LAV's

Scene 03 LAV

Scene 04 LAV

Scene 05 LAV

Scene 09 LAV

Modelling Preparation

As I am modelling for this project as well I have started to do some research. First starting off with the Red Bull can.

Next is the skip which first I will do some research, then model concepts and then draw up the final design.

Rigging Preparation

Scene 09 Thumbnails and Animatics

As this is my most complicated scene I have decided to do some more refined thumbnails and try out some different ideas. For this scene I have decided to take a lot of reference from the Ice Age Gone Nutty short in particular a scene where Scrat is falling through the sky. Here's the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=etKCHLgW_o0    approx 1:38 into the video.

So for the first thumbnails he is praying at the beginning and then start to swim over towards the can.

Animatic 1:

For the second set of thumbnails I decided to take out the praying as I had mixed feedback from it as people thought it was confusing as to what the character was doing so now he just comes into view screaming and then looks up notices the can then starts to swim over to it.

Animatic 2:

Shot Breakdown

Thumbnail Animatics

Here is the Animatic from the first set of thumbnails:

Here is the Animatic from the second set of thumbnails:

Thumbnail Ideas

We have now settled on an idea to have a window cleaner who is cleaning the windows of a huge skyscraper on a hot sunny day. He gets thirsty and needs to have a drink so decides to drink a can of Red Bull from his ice cooler box. As he travels across his cradle to get the Red Bull we see that the wind picks up shaking the cradle forcefully. Once getting his Red Bull he leans back on the railing to relax but suddenly the wind picks up even more and throws him of the edge. As he falls we see him reaching for the can just closely brushing it with his finger tips. CUTs to him landing in a skip with a puff of smoke, at which the slogan appears: No Red Bull, No Wings.

After a little more consideration we decided to add another character to not only make the advert a little more interesting but also lengthen and add more animation as with two animators the work load was seeming a little scarce between us.

So now it follows as similar premise  however none of the wind blowing the cradle instead we have the silhouette of a bird flying past the camera to add suspense.

So the character gets the Red Bull as normal but when he leans on the rail this time the bird comes swooping in and cuts one of the cables supporting the basket causing it to fall thus forcing the window cleaner out.

As he falls he again gets painstakingly close to catching the can in mid air in order to achieve his 'Red Bull gives you wings' but just as he gets close enough the bird swoops in a steals the can leaving the man to plummet to his death.

As we see the dust billow from the skip we pan across to see the bird sipping from the can and the last shot is it staring into the camera with evil eyes.

Finally white background a crumpled can falls into view and the slogan starts
'The Birds Want Their Wings Back'

Chosen Style and Appearance

Here are the links to the shorts:

Mac 'n' Cheese   https://vimeo.com/27127177

Meet Buck   https://vimeo.com/17535548

Salesman Pete   https://vimeo.com/15126262

Freederm Advert   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wleR59hiV0A

Chosen Advert

After much consideration we decided to go for a Red Bull advert because from the style that we have seen and the traits there work carries we feel we can replicate that yet add our own personal touch to it.

The Red Bull stings usually feature the slogan 'Red Bull gives you wings' so we thought we'd have a play on this and swap it around so that no 'Red Bull no wings'. This gives us a new sense of freedom as we can now give a slightly different narrative to what you would expect with the classic Red Bull advert.

However one thing Red Bull is also known for is the hand drawn style they use in their adverts, however because we are doing computer animation not 2D we thought we'd put our own spin on this and have a painted like effect using rough textures and the Maya toon shader.

Initial Ideas

Brain Storm of Ideas

Advert Research

From researching the various adverts I have found that they can be devised into two categories, they are as follows:

Comedy 
- Most of the Redbull adverts, if not all are comedy focused pushing the well known slogan 'Red Bull gives you wings'

- E4 Similarly to the Red Bull adverts usually feature a crude sense of humour of just random shapes and objects interacting with one another.

Serious
- BBC One Idents are more professional and simply just about BBC One and displaying the slogan.
- MTV has move serious based adverts due to the fact that they only really show the logo, no narrative or characters just simply having the logo being shown in a unique way.

Current Project: Sting Advert

For our current project we have been given the brief to make an advert, sting or ident for a product/channel. We get to pick who we work with and what company we are going to produce this advert for. Examples from the lecturers have been for E4 Stings, channel four, documentary channels and  BBC One.

As a generalist/Animator I will predominantly focus on animation however also do some asset modelling and possibly VFX if needed.

I will be working with a CG artist named George Skodras: here's a link to his work http://www.georgeskodras.com/. He will be responsible for the main model and assets and also any lighting and general rendering effects that need to be done.

I will also be working with another animator named Ben Jones whom will solely be an animator, that will allow us to be quite free and non-restricted with the ideas that may come up as we have the resources and man power to achieve an advert at the lengthier time scale.

Previous Projects

Here is an animation I did for my final project in 2nd year called 'Too Good To Share'

For this I actually did everything so I modeled, textured, animated, set up the lighting, rigged, rendered and edited with sound effects.

The main software I used was:

• Maya for modeling and animating
• Mudbox for finer modeling and texturing. 
• Photoshop for finer texturing
• Adobe Premiere for editing.

This was a big project for just one person which of course we weren't expected to do however due to circumstances beyond my control, other projects which I was working on for instance a collaboration for a game with 3rd year students fell through. Therefore in order to create more work for myself I had to lengthen this project. Even though I had been given more time with it, it was still a struggle to finish and involved a lot of sleepless nights working throughout.

I am actually very proud of this project with the amount of work I managed to produce and the quality with the skills that I learnt from it enhanced me through many fields of practice.

For a better quality version please visit my Vimeo page:

https://vimeo.com/96521820

Companies I'd Like To Work For

Of course it is any animators dream to work for the top of the top companies like Pixar or Dreamworks, to have a job where you truly do what you love, producing movies that feature well loved characters that live throughout the ages.

Yet is it a plausible and realistic route for a straight out of Uni graduate? Probably not, but one can dream.

More realistic options would be companies more closer to home and ones that would be more excepting of underexposed animators.
Here are my top 5 companies for straight out of uni:

1. Blue Zoo - Based in London this is a quirky company that are responsible for such adverts as Just Eat, LEGO, Clarks and many more. Featuring 3D as well as 2D Blue Zoo focus on many different styles making them a fun and dynamic company.
2. Studio AKA - Also located in London Studio AKA work on TV series, adverts (Lloyds TSB, Skype, Guinness) and animated shorts. Similar to Blue Zoo this company also feature 2D and 3D and take pride in being a company that is ever evolving into greater things, sounds like a company worth working for!
3. Seed Animation - As a character animator what draws me in is companies that want to create characters with personalities whether it be in adverts or in TV series they still want to give the animation life through their characters. Seed Animation is another company based in London that does exactly this with incorporating clever wit and unique characters they give their adverts an extra edge upon competing companies. They also produce their own in house animation shorts, what more could you ask for?
4. Sun and Moon - This is a big company for my university (University of South Wales) as they are one of the proud sponsors of our highly appreciated Glammies awards which are held every year for all divisions of animation. In second year I was nominated for best 2nd year award which was out of around 80 students. Sun and Moon are based in Bristol and are responsible for such adverts as Clarks, change 4 life and BBC learning.
5. Kilogramme - Here is a smaller company based in Manchester that although being smaller still produce nice stylized adverts with strong character animation. Adverts like Kaspersky IT Security and Edge Hill University are their most prominent pieces.

So there it is my top 5 companies. However they may be numbered this in no way reflects their importance I would love to work at any of these companies.