2D backgrounds

Here are some drawings I did for the 2D background project. 

3D Environment

Having to create a 3D environment was probably the most difficult task for me. I'm not a fan of maya in the slightest and struggled a lot throughout the whole thing. I still came up with this piece which is part of my house in Seychelles. There are many many things to improve of and if I have the patience it would be interesting to go back, re-work and improve the whole environment. The thing that I struggled most with was actually the lighting. I couldn't get the type of light I wanted in the direction I was going for and had to keep rendering it over and over again till I was ok with it. Rendering also seemed to cause issues.. it kept crashing, didn't finish rendering or some frames were missing. Maya was an interesting program to learn the basics of however I don't think it's for me

Motion Studies

This is my showreel containing all the motion studies work we did throughout the term. Each week we were given a new task, i.e a walk cycle, juggling. There are quite a few things I could improve on like the juggling needs more movement in the body, the sneak cycle has a little skip to it, it doesn't flow smoothly.
We also had to create a dance in celaction and then add secondary animation to it in flash.

Mazed Ident

We had to create an ident for the mazed project we worked on earlier but all on Adobe after effects. I used the mining scene I worked on for the final animation and when the rocks fall the Mazed logo appears from the dust. I couldn't find the right sound effect to go with the logo sadly.. I think I should definitely add one to make it feel more complete. Also, I would have liked to add a logo transition.. for example having the umbrella in the corner and there being a 2 second transition of the umbrella going across and dragging a black screen. After Effects seemed like a complicated software in the begining but after a few tutorials it was actually fairly simple. It always takes a while to get used to a software after working with one for awhile.

Life Drawings

Every second week we did life drawing to improve our knowledge of human anatomy and drawing skills. I found that it was extremely helpful and I learnt a lot in each session. I need to stop being so tentative with the postures and maybe do more gesture drawings in my spare time to understand general postures and alignment. I always found feet difficult to draw and tended to avoid it in life drawing which is another thing I think I should start practicing in my spare time. 

Mazed Project

We were given a project to animate a short folktale based in Cornwall for the Mazed project http://www.mazedtales.org/  which would be created for an iPhone app. We were given a short period of time and a lot of work so there was constant stress throughout the whole project.
When we were first given the project and assigned our groups we discussed who would take on what role and played around with character design ideas. I was one of the animators on this particular project, working on the kitchen scene, mining scenes, the knocker's eyes and the picking up and dropping of the food.
As the animation would be played on a small screen we figured it would be best to have the animation made in a very simple style with bright colors contrasting with a watercolor background.


There were many complications throughout the whole project.. people falling behind on deadlines, technical difficulties, lack of organisation. All in all considering the time and knowledge of the softwares I think we ended up creating a good final piece. We redid the piece a few times to perfect it before sending it to the production company.. there are still some things that could do with adjusting, for example the fairly noticeable difference between the two animator styles. As dan,the other animator, and I worked separately but still using our director's designs we ended up with the main character looking slightly different so it is clear the final animation was done by numerous people. We could have avoided that by making it simpler-having it in a cut-out style and having all the assets ready and then animated later.