SIDigital Animation
Industry Feedback
A collection of different research work done over the course of the unit.
This section includes research into my roles and sectors, and the companies I identified interest in.
Coffee & TV - Studio Visit [25/05/2023]
When we visited the Coffee & TV studio, I met a fair amount of animators and got some feedback on my Spring 2023 showreel. They thought it was interesting, but did have some words of advice on improving my skills. They spoke about how adding lighting and rendering to a sequence would make it more engaging with the audience, as it adds more to visual flavour and adds to the appeal.
They spoke about how interesting it is to cut on action, which allows for more energetic storytelling and feels the impact of the action while naturally transitioning between two shots. Specifically one example they gave was in reference to a punch. “If Person A punches Person B, they punch them in two shots. In the first shot, A gears up to punch B which provides anticipation for the leading action. Cut to Person B getting punched with overshoot and settle.”
QT in Animation - Script Reads
In finding communities for animation across various social media, I came across Queer Trans in Animation Discord group for members of the LGBTQIA+ societies in the Animation Industry. While there was a fair amount of animation discourse provided, the major source of engaging with industry and receiving feedback was from their Script Reads.
For my “Moments by Moments” script, I initially wrote the dramatic parts and the heightened emotional aspects. I received positive feedback and was encouraged to keep going. They were curious about the humorous parts with the hospitality subplot since the main story felt so heavy, they agreed the humour would break the tension and emphasised their interest in adding it. Afterwards, I fleshed out the hospitality subplot and the feedback I received was very positive.
Animation & VFX Union UK - November Social [01/11/2023]
At this event, I met Niki Kehoe, a Senior Harmony Rigger at Blink Industries. We had an engaging conversation about the work they had done at Blink. I was familiar with some of the company's projects (“Dead End: Paranormal Park” and the episode “Enkai” from “Kizazi Moto: Generation Fire"). We discussed the pipeline for ToonBoom since I am not familiar with the software.
I introduced my showreel to them. I often received criticism that my work is “janky” since the movement isn’t highly polished. So I used that
term when showing my work, and she made me aware that by saying that, I am highlighting the errors to the viewer. This leads to downplaying my work and highlighting issues with them instead of viewers having a judgement-free view of my work. She brought to my attention that a showreel compiles some of your best work that you’re proud of, and if I say “It’s janky.” it means I am not proud of the work I’ve done, which brings into question why it's even in the showreel to begin with. This was a way to recontextualise how I view my art from a perspective of Industry standard.
They told me the first 15 seconds are crucial. They would rather see a 30-40 second showreel of really incredible work than 2 minutes of middling work. The first 15 seconds are the strongest pieces, followed by “good” quality work, and conclude with a very good work: not necessarily as strong as the first fifteen seconds, but better than the middle.
Trojan Horse was a Unicorn (THU) Career Camp [09/11/2023]
I took part in the “Trojan Horse was a Unicorn” Fall Career Camp, where I had two animation industry persons give feedback on work I had done. I was unable to provide the work I was working on for the Portfolio Unit since I had just come out of a rough four weeks I was unable to develop my work for Weeks 4-8 due to personal and medical reasons. Instead I showed my Spring Showreel which featured my animation work done prior to the Portfolio Unit. For this Career Camp, I had two feedback sessions with two different people: Boyan Kazalov and Niki Antell.
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Portfolio Review and Feedback with Boyan Kazalov
Boyan Kazalov is a 2D Concept Artist and Illustrator for Games and Comics, currently a freelance artist in Bulgaria. Since his expertise surrounded 2D animation instead of 3D, we encountered a barrier on providing efficient feedback regarding my technical animation skills. Although a bit challenging, it was a really productive session regardless.
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We had a fair amount of conversation about the translation between 2D and 3D. He highlighted the importance of translating emotion through expressions. He showed me some Pixar 2D character expressions sheets and discussed how translating them to 3D improves the ability to exaggerate instead of live action reference footage.
