Some doodles from different times

These are from my travel sketchbooks, I always have some form of sketchbook... Even at formal occasions! Always something to draw!

Allow me to guide you through the different sketches and when I drew them:

Tokyo - Feb 2014

Still need to write up the Tokyo trip. However here are some sketches I made during a museum visit, all these were of statues of various sizes.

Aardman June 2014-

Another write up I have to do for you all, but recently I spent two weeks work experience at Aardman!! I was in the cg department, it was crazy fun. More details on that soon, but in the mean time...

On my lunch breaks I went out and sketched, either people or environments, was really fun!

This is from Florida Apr 2013 -

I was very fortunate last year to visit Orlando, Florida, and stay at orange lake. Here is a sketch of their main water attraction - river island.

Broad Haven July 2013 -

A lush summer in west wales, really sunny and warm and... Lots of locations to draw! Haha! These were some of the better sketches, minimal detail so I cannot think I stayed that long!

Well that's all for now, see you later,

Claire

Sorry for lack of updates

These are the final weeks where all my university friends are in cardiff, so I've been very social! Unfortunately, other than an animatic and a load of sketches, I've not had time to update; sorry.

I've now moved back home, and am clearing spaces, so there may be a bunch of sketches loaded on to here.

The first is the bone sketch I did for the BFX competition, of the Roc, this was later turned into a rig diagram!

Lots of fun.

See you soon,

Claire

From Start to Finish - PMF Director

Hi All,

For my dissertation this year, for which I scored a high 2:1 - YEY, I studied the 12 principles of animation. More specifically my dissertation looked into the 12 principles and how they are applied differently to the different mediums. Eventually the conclusion was CG uses motion blur to aid in quick movement that is often seen in 2D animated films, however, like 2D, it also uses 'smear' frames; where one segment will stay with the beginning, or hit the end, of a big movement. This technique causes huge extremes in certain part of the body...

So how did this work with this piece:
Obviously I ended up using ARNOLD's motion blur features, however I also used some features on the malcolm rig (which is insanely flexible), to stretch out some features to aid the blur. In this piece, fingers were elongated, arms bent and stretched, and the head sevaerly stretched until it didn't really look like a head anymore!

Obviously I will be experimenting with the technique in future animated pieces, including the full film of this.

Hope you enjoy!

Oh yeah! That's me, and that's my dialogue too...

See you soon,
Claire

Painting Fun times: More alien mischeif

Now to animate....

Zekros in his bounty hunter garb, which glows in the dark.. he's pretty arrogant with his hunting, but likes to hear from the hunted's point of view; so he wants to be seen...
Anyway he's holding his Salak Kahim, which loosely translates as his 'beloved mind' in his language... The Tharinos do not normally speak like humans do, as their sandstorm ridden planet dislikes their throats, so they have developed a way of psychic communication. Their equivalent of a thumb, index and middle finger have nerves that can transfer thoughts and feelings to another Tharinos, while it started off like this (which is already a crazy stretch), it evolved into them generating small psychic fields around themselves for communication (this would help particularly grouchy Tharinos understand each other from a distance). Then it developed as the species grew, as more joined the world the network grew, until the connection of 'beloved minds' were formed. These are two individuals who would be mentally healthy for each other to be around, it is a mutual connection felt by both involved. This does not make them mates or anything, just able to hold healthy conversations and understand each other on a further level. With the Tharinos, a connection is formed when both are mentally advanced to the psychic stage, then the need to find each other grows like fire.
As the council expanded the psychic fields for all species in their airspace, the Tharinos found themselves connecting with other species.

A millennium since the first Salak Kahim bond between Tharinos formed, the first bonded with a human. The human is a gifted psychic, unable to control her powers fully her mind reached out for help, and an adolescent Zekros heard. No one from council space is legally allowed to enter earth's solar system, and all must be cloaked to avoid detection. Zekros, driven mad by the years of wanting to meet his Salak Kahim disobeys all orders and laws and finds the 'great psychic' he's dreamed of... But she's small... and fragile and not at all what he's expecting... Until she unleashes her powers.

