Introduction & Target Market

For this Professional Skills assessment, I had to show a vast range of skills in organising and planning, specifically for a career. Also I will focus on several technical aspects for my final film project, including modelling, texturing and rendering.

Also I would have to identify a specific target market for which I attempt to have my final product aimed at.  I’m attempting to produce a short film set just after the Second World War and will include two main characters; a little girl and her father. Although the final film will have a sort of sorrowful theme throughout, I intend to give it a good ending that will appeal to audiences as well as giving that quality throughout the entire piece. The finished film is to be aimed at people of all ages and there will be no themes involved that would be considered unsuitable for younger viewers. Originally the film was to involve a live action character placed in a computer generated environment but due to certain changes as well time management, I decided to completely use stylized computer animation instead.

I have viewed several good films that I like and may use them as reference into producing a film that would be successful and appealing to all viewers.

A few goals I intend to achieve are listed below.

• I plan to research and identify a target market to aim my film at and what I wish to get out of said film.
• I shall conduct research into areas that may improve production and may prove useful such as render farms, texturing techniques, etc.
• To use google calendars to plan out all stages for production, deadlines to meet and other events into producing and completing my project.
• I will attempt to develop and advertise my final piece, i.e. creating a website, plan for end of year show, getting finished film out and produce posters.
• Quality control aspect - the film will have to go through this so certain qualities can be pointed out and kept as good as possible as well as making it work on big screens around uni.
• Also will develop a showreel alongside the project in order to present at end of year show, this of course is more of a personal aspect.

I intend to learn and improve many skills through the course of this assessment to be ready for employment, such as advertising my work, being able to meet deadlines and produce work with considerable quality. 

Targets and Roles

Roles:

Michael Hines - Character Modeller, Texturer, Lighting, Render and Animation Supervisor.

Perri Wheeler - Additional Environmental Modeller.

Lien - Animator

Below is an image of my individual contract, showing dates where stages of progress are planned and will be carried out and what parts of work need to be completed.

For scheduling purposes, I have used Google Calendar to further plan stages of development and production for various dates leading up to the final stage in May. As my dissertation is having a major impact on my schedule, I have attempted to plan certain dates that would fit in with the progress of completing this project. 

Planning/Scheduling

I have been using Google Calendar to plan the dates for each step of progress from start to finish as well as to keep track of particular deadlines where each stage has to be completed. I'm working on an individual project but as I'll be acquiring some assistance from a few others, I shall resort to certain methods of communication in order to go over any details that are necessary.

Designing Website

This is the progress of designing and building a website for the film for advertisement purposes in order to give its publicity a boost well as showing that I'm making progress with this project.

The Home page is of course the main part that contains all the links to other pages of the website and other links that may connect to future pages on other public sites such as Facebook and Twitter if the procedure is beneficial to showcasing this film.

The Film page is of course "exactly what it says on the tin." This will be the page where the film will be placed and shown on the website. May include a brief paragraph of a synopsis explaining the story and theme of the film but not to give too much away.

The Gallery page will show a series of images associated with the film, including screenshots of the finished movie and other promotional images. 

The About Us page will be where photos of those who were involved in the production of the film will be shown and a brief biography about each individual as well as links that connect to other pages where people can view their showreels and other works.

Production - Character Development - Little Girl

Throughout the past year at uni, I have been attempting to improve my skills in modelling, texturing and rigging. The main character that I intend to use in the final film piece is actually a little girl that I have modeled sometime ago in Maya. As I previously stated, I decided to use stylized animation rather than a live action character, as with the environment I intend to border on realism as this film is set in a non-fiction sort of time.

Built from references of sketches for character, I built a simple structure of a little girl, needs a bit of clean up obviously in certain areas but will not worry too much about it as I'll be modeling a dress for her.

Near completion with model and a few early CV curves intended for hair follicles. May need to work on hairstyle though.

Of course every character should have a way to express emotions, mainly body language and facial expressions. In order to achieve changing the character's face to a new type of expression, I produced a set of blendshapes by duplicating the head a certain amount of times and rearranged a number of vertices to slightly different positions to alter the shape of the character's face, one for each type of facial expression.

