Timemaster clock - wireframe

Seafolk Blues - music video

Space explorer - Wireframe

Headtracking + Breakdown

Casio Radio - Wireframe

Don’t Touch the Book

Familiarville + Breakdown

Record Keeping

Jumpschool VFX: C-47

The Legend of Boxing Rock

CRITICAL REVIEW

reviewing my work for university

This first video features an 'Animated storyboard'. It was one of my first projects to incorporate a 3D character. Compositing the 3D renders onto a live action plate, this was a good starter project to get me working in 3D.

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The models themselves are not bad, I had just discovered sculpting programs and this shows I was already working on organic modelling early on. The rig also functional just about getting by without any issues. The project would have been more 'animated', though at the time I seem to remember not actually being able to. As previsualisation for an animated short, this animated storyboard works well. Whether or not I knew it at the time, this is how you might pitch an idea in the industry.

'The Adventures of Fish and Cat' was an animated short I made soon after learning maya. Emphasise on the short, this clip was created to in order to help pitch the fictional show. The voice talent came from yours truly, and my friend Chris Jones. I created the characters with our own personalities in mind, which looking back on really helped develop the characters.

The short was inspired by the visual style of many kids’ 3D animated shows, with Octonauts being my main inspiration. The idea of creating an adult animated short came from watching Sausage party and Bojack Horseman, which were also made in this contradictory style. 

For this project I teamed up with the games development students, deciding we would develop game assets for a fictional Incan adventure game. The games development students designed the characters and the animation students modelled and animated them. It was nice to work with concept artists, as it allowed me to take a step back and enjoy what I do best (modelling and animating) without worrying about all the pre-production. The group had noticed a lack of cell-shaded adventure games and wanted to play our hand, creating a modern take of an adventure game. This was only the second group project I had worked on at university, and it's interesting to see that already I had gone through several styles and genres of animation. I was still trying to find my feet, and this fluctuation in style was a by-product of this.

Working with a local filmmaker, the class teamed up to tackle the vfx on 'Jumpschool'. Initially signing up to just be a modeller, I ended up helping organise the project. Which was an experience worth being part of despite having to motivate an entire class of students every step of the way. I have a bit of history creating visual effects, but only when working with 2D stock footage. So it was nice to revisit these skills, knowing that I could rely on 3D models instead of stock. For compositing I used Nuke, which I got on with fairly quickly. It was an interesting experience using a node based compositor and it might sound absurd, but working in the Nuke and learning about its functionality was the highlight of this project.

'Don't touch the book' is the first animated short I finished, a basic narrative allowed me to go all out on the characters and environment.

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Although looking back now there are flaws in both the animation and modelling, it taught me a lot about storytelling and how important the preproduction phase of animation production is. The completion of this project motivated other projects and helped me build the confidence to continue to make animated shorts on my own. I also discovered n animation style I enjoy using, and although it is not common practise in the industry to animated 3D in stepped, I like it. I also found it easy animating in this way as the process become more like the way they animate 

A group project which pushed me out of creative zone the 'anatomy mind palace' was created in the unreal game engine. The use of real time renderers for non-game related projects interested me, so I was stoked to be part of a project that could help possible medical students, with learning the correct medical terms for the skeletal anatomy.

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From listening to speakers, the pipeline we used was not unlike one you might find in the industry. Once again this was a project I enjoyed working in a group for, as I had less to worry about and I'm much happier working that way.

My final animated short 'Record keeping' was inspired by the great Wes Anderson's work. Motivated by a story idea and my past animated shorts, I knew with this project I wanted to do something that was completely different to anything that I had done in the past.

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I learnt a lot about visual storytelling as well as auditory storytelling, now I can't say the story makes a whole lot of sense. However it was such a joy to make and I hope I continue to create shorts inspired by my interests.