Week 16 (16th-20th February) - MOVE Summit
Monday 16th
Last year at MOVE Summit I had the idea of doing little stop motion/traditional animation on post-it notes and just photograph them in locations around the convention. But I didn't have time. I REALLY want to do that this year, but I can't decide whether to do my own original character (could be part of a bigger series) or with H3LPR (practice drawing him and gain publicity). If people see me doing this it could also spark opportunity to network or at least make me memorable
I managed to book four 1:1 reviews for the week. Wish I had more of a stop motion portfolio but that's my own fault for not being more organised. I need to get over the fear of starting projects so that I actually have stuff to show people
Tuesday 17th
Managed to make it to the WildChild meeting after all, but couldn't stay for the debrief. Think they liked the direction our animatic was going in. My main task this week is to start exploring matte painting (I want to do a few small tests emulating the style of the Slime Rancher references), but I won't have time to start anything until at least Monday
Wednesday 18th
Talk from Dylan Sisson about his career (didn't go to his later Renderman talk since I'm not a 3D artist but apparently everyone got the Renderman teapot so kinda wish I did just for that). Jen Zheng from BUCK gave an entertaining talk on networking. And finished off the day with Todd Harris going through the stages of making Eyes Of Wakanda (the talk was called "Composition - From Idea to Final Picture" so I was expecting an actual talk on composition but it was more of a metaphor).
Had my first 1:1 creative review with Zoran Arizanovic, since I wasn't able to go to his colour workshop on Friday. Suggested I can put colour scripts into an animatic format too as an idea for how the final film will look which I hadn't considered. With each project try and expand my media usage. Look for copyright free stories (eg mythology, I've been wanting to adapt Scottish folktales for a while) and make an imaginary concept project for it. Focus on presenting my personal sense of colour, expand my visual library with more observational studies - style will come later (I've been told before an identifiable style is better). As a junior, people will be looking for a strong understanding of fundementals, as well as variety and teamwork. Suggested I can block out rough scenes in 3D and project my concepts onto them with a small camera movement to make it look more 3D. But yes fundementals and more studies is the priority in portfolio.
Dan Richards from A+C Studios in Margate gave a really insightful talk about how he set up his own stop motion studio. I would love to set up an indie studio one day. An animation studio is allowed to be just one person in one room. He worked at Aardman, gained exposure from a short film and was hired locally to do workshops which built up the bank, before opening up the studio with two other people. Currently they have two studio buildings, with 10 full time in house artists and a pool of freelancers. Built up money with plasticine workshops for schools and corporate events, now primarily working on adverts.
Then finished up the day with Todd Harris (Eyes of Wakanda) going through his process as a filmmaker from the perspective of a storyboard artist
Thursday 19th
Opening with another talk from Todd Harris about ambition vs achievability. Vibe (eg atmosphere) will help a lot if you have a lower indie budget. The same sentence can be illustrated in one shot or five, depending on the genre - more shots are not always better, and fewer shots are not always easier. For fight choreography you need to keep swapping which character has the advantage which is a good tip to keep in mind for my finale. Don't try to emulate what you've seen before
I tried the post-it note animation but it wasn't working out, I didn't have anything on me to keep my phone stable or a marking of where the post-its were so it was too tricky to line up. I wanted to get people in the background so I sat in the cafe and had a really good spot, but I didn't take anywhere near enough frames, I can't get away with reusing frames for this style I need to keep taking sequential movements. I really wanted to get these wee idea filmed at MOVE this year, but I was stressing too much about it and had no time or energy to prep them. I decided to just leave it entirely and enjoy my time at the summit and rest properly. It was going to be part of a longer ongoing series anyway so I'll continue it another day
Three 1:1 reviews today
- Jess Deacon, stop motion animator at A+C Studios. Said to keep testing and practicing, film movements and break them down to study; Richard Williams book good for movements too (true, I can work through that book for exercises), movements need to feel real. Need more variety in my modelmaking portfolio, be flexible and build my portfolio. Study some lighting, what can I achieve with my simple setup? The model armature doesn't matter, the movement skills are much more important (so if I don't have access to a proper fancy ball and joint socket armature it's not too detrimental). I can ask around studios for internships after I graduate, either as a junior or even as a runner
- Johhny Schumann, creative director/producer at Flickerpix, 2D/3D/stop motion studio in Northern Ireland. Likes my in progress model, suggested adding K&S to the wrists too so that if a finger breaks I don't have to replace the entire arm (good point), and drill holes into the pupil too to move with a toothpick. Just keep knocking on doors for stop motion studios, some aren't always working on projects. Manchester has a good stop motion scene too (Mackinnon and Saunders) as well as of course Bristol (Aardman). He said I could send him stop motion work I make, I wonder if I could get feedback from him?