We discussed my Spring Showreel. For my Moon Girl Audio Performance, he gave me a lot of advice on how my animation could improve. For when my character says “No!”, my line of action and body language could have improved while exaggerated even more: pushing up the shoulders to visually heighten the emotion. With my Lion Animation, he explained the Lion doesn’t have as much weight so that could be an improvement: this could be improved with squash and stretch to the Lion’s legs and pushing the poses beyond live action creature limitations.
He also discussed my Showreel and gave me advice on how to make it more engaging creatively: by perhaps adding effects at the beginning and stand out. He suggested I see showreels of other professionals in the companies I am interested in for inspiration.
Although there were some challenges in discussing the technical improvements necessary for my animation, he really did help me view my work in a new way.
1:1 Review and Development with Nikita Antell
Niki Antell is a VFX Recruiter at One of Us VFX Studio in London. She gave me a fair amount of advice on what recruiters like to see, how to make myself more accessible and engaging via LinkedIn, and developing my CV, Showreel and Cover Letters.
For my LinkedIn page, she suggested I provide more details on my role and the type of animation I plan to specialise in: which would be more cartoony and stylised animation. I should also provide more information about who I am and more links to my work so recruiters and other artists would be able to understand my personality and general attitude.
We spoke about engaging with company recruiters. I explained I hadn’t spoken to company recruiters due to intimidation and being worried about wasting recruiters time. Niki Antell expressed recruiters’ role is to engage with potential new talents, so engaging with them is actually helping myself and the company of relevance. By engaging with recruiters, they will remember conversations and put you in their talent base.
It’s also a way to find out if the company is suitable for me: even though I may enjoy their work, but the company’s conditions and what it can provide to artists may not be suitable for me, which is quite important to consider. By speaking to recruiters, when I apply for an available role and send a message to them “I’ve applied for this role! Can’t wait to hear back.” may highlight me in their mind so they will be aware and likely look for me amongst the sea of recruitment forms.
We moved on to CVs. I made a CV to apply for animation internships over the summer, so I showed her what I made. She complimented me on how easy to read it looked and how it gives her a summary of my experience. She suggested some improvements: hyperlinking my LinkedIn and Email so it makes it easier for the recruiter to find and contact me. Another improvement was with the experience levels I had for each software, whether it was beginner, intermediate or expert. I thought this was a really clear way to show my experience level with software so I added my experience levels with softwares prior to the unit to my Development Work page.
For my showreel, she was fairly pleased with it. One of Us focuses on VFX animation, so her eye was more directed to VFX rather than Character Performance, but she does have an eye for 3D so it was very helpful in identifying my skill level. She commented on the importance of adding quadrupedal animation since the versatility of an animator is a crucial skill, since animators unable to vary their types of animation are often not considered long-term for a company. She suggested I develop two separate showreels: one for cartoony and exaggerated animation, and another for more stylised content.
Overall, this discussion with Niki Antell was extremely productive for my professionalism as an artist, and understanding how to look at my work from a recruiter’s standpoint in order to make myself more hirable.
Ollie Trotman is a Senior Animator who worked at Sumo Digital Ltd, Framestore, and MPC. He was previously my mentor for the Animation Industry Module when I chose Character Performance as my specialism. He was really amazing and the feedback he gave was very quality and consistently helped my animation improve. So I decided to reach out to him. ​
I first contacted him through LinkedIn, where I showed him my final work for the previous year and thanked him for his time. He provided some really quality feedback as seen on the left. I next spoke to him at an animation event where he gave a presentation of his animation journey from the early days of Maya and 3D animation to when he is now. I spoke to him a bit more about my Blender work and developing workflows around it.
I did send him my Development Work during the Portfolio Unit for review, however due to technical difficulties and his busy schedule at Sumo Digitial, he was unable to provide me feedback. He did apologise for not getting back to me, but I knew Industry schedules are tight and demand a lot from their artists. While I did not end up recieving mentoring or feedback on my work from him, I do think it is important to acknowledge my effort in reaching out to him and trying to improve my communication skills and my means of engaging with
industry artists. I found additional means of feedback (as seen on the other tabs on this page) to make up for this.
