LinkedIn

My professional linked in page is now fully completed and updated ready for industry contacts. I have included a link to my current showreel and will update that with my final year showreel once it is completed. 

This should give me a professional look to the industry and enable me to find industry contacts that will assist me in starting my career as a puppet maker/ animator.

Manchester Animation Festival- Making it in Manchester.

Phil Chalk- Factory.
Leo Casserly- Flix Facilities.
Chris Bowden- Mackinnon and Saunders.


Chris Bowden- Mackinnon and Saunders.
Contributed to over 80 projects- films, thames TV.
Works frequently with Flix and Factory.
Allows employees to expand and experiment within the company.
Using both traditional sculpting and armatures and CGI modelling too.
3D printing in metal is possible. Makes little bone elements possible for armatures.
Line up live action and stop motion by putting a square/ something in the middle and line up camera to both.



Phil Chalk- Factory.
Born out of necessity. Working out of a company that went bust so set up factory with connections in BBC commissions. 
Strange Hill High- First commission from BBC- Rod Puppets.

Have all their own post production studios. In house sound, lighting, compositing. 

3D printing whole heads. 
11 minutes of Digital Facial animation in 24 hours. 



Leo Casserly- Flix.
Works with live action and animation.
Leo started as a runner at a post production company in Manchester. 
Works mostly in childrens animations. 
1985- Cosgrove Hall.
Fix started in 1992, the same time as Mackinnon and Saunders.
Had to close one branch in 2009 from the credit crunch. 



Mackinnon and Saunders do take interns, but you need to be up to a good standard so that you can keep up with production.


What are they looking for?
General skills. 
Specific skills.
Teamwork.
Passion!

How to get there.
Just keep asking. 
Volunteer your time for nothing.
Persistance.

You have to love what you do. You can't half heartedly become a stop motion animator.
Get your foot in the door and make a good impression.

Manchester Animation Festival- Will Becher: Masterclass.

Started animating when he was 12. Inspired by Morph. Found his way into Aardman at 22. 

Animated Wallace and Gromit and Shaun the Sheep.

Shaun the Sheep was first seen in the Wallace and Gromit film 'A Close Shave'. He was a popular character from his brief appearance and so that made him his own show.

Order of production.
Script.
Storyboard (Cintiqs. Every scene broken down.)
Animatic +  Voice actors.
Set Building.
Character building.
Animating.
Post production.


Creating the world.
Everything is made by hand except for skies and some special effects.

Large fully coloured drawings and designs.
Very Large scale sets- needs a warehouse with very high ceilings.

Floor+ Scaffold+ Wooden pallets underneath sets for stability.

Polystyrene for cliffs and things. Stick it to mdf and carve away.

Teddy bear felt painted green for grass.

Glass made by a local man.


Character build.
1. Plasticine sculpt.
2. Armature.
3. Break down into parts- hands and head gone.
4. Foam latex inside fibre glass moulds for body and baked.
5. Trimmed and hand painted.
6. Mouth sets and moulds made.
     Head made up from hard and soft elements. Detailed/ textures- hard. The rest plasticine. Latex hands. Foam body. Tie down onto set through feet.
7. Movement tests.
8. Mouth mould made and silicon poured in.
9. Plasticine colours mixed in house.

More than 120 sheep were made for the film. Hard elements for the head and feet. Black and white plasticine is really hard to work with. The only plasticine on Shaun is the eyelids.


In the Studio.
Background figures sometimes in 2D. 2D cut outs look like puppets if they are far away or very close and not in focus.

Big sets- need to climb on set to reach characters.

3 seconds a day on average done. Less if there are more characters to take care of.

Sets designed so that they can come apart easily for access.


Live action video.
-Perform the shots.
-Tiny web camera.
-Acted out by directors and animators.

Water Drops- glass beads, perspex, vaseline, glycerine.

Use dragon frame and canon cameras.
To make scrubs costumes, they 'borrowed' scrubs from a hospital.


Post production.

Rig removal.
Skies added.
Sound- they recorded a full orchestra.


550,000 shots in Shaun the Sheep.
Start to finish took 9 months, Pirates tool 16-18 months.

Heat can affect the set- can cause movement.
If moving camera through a set, motion control rig. It'll move the camera frame by frame. Can't animate camera on twos or it would look juddery.

