Animation Mentor released their new student showcase this week, and I was honoured to discover that my 'church' shot made it onto the reel! (at 5.00)

It's a fantastic collection of student work from the last 12 months and it really demonstrates what a great school Animation Mentor is.

Enjoy it!

About a month ago I was dragged along by my parents to a celebratory event in Glastonbury Abbey. I didn't really want to go - I had a shot to polish and a showreel to put together so I clearly shouldn't leave the house until they're done right?

I ended up going along, mostly because a family friend was doing one of his mime acts and I still hadn't seen him perform after about 10 years of knowing him. Watching him I was suddenly struck by how similar a mime artists job is to an animators (I guess I had never really thought about it before?) Communication, exaggeration, staging, anticipation, timing - all these things were essential to communicating his visual explanation of the story. No wonder people recommend animators take mime classes...

After that, my parents left me and went to a talk I wasn't really interested in. So with an hour to kill I wandered along to a choir workshop called 'It's Not Enough To Make A Noise'. I have sung in a couple of gospel over the years and I figured this would be a typical 'here's a song, let's learn to sing it together' sort of workshop and would fill my free hour in an enjoyable way.

But what I actually stumbled across was very different. Barry Rose (one of the greatest choir trainers in Britain - I later discovered) was teaching us that you not only have to sing with your voice, but you must sing with your whole body (your nose, mouth, lips, jaw, eyes, face etc.) He demonstrated with an exercise for each to help us understand just how much these parts depend on one other (e.g. trying humming, and then pinch your nose.)

After the lecture, two things he said really struck a chord with me and I wanted to share them:

1. Sing with your eyes.
He took a piece of paper and put it over his face leaving only his eyes visible. He then asked us to decide whether the song he was about to sing was either happy or sad. He then proceeded to give us sad or happy eyes and we correctly identified the mood of the song.

His point? Your audience should know before you even open your mouth, what you are about to sing.

Which made me think about how this relates to animation... Apart from those rare times where we need to break that rule (e.g. sarcasm) our characters really should be communicating what they are about to say through their posture and facial expressions before we even open their mouths to speak. This is why we are taught to animate the body first and make sure it is communicating clearly before we touch the lipsync. The expressions we layer onto the face should also be supporting the mood of the shot. So without even hearing a word, the audience already knows the tone of what will be said.

2. What's your favourite song?
He asked us all if we had a favourite song, and many of us nodded. Then he told us this –‘whenever anyone asks me this question, my answer is always - the one I am singing right now'. Even if you can't stand the song or hymn you are singing, you have to give it your all. Sing it as if it is your favourite song and convince the audience of that.

I know I have been guilty in the past of being on a project that I am less than enamored with and this has probably affected the quality of my animation, or just my day to day cheeriness. Hearing Barry's response really made me think. No matter what you are working on you have to give it your all, as if it really is the best project ever. Any chance to animate, whether the project is fast or cheap or just plain random, is a great opportunity to just animate. There is always something you can practice, learn or experiment with along the way and you never know, you might actually learn to enjoy it?

Apart from filling my hour it turned out to be a very interesting and enjoyable lecture. In fact the whole day turned out to be quite inspirational, and a good opportunity to top up on some vitamin D before returning to my darken room.

I guess my biggest realisation, and the whole point of this post was this:
sometimes it's good to put down your wacom pen and leave the house - you never know where you will find inspiration!

On my homepage you can now find an updated showreel for 2009!



There are three shots completed recently at Animation Mentor, a Keith Lango APT dialogue, some shots from "Monkey Fist" (Blue-Zoo Productions/Cartoon Network/Dandy Productions) and a couple of clips from "Stitch Up Showdown" (Blue-Zoo Productions/Nickelodeon).

All the animation was done by me. Let me know what you think!

Nick have created a Stitch Up Showdown microsite, where you can watch some of the episodes, draw your own warrior and play the Stitch Up 'beat 'em up' game.



It's pretty cool!

The episode I wrote and animated is in the 'Watch' section (episode 3: Flower Power), if you want to see it!

It's been a while since I posted - I know! I am not doing anything interesting at the moment so I thought I would just post up some pictures from my stay in New Zealand at the end of last year. Such a fantastic country, I would love to go back and see more of it!