Created a rig and several constraints for the "skeleton" part of the character. Had to assign a smooth bind of the mesh to the rig and then used the "paint skin weights" tool to fix certain areas around the joints so the skin would move and change shape appropriately whenever a joint is used. Refined the CV Curves for hair and applied a nhair node to the head mesh. Have also applied locators and aim constraints to eyes, ready to be animated.

Applied a ncloth node to the skirt and adjusted the dynamic properties of the "cloth material" to imitate a particular type of cloth. And added a passive collider node to the whole character mesh so that the cloth would collide with her legs when she walks or moves so that it would react like real-life fabric.

Attempted to add a type of material shader to the character that would give it the look of human skin. Applied a "misss_fast_skin_maya" shader and adjusted the controls as well as assigning a texture map that I produced in Photoshop to the diffuse colour and epidermal scatter colour. Had to experiment with the controls before settling on the desired look.

Rendered shot of the eyebrow, using a grass paint effect mode.

Rendered shot with experimental directional lighting effect, ray trace shadows and global illumination modes are used. 

Rendered shot with motion blur mode activated.

Using Renderfarm

I have made plans to use the Renderfarm for this project as one single laptop alone can not produce up to 500 frames of complex CGI within the time periods, I have rendered one of the shots of St Paul’s Cathedral that I’m using for the final version of the film (see images below.) A few of the the renderings have failed several times due to technical errors and missing files but overall I’ve eventually managed to make good progress with the rendered scenes.

St Paul's Cathedral, as you can see more detail needs to be added and tweaks of lighting/global illumination are in order.

Marketing - How Others Have Achieved It

As part of the assessment, I have looked into how other Animators/Modellers have marketed and advertised their work. I have focused on finding Student work and films that have proved to be a success with both the final film and the methods used in advertising through social networks and websites.


Polished Off

http://www.polishedoff.blogspot.co.uk/

This was a great example of student work from Ravensbourne. Had the pleasure of viewing the film and it was hilarious and well made. How they made use of a blog to showcase the work that went into producing the film is well structured and easy to show people the progress. Also a good way to send people updates of the work to attract them more.

Meet Buck

Website - http://steakollective.net/
Video - http://vimeo.com/17535548

Meet Buck does have its own website but it's structure is slightly different and some of the information is irrelevant to the actual showing of the film piece. Also it lacks a social networking presence, it is not informative enough and it does not introduce the film directly.

Going Down

http://www.goingdownfilm.co.uk/

Video

This is yet another good example of student work. The film has its own website, well structured and informative and there is a presence of social networking, hence having their own Facebook page which is shown in the image below.

Throughout research, I have learnt that having an online presence is vitally important in marketing and showcasing work. People who may view videos may wish to find out more information connected to it such as the making of said film and how to contact the producers directly.

Degree Show - Individual Planning

For the purpose of marketing, I have looked into a series of ways to get my film shown to people. All tools shown below will assist in advertising my work for the Degree Show. I intend to make sure that people know about my film before or after the degree show has commenced so I have planned a few assets that I want to create in order to achieve this.

Below are a few festivals that I have looked at that may be beneficial in getting my film shown to a wide range of people.

London International Animation Festival - http://www.liaf.org.uk/

Encounters Festival - http://www.encounters-festival.org.uk/

The Citrus Cel Animation Festival - http://citruscel.com/

The British Animation Film Festival - http://www.thefilmfestivalguild.com/#!british-animation-film-festival/cav0

Also another main goal is to send my work to different companies so they can see what I can do and if they approve to a certain quality of the film, contact details and other information will of course be included for them to get into contact with me. Below are some of the potential companies that I shall attempt to send my work to:

• Double Negative - http://www.dneg.com/
• Cinesite - http://www.cinesite.com/
• Framestore - http://www.framestore.com/
• Sony Pictures Animation - http://www.sonypicturesanimation.com/
• DreamWorks Animation SKG - http://www.dreamworksanimation.com/
• Tiger Aspect - http://www.tigeraspect.co.uk/

A wide range of platforms have to be planned when the progress of advertising and marketing my film is in order. Below are some of the tolls that I have been using.

