Month: May 2025

Research and Thought process:

Posted on by helou-s

My thoughts overall:

Feedback from lecturers and others is definitely essential from this point on, to understand where my work stands, I do feel like the cover letter needs a lot more work, but perhaps the moment I have an actual company of interest with the requirements that they specifically want available to me it might make it easier to write.

My CV and showreel on the other hand I feel quite confident about, There might be some minor issues with it, but it has the overall message I wanted to give and the relevant information for the position I chose of 2D/3D generalist is there.

Business card practice:

I had a go at trying to create a card, mostly as a test trial to see how I can keep my documents cohesive and within the same theme in different format. For this attempts I feel like I should try again, and maybe exclude the drawn face and keep it more simple.

it also looks like a police officers badge and I’m not trying to achieve that with my design.

Interview:

Although, I wasn’t able to properly do my test interview, I did feel it was practice to write down the potential questions I might have been asked, because I still feel very unconfident talking about my skills, my abilities and most importantly I struggle remembering my works. I believe doing mock interviews for myself and practicing throughout my summer, should definitely helps me, As well as keeping in mind some of the feedback I received during the mock interview, specially about asking questions about the company, which I find hard to think of questions on the spot.

This is an example of how I practiced:

 

Research and Thought process:

Posted on by helou-s

For my showreel, I wanted to make sure everything I had mentioned in my CV was included, I unfortunately couldn’t do a turn around of my 3D creature model, similarly to the previous years student and on top of that accessing it through my OneDrive was not possible either, it wouldn’t let me download it. Though for the internship I’m applying to because they took interest in me thanks to that model, I will be redoing the showreel once I have access to my external drive, as well as created a still portfolio to calmly show the model and its the textures, generally the effort I put into it.

But overall, In our case, as we don’t really have much experience most of our animation could be included. Although, for the longer animations like the lip-sync and weight lift, I only included the parts which I felt more confident looking at, But mostly the older animations were in the end and the most recent to the front. I also tried to blend the 2D ones with the 3D and not have them completely separated because I felt it better represented what I was aiming for in my cv, my capability and a fluidity in both.

For the music I kept it upbeat and tried to mimic the tempo of most of the animations so it would feel relevant and keep the viewers attention captured.

Research and Thought process:

Posted on by helou-s

When it came to the cover letter, I wasn’t sure how to go about it, I focused it on what I had initially practiced for the interviews we had done, which was on Cartoon Saloon, I was applying for a 2D animator position. I didn’t do it for the 2D/3D generalist position as the internship I was applying for is not local.

Notes that helped me:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Research on the studio:

I hadn’t known but this is the only local studio that we spoke of in class that I had unknowingly watched a movie from, The bread winner and was actually a movie I really liked because I felt happy that the the story brought to light an on going problem in real life, which I later learned they have done other animations that had the goal of bringing awareness on world issues, be it war or environmental and surrounding the subject of children like: There’s a monster in my kitchen.

Furthermore, what interested me into learning about that studio after I learned their name was the software they are using to achieve the look they have. What I  practice more than anything else that I’m able to do in the artistic field is drawing on paper, sketching, which is what intrigued me that they were able to achieve it in Wolf walker, the unfinished traditional look it had. It led me to look into TVPAINT. I did some research to see how the interface looked, how it is in general, the pens and what makes it so special. It was mind blowing how organic it looks and the options available, I haven’t tested it for myself so I can’t say for sure but it resembles TOONBOOM Harmony’s interface but with way more options and pens, as well as the organic feeling that I unfortunately like about procreate, which I wish to move on from and find a suitable alternative to continue practicing 2D animation.

Finally their stories, tales and relation to local folklore is mesmerising and I even preferred and found more interesting the movies that were made that way rather then the ones that weren’t. mainly due to how I keep myself inspired by folklore and mythology in most of my works.

What it should include:

I tried to think about mentioning all the skills I have, that are relative to the position I was thinking of, in this case I stayed with the hypothetical scenario of applying as a 2D animator. I made sure to mention works I felt were relevant to the position and relating them to their work. I made sure to mention key words like pipeline and animation fundamentals, etc. And stayed honest about the fact that I didn’t use TVPAINT but I am more than happy to learn a new skill.

Although I did failed to mention that I also have little to no experience in rigged 2D animation.

I still feel very unconfident about my cover letter and its content, because I wasn’t sure how to speak of myself.

