Responsive: 11 Second Club (Unfinished Project)

Disappointed that I hadn’t had a proper chance to animate a character in Maya I decided to attempt that month’s 11 Second Club brief. 11 Second Club is another monthly animation competition in which participants animate an 11 Second sound clip taken from a film (this month it was Ocean's 11), usually using pre-made 3D models available on their website. Wanting to at least attempt 3D character animation, I downloaded a Moom Rig from E-studio as well as 50 or so David O’Reilly’s rigs from his short film The External World which he has made available on his website.

At the time I saw this brief more as an opportunity to fit in some practice around 3D animation in Maya, as it interested me but I did not have the time to learn to model and rig a character on my own. By using these pre-made rigs, this allowed me to focus more on the animation aspect of 3D, particularly the lip-synching and character gestures. Moom is a fairly flexible and accessible rig to animate with meaning I could focus on communicating body language through gesture and facial expression; skills that would not only serve as improving my 3D animation, but also cross over and affect my other forms of animation as well.

For maximum comedic effect and due to the fact that many of O’Reilly’s rigs were impenetrable to a newcomer such as myself, for the secondary character I opted to use what can only politely be described as his ‘breast monster’ character rig. This rig had fully articulable arms as well as breasts and could change the shape of it’s pupils by changing the values in the action window.

I definitely enjoyed animating with Moom. I had never done proper lip-synching up until this point and I found the process of animating facial expressions using Maya’s graph editor rewarding and easy to use. I picked up numerous subtleties of 3D character animation when working on this brief, notably the importance of maintaining eyeline between two subjects in the stage, as well as animating idle poses for when the character’s aren’t talking or are only partially on-screen.

While not perfect, I feel for a first timer the final animation was fairly well put together and effectively communicated character in a verbal as well as a visual manner. A problem arose however when it came to exporting the finished scene. The David O’Reilly rig I had used for the second character, the one I had previously dubbed the ‘breast monster’, did not have compatible shaders with the version of Maya I was using and thus, when it came to render, the model had no shaders; which looked terrible. On top of that, on the renderer which I could use to render the shaders, this affected the Moom rig, who started suffering numerous visual glitches, such as pupil disappearing and screen tearing. Not wanting to submit a subpar animation I quietly dropped the project for the time being on the day of the deadline.

While this was disappointing for me, I still found the experience of working on this brief rewarding in it’s own way, pushing me in future to explore Maya a bit more in depth and one day model, rig and animate my own character. I feel like I picked up a lot in terms of 3D animation principles as well, principles which can be applied to any animation I may do in the future.

Studio Practice: Weekly Production Diary- Applied Animation Week 4

Rethinking the documentary element of our idea
This week we had a slight rethink about our idea and how we can incorporate more documentarian elements into our documentary to prevent it from becoming just a comedy sketch in a documentary style. We brought this up with Steve on Tuesday; who suggested we find a way to incorporate things real people have said on the topic of homelessness to paint a portrait of societal attitudes towards the issue. One thing led to another and one of us suggested we construct our character from bigoted internet comments left in comments sections on news articles and other documentaries. So then we began trawling through internet comments sections of articles and videos around the topic of homelessness looking for the most outrageous and despicable comments which we could turn into dialogue which our character would say. We screenshotted the comments and compiled them all on the shared Google Drive where we would later arrange them into a script...

Location scouting and the cliches of documentary making
This week I also did a bit of location scouting around estates in Leeds to look for potential locations for our animation. We're wanting to use Leeds as a setting as we want the places our character visits to reflect real locations. However, since we don't have a script yet and have recently changed our idea, none of these locations are final and are subject to change. While most of the pictures I took were around the council estate behind college, Tess says that we should incorporate more metropolitan/busier areas of Leeds for our documentary, such as the high street or shopping areas, as this is where a lot of homeless documentaries/pieces from The One Show take place. Due to the comedic nature of our documentary we want to identify the cliches for documentary filmmaking and deconstruct them in a satirical way, which means finding the most cliched locations to shoot a homeless documentary and depicting them in a heightened way for comic effect.