Months later his ship unexpectedly beams her and him up, and she is soon the first and only human in council space... or so they think...

ANYWAY

This image??

He doesn't understand the idea that human's don't like their butts grabbed, his species doesn't have this social problem, butts are hard and not seen in that way. Humans do have this problem... and she's about to let him know that....

Painting fun times

Filed under 'This is not the work you should be doing'

A quick colour and shade of my Alien character Zekros. His species, the Tharinos, have an adaptive carapace that allows them to adapt to most environments, however this does not account for clothing... So they tend to walk around naked on their own spaceships. The design basically became 'make a human bearded dragon', because bearded dragons are my favourite lizards.

They put on clothes around other alien races so as not to make them feel uncomfortable... (Also to save line mileage on those scales!).

No... I have no idea why Zek is pacing aggressively on his spaceship...

See you soon,

Claire

Current Showreel: May 2014

Will give  a  better blog update soon!
In the mean time please check out my new showreel:

See you soon,

Claire Hodges

Horse development - Prance

We have to make making of videos... So I thought I would give you guys some thoughts behind my process!

(Sorry for English, Sleep is for the weak, is my latest motto)

See you soon,

Claire

Pigs May Fly: Poster Time

(Caution they are CMYK)

Some posters I made for Uni to promote my work.

Sorry for not posting much lately! My major deadline is Friday and well... There's so much to do!!

See ya soon,

Claire

Ffresh 2014 award for best Game/Interactive goes to!!

So you know last year... Around about this time, you saw the guy on here with the spade staff and the hood. He was part of Form Wars, a project directed by Conor Moloney and Pavel Tsihhotski. I had the amazing chance of animating one of the kings on the game, the one leading the nature fraction.

So all that, and we won a Ffresh award for it! How fantastic! Will get a photo up of us with the trophy as soon as I get one. In the mean time take a look at the game:

See you soon,

Claire

Stress doodles

A pudgy griff, because I'm stressed....

Griffin biped thumbs

Some character thumbs, I've finally settled on a design for her!

Basically she's human who became stuck in this form when she first shape shifted, she can return to being human, but cannot sustain it.

Trying to explain rigging to friends...

Never easy!! Teehee!

BFX Storyboards: Post hand-in submission

I recently teamed up with a couple of others to submit an entry for BFX, as everything is hosted... and I have not managed to post some storyboards for a while, I thought I would post them here.

It's Sinbad and the Roc... btw...

See you later,

Claire

White Tiger: Rigging - Leg test

Using some MEL based scripting I have just started creating my leg rig. Please check it out.

The difficulty of this rig, with regards to the feet, is the use of bipdeal rigging methods on a digigrade (?!) leg... So... a human leg rigging method on a leg with a mix of quad and biped features.

See you later, check back for more Rigging fun times in about... well... TONIGHT!

Claire

PMF: Producer

(You should be able to HD this...)

So I had to reduce the time for PMF... Because we're only meant to do 20seconds of animation for each project, and the lecturers liked this segment, which was fine for me.
The whole point of this exercise was to prove that I could animate a character who reacts to things being said for 20 seconds... In a subtle way... this was the point. This was artistic intent as, if you've seen the other vids, the Director is incredibly cartoony and hyper-active!
This was a lot of fun to do, as I am not a serious, or subtle person (I am the Director).. well apart from when I have to be...
Anyway! Lavs will be up next week for laughs!
Morpheus @ Josh Burton

See you later,
Claire

What have I been up to?

RIGGING!!!
Which is insanely fun as I am applying some MEL script I have been learning, (incredibly basic, mostly variable naming then recalling and stuff.) But really cool, have more or less done a Rig in two weeks... which would've taken me four last year! It's also more robust!!

Anyway, deadline is approaching, so I thought I would briefly update.