Website – http://michaeljhines00.wix.com/postwarchildpage - this is the link to the website I have created for the film. A website is a great way to get work uploaded onto the Internet and can be sent to everyone online that I want to try and get involved. I also have links to my own individual website, personal blogs and to my Facebook page.

YouTube/Vimeo – Been using my own account on YouTube for several years so this would be beneficial in uploading videos that I create and add links of them to any of my sites or even send the links to them directly to employers of great potential.

Facebook Page – A Facebook page will be created in order to post updates of renders, concepts and posters to keep viewers interested.

I’ve been researching into several methods that can be beneficial for my plans. For the End of Year Degree Show, I plan to have the following:

• Videos of work revealing breakdown stages of shot and making of the video.
• Final version of film playing on a loop.
• Website with downloadable content.
• Business cards, posters and leaflets.
• YouTube Channel (Already have one but others can be appropriately made for other videos.)
• Planning to have a Facebook page for promotional purposes to keep viewers who follow updated on what is being done and how it is being done.

I believe that these tools will prove to be useful in getting my film and showcases of my work noticed and to get my products to the appropriate target market. I want this film to be viewed and appealed by anyone but I wish to make sure that it sells exactly what I am capable of doing.

Individual Website Marketing

The image below is from the About page of my individual website, this page shall also include a link to my blog where you can find out more info.

A brief introduction about me and the type of work I do has been written:

'I am the creator of Post-War Child.  I have been in modelling for approximately 4 years now and. My main goal is to go into Character Animation, Modelling or Character Design, I’m up for any kind of challenge. Please view my blog for more information.'

Also I intend to enter my work into a few competitions in order to advertise myself more and secure a better chance of finding employment relevant to my skills.

My Own Employability & Advertising

I have done a bit of research into ways to advertise my profession through video streaming sites as well as my own website. You can see a link to my official blog below where I can show viewers some of the works that I’ve been doing in my time and several links to my individual projects from uni. This is an effiecient way to list my skills as well as showing stages of development of my work and the qualities/techniques I have learnt while producing them.

http://michaeljhines.blogspot.co.uk/

Below is a video of my current showreel, which is another good way to send companies a brief look at some of my work. As you may see, I have attempted to show a variety of work to advertise several different abilities to model, produce visual effects and composite using different methods and software programs.

I have developed an official blog and used my showreel in order to advertise my abilities and the kind of work I specialize in. When I have completely finished the course at Ravensbourne, I will have possessed more experience and be at a sufficient level to work in any one of the mentioned fields of work such as a modeller, character designer or animator.

Aside from having several blogs, a website and YouTube channel, I have discovered that there are several other ways of getting my work noticed. I would like to try and get my work shown in print more such as in magazines and leaflets. Through research, 3D World Magazine and 3D Artist are of two several ways of getting my work out more as they publish works from people who specialize in that field and they even do pages on students.

3D World Magazine - http://www.3dworldmag.com/

3D Artist - http://www.3dartistonline.com/

Quality Control

Recently received a lecture from Mike Davidson on the subject of quality control. Below are some notes that I have taken from the lecture and from several documents linked with the subject. 

Notes on Picture Quality:

• Picture must be free of grain, excessive noise, obstructions, markings, excessive flare, lens dirt and objects of digital compression.
• Movement involved in picture must give rise to particular distortions or major changes in resolution.
• Picture must be free of unnecessary highlight compression and black crushing and visible artefacts must not be caused by hard clipping of highlights.
• Picture must be stable and continuous – no blips or jumps.
• No horizontal and vertical aliasing (i.e. jagged lines) should be noticeable.
• No digital processing that could result in visible contouring or noise.
• Picture has to be in 1080 lines, not 540 as this may cause the picture to appear odd and static.
• Picture can be in 1080i interlaced footage – Must be played in 25fps (frames per second) rate so that it can be suitable for playing on screens throughout the uni building.

