Well, it truly has been
a long time since I last updated the blog (May to be exact) and the
reason is... I have just been so god d#@$ busy, which is most definitely a good thing, but I'm now starting to feel pretty burnt out and I am just
looking forward to a well earned rest.
After the “Marty Goes
to Hollywood” project that I worked on back in March/April
(which, FYI, is still in post-production owing to some funding problems
but is now scheduled to be released this year) I continued to look for
work in the field of animation, but also to find work just simply to
pay the bills. In June 2014, I was offered the position of 'Customer
Service Advisor' at a call centre named Response in Glasgow, working
primarily on their Student Loans campaign.
In addition to this, I
also picked up some freelance work creating four separate adverts for a company named “Freetise.” I worked on these adverts in my
spare time, whilst also working at full-time at Response which was, as you can
imagine, very draining.
The Freetise website can be found here.
The first advert that I
created was for the Business section of Freetise, and I worked on this from July to
September. This advert took quite a lot of hard work to complete, mainly
because I needed to come home after nine hours at work and continue
working tirelessly on it. This process lasted for roughly 5 weeks
until the animation was finally finished.
"Erik" the main character of the ad, perfectly conveys how I felt at the time.
As I prepared to start
work on the Business ad, I was contacted by “Smudge Digital”, who
I had collaborated with previously during the “Marty Goes to
Hollywood” project. The women at Smudge wanted me to join with
them, full-time, on a temporary basis to work on “Deep Roots - The
Bloody Boyds” as part of “Homecoming Scotland 2014.” This would involve creating a nine minute animation about the Boyd family, in a team of three animators.
This opportunity left
me with a very tough decision, as it would mean quitting my job at
Response, which had taken me several months to find in the first
place. I even considered at one point trying to continue working at
Response, whilst working for Smudge and also trying to finish the
Freetise work, which would have been absolute insanity. It was also
in the back of my mind that I would need to return to the jobcentre
after this temporary work was completed, an idea that I loathed.
Ultimately, I decided
that it was in my best interest to leave Response in October, and to
follow my heart. The majority of my group in work were eventually let
go around a fortnight after I left, a few days before their
probationary period ended. This leads me to believe that I probably
would have been let go too. In retrospect, I made the absolute right
choice, rather than now sitting full of horrible regret.
After working my weeks
notice and leaving Response, I had a week or so before the Deep Roots
project began. In this period of down time, I joined Smudge to take
part in the 48 hour film project
(http://www.48hourfilm.com/en/glasgow/) during which our team of
seven animators, including myself, created a five minute movie, using
Autodesk Maya. During this project we were given the required
elements:
Character: Dusty
Beaumont, Retired Entertainer
Prop: an empty jar
Line: “It's never
done that before” or “it has never done that before”
We were then given the
genre 'Film Noir' before setting to work on our project, wherin most
of us stayed awake for around 40 hours. In the end, because of high
rendering times, we didn't manage to make the final deadline for the
project, but we were all insanely proud of the work we managed to
produce, and hope to enter it in another contest in the near future.
So after having
recovered from the exhausting 48 hour film, the Deep Roots project
finally started a couple of days later. During this project, I was in
charge of animating the character William Boyd, along with several
other minor characters such as the maid, executioner, numerous
soldiers and guards. This animation was done completely in
silhouette, which I found very interesting as it was something that I
had never done before. The backgrounds, on the other hand, were
created by others at Smudge, which really freed me up to focus purely
on the character animation itself.
During the time I was
working on the Deep Roots project, I also managed to complete the
Property animation for Freetise.
With the Deep Roots
project completed by early November, I was once again free to work on
the remaining two adverts for Freetise. I commenced work on the
General ad in early November and completed it by around the end of
the month.
The Deep Roots project was finally shown to the public, projected onto the walls of Dean Castle in Kilmarnock as the sun set. It was a truly beautiful, and also immensely proud moment for me, seeing my name projected in six foot lettering was fantastic!
The Deep Roots Project, projected onto Dean Castle. Epic moment!
I began work on the Auto ad straight away, without even a
break in-between which I would usually allow myself. I managed to get
the Auto ad completed and sent to Freetise a few days before
Christmas, giving me some much needed rest.
A still from the General ad.
In addition to the
Freetise work that I completed in December, I also created a test
animation for a company called “Catchup News Ltd” who contacted
me to say that they might have work to offer me further down the
line. Freetise also gave me hope of future work, that they will
require “early in 2015.”
For now, I have snared
yet another call centre job at Webhelp UK in Glasgow, working on
their Sky campaign, which started on 5th Jan 2015. For
now, I will be taking a bit of a break from animation whilst I
recharge my batteries. I will be using this time to update my website
with more recent work, and maybe work on a personal project, perhaps
even create a new, updated showreel too.
