Post With The Most 24/02/2013

This month's edition of the Ba Hons CG Arts & Animation Post With The Most has me licking my lips like a kid before the Pick 'n' Mix.  It's wall-to-wall eye candy in here!  I love my job sometimes; in what other occupation would it be considered normal to discuss with total seriousness how many eyes/mouths/tentacles is 'too many' when designing a monster or the technical challenge of making a penguin appear just 'a little more gay' or the cultural legacy of the vagina dentata and how it might relate to the design of the harpies from Dante's Inferno?  Honestly, February's PWTM quite closely resembles a family pack of Haribo, what with all the rainbow-coloured faux-naif critters (though its not without some welcome sour notes as injected by the likes of nightmarish insectoid typewriters and those scabrous bird girls!).  We've rubber chickens, wide-eyed eskimos, bespectacled 'dream-cleaners', a garrulous old lady whose false teeth have a life of their own, grumpy chefs, disapproving penguins,  Lithuanian trees, a freckle-faced heroine in over-sized boots armed with a frying pan... It's quite a list - and hardly exhaustive!

CGAA year one have, as of last Friday, completed their From Script to Screen project - a hugely challenging and multi-layered unit requiring them to first write their first original script for a one minute animated short, and then pre-produce it via storyboarding, character and environment design, sound design, animatics and Maya pre-visualisations.  I'll be sharing highlights from their From Script to Screen submission in the next edition of the PWTM - so until then, here's a sneak peek at year one's production drawings, storyboards and character designs.

Lucy Yelding - Gie

Megan Howett - Shelf Life

Sam Niemczyk - The Two Chefs Of Tonga Island

Shan Mason - Caspidia

Emily Clarkson - Roped In

Jake Bryant - The Interstellar Complex

 

George Hind - Dreaming Stars

Nadia Yadallee - Mini Cookie Cupcakes

CGAA Year 2 are knee-deep in their Adaptation unit - which sees them challenged to derive imaginative CGI responses from existing texts, materials or ideas.  Adaptation always marks a change of emphasis in the CGAA calendar, as students become more autonomous, more specialised, and work becomes more personal.  Risks are encouraged, as are creative, blended methodologies, as students seek to develop innovative approaches to the making of memorable cg assets, sets and experiences.  This year, the breadth and depth of student projects is exciting, encompassing everything from classic literature and Native American mythology to children's drawings and first person testimonials.  As per normal, all you need do is click on a student's name to visit their respective blogs for more information about their projects.  In the meantime, feast your eyes on this miscellany of works-in-progress...

Ernesta Baniulyte - Metamorphoses 

Adrián Alemany - The Other Gods

Nat Urwin - 'Winnie'

Tom Farrington - Phil O'Grimm, Vernon McCobble & Lenny Nightingale

Sammy Butler - 'Winter' from 'How Glooskap Caught The Summer' 

Chrissie Peters - 'Plop' from The Owl Who Was Afraid Of The Dark

Joey Ku - Donug, Beeba, Afay, Offie & De-Dak (& friends!)

 

The Final 5

Steven Payne - Making Plans For Nigel

Gabriel Burokas - Egle, The Queen Of Serpents

Urvashi Lele - How Krishna Got The Moon

Anita Gill - Calypso's Island (thumbnails)

Alice Druzga - 'Tiffany' from The Wee Free Men

Lydia Caplan - Twenty To Nine

In CGAA year 3, it's major project time.  Yes, the dissertation is done and dusted and now all effort and attention is being paid to the final push.  These are the projects the fat lady sings about, our third years' last hurrah before breaking orbit.  With projects ranging from child-friendly nocturnal moppets, hellish harpies and full-blown saga-centric fantasy to abstract worlds and projection mapping hocus-pocus it's another exciting crop of works-in-progress.

Sam Tremain & Domantas@ Bestia Designs - The Harpies (creature design)

Max Rogers - Eskimo Boy (character design)

Molly Bolder - The Dream Cleaners (Character design)

Andriana Laskari & Dayle Sanders @ Mango Mecury - Kinnaree

Hemmy's walk-cycle (wip)




Alex Zepherin - Anima character design & concept art

Lyn-Dae Stewart - Rhea Monroe (character design)

Ryan Leitao - Projection Mapping tests

Aidan Codd -  Inventions imagined by Jean-Marc Côté - Pre-viz

Jonathan Pearmain - The Old Kingdom (storyboard wip)

The New Designers people have released their 'Best of 2012' Showreel in which CGAA's exhibition stand makes a number of appearances - just watch those zoetropes spin!  This short film does capture the excitement of the event and it's continuing importance in terms of providing an established and highly-regarded platform for new design talent.

The Final Word...

"You are capable of more than you know.  Choose a goal that seems right for you and strive to be the best, however hard the path. Aim high.  Behave honorably.  Prepare to be alone at times, and to endure failure.  Persist!  The world needs all you can give." E. O. Wilson