MD6003 Week 12 - Showreel of animation work from 2012 - 2014

I have produced a showreel of animation work from my first two years at university to showcase my best techniques and also as a practice to show potential clients such as those who work for animation companies or Royal College of Art staff. During my third year at the London Metropolitan University, I will add more to my showreel such as experimental work or work-in-progress scenes for my major studio animation project.

Below is a commentary of each section of my showreel and their timecodes (how far along into the showreel) explaining how I made each part and how I found making them. My showreel is one and a half minutes long, which keeps within the recommended time of 2 minutes as suggested by Aaron Wood from Slurpy Studios.

• Rotoscoping (00:00 – 00:06, 00:28 – 00:00:35). This is an animation technique that is achieved by tracing and colouring over live-action footage frame by frame. In my first year of my course I was asked to produce a 40-second rotoscoping piece expressing anxiety. Prior to producing the animation I filmed myself performing anxiety-induced actions such as clutching my stomach and biting my nails. Next I opened Adobe Photohop, created a new Film and Video file, adjusted the settings for working with video, created a new video layer and adjusted the timeline to show the time in frames. I traced over and coloured each frame and added some additional elements such as butterflies flying out of my stomach and my heart beating right out of my chest. I like the outcome of this work, despite the jumpiness of the second part, but because the process was time-consuming, I ended up producing less than 40 seconds’ worth of footage but I would reconsider using this technique for my final major project.

• Digital cut-out animation (first piece, 00:06 – 00:13, 00:35 – 00:46). This piece is a closing title sequence for the Dutch horror film Die Griezelbus (2005), known in English as The Gruesome School Trip. I created the characters, backgrounds and props using materials such as corrougated cardboard, fabric textures and coloured paper, animated the sequence in Adobe After Effects and edited it in Adobe Premiere. I am pleased with the outcome of this work, especially the simple animation and the camera work, because digital cut-out animation is one of my strongest techniques and I would seriously consider using it for my major studio project.

• Stop-motion animation (first piece, 00:13 – 00:17, 00:46 – 00:51). This animation is based upon the theme of waiting. I produced it by making a clay model of an anthropomorphic perfume bottle, securing it onto a wooden pegboard, setting up a simple backdrop of wallpaper with a brick pattern on it, moving the perfume bottle slightly, taking a photograph, moving the perfume bottle again and taking another photograph. I took several more photographs of the movements, imported them into Toon Boom, added sound and exported the final animation. I am pleased with the outcome of this work but although the animation is slow in the first half, it is still smooth and it has a more consistent flow. I may consider this technique for my major studio project.

• Digital 2D hand-drawn animation (00:17 – 00:24). This is a lip-sync animation I made using a free sound clip of Cathy Lane interviewing Helen Frosi, curator of SoundFjord. I produced the animation in Toon Boom where I drew each frame by hand although I copied and pasted certain elements such as the mouth shapes that move in sync with the dialogue and the eyelids for blinking. I am particularly pleased with the use of lip-sync in this piece and although the movement of Helen’s arm is smooth yet slow in the first half, the second half is mainly static with just Helen’s lips moving and Cathy blinking. I would not consider this technique for my final project due to some inconsistencies in the full 37-second-long piece but I might use lip-sync in my major project.

• Digital cut-out animation (second piece 00:24 – 00:28). This piece is based upon the theme of love and romance. I used similar techniques to the Griezelbus animation to produce this piece. The part I am most pleased about is of the lady jumping although I feel that I could have made her walk towards the chocolate box rather than keep her still and have the camera move towards it but I had trouble with animating her walk cycle.

• CGI animation (first piece, 00:57 – 01:01). This is an animation I made as a practice run piece in preparation for my March 2014 entry for the 11 Second Club, an animation website that provides a different sound clip each month and people make an animation based on the sound clip. The sound clip for this animation is from Galaxy Quest (1999). I produced the animation in Auodesk Maya by creating basic geometry for the background, downloading the Eleven Rig and setting up key frames for the animation. The part of this piece I am most satisfied with is the lip sync although there is very little movement because I animated the piece as if it were a 2D hand-drawn animation and upon viewing other 3D CGI works I noticed that they had more life-like movements so I thought of doing the same if I were to do more 3D work. 3D animation is not my strongest point in animation; therefore I would not consider it for a final project although I am using this method for a 3D pre-visualisation based on a clip from the 1947 film noir Kiss of Death.

• CGI animation (second piece, 01:01 – 01:05). The sound clip from animation is from the 2009 film version of Star Trek. I produced it as an entry for the 11 Secon Club’;s January competition. I used the same techniques as I used for my practice run animation. Again I am most satisfied with the lip sync for this piece and although there is more movement in this clip than in my practice run piece, it still relatively rigid for CGI animation.

• Hybrid of stop-motion, cut-out and digital 2D animation (01:05 – 01:09). The sound clip in this piece is from Ghostbusters (1984). I produced this animation as an entry for the March 2014 11 Second Club competition. I made the characters from clay, lay them flat on a piece of white paper, took several photographs of their movements and used mouth shapes drawn onto and cut out from paper. Next I opened the frames in Adobe Photoshop and removed the white background from the characters. I also designed the background and props in Adobe Photoshop using similar techniques to those in my closing title sequence and my romantic cut-out animation. I superimposed the characters over the background and saved each one as an individual frame. I imported all images onto each frame in Toon Boom and exported the animation. To animate the river, I opened the animation I produced so far in Adobe After Effects and animated the river I previously made in Adobe Photoshop. I am generally pleased with the outcome of this project, particularly with the lip sync and the blue character’s head turn, because it uses a combination of my best techniques although I feel that the characters should not be jumping around when they talk.

• Stop-motion animation on 3D zoetrope (second piece, 1:09 – 1:27). The 3D zoetrope was a live brief project in association with the Museum of London. Students who participated created their own part of the zoetrope based on a stage of Thomas Becket’s life. My section in the zoetrope depicts Becket sailing back to England from France with three companions. I made an eight-frame looped animation sequence by making slightly flat clay models, painting them gold and adding oil pastel detail to make them look grubby. The models were placed onto a lampshade to form the zoetrope and then the lampshade was placed on a record player to make it turn. A strobe light was used to give the models the illusion of movement. I am quite pleased with how the models produced the movement although I feel one would have to look at it at a certain angle for optimum results.

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