ExpoTees and graduating

Long time no see! I have been putting my blogging energy into my project blog, so if you want to see what I've been working on over the past months have a look there. OR you can come to ExpoTees on the 15th May in Darlington, where you can see me in person with my final year project, along with loads of other amazing people and work. You won't regret it! Just look for my table with this big poster:

ExpoTees being the graduate show, this means I have now finished university. I can't really believe it… My final assignment was handed in last week, which was the group project that has been running alongside this individual one all year. We had several jam-packed weeks of animation and fixing rendering problems, and just about got it done in time!

So here is Inky Squid's final animation, All Is Fair In Love And Playtime.

And if you have red-cyan glasses, we also made an anaglyph 3D version!

I also handed in my final year project on 21st March, but I am still tweaking it for ExpoTees so I will upload it then.

In the meantime here is my current showreel which does show some of the work from this project:



I have done so much animating this year! It's been great to learn so much in a relatively short space of time. I have no idea yet what the next chapter holds, but I am excited.

I'll see you at ExpoTees!

Caitlin :)

Find me on Twitter

Just a quick post today to say I made an account on Twitter so I can improve my networking! Hooray! Follow me to see what I'm up to: www.twitter.com/Caitlin_Vickers

Meanwhile my project blog is being updated regularly: www.caitlinvickersproject.blogspot.co.uk

I'm currently sorting out all my work and research for an upcoming (assessed) progress review - something that is also good practice for pitching at events like Expo Tees, for example (which I hope to earn a place at!).

Caitlin :)

Another blog! - caitlinvickersproject

A new link has appeared at the top of this page... That 'Final Year Project blog' button will take you to a new blog I have created dedicated to my individual project for my third year. Please head over there (www.caitlinvickersproject.blogspot.co.uk) and read my 'introduction' post to see why I've done this.

I will continue to post on this blog, but it will be more general posts about whatever I'm animating; specific details about my "The Life of a Student Animator" project will go on my new blog, so please follow that if you'd like to see all the stages of my work process!

I hope I can keep up with all the blogs I'm involved with this year...

Caitlin :)

First day of third year - eek!

I attended my first classes of the year today - my last year, cry! Everything is still moving slowly at the moment while timetables get sorted out and we get given some information, but at least I do now know a bit more clearly what I'm doing.

Our group project is limited to one minute, which means we as a team need to edit our idea as it was heading towards two minutes. While this is a little inconvenient as it means changing things, I am happy that we're being forced to keep it shorter as it means we know how much work we're taking on and it's less likely to become overwhelming - animation is time consuming!

The individual project is pretty much as open as I thought it would be, so my current idea should be alright. The only thing I need to start thinking about differently is how I'm going to structure the project as a whole, with an assessed proposal and a report that must detail the main parts of the process: deciding what is required (what I want to show at the end of the year), creating a way of fulfilling this (planning), following it through (animating, yay!), and evaluating. I also learned that my individual project must be submitted by the 21st March 2014, before my Easter break - seven or eight weeks earlier than the group project. I'd better stay focussed!

"The Life of a Student Animator" is still in the script stage; my first meeting with my supervisor is on Friday, so I'm going to work on my proposal until then rather than putting lots of effort into storyboarding something that she might not even be on board with! I'm excited for Friday to finally see whether or not my project is on the right lines.

Caitlin :)

Third year team - Inky Squid!

My 'I'm back' was a bit optimistic for such a busy summer! I did take on a large creative project, though it was very different to animation... If you fancy a gander, I made a blog about it here.

I have been thinking about my individual project and I think I've settled on an idea that will be diverse and fun to make, based on or titled "A Day in the Life of an Animator". Animating someone animating sounds like a healthy challenge! I want to incorporate those moments of the animator impersonating the character they are animating and of them posing in the mirror; it should be an accurately strange representation of computer animators!

The other half of third year is the group project. I've mentioned this briefly before without going into detail about my team as we didn't have anything going online yet. Our blog is now up and running, so head to www.inkysquiduk.blogspot.co.uk to see a spot of pre-production. The story we've decided on, which will be created in full 3D over the next nine or ten months, is one that shows how vivid kids' imaginations are. Two brothers are playing in a garden and a fight for some cookies begins, switching between real life and multiple different imaginary scenes. We're all excited for it -- though it's going to take a lot of work -- and having a very balanced team is something we all appreciate.

Caitlin :)

I'm back!

Hallo! My blog has been on hiatus for a while... The original purpose behind it was for its contents to be marked for my second-year module, 3D Character Animation, so I uploaded the work for that module as I went and then I had to stop adding to it so it could be marked. Now that the marking is done, I am free to start using it again -- and I can put whatever work I want on it. :D The older posts that were used for marking are still on here -- and I still like them as they show the progress of my very first pieces of computer animation work -- but I've changed the blog design, renamed it and created my own banner to match the style of my portfolio website (albeit a bit sillier than my portfolio website!).

Now this blog will follow me into the next stage of my career as an animator: final year project! My third year at Teesside consists of a group project (I'm in a team of five) that's worth 50%, and an individual project (plus dissertation) that's also worth 50% but is more important as it's what gets you a job. I have yet to decide on an idea for my individual project. All I know is that since I want to specifically be a 3D character animator, it's going to be focussed on that as much as possible -- so hopefully doing some work that will show diversity in skill, like animating both dramatic and subtle performances, etc..

I may put some of my latest work on here with any works in progress I can find, but apart from that I guess I'll post when third year ideas start moving along.

Caitlin :)

(I need to find the timezone settings on Blogger because apparently I post at really strange times...)

FINAL - song performance

Hooray, it is finished! I think I only started on this about a week ago, so it's been a very full-on week! Animating this piece was very difficult because I had never done anything like it before and it wasn't nearly as easy as I thought it would be, but it was also extremely rewarding to figure out the hard way how to make these movements believable and to see a good result at the end.

I'm really impressed with how this turned out, given how many things always seemed to be wrong with it every time I played it back! I just kept combing over and over it, making lists of the things that needed to be tweaked and then fixing them. There are still things now, of course, that I can see are a bit stiff or not quite timed right, but it's my second lip sync and first attempt at real, complex human movement, so those things will get better in time as I continue to animate. 

My reference video (on the 'planning' page) was mostly just used for figuring out the initial thumbnails, then as I was animating I relied heavily on either doing the moves in a mirror to see the order in which the joints moved and rotated, or dancing in my chair! The 'snake' move especially was a challenge given that the head has to lead, which is totally against the way rigs like this work.

I got the rig here: http://www.creativecrash.com/maya/downloads/character-rigs/c/max-for-maya
In hindsight, another rig might have been better -- one with more advanced or human-like facial controls (with more eyebrow/face deformation, for example) -- but this was only something I thought once I had seen what kind of animation I was producing with it quite far into the process. Different rigs are better for different tasks; you live and learn, I guess!

This is my last post for this module, but I will hopefully continue to use the blog in future. I have learned so much in a short space of time through this module, and I'm really excited now to be able to use my newfound skills to pursue my character animation career!

Caitlin :)