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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Moving forward

The second week has begun and heres what it entailed! Im getting into a swing of things now finally and things are getting busy and starting to kick off!

Monday 

I started my new job on the newest project for University. Today was mostly about working and getting a ton of assets and preproduction stuff done for the rest of the team. I was tasked with designing the style of animation for the video we're going to be doing, so I produced a moodboard of animation styles I liked and searched for on the internet got feedback rather fast over messenger. 

I produced two design concepts from it and from the styles my co workers liked and went with it, I began sketching

concepts in photoshop, Admittedly design two based off the one at the bottom of the moodboard to the left was a little simplistic, it would be quick to do but it didn't have much personality the lack of features made the style very bland and boring, and honestly I never got chance to do the 3rd option because everyone liked the 1st one so much, and so did I. I was slightly worried it would be difficult to animate within a shorter time frame, however, It was this nice balance of complicated but simple. although because of my concerns with time restrictions I made a slight adjustment not to bother with the odd shading, since it required a second filter layer over the top of the colour layer, and if you merged the two it would act up, so I decided to bench that small detail, but I don't think many would notice and it would help tremendously with animating it within photoshop for later. All too soon however the day was over and I had to go home to rest until tomorrow before I started to work on the feedback I was given.

Tuesday

When the day begun I worked a little on the animation I have done in my spare time to polish it and have a finished good looking product, we had a meeting later on in the day for feedback on the style of animation and moving forward with that. One design from yesterday was picked and I was given more extensive feedback with our little group. My team said I needed some ethic diversity, that the eyes needed to be bigger and to produce a secondary character from it. So I went off and did more designs yet again and sent off what I made. Everyone seemed to like the second design here most.

Wednesday

Continuing on from yesterday I did a load more design work from suggestions and feedback from other students. I did the initial concepts of the chosen outfits, but was told that the black girl was too plain  and needed to have more exciting interesting colours in her outfit to stand out. So I experimented with some colour schemes. I firstly tried experimenting with different colours, such as peach and cream, people seemed to like the green hoodie and red jeans, I wasn't so confident at the time and knew that green and red clash together and aren't complementary colours but I decided to do some shades and test out the colours to see if I could make them work.  From this people seemed to lie the second one best but this is where the day ended. This day went by fast as I was working hard on the designs. I soon left for home and continued the work the next day.

Thursday

Today we were able to have a short session of learning cortex the mocap clean up software with a lecturer. We sat down and went through some basic principles of the software and the interface. He showed us how to clean up data and gave us general advice on how it all works. We also looked at in real life examples such as star wars rogue one, of facial mocap. After this was over I got back to designing the characters yet again. I went with my gut that was nagging me since yesterday that the design was wrong and told the rest of the gang that the outfit for the black lass wouldn't work, colour scheme wise, so I decided to go back and give them another round of choices from the previous outfits. The group vote was that the red outfit was the best, however there were debates with sleeves so I did another concept, eventually we settled on that concept and I produced a final design sheet for the characters and how tall they are as well as some colour scheme palletes. This day was nice and average despite the back and forth, but busy enough to stay entertained!

Friday

I did some self development and worked more on my character reference for Amadi my original character. But this was after I did a turnaround of the characters designs. 

We met up with Allison and she gave me a few pointers to change in the characters over the weekend, She wanted the black one to be a guy and the girl to have a hoodie since it's a stable of University clothing and life there. I agreed and did this design over the weekend.

Overall some great experiences. Some days were more eventful than others but I am happy with the second week on the job!

From here on out blogs maybe done in a different method to how I have done them for the first two weeks. I may highlight important and exciting details in the week. But daily tasks and average work I may just have to skim over, since it's mostly the same processes and ideas being redesigned or redone.

See ya next week!

By Gemma Stephenson

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Settling in

This first week of work has certainly had it's ups and downs but we all managed to gather an idea of a decent work week and pumped out some quality stuff! Ill take you through each day and give thoughts on it all and what I hope to see for next week!

Tuesday 

New library

Well it was the first real day at work and we all gathered in the meeting room to be briefed on what will happen through the week and we were to get our office keys and u numbers (which is a card we use to enter rooms, sign in etc.) We weren't really able to do much however as it seemed our u numbers hadn't came through so we waited in the library until 1pm. The library is newly renovated and very flashy now. It was a real relaxing experience. Even if I got bored from not doing much for so long. When we returned to meet with Siobhan at one we go our office keys but had to tell her the bad news that we had to wait until tomorrow to get the cards. We all went home early at about 2/3. Unfortunately it was all we could do.

Wednesday

My after effects set up

The second day was a lot more productive in terms of work. We got into our offices finally and out key cards so we can access any room in the campus now and I immediately took to it, I have a cork board and sticky notes to record all I need to while I work. I share my space with Nichole, We worked for a damn long time, all day really, with a lunch break. I made two logo designs for the University. The after effects tutorials I followed were really interesting and I really got into it, I think in future I'm gonna really like creating animations in after effects. The skills I learned here would prove to be useful in designing further designs further in the week. 

