The End of a Chapter

Well. It's been a while since I uploaded on my blog but so much has gone down since then.

My last upload was about the beginning of Cyber security. And now It's all completed and done, so I'll try recollect what I did and what I was feeling during the project.

Cyber security was  a lot more free and fun than PHE to compare. It was creative fun experience where we got to enjoy and create some films that were goofy enjoyable and colourful. The animation itself was bouncy fun and interesting to do. Me and Zoe ended up animating a lot of the films and I have to say for the time we did it in we did a pretty good job of doing something funny and energetic to watch. Rose and Nichole took a more casual role in the animating department, but I feel the stress and pressure put on me here was overall worth the effort since now I have a bunch of clips of animation to put in my showreel, which at this point I've actually remade!

As I said before cyber security was an overall more creative fun experience than PHE We chose our own colour pallete which I felt helped a lot. Which is here:

I found having your own colour palette to be the most refreshing and rewarding thing about this new project, it allowed us to be so much more creative in our work.

After we settled on this, The client liked my character design as well so having that out there and the concept admired is a really rewarding and proud moment for me.
Here he is!

I really love that something of mine is going to be out there and enjoyed by so many people. And once all the concepting for exteriors interiors and characters were completed we moved onto production where animation steamrolled in at light speed! We were ending up completing at least 1 film per week! So all 6 films were done in about a month which was incredible!

I am so proud and happy that I did this project. I would love and dream to think that people will actually learn and enjoy the films we created in that time.

For the last few weeks we have been working on another project called random acts. Which is an odd little project I will go into more detail at the end of the week.

I really enjoyed working and ding these projects, I will talk more and reflect once the contract has ended. But for now I'll see you in the next one!

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Cyber security

So while we are also working hard on production of the PHE animation we also have cyber security in the left wing of our schedules. 

I been thinking a little about it and I ended up doing some concepts of the gremlin idea that the people we talked to in a long meeting a couple of weeks ago.

I went for a cutesy angle and some better colour schemes than the one we have to work with with PHE. Really pastel cute colours.

Hopefully this project will be a lot better than PHE has been on us. one of the main reasons why I haven't been recording the discussions and plans and progress of each week on PHE is because it's been so back and forth and genuinely nightmarish to work with them. They constantly find silly things to change or pick out of our work. and in the weeks before production it was the worst to try get feedback from them. They're still slow at giving us feedback but a part of us doesn't care anymore.

I enjoy working I really do it's just we often find ourselves doing nothing due to the lack of feedback or slow progress of the client.

So my hopes are that this new project we will be working on after the easter holidays and hopefully end PHE by, will be a lot more fun, easier happier and expressive to work with, the clients seem to want to let us do whatever we want and take our creative input into account and give us some of their own.

Im really actually looking forward to this and leaving PHE behind me as an experience.

By Gemma Stephenson

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Production!

Im not sure how heavily I can go into details but we started production of PHE finally last Wednesday. I didn't mean to take so long yet again getting back to everyone with my slowly increasing blog. I'm just honestly not sure what we can show and what we can't. Production means that we are now working and producing the actual film that'll be aired and put on .gov for people to see and well. Working on the governments terms your not sure exactly how this is gonna go down with them. Haha not wanting to get SWAT teamed or something.

Anyway, enough speculation, it's about a week and a half into production. We have about 6 or 7 shots done for the final thing, with about 23 left. Our director and producers say we have 2 weeks left to try and finish this as well. This week is over, we have next week then easter off, then we come back and it should be finished by the end of that week I believe, But I'm not confident that will happen.

We have a huge chunk of the animation not planned fully out because of lack of feedback on that said part. Apart from this it's just been working hard and knuckling down to get this over with as fast as we can. 

I think the next time I will be writing something will be in post production or at the end of the animation period to give a summary of my experience with this client.

Im sorry this journal isn't as long as the others. Theres not much to say at the moment but I wanted to keep in touch and fill you guys in on whats going on right now.