So while I was completing other pieces, I was communicating with Pierre Laffoux, an amazing ex-grad of Glamorgan, who made just about the most bulky, broad and well built character I had seen that year! Obviously I wanted to rig it! Please check out his website.

We both communicated to each other ways to improve the mesh for better deformation, which was a learning curve for both of us, as I am not known for modelling and Pierre seemed to enjoy what I did know.

Just a few notes I sent to him after one model evaluation session!

I have now got a fantastic model to rig, and I hope my Rigging skills are up to the standards of his modelling!!

See you later,

Claire

Travelling Tipits - FMX 2014: Third day

Owwww.... Getting up that morning hurt... My friend's alarm kept going off and everything!
Anyway, an extra 10 minute kip on the coach and into FMX day 3. This was the day I mostly split apart from the main group.

Since we got there extra early I snuck into the Filmakademie screenings which included this lovely and heart warming/tear jerking short

The Present - Trailer / 2014 from Jacob Frey on Vimeo.

So after bawling my eyes out, I stayed in the Meidinger-Saal, for the 'Developing Games for Mobile', presented by Arash Keshmirian from Limbic. This talk gave interesting insight to the evolution of mobile games development and how audiences can change. They started out with TowerMadness, a highly successful game, that powered their company; with paid for unlockables. Later, however, when they went back to make a 2, they discovered that the older audience did a marmite, either loved it or hated it.

Very interesting talk.

I then went to a technical lecture on 'Gravity' and 3D conversion at the cinema, again interesting, but my notes are incredibly vague on it... I think it blew me away somewhat.

Staying there I then saw 'Behind the invisible visual effects of Rush' which was presented by Nathan Ortiz from Dneg...

THIS BLEW ME AWAY IN A DIFFERENT WAY. I had no idea how much Cg was in this film, it was all so realistic, which was crazy. Thankfully I sat with Remco and he managed to shut my seemingly permenant hanging mouth. The team work described in the Dneg team reflects on the time I went to see them, they are very much a community there and they want to work together to produce the best visuals. All fantastic.

I then saw the development of 'Manou the Swift'... I had considered working in Germany before, and after this it cememented the idea. I loved the concept of this film, the art, the models, the passion of the team, it all radiated the potential of the film. Looks fantastic and I cannot wait to see it... Am currently making multiple showreels... Definitely making one to send to Luxx studios!!

I stayed for the best of Siggraph Asia shorts that were shown, all amazing for different reasons.

I then ran to see 'Making Animation Blockbusters in France for Hollywood', which was more businessy than I somehow expected.

Stayed for 'Producing and Visual effects for the Grand Budapest hotel' which left me with the same feeling Rush did, I had no idea how much of it was visual effects. This was presented by Gabriel Sanchez, and others, but Gabriel I met the previous night at the party. So that was a funny meeting again, he's a lovely bloke. Seriously though, there was so much visual effects in that film, and by the sound of things, a great deal of them was because of mistakes made in the original shoot - CRAZY.

That wraps up the day...

But I went out to another party in the evening! WHOOPS... Still, it was an industry meet.

See ya soon,

Claire

Travelling tipits - FMX 2014: Second Day

"Action >Obsticle > Objective"
Ed Hooks' acting for animators 2, fueled more animation ideas in the morning, with crazily important theories and tips for better story in animation. Trust me, if there's ever a talk presented by him go to it, he's fantastic, and has loads of ideas for people to learn from!

-Thumbs to come-

This lunch time was when I discovered a lush pizza place, with huge slices... VERY YUMMY... and great for a pizza fan like me.

Then I spent the afternoon in simulation, which provided insight into areas of animation I previously had very little knowledge about.

Frozen: Simulation was presented by Rajesh Sharma and Lawrence Chai, they dicussed snow and clothes mostly. The snow simulation fascinated me because of my physics background, Sharma and Chai discussed the equations that were used. Here's, more or less, most of that discussion in this video.

