Introduction

Within a collaborative team you will work towards agreed designs and goals. Each individual will design their own response to the brief before the team embark on negotiation towards creating a consistency in design and animation style

THE CHALLENGE: The Sword in the Stone. As a starting point you will design a character who will attempt to pull the sword from the stone. Based on the classic Arthurian legend the challenge will form the ideal starting point from which to create characterisation and dynamic performance options for discussion and negotiation between the collaborative team. From here the team may choose to redesign characters wholesale, or adapt initial concepts to create a consistent design style. You may play with the format, with the sword and stone and it’s implied setting being open for adaptation. The final outcome will be a compilation of each individual's animated sequence edited together.

 Through experimentation you will build on existing character design skills, addressing semiotic issues of communication including shape language, proportion, silhouette and colour. You will be responsible for you own 6-10 second clip of animation. Each individual’s film must consist of 1 wide, 1 medium and 1 close up shot in whichever order you choose. The performance is required to address classic animation principles appropriate to your film. The sharing of assets such as background and props is essential to the success of the project. Clear and consistent communication between team members will be the responsibility of the whole group. The film is to include opening titles, end credits and sound design from first animatic through to delivery version. Early versions can have temporary designs for title and sound design. The animatic is to be finished in digital form, using black and white, with tonal shades of grey optional. Each individual's animatic should clearly communicate the intended action, with solid drawing and strong posing adhering to good use of line of action. The animation process will be produced through an iterative process, tailored to your group’s animation technique.

I MUST HAVE: 

• Character Designs (PDF or Jpeg) to include model turnarounds (front, back, side, three quarter view) and dynamic posing and in the agreed style of the film.
• Designs Any extra designs you have worked on, including iterations of the character and set design. 
• Experimentation and Progression Reel a collection of personal moving image work showing your personal participation to the team's final outcomes. 
• Final Outcomes the groups film edited together. Quicktime, Pro Res, 1920x1080, audio uncompressed. 
• Research Portfolio a link to your blog demonstrating sustained engagement with research, development towards the successful outcome team’s goals, including a weekly summary.
• Reflective Journal a PDF extracted from your research blog containing all weekly summaries and a final critical evaluation of the project, with a suggested word count of 250 words.

Evaluation

For my groups presentation we decided to focus on the animation company Laika, and it’s stages of production. Before we even chose Laika we already had some preconceived ideas of what they were like, for example they’re the forefront of technology, they blend physical stop motion and digital CGI. They’re also artistically driven with story focus. We spilt the presentation into different sections, they were storyboarding, model making, post-production and animation. My job was to focus on model making.

Laika is an American stop-motion animation studio specialising in feature films, commercial content for all media, music videos and short films. They’re best known for films such as Coraline, Paranorman and Boxtrolls. All highly successful. I looked into the model making for all of these films and was blown away by the process, to put it simply. It all starts off with a 2D design that the model makers then have to turn into a 3D model.

During my research process I was able to get in touch with the model maker ‘Helen Duckworth’, we’d previously talked to her about her job. Because of this I felt inspired to learn more about model making, she explained “I was inspired to follow a career in CG when I did work experience at Aardman animations in Bristol when I was 14. As a child, I loved to make things from nothing, I had a keen interest in art but also was very interested in computers. CG was a perfect marriage of both these things. ”

The process continues with an amature being made, along with a mould. The model is painted and dressed. But the process that fascinated me the most is ‘Rapid prototyping’, the process of 3D modelling the puppets faces that has rapidly improved through the years due to Laika’s innovative nature. During Coraline they were able to produce multiple 3D heads by 3D modelling them and using a 3D printer. Laika have made leaps and bounds in rapid prototyping, by being able to colour print faces of their puppets. Coraline’s face had to be carefully hand painted, resulting in the model makers not having such creative freedom to the design of the puppet. Since they couldn't get every face identical, it would make the animation look noisy.

Angry Aggie, a character from Paranorman was another puppet that was fascinating. She was an innocent little girl accused of witchcraft. She was a very complicated looking character, she needed to be constantly rigged as she was able to fly. Her face needed to look like it was tearing and stretching. As if she’s being torn between two realms of existence. It was very tempting to make her CGI, so the animators could play with her. But they wanted to make sure she looked traditional. Although there were parts of her that was impossible to animate. Rapid Prototyping, VFX, puppets, costume, art department all worked on it together.

Laika is a growing company, and if they continue to improve on this old art style which is popular. They seem to be going in the right direction.

Presentation

 Here are just the slides that I contributed to the presentation, but below is the PDF file of the entire Presentation.

file:///C:/Users/Taechel/Downloads/Studio%20Laika%20Presentation%20MK1%20(1).pdf

(PDF  FORMAT OF THE PRESENTATION)

Summer Internships

https://www.velvetjobs.com/job-posting/2016-summer-model-shop-internship-381611

I tried to find examples of the contracts they have in Laika, and how long people stay there. But it was pretty hard to find, apart from Helen Duckworth who mentioned contracts can be unpredictable. But I found a few websites for summer internships.

Job At Laika

http://www.cgmeetup.net/home/jobs/laika-recruiting-soft-goods-model-maker/

I found an example of the traits of a model maker and this is just at Laika.

Presenting Our Presentation

Our group has set up a online presentation that each of us can add too whenever we wish. It also automatically saves, it's been incredibly useful.

Meeting with Helen

As a group we had a meeting with one of our tutors, we told her what we had and recommended what we could include. Examples..

• The production line: Do they keep to the same people all the time or is it long term
• Income?
• Why we decided to choose Laika

We took it all on board, and are working on the presentation.