My Finished Animation Demo Reel

Here's the link to my finished demo reel:

James Ensor Animation Demo Reel 2013 on Vimeo

Sound and Editing

Now that I had rendered all my animations out from After Effects, I could then edit my reel together. To do this, I exported all my animations as TIFF sequences from After Effects and then reimported them into Premiere. I found it quite difficult to edit my animations together as I knew that when it came to putting sound into my reel, it would change the pace of everything. To get over this problem, I went over to YouTube and found some pieces of music I thought would work quite well with my animation style and, most importantly, what's on screen.

For my quick demo reel edit a few days ago, I used one of Randy Newman's most well known pieces of music; the Monsters, Inc. theme. I decided to first use this music for my show reel because it's catchy and has a happy vibe to it which I felt (at the time) would work well with what I had done so far at the time of making the quick edit. At the time of putting it in the reel halfway through production, it seemed to work but when I used it in my final reel edit this morning, it just didn't work at all.

Now I had to find new music to use in my reel. As well as this, I thought about finding other sounds that could play in the background of my reel. I thought up of the following:

- "Shh!" (for when Norman turns to the audience and does the "shh" gesture)
- Dinosaur roar (T - Rex)
- Pharaoh scream (same one I used for my Norman film as well as the accompanying DJ vinyl scratch to break up the music)
- "Sigh" (for the robot lip sync just before he says his line)
- The dialogue used for the robot lip sync

In the end I didn't include any of the above as I knew it just wouldn't work with music. I decided to keep with just the music.

Music:

Disney Pixar's 2001 "Monsters, Inc." Theme by Randy Newman

The animations I made for my reel just didn't suit the style of the above music so I went to find something that would compliment my reel, not distract.

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Gorillaz' 19/2000 (Instrumental version) from their 2001 "Gorillaz" album

I liked how the beat of the music worked well in time with my animations although it didn't feel quite right so I went to find other Gorillaz instrumentals.

Gorillaz' Rhinestone Eyes (Instrumental version) from their 2010 "Plastic beach" album

In the end I decided on this instrumental as the beat worked almost perfectly in time with my reel. A lot of the animations work well with the beat but a few don't quite fit. I don't feel that it distracts the audience at all so I have decided to keep with this one.

I also mocked up an end credits title card too but I've decided to leave it out because when thinking ahead in the near future when applying for jobs and intern ships, I don't think employers will be really interested in what software I used to produce my demo reel. I think that if an prospective employer were really interested in my work and wanted to invite me for an interview, they would then have the opportunity to ask such questions.

Post Production

Now that I have finished all my animations and they're rendered out from Maya, I can now go into the post-production phase of my demo reel. For this, I am going to use After Effects. I've been thinking of what effects I can apply to my animations to improve the overall look and feel to them. I have to be careful which how much I do though as I don't want the audience to get distracted by the effects so they don't notice the animations.

I've decided to apply very minimal effects to my work - just some lens blur to create a motion blur effect with the camera as well as optical lens flares. I could have set up my cameras in Maya to do these for me, so I wouldn't have to do them in post, but it both increases rendering time and I wouldn't have a lot of control over the lens flares.

Because I applied effects to only some of the animations, I could go straight into importing the other animations I didn't apply effects to straight into Premiere.

Final Touches - Making My Reel Professional

I have been testing out different fonts and colours for my titles at the beginning and end of my demo reel. I have decided to make my titles in Maya because not only do I think they look more professional than 2D, it emphasises my favour towards CG rather than 2D animation.

I downloaded free fonts from dafont.com and used the text tool in Maya to create the words in CG. I then extruded the letters to emphasise the 3D look of them.

First font - although clear enough, the style doesn't suite the reel I have in my head at the moment

 

Second font - although more stylised, it isn't as clear as the one above and is too 'sci-fi' for my reel

Third font - I like the font because it's both clear and suits the animation style I have gone for in my reel. I also tested out colours but these are too dark for my reel.

Testing colours - I like the colours but I'm not too sure on how much white can be seen

I've moved some of the individual letters around to make it read better

Final titles (with basic lighting)

I want my reel to look as polished as possible so I've been playing around with different textures and lighting for my scenes. I've been careful with how much I've done and how long I've spent playing around with different settings because I don't have the luxury of time and don't want to distract the viewer from the animations themselves.

Here's a run down of what I've done to some of the scenes to make them look as good as possible.

Norman Sneak - the cameras have a default where anything not lit or textured is rendered as matte black. When I first rendered this animation with the default black 'background', it didn't stand out at all and with making Norman's texture really dark, to almost black, I couldn't see much of him except for where my three spot lights highlighted his features during the animation. I decided to change the camera environment colour (the colour at which it renders anything not lit or textured) to almost pure white. I didn't go for pure white since the title almost disappeared. I feel it works well but I might go back and change the colours of the title to make them stand out more.

I decided to render the animations I did for Edward Hudson's film, "Once Upon A Time In Leningrad" with just an Ambient Occlusion pass because I feel it looks really professional. Below are the settings I used for all 6 shots:

(Select everything needed to be rendered > Layer Editor > Render tab > Create New Layer From Selected > Presets > Occlusion)

Samples - 64

Spread - 1

Max. distance - 45

When rendering everything from After Effects and Maya, I was sure to render as TIFF sequences as to not lose quality and then saved each sequence in separate folders.

