Due to the mock interviews with Aodhan happening, there were no defined classes on and we were also given the opportunity to try out the games the other groups made. except our own. I realised that our game didn’t have a main menu compared to most other games I played. One of the games I played was a 2d Pixel platformer called ‘Pebble’s pursuit’ where you play as a kitten made from stone who must traverse caves and villages to rebuild themselves with stones. I found the game enjoyable, as it even had a defined story to go along with it. Another I played was a stacking game that had 2 player support.

Today we stared going over dates for our lessons with the Teachers. My dates for the tutorials are 17h April and 1st of May. I also gave my Essay to Yuan to look over and give me advice for. One of the things she said was that my essay reads more like a story rather than a professional insight, with more descriptive and emotive inflections and I haven’t made my own opinion on Richard Williams’ legacy. I realise that my writing style is not suitable for an academic setting, and with this in mind I want to endeavour to research how an academic paper is written so I can apply it to my own essay.

We finally returned to the classroom after our Easter Break. Our teacher told us that we will be having mock interviews next week with Industry Professionals from Screen NI and other studios to prepare us for our placement. Aodhan gave us a tutorial on making a video in AFTER EFFECTS, but due to my laptop lacking an engine to run the program smoothly I had to go download it, with help from Andrew. After Lunch we went and did more group work, but Aodhan noted that some pupils went home after lunch and all members of my group didn’t stick around for 5 and also left a bit early. I tried out a bit of the project we were working on and found it very good so far, but the way the car bounced and spun when it collided with the wall was a bit unrealistic.

On Monday for our Game development we recieved more feedback on the progress of our work. We were told to have a working prototype of our game by the end of Easter and to work over Trello Board, and also to work on the asset list. On wednessday we looked at how to approach our essay or report. For one, we have to be original and ambitious with our work as originality is marked.

I already done a lengthy essay on Richard Williams, but it was nice to learn about how to structure my essay. It had to have a

• an introduction
• Section 1
• section 2
• optional section 3
• conclusion
• references

I also managed to make a very good start on my CV after Uni. I showed it to my sister who helped me make Tiny URLs of my links to portfolios and also

For Monday’s class we had a go in starting our own CV to get ready with our placement. I looked at differently designed CVs to try and design my own CV, only to find that many of the ones I had picked were placeholders. Rachel gave me some feedback on how to make my CV work, such as talking about what skills I have, and forwarded me to CVs that suited an Animation Generalist. Lisa said that my style was very bright and colourful, and wanted me to make a CV that showed off that style. Lisa also helped me put in what GSCEs and A-Levels I did in my CV. worked more on our game and showed a working prototype to the teacher.

Today in Wednesday’s class we looked at Gender in Animation and prominent female animators in history. In the 1930’s, women were largely unable to find work in animation roles, and mostly did colouring line work instead. Retta Scott was one for the first female animators, responsible for being the first female animator at Walt Disney Animation Studios to win screen credit as an animator.

Lillian Friedman Aster was another animator who started a commercial company and wasn’t hired gy any studio because back in her time the sex barrier hadn’t been broken. Lotter Reiniger invented the first split level plane camera, which was used on the adventures of Prince Achmed (1926). Eunice Macauley was the first femal animator to win an Academy award, and there is also a japanese animator named Kazuko Nakamura whose work is not well preserved in English.

Domee Shi is a more recent example who was the first female Director of a Pixar Film with Turning Red. However, Brenda Chapman directed Brave during its development back in 2008, but was replaced by Mark Andrews following disagreements with John Lasseter.

I focused more on modelling for my Monday group, making all sorts of Ramps and castles, learning I had to make them low poly to fir the theme of the game. I discovered a tool called Real Snow that puts snow on parts of selected faces to make them look they were part of a snowy environment.

Today we presented the work we’ve done between now and last week. Mike was sick, so Andrew took over for him to review our work with Matthew. They were both happy with the progress we’ve made. Zakk explained that he was trying to make the car feel good to drive and not like it’s from  Grand Theft Auto 4, and I showed off the animation and the models I had done for the project. The teachers gave me feedback on the work I did for them, and said that the trees I had made were low poly while the carriage looks to be high poly, and so they said I should try to keep it low poly. They also said to review each asset so they look aesthetically the same, and to limit the polygon count where applicable.

We also did work on rigging a robot’s legs and giving it IK controls as well.

In Wednesday’s class we looked at animated documentaries, many which I actually viewed last year. One of the documentaries was about a grandmother recounting her memories of a dog she used to have. The dog was usually shown as a whole model, but when the scens get more emotional, the dog becomes choppier.

We also looked at documentaries visualising Autism. One of them was a film called A is for Autism, by Tim Webb. Autism is a hard topic to explain, and expressionism and animation can be used to show it from someone else’s point of view.

We also saw trailers so docs such as Koyaanisqatsi, a very visual based documentary with some influence from the film maker that shows the world as it is, constantly moving, The Sparks brothers, which was similar to a talking head interview, and Drawing from memory, which the main character tells a story based on his memories of it, from his perspective, being meant to be expressionistic.

I also went to the RENDR Festival on Thursday and Friday, and had a lot of fun there. There were so many great talks and venues I went to that helped me learn about the animation Pipeline and how to be creative, like one from a guy who worked on Spider Man: Across the Spider Verse, who talked about how he tried to replicate artists pictures using Modelling and AI. One particular piece had him stumped because the artist drew a piece that didn’t follow the rules of reality enough.

Today I focused more on my group work in game development for today’s class. The teacher told us that we were falling behind because we were focusing too much on tests and should start actually making the game, so I pushed to finish texturing the models that I had created for the group, posting them on Github and sharing them on Onedrive.