By Gemma Stephenson

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Been a bit

Firstly I'd like to apologise, I know last blog I said this and I quote:

Next week, praying to the gods of luck I will DEFINITELY have started the PHE project. I know I've been saying this for a while now, But there has been some difficulties with script and client feedback and information. So hopefully this will be the last week where I say this and the last week where nothing of much substance has been made.

I know now it's been a few weeks since I updated my blog last. Well this is mostly because of the client we are working with, We have spent about 2 weeks in the time I've been gone doing nothing substantial. It has only since about Thursday last week started to get into gear. This project isn't the best introduction you could have to a project based job but at least it's something. I will start with the work we got started last week. 

So we had this submission for characters and all the new concepts we had made up since our last meeting or feedback from the client, They basically scrapped all of our work up to that point so we had to redo it all. We created a lot of ideas assets and concepts during the time I've been gone, but as I say a lot of that was scrapped. Here are some of the tings I came up with in that time. I also did a lot of practice in duik and animation stuff but unfortunately I have not much space to show you those animations. Either way this stuf is really good stuff for portfolio work and just experience in general. I love I've got to know illustrator more and I never get sick of working with After effects.



The concept I took part in was a teal scene from the script Ellie had to re-write. A lot of the majority of our time was pent on redesigning and going back and changing things, we managed to land on final designs Nichole came up with. We thankfully got feedback on all our work the next day. We had a few changes and edits to make by Tuesday night. On Monday however, I was tasked with making the map visuals as well. And I came up with this visual shown here. I also was tasked to make a few minor changes to the teal scene I made. I had to change it in accordance to the script, So it went from a more crowded detailed scene with letters above the characters to a simple visual of showing the statistic's visually using filled characters and outlined characters. I was later asked to change it again to the same characters for all 3 versions. The images are below!

Old teal concept

Updated concept

Final concept

For this week we are going to finish the animatic and get on with creating sound, timing and visuals to show the client how the animation will look and how long it'll be. So far I'm enjoying this and I'm extremely glad We have finally ended up with a lot of work and stuff to be getting on with,

I will probably end up posting another blog this week or maybe on Monday. Since I'm writing this on Wednesday and not the end of the week. It's just been an awkward few weeks and time management and feedback has been so slow. Now it's finally getting going I wish to update you on at least some of the things that has happened and Id like to reassure you work is definitely on the ball now!!

Bye guys! I'll update you all soon I promise.

By Gemma Stephenson

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Busy week

I honestly don't recall what I did on Monday Or Wednesday of this week. I assume it must have been a mundane average work day where i go on with duik or after effects practice. I do remember creating a digital version of the map we all discussed Tuesday on Wednesday though! I'm still fairly sick while I write this so I apologise. Anyhow this week was mostly speculative talk and research around the PHE project. We had a meeting with Ellie and we discussed the options we had on the table, Zoe and me were sent away to produce some research documents on a large file sent to us by the PHE to read and analyse, we did a good job however Zoe and Kaleigh had to go and do some stuff regarding another project. and we only got about a third of the way through with two whole whiteboard sized sheets of paper filled. I did a little more but I got too tired to keep going. by the time they came back it was close to home time so we decided to quit while we could and just discuss what we managed to get. We did with Ellie and managed to produce a prototype for the map on paper to kinda conceptualise what it might look like, I was tasked to do the paper map in digital form which is what you see here. After we had not much choice but to wait for client input. So we were tasked with practicing after effects and duik animation for future. I find the tutorials and tasks really useful and even managed to make a short sequence conceptualising visually some ideas maybe we could use for the animation.

However not only was this week spent doing PHE animation research, we also did take a couple of practicals for students so that lecturers could mark their work, I took a second year animation class which was pretty much me watching them work, I ended up practicing duik instead, since they needed to get on. On Thursday I took a foundation year drawing class, which was more involving but it was still mostly me just sitting there and occasionally going round asking questions and looking at their work. Although all the students seemed really nice and accommodating. I mean for a new intern cover. Having a few more pounds in my pocket is never a bad thing too, I'm really glad I did it and I can put it on my CV and such.