 But they also talked about Technical animation, and how that department takes simulated scenes and corrects them... I am now researching that area some more, as they seemed to be the department that pulls the final pieces of animation together, as they still were creating arcs and appealing movement.

Pixar's talk by Samantha Raja, consisted of loads of simulation examples dubbed 'motion that is calculated by software because it is too complicated to animate by hand'.. I wouldn't say too complicated to animate by hand... just tons more work for an animator to do, (but 2D does it)!

Either way, this was another interesting talk that I loved again for the subtle, appealing look of it. Mostly talking about clothing and how it interacted with the clothes in Monster university! FANTASTIC!

 In the evening I attended the afterparty with Remco van Dongen, and managed to speak with loads of people. Gave out as many business cards as I received, so I think I did well there! Met many people from different segments of the industry, all with different roles... Some roles I would not have thought about in the past. So overall amazing experience!

Managed to crawl back to the hostel at 4am.... Ow!!

Travelling tipits - FMX 2014: First Day

So I have been and sadly left FMX... Sad times, had such an amazing experience there, would recommend it for any animator!!
So now to catch you all up...

Day 1:

Travelling -
A lengthy but relaxing coach ride all the way from Cardiff to Stuttgart! Was crazy, but, if I am honest, most of us slept through the majority of the trip. However we all did get up and out on the underground, and played catch... Which was funny seeming the small space! The ball did go under the coach a few times, thankfully though we managed to get the ball, and its pursuer, every time.
Must've been asleep when we came to the German border, as I remember reading french, falling asleep then waking up reading German :)

AT FMX:
First thing, the building that Fmx was hosted in was gorgeous! Second thing, oh I was so hungry when we got there!
So the first thing on the agenda was setting up the stall, which we all did in double quick time- before heading over to 'The art of animation: Advancing Visual Effects in "How to Train Your Dragon 2"' in the cinema....
Which was basically a huge tease for the awesome animation, as well as including some sweet testers of fire effects and other nice visuals (snow for instance) used in the movie. I needed to see the film afterwards, but its still not out yet!!!
Then we ran back to the main building for 'Concept art: concepting for film', which was a lovely insight to some painting techniques and workflows.

For lunch we discovered a Subway like place... Which had some yummy sandwiches.

Then we came back, watched 'Frozen: The Art of Lighting', which summarised the films lighting with saturation = a tense, sad... Negative scene, whereas bright and vivid scenes were happy, or dramatic.

Then there was Ed Hooks' lecture on acting for animators! A fantastic way of thinking, that unfortunately has come too late for 90% of my final project... Although I have some ideas to incorporate it. Future projects though will not just contain animation, but also a motive for the movements in the character, even if it's body mechanics!!

After all that, we tried to hunt for food, failed, were taken to the hostel... Setup base there. Then went out for hunt 2... Found a local restaurant, had chips then had a larger... Got to admit was not fond of larger prior to the trip, now however I do drink the stuff!

Summary:

So much travelling. 

Awesome art,

Amazing animation tips ,

And discovery!

See you all later,

Claire

Fmx day 2:

Fmx day 2 begins!!

See you all later,

Claire

Fmx

 We're here!!

See you later,

Claire

Website is ONLINE

Hi all,
In prep for FMX, and because I needed it done anyway, I have completed my website!

Any constructive criticism would be loved - what draws your eye, what repels it? Is it warm and inviting, or just plain chaotic?! Would love to know.

Website is HERE

Also my latest showreel is up and active, so take a look!

Also... that lady's voice? Yeah... That's mine!


See you soon,

Claire

My set up all working hard

All hard at work - look my WIP website! Soon to be up!!

Ta for now,

Claire

Practical Process: WIP - Editing

Hi all,

Thought I would add some more progress shots of my PMF project.. This time of the other character, she's a director, but I need more props to show that... Anyone got any recommendations?

A new part of my process is to take my latest playblast (When I can't think of anything else to do to it, but it doesn't feel right), and draw over it in photoshop... This helps me produce more exaggerated shapes, follow lines of action easier... and just generally have more fun!

