Fettle Animation:Zane Whittingham

We had Zane Whittingham of Fettle animation today and he was so nice and showing a lot of his work to the rest of the room. Zane Whittingham has been an animator for 26 years, working across film, tv and computer games. fettle takes commissions for all kinds of animation, from promotional films, to children’s tv, to animated documentaries to animated music videos. They have production partners, teams to write scripts, do concept artwork and  storyboards etc so it is quite a big animation company. I really like the Shakespeare  animation that fettle does because they are so creative and really help memorising if they are in pictures and music instead of words. The aesthetic is so unique and they are not complicated at all. I wish I could have this animation during high school haha. Zane also show other interesting animations without different style which show the flexibility and diversity fettle has when responding to different clients. He told us a lot of useful. He always said that he is happy to offer work experience or internship to students and also he told us about how different people work within his studio. It is very excited to know about the real working situation in the industry and he shows a lot of passion and interests during the talk.

I went on their website and it is a very clean and pretty layout. I noticed that they display their awards at the front page with some thumbnails of their work. It is very useful when promoting and make clients think that they are very professional and trusty. Fettle have quite a lot of contacting methods as well such as facebook page, vimeo and twitter etc allowing clients or people to keep up with their latest work or new feed. To become a successful animator like him, i think it is best to show others that you are passionate and could constantly think of new ideas or style that increase the types of clients. 

Setting up social media

I am so not used to promote or show my work to others because I am confident enough but the tutors always say that you have to show your work to the world and gain feedback from different kinds of people in order to gain opinion from various perspective to improve myself and my work. Obviously I know the advantages of showing off work to the world but at the same time it needs quite a lot of bravery and confident to do that. Anyway, I opened a tumblr account recently during responsive brief and I really like the layout and the huge amount of artists use tumblr. I followed quite a lot of people who do amazing art from digital drawings artists to traditional painter.

I also opened a facebook page for Animation Wings.  It was a bit different to learn the system and set up but it is actually quite easy and could invite quite a lot of friends and family to support the page. This is also effective if people share it and gain more viewers. I like the layout of facebook and I think the cover page could definitely attract people and show my style. Also facebook does not have a limitation on uploaded video so I could upload video that is quite large and they still support it. Unlike tumblr where I have to upload the video to Vimeo if it is too large and which is very convenient.

Lastly I transform my usual instagram account into Animation Wings since I do not really know how to make another account with out changing my phone and it is so annoying. So it is going to have photos of my life and art work uploaded at the same time. I think I will use instagram the most since it is on the phone and it is super handy with a lot of pretty filter. it will be a media to share my actual life with others so that it is less stiff than any other social media therefore I like it quite a lot.

Requested Work

I am requested to do a series of learning cards for my mother's students who are 3-6 old children who suffer from autism spectrum. These cards are going to help them from learning the orders of occasions for instance the reasons of the case, the process and the end result of the act. The cards have to be very simple and could be easily understood by kids so I use simple drawing style with less than ten colours in the drawings in order to show the information straight away. My mother describe that it could be any style and format and going to let me do more if these examples work on her students. Therefore I started to animate soon I get the job.

The first story is about a kid jumping on sofa so he fell down and need to go to the doctor. I separated the story into four parts: little boy jumping vigorously on the sofa; His mother feeling worried while he fell down; he hurts and mother is worried; he went to the doctor. Since the autistic students need to interpret the character's feelings and they will be asked about the emotions and situation from the surround within the picture therefore I have to emphasis the facial expressions of every characters in the story and need to clearly show the actions and atmosphere. I used comic expressions like water drops on head showing worry or from eyes showing sad and tears; brows movements to show emotions more specifically. The first story is all done in gif, I learnt how to make tween in photoshop and easing as well but it is not as good as aftereffect when editing, the move is jiggling but I think it is suitable for little animations like this.

The second story is also separated into four parts: little boy with his grandma go to restaurant together, he is playing toys while grandma is reading newspaper; Waiters serves two hot glass of water while the boy is playing excitingly; he knocked off the glass of hot water and burns his hand; he is sad and his grandma is so worried. As before, I animate the first two scenes in photoshop and they are in gif mode but I really want to try animating in aftereffect and see how it would make the difference. Therefore I drew all the component of the sets and put them together in Aftereffect. It is easier to animate the easing and control the timing. The animating definitely goes smoother than in gif while it also allow me to liquefied the object like spilling water. What's more, it is time consuming and the whole animation is more natural and therefore I completed the rest of the story in aftereffect and my mother is happy with either of them but personally, i prefer the Aftereffect animation.

