Showreel Proposal - Brooke Hayes

Looking into different aspects of the Animation Industry and how I have developed my personal skills in 2D and 3D animation and design, I have carefully thought about which area of the animation process I would like to specialise in. I have done a lot of research into character animation, background design, storyboarding, digital painting and 3D character animation and have personally worked on all of these aspects of the animation pipeline. Based around my own work I have come to the conclusion that I would like to base my showreel and also my long term career choice around 2D background design and 3D background modelling, whilst also experimenting with 2D character animation. Personally I feel that the strongest parts of both my 2D and 3D animations are the background designs and final images or models along with certain aspects of my animation principles. I can see myself being best suited for careers that focus on these skills, and so feel my showreel should present these skills to an employer. I enjoy creating worlds for the characters to interact with, and as I would like to develop my showreel around backgrounds I think it is best to have a form of animation within those scenes to make them more exciting and to show an employer how my scenes can work for an animation. Even though I would like to specialise in being a background designer and stylist, I have also come to realise that I have a love of taking characters and animating them to show their individual personalities and capturing their emotions on screen.

My inspiration for looking into background design was originally the background artwork for Warner Bros Looney Tunes and the 3D background models in Disney’s Tangled, these two companies have always inspired my work in some way. The clean lines and use of simple block colours used in the Looney Tunes backgrounds, are created in such a way that they are able to stand out without overwhelming the animation going on in the scene. I feel that this balance between animation and background design is very important; I would like to get this point across within my own scenes and make them visually appealing but not overpowering. With Tangled this interested me in 3D modelling because I love the smooth designs and thought that goes into every model, I am fascinated with the realism that can be achieved which would take a lot longer to duplicate in a 2D animation.

I possess extensive knowledge of how to use software such as Photoshop, Flash, and Autodesk Maya. I do prefer to work out my initial sketches on paper because it gives me more control over the lines; I also find it easier to add in smaller details using different coloured pencils rather than the tools on Photoshop. I will need these skills to help me to create my layouts to get the best possible flow from the design. My digital painting skills will help me to create realistic concept art to showcase my background designs before I paint out the final scene, I have an extensive range of painting styles that will give each background design its own personality. I have created a variety of character animations with bringing inanimate objects to life and developing their background story, to make them relatable and interesting to the audience. Using what I have already learnt from my Animation course so far I will make sure to add stimulating stories and characters to my background scenes.

In regards to hardware, I will need a computer capable of running software such as Flash and Autodesk Maya. This software needs to run efficiently because if it’s slow I will not be able to finish my work to a high standard, as my work flow will be affected. I am planning on creating all of my animation on the computer rather than drawing out the frames by hand because I want a clean almost cartoon feel to my animations, I believe this method will give me the design and quality that I am looking for. I will be making use of a graphics tablet to produce my showreel, as I feel more comfortable working this way and feel in doing so I can produce higher quality work. When thinking about making my 3D modelled backgrounds I need to make sure that I take lots of reference photos or if I am designing worlds from scratch I will create a library of reference images from existing movies or sketches based around real life objects and buildings. I will need to have a mouse to make these scenes in Maya because this is the best way for me to achieve an accurate representation of my initial designs and research quickly and efficiently.

During my showreel pre-production process I want to learn how to add in complex details to my 3D models, I shall do this by using another piece of 3D modelling software such as Z brush with my finished Maya designs. I only have experience using one piece of 3D modelling software which is Autodesk Maya. I would like to develop my knowledge within this field as I am not comfortable UV mapping and texturing my models; I feel that adding small details to my background models will make them look much more appealing to the viewer rather than adding low quality textures.

The plan for my showreel is to show a series of initial design ideas and developments to show that I clearly understand the process within the Animation Industry, finished pencil background design sheets and concept art pieces drawn in Photoshop. Also background artwork for those designs finished to animation standards. I shall develop a series of character animations, including a lip sync and different character studies such as a walk cycle for both human and animals, a weight study and character interaction scenes. These will be either placed over the top of some of my earlier shown background designs or I shall create new scenes that I will make especially for the short story animations. All of my animations will be in 2D on either Flash or Photoshop. Finally I will design and make 2 – 4 3D modelled backgrounds in Maya and developed in Z Brush. At the time of writing I do not have a thorough understanding of Z Brush, however I am currently learning to use it and by the time my showreel enters production I hope to be competent enough with it as to not detract from my productivity. I am aiming to have a showreel around 3 to 4 minutes, because that was the generally accepted running time from most companies. My target audience will be low to high budget animation studios, and so I will need to make sure that my showreel is to a high enough standard for what these studios expect. These standards are set by high end animation companies such as Pixar that lower budget companies may look to in order to gauge the standards they should expect from applicants. I am going export my showreel as a Quicktime video, so that I can upload it to a video sharing website so that it can be easily viewed by an employer, I can also link it through networking websites such as LinkedIn in order to gain additional exposure. I am still deciding on what resolution to put my showreel into, but to get the best possible quality without having too much rendering time I will look into having the video resolution as HDV 1080/DVCPRO HD720 and the image size as 1920x1080 or having the image size as 1080x720p.