This image shows the odd and even lines of a particular footage and shows how it should be processed with 1080 lines otherwise it would affect the quality.

The purpose of this image is to indicate the editors who take footage of films and cut them together and provides protection against any kind of cutting of the film.

This image is a chart that shows how our retinas respond to light, that is how our eyes pick up light and colour. I must aim to make the quality and colour of my film as good and balanced as possible.

Notes on Sound Quality

• Sound must not be recorded on severely high levels, can cause disruption and .
• Sound must recorded with efficient quality microphones appropriately placed with minimum background noise and no peak distortion.
• Stereo sound needs to be appropriately balance and free of phase differences, which could cause audible termination in mono.
• Sound peaks between -18db and -9db is suitable.
• Sound must be free of any analogue distortions and specious signals suchs as beeps, clicks, hums and noise.

Photosensitive Epilepsy:

Videos that are produce must not contain flickering or particular types of repetitive visual patterns as this may cause severe problems for viewers who have photosensitive epilepsy. Children and teenage people can be vulnerable to this.

Disclaimers and on-screen text warnings may only be used at the start of a programme in certain circumstances when the content to entirely integral and necessary to the theme of the programme and permission for said content has been cleared by the appropriate broadcaster and documented in writing.

Safe Captions

Both captions and credits in videos must be clear and legible and be positioned within the safe areas specified in the image above. For High Definition (HD) font sizes must be legible. Two primary caption safe areas are defined for material for transmission in the UK as defined in the images below.

14:9 material

4:3 material

Invitations to Degree Show

For the degree show, I have made attempts to email a few people at certain companies to get them to agree to attend the show and see everyone’s work. This would be beneficial for me and for others in my class. Unfortunately no replies have been received at this time but will attempt to try again.

Below are a few people that I’ve attempted to contact and invite to the Degree Show.

• Melissa Taylor (VFX Executive Producer) – Double Negative.
• Anna Swift (Careers) – Framestore.

Poster Designs

For this project, I have designed posters for the promotion of the film, a few that are also being used for the film's website. I also intend to makes plans for printing and posting this poster designs and other updated ones around Ravensbourne.

The first design of the little girl standing against a background with St Paul's Cathedral in the distance.

Designing this posters with CGI elements from the project have really been one of the key moments because it will show people the type of style and theme used in the completed film. I plan to produce a few more updated ones for the Degree Show.

Personal Reflection

Throughout the course of this project, I have aimed to establish marketing for my film and my plans for advertising myself and my work.

I have scheduled all assets of this project using Google Calendar. This has really helped in planning deadlines for the production sides as well as keeping track of other stages. When it comes to the Degree Show, I will have to plan advertisements for my film and my other works through the use of videos and images as well attempting to enter into several competitions. An individual contract has also been posted to show a plan for the rest of this project and all key dates of when each stage of the project must be done by.

For the End of Year Degree Show, I have made attempts to contact and invite potential employers but have not received any replies at this moment in time. So I shall try to contact other companies by formulating another message with links to my website and work.

This project has given me an opportunity into looking at the methods of selling ideas or films as well as professionally advertising myself through a variety of online links and websites. The blogs that show my progress of development are complete but the websites still need more work and I intend to get them done long before the Degree Show.

I’ve learnt that there are other effective ways of getting myself and my work advertised other than online sites and links. I intend to get my work shown in magazines and brochures which I believe will help with the marketing and advertising side of my work.

On a final note, as I have worked individually on this project rather than working in a team or group, I still have yet to sustain organisation and efficient team work but I am on time for the project’s completion and will still to make better progress for all future works.

Two Shot Drafts

Here is the opening scene to the short, Shot001. I wanted to start off with a good establishing shot to show the location of the where the story takes place. Not much lighting and global illumination has been done yet but this is the main layout for the shot, using After Effects for some compositing and a slight depth of field. I shall be making more adjustments for the final render such as texturing and lighting but I think this is going to be a good start to the short film.

Below is a shot of the main character, Shot004. There are some tweaks that I have to do, notably the hair curves and the texturing as there is a few defects for this shot, but this has turned out quite well as a draft.