We're also toying around with the possibility of incorporating live action imagery and rotoscope for the backgrounds a la 'When the Day Breaks', perhaps using monoprint or some sort of digital filter in After Effects.

Responsive: Collaborative Practice: Conducting Interviews

Today we conducted interviews for our Autism Documentary in Room 118, which we hired out for the day. After initially putting up the posters around college and getting the word out on social media, we were overwhelmed with the rapid response we received from people wishing to share their experiences. We had emailed the potential interviewees beforehand to ask them if they had any questions before the interview and whether they were comfortable being recorded for the documentary.

Due to the logistics of renting out the recording studio for the day and not wanting to rush the interviews we rented out a portable recording device from the AV suite, after a short induction and picked a relatively small-ish room to record in. One problem we ran into when we were testing the sound equipment was that due to the room being by a window overlooking a main road, car noises from the street were being picked up on the mic, so we had to adjust the sound levels and conduct a few sound tests before proceeding with the interviews. Another problem we ran into during the recording process itself was the fact that some of the people we were interviewing were quite softly spoken, and not wanting to have to rudely ask them to speak up during the interview, had to adjust the levels during the recording without picking up the background noise.

Over the course of the day we interviewed around half a dozen people for roughly 15 minutes each; a mix of people who both had some form of Autism or had first-hand experience through friends and family members. The experience was both constructive and enlightening. Molly conducted most of the interviews as she had the most experience with Autism out of the three of us in the group, but beforehand we mapped out the sort of questions we would be asking. The key was to ask a few questions as possible and allow the interviewee to speak uninterrupted so we can edit their dialogue down into a short documentary. While conducting the interviews we made sure to listen for moments which would make good short anecdotes or gave an empathetic impression of the speaker.

After we conducted all the interviews we listened to them all again to decide who was going to work on whose interview for the animation. I already had a fairly clear idea as to whose conversation I wanted to animate which the other members of my group agreed would be suited to my artistic sensibilities. We latter went off with a rough idea as to what everybody was doing, developing our own idea in parallel with input from the rest of the group. We'll start editing the sound clips down next week.

Studio Practice: Weekly Production Diary- Applied Animation Week 3

Moodboards and Design Inspiration

Over the weekend we each compiled a moodboard of design inspirations. For this project I have decided to look at illustrators such as Marie Bretin, Rebecca Clarke and Kristin Lidstrom, who all have a more hand-crafted, tagible style as opposed to the more digital styles I usually take my inspiration from. I am hoping to use this project as a way of broadening my aesthetic, trying new things, using new processes and refining my existing skills. Having watched a handful of animated documentaries in preparation for creating my own, a common visual motif I have picked up on was this tangible aesthetic, often using pencils, paints and paper textures to give the impression of a more hands-on, handmade aesthetic, which is a notable trait of my collaborative partner's work.

Some of the animated documentaries I watched in preparation include...

 The Chaperone 3D



I'm a big fan of this style of rotoscoping as well as the use of colour, which I think pertains well to the setting and period. There is also a lot of texture to the animation, which I feel lends to the imperfect, handmade aesthetic, which was obviously constructed digitally to appear more hand drawn.

Mr Madila



Mr Madila was a favourite of mine from MAF; the style of humour and focus on larger than life characters is definitely something reflective of the comedic tone we are going for with our animation.

Fat Pants


Similar to The Chaperone 3D in it's design, but far simpler in it's rotoscope and execution, Fat Pants owes a lot of it's comedic appeal to it's slightly haphazard animation, mix of digital imagery and real life pictures, as well as it's witty script.

Character Designs

As a group we worked on the character design alongside one another, building off each other's ideas and drawings until we settled on a rough idea for how the character should look. We used Matt Berry's character Douglas from The IT Crowd as visual inspiration for our character's personality to start with, as we felt he represented, in broad strokes, the essence of what we wanted to distill with our character.