Research and Thought process:

Posted on by helou-s

I initially started by looking at a few CVs I found interesting and saving them:

What I felt would make it a good CV, would be the balance between creativity and clarity, meaning I didn’t want an overwhelming collage of elements or being too distracting which might lead some companies to consider it unprofessional that I OVERLY express my creative side. On the other hand I didn’t want it to fall into simplicity too much either, because this is an artistic field and it would be a pity to not take advantage of the opportunity to express myself to future companies I apply to.

I kept it very general, staying with 2D and 3D Generalist because the internship in Greece I’m currently looking to apply at for this summer is very broad as to what they are looking for, they do 3D/2D characters which could be animated and patterns and motives that are leaning more towards the graphic design side. Consequently, I put everything in to show all of my skills specially that I don’t have anything other than the experience in University.

FONT:

 

 

I followed the font style suggested to us to create an interesting contrast and keep everything readable but within the theme.

OVER ALL DESIGN:

I wanted my design to continue to sustain me in other application specifically to stand out towards indie game companies, or even animation and to speak of my personality, meaning loving medieval everything, hence the crossed swords and the shield.

I also kept in mind what the lecturer had mentioned in class related to the drawn picture, I wanted it to be in my drawing style but still somewhat recognisable as me, again a balance between the artistic and professionalism.

Animations

Posted on by helou-s

Character(block out keyframes: Sophie/Line art and In betweens: Sasha/ colours: Sophie)

 

 

spider(done by Sasha)

spider(line art animation by Sasha/colours by Sophie)

snake (done by Sasha)

Reflection

Posted on by helou-s

Overall, this was an experience. I went into this assignment terrified of all the bad things that could happen in such a big project and was not disappointed by the foreshadowing I had done of what was to happen to our group. Although frustrating, this does happen in professional settings and having experienced it where we were on our own but still had lectures to guide us, is a great early preparation on what to expect in such a situation. However, it always felt like no matter the amount of work that had done there was still more ahead, and I did feel very overwhelmed a few times, my team and I did, but we did our best. I do wish I could redo this assignment; like rework my texturing, tweak the animations, be able to include way more of what we wanted in our game initially, experiment more with camera angles, depth of field, post processing and game mechanics we could have had. Feeling overwhelmed did make it harder to be motivated to work and every second is precious in this situation and that’s on my part, I should’ve have pushed through tough times and not fall behind, because it felt too rushed and imperfect in the end.

Unlike my other projects, even if this one doesn’t feel so successful, the fact that there are so many flaws makes me want to fix those mistakes and it motivates me to do better then what I have done in the time limit that I had. That also means I need to get back on my feet and manage my time better.

Finally, my teammates were probably the best even with the cards that we were dealt we pushed through, we had amazing communication and very helpful.

Drawing and modelling assets:

Posted on by helou-s

2D:
for the 2D assets it was a simple straight forward approach, I looked at references online and followed Sophies guide and asked for feedback to make sure I got the texture on the drawings right and that they of course blended in with the rest of her assets. I feel like mine are just ever so slightly saturated.

My 2D asset

My teammates 2D asset

3D:

Like the 2D I used references for the sizing and to get it right, I also had to keep in mind that it worked with out theme which required a lack of straight lines “wonky” or crooked, bent, etc. And make sure it blended in with my games design theme mate joey. We had a little struggle getting it right, I found what helped is to model it straight and then duplicate it to try different deformations, shared them to my group and we decided with votes which one we preferred.

On the other hand, texturing, although I thought I had prepared myself for it was full of trials and errors, a lot of models whose UV mapping got ruined when I was in the process of level design,  most of which were faces overlapping each other but I generally didn’t have much time left at that stage so I tried to work as effectively as possible, that unfortunately meant I couldn’t explore with textures as we did want to take time and draw the outlines like in 2D assets:

But it was very time consuming, and my teammate had a problem with her UV mapping that couldn’t be altered now.

I used UDIM workflow and had by category all of my assets spread apart onto the scene, because most of my models were variations of each other I created a smart material that had the basics of what I wanted my models to include, similar to 2D, not use height maps and look more like a 2D digital colouring, with some noise and specs of discoloration, it did the job although I feel like I could have done better. These smart materials would be copy pasted into the other props and the black mask would be changed to put the colours I wanted the models to be in.