To get into animation:
Luck.
Be Persistent.
Get in as a Runner/ Junior model maker.
Just get your work out there. Make sure people know you're there.
Just keep getting feedback, reach out to companies just to ask for feedback.

@will_becher on twitter.

Useful sites.
Skwigly.co.uk
Animate-it.com
Dragonframe.com
Aardman.com/jobs



    

Manchester Animation Festival- How to Make Friends and Animate People: The Art of Crowdfunding.

Kick starter:

Wide reach.
Trusted.
Better update tools.
Simple.
But,
High fees.
Little support.
Dropout/ failed payment.

Campaign target divided by average pledge= estimated number of pledges.

The reboot of Morph- Aardman was crowdfunded. 

If you get your short film shown in the cinema you can claim back 16% tax.

New Youtube channel

I have made a new professional youtube channel for my showreel and for animations that I am most proud of. This will be my place share my animations with the industry and hopefully it will be useful in finding myself a job.

Portfolio

I would like to make a portfolio tailored to puppet making, model making and stop motion animation.
Unfortunately, I only have 4 images that I am proud of to put in a portfolio so far, as I have only done one module for the skill I intend to continue with.

Because of this, I intend to spend third year making more models, developing my set building skills and improving on stop motion to get a decent portfolio of work for when I finish my degree.

Second year showreel

Pop-Up Show.

On Friday, we had a test screening of our applied animation projects. This was to get feedback on our animations and prepare us for the Pop-up show that our course will be putting on hopefully.

For the Pop-up show, I want to finish my food documentary animation and have that edited and ready to show people, and if we have to show other work we have done in this show too, I will include my E4 and Shark idents and the robot dance from last year, as well as maybe my Pirate moom for character and narrative from this year.

Social Media Presence.

This year, I have been using social media a lot more to promote my work and show the world what I am doing. I was always posting my animations on youtube, but this year I have expanded to using twitter more to inform people of new videos I've put up.

I have also found that instagram can be a great way to promote my work and get a wider audience interested in it. I have been posting updates of my Applied Animation project on instagram throughout the making and animating stages, and the ability to hashtag animation, stop motion and puppets has meant that my work is reaching people specifically interested in those topics and as a result, more people interested in the industry have been liking my posts and following me on instagram. When my applied animation project is finished and on youtube, I will post links so that people will be able to watch it who have seen all the behind the scenes photos already.

Instagram is also great for finding other people doing similar work and wanting to do similar things with stop motion puppets which is giving me more ideas for how to improve what I am doing, and also creating a little bit of competition which will inspire me to work harder.

Putting hair on puppets

This video was very interesting and taught me a very good technique for putting hair onto puppets. It looks quite fiddly and confusing but it is definitely something I want to try out.

I am finding these Kool Koala Productions videos very useful and I will continue to use them in my future endeavours into the puppet making world.

Kool Koala making puppets

For my independent study task I have been researching different ways to make stop motion puppets and this seems to be the cheapest but most effective way to create puppets in a professional way. 

These videos are really helpful and interesting, as they show in detail how they make the puppets, tell you what materials they use and how much they cost. I will definitely be trying these out next year. 

The third video gave me some really good ideas for suspending the wire armatures which I wish I had thought of while making my armatures for applied animation.

Show and tell

Today we had a show and tell session of what we have been doing and what we are interested in. 
I chose to show my puppets and armatures, as I have been learning about how to make puppets for my PPP as it's what I am really interested in, and applying it for one of my other modules. 
So far I have been looking at shadow puppet animations made from black paper on a light box, wooden puppets and also puppets made from metal armatures with silicone or latex to build the bodies. I showed my armatures that I have built, as well as the latex foam face that I was practicing with. 

Puppets for Stop Motion animation are really interesting to me and I find the whole process of making them exciting. I have learnt so far how to manipulate some of the materials used, although I still need to expand on my knowledge a lot.

Showreel planning.

I have been thinking about what to put on my showreel. It is recommended that we put 10 pieces of work in, but they don't all have to be animations. Because of this I was thinking that I would put in:

• The food documentary
• The character and narrative pirate moom
• My E4 and discovery channel idents from last year
• The Robot Dance from last year
• My 87 bingomation animation
• My 11 second club animation
• And then I would put in my puppets from my food documentary animation which brings me up to 9 things in my showreel.

I cannot think of a tenth thing to include at the moment but I will put these 9 together and choose some music and have a think about the tenth. 