I have learnt that it is important to respond to clients' request when doing commission work, like what style they want, what content and timing as well. Since this job is quite flexible and allow me to create without much limitation, I enjoyed it so much and have learnt some new techniques as well. However, my mother said she want the story to be linked together like online story book, so I am learning how to make that now and hope i could create some buttons for the students to click in order to choose different events or result in different story, I think it would be more interesting and integrate the students with the story.

Ident production

I started the ident animation in Aftereffect. I am so inspired by the book cover of this book

and I would love to try out its aesthetic and apply in my work. 

Development 1

I created all the components in photoshop with the book cover's style. They work so well together and I especially like the starry sky and the planets which is very beautiful and attractive. The logo is animated into a flying motion and the whole animation is made with hand-crafting style especially when a canvas texture filter is added on to it.

Development 2

However, it should be a lot faster because the part in space occupy too much time and make it boring and I need to shorten the time.

Development 3

 The timing is changed and it is more fluent and not as boring. I was not sure about the transition at the end as it looks unnatural and doesn't fit the rest of the animation and the end so I try different ones. I also add a effect called turbulent displace which could make the object wobble as if it is hand drawn and very authentically created, I apply the effect on the logo, the clouds and the planets and I want to approach to Zheng's style, the artist that I like, and the effect really does help a bit with the aesthetic. 

At last, I want to add some music to the ident and found this website very useful. It is free to download just need to credit the site address and there are a lot of genre for people to choose and I chose a happy and cheerful music to go with the animation.

However when I combine the music and the ident together, they do not match at all. I could not find a suitable music for the animation not only because they are too long but also i want some unique music to hence the feel. Therefore I decided not to include any music and it would look good on its own.

final ident

I like the ident. It is a lot clear and visually interesting than the cat in box ident and I am happy with this change. I hope this could help branding me as a sprouting animation student and people will like my work together with my showreel that I am working on. 

Ident design

I started my ident design by sketching a lot of ideas and think about what I really like. I want the ident to be representing myself and involve what I love and which I came up with feeling safe, cat, cute, mysterious and interesting. And I was so obese with the Schrodinger's cat theory at that time therefore I was designing a Cat in box ident, representing that there are huge amount of creativities within the box and there are endless opportunities and ideas like what I want to do. I think this idea is so cool and cannot wait to animate the ident.

The design end up with this graphic-style logo and so I think some nicely lay-out font would help hence the look.

Cat in Box was going to be the name of my brand, and the font I chose were all very simple but powerful in order to reveal to the audience clearly.

At the same time, I added some Chinese characters in it as well and animate a realistic cat silhouette which made me initial idea changed completely into the logo shown below.

I was hopping that the cat could be involve in the actually logo therefore I changed the direction of it and made the cat sit inside the Character as if it is sitting inside the box.

I though this idea was perfect and could really represent me in person. I have shown it to Oscar and Lauren, they said they like the Chinese Character which could tell my background for a bit. However, after looking at their idents, I realised that this ident is not good enough. I want to make another one that have my name within the brand so that it would be more clear that it is my logo instead of just showing my style. I noticed that it is important to make the brand related to my name otherwise audience could not find connections between me and my brand hence it would be a bad promotion.

Therefore I started another ident which is ANIMATION WINGS and this is the final design I choose.

It is totally differ from the Cat in Box logo but actually I like this more because it is more simple and clean, with the logo having A and W, forming a bird that could related to me, Wing.

Oscar suggested me with a website that has a lot of designed font and is free to download! I spent so much time on the site because there are so many beautiful font and just too much choices! Eventually I picked these types and hope they could fit well with the logo.

I also try using illustrator to finalise the logo. It is so hard to learn at the first time but it is a good programme with a lot of different brushes and function that helps to make perfectly designed logo and it is actually useful when creating motion graphics through after effect. I want to practise more in Illustrator and hope I could feel confident using it to animate as well.

I showed the logo to my friends and they all like the round wing than the angled wing. I think round wing looks better too, it is softer and less intimidating.

