Sarah spoke to me recently about someone from the animation company Realtime UK, telling me that they would like to see the CGI work from our year at UCLan...luckily for me I am the only one who does CGI in our year! And coincidentally it's a company who I had previously researched and been interested in :D
The guy from Realtime has 2 interviews on waiting from Bolton to see my work, so I had to get my showreel together with Jud today and put it up online asap. A little added pressure there as he has put some interviews on hold, I just have to hope my work is better than theirs! Check it out vimeo.com/robertbeard/showreel
RealtimeUK started out in a small house in Lytham, but has now grown to a 25-strong comapny in a purpose built studio. They produce a variety of work, from trailers and animations for game cinematics, including in-game animations, for games like Motorstorm, Split/Second and various Kinect games. To 'adventurous On-line Projects and Commercials' like the Warburtons Consumer Website. For which they were nominated and awarded the silver award for Best Use of Visual Design at the Roses Awards last year.
They focus entirely on CG animation and effects (which is why I am so interested in their work) and produce a lot of photorealistic renders for companies like Aston Martin , Audi and Lexus. I love the style of a lot of their work and I feel that through a company that has come so far in such a short period of time, I could really learn a lot and it would be a great foundation for my work. And after checking out their blog they look like a fantastic company to work for! With all sorts of crazy days out and what looks like a great buzz in the work place.
At the moment the only have senior and lead positions advertised on their website, however thanks to having lecturers with great contacts, I have found that they are looking to hire a recent graduate who shows potential...I just hope they see a whole bunch of that in me :)
Tuesday, 22 May 2012
Compositing Dooone!
With our compositing finally finished and signed off by Jud, all we need to do now is finish our sound. We already had a lot of our sound from the animatic so we have begun importing this into Premiere, we are in university early tomorrow and plan to spend the day on our sound.
In the mean time I suppose it's about time I got round to posting the research that I did for my action plan months ago. I have been looking at various websites and companies who I find interesting, and who I might like to work for. I began my research at the beginning of the year and just haven't found the time to post it, as I have been putting all of my efforts into our final film.
But prepare for an onslaught of companies that I have found and intend to apply to. I won't post the link to the jobs that I have found as I don't want to increase my competition :p
In the mean time I suppose it's about time I got round to posting the research that I did for my action plan months ago. I have been looking at various websites and companies who I find interesting, and who I might like to work for. I began my research at the beginning of the year and just haven't found the time to post it, as I have been putting all of my efforts into our final film.
But prepare for an onslaught of companies that I have found and intend to apply to. I won't post the link to the jobs that I have found as I don't want to increase my competition :p
Friday, 18 May 2012
Editing!
Full steam ahead, editing ahoy!
I have spent some long hours in uni the past few days and some late night getting all 3D elements rendered, I've been working about 14 hour days...eek! I also started editing today and have nearly finished all of the compositing that needs doing. We'll be ready to show Jud and Mario on Monday and get them to cast their expert eyes over the shots and suggest any changes and fixes.
Also, after testing out the film grain over the 2D side, we decided to go with it as it isn't as much work as we thought. Only 4 shots need to have a mask animated over the layers in order to keep the split during camera pans.
Here's a taster of how the finished result will look
I have spent some long hours in uni the past few days and some late night getting all 3D elements rendered, I've been working about 14 hour days...eek! I also started editing today and have nearly finished all of the compositing that needs doing. We'll be ready to show Jud and Mario on Monday and get them to cast their expert eyes over the shots and suggest any changes and fixes.
Also, after testing out the film grain over the 2D side, we decided to go with it as it isn't as much work as we thought. Only 4 shots need to have a mask animated over the layers in order to keep the split during camera pans.
Here's a taster of how the finished result will look
Thursday, 17 May 2012
Animating Done...Almost
With only 5 seconds to animate and all of the available shots on to render, I am hoping I can finish this shot today in uni. I've been in quite a lot recently checking on renders and getting everything ready to composite on my side. Mat is also nearly finished and ready to render out his work for compositing, just colouring and a tiny bit of animation to do.
Things are now coming together and it's looking very nice I have to say. Here's a test of the desaturation of Oldie's side, where we are still in discussion of whether to put a film grain over it or not.
Right now we think it looks great and I don't think we're going with the film grain. We will test it though and see how it looks
Almost everything is rendered now too!! :-) We hope to be done compositing by Monday so we have pretty much a week to improve our sound and finalise things like CV, Action Plan and get painting the walls in room 22. Fun fun fun! :)
Just 8 days to go :)
Things are now coming together and it's looking very nice I have to say. Here's a test of the desaturation of Oldie's side, where we are still in discussion of whether to put a film grain over it or not.
Right now we think it looks great and I don't think we're going with the film grain. We will test it though and see how it looks
Almost everything is rendered now too!! :-) We hope to be done compositing by Monday so we have pretty much a week to improve our sound and finalise things like CV, Action Plan and get painting the walls in room 22. Fun fun fun! :)
Just 8 days to go :)
Monday, 14 May 2012
Final Day
Well so much for posting everyday!
Today is our final day and we maaaay not be done on time, this is the exact reason we set such an early deadline for ourselves. We still have 2 full working weeks until hand in so everything will get finished and ironed out before then I'm sure.
Only 1 shot left for me to do now (the final shot of our film), it is however quite a long one so I'll do as much as I can today. I'll let you know how it's gone/going later on.
Mat is also nearly finished, he is still colouring and I believe has finished in betweening now. He does however still have the crowd to animate. These are only short loops though, so that shouldn't take much time.
Today is our final day and we maaaay not be done on time, this is the exact reason we set such an early deadline for ourselves. We still have 2 full working weeks until hand in so everything will get finished and ironed out before then I'm sure.