The character's facial structure, shape and overall aesthetic is a far cry from my usual style of drawing and more in line with how Tess draws characters, often without chins, with large curves, small facial features and exaggerated posture. This was something I had to pick up on quickly if we were to co-develop the character. It took a little trial and error, but I eventually learned to adapt to this style and help mould the character to our liking.

My main input was the eyes and mouth, inspiration for which I took from CollegeHumor's caricature of Kim Jong Un in their web series 'The Adventures of Kim Jong Un'. Below is my interpretation of the character, who is a little more slender than either of my collaborative partner's interpretations, which are a little rounder and more pot-bellied, which I feel is more appropriate for the character. I gave the character simple, almost pipe cleaner-like arms and legs, similar to how Pendelton Ward draws characters, though inquiring with my group, future designs will probably have thicker thighs and calves.

Character Profile

While working on the visual aspect of the character we also made a profile to define our character's personality and backstory. This also helps inform the visual element of the character as it gives us a backstory to draw from so we can cater the character's wardrobe, facial expressions, posture, mannerisms and general design more closely to the character.

Name: Keith(Queef) Gotyӗ

Age: 48

Occupation: Self proclaimed entrepreneur, used to be a very successful businessman but got caught up in some legal troubles and now is only a husk of his former professional days. Still lives a lavish lifestyle but is in millions pounds of debt.

Family: 2 ex wives, one divorced him when he lost his money, the other died with suspicious circumstances surrounding the incident. Is re-married now with expected child. Hasn’t spoken to the rest of his family since he stole a large fortune from them.

Likes: Likes luxury dining, fine wines but most of all, himself.

Dislikes: Fox Hunting (his hands are too small to hold the gun), Liberals, poverty, lactose, copper coins.

Hobbies: Finding his next business adventure, spreading the word of queef, has an addiction to shitty mobile games (farmville, candy crush, draw something).

Defining Character Traits: Has a lazy eye which becomes obvious when he is bored, has a sensitive gag reflex, speech impediment (keith is pronounced Queef), Lactose intolerant, has tiny baby hands, is triggered by copper coins because of a traumatic childhood experience.

Thumbnails

We each also came up with a few rough thumbnails depicting various scenarios for our character. This is a good way of visualising scenes and visual jokes ahead of time, deciding which ones are good enough before moving forward with the more formalised storyboards, which will have a more definitive and refined art style. The idea is that we'll decide on the strongest thumbnail sequences and hopefully arrange them into a coherent narrative befitting of a 2-3 minute mockumentary.

With this animation we want to emphasise visual sight gags as much as the script in order to make the most of animation as an art form. We have discussed various sight gags already relating to the character's wardrobe, such as wearing protective gear as if he were in a war zone, or a gas mask to protect himself from vape smoke. 

I also watched a handful of short form Vice documentaries to analyse and pick up on some of the cliches and visual motifs present in them, either to be used as filler during the narrated segments or just to more clearly emulate the style of a documentary. In order to really sell our animation as a documentary, we really want the camera to have more than a passive presence in the scene, maybe even going so far as to make the cameraman a character in and of himself. 

There is however subject matter we would prefer to steer away from in our animation. While we are trying to make a statement about class and the nature of the documentary medium, we would prefer to stray away from touchy subjects such as racism and specific politics, as this is not really the tone we are going for. I had planned a series of thumbnails for a scene where our character gets in a taxi and is shocked to find the driver is a foreigner, fearing for his life due to his own internalised bigotry, he reacts by frantically trying to get out of the car and throwing up in a panic. While I did think this was funny, I do agree with my collaborative partners that this doesn't really fit the tone of comedy we are aiming for here as it seems to paint our character in an exceptionally despicable light and we want him to feel at least moderately humanised; laughable rather than despicable. 

Background Design Test

Over the weekend I also did some background tests for the animation while Tess and Brogan worked on Characters and Thumbnails. As we are going for a rough, simple but tangible aesthetic I have opted to interpret the backgrounds as simple as I possible can, forgoing a lot of the details in favour of a broad-strokes interpretation. I wanted to keep the number of landmarks in the background to a minimum in order to emphasise certain details, both in the long shots as well as the more close up shots. I will probably do some style tests for different types of shots next week also, for more close up and medium shots in order to flesh out the style a little more. As this was a simple style test, I just traced a Jpeg I found on Google Images and will do some location scouting around certain areas of Leeds next week when I get the time.