Some more experinments

I really hope this logo would work better than the previous logo. It is more sophisticated and appropriate in my opinion. It is also presenting myself from the word to the logo which I am super happy with and I am going to animate the ident now!

Contacting artist:Zheng Yawen

YAWEN ZHENG - ANIMATION REEL from Yawen Zheng on Vimeo.

I found this artist when researching for applied animation. I am absolutely in love with her style and the children's book aesthetic through out mostly all of her work. Her work is so beautiful with a canvas textured background(I wonder if that is filter), and her unique style is never bored to look at. At that point, I really want to know the technique she used and what is her inspiration and therefore I email her as soon as I finished watching her showreel on Vimeo. 

Inside the email, I asked her what animation programme she used to animate, how she textured them and if she could kindly provide any advise for second year school like me. However she did not write back. It was a shame as I really want to talk to her and learn from her but it might be quite usual that people would not check their mailbox constantly? I would try to see if she had another email address that I would contact her but I do not want to sent too many emails to her within a short time therefore I hope she could reply me eventually.

PitchPerfect:presentation and feedback

so we had our presentation this morning and I think it went quite well. At least I didn't panic like I usually do during presentation and successful talk about every point I want to give to the audience. Me and Matt are the ones who talk in major while Greta only talk about her part.

We got some feedback on our present that it is a bit too broad and not specific enough to show our professional area and how we are competing with our studio. The logo needs to be in high resolution and talk about the learning curve of Unity and other game engines. I think there are so many external elements that we should have spent more time researching on such as more accurate statistic on the cost and other spending also introduce more depth of our studio like how could we compete and how could we promote. Also by studying other's presentation, it might also be a good idea imaging our future clients, who would they be and how could we sort their problem.

I have never thought about setting up my own freelance business and I do not think I am going to because i am really bad at managing money and all the complicated laws and taxes. I am happy just being an employee and interacting with studio people. also it is more likely for me to work inner studio but it is true what Mike said that we need to do a bit of everything. I don't mind challenging but what I like to do is still studio work.

PitchPerfect:finalise ideas

Our team has created a logo for the studio which is going to be very simple design just text. But we think it will be better to actually have an emblem that can also represent our studio and therefore the curly thumb is created! These logos are designed by Matt and also he managed to get them animated which look very nice and very stylish as well.

 At the end we still haven't confirm the font yet but personally I prefer the most simple ones on the left because I like simplistic theme across out our studio and also it looks more convincing as a professional animation studio.

Before the presentation day, I saw a lot of other people built a proper website for their studio and make it so realistic. I didn't think about this before and only have been focusing on statistic and not really dedicate to make it real. But soon i realise that we might only touching the surface of the project but did not go far enough, however it is a bit too late to change and to research therefore I made this fake website page in photoshop in order to give a brief ideas to the audience what styles we are looking. I reference a lot of webpage from other animation companies and what should the site has like contact, showreel and introduction of our company. Through making the fake website, I learn what information we need to put on the homepage of our studio and how our work should be on the first page i border to catch attention. At the end it is about the quality of our work and the web is helping us to sell it.

Molly helps making a floor plan for our future studio after we break-even. We are going to have 4 hand drawn animation desks, 4 computers and scanners and sound booth. Since we might be using Duke studio before break even, this plan is going to be our expansion studio when we also have money to hire more professionals.

PitchPerfect: Research(2)Discovering game engines

Unity showreel

Unity is notable for its ability to target games to multiple platforms. Within a project, developers have control over delivery to mobile devices, web browsers, desktops, and consoles.^[3][8] Supported platforms include Android, Apple TV, iOS, Linux, Nintendo 3DS line,OS X, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita, Unity Web Player (including Facebook), Wii,Wii U, Windows Phone 8, Windows, Xbox 360, and Xbox One. Unity Web Player is a browser plugin that is supported in Windows and OS X only. Unity is the default software development kit (SDK) for Nintendo's Wii U video game console platform, with a free copy included by Nintendo with each Wii U developer license. Unity Technologies calls this bundling of a third-party SDK an "industry first".

All of us have not made a game before and this is my first time to look at game engines. There are a lot of familiar names I see when playing online or video games like unreal engine and I did not know that you can buy to use it to create your own game. The quality is so good and available for window and mac as well! We can also export to mobile/ desktop/ web and also consoles.

