Assessment Development and Reflection

Showreel

For my showreel, I looked at tips on how to create a showreel. I also looked at other artists’ showreels on YouTube. I looked at the information on the title cards, the type of music used for audio and the way their animation clips were edited together. Most title cards were very simple. They had a plain black background with white text and a logo on some. I didn’t have a logo, but I didn’t like simply having a plain black screen at the beginning of mine, so I added my text above one of my models at the beginning and end of my showreel to make it a little more personal. I used the same information for my title card as other artists by including my name, job role and contact information.

When receiving feedback on my showreel, I was told to rearrange some of my clips, so for my content, I included my best and most recent models/animations at the beginning to show my skills quickly to the hiring manager. I then included other models/animations that show off my skill set in the middle and some more recent work at the end. I included part of my cinematic short film from my Animation Strategies assessment 1 near the end as I still wanted to include it into my showreel, however, it doesn’t show my animation skills specifically. I wanted to keep my best animations close to the beginning as that may be the only part of my showreel a potential employer sees.

To show my 3D models, I used the turntable option in sketchfab, and screen recorded my assets using OBS. I also used OBS to record my audio from reddit and linked the sound in my showreel description on YouTube. I chose an audio that wasn’t too distracting and had a clear beat to make editing a little easier for me. I tired to edit my clips in time with the audio to make my showreel a more pleasant watch. Instead of exporting my animations from maya as a playblast, I was advised to render them using Maya Hardware 2.0 as it would be much quicker than an Arnold render, whilst being a better image than a playblast.

(112) 25 Tips to Create an Animation Demo Reel – YouTube

https://youtu.be/9hea3XkfFnE

https://youtu.be/5VizkI5hP4Y

https://youtu.be/xjmOuaunZtg

 

CV

I already had a CV from when I was applying for my current part time job. However, it was very out of date as I had not yet included my job, or any animation experience. I used some of the same information such as how I described myself and my school a level grades, but most of my CV had to be changed so I decided to start fresh. I used InDesign for my CV as I felt it would make it easier to add graphics and text and experiment with the layout. When looking at other animators’ CVs/resumes, most of them included wok experience, Qualifications, Technical/software skills, and soft skills. Some also included an ‘about me’ section. I made sure to add all of these to my CV to try and fit in as much information as I could about myself. One thing I took from my old CV was my school qualifications. I only included my A levels this time as I felt my GCSEs were no longer relevant.

I tired to keep the information I included as straight forward and to the point as possible. When receiving feedback on my CV, I was told to play around with my graphics and add boarders to break up my text, as the circles I had included were a little distracting and the shade of blue I used made it difficult to read the text. For my final draft, included a rectangle to separate my skills and qualifications from my main paragraphs and information, and using only one circle and centred it to the left of my screen. As blue if my favourite colour, I still wanted to use it for my graphics, so I used a lighter tint to make the text easier to read.

I was also told to make my job titles bold and place them about the dates, so it was more eye catching for the hiring manager, to make my titles consistent in size and to put my experience in chronological order from most – least recent and I had my experience arranged the other way. I also moved my job title and showreel link closer to my name to catch the attention of a potential employer.

Professional Animator Resume Examples | Film | LiveCareer

Hue Teo – Resume (artstation.com)

CV example – Christopher Carter

Original vs Final Layout

 

Cover Letter

When searching for a local studio to write to, Italic Pig was my first choice. I love watching their development of Paleo Pines and am excited to play their other games in development such as Mona Lisa and The Infinite Hotel. I couldn’t find a job listening specifically for what I wanted on the Italic Pig website, so I made up my own listing for this assessment using posts I found on indeed for similar jobs. On twitter, I found the name of the hiring manager at Italic Pig, Aimee Lingman, so I addressed my cover letter to her.

Through using our lecture slides and researching how to write a cover letter on websites such as indeed, I found out how to format my cover letter into three different paragraphs/sections. Firstly, I stated why I am applying and my interest in the studio itself. Secondly, I stated my experience and described myself a little. I kept this brief as I described myself and listed my experience on my CV. I then thanked the hiring manager for considering me. I tried to keep all of my points brief and specific as an employer most likely will not have time to read a cover letter longer than half a page.