Another final major thing that happened this week was that I got rather ill. I think there's some kinda flu going around our office since people seem to have got ill basically just around the room. I still came into work despite it but I started with a nasty headache then some more cold like symptoms. It was hard to slug through two days of work while pretty ill but hopefully I will get better over the weekend.

Next week, praying to the gods of luck I will DEFINITELY have started the PHE project. I know I've been saying this for a while now, But there has been some difficulties with script and client feedback and information. So hopefully this will be the last week where I say this and the last week where nothing of much substance has been made.

By Gemma Stephenson

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Research

For most of this week we were waiting for updates on the three projects we were involved in.

Firstly I will cover the campus tour. Since the other two projects take priority over this project, it has been on the back burner. However on Friday while Zoe was sick I managed to nearly complete the previs, We are so close to completing the final thing, after this well have to send it to Allison for feedback and probably meet with her, but I'm unsure of the action well have to take, as I say our focus should be on the newer projects.

The cyber security project was the most predominant this week, we did a lot of research and idea building around the concept. Unfortunately my research went into cyber bullying as I was mislead, but the research I did do shouldn't go to waste, as it has some relevance on the damage having poor cyber security can cause. I created some moodboards and referenced some videos and created a powerpoint highlighting some main themes I found in the animation of the videos which could be useful for later.
Once I got on the topic though I created a new powerpoint with deep analysis of two videos about the subject and core/key themes surrounding them. Similar to the image given however in much more depth.This researched consisted of going through the videos and highlighting keywords used and that I heard throughout the video. Then after going through each scene and picking out useful bits of information and animation techniques that are common in these types of videos. Finally I produced and idea summary at the end which listed concepts and ideas used commonly through the videos and what we could possibly use in our video.

Finally there is the weight loss project, we were not told much about this just to wait for information from the client. at the moment.

We were told some extra things on top of all this for example we may have the ability to take some practicals for students in the near future but we need information to clarify this. If it is a thing we maybe paid £20 per hour nearly triple our pay as interns.

Also it was a colleagues birthday and we had some cake in the office and sang happy birthday. :3

Can't wait for the following weeks!

By Gemma Stephenson

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Calm week

This week was both typical as well as exciting. The most exciting day being Tuesday when we were assigned with a focus group task for a company. We were asked to give opinions and suggestions for an upcoming event in the northeast. So we had to provide some inside information on our region. We were put into teams and first asked some interesting creative questions like who was our favourite hero's. I chose Spiderman since he's relatable, a student and "one of us" which they seemed to like. We moved on to more specific questions like Event planning what makes a good event, and finally we got to have input on some of the content we deemed necessary for people in the north east and stuff we thought people here would like to be a part of in the event. 

It was a really cool experience, and the exciting part is that they liked us so much they took our names!

Unfortunately Id be too unsure to say who exactly what this company was. But the general premis and idea is there!

The rest of the week was mostly spent working on previs and going out to take photos for it. We went to the library and the gym together to take some shots of what we needed to complete the previs. We have finally finished the first half and moving on the second half. I have a strong feeling we will get the previs done by next week. We're working hard and focused wholly on it. Not other jobs have come up yet, but I'm optimistic since siobhan has mentioned a couple of 2d jobs coming in!

Here is an small example of the work we have accomplished so far on the previs. We have done a lot more than this but I'm not confident in showing the whole thing online, but here is a little snippet of what we're doing! Enjoy!

Click Here for Video

We have also been consulting each other about a studio name, I came up with load of ideas for people but we narrowed it down to cloudtale, since we were all still uncertain we were given it as a homework task over the weekend to come up with a name. We should be able to come up with one by next week.

The weeks are turning into a real job. I'm enjoying my time still and am looking forward to future work!

By Gemma Stephenson

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