Liam De Bolla
3D Character Animator
Industry
1st October, a few of my colleagues and I went to a talk from Seed Animation regarding their story of how they came to be what they are today, as well as the projects they have worked on. After the talk, we spoke with Morgan Powell, creative director at Seed Animation, and got some advice concerning us as aspiring animators and creatives.
I emailed and messaged companies I was researching as well as animators that were working at the 5 studios at the time. From this, I was able to gain a better understanding of what certain studios require from applicant showreels as well as more information about the company. Sometimes I did not get a reply but from the ones I did, they were very beneficial for my research.
Some of my colleagues and I recieved a brief from Seed animation concerning animating their logo. I created this short, less than five-second animation for them.
Some of my colleagues and I recieved a brief from Seed animation concerning animating their logo. I created this short, less than five-second animation for them.
I visited an event called 'How to nail your presentations', where I learnt a lot regarding how to change nerves into excitement and how to structure an presentation that is beneficial for the audience and keeps them engaged.
I visited the 'Bring Your Own Animations' event on the 21st October where Rodrigo Costa (an animator at one of my researched companies, DNEG), critiqued several of my pieces. This provided me with an insight on what I should work on and fix in future animations such as the rhythm from one pose to another.
Client Communication
From taking the project on board of a rat animation, I messaged my client concerning some information I will need in order to set the scene for the rat. I asked for some information regarding the frame rate and the lens. I was already informed by him of the size of the containers for the box which is 200mmx200mm. This allows me to start building the scene for the rat. I have my rat reference that I will base the animation on and with my scheduling, I knew that I would not have the time to start animating until I finished this unit. I set a date from which I will start animating for this project which will be the 11th December. My client understood and accepted. I am looking to work on this project throughout December as well as in my next unit back when term starts again. I will have to keep this in consideration when doing my FMP. The images can be found in my Google Drive folder, under ‘Industry Involvement’.
Informing Companies of the Degree Show
For the five companies I have researched, I emailed them as well as one employee from each company to let them know about the degree show as well as whether the company is interested in attending.
This was my preparation for the degree show. I wanted to contact people and companies that I felt would be interested in my work and could offer me work in the industry from seeing my work. Preparing and informing them to come along allowed me to have the best chance of gaining work in the industry.
After the change in plans for the Degree Show, my showreel was still ready for them to see online if the Degree Show was to be an online event. From this, I was able to find out what companies were interested in seeing student work which allowed me to know which companies I should look towards for work.
Rat Animation
To start production of the rat animation for my client, I put together the references I plan to use over the video my animation will be added to. This way, my client was able to get an understanding of the motion I plan to have for the rats in each scene.
From this, I started to animate the rats. I found the animation to be quite difficult at the start as scrubbing through the timeline, the key poses were not changing. I later found out it was because of the hair simulations applied to the rat. I decided to remove the hair simulations and found the animation process much easier. From animating the rats, I sent my work as videos to my client for approval to which he was happy with the outcome.
I did not receive a reply for a week so I messaged again asking what he would like from me next. This message also had no reply so I sent another message a month later on 15th February asking about the project and the rat Maya file I wanted to send to him. I did animations on competitions during the summer and the first term just in case this project was to fall through. My planning of this allowed me to have competitions as my back up in case my client work fell through.
Industry Applications
During the summer of 2020, I am looking to work in the animation industry, and internships are a good way for me to start in the industry. For this, I applied to the Framestore internship and the Blue Zoo internship. I wrote a cover letter and answered the questions in the application process for the Framestore internship.
Regarding the Blue Zoo internship, Ruby Hagemeier messaged in our year 3 animation group chat that the 15th May is the last day Blue Zoo are accepting applications for their internships so I felt it was best for me to apply to their 3D animator internship position as well.
