Work Experience

I did lots of other little pieces of work at Ash Gaming mainly using flash. Above is an example of one small piece of work I did which later finally got included in the final game. All I did was just design and animate the text at the bottom of each character logo saying, 'FREE SPINs' and 'BONUS'. This project reminded me about the basics of Flash and how to do very simple little animations.

The above video is developing rigging the arm in after effects. I realised that if the different sections of the arm were in layers then I wouldn't need to have different images, I could just create 1 rig for 1 arm. This is because if the different parts of the arm are in separate layers, when for example, the forearm bends it doesn't manipulate and distort the bicep (because it's on a separate layer). So I used this work to explain to the employee how best to use after effects rigging capabilities.  

I did 1 weeks work experience at a company in London called 'Ash Gaming'. The company specialise in creating online gambling games. They do almost all their work in Flash but also use other programs such as photoshop and after effects, all the work they create is 2D. I learnt loads about the industry: the office environment, the industry standard work, shadowing sessions helped me understand peoples individual roles and how they work. Although it's not an area that I'd probably go into, it was still extremely interesting and useful. I got the opportunity to work with some of them and i got to produce a few pieces of work. The first 2 videos show work I did for one of the employees who needed help exploring after effects rigging capabilities. The first video shows his character art (just an arm) in which I created a basic rig for 3 separate drawings of arms, then I created movement for each image and put them together to make the arm look like it's bending. The reason 3 different drawings were used was because the arm would look different as it was bending so it wouldn't have worked if i'd just rigged 1 image.  

Old Basic after effects tutorials

This was an interesting tutorial, I learnt how to animate a volcanic eruption just from a still image. There are quite a few different elements involved here, but i learnt a lot about: corner pining, further particle effects work, the clone stamp tool, working with masks, keying out colours, camera options and most importantly i learnt how to use the warp tool effectively. 

Heres another old after effects tutorial using particles. In this tutorial i learnt how to use particles to make an ink splatter effect. I've learnt that you can use particles to create a huge variety of different effects and that they would be a very useful tool to learn how to use in different programmes as well.

Here are some old after effects tutorials which i never got round to uploading. This one is a very basic tutorial which introduced me to particles in after effects and making a 3D stroke effect. 

Title Sequence

Here is our final animatic. Extra bits that i haven't yet talked about are: The opening shot with the 3d text saying 'The Archers Reloaded', which I did in maya; I learnt quite a lot about editing the camera setting in maya, the effects and uses of changing focal lengths etc. Also Maggie made the opening credits introducing guy Ritchie and Joel Silverstone. Jack and his brother did a brilliant job creating the music. Overall i think the whole thing flows really well because of the camera transitions. I also think that it works well capturing the stylish vibe of the programme and introduces the characters in a new, interesting and unique way. I've worked hard on this project an I think it has paid off, but i think there is still room for improvement. I think perhaps I should work more on trying to make the character designs fit better with the style of the scenes. Also I'd like to work more with sound and involve some interesting effects and noises.

Here are the first few scenes i've done incorporating all these new elements together. I think the new people that gradually appear in the scenes are a good addition because otherwise whilst the camera pans around the scenes there would not be too much going on. I think the camera transitions work very well between the scenes.

So here is one of the new big backgrounds with multiple scenes on it. Some of the scenes are upside down because one of the camera transitions involves a 180 degree rotation. Above is a test video showing how the camera transitions and scenes look. 

Another new element is the final characters which Jack has now finished, here are 2 examples above: Alan Franks (left) and Brian Aldridge (right). Now that i have these final characters i have all i need to complete the scenes.

Some new elements i've added to the scenes: Our title sequence doesn't actually involve that much animation, so i thought it would be good to make some objects gradually appear in each scene whilst the camera is panning across. I thought it would be good if these objects were a different style to the other objects in the scenes, so I grey-scaled them to make them black and white and applied effects so they look partially sketched in. The policemen above are an example, they feature in the prison scene.

1st test scene for new animatic

So bearing in mind what was successful and what wasn't in the previous animatic, i started trying to design new scenes. A lot of the new scenes were based on the old ones but just enhanced. I decided that colour would be a useful tool and i also thought much more about the composition of each scene this time. So i started by designing the prison scene by manipulating various source images and putting them together in layers. so heres 3 examples of the source images i used, then i put them all together to create the scene above.

