Animation Update: Wall Dismount

A little test I did waaayyy back in June in lunchtimes and between projects.

Hope you enjoy.

So life!

Hi all! Wow, it's been a while hasn't it? Sorry for not keeping everything up to date, it's just been such a huge year! A FANTASTIC HUGE YEAR.

Summer 2014

 Where do I begin? So I graduated from University of South Wales last year, had an amazing time there, and met so many animation geeks like me.

 Then I worked in the summer as an animation workshop assistant, with Turnip Starfish, as part of First Campus. They ran a course for kids aged 10-18, and I had the inspiring opportunity to work with these young people on their films. You can check out their work here:

Also you should check out their channel for other goodies, like how to draw Elsa, and Showreels from previous summer school years.


Then I had a fantastic opportunity to join Aardman for work experience for two weeks. I worked with Matthew Rees during this time, and saw many exciting projects in their various stages of production. It was amazing! I have a shot that I was working on there, however i'm currently retopologising a prop, as it's far too dense for my computer to handle! I shall write up more about this at a later date I promise!
But it gets better
As of October last year, I became a Junior animator at Oysterworld!!

I feel like the luckiest person, I still don't know how to process that, haha! It has been an indescribable experience. I get to work every day doing what I love, with truly inspirational people. They're all so talented, and I cannot wait to show you what I've had the opportunity to work on.

I've been so fortunate the past year, it might not come across how truly thankful I am of it, seeming the small paragraphs, but that's because I don't know how to describe it to you... How do you go about describing an experience like this. I've wanted to do this since I was a child, and now I am, and it leaves me speechless. Which, if you know me, is quite an amazing feat.

I'll update you with more... sooner this time... haha! As a side note.. I really need to update the colour scheme of this blog don't I?!

Hope all is well with you readers,

Claire

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!!