Only 1 shot left for me to do now (the final shot of our film), it is however quite a long one so I'll do as much as I can today. I'll let you know how it's gone/going later on.
Mat is also nearly finished, he is still colouring and I believe has finished in betweening now. He does however still have the crowd to animate. These are only short loops though, so that shouldn't take much time.
Saturday, 12 May 2012
3 Days to go!!
ONLY 3 DAYS TO GO??!
Well not long to go until our personal deadline...meaning not long until the real deadline...
I did have a major freak out the other day when it took a whole night to render a 5 second shot, basically meaning that we wouldn't have enough time to render the film. I did some severe pacing and sweating!! However the crisis was averted thanks to Mario. We managed to gain access to the native hard drives on the computers in room 15, giving me more than the allowed 1GB of space to store my 20GB of work. I am now using the computers as my own little render farm. So far I have 11 shots rendering over this weekend, meaning most of the Rookie shots should be rendered come Monday. Only a 3 left to animate now and I'll be getting them on to render asap!!
It has been pretty much full speed ahead for the past week or so and both Mat and I have struggled with motivation recently. Luckily though we can try and motivate each other as we are still working together in our mini studio.
Mat is in the colouring stages and only had 1 or 2 more shots to animate (the crowd) and as predicted; it's pretty mind numbing for him. We did come up against a snag with Oldie's clothing, he was supposed to have stripes like a mime would wear but when they are drawn on they wiggle all over the place and take away from the great animation that Mat has done. This does make the colouring job a hell of a lot easier and a little less time consuming as he now has a plain grey top and looks just as good.
My computer also freaked out recently, it has happened twice now...I believe it's the graphics card but I still have to ring up Sony and get it checked out. But we can't be without for even a day, so it'll have to wait, we're just praying it'll hold out until deadline day!
Oh and we have also tweaked some textures recently as they were a little off, we both want everything to be as good as it can be, it is going to be shown to the public and possibly prospective employers after all.
I'll be updating on a daily basis from now on, as we are less than 2 weeks from hand in day and still so much to do!
Well not long to go until our personal deadline...meaning not long until the real deadline...
I did have a major freak out the other day when it took a whole night to render a 5 second shot, basically meaning that we wouldn't have enough time to render the film. I did some severe pacing and sweating!! However the crisis was averted thanks to Mario. We managed to gain access to the native hard drives on the computers in room 15, giving me more than the allowed 1GB of space to store my 20GB of work. I am now using the computers as my own little render farm. So far I have 11 shots rendering over this weekend, meaning most of the Rookie shots should be rendered come Monday. Only a 3 left to animate now and I'll be getting them on to render asap!!
It has been pretty much full speed ahead for the past week or so and both Mat and I have struggled with motivation recently. Luckily though we can try and motivate each other as we are still working together in our mini studio.
Mat is in the colouring stages and only had 1 or 2 more shots to animate (the crowd) and as predicted; it's pretty mind numbing for him. We did come up against a snag with Oldie's clothing, he was supposed to have stripes like a mime would wear but when they are drawn on they wiggle all over the place and take away from the great animation that Mat has done. This does make the colouring job a hell of a lot easier and a little less time consuming as he now has a plain grey top and looks just as good.
My computer also freaked out recently, it has happened twice now...I believe it's the graphics card but I still have to ring up Sony and get it checked out. But we can't be without for even a day, so it'll have to wait, we're just praying it'll hold out until deadline day!
Oh and we have also tweaked some textures recently as they were a little off, we both want everything to be as good as it can be, it is going to be shown to the public and possibly prospective employers after all.
I'll be updating on a daily basis from now on, as we are less than 2 weeks from hand in day and still so much to do!
Wednesday, 2 May 2012
May Update
So a few weeks have passed and we have been animating like mad men! We are now spending all day in the same room together (almost our own little studio) keeping each other motivated, and I must say it has been working so far. Mat has all of his shots key framed now and I am over halfway through my shots.
Only 12 days left now until our intended deadline and I'm really feeling the pressure, with only the difficult shots left to go, not really helped myself there! There are gonna be a lot of late nights on the horizon.
I hope to get rendering as soon as humanly possible, we just need to tweak one or two textures and we'll be ready to start the oh so lengthy process. With frames taking up to 30 minutes to render we are going to have to have multiple machines on the go. thankfully we can render on my laptop and Mat's iMac, with one of our friends offering their desktop if we get desperate. I would have liked there to have been a working renderfarm at university to make the job a little easier, but I found out the other day that it has been out of commission for a few years now and vastly outdated.
The aim for now however is to get 1 shot a day finished and we will both be finished by our personal deadline May 15th. This gives us 9 days to composite and finish things like the action plan and CV, which have been neglected recently.
Well here goes back to work, until next time.
Only 12 days left now until our intended deadline and I'm really feeling the pressure, with only the difficult shots left to go, not really helped myself there! There are gonna be a lot of late nights on the horizon.
I hope to get rendering as soon as humanly possible, we just need to tweak one or two textures and we'll be ready to start the oh so lengthy process. With frames taking up to 30 minutes to render we are going to have to have multiple machines on the go. thankfully we can render on my laptop and Mat's iMac, with one of our friends offering their desktop if we get desperate. I would have liked there to have been a working renderfarm at university to make the job a little easier, but I found out the other day that it has been out of commission for a few years now and vastly outdated.
The aim for now however is to get 1 shot a day finished and we will both be finished by our personal deadline May 15th. This gives us 9 days to composite and finish things like the action plan and CV, which have been neglected recently.
Well here goes back to work, until next time.
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