Responsive: Collaborative Practice: Initial Ideas and Organising Interviews

Initial Ideas

After getting into a group of three with Jay and Molly, we brainstormed some initial ideas for how we wanted to tackle the brief. This consisted mostly of creating mind-maps, linking ideas for things we wished to explore, as well as creating a joint mood-board using images from Pinterest. Through creating these mood-boards we quickly found we all had a shared appreciation for the same types of illustrators and artists, which we used as inspiration, but different ways of going about interpreting our influences.

We read through the brief and brand guidelines provided by D&AD in order to better decide how we should approach the brief and decided after much discussion that we should approach this project, the way most charitable campaigns are conducted nowadays; with Social Media in mind. As this is the second stage of an existing campaign for raising awareness for adults with Autism, we decided that the format of our submission should reflect the contemporary media landscape in keeping with the times; short, sharable content; something you would see while scrolling down your timeline on Social Media.

This is where we got the idea to create a series of short animations, each one under the same broad stylistic convention, rather than a single piece of content, as this allows for the campaign to be about the message rather than the content of a single animation. By creating a series, the audience is more likely to connect to the underlying message rather than simply one animation or point of view. We also got the idea to make the short animations, short animated interviews with people who have had some sort of experience with Autism, whether it be themselves, friends or relatives.

We looked at examples of documentaries, both animated and live action, which use the interview format for inspiration as to how we should go about this. Namely...

Inner Views


Tough


Life Animated

Organising Interviews

Documentaries, by their very nature are dictated by their factual content, so in order to create one, you must first gather adaptable research material which can be interpreted visually in order to tell a story or make a point. As a group, after careful discussion, we decided that the content of our documentary should be a series of interviews we conduct ourselves with people who have experience with Autism. Many of the documentaries we admire, as well as the ones we have been analysing so far, could be described as animated monologues; edited interviews which paint a picture of a person or situation for the artist to interpret in the form of an animation.

In order to get the word out about our interviews, we put up posters around the college as well as on social media asking people to reach out and talk to us about their experiences, whether that be themselves,  friends or relatives. As the brief outlined, the phase of the campaign for which we will be creating the animations will be focused more on the experiences of adults, however we would also like to be more specific with this, focusing on the experiences of young women predominantly, as we all feel their experiences are severely underrepresented in the societal conversation revolving around Autism.

Responsive: Do it in Twenty- 'Utopia' (Initial Ideas)

After a month-long hiatus, Show Me The Animation's monthly 'Do it in Ten' competition is back for February with a slight twist. The competition for the next two months is a twenty second animation competition compared to the usual ten second competition and the topic is 'Utopia'. I was immediately drawn not only to the change in timeframe but also the the topic itself; Utopia, which in my mind conjures up some some interesting themes and imagery.

Immediately the theme of Utopia planted the seeds of an idea revolving around the aesthetic of surrealist, metaphysical Italian painter Giorgio de Chirico. Theres something about the derelict, surrealist desert landscapes, juxtaposing architecture with a wide landscape that reminds me of supposedly utopian modern cities such as Dubai. My idea is to portray the dark side of an uneasy, imperfect utopia.

I started off with a few thumbnail sketches and character designs in my sketchbook. The character I want to portray a future where human beings have evolved to be super-intelligent, evident by their visibly large throbbing brains. I feel this is a clear, visual and humorous way of portraying this idea, which is vital in communicating the 'bit', as the animation is only going to be twenty seconds long. I created rough thumbnail storyboards in my sketchbook which rough out the composition of shots and the longevity in relation to the rest of the animation.

Another thing I wanted to communicate through the character's facial expression is the suppression of emotion, though I haven't decided yet whether that would best be communicated through a fake, force smile of a vacant facial expression. After creating several variants in my sketchbook, I created a more finalised version in Photoshop using my Cintiq.