Thursday

On Thursday I ended up back in the office with less of a fuss but I got into a swing of things. I focused hard on creating another logo from tutorials and using prior knowledge of tutorials created and experimented. Later on in the day we had a mocap session as well, we wanted to research and learn more about it as we have a client that is doing a VR project which involves mocap. They want us to clean up some of the animation from their mocap. I was in the funny ball suit that they have which is shown to the right here and I did a load of actions and activities while Kayleigh Rose and Nichole watched and recorded my work out. The suit itself was entirely made of Velcro so it was hilarious to take on and off. We will be cleaning up the animation I made as practice for the real thing. It was super fun and funny to use such awesome equipment. First You have to calibrate the area you'll be working in, so our supervisor went around with a stick with two balls on and waved it around until all the 3d space was highlighted in the CORTEX software. After that I got into the space and did some basic movements to calibrate the suit with the software.  When everything was set up we were able to start recording, so before I started every action I did for example, walking, I had to do a T pose and once the action was done I ended with a T pose, this is so we can have a zero or a constant in the animation. I repeated this process for every action we went through, there was a walk a run, a jump a punch, a dodge and a death which was my favorite. Once this was all done however, it was right back to work in the office until my day was done.  

Friday

Snowy day

Snow was on it's way today. Unfortunately it made me a tad late, so I just emailed the admin office. But I wasn't that late to begin with. Either way I sat down and got on with more work. I went through another after effects tutorial to make a new logo design which looks pretty good, But before I could render it I had to go to a meting with Allison and She really loved two of the three logos I've done. So I'm very happy with that, I just need to convert these sequences into gif form and send her it via email (hopefully). Right after we had a meeting with Siobhan and we caught up with what we have done through the week ad discussed the future week and it's plans, of which there are many for me. She told us as well we could be working on a cyberbully project for our local police! 


Overall the weeks been amazing busy and had it's ups and downs. I'm super happy so far with my job and I can't wait for more!

By Gemma Stephenson

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First day

So it begins, my journey into a career, so much was said and done by the end of it all I may miss out a few details but Ill give it my best to recall everything.

Grieg building photo

So today we were given a rough timetable that told us to meet up at the Greig building which was exciting, I arrived early so I was waiting a while, but when I finally was able to get it I began meeting some of the rest of my team, it wasn't long before everyone arrived and Siohban followed to introduce us to each other and gave us little name stickers.

She explained to each of us our jobs roles and our admin who will help us through our work. Ours was present although I don't recall her name she gave me and the other animator some research assignments to start, which I will today, it's just some simple searches on google for animated gifs for ideas for the Teesside logo. As well as this we were tasked to design some ideas on how to represent computer science properly as at the moment they only use stock images of random computer things in their leaflets and they don't really like it. We were given some booklets for examples and pastries for food then we were shown the staff room of the building, which was odd because I used to be a student here so to now be working with my teachers is really odd but fun!

Once we were done with that Siobhan let us go for a break, I went to the new library and just texted some people about the situation waiting and had some lunch, Soon I returned and we got to meet Ellie Land, the animator I mentioned in a previous blog.

She showed us her work and explained a lot about herself and how her and her team would work on the films we saw. The films themselves were really good and informative. She mentioned that lately the market for short informative 2d films are sky rocketing, so it's something I'm going to keep in mind for future projects. 

We took a short break, some of my team went to use the staff room but I just hung back, soon everyone was back though and we began to show our work to each other.  I'm really glad people liked my art and my style but the best thing was when I showed everyone my new video and even Ellie laughed a little.

I find it funny an animator of her experience can be amused by my utter poop. But hey I always said my main goal out of my career is to entertain, so Im very happy that it made people laugh. Once all this was done it was another quick summary before we were sent off home.

I am at home now and now I have written my blog Im off to do that research and send some emails, so see you all tomorrow for another update and hopefully I will be in an office!

By Gemma Stephenson

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Induction

The Curve @ Teeside University

So I have just returned from my 3 hours session with the University which involved various tasks and lectures about the job I will be starting on the 9th.

The gathering was made at The Curve where I signed in and waited for the first presentation to begin. The process of waiting was short before we were called to the upper floor where we were introduced to our host who told us our itinerary for the day. As I signed in I was assigned to group 3 so our group were the first to have a lecture on Human resources which covered general aspects of the workplace and expectations of being employers of the University. Topics included:

• General Information such as: working hours + start and end dates of Internship
• Attendance
• Payroll/payment
• What to expect on the first day
• Contacts and issues
• Impressions

After this lecture was over we were directed to another room to be shown a health and safety video by the university outlining contacts and numbers to call if emergencies occur as well as facilities and offices to use in the event of accident or injury. There were many topics of detail such as typical risk assessment forms to read, manual handling, substance abuse and fire safety, but I won't bore you with the details of that. It's more of a need to know basis and you don't really need to know it like I do.

We were even a break once the video was over so I went to the library for a quick snack before

Photo of Welcome presentation

returning to fill out my contract with the University.; which I believe went pretty smoothly. Having said this, I have never had to sign a contract of employment before, it was exciting to see the legal bond and have an actual place of work.

Once I completed the form we were guided to a sitting area where we waited For the finally presentations to be shown to us.

Firstly, we were given advice and a small SWOT task to complete by the careers service advisers of the University, they gave us a lot of encouragement about going into a workplace and what to expect, asked us questions one of which I replied to and general information about how to approach a job with enthusiasm, professionalism and for us to make way for the future.

The next presentation was hosted by an employer working and managing a company called Actes. He gave us similar information from the previous presentations, reiterating points made before, however he also gave us stories of his experience hints and tips to help us understand and know exactly what employers are looking for and what they want to see from people while in a work place.

Finally we were given one more form to fill out directed by our main host, who after informed us of a party that will be held after the internships, awards and ceremonies to possibly attend. We will be sent invites in March at some point I'd think. Then we were sent on our way back home.

Overall, it was a fun interesting experience given to us by funny upbeat members of staff that has prepared me and given me the determination to go into the job enthusiastic, cheerful and optimistic. Next blog will be about my first day on the job and any interesting events that may transpire on the day. But until then, Goodbye!

By Gemma Stephenson

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