Ta for listening,

Claire

Deer animation

Hi all,
I don't believe I posted that deer sting I was on about... So here you go (please view in HQ!):

I was in charge of (in Pipeline order): Research, story idea, pose ideas, storyboarding, being a camera woman, deleting rolling shutter, working as a team to matchmove, Rigging, Animating, Rendering and post production - including colour correction, roto and shadow correction!

Thanks for visiting,

Claire 

Find me at FMX

Hi all,

I'm going to FMX next week with some new business cards, my portfolio and a sketchbook. If any of you are going... I'll probably search you out! However I'm hosting the university of South Wales stand at 12 on Wednesday, and would love any company I could get - I promise to be a good conversationalist, especially about animation!

I'm very excited by all the companies that are attending the conference, and am looking forward to all the talks!

Ta for now,

Claire

Thoughtful thumbs: waiting for people

Thought I'd make use of the time... Sorry cardiff bay people!

Ta for now,

Claire

Industry indents: Bobby Pontillas

Hi all,
I have done them before, now I am making it a semi-regular thing! Every now and again I'll write an entry on what inspires my work, from artists to companies this section will explore different aspects of creativity. If I am granted permission I shall post knowledge I have gained from animation conferences that I have visited... Hopefully along with some new quotes!

For the first artist entry however I shall look at Bobby Pontillas' work, and show you all why I'm inspired by him.


Animation:

 

Pontillas currently works for Disney Animation, having previously worked on Rio for Blue sky after graduating from Animation Mentor. From here on out this is purely my opinion of his work, as it is not backed up by other sources.
Pontillas has a talent for excitable movements, knowing how to overlap and follow through his work to portray the characters settling; this can be seen in his animation of Blue primarily, however also through Anna. Making his work an inspiration to me, mainly because although I can hit key frames, I struggle with believable 'moving holds'. Due to my struggle I went looking for other animator's work to see their techniques, and stumbled upon Pontillas.

In his scene with Anna, you can see his comedic use of timing when matching the music to Anna's arm movements, does not end with the note itself... His cushioning of her arms are minimal but can be seen.

The pattern I have noticed with his work is incredible speed to a key, which, once hit, slows down for cushion.

I am currently studying his work while animating my current PMF project...

However after stumbling across his animation, it struck me that I had heard his name before... Well... Not heard, read... So I found his blog.

Character Design

Not only is Pontillas a talented animator, he is also a talented character designer; his ability to pick out traits to caricature can be seen on his blog.

(I am hoping these link back to him)

I personally admire the texture and lines he achieves with his digital work, there's such a human quality to all aspects of his art and animation. If you are unfamiliar with his artwork then let me point you to the Art of Wreck it Ralph where his art is gorgeous!!

(I went to go and hunt y'all some of his beautiful wreck it Ralph pictures... But couldn't help but gaze at all his character arts on his blog)

On that note, I shall just leave you all to stare at his beautiful art on his blog and stunning animation on his vimeo!

Claire - OUT -

Animation thumbs

Some of my animation thumbnail notes...

Industry Indent: Double negative

Established in 1998 Double Negative, or Dneg for short, have worked on several exciting projects both for
major studios, Harry Potter, Skyfall, Man of Steel, etc. and independant film makers for films like Shaun of the Dead, Paul, Attack The Block, etc. 
They have won an academy award for Inception, as well as four VES awards (three for Inception) and two BAFTA awards, one for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2, and the other for Inception.



