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Happy New Year! January 12, 2010

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BAFTA Win!

The end of 2009 was a very exciting one for AnimNation. The online interactive CBeebies game Big & Small won a 2009 Children’s BAFTA! I worked alongside Plug-in Media, Kindle & CBeebies to create the 3D Papervision assets for the game – creating all of the 3D environments to go into the game – including Big & Small’s living room, bedroom, bathroom & the newly released garden & mysterious woods.

Inside the house - the lounge

A New Website

A new year & a new website! AnimNation now have a new 2010 website & a new animation show reel. Check it out here – http://www.animnation.co.uk

Work in Progress

I am currently developing a selection of children’s tv series ideas. In 2010 I am hoping to develop these further & create pilot episodes for two of the ideas. More information on that come.

Christmas Big Screen Bonanza

On 15th December, BANG! & FlashBrighton groups got together for our Christmas Big Screen Bonanza. Decked out in very bad Christmas jumpers & reindeer antlers, Seb Lee-Delisle, RichMitch, Jo Summers and myself hosted the evening – which saw animated short films selected by RichMitch, a guest speaker slot by the wonderful Garth+Ginny, a special screening of Cyriak’s latest animated short film (and a secret film that hasn’t been released yet!) as well as a load of mince pies & festive cheer.

Here are some photographs from the night –

Big & Small nominated for a FITC award! March 31, 2009

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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.

Vote For Big & Small

Papervision & Maya training in Brighton – March 2nd-4th January 27, 2009

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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

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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.

Play the game

Outside the house

Outside the house

Inside the house - the lounge

Inside the house - the lounge

Playing the Band Game

Playing the Band Game

Playing the Hand Painting 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

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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.

badge_grey_100x100

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.

adrian

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

westk


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.

gameday

Plug-in Media also required a 3D storybook for their latest Museum of London game – Tales of London.

talesoflondon1

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

Flash On The Beach Update November 9, 2007

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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!