Ciao!

It's been a while but that is due to being away in Sardinia for 7 days due to work. I was on an Erasmus project set up by Sassari University in Sardinia which brought students together from Sardinia, Spain, Greece and the UK (Glamorgan). It was such an incredible experience and I think the students really got a lot out of it as they were in mixed groups with guys with limited English and they had to work on live project set up by real clients looking to push their message or issue across, they had about 16 days to produce an animation to inform us about said issues with some really great results from all the groups. I also got to mix with the staff from these different Universities and I learnt so much from them (and totally felt out of my depth as some of these guys had doctorates). So overall it was great experience and I have taken away a lot of good ideas. I have also fallen in love with Sardinia and the Italians in general.

Ogre WalkCycle

As my week nights and weekends have freed up recently I wanted to just flex my animation muscles with the Tiny rig. It's not great but a good way to get my animation juices flowing again. I'm hoping to do some more now over the summer.

It's a wrap!

Well my first academic year is now over and it's been fantastic. I've learnt so much when it comes to lecturing and a year ago if you would have told me I would be giving lectures to a class full of students I would have vomited in your face with fear but it's all not as bad as you think and you get better with each one. The students were all great and helped settle me in and I'm already looking forward to the students coming back in September though for the mean time it's lots of paper work, a trip to Sardinia with the course and then some holiday time, not bad at all really.

The Glammies

We had our end of year student showcase, The Glammies, last week and the standard of work was just amazing across all disciplines of animation and the show was packed full with students and industry bods and speaking front of the cinema wasn't as scary as I though it would have been. 
I will add the link to the website with all the finished films when that's ready to go but for now here's the showreel.


 

Keep on Top

Here's a nice handy tool for all those animators out there for when it comes to studying reference, it's called Keep on Top . So when animating you can keep that reference vid open whilst animating, no more having to minimize the reference to animate. Check it out here

A is for Awesome!

This was done by a friend of mine,Mathew Rees, who works for Aardman. Just awesome! Check out his blog here

Retrospect

Following on from my showreel post it gave me a thought.

The thing I love about animation is how when you look back on your work and just think 'Urgh, what was I thinking? That doesn't work at all!' I love it because it shows how you're always developing as an animator and to pick out flaws in work you thought was pretty tight at the time of completion.  It gives you a drive of aiming for better and pushing yourself next time. I think if you're ever to look at your work after time and think 'Yep that's still awesome and I couldn't improve it' I think that is the time to hang up your coat and retire.
    I had a great example of it with the first year students the other day, they were critting their work from about 6 weeks previous and they all remembered their work better than it was and almost all of them knew they could do that exercise piece better again. This gives me an idea for the future to show students their work from the beginning of their year at the end as to show them their development over the year, for most it would be harsh viewing but all the better for it :)

My latest(ish) Showreel

More Gobelins Magic

Keep drinking your magic animation juice you French wizards!

New Year New Post

Well I thought I'd post again after as it's been such a while since my last post. It's been a pretty emotional new year to be honest so I haven't been able to get on here as much as I would have liked. Our little boy has been for almost the entire month of January with virus', infections, stomach bugs and colds but thankfully he's been healthy for a week now and he's back to his old self which is great.
Then I also had great news at my University and the career path, hopefully, looks pretty good which is great news as I'm really enjoying lecturing. Then the wife has also landed herself a job as well so it looks like our future in Wales is looking pretty cool.
Work has been non stop since coming back from Christmas what with interviews, assessments and new briefs kicking off but it's all great experience. Getting the hang of the lecturing as well and I no longer stress about getting up in front of a class and talking which I never thought I'd be comfortable doing.
Anyway that's me for now. I think I might start putting up some of my work soon and putting it out there for it to be torn appart.
Until the next time.
P