Latex foam faces

I did some practice moulding making some models out of foam latex. I made a clay model of my face that I wanted to cast, then made my plaster mould and learnt how to use foam latex. I had to paint it with latex mixed with paint as this way it sticks to the foam and doesnt crack when you move the paint. 

Latex Puppet heads

This video shows what seems to be a relatively easy way to create puppet heads that are easy to move. It also shows what materials can be used and the pros and cons of each material so that you can make an informed choice depending on what you need for you character. 

I really like this video for it's information and the models have an interesting style. They seem like a relatively quick and cheap way to create puppet heads that can move relatively well.

Coraline the making of

The making of videos for Laika animations really interest me. Watching these is what really got me into stop motion animation and the way the characters move and the way they are designed really excites me. I haven't yet decided whether I'd rather work in the puppet making department or the animating department but I know that I would like to be involved in this industry and making these amazing stop motion animations in some way.

These videos give such a great insight into how the studios work at Laika and into all the different departments involved.

Animex: Big Hero 6

Zach Parrish. Head Animator.

They used Marvelous Designer for clothes simulation. This meant that you can layer clothes in a realistic way instead of creating only the parts of the clothes that can be seen.

The software used is Maya.

Baymax is based on baby penguins. The walk cycle resembles them closely.

Created each characters movements.
Describe it in a simple words. Create the movement of the character in a bouncy ball. Essence of the character.. use the bouncy ball to animate the character. 

Animex: MPC Film. Animating Groot.

Greg Fisher. Animation Supervisor.

60 Animators and over 700 members on the team.
MPC did first and third act. Framestore did second.
MPC did 857 shots for the film, 1305 shots were thrown away (omits)
Including 490 shots for the final battle:
-Aerial Battle
-Nova corp net
-Milano crash
-Groot Spores
-Yondu crash
-Rocket crash
-Groot cocoon
-Dark aster crash
-180 Rocket shots
-170 Groot shots
Also Peter Quill's abduction and Morag.

The largest shot contained 7000 explosions, average of 400 explosions per shot.

4 hour average render time per frame but the city took 6 hours per frame.

A key part of animating of animating Groot was making sure his eyes had life. His body is wooden so he didn't move as well as people.
The branches etc all move over each other, and all together. They don't squash and stretch, they move like wood would move. 
They create empty space when weight goes on. Difficult to animate his feet as he doesn't have ankles or toes. 

Working out whether Grood breathes. Subtle human style breathing. Chest rising and falling. 

Face an eyes. Groot isn't very expressive. Subtle emotions shown in the eyes and not so much in the whole face. They needed the eyes to have a good range of movementm but he's made of wood. 

Doesn't have a nose either, difficult to express emotions. 
Groot doesnt understand a lot of human emotions so his expressions show what he thinks he should be feeling but he doesn't know how to do it right. He only really has a few basic emotions but he gains more emotions as the movie progresses.

They producer wanted Groot to be dead still when he stops moving but when CGI characters stop dead they don't look alive anymore. MPC had to find ways to subtley move him to keep him alive when he stops moving.. eyes and breathing.

Groot is mostly calm, gentle and zoned out apart from someone threatens his friends.

Animex: Atomhawk. Imagining a world of Marvel.

Creating concept art for Guardian of the Galaxy.

Atomhawk concept art studio in Newcastle. 
Did Concept art for Lord of the Rings, Thor: The Dark World and Guardians of the Galaxy among other things.

Started at Midway Games before it went bankrupt. Worked on a lot of well known games.

Thor 2 was the first big movie. Guardians of the Galaxy was huge. They weren't to stick to normal references. 

The best was to create good art is to do what you think will work. It is better to ask for forgiveness and not permission. 

Quill's rocketship took a lot of work and hundreds of sketches. So much work went into it because it was almost a character. So much time is spent inside it.
They had to design all the spaceships with architectural designs so that the sets could be designed and built. 
They also designed many of the scenes, including the prison. 
They added extra colour everywhere. 

Animex: Recruiters Panel

The Mill. -Mostly commercials, music promos and games. Based in London, L.A, Chicago and New York. 

Framestore. -Film, VFX, Commercials. Based in London and L.A.

Industrial Light Magic. -New studio in London- Based in San Francisco. Soon to get internships for graduates.

MPC. -Film and Advertising. MPC Film are more specialised artists in particular areas, MPC advertising is more general artists, working in a variety of areas. Based in London, Bangalore, Montreal and Vancouver. Recruiting for 2D.

