Back from Paris & Gobelins! July 20, 2009
Posted by animnation in General AnimNation News.Tags: 2d, 3d, animation, animator, Gobelins, Paris, study
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I’m now back in UK after studying at the amazing Gobelins Character Animation Summer School…what an amazing course! I would recommend this course to anyone wishing to develop their character animation skills!
I was very privileged to learn from the likes of –
Shelley Page (Head of International Outreach for DreamWorks Animation)
Fred Nargorny (professor of animation at Gobelins)
Alexandre Heboyan (ex-Gobelins student, co-director on Migration Bigoudenn, Dreamworks animator & now co-director on the French feature film, Mune, le gardien de la lune, for the studio Method Films.)
Robert Bennett (the amazing Corporeal Acting teacher)
Kyle Balda (who has worked for the likes of ILM & Pixar – as directing animator on Toy Story 2)
Daniel Cacouault (an incredible artist & production designer for films)
So the quality of the teaching was second to none!
I will be putting together a series of blog posts that cover some of the animation principles that I learnt whilst studying at Gobelins. So keep an eye on this blog to find out more.
Off to Gobelins June 11, 2009
Posted by animnation in General AnimNation News.Tags: 2d, 3d, animation, Character, College, Course, Gobelins, Paris, School, Summer
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A couple of weeks ago I received the amazing news that I have been accepted onto the Gobelins Character Animation Summer School in Paris!
For those of you who are unaware of Gobelins l’ecole de l’image – it is an incredible arts college in the middle of Paris that has been churning out award-winning animation students for the past 30 years. Their 2007 students short film “Oktapodi” was nominated for a 2009 Academy Award!
For the past four years Gobelins have been running a Summer School for animation graduates and professionals. The course is an intensive insight into the world of professional character animation & professional studio pipelines through a host of highly skilled industry instructors from the likes of Pixar, Industrial Light & Magic (ILM), Disney, Weta Digital, and Dreamworks.
So you can understand why I’m so excited to be attending the Summer School!
And I have just heard that Screen South have agreed to support me on this course.
I’m heading out to Paris on June 29th to start the course & hope to keep an up-to-date blog on how the course is going whilst I am out there (hopefully with videos of the animation work I have been doing during the workshops).
I can’t wait!
April/May Update May 22, 2008
Posted by animnation in General AnimNation News.Tags: 2d, 3d, animation, animnation, cartoon forum, children's, kid's, series, tv
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So much has happened at AnimNation since the last blog post about winning a Gold Award at the New York Film and Video Festival.
One of the big pieces of news is that AnimNation are now affiliated with Brown & Sticky Productions – set up to concentrate on developing children’s animated television series. Our animated series currently in development has just been accepted into the Cartoon Forum conference in Germany in September – where we have to pitch the series idea to a whole host of European broadcasters and investors. Quite a scary prospect – but a very exciting time in moving both AnimNation and Brown & Sticky Productions forward onto bigger projects. More information on the series later.
Over the last few months we’ve been working on a whole host of projects :-
3D assets for a new feature on the Major League Baseball site (which led to a trip to New York to meet the clients!)
3D assets and animation for the Museum of London site
2D and 3D animations for a corporate video on marine environmental issues
Illustrations on the dress code at Ascot that was featured in the Spring 2008 Square Meal magazine
Illustrated assets for the revamped Netmums website *coming soon*
A television advert for a London-based college that will be broadcast on MTV, E4 etc. *coming soon*
Director, Sarah Bird, was also featured in a recent edition of The Argus newspaper.
AnimNation win an award! February 5, 2008
Posted by animnation in General AnimNation News.Tags: 2d, animation, animnation, award, brighton, film festival, gold, new york, video festival
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I have just heard the amazing news that AnimNation have won a gold award at the New York International Film and Video Festival!
I produced a 10 minute 2D animation with Hove-based production company Supernova Learning on the issue of age discrimination in the workplace, “As Old As You Feel”.
Here’s the press release –
Age Diversity Video strikes gold in New York
Hove-based video producer Supernova has won a Gold Award at this
year’s New York International Film and Video Festival. The Awards
Ceremony took place last Thursday 30th January at Manhattan’s Tribeca
Rooftop. The Annual Festival attracted entries from 31 countries.
Supernova won the award in the human relations category with As Old
as You Feel. The 10 min cartoon, with a commentary by Woman’s Hour’s
Jenni Murray, promotes a positive approach to age in the workplace.
Supernova teamed up with Brighton-based AnimNation to make the video.
It was written and produced by Supernova’s Vincent Thompson, with
animation by AnimNation’s Sarah Bird.
Supernova director Vincent Thompson commented “I’m delighted that our
DVD has received this recognition. Age discrimination at work is a problem
for both young and old. We’ve set out to raise awareness and promote
good practice in a witty way without being patronising”.
More information and video clip at:
http://www.supernovalearning.com/catalogue_08_age.htm
I’m running a Flash Brighton group workshop on creating 3D in Maya! November 15, 2007
Posted by animnation in Animation Tutorials, Flash Brighton, General AnimNation News.Tags: 2d, 3d, animation, animnation, brighton, demonstration, flash, Flash Brighton, flash games, ik, maya, tutorial, workshop
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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
Flash On The Beach Update November 9, 2007
Posted by animnation in Brighton Digital Festival, Flash Brighton.Tags: 2d, 3d, animation, brighton, conference, flash, Flash Brighton, flash on the beach, maya, papervision, workshops
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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!
October AnimNation Update October 24, 2007
Posted by animnation in General AnimNation News.Tags: 2d, 3d, animated short film, animation, animnation, channel branding, digital shorts, flash game, industry brief, jayne kirkham, maya tutorial, maya tutoring, screen south, script, sussex downs college, tv series
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This month has been incredibly productive and quite a manic time!
Work is already on it’s way producing the Production Bibles for the two children’s TV series ideas developed by myself and talented script writer, Jayne Kirkham. A pitch meeting with Cartoon Network has been arranged for the start of November – which we are very excited about.
Time was spent this month on developing characters and a script for an animated short film called “Rose”. An application has been sent in to the Screen South Digital Shorts scheme in the hope of some funding money to put the animated short film into production.
I was also invited along to the Brighthelm Centre in Brighton by Sussex Downs College to give a talk on the importance of setting industry briefs to students. Last year I set an industry brief to the BA Multimedia students at Sussex Downs College to re-brand one of three fictitious satellite TV channels – which went down incredibly well & I have been invited back this year to set the same brief to the next batch of final year students.
I was given the opportunity to put on my teacher’s hat this month & do a bit of Maya tutoring to a local company, Hudoq. Which was something I had not done since I was a software demonstrator for Maya (back then owned by Alias/Wavefront!) – but I thoroughly enjoyed it.
AnimNation are just about to start work on some more concept artwork for Sony and 3D models and animated assets for an online Flash gambling website.
AnimNation - 2D/3D Computer Animation in Brighton 