As well as character designs and thumbnails, I also created a few rough fine liner sketches of possible buildings and landmarks to use in the background of some of my shots. In  preparation for the new series in March, I have been watching a lot of Samurai Jack recently, and have long been a fan of creator Genndy Tartakovsky's backgrounds, so for this animation I am attempting to emulate this style to a degree while also putting my own spin on it. Simplicity seems to be the key to Tartakovsky's striking vistas, owing just as much to contemporary vector based graphic design as to traditional Japanese painting. I created my backgrounds (pictured below) in Photoshop using some of Kyle T Webster's brush presets, most notably the pastel and oil paint presets which have a more tangible texture to them.

Studio Practice: Weekly Production Diary- Applied Animation Week 2

Initial Ideas
This week was dedicated mostly to brainstorming ideas for an animated documentary. We tossed around a couple of ideas before settling on one going forward towards the end of the week. The first idea, which we seemed set on for a while was an idea involving creating a candid documentary following one of our classmates over the course of a week or two. The idea was to create a sort of meta documentary, where the documentarians (me and my partner) become the subjects of the documentary over time as their original plan falls apart. We wanted to create something which was 50% scripted, 50% genuine reactions and even recorded our tutors response to us pitching the idea for possible use at the beginning of the documentary.

However, after reflecting on this idea for about 24 hours, the logistics started to weigh down on us and we opted to abandon the idea in favour of a fully scripted mockumentary. This idea seemed to rely too heavily on factors which we couldn't necessarily definitely control. While a neat idea, had we not pulled it off perfectly, without any hitches along the way, the documentary would have been very underwhelming. There was also the fact that we couldn't guarantee the subject's consent at least until halfway through production (due to the way we had planned the documentary out) which could have led to a situation where we are forced to abandon an idea weeks into production.

We decided it would be better, if we wanted to create a deconstructive documentary, to create something completely scripted; a mockumentary which uses the aesthetic conventions of documentary filmmaking, live action and animated, in order to take aim at what we perceived to be injustices and examples of using documentary making in an exploitative manner to suit the makers own ends. We highlighted examples of this which we each found particularly annoying, mostly coming from the world of television. Catfish was a documentary which came up a lot in our discussion, as we both felt the original film was manipulative, misleading and pushed a regressive social message, solidified by the follow up MTV reality show. We toyed around with this idea of creating a Catfish mockumentary starring an actual Catfish, though we didn't get far with the idea due to it's absurdity and our lack of coherent vision or message.

From this we did determine what the message of our mockumentary should be and what purpose we wanted it to serve. We wanted to create a mockumentary which deconstructs the way narratives are projected onto the subject to suit the documentarians ends in an exploitative and manipulative way; to instil a sense of false sentimentality or anger in the way shows such as Channel 4's Benefits Street exploit the working class in order to push a sensationalist, anti-welfare narrative.

It was around this time we decided to add Brogan to our group, making us a group of three. We discussed with her our ideas for the message we wanted to communicate and she immediately threw at us some of her own, which fit into our mould. As a group we created a mind-map of various ideas, from PSA's treating children as a sexual health epidemic to experiment documentaries, seeing what happens if you drink just energy drinks for a week etc. However, one idea we kept coming back to was along the lines of Secret Millionaire, meets Alan Partridge. A rich, egotistical, out of his depth businessman who, in order to sell his new book, embarks on a self aggrandizing trip to a 'rough' area of the inner city, exaggerating the conditions as if they were a war zone and making himself look good at every opportunity. This idea really clicked with every member of the group and soon we were writing scenarios for what sort of trouble he could get into.

This idea really resonated I feel as it fulfils something we all wanted from this project; to work on something more lighthearted, with a satirical edge, as a change from our usual output. It also helps we are all big fans of British comedy; of characters such as Alan Partridge and shows such as The IT Crowd and Brass Eye. Uniquely British comedy characters who play on stereotypes, but in a deconstructive and humanising way.

