Caged wins an award at FLIP 2011

So FLIP festival 2011 was held this weekend where i attended the event on Friday and Saturday. Considering the festival was in danger of not being held this year, the FLIP team pulled off an awesome festival that in my opinion was better than previous years that I've been to.

It was an honour meeting industry figures Bill Plympton, Barry Purves, Cosgrove Hall (they made Danger mouse!!!) and Aardman. Bill Plympton's masterclass was amazing and very informative. He also showed a pencil test from his upcoming film " Cheatin' " which I cannot wait to see. I recognised him more for his Hot Dog film so will definitely catch up on his past films such as "Idiots and Angels".

From left to right: Me, Bill Plympton and Josh


BrothersMcleod also premiered their latest film, Isle of Spagg, which was awesome. I love the style and the humour was great. I enjoyed the scenarios the little boy was put in and couldn't stop laughing.

Caged was shown on Saturday during Open shorts 5 and I am proud to announce that it won the award for best film from open shorts 5 (Each open shorts session had its own winner based on public vote).

The ringmaster sting that I made with Sector5 Studios was also shown on Friday to open the first event of the day, Open shorts 1. Unfortunately I missed it by 10-20 seconds as I was in the queue to go in to the cinema room. The winners of the sting competition will be announced online later on, so fingers crosswed we win.

process of the ringmaster 1: eyes

As promised, here's the first of a series of behind the scene posts for the FLIP sting entry we made at Sector5 Studios. I will also use these to compare my skills with the skills i had when making Caged so expect a lot of comparisons.

For this post, I'll focus on the eye as there's a huge leap from Caged. For Caged, the eyes were shaded through basic material colours. For the Ringmaster, I decided to UV map and texture the eyes following the philosophy that the eyes are the first thing the viewer will look at in a character; so it was important for me to kick the bar higher that I set for myself with Caged by putting in effort in to the eyes.


Render comparisons of how they would look in their final state

The results were noticeable straight away but there is still a massive room for improvement as I was treating the Ringmaster as a test subject for texturing the eyes. For example, the iris can be improved a lot in its texture.


the ringmasters eye was originally going to be plain colours which I've labelled Caged style


The next big change is in the blend shapes. In Caged I created blend shapes for the pupil to increase and decrease in size but it still didn't look right. The reason for this was that the iris never changed in size. For the Ring Master I made sure to do this which meant extra blend shapes were needed for the iris, eyeball, and the cornea.



The difference is subtle but pays off in close shots as well as adding to the characters personality. In this case it exaggerates the ringmasters crazy personality with the blood shot eyes.

 Whilst there's a big improvement in the eyes in comparison to the eyes i made for the characters in Caged, there's still a huge room for improvement. Perhaps in the near future, I will have another comparison between a new project and the ringmaster.

You can catch both the FLIP Sting and Caged at this years FLIP festival later this month. For more details visit: http://www.flipfestival.co.uk/

Caged to be screened at FLIP festival

A short update to announce that Caged will be shown at the FLIP festival on Saturday 29th October.

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The 3D project I introduced in my previous blog entry is complete and ready to view online. Over on the sector5studios blog, we announced that it was our entry in the FLIP 2011 stings competition. If you haven't seen it yet check it out below:



I will go into depth on the process behind this project in future blog updates.

New 3D project

Now that the Sector5 Studios blog is starting to reveal one of the projects that we are working on, I can at last start to talk about it...a little.

The Ringmaster was teased in a screenshot during the last company blog update. My role was to take the concept art designed by Matt Ayris and to translate it to 3D. This is the first time I've worked on a 3D character who I haven't designed myself and I can definitely see the advantages of it and already the character surpasses what I was able to accomplish in Caged.

As always I begin modelling with the head



The head completed and ready to have geometry mirrored. A rough hat is also
now added.

A great experience in this process was constantly getting feedback on the design and where to improve it which is something I didn't have during Caged since the designs were my own. I'll be updating this blog regularly over the next few days with more development info on this project which is now getting close to being completed.

My impressions: Drawn from Life

Last Wednesday, Jonathon Hodgson gave a talk in Birmingham, Drawn From Life, which was hosted by Animation Forum West Midlands. I'm a big fan of AWFM's events so this was a must to go to.

I enjoyed the event and it was very informative, definately an eye opener into the world of animated documentaries. It's a genre I would now like to try out in the future. I love telling stories with my animations so it was motivating when Jonathon spoke about telling a true story almost like a fantasy with different plot devices available in animation.

I also enjoyed the networking opportunity that followed after which was perfect since it was the first day for Sector5 Studios (which is the new animation company I have formed with 3 other animators).

Sector5 Studios

Its been a busy month but I can atlast reveal what I've been up to which is starting a new animation company known as Sector5 Studios. It's a very exciting time for me as I'm also working with 3 animators that i've become great friends with during my studies at Wolverhampton University.

As well as being an animator, i am also the head of social media meaning it's my job to keep our online presence up to date. This is perfect for me as I enjoy online networking too.

each of the animators at Sector5 Studios are bring their own specialities forward so that we are able to work on a variety of animation forms: stop motion, 2D and my speciality: 3D.

Visit our website at:
www.sector5studios.co.uk

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