How To Write an Animator Cover Letter (With Example) | Indeed.com

Sample Cover Letter for Animator Job Application (resume-now.com)

 

Self-Reflection – Assessment

I found the most difficult piece of work the cover letter, as I find it difficult selling myself to others and trying to convince potential employers to hire me. Showing my interest to the studio and their work made it a little easier for me to talk about myself as I wasn’t focusing on myself for the entire email. This is something I need to work on, especially as in the near future I will be applying to studios for placement.

Writing my CV made me more confident in my work as I was scared that I wouldn’t have enough experience to fill the page as someone who has never worked in a studio before. It made me realise how many skills I have obtained from doing various courses and from my jobs as a freelancer and working in hallmark. I definitely prefer the layout of my CV since changing the graphic as it is much easier to read now.

I was already familiar with premiere pro, therefore made creating my showreel a little easier as I didn’t have to learn how to use a new software. Timing my clips to the sound of the audio was more difficult than I thought it would be as some were an awkward length and couldn’t be cut or extended. Editing is something I enjoy; however, I feel I still have much to learn. I am hoping as the level of my work increases, I will gain much more knowledge of editing software’s such as premiere pro and what makes a good showreel.

 

Self-Reflection – Module

Over all, I am pleased with the work I have produced for this project. I now know to look for jobs on websites such as indeed and glassdoor, and studio websites themselves from completing this module. Also, even though interviews are still a scary thing for me, like they are for most people, I feel much more prepared for interviews and studio life after completing this module, as I now know my skill set and how to communicate with employers whilst being myself. It is important to be yourself during interviews as the employer already knows your skill set from everything I created in this assessment. In an interview, they are trying to get to know you as a person.

Assessment 1 Reflection Post

Overall, I am very proud of the work I have achieved this semester. I was able to use the 3D knowledge from last year and improve my skills in newer ways. I learned how to use MASH in Maya to create chain links and how to use cameras to film my shots in a level sequence in Unreal. I also used nodes to apply textures and create rain in Unreal, which was the most difficult part of this project in my opinion. I would like to practice using nodes more as the rain particles are one of my favourite things about my project.

If I were to start this assessment over again, I would give myself more time to film my shots as, even though I finished rendering earlier than I thought I would, if I had any trouble when rendering I feel as though I would have been very pushed for time. I would also make the whole ceiling planks into a tileable texture as it would have saved time when building my scene and written a short blog post weekly. Even though for this assessment there was a 2000-word limit, it would have been easier to go back and cut sentences out of my post than write the blog all at once.

Assessment 1 Development Post

Ideas

For this group project, we were tasked with creating a Cinematic Short Film. Out of the 10 themes we were given, the Ancient Temple had the most votes within my group. We came up with our own original idea of a Church/Cathedral that was built in our present but was destroyed in the future due to a natural disaster.

We made a list of assets and thought about our favourite styles for the assignment. We all agreed on a comic book style inspired by Telltale games such as The Walking Dead and The Wolf Among Us and Spiderman into the Spiderverse. We later started creating our assets based completely on Telltale rather than into the Spiderverse. As The Walking Dead is one of my favourite games, I was very familiar with this style.

We used a miro board for our shared ideas and references.

Ancient Temple, Online Whiteboard for Visual Collaboration (miro.com)

 

Block out

For my block out, I took inspiration from my churches in Greyabbey and St Anne’s Cathedral in Belfast. I added assets which we previously discussed such as an altar, first aid kits, bibles, and phones.

 

Modelling and Texturing Assets

Creating our block outs gave us a better idea of what assets we would need. We split them up so each person would have 4-6 assets, depending on the difficulty of the model. I chose to model the ceiling, a chandelier, a cross and a skull.

When modelling my assets, I kept in mind how I wanted my scene to look. I had originally thought about a tsunami destroying my temple; however, The Walking Dead, which was my main inspiration for my scene, doesn’t have any underwater scenes. I decided an earthquake would be the natural disaster that destroys my temple.