Studio Practice: Weekly Production Diary- Applied Animation Week 1

This week I got briefed on the final module for Studio Practice; Applied Animation 2, the aim of which is, according to the brief, 'to identify, explore and develop areas of practical, technical and conceptual research in order to produce a body of creative/professionally relevant work.'

The main studio brief for this module is a collaborative project; to produce a 1-2 minute animated documentary revolving around one of four themes: Sustainability, Science, History or Politics, with crossover if applicable.

'For Arguments Sake' Presentation Study Task 
However, most of this week was spent on the first study task, which was to be completed individually. For this we were tasked with presenting, visually and in a convincing way, an argument which we picked out of a hat, ranging from the straightforward (In favour of non-violent direct action) to the outlandish (In favour of Brexit). The argument I was asked to present was in favour of 'Banning all guns', though I was allowed to set my own parameters as it did not state as to what extent or whether it meant in the UK or the US. I chose to interpret my argument as arguing against the general arms culture, taking aim at rural American gun culture as well as British Arms sales. However, not wanting to simply be quoting mass shooting statistics for the duration of my presentation, to lighten the mood I opted for a more comedic tone to make for a more engaging presentation and not bore or depress my audience too much.

One of my main documentarian inspirations for this task was Adam Curtis, whose documentary style works more anecdotal and cultural evidence into the broader political narratives he weaves throughout his films. For example, in his 2015 film Bitter Lake, Curtis uses clips from Andrei Tarkovsky's film Solaris to emphasise a point he is making regarding the Soviet's cultural attitudes towards truth and ideology in the aftermath of it's failed invasion of Afghanistan in the 1980s.

In keeping with that spirit, I opted to open my presentation with quote from George Washington regarding the second amendment of the American Constitution before juxtaposing it with a clip from comedian Jon Lajoie's 'I Kill People' music video in order to make a point about how gun culture in the United States has evolved and been bastardised since the days of the founding fathers, before diving into a slide of statistics regarding gun ownership. This loop of anecdotal evidence followed by dry statistics to back it up is one I have stuck to for the most part in this presentation, as I find it to be an engaging and humorous way of presenting an argument.

The next few slides then dive right back into an anecdote, this time about James Madison, one of the founding fathers. I then go on to infer his support for the right to bear arms is related to his sexual impotence, using admittedly flimsy evidence I read from Wikipedia that he couldn't have children, before implying the musket is a phallic symbol, calling out gun owners in the US as being sexually insecure and then talking about the disproportionately small amount of gun owners who own the mmajority of the guns in the US.

The final part of my presentation breaks from this established structure somewhat, however on a still follows it on a more micro level as I sarcastically say we in the UK are above the sort of violent culture seen in the US, before talking about UK arms sales in the middle east. Overall, I do feel my presentation will be a success when I present it on Tuesday in the form of a powerpoint. I may have exceeded the number of slides required by quite a bit, but I feel the loose script I have written should be engaging enough to make my point. I have taken into consideration the tone of how I want to argue my point and I will probably be taking cues from David O'Reilly in his presentation masterclass on Creativity and Advertising.

Getting into Groups
This week we were also required to get into groups of up to 3 to work on the animated documentary. While there are a lot of people in my class whom I would love to collaborate with at some point, I have been talking to Tess for a while about working on something with a comedic bent, and we both felt the Animated Documentary brief, which we both knew about ahead of time would be a good opportunity for the both of us to work together. At MAF back in November, we were both massive fans of RoryWT's 'Mr Madila', a series of increasingly comedic animated conversations between a documentary filmmaker and eccentric spiritual healer Mr Madila. While it's questionable whether the documentary is real or if Mr Madila is a character, the animation itself follows a lot of the conventions of documentary, incorporating elements of Live Action outside of the conversation as well as visuals to clearly illustrate the topics of conversation. We both want to create something of a similar tone and style, something comedic and character-centric which incorporates various mixed media techniques and I feel working together would be a good way to accomplish this. Our skill sets are fairly complimentary also, we both have similar aesthetic interests for this brief and we both have similar approches to pre-production and workflow which should serve us well.

