Stay Drenched March 16, 2010
Posted by animnation in Uncategorized.Tags: 3d, animation, animnation, drench, fish tank, fishing around, goldfish, plug-in media, plugin media, sarah bird, stay drenched
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I recently worked with Plug-in Media & Drench on a new online viral game for their Stay Drench campaign. I was commissioned to create a realistic 3D goldfish – modelling, texturing & animating it to react to the progress the player is making, as well as making the 3D fish tank.
Switch your web cam on & give the game a go (you can play the trial game, but you won’t win the prizes – you need to buy a bottle of Drench water to activate the prizes side of the game).
http://www.staydrenched.co.uk/one-beat-ahead/index.html
Enjoy!
September/October Update November 1, 2009
Posted by animnation in BANG Meetings, General AnimNation News.Tags: 3d, animation, animnation, bafta, bang, big & small, big and small, interactive, white night
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Another mass update of AnimNation news since the summer…and it has been an exciting few months!
Firstly, the CBeebies Big & Small online interactive game that I created the 3D environments for has been nominated for a Children’s Interactive BAFTA!
AnimNation have also moved into a shiney new studio in the heart of Brighton’s North Laines – more space, better facilities – the company is now more equipped to take on bigger projects.
Last weekend, the White Night festival took over Brighton for one night. I was one of the main organisers for the Brighton Animators animated projections event. I helped to put together a night of futuristic projected animations onto the very distinct Brighton Unitarian Church. 42 purpose made animations were chosen to be projected onto the church. The whole event received wonderful feedback from the audience & press. I created two animations for the event – a B-movie inspired opening animation to introduce the evening & a 3D animation of a Robot hiding out in the church from the police. More information about the event can be found here.
Over the past few months AnimNation have created work for Nokia and Punch & Judy prof. Glyn Edwards, as well as developing three new children’s television series – more information on that to come!
And the run up to Christmas looks equally as exciting – with a whole host of exciting animation projects, working with big name clients.
Here’s to a new era at AnimNation!
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!
Big & Small nominated for a FITC award! March 31, 2009
Posted by animnation in General AnimNation News.Tags: 3d, bbc, big & small, big and small, cbbc, cbeebies, flash, game, interactive, kindle, online, papervision, plug-in media, plugin media
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Recently I have been working on the 3D Papervision assets for the CBeebies Big & Small online interactive game alongside Plug-in Media and Kindle Entertainment.
We’ve just heard the amazing news that the Big & Small game has been nominated for a Flash In The Can (FITC) Award in their 3D Flash category!
You can vote for the game at the FITC People’s Choice Award under the 3D Flash category.
Papervision & Maya training in Brighton – March 2nd-4th January 27, 2009
Posted by animnation in Uncategorized.Tags: 3d, maya, online, papervision, training, web, workshop
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On 4th March, I will be running a masterclass in Maya 3D modelling specific to creating Papervision 3D assets (which enables you to create 3D websites). Recently, I have been working on a number of Papervision 3D projects for clients such as CBBC/CBeebies and MLB (Major League Baseball) – as a result, I have become quite familiar with creating 3D assets for Papervision-made websites.
My Maya workshop is aimed at developers without any 3D modelling experience or 3D artists who want to know exactly how to get their models to look good in Papervision3D.
The morning will cover the basics of 3D modelling in Maya, covering primitives, materials cameras and lighting.
After lunch we’ll learn more Papervision specific techniques :
* Making low poly models look good
* Exporting for Papervision
* Baking textures
* Making your models accessible to actionscript
* Animating Collada files
On 2nd & 3rd March, Seb Lee-Delisle from Plugin Media will be doing workshops on how to create Papervision 3D sites from a developers point of view, and my Maya workshop will be following on from this.
Both workshops are being held at Lighthouse in Brighton, UK.
More information about the workshops & registration can be found HERE.
Big & Small goes live on CBeebies website January 27, 2009
Posted by animnation in General AnimNation News.Tags: 3d, bbc, big & small, big and small, cbbc, cbeebies, flash, game, papervision
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I have been working on the 3D Papervision assets for the new Big & Small Cbeebies game recently with Plug-in Media – which went live on the CBeebies website recently.
Outside the house
Inside the house - the lounge
Playing the Band Game
Playing the Hand Painting Game
Big & Small is a new CBeebies TV show created by Kindle Entertainment. The preschool series is about two friends who couldn’t be more different is voiced by Lenny Henry and Imelda Staunton.
Update – November November 11, 2008
Posted by animnation in General AnimNation News.Tags: 3d, animation, animnation, award, DiMA, DiMAs, flash, news, papervision
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I have to apologise – I last updated this blog in May! But things have been very busy recently & there have been lots of changes!
Firstly – my little piece of good news…I have been shortlisted for DiMA award. I’m down to one of 3 shortlisted finalists for Freelancer of the Year.
The DiMA awards are being held on 27th November.
Secondly – AnimNation are now affiliated with Brown & Sticky Productions – a company set up to develop children’s television content. Talented children’s script writer, Jayne Kirkham and I have been working on a new kid’s TV series, Adrian’s Wall. Which we were fortunate enough to present at the recent Cartoon Forum conference, where we had to pitch the show idea and a 45-second animated trailer to potential broadcasters and investors. The project also took us off to Cannes to Mipcom Junior.
I’ve been busy working on a number of projects since May. One of which was a successful advertising campaign for Westminster Kingsway College – creating a 30-second 3D animated television advertisement that was recently aired on Trouble TV and creating 3D imagery and animations for print, online and mobile campaigns to promote their latest enrolment drive.
“The project commissioned to AnimNation was an integral part of our marketing strategy. They listened and responded to our exact needs and created something that we are extremely proud to have as part of the Westminster Kingsway College brand. The finished product surpassed all of our expectations and we look forward to working with AnimNation again in the future.” – Westminster Kingsway College
I have also been working with web community Netmums on creating assets for a new section of their website – more information about that to come.
And creating 2D and 3D animated graphics for an educational CD for geophysical and geoscience exploration company, IAGC.
I’ve also been creating a number of 3D assets for Plug-in Media:
Using the revolutionary new piece of Flash based software, Papervision (which enables 3D models to be viewed in Flash – the user can interactively move around the model in realtime), we created a 3D baseball player for the Major League Baseball’s Game Day section of their site. The aim was to create an interactive way of viewing baseball game data.
Plug-in Media also required a 3D storybook for their latest Museum of London game – Tales of London.
And most recently I have been creating 3D papervision assets for a new CBeebies show with Plug-in Media. More information about that to come.
So it has been a busy few months! And with more exciting projects on the horizon, I’m hoping that 2009 will be another exciting year for AnimNation!
Thanks for reading
Sarah
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.
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
AnimNation - 2D/3D Computer Animation in Brighton 