I created my crosses with cracks throughout the wooden planks so they could be displayed in a scene as if they were unharmed or destroyed in an earthquake. By using the multi-cut tool and bevelling the edges, I created one inspired by these references and added a gold ring for those who wanted a grander cathedral. To keep to the walking dead theme, I added a slight purple hue to the wood and used a blur scope filter to keep the textures quite flat. Previously, I did use a height map for more detailed wood and anchored green fill layer to them to give the illusion of moss growing in the cracks, however, it didn’t fit the theme or the other assets, so I chose to use a blur scope instead when adding the moss.

Learning Substance: Professional Tips and Tricks (80.lv)

The chandelier was quite time consuming as there were many angles involved to keep the circular shape of the tiers even. The most challenging part was using MASH to create the chain links used to hang the chandelier from the ceiling. I created a single chain link then used MASH to duplicate the link to my desired length and rotate every second link, so they look connected. I then created a smaller link to connect each tier to the one above.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lIqZKh0lWkw

As for texturing, I wanted to make the chandelier gold as the gold in the chandelier would go well with the ring in the cross. I felt the pure gold texture was too bright in substance painter, so I turned down the opacity of the layer and added a steel layer below the gold to make the gold look worn down. I added an emissive layer during texturing to get an idea of how the chandelier would look turned on if anyone wanted to add lights in their scene, but later hid they layer for exporting textures. I also made the material around the lights resemble glass. As glass looks different throughout The Walking Dead, sometimes being white and other times transparent, I added glass so I could later change my mind when applying my textures in Unreal Engine. For the broken chandelier, I used the same textures as the hanging chandelier, but added cracks to the glass to make it look like some of them hit the ground when they fell.

I had a little trouble with the ceiling in the beginning. I originally planned to bake the texture of the planks onto a plane in substance painter. However, I couldn’t achieve the level of detail I was looking for by doing this. I then decided to make single planks so I could extrude the tops of the broken planks as far as I wanted. If I could go back and do it again, I would bake the whole planks onto a plane and make a tilable texture as I feel it would have been a little easier to build in unreal engine.

I made the metal of these planks less reflective than the chandelier as there weren’t any shiny metallic materials in The Walking Dead. I kept to a blue shade for the metal too keep with the purple/blue colour palette many of us liked in The Walking Dead.

Original Planks

Final Planks

When texturing the structure of the ceiling, I found a MatFX Comic Book filter in substance which gave the Telltale black ink edges to my asset. I went back and applied it to my previous assets, but I ended up not using the filter on the ceiling planks or chandelier as they weren’t very noticeable fur to the thin mesh of the chandelier and dark hue of the planks.

I was familiar with the process of modelling a skull from semester 2 of last year as 2 of my assessments involved skulls. Because of this, I wanted to sculpt another one as I felt that since my first skull, my skills have improved a great deal. I used my first skull model as the base for this model and sculpted using blender. I also have a physical skull model that I used as a reference and research the different types of teeth as the teeth on my skull model wasn’t very accurate. I retopologized the skull and baked the high poly mesh onto the low poly mesh in substance painter to keep the grooves around the mouth.

I used my knowledge from last year when texturing by using the wax candle smart material for the base of the skull. I changed the base colour of the smart material to make it less saturated like the zombies in The Walking Dead. I originally added my own black ink lines as, after I imported my skull into unreal engine and used Cloe’s shader, I felt my skull needed more outlines around the eyes and teeth. However, after finding the MatFX Comic Book filter, I decided to use it instead.

 

Importing assets and Building scene in Unreal Engine 5

I had trouble with sizing when importing our assets to unreal engine. To make sure our assets were imported their true size, I had to tick convert scene unit before importing so my scene wasn’t too small for lighting later. I felt the height of the walls were a little short for my temple, so I scaled them to 1.5 rather than 2 and used two walls to make the total height 3. I also used one of the walls as a ceiling for my alcove section so I would have a place for the statues and pillars rather than have them in the main body of the temple.

I had to do a little bit of adjusting when everything was imported and textured as some assets were out of proportion, such as the doors. I imported a human model from Maya to help with making sure everything was to scale.