- Wilma Smith - stop motion animator and programme manager of the Wee Wonders scheme. Wee Wonders is a new funding scheme, 18+ non-students based in Scotland that have never been funded for a film before and their first director role. Story proposal under 3 minutes, its about story development so it can be simple, awarded £7000 and upskilling workshops for story development. So I couldn't use it to continue funding my masters film, but I have another short film in mind that would be perfect for it. She gave me good advice for my practice as well. Start off with simple projects, small achievable tasks a day/week because the more I do the better and more motivated I will feel. Even if something doesn't work out, I can learn from it (like with the post-it note attempt earlier - maybe those could be my regular little tests). She said that sometimes imposter syndrome could be a good thing because it keeps you going and shows you're doing something right, which isn't a way I'd looked at it before.
Went to a panel about how show get made without permission, eg indie productions. YouTube is much harder to monetise now because their "made for kids" feature means there's less personalised ads meaning less ad revenue. However, YouTube is a good way to get an audience and feedback quickly with a good upload strategy, as it's where a lot of kids and young people are. It's an effective way to gain eyeballs and a large audience to commercialise with merch later. YouTube and social media can be used to drive audiences over to a broadcaster as well, working in tandem. BBC recently announced YouTube collaboration so could be looking for digital content soon. And as a personal observation I've been seeing a LOT of indie animation pilots doing well on YouTube, building audiences and online fandoms - my plan has always been to create short films for festivals and then release them to YouTube afterward so a wider audience can see them for free, and then sell merch if any of them do well.
Wanted to go to a writing comedy for animation workshop but it was full capacity, so went to a self-aware directing talk from Jen Zheng which was very entertaining again and informative, especially since if I want to start working with other people on my projects and set up a studio one day I'll have to be a director. "Questions are not attacks - if you cannot defend your logic, your logic is flawed". Stay approachable, you want your juniors to be able to question you to avoid blind spots later down the line. Build tolerance. Daily calls are only really beneficial for management, not really for the team, but good to build connection. If you get something done early don't be afraid to let your team rest for the rest of the day. REST IS PRODUCTIVE TOO. When giving notes, hold back your first reactions; is it bad, or just different?
WIAUK panel on writing for animation, went to it because I'm struggling to get through my script and I need it done ASAP. Map out your goal of the project - what audience, what output, what is the crux of the story? Doodling helps with figuring out narrative, in some cases imagery can come first that you want to write around. Every idea helps you progress a little further. Non dialogue script expressing movements and attitude only through stage directions helps convey good physicality of the character. when writing dialogue do not overdo it, think of real life reactions. Make sure you don't lose sight of your project ideas and goals over the different drafts. Read other scripts and loglines online for inspiration.
Closed out with a Zootopia 2 talk from Carrie Liao. Interesting considering I've not seen either film. Gorgeous environment concepts. 177,000 storyboard drawings over the course of production! Disney lets storyboard artists draw in their own styles, and they still draw animals in studio for study occasionally. Practice constantly
Went to the networking event tonight. I only really spoke to my fellow introverted friends from last year at the Pleasance bar because we were all too exhausted to speak to people, but I spoke to a couple people at the other bar. Chatting to an intern at Eyebolls, it would be good to get in with them because they do 2D and stop motion and are based in Scotland. Inspired by another guy drawing mech designs on his phone, I need to work on my robot designs more and use the symmetry tool for the "blueprints" (since I want 1.0 at least to have asymmetry, maybe 2.0 can be symmetrical as he's more "perfect"). So networked a little bit but I need to try and talk to more people tomorrow. I'd be fine at these socials if it wasn't on the back of a full day of being around people too, being an introvert in the animation industry is hard...
