ROBEAR

I’m still just Sorting out this website so appologies if these early posts are a bit random.
I went to a talk given by Nick Donkin from Flying Gherkin.. He is a great stop motion animator who has been doing it for 20 years or so.. So he had a few interesting things to say. Nick has worked on several ads that were familiar to me, including the ‘Yo Go Gorilla’ and ‘Schmacko’ ads that were really big here in Sydney.
The things that really stuck with me were how important story was to him in everything he chose to do… It was pretty much – the most important thing.
He wondered why stop motion artists have been going with boring stories lately & that ‘Fantastic Mr Fox’ might be different. I guess it’s the same reason Pixar has done do well, because their stories are enjoyable.

I thought it was interesting when the issue of really smooth stop motion came up, he thought – why not just use a computer?!
So I thought that was a good point. It can look great when it’s a little rough.

I went along to the Sydney International Animation Festival, put on by the University of Technology Sydney. They put on a good show.. There was some pretty good stuff to see. $23 for the day, you could sit down check out the films and ask qns to animation representatives from the tv chanels such as nikelodeon. I wasn’t that happy with the selection of films though. I would have loved to see more of a selection from around the world. With so many great corporate and student films out there I hope they improve the selection over the coming years.

It only strengthened my resolve to set up an animation group,, somewhere people can get together in a comfortable place and show their stuff.. or just discuss what they are up to..ask for help… Generally somewhere to network etc really.
There is nothing like that available in Sydney as far ad I know.

I experienced working in a medium sized production company over the holidays. It was great. ZSpace are a medium sized production house near the Power House in the city that specialise in things like ads and promos on tv. In one week I managed to learn so much it’s ridiculous.
They were really helpful and friendly. I worked on an ad that i’m unfortunately not allowed to mention until it comes out in a couple of months.

It was similar to this shot taken from one of their promos for the ABC (C) Zspace. You’ll notice the helicopters moving around the actor.

zspace

I learned all about green screening and integrating plates to be composited into a 3D environment from within maya. I was asked to animate some objects that were flying around actors and because they were filmed infront of a green screen, the ‘plate’ could be brought into Maya and moved around. The green was keyed out so the objects could be positioned more precisely.. The layers were then given to the compositor so it looked nice