Texturing

I found that a few of the assets, including a couple of my own, were quite shiny due to the metallic map. By not connecting the blue port to the metallic port on the result node of the material, the assets look much flatter, like the textures in The Walking Dead. I also had to turn up the saturation on a couple of the textures as without the metallic map the colours were very desaturated. I also added decals such as moss on the walls to go with the rain I added later on in my scene, and dried blood with a bullet next to the skull lying beside a gun.

 

Shader

I used Cloe’s shader to outline our assets in case there were inconsistencies with the graphic lines in our textures. To apply it, downloaded Cloe’s post process file and imported it into my unreal content folder. I created a post process volume and under Array in the Post Process Materials drop down, added the shader material. To alter the look of the shader, I clicked on the PPI_OutlineShader and changed the thickness and threshold of the instance.

(107) [Unreal Engine] – How To Add Post Process Material – YouTube

 

Sky sphere and rain

For my sky sphere, I downloaded BP_GoodSky from the Unreal Engine marketplace, which allowed me to change the lighting and weather conditions to fit my scene. I wanted the mood of my scene to feel sad and lonely. I achieved this by using the midnight storm Sky Preset which has a blue sky with lightning, and I created my own rain my following a YouTube tutorial. I used the Niagara system UE4 to create the rain particles, increased their spawn rate, added velocity and downloaded a water splash png to create the illusion the rain was hitting the ground.

Lighting

For my lighting, I researched sad scenes in famous movie and found that low lighting with cool tones is the most popular way to convey a sad and distressing scene. The first lights I added were flickering lights in my chandelier. As the temple was destroyed, I knew it couldn’t be completely lit, however, as it was still connected to the ceiling, I wanted slight flickers to make the chandelier a focal point.

I found it difficult to light my scene as there was very little light streaming in from the direct light source. I added a PostProcessVolume and increased the exposure, so my shadows weren’t as intense. Cloe taught me how to also use a PostProcessVolume to add a blue hue to my scene to keep with the sad mood I was trying to convey. I wanted to show light streaming through the windows, however, having the light pointing away from the windows wasn’t noticeable. I then used 2 rectangular lights for each window and placed them facing towards the windows, so they looked like the source of light.

The corners where I had placed the skulls were still very dark after increasing the exposure. To give them a more natural light source, I added a point light over a white cone and placed them both on top of a candle. I originally tried to make the cones emissive by Connecting RGB to emissive colour, however, there wasn’t enough light coming from the candles that way. This was, I was able to have full control over how bright the candle was.

 

Cameras

I knew a little about cameras before this assignment as I did photography throughout Art a level. As an unreal camera has the same settings as a physical camera, I found them a little easier to navigate. I use a 30mm Prime f/1.4 lens on nearly all my cameras but reduced the max focal length for my 3rd shot so I could capture more of my surroundings along the ground. I enjoyed experimenting with cameras as photography is still something I enjoy doing in my spare time.

 

Shots

I found using level sequences enjoyable as they were similar to adding keyframes in maya. As the ground was the busiest place in my scene, I enjoyed experimenting with low level shots to emphasise the rubble and destruction of the temple. The ground is where the broken chandelier, rubble and cross lies due to the earthquake, but there are also skulls that tell their own story, so it is up to the interpretation of the viewer as to what the story is here.

 

Rendering

When doing my render tests, I had an issue with the rendered images. The first few pngs were completely black, then every image after was blank. This happened to a few more people in the course, including Cloe. She told me how to resolve the problem by first going to window, then levels, then changing the default streaming method from blueprint to always loaded. Then I had to make sure my shot was being filmed from my main level. None of these seemed to affect the pngs as when I did another render test, the images looked the same. After I changed to rendering as jpegs, the shot rendered as normal. For all my tests after this I used jpegs so I wouldn’t fall behind with my rendering.

After I did 5 render tests, I began rendering my shots as exr files. I turned on Anti-Aliasing to smooth jagged edges and increased the temporal sample count to 32, creating an even smoother image. I then added console variables and began rendering. Once the files were imported to After effects, I added a black solid layer to fade in and out of my scene. I also recorded 1 minute of rainfall audio from YouTube rather than importing music as I felt it kept to the mood of my film.

References throughout project