Gantt Chart/Project Plan

Responsive: Collaborative Practice: Choosing a brief, Pitcha Pitch Slides and getting into groups

A major part of this Responsive module is a cross course collaborative project with the Illustrators and Graphic Designers at Level 5 to respond to a live or competition brief from YCN or D&AD. Before we could get into groups, first we were required to pick a maximum of three briefs that interested us, which required reading through the guidelines of each brief on the YCN and D&AD websites. Out of the roughly two to three dozen briefs available, the one that stood out to me was...

Autism Uncut- National Autism Society 

For this brief I would be required to produce a 1-2 minute film/films for the National Autism Society's campaign 'Autism Uncut' which aims to address the stigma surrounding Autism and Aspergers Syndrome in Adults, particularly in regards to the workplace. This is a subject that interests me as I have both friends and family members who are on the autistic spectrum, so addressing the stigma and attempting to normalise the condition and humanise those who have it. I have already thought about how I would go about doing this. Preferably I would like to work on an animated documentary, visualising conversations with people who either have autism or have experienced autism with their friends and family. Not only do I feel this is an effective way of communicating the point of the campaign, but it would give me a lot of freedom with how I could approach the visual side of things; broadening my practice while also engaging in animation in a socially aware and progressive way.

A couple of existing animations come to mind when thinking about this brief, most notably Tim Webb's 'A Is For Autism' which visualises a series of conversations by autistic people, discussing their experiences. I feel this film instills empathy for Autistic people in a very effective way and is definitely something I hope to emulate should I go down the documentarian route, though I am open to other ways of exploring the topic. 

One very important thing however to consider when responding to this brief however is the brand guidelines set by the National Autism Society. As a charity which supports people with Autism, there are certain types of words and language, as well as ways of depicting Autistic people which are off limits. It is important that whatever I produce in response to this brief fall in line with these guidelines, as what I produce could have social ramifications. 

Pitcha Pitch slides

In order to get into a group with other people who have similar interests and approach to practice as I do, the college has organised all the courses to come to the lecture theatre on the 2nd February for a presentation of everyones work, their inspiration and the briefs they wish to respond to in the form of Pitcha Pitch slides. For this I vetted all the work I have produced since starting University for the work which best reflects my skill set and paints my portfolio in the most positive light. I chose a variety of shots, some taken from animations, others simple background designs for future or potential animations in order to convey the broadest skillset possible, though I did make a conscious effort to ensure the majority of the work featured in this was at least fairly recent. 

As for my inspiration, I wanted to convey a set of interest beyond what I had showcased in the previous slide. I was careful in choosing what to display, as this could make or break what group I end up in. One of the images I opted to display was a shot from David O'Reilly's 'The External World'; a 3D/CG animated film, which visually is a far cry from any of the work I have produced myself in my time so far at LCA. I did this as it reflects the standard of work I hope to achieve in the short term as well as the importance I put on conveying different tones in my animation. Another illustrator I decided to include was Don Kenn, whose aesthetic continues to inspire my work, which in a way was my appeal to illustrators, as I do wish to work with Illustrators. Other pieces of work include the Box art to Fumito Ueda's 'Ico', both for the game itself as well as the Box art, which was quite clearly takes cues from Italian painter Giorgio de Chirico. I also made sure to include an image from my favourite illustrator Jamie Hewlett, as his house style continues to inspire me to this day. 

Getting into groups

After the botched Pitcha Pitch presentation (some people forgot to put their names on the slides), we were then tasked with getting into groups based on mutual interest. After loitering around the tables in the Illustration studio for a while I was eventually approached by two illustrators; Jay and Molly, who expressed interest in collaborating on the Autism Uncut brief. Their styles, while very different seemed complimentary to eachother, with Jay being more into the puppet making side of things and Molly being more of a graphic/comic artist. Personally I see my own skill-set as a sort of bridge between both, so I feel working as a team would be mutually beneficial to all of us. We exchanged contact information and later agreed to all work together on the Autism Uncut brief, with our first meeting to discuss ideas scheduled for the 9th February.