design for the protagonist unfortunately. I found myself constantly dreaming up new sub characters and episodes that could surround them instead.  

Above is the concept for the protagonist's best friend, the poodle. This character was going to animated with a very similar aesthetics to the bear character from the previous Dejaview music video. I knew I wanted at least one character to be done using frame by frame animation and I didn't know exactly how many characters I was going to feature in the pilot. So I decided a main character should be animated in a style I was familiar with.

 Here is an early 3D model of the ice cream truck the doctor would have been driving during the episode. I did the rough build in of the model in 'Sketchup' and was then later going to texture and fine tune the model within Maya. The horrific colour scheme on the truck was intended to make uv mapping a little bit easier down the line. I never got that far so unfortunately the truck remains ugly.
 Below are some screenshots of the city I was building for the animation. The idea was create the main layout  for the city straight away and then be able to use it for later episodes, adding new locations as the show went along. I had already done a lot work modelling and texturing the city. Although I don't think I'll use the model for anything now, (as it was far too big to accommodate simple scene navigation or rendering) I did use a lot of the textures I'd created for other projects however which has saved me a lot of stress and time.

  

Heart Attack - Music production

I recently finished working on a track for an animation created by Cassandra Adsett (a fellow animation student on my course). The animation is supposed to raise awareness about the potential dangers of heart failure. The animation shows a beating heart becoming clogged up with fat, until finally a blood clot blocks up the arteries causing a heart attack. Cassie wanted the track to be upbeat and quite busy to represent how many different things were going on with the visuals. I choose to produce the track using entirely electronic elements within Reason 6. This way I could keep the sound and rhythm perfectly functional whilst adding glitches to the sound to suggest that the body was failing. I gave Cassie a couple of different versions of the track, the first version had less of a beat to it and focused more on the string and synthesized elements. Were as the second version had a strong kick drum backing the entire track. Cassie ended up going with the second version of the track. Which was probably a good idea as the kick drum gives the impression of a beating heart.

The full animation can be viewed here on Cassie's YouTube Channel

Also the full track can be listened to and downloaded for free here on my Soundcloud page

Vanity Trip - Animation & Render Progress

Over the last week I've been working with the Morpheus rig. My aim has been to create a full 3D short using the rig as the main centerpiece. Above is my current progress from a visual standpoint. The last bit of animation  that I did with the rig was quite static, so for this short I wanted something a lot more expressive. I'm pretty happy with the early playblasts seen in the video below. There's still a lot of work to do before I finish this particular animation. My main focus at the moment is building props for the scene. All the character animation is pretty much finished and I have a clear plan for everything that needs doing so I'm hoping to finish by the end of next week. If all goes well with this animation I'm hoping to create several more shorts similar to this one all based round the seven deadly sins, this first animation being 'lust'.

Roboface - Portfolio Website

This last month I launched my new animation portfolio website. I built the page myself, keeping it as simple as I possibly could. The site is compatible with most mobile devices although it doesn't have any css code, so the site doesn't scale unfortunately. The site's only real purpose is to present my showreel whilst giving out my contact details. I likely won't make any changes to website now apart from updating my showreel with new work. I've tried to keep my showreel as short as possible, whilst giving it fairly varied content. It's ok for now but I'm likely to do a new showreel within the next couple of months.

My website can be viewed under the domain www.roboface.co.uk

  

Throwing Dirt - Reception

I've been blown away with the reception I've had for the animation I created for DéjàView. The video has been posted and shared all over the web. Fans of DéjàView have been reviewing and sharing and generally just have been having a positive reaction to the video. I'm so happy that people have been able to enjoy the content I've put out and it's all the more incentive to keep doing what I'm doing. Congrats to Ben Potts for the success of his new EP.

Here are just some of the places the video has been featured over the last month or so:

Finest Ego - review 

Uk Garage - feature

Frequency - feature

FUXWIDDIT -feature

Flashlight - VK feature

Morpheus Animation rig

I've been meaning to use a free animation rig for quite some time now. As my own rigs have always been a little on the simplistic side. I need to ground myself with more complicated professional rigs if I'm going get any good at 3D. For this test I used the Morpheus rig which was created by Josh Burton which can be downloaded here. I'm really impressed with the rig. It's capable of morphing into lots of different figures without breaking. Hopefully I will be able to do some more ambitious animation with this rig over the coming weeks.

Déjaview - Throwing Dirt Music Video

Over the last few months I've been working on and off on an animated music video for Future Flavour's up and coming artist Déjaview. The video follows a bear through a forest as he discovers music. This leads to him having a psychedelic experience which he eventually shares with the other animals around him.
 I really wanted to challenge myself creating this video by heavily relying on a broad amount of technical aspects for production. Primarily this meant I produced most of the backgrounds in 3D within Maya and animated characters in 2D within Flash. I then combined both worlds within After Effects; i'm very proud of the result.