2D Robot Animation - Compositing

This morning I finished the robot animation and rendered the U.F.O animation from Maya.

 The robot

The U.F.O 

Here's the final edit with both the 2D robot animation and the 3D U.F.O animation composited together

To composite these together, I rendered both the robot and the U.F.O as TIFF sequences, in After Effects and Maya respectively, and then imported them in the timeline together in a separate composition in After Effects. 

"Once Upon A Time In Leningrad" Animation - Final Thoughts

Today I finished the animation for Ed's film and gave him the Maya file with all six shots. I am happy with the animation I have done and, most importantly, Ed is happy with the animation for his film. I am pleased with what I managed to do with the time I had, as well as restarting my demo reel.

I have done a total of 308 frames which is almost 13 seconds of animation.

Overall, I have enjoyed working on Ed's film. Working in a team has been beneficial, not just for the work I can use in my demo reel, but it was an experience that showed me just how important communication, trust and team work is when working on a project together.

I think the experience I have had working on Ed's film will be similar to that of working in a team in the industry although there will be some differences. I think the teams will be much bigger with more people doing a much wider variety of tasks. I also think it will be more professional in terms of more daily deadlines.

"Once Upon A Time In Leningrad" Animation Update 3

I finished all the animations for Ed this morning and have just got to finalise everything before I give him the file ready for rendering this afternoon.

Shot 18

Here's one of the reference videos I recorded (for Shot 18)

Shot 21

Shot 22

                                        

"The Trophy" Animation

The story behind this piece of animation is heavily inspired by Spielberg's "Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark" scene where Indiana is replacing the golden idol with a bag of sand. I looked past what we see on screen and looked into Indiana's thoughts and emotions during this particular scene in the film ... nervousness, being on the edge, wonder, amazement, relief, arrogance, panic, trust, shock, surprise, terror etc.

From this, I decided to set myself another challenge (like the eyes and the cake). This time I wanted to show changes in emotion in as little time as possible. I thought back to Indiana Jones, the amount of emotion that Harrison Ford put into that scene, and how I could make links between two or three emotions, one after the other. I decided to go with:

tiredness > relief > happiness

The story I wanted to go with for this piece of animation is where this robot has been climbing endless stairs for what feels like an eternity. His goal, and the thing that's keeping him going, is the eventual reach and claim of the trophy.

I'm not 100% sure on how to present this story, so I've started with a side view of the robot walking up the stairs.

Walking up stairs (Work In Progress)

I'm having a little trouble with the rig, particularly the legs' IK (they snaps into different positions some times) and the eye lids (the mesh intersects the mesh of the eyes). These are little problems which I'm trying to get around but hopefully they won't be too visible on screen. 

Change of emotion (from tiredness > relief > happiness - also a Work In Progress)

For the trophy model, I decided to duplicate the robot rig, pose him like a statue and change the texture to resemble that of gold. I also decided to add a fire dynamic to the model to make it more God like and to exaggerate the importance and passion for the robot wanting the statue.

Render of the statue prop on fire

Final animation

Maya screenshot showing the scene

I feel this piece of animation could have gone better but I do feel it gets across the character, his emotions and the story. When it comes to editing the reel later, I may leave this piece of animation out if it doesn't fit well with the other animations.

2D Robot Animation - Animation

Importing the robot into After Effects from Photoshop was really easy and because I set up both the Photoshop document and After Effects composition as the same pixel ration (1280 x 720), I didn't lose any image quality.

Photoshop screenshot showing how I organised the body parts on separate layers

After importing to After Effects, I organised the layers and edited the pivot points for each of the body parts. I did this by going to the Pan Behind tool > select the body part > moving the pivot point to where I wanted it to be and then saved the changes by clicking in the Selection tool. After all these were set to how I wanted them, I set the robot in his starting pose.

Now I could start animating the robot. The animation style I adopted for this particular piece was inspired by that seen in the Rayman Origins game ...

12 Principles of Animation Explained with Rayman Origins

After Effects screenshot showing the body parts on their layers with some keys 

I'm happy with how this is turning out and am looking forward to compositing this with the U.F.O animation I have done. I am hoping to finish the robot animation by next week.

2D Robot Animation - Design

I've been thinking about the design of the robot and have decided to use the construction industry as inspiration. I decided to make a moodboard of images related to the vehicles and equipment used in the industry to get me started ...

Construction Vehicles and Equipment Moodboard

After looking through a plethora of images related to the construction industry, I started to sketch some  possible body parts for the robot ...

Robot body part sketches

Next I began thinking about how I will animate the robot and pondered about making the character design similar to that of the redesigned Rayman character from the fairly recent Rayman Origins game. Rayman's body parts are completely separate from each other which allows the animators to create a snappy animation style. Thinking about my own character, when it comes to importing the robot into After Effects, it will be easy to draw the body parts on separate layers in Photoshop and import the document straight into After Effects and finally animate each body part that way.

Robot Concept

Robot clean up in Photoshop

                                     

Robot 'Colour Map'

Robot Colour

Robot Colour (+Dodge and Burn)

Next I have to import these body parts into After Effects and begin animating them.