Friday 20th
Started off with charater designs from GOAT, I appreciate anthropomorphic female designed that are not hyper feminised or oversexualised. Bits of the talk flew over my head because it was all technical and specific to groom art which is an area I'm not too familiar with but looked very ambitious when even all their background characters had groom and animation too. I like the environment designs, especially of the Vineland location
Managed to get the final seat to the MOVE Big Pitches (tv series pitches - winner recieves £1000 and a free audio piece for a trailer including music and voice acting). Taking notes on what I felt was engaging or less strong. I liked the first pitch, UltraStar, because it had a lot of concept art illustrating their talking points and good descriptive overview of character arcs and dynamics. The later talks had very wordy presentations but had a full outline of their plot per episode. My favourite presentation was The Noble Nia (which one) as it was extremely engaging, the presenter Mark Adaka bantering with an animated version of his protagonist (spoke to him on Saturday, it was all in one video file just practicing the speaking timing), it was very dynamic and alive!
Another talk by A+C Studios, absolutely fascinating to see their behind the scenes clips! It's interesting that LEGO doesn't allow them to include their work on their showreel, I was wondering why it wasn't there because I clearly remembered the LEGO Wicked trailer - they only had five weeks to recreate the trailer before the film was even out, they were provided the figures but had to design all the sets themselves. Scale is important for paper animation; too small and it's tricky to animate, too big and the texture is lost. I should probably film BTS videos as well when I get into production for social media promotion of my film/project. They usually use a plotter via Illustrator files to cut out their paper animations with more precision. When they have spare time they give their in-house juniors projects to let them practice. I won a wee "stop motion studio" kit which is just figures of animators at A+C Studios - I can at least practice miniature painting
Two hour workshop from Jess Deacon again making a paper moth puppet! The beetle option was really cool too, but I had ideas to make a paper short film including a moth anyway so figured it would be great applicable practice. Learned a lot of practical tips! Fine syringes for glue makes application so much easier, bamboo stick rolled over leg to curve the paper, and black aluminium foil holds its shape well and can go between layers of paper. I managed to get mine finished within the time, I'm tempted to see if I can animate with it in future (would most likely just be sitting on a flower flapping wings), but maybe not this semester as it's not entirely relevant
I was chatting to Rory Whittle during the workshop, we'd met before in a Clanimation D&D game but I didn't know he was a stop motion animator. Gave me a couple more suggestions and even offered to give me some of his silicone cos he's apparently got a lot (might take him up on that...) He sent me a full list of stop motion related things (animators, studios and events) in Scotland!! Apparently his friend Kira Awrey is based in Dundee and does stop motion. But if I did need an extra hand on my film I could reach out and see if anyone would be interested; however since I have limited space I don't know if I could get two sets up at once, and only one of each model. But it's something to look into - after all I'm already recruting one of my friends for storyboards and one or two for compositing/fx as well (depending on scope), so we'll see. Since I'm the first to do stop motion at DJCAD in years there isn't an in-uni expert so I'm kinda figuring it out by myself, so it would be good to get more local help/feedback
Speaking to Freyja more over the past couple days about my project and she has ones of her own she wants to get off the ground that she'd like me to work on which I'm really excited about, including a third year project I had fun working on to pitch next year. So when I leave uni I will at least have a bunch of things to work on, and between us we'll boost each others portfolios with projects. In the meantime I really want to get my script finished ASAP and start refining some more character designs so we can start working on an animatic! In an IDEAL world it would be great to have a bit started by the next group peer review whenever it is (9th March? Two weeks is ambitious).
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