For character design I didn't really stray too far from original concepts. The differences are pretty much unnoticeable in fact. However on the 3D side of things I did a lot of work trying to get a style that worked. At first every object in background was an actual 3D model. This proved to be a lot of work; neither did it look very good as the characters really clashed with the scenery. In the end I settled with 2.5D backgrounds which used curved planes of 2D images to give an illusion of full 3D. This had it's pluses and downsides. The good thing being I could produce backgrounds which blended well with my style. The downside was lighting was very hard to get right. I couldn't really use shadows as I rendered without raytracing. Meaning alpha maps wouldn't cast the correct kind of shadows. any shadows I made had to be faked later in After Effects.

   

An early concept render of the 3D environment.

I felt my approach to production worked pretty well for once on this animation. I had a clear idea of what I could achieve with each of the different set of tools that I used. Because of this I feel I scheduled appropriately. I deffinately want to keep animating using a range of different programs like I have. I think I need to work a lot on the 2D side of things in terms of animating. I felt some of my illustration could have been better but I'm not unhappy with it either.

I really Like the music for the video as well. And i'm not just saying that because I was paid either. I'm generally excited for Ben Potts (Déjaview) to release some new music. I've been whistling and humming this tune ever since I started working on the video and that's a very good sign considering I've been working on it for so long. Please go and support his music when his e.p. releases this month on the 31st 

3D Forest - Maya Model continued

 I've continued creating 3D backgrounds in Maya. I've been mainly focusing on the forest environment seen below.
I've made a lot of changes to the assets for the forest; the most obvious being the trees. I decided that I wasn't happy with the 3D trees that I had before; as I felt they didn't really match the rest of the environment. So instead I've created a variety of hand-drawn trees in Flash which I then imported into Maya. I've made the trees slightly 3D by putting them on curved planes. This means I can still move my camera without objects looking skewed.

I have also created an interior forest scene. I wanted this scene to be darker than the other scenes but still keep the same colour palette. I think I've pretty much achieved my goal. The scene maybe a little too dark but this is something I can continue to tweak as I go along. I still need to create a few more environments for this forest yet but I feel like I should be able to make them pretty quickly seeing as most of my assets have been created now.

3D Forest - Maya Model

  Recently I've been making a lot of 3D assets in Maya for several different animations that I'm working on.
 One of the main things I have been trying to teach myself over the Summer is how to use UV maps to texture my models (UV maps are  coordinates given to a models texture, allowing it to placed in any size, shape or position). I've still got a lot to learn regarding UV's but I'm particularly happy with my progress here. It's allowed me to create my own textures. Meaning I can keep a consistent visual style with each of my projects.

 I've started to take more account into rendering times now as well, as it's pretty normal for me to compile a single shot three separate times. I need to make sure my poly count stays within reasonable limits as well as making sure my lighting isn't too memory intensive. But at the same time I want everything to still look good. For now I'm going with depth map shadows. Ideally I would want to go with 'raytracing' but It's proving to take too long to render.
 Here's an example of different lighting techniques I've tried:

 

Depth map shadows (shadows correspond to a models shape but ignores texture) - medium render time

Raytrace lighting (allows shadows that use 'alpha map' data) - long render time

 

 Flat shaded/ No shadows - Quick render time

 Another way I've been keeping my render times down is by using 2D texture plains to fake detail. For example instead of having hundreds of tree models in the background I used illustrations I created in Flash instead. I used the same approach to rendering things like bushes, flowers and grass. Not only did this keep my render times down it also complimented my visual style. I imagine once I have all the animated elements in one shot; the combination of illustration and 3D should make for some interesting aesthetics.

 I think this scene has still a lot to go before I completely happy with it but I've really enjoyed putting together what I've done so far.

Sonic Walk Cycle

For my final year at university I want to create an animation that combines both 3D and 2D elements seamlessly. This little walk cycle was a test to see how easy it would be to achieve. Broken down the shot is comprised of three main elements. Firstly there's the goofy looking Sonic which I animated in flash. His cycle could probably use a couple more frames but otherwise I'm happy with him; after all this is just a test. I then modelled/animated the 3D chili-dog in Maya. I exported both the sonic and chili-dog animation as PNG sequences into photoshop were I gave them a stroke and bevel effect.
Lastly I needed a backdrop for animation. I wanted the shot to be an everlasting cycle, so I decided a scrolling plane would the simplest thing to do. I quickly modelled up a basic looking floor in google sketchup and then animated a camera path over the model in 3Ds max.
 I then compiled the entire shot in after effects adding little details like shadows. I also added some scrolling background elements just to add a bit more depth.
This approach to animating definitely takes a lot more planning but I never felt like the process was anymore difficult. If anything I enjoyed making the animation more because I wasn't doing the same thing all the time. I think my next real test is to have 3D and 2D characters interact.       