Double Negative. -VFX feature films etc. Based in London and Singapore.

Entry Level jobs?
Many entry level jobs= Runners. 
To progress fastest, build relationships with the division you are aiming for within the company. 
Some divisions recruit more junior artists more often. (The Mill)
Runners are hired based on strength of their showreels and trained based on their interests. (Framestore)
Runners feed straight into the production line. They hire junior artists straight out of school and they get a 3 month intensive training program. If you graduate from the program you are offered a job as a junior artist. (MPC)

How specialised should the showreels be? 
Pretty specialised for the specific role/ division you are applying. 
Don't put everything you've ever done on your showreel. If you don't particularly love something you've done, don't include it in your showreel because the chances are that if you don't love it, they won't love it either. QUALITY, NOT QUANTITY. Put your best work on.

Important skills.
ADAPTABLE. Be able to work on projects you don't particularly like. 
TECHNICALLY MINDED. especially for compositing. Learn about all the technical things before you apply.
HAVE AN INTEREST IN TECHNICAL THINGS. 
UNDERSTAND ANATOMY and rigging.
Have a want to learn.
ENTHUSIASM.
EAGERNESS.

Stay open in your ideas of what you want to do.
When you have a junior role or runner, be enthusiastic about your job and learn as much as you can. 

Interviews. 
Evidence of team work. 
If you get an interview, be yourself. Be normal. 
Good if you know where you want to end up. AMBITION.
Have a good knowledge of the software that the studio uses and demonstrate that you can use them in your showreel.
Mostly informal/ semi-informal interviews because the showreel/ portfolio is more important. They already know that they like your work, they just want to meet you and know your work well in a team. 
Research where you are applying. Why are you applying? You've heard they treat staff well? You like they work they've done? Be Passionate.

Internships.
MPC. 8 week program. Accommodation in London paid for. Very competitive. Have a good showreel. One intern per department.

Framestore. Similar to MPC but with a chance to work on your own project evrey friday so you have a framestore approved project on your showreel.

The Mill. Internship opportunities all year round. 

Animex: Method Studios.

Exodus: Gods and Kings. VFX Supervisor Simon Carr.
Worked on it from May to October 2014
162 shots worked on by Method Studios.
-80 triage shots (making the left eye look like the right eye)

Software used:
-CMM: 3dE internally; some sequences outsourced to Yannix.
-Ocula 3 and 4
-Maya/ Houdini/ Z-Brush/ Mari- 3D components and additions.
-Arnold
-Photoshop
-Nuke -Compositing.

Left eye camera is more yellow/green
Right eye is more magenta.

Flames and smoke are done in Houdini.

Animex: Feature Animation for Adults: Now is the Time

Ed Hooks. Author of Acting for Animators.

Now is the time that animation is changing. "Animation has been efficiently commercialised. Disney is at the front of that."
Ed Hooks believes that Dreamworks might not be around for much longer.
Animation has always been thought of as for children. Kids cartoons etc. Now animators are focussing more and more on adult animation themes. Disney, Pixar and Dreamworks spend upwards of $1.5 million per movie. They need to make 5 times what they spent on the movie in the box office. Dreamworks haven't made as much as they needed in the box office. They're in trouble.

Frozen cost $200 million. 
Coraline cost $60 million.
Spirted away cost $30 million. The latter two are low budget movies. 

You don't need to spend huge budgets on making a movie, the software and everything you need is more readily available for making a good movie in your own home.
A lot of the most exciting animations aren't coming from the USA.
Advice: Make sure your passport is up to date. Travel. Don't spend your life waiting for a job at Pixar. Animators should work like actors, and attach themselves to projects they like. 
Look at what Walt Disney did, not what Disney is doing today. Today, Disney is a big corporate machine. Walt Disney in the 1930s made Snow White even when no one thought he should/ thought no one would watch it. Walt Disney didn't have anyone to follow. He was a pioneer. We don't have anyone to follow. WE are pioneers. Don't go to work at Disney if you want a career instead of a job. 

KICKSTARTER. Find people that you want to work with, who's work inspires you. Not who you want to work for and trying to convince a company to hire you. 

A good animation is art. "Big Hero 6 is a feature length commercial." "Art has something to say." "Art presents questions." "Art is hard, it puts things in your face."