The background for the latest animatic

So moving on from the last animatic, I started with a new background. I thought that for the background it would be good to edit coloured paper textures to try and get a very splattered and marked surface. So i manipulated these 3 paper textures by deleting certain colours and changing certain colours etc on photoshop, until i got the background at the top which i thought was very interesting and i imagined it working well with various scenes on it. So the next stage would be to test creating scenes on it.

So here is the animatic we produced to show what we'd been working on to an industry professional from London. The music is Oasis' so we can't use it in the final sequence but i think it captures the right sort of atmosphere. After the music stops there are some other little videos which just highlight elements we haven't got round to incorporating yet. These are the actual character animations and final character design, the potential use of ink for stylish effect and also an old projection filter over the top which i thought added a lot of interesting markings which work with the video.  

Here i've done some tests developing the look of the scenes. These tests will lead to up to the animatic that we had to create shortly after. The title sequence will transition from scene to scene, by moving a camera around large backgrounds with multiple scenes on each background, in after effects. So above is an example of one of these large backgrounds with 3 different scenes on it. 

Here i've applied the 3d compositing effect to the image below. I think it works reasonably well but there is not much movement amongst the further back layers. This makes it hard to realise that the houses in the background are all separate layers. I think i will keep doing tests with this image to try and make it better. 

Here i've just put jacks character design for Alistair Lloyd over the background i created. Everything is on separate layers which makes it easy to do the 3d compositing effect in after effects. I think this image works well. Now i just need to test animating it.

This is the background i created for the farmers scene. I'm less pleased with this one i don't think it works so well as the other backgrounds. So i will probably keep working on it. I think the effect doesn't work so well for the hills. Now i need to get jacks character designs and put them in these backgrounds and test animating them.

Here are some examples of original images that i used to create the background for the farmer scene.

This is the final background i composed for the gambler 'Alistair Lloyd'. Here i've taken 10 images, cut them and applied some affects then make them on seperate layers. I think its a successful test maybe not yet perfect but i think it looks good.

Here i've started working on the gambler scene. Like the previous prison scene i've taken lots of images, cut them up, edited them on photoshop and put them together to make a layered scene. the first two images are 2 examples of the original images that i used before i edited them. 

 Prison scene

Here i've been working with Jack, taking photos and digitally editing them. I think this effect looks great, grey-scaleing the image, then taking out certain parts and applying a cut-out effect on them. It is very Guy Ritchie style as well. I've done a test of a prison scene above, by cutting up various images, putting them on different layers and then applying this effect to them. All that is left is just to add Jack's character designs. I think this prison scene test has been very successful. So now i will compose more of these scenes for other characters, try and apply Jacks characters to the scenes and do little test animations using the 3d compositing effect.

Here i've further developed the backgrounds digitally. Playing with different ways of presenting the objects and things in the different scenes. I think these tests work reasonably well but i don't think they will work with jack's character design style. His character designs are very realistic but also artistic, i think these backgrounds will be too simple or cartoonish. I think i need to start testing creating backgrounds by manipulating photographs, this will get that realistic look and work with the characters. The difficulty is editing the photography in an artistic way that will work well.  

Here i've been doing a few basic drawings of how different scenes could look with background objects. I've tried a few different styles of how the scene behind the character could look. However these are just basic black and white drawings, i will go on to do further colour tests, computer editing and applying little animations to find out the best look for each scene. Jack will be in charge of creating the characters so i will look more into the backgrounds. 

This is a test for a more detailed look, we could potentially use this style in our final title sequence. Jack (who i'm working on this project with) created the image and i cut it up into layers and applied the animation. The difficult part was painting in the gaps in the layers after they'd been made separate because when, for example, the cards were cut and put into a separate layer there is a card shaped space in the background layer. This is the style we could work on, over the top of some of the scenes from the video below, for the final look.

Above is a basic animatic for a few scenes that i put together just introducing a few characters. The first part is just using the procedural crumble i learnt earlier. All i've done for the first shot in each scene is: cut the image up so that each object is in a different layer. Then i've used the 3d compositing technique that i learnt earlier, added a slow camera pan and it gives the illusion of 3d depth. Then for the second shot all i've done is a quick camera zoom and change to the second image. In some of these scenes i've kept the real names of places that are in the Archers radio show for example, 'Brookfield Farm' and "the Grey Gables'. This helps relate it more to the original Archers programme.