Interviews...

...you don't have any for ages and then all of a sudden you get them all at once!

After many, many... many months of job hunting I signed up to jobseekers benefits. After another month since then I was finally given the interviews I was hoping for. The first one came from The Character Shop in Birmingham. This will be a junior animator role working on Zoo Troop III for Haven Holiday Camp. The interview consisted of a 3 day test by animating a 14 second piece of dialogue of the main character; Rory the Tiger. Fully modeled and rigged in 3ds Max with Biped. I finished on the morning of the forth day before I had to get my train back home and was accepted to be on the team for a 3 month contract when it starts.






I got the train back home and then hopped on another train to London. This time I was going for an interview at Prime Focus in Soho. I arrived very early so I had time to relax which was much needed in the busy area of Soho. I got to the interview 15 minutes early as planned and waited for my two interviewers.


There was a bit of confusion at the beginning. You see, someone in HR told the interviewers that I had applied for the Data Operator role when in fact I had applied for the Junior Support Technician. So the questions they were asking and the answers I was giving were conflicting in both of our minds. Soon they realised we were on totally different tracks and they began to interview me for the role I actually applied for - leading on from the other role as not to repeat the same questions.
In the end it worked out quite well, because they have put me forward for both of those roles - so it was almost like hitting two birds with one stone!
Data Op isn't something I particularly like the sound of, but that's only because I wasn't sure what that was until my interviewers started saying "You know this is a really boring job" and "You will be punching numbers and data all day long in a dark dingy cave with no outlet for creativity"... okay the dark dingy cave thing I made up... but that's what it felt like. The Junior Support Technician role is perfect for me though. I've done it before and as it's a Junior role I won't be expected to know everything and I already have a willingness to learn. So I can't see a problem there.

Anywho, my four day interview week went very, very well and it's only a matter of time now before I can start working again and making £££££!






Location: Cafe Libre - Soho, London

The Incredible Results of Viveza 2

A couple of weeks ago I discovered a piece of software for manipulating photos with exact precision, that I had never come across before. Nik's Viveza 2 is a wonderfully simple tool to bring the most out of your images.
I am very excited by it as I will want to improve the final shots of my trip to China when I come back in September. So to test this software I created a simple render from maya...

The text uses an ambient occlusion material and the three balls are using a car paint material, both are mental ray materials. The light was setup using an HDRI I pulled from my buddy Rob, who i'm sure won't mind =) and applied it to a IBL dome. The final render was at 720p and these are the results...

1) The original - straight from Maya


2) The edit - from Viveza 2


The results to my eye, are quite staggering. I was able to ramp up the colour and contours of the balls individually and then the whole scene using a circle border which gave it that soft vignette round the corners. I love this tool and will probably be using it for a long time. If you've had positive or negative experiences with it I'd like to know.

I Am A Job-Hunting Animator

After reading this blog post by an animation mentor alumni, I realised that I am looking for work by so many different means. As I dont want to miss opportunities and be helpful to others who might be searching, I thought continuation of Kaiern's list would be a good idea. The first two are very useful if you're looking for work outside of the UK too, which I will be looking for after my holiday.

GameDevMaps




Wayfaring - Animation Places of Interest




Twitter - My gradually updating list of everything animation that comes in 140 characters or less




LinkedIn




Soundtrack: Gentle Giant - Excerpts from 'Octopus'

List of Video Sharing Sites

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Back To Basics - Bouncing Ball

I recently started to work on the 'lifting heavy object' animation exercise, but realised that I was still lacking some of the fundamental knowledge needed to apply in the animation, to make the whole sequence more believable. So I have gone back to the basics and to start with I am working on the bouncing ball exercise using the Flying Fox Rig because later on I can add the tail and ears.



I can see that there is not weight from this first example, so i've gone onto 11SecondClub for some feedback using the curve of my Translate Y movement.



Update - 06/07/10
I've had some feedback from 11SecondClub members now and the ball is starting to look much better. Here is the graph and video update:





Update: 07/07/10
More feedback today to say that there is too much squash and stretch, as in it is too strong. So i've gone in and reduced the amount of S&S i've applied...




Soundtrack: Stevie Wonder - Isn't She Lovely