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This year’s Brighton Digital Festival went off with a bang this year - quite literally!
Starting off with an amazing interactive Flash generated fireworks display by Seb Lee-Delisle from Plug-in Media on the front of the Unitarian church in Brighton.
Pictures from the night are here
It then continued the next week to include the Portfolio Clinic - where I was priviledged to share a table with local animator RichMitch and look over work produced by local students and freelancers and offer advice on how to improve their portfolios and where to take their career next.
Photos from the night are here
The following night I was asked to be part of the Animation Night. Together with the Hastings Animation Networking Group’s founder, Angus Giorgi - we compiled a 30 minute showreel of animation work produced by BANG and HANG members - which included a very varied selection of films - from commerical work produced by AnimNation and John Davison, to personal projects created by the incedibly talented Cyriak, Tim Frost, to name but a few.
On the night this was shown to the audience along with a selection of animations from some of Ireland’s most talented film makers and animators. A panel discussion was then put together - consisting of the Dark Light Festival organiser Nicky Gogan; Matthew Talbot-Kelly who created the haunting Blind Man’s Eye; Eoghan Kidney who created Stars; English animator/film maker and director at Slinky Pictures, Chris Shepherd; Angus Giorgi founder of HANG and myself.We all discussed how we all have sought funding for short films and how the process varies from country to country - with an English, Irish and Canadian perspective on things. We also chatted about how politics can influence animation.
I have been helping Flash guru Seb Lee-Delisle run the Flash Brighton group for a while now - but this is the first time I have actually held a workshop for the group!
There seems to be a bit of a growing interest in 3D within the group - so I thought I’d give them all an insight into the world of Maya and what the software is capable of doing. Plus a lot of the research and technology used for many years in the 3D industry is now making it’s way across to the Flash platform. News has it that the next version on Flash will have IK integrated into it (for those who aren’t “in-the-know” about IK - it basically is an amazing tool to assist character animators. It links a series of skeleton joints together in a chain - enabling you to simply pick up a handle in 3D space and move, for example, a limb around without having to manipulate a series of individual joints). So I thought it would be nice to show where that technology came from.
Seeing as Maya is such an immense piece of software & has quite a steep learning curve - I’m limiting my talk to demonstrating character modeling and animation, lighting, particles and dynamics, and also how to integrate 3D animation into Flash (a technique I have done a few times to bring in 3D character animation into online Flash games).
It’s beginning to remind me of the days when I was assisting Techex - demonstrating earlier versions of Maya to potential buyers!
When & where is it?
The Greene Room (upstairs in The Cricketers)
Tuesday 20th November, 6:30pm
Register to attend here - http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/319259
Well I’ve just got back from the Flash On The Beach conference & feeling incredibly inspired! The conference guest speakers were amazing - & really opened my eyes up to the advances in the Flash world. I was very lucky to be given a ticket to this year’s festival through coming 1st in a competition to design a Flash banner to advertise the conference - so a big thanks to the Flash Brighton group and John Davey for making it all possible.
I’m off now to download a copy of the Papervison3D Collada Maya converter software to see what amazing 3D models I can drag into Flash!
And the best news of all - the next version of Flash is incorporating Inverse Kinematics! Now why they couldn’t include that technology into Flash years ago, I’ll never know! IK has been around in the world of 3D for donkeys years & revolutionised the way us 3D animators work. But it’s great news anyway for any Flash animator!
Out of all of the guest speakers, three stand out as being very inspirational to me:-
Chris Orwig - freelance interactive designer, photographer & lecturer at Brookes Institute of Photography. Chris gave an hour long talk on story, branding and visual design. A few things I took away from his talk are to keep things simple, how to explain my niche work in one sentence and how my work could tell a story (colour conveys emotion, typography a voice etc) & also complete admiration for his photography work.
GMUNK - an amazing Motion Graphics designer who combines Maya dynamics & modelling and design to create brilliant visuals. And very often his work has been produced to an extremely tight deadline - so I’m sure his tips and tricks will come in handy!
The Ronin - again, an amazing Motion Graphics designer & UK based! I recognised one of The Ronin’s animations “Black Day to Freedom” from the McLaren Award at Edinburgh Festival a few years ago - second time round watching it, I still found it incredibly moving. The Ronin combines photography and illustrations by his brother to make some very inspirational pieces. I would definitely like to try out some of his techniques to combine my photography work and get some motion into it!
As soon as the tickets become available for the 2008 Flash on the Beach - I’ll be getting my credit card out to book a bunch of tickets!