 I made a list to compare different game engine and find unity and constructs 2 the most appropriate to use and can export to various media also with a good reputation.

From online feedback on both game engines, I also state the pros and cons for both of them. At the end we agree to use unity because it support 2D and 3D also available for mac whereas construct 2 only avaliable for window with bad performance issues on mobile devices. Our studio would aim to create quite a lot of mobile game since mobile game is so popular now and it is very important that we can asset in that media. It is not easy to make a game so we would all need to learn about programming which would take some time developing this skill.

Pitch Perfect: further research

Greta and Matt is joining or group but sadly molly cant come to school and Matt always disappear from the studio so it were only me and Greta who did research at the early stage. Obviously we found out that there are a lot more to consider about starting up a animation studio not only financially but also like promotion, competition etc. 

Since we didnt know how to start so we look at the advices questions on e-studio

• What skills and services do you have to offer?
• Who is your target market?
• Who is your competition and how will you compete?
• What are your costs, charges and financial considerations?
• How will you structure your studio?
• Who will be responsible for what?
• How will you promote your services? To who? Using what media?
  
  

We both started researching from scratches, I am researching about target market, competition and posts while Greta is in charge of the costs and money. 

To be honest, I am not so familiar with local animation studios which I shouldn't and therefore this is also a good opportunities to look at various firms and how they run and set up their company. It might be great to look at their website and what they have been involved in. I found this website that provides a lot of website to local animation studios and I did went through all of them.

There are a lot of bad website that not even attractive like only with a sentence describing their work with no supporting images. It is hard to attract clients and audience when having bad PR. If we are making a website, it should be quite clean but fun, with bold element like interaction with visitors that could make them stay at our page for longer so we could also have more time to promote.
For example http://www.illusionanimation.com/services/

Illusion Animated Productions. I am not fond of their page because there is no interesting elements also the composition is very boring. 

I would like my page like the slurpy studio where they have a texturised background and a lot of colourful work and effectively introduced their style at the first page which I really like. The whole page is very professional and making clients feel confident to purchase them.

Other Amazing studios:

ATTACK

 BLUEZOO

 AMANITA DESIGN

FRED&ERIC

All of these website are clean and simple but very impressive because of the quality of work. Therefore I think at the end what matter is still the quality of work but online web is also an very effective tool to promote the studio.

Cost of living

This tells me that I might only need 2,555 pounds to keep alive but I must aim higher than this because I totally not satisfy with this income. Therefore aim high!!

Pitch Perfect: Initial set up with Molly

Our brief this time is to set up a studio, working in small groups (no more than 4) and to construct a

 business proposal for a creative studio, collective or collaborative practice and present it to peers and 

tutors in an formatively assessed, oral presentation.

Your plan/proposal and presentation should be based on the analysis and content that you have been 

introduced to throughout the module.

Me and Molly wanted to set up a local studio called THUMBS UP studios which produces mobile/web games and virtual comics with 2D traditional animation methods. Our target group is kids and actually everyone else, we wanted to be entertaining and interactive and hopefully we can make educational animation for children in cartoon network.our style is very friendly, crafty and mainly 2D, mixing different media. 

Our Roles

I focus on Studio organisation, scheduling and budges inside the studio; as well as producing material such as animation and illustration. Molly will focus on external representation such as admin (including emails, phones) and will host as a representative for the studio. Since I am more introvert and I think molly would be more suitable for communicating with others with her good personality.

Both of us are also animators/creatives workers and dual with financial costs as well (including pre-production, prep, animation, art production, post-production and fees/tax). We did not think about cost at that point.

Contacting C-major Studio

http://www.c-majorstudio.com/

C-major studio was founded by Wilson Chui and Valerie Chan. We do motion graphics, animated short films, music videos, TV commercials, marketing videos, explainer videos, title sequence, VFX compositing, illustration, comics and music production.

I am interested in this Studio because of a music video they made which style attracts me a lot also they are based in Hong Kong so it worth a try asking if they offer any work placement or even summer job. I provide my CV and a showreel to them but they did not reply at last. Nevertheless, I learn to prepare myself at anytime by having a showreel and CV ready for any occasions and I am going to try emailing different animation studio after this.