Bring Your Own Animation, Siggraph London [23/01/2024]
At this event, I got feedback from Kieran Jordan, a Key Animator at MPC Film. While he focuses more on realistic animation rather than stylised/cartoony animation. Regardless he gave me a lot of useful criticism on my “The Eternal Question” animation, which you can see in my video below. In the second video below, I fixed my animation based on the feedback recieved. If you would like to see the SyncSketch link, click here!
Bring Your Own Animation, Siggraph London [19/03/2024]
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Since I received feedback on my Maya test for the Bring Your Own Animation event in January, but not for my Blender animation, I decided to go back in March for a second round of feedback. At the event, I received feedback from Szilard Hadobas (a 3D Animator at ILM); who saw my animation and then my reference. He noted an issue I didn't realise which was that I was focusing on the arm instead of the body of the animation. He enjoyed my facial animation of my character, but had certain critiques, which I have noted below.
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The neck is an issue. It looks like it’s alive and moving on its own, which it should not be.
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Neck normally moves based on head movement, it doesn’t not move the head. You have to force your neck for it to significantly move.
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Both hands are feeling IK-ish. The hands don’t cause the shoulders to move at all, and the hand/arm movement should move the shoulder.
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Add movement to the bottom of the spine. Especially the static movement of the “uhhhh bacon omelette, Belgian waffles” is not good. Feels like the bottom of the spine isn't moving at all unlike the reference
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Frame 36 of Animation Syncsketch
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Red - Linear.
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Green - autotangents
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Yellow - overshoot
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F12 - Mute all animation for body, and animate head only.
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Then animate the chest in response to the head (NOT THE NECK)
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Then go to arms (see F61) if you can hide the mesh of the arms, do it
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F133 - don’t see the black part of the mouth.
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Cheat by pushing the cheek into the mouth
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F133 - Highlight in eyes is off (F133 has been drawn over to reflect this)
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F86 - Fingers are not curled properly
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Saw reference
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F87 - Hand position is good, move paper up in the anomation
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First and last poses are the golden poses
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Don’t focus on the hand. Focus on the body. The body gives you the key poses.
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Green tick is the key poses for the body. Black ticks are what I interpreted as the key poses based on the hand.
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ACCESS VFX - Meet the Industry: Portfolio Review (3D Animation) [25/02/24]
On 21st Feb, I signed up for a Portfolio Review with ACCESS: VFX, which promotes diversity and inclusivity in the Animation (or specifically VFX) industry. I previous went to an event("End the Summer with XVFX") with a panel of BIPOC artists speaking of their experiences in the VFX industry as BIPOC artists. On 25th Feb, I recieved an email inviting me to a Portfolio Review session with various 3D industry animators.
I recieved feedback from Jeff Lopez at The Mill VFX (which is under Technicolor Studios, much like Mikros Animation) on my Spring 2023 ShowReel. He asked me to talk through each sequence I did, and I explained each one. It was really strange to speak through each shot since I hadn't done that before, but it was also exciting to do this since it felt similar to an interview process of my work.
SPRING 2023 SHOWREEL
My first Sequence (Character Performance Brief):
- The low camera angle looking up is quite awkward. It doesn't communicate the intention, so it may be better to revisit this.
- The joke of the coffin isn't clear either. This could be improved
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Overall Showreel Critique
- The final sequence should be at the front. Polish it a lot more so you can make it the best one.
- The side step should be one animation in three side views (front, 3/4, side), but still tweak it a lot more to really have the character shine.
- The Lion is least effective animation. Either tweak it some more or just remove it.
- Remove the previs stuff. Since I am a character animator, it would be better to focus on that section of animation.
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He also gave advice to remain persistent. It's rather challenging to get a job to penetrate the industry, but once you've gotten that first job then you're in the industry for good Highlight what makes you special, cause you have to sell yourself and stand out. He emphasised the use of reference in all our animations.