Cook With Dan - Animation

 Over the last two weeks I have been colaborating on an animated short called 'Cook With Dan'. Above is the final movie. The film is an adaptation from Dan Berry's comic and was directed and supervised by Dan Berry, Claire Fouquet and Christopher Mage.

  I worked alongside a set of very talented French and American animation students who were in the country as part of a animation workshop. A detailed blog of the workshop can be found here.
I worked mainly on animating puppets in After Effects, I also did a small amount colouring in Flash as well. The animation was heavily planned and had a very strict deadline. This was great practice for our mangenment skills, we had make sure we didn't take too long on certian shots as well make sure all of our files followed the same naming convention. This insured that no essenstial files would be lost when came to editing the final animation.

 It really fealt great to work on such a large project like this. It's refreshing to work with a team of people for a change. You get to see the a project come together so much faster than you would normally. There's deffianelty a huge sense of accomplishment seeing a group project like this finished with a consitant quality. I'm also really glad of the experiance with After Effects; as I have been meaning to learn the program for quite some time now. Overall I have met some great people over the last two weeks and I'm really proud to have work with them! 

Afar - Scrimshire - Music Video

Recently I just finished working with Adam Scrimshire. A very talented musician based in London.  I had the pleasure of making a music video for  his lastest album 'The Hollow'. The track being titled 'Afar'. You can listen to the album in full here on Scrimshire's website. 
 I met Scrimshire through a chance conversation on Twitter, were we joked about making a music video for another song. Adam then mentioned his new album and asked if I would like to create a music video for it. Already being a fan of Scrimshire's work I jumped at the chance.
 It was very important to keep similar aesthetics to the original album artwork. To do this this I stuck to filming everything live action; focusing mainly on plant life and also using a mixture of artwork from the album and shots of out of focus lights; mostly being off passing traffic.
 I shot the majority of the footage in my hometown of Whitchurch. However I also did a lot of filming down in London. This allowed me to get a lot shots of slow moving traffic which I later synced up whilst editing the video.

All the video was shot using a Nikon D3100. The video was then edited in Sony Vegas.

It's been a real pleasure working with Adam and hopefully it won't be the last time either! Please check out Scrimshire's work on the following links:

http://www.scrimshire.com/
Twitter : @scrimshire
Facebook : http://www.facebook.com/scrimshire
Youtube : http://www.youtube.com/user/scrimshire
Soundcloud : http://soundcloud.com/scrimshire

Also Check out Scrimshire's label 'Wah Wah 45s'. They have a fantastic range of music That I can't rate highly enough!

Ignis Lake - Teaser Trailer

For the ignis lake teaser trailer I realised that I was hard pushed for time so I decided to use several different methods in achieving my final goal. I wanted to make an underwater scene set at the bottom of Ignis Lake. With my limited knowledge of 3D animating packages I decided that the best way to get the scene I wanted would be to add GFX whilst I was compositing the video. I started off making a fairly simplistic scene in Maya. I then made a particle system in 3Ds max to simulate specs floating around in the water. Once I had these two elements; I placed them over each other in Sony Vegas. Finally I added a few blurry filter effects to make the scene seem like murky water.

 

'Creating the particle system in 3Ds Max'

 'Creating the environment in Maya'

 I also took a similar approach to the end titles. I layered over several pieces of video including smoke, fire and text and then had the videos slowly cycle through each other to make what looks like flames underwater. It took a lot of adjusting but I'm pleased with the results.

  

 

Overall considering the amount of time I had to create the trailer, I'm really pleased with it. I think it nicely caps off the end of this project as I've pretty much been able to use all the assets that I had made beforehand  and put them together into one big collective piece. I as I mentioned the brief was a collaborative piece, more research and write ups can be found here 'andrewroberts.blogspot.com'

Zombie Walk Cycle

Here is a finished walk cycle for my zombie character. It was a lot trickier than I thought it would be to animate a limp for the character, I'm glad I tried though as I think it would have looked stupid if the zombie walked normally. I also wanted reinforce the fact the zombie is supposed to be a woman. To do this I gave the zombie an excessive amount of hip sway. I'm really happy with the end result. The legs don't bend perfectly but this is down to how I've modelled the character in zbrush. Next time I make a character in zbrush the legs need to be completely straight. I've also given the character some simple face animation. I never really intended to animate the characters face much but I'm really happy with the way it turned out. My next step is to produce a teaser trailer for the game.