Their pieces range from Character animation (Paul) to vehicle animation (Rush) and crowd animation (John Carter), again another diverse range of work that thrills me when I see it. Double Negative was another studio that visited USW in 2013, and gave a fantastic talk on their involvement with the animation of the Tharks in John Carter. Specifically they talked about the crowd scenes featuring the Tharks, such as the gladiator ring scene with the White Apes... Who are petrifying! For all those who paint John Carter with the 'flop' brush, I urge you to watch the film again with fresh eyes, the VFX are glorious, the realistic character animation on the Tharks is fantastic, and how they solved the whole four arm idles is brilliant. The film itself is well worth the watch just for all the Thark scenes, as you can see the heart and soul poured into the characters, each bringing a believable human aspect to the film. If you believe the story has influences from other Sci-fi hits like Star wars, then read the origins for the script, as the book 'John Carter of Mars' was produced early 20th century, and is in fact the stem of the other Sci-fis! Anyway, I'm detracting!
In fact this talk was the one to get me into rigging, due to the sequences they showed of all the facial animation, and how the deform shapes, and underneath muscles, were triggered by controls. However the main appeal of this talk to me how they interpreted the motion capture data for four armed characters, describing how the arms were arranged for dominate and recessive actions. This blend between motion capture and realistic key-framed animation is what drew me towards the studio. I approached the team after the talk and I was very fortunate... and very cheeky as I asked... to arrange a visit to Dneg late last near when they were in full production of a film I cannot mention because of reasons... However I am very excited to see it in the Cinema!!
If you cannot tell from my typing, I have been very inspired by the realistic animation Dneg has produced over the years, and cannot wait to see more! See you later, Claire

Birthdays and fun stuff

Hi all,
Been slightly inactive this week due to one major cause:
It was my 21st!!
Aiming to update with more precise details later... along with photos and things.
But in the mean time have a taste of what's to come... As I have a new tech baby!

Deer painting

Working on something for Uni and it involved painting a stylised deer fully rendered... Which I really enjoyed. Quite proud of it too so I'll just leave it here.

See you soon,
Claire

PMF - Producer Dialogue

So much for those sketches the other day right? Sorry, I had a couple of deadlines to attend to, but most of its out of the way now, so I get to host more stuff for you guys now! Including this:

My current version of the Pigs may fly lipsync... I'm a bit worried because I am only meant to be doing 20 seconds for each topic.... HMMMM... Oh well!
Hope you guys enjoy,
Any feedback would be appreciated!
See you soon,
Claire

Industry Indents: MPC

MPC is another amazing VFX company based in London, Vancouver, Montréal, Los Angeles, New York, Amsterdam, Bangalore and Mexico City. With these many facilities it will come as no surprise that they produce such a great volume of fantastic visuals.

MPC has worked on Advertisements and film, made possible by a team of talented and enthusiastic artists. Examples of their amazing hard work can be see below:

So.. why does this inspire me? Well, how can such awe creating team work not inspire a person in this medium?

More importantly when did this company become inspiring to me? On Feb 27th this year, I attended a VFX masterclass  presented by MPC's Adam Davis, on the VFX and crowd simulation in World War-Z. Davis described to us the difficult use of motion capture data, caused by the awkward twists a half dead zombie makes while grasping for the next host; well... the guy mimicking the zombie at any rate. The studio brought in people who could twist their extremities in such ways, the motion capture data was getting confused and glitched. Davis also described the hero animation system MPC made up for both World war-Z and Lone Ranger. Their VFX breakdowns for world war-Z can be seen below:

MPC has a great diversity in the realistic animation they produce, with many different subjects, in both advertising and feature films, has made me aspire to produce such diversity in my work. They have character, creature and object animation in their commercial reel alone, and I should aim to have the same in mine! Hopefully I will have a diverse, realistic, and dynamic showreel for VFX by the end of summer...

Thanks again,

See you soon,

Claire

Sketches and things

Production of those rendered scenes is now well under way, about a week or so in infact!

Made more props than I thought I should... But has been fun rigging them to the characters!

Also been working on a concept for a bird thing...

Which I can only show you sneak peeks of... As this is a group project I'm concepting on!

Despite being an animator, I've been given the role of storyboard artist, concept artist, and matte painter! It is always fun to learn more stuff!

I will update tonight with more thumbs!