Your showreel, coming out of animation school. Don't show the world what you think they want to see. Show them who you are and what you are giving them. Have something to say. Put your opinion into your animations. 
Don't come out of the school and not feel like you belong in the animation world. Believe that you belong. 
It doesn't start with your ability to draw, it starts with your ability to think. Have ideas then think of how you can get these ideas to other people. Know who you are and show the world who you are.

Don't hope to be an actor or an animator one day. You are an animator/ actor from the minute you want to do that. 

The animation industry is in a state of transition today. 

Is 3D replacing 2D? No. "I don't see the reason for animating something in 3D if you can do it in live action." Animation is for the magical, for the things that you cannot do in live action.
"Being an artist is risky but you're gonna die anyway." "There is no good reason to become an artist. If you care about feeding your family, become a lawyer or a doctor. Being an artist is enjoying life." 
If someone asks if they have what it takes to be an artist or an actor, say no. If they are dissuaded then they should do something else. You become an artist because you have to. You have no choice.

Making Norman

This timelapse/ animated video about the making of the Norman character in Paranorman is incredible. It gives a brief look into how the character is made, while still being detailed and indepth. 

This video has made me realise that I am really really interested in making puppets for stop motion animations and Laika have really inspired me. I would definitely like to investigate making puppets for my 50 hours of developing a skill.

Lee Hardcastle

Lee Hardcastle attended the Northern Film School in Leeds, and turned to animated film making when he struggled to get his ideas made into films as he had trouble socialising with the other people on his course. He started playing around with stop motion animation because it allowed him to create his short film ideas by himself on a low budget. 
After he finished studying, he was on the dole for a year while trying to find a job in the industry and eventually managed to get a job as a runner at Scramble studios in Soho, London. Here he was able to experiment and learn how to use the VFX software, and made professional relationships including one with Tim Atkins, who still does a lot of audio on his short films. While he was working there, Lee still worked hard on his own work, writing comic books and scripts when he was unable to physically create films.

Entering competitions is one the most important and best things you can do as a freelance animator. They allow you to work on set briefs, get your work seen by more people who might then contact you for a piece of work they would like you to do, and they also present the opportunity to get paid for your work by winning the competition. It can be disheartening when you don't win or get any feedback on your submission, but when you get recognition for your work it is an amazing feeling.

Lee entered the Done in 60 seconds competition with his remake of Evil Dead. The 'Done in 60 Seconds' competition asks for people to remake classic films within the time limit of one minute. This short film was the first film made by Lee that got a lot of recognition, and went viral. He even got requests for interviews and people asking for him to create videos for them, so he started thinking about what made this so successful and decided to continue creating claymation videos. He the quit his job at Scramble and moved to the south of France to work at a cafe and write screenplays and enter competitions when the tourist season was over. This was when google got in contact with him and asked to put adverts on his youtube channel because of the success of his Evil Dead video, and that video earned him £50 in a short amount of time.

He started looking at other animation that were of a similar style to his, and came across 'Chainsaw Maid', which had a lot of views, so Lee made a sequel. 

He quickly learnt that the more videos he put on youtube, the more money he could make from them. He started making more videos that would get a lot of views on his youtube channel, and giving them names that would catch peoples attention and get more clicks. 

This lead him to create 'Pingu's The Thing', which was massively successful until he got sued by the creators of Pingu and told to take it down. Then he created Claycat, a pingu-esque cat, and recreated his video of the Pingu/ The Thing mash-up with claycat. He then turned this into a series of claycat animations.

The ABCs of Death came around, with 26 directors creating a short film for each of the letters of the alphabet. There was a competition for the 26th director, who had to make a short film for a way to die with the letter T, and Lee Hardcastle won with T is for Toilet. Being included in a feature length film was his dream. T is for Toilet was so successful because Lee knew his limitations that came with his claymation style and he put a lot of effort into the set design and the story. 

Lee doesn't consider himself an animator, despite the majority of his work in the last 10 years being done in a claymation style. He refers to himself as a film maker instead.

Being a successful freelancer is all about branding yourself. You need to brand yourself to get commissions and jobs in the creative industry.

This talk has taught me that being a freelance animator, especially if you are work in claymation in the UK where Aardman get most of the claymation commissions, is a challenge. It can be disheartening and a struggle to earn enough money to keep yourself a float and pay rent, but when you win competitions, and get approached to do work for big brands, it can be very rewarding and getting paid for doing something you enjoy is really exciting and makes it all worth it.