Industry Indent: TRIXTER

Established in 1998, TRIXTER has worked towards creating stunning character animation and visual effects for television, commercials and feature films. In its early days, TRIXTER specialized in creating CG characters with powerful and emotive character animation. Recently though TRIXTER has become know for its visual effects pieces, which includes, but is not limited to, Captain America: Winter Soldier, X-men: First Class and Iron Man 3.

As I'm keeping an open mind with regards to the style of animation I want to head into, cartoony, realistic, etc, (I find it important to learn all of them if I am honest), animation used in visual effects certainly holds a bewitching quality. The best kind of visual effects will go unnoticed to most viewers, and I will be honest in scenes, such as the iron man fight scene above, its becoming increasingly difficult to tell the difference between real props and digital ones. I would love to one day help making these illusions, especially object animations, despite having only bouncing balls as object animations so far.

 TRIXTER is based in Berlin, Munich & Los Angeles, and as I am based in Europe and know enough conversational German, I would like to think I could adapt to the whereabouts...

TRIXTER creates stunning animation that matches live-action footage, for instance the shield in Captain America, as well as its own key-framed animation for realistic creatures,  such as the wolves in wolf's blood. Studying the animation produced by TRIXTER will help my understanding of  how to create realistic footage of animals, the acceleration and weight on objects. Take a look at more of their recent work in this showreel below:

Now to go and study!

See you later,
Claire

Lecture notes

More lecture notes

Need to clean this photo...

Industry Indent: Blue Zoo

Blue zoo is a multi-BAFTA winning animation company, who produce:

• Commercials
• series
• Idents
• Development trailers
• and many other types of animation (Check out their styles here)

I first became interested in Blue Zoo when they visited the USW in 2013, however my interest spiked with the Blue Zoo Christmas short, Xmas 2013.

Their use of warm-cool colour contrast and arcs for character movement fascinated me; especially the squirrel character (who I do believe is a Jackalope?!?!), who floated believably. More on this short in a bit... Blue Zoo has won 2 British Animation awards for their series 'Those Scurvy Rascals' and won a BAFTA in 2012 for 'Best independent Production Company'. The different style used within the studio is what makes Blue Zoo so appealing to me, from 'Lessons in the force' to their animal planet stings, their range of styles shows their adaptability in their work. I personally love their pieces for stings and commercials the most, mainly because of this diversity. Most of these feature a hand made look, rather like the Xmas 2013 short, in which you can feel the artist's influence and hand in the pieces. Even shiny pieces like the Rugby League World Cup 2013, stings, you can see the thought behind the style used, and the simplistic shapes used for the characters only highlights their animation teams' ability.

Their diversity in animation styles, not just textual, is my main pull to this company. As a student now working to diversify my showreel for multiple styles, studying Blue Zoo's studio pieces is proving integral for my studies.

Looking forward to seeing way more from them soon!
See you later,
Claire

Background textures and scene setup - Office

So you guys do not know about my projects for university as of yet, however I want to show you some of my render tests I have been making for my personal project... As well as texutres... Turns out I'm going down a generalist route, I only need to add modelling to the CV!

Following images copyright details:

Morpheus rig, suit,

Following came with no textures: Darts and Dart board, Clock, Chair, Desk, iMac, Desk Caddy.

Room Texture

City texture

Textures made in photoshop for this project include the 2D textures on the walls (inspired by 101 dalmatians backgrounds), and the background cityscape. The city was deliberately coloured to contrast the blue cool colours inside the office. Blue being the character's colour scheme, as he is a very calm, collected character.

Glass test render

Final room render

I also installed large areas of glass into the walls of the room to allow better lighting of the character.

CG assets, like the dart board, originally came in untextured, texturing selected faces of the object quickly rectified this problem. Tacks and paper were made and textured by myself as well.

Final Desk render, came out better than I thought, the 2D city image being reflected nicely in the table surface added to the texture of the background I think!

Now to progress to animation!!!

See you soon,

Claire