Work Experience - Evaluation

For my work placement I worked for Butch Auntie. While doing work for them I have had to take on new skills and approach projects with a different attitude, because for the first time, I'm not working on one of my own projects, I 'm working for someone else who has the task of providing content for other clients.
With that comes the need to communicate regularly, and as a result my email inbox has never been so full until now.

The work I have been producing I've not always been so happy with, but that's not to say the times been wasted. As I gradually discovered, it is usually almost impossible to create something right first time, let alone for someone else. We usually started with briefs that were very general at first, and from providing something within a day or two, we could then get feedback on what they like and dislike. This way of working was something that took a little getting used to.

I have been so used to taking the first week of any given assignment slowly, just getting ideas together and figuring out what I want from my own projects, that at the beginning of work experience I was quite panicky. Luckily this soon went away as I got into the swing of things. I think that was an important experience to take from this.

I have to say though, that most of the other difficulties encountered were mostly technical. I found myself making silly errors, which are usually only made when under pressure. Like in the last week of a project deadline. I think because of the way I have had to work to get things done I have been more prone to making mistakes. As a result I didn't always complete the project deadline in its entirety. I wasn't particularly happy with myself for this, but I guess I can learn from my mistakes.

I have been happy with most of the work I have produced, and I have learnt a great deal more on particle dynamics in Maya along the way. I think though the project I enjoyed the most has to have been the Jazz themed visual. I am particularly happy with what I produced considering I didn't use Maya and found it the least stressful project.

I am glad to have had this opportunity to experience work in the last 5 weeks of year two. I think I would have found doing another five week project a step backwards, so I think now I am ready to move forward into year three.

A Flock of Pixels

PS - Company history and profile is slightly delayed as I asked some questions directly to Pete to accompany the rest of the text, but haven't gotten a reply. I don't expect I'll get one now as I can assume he is very busy, so I will probably just post what I have some time tomorrow.

Work Experience - Begin Week Three

I've got something to post on work experience!
Before that, lets recap. I've done two weeks official work experience, plus whatever was done in the holidays. So far I've worked on two projects, however the first one I haven't blogged yet as I'm waiting for the go-ahead, so the second project is what I'm posting now.

So last Friday was the day of one of the events that I was making visuals for.
In this case it was a posh party with the theme of 1920s - 1930s New York Jazz / Cotton Club.

A blank J shaped wall in this venue was to have visuals projected onto it.

No music was involved in the making of the visuals as it was meant to be a kind of lighting and decor. Nothing too distracting. ie, no timing to fast beats etc.

So to answer the brief I created this visual, a minute in length, and loops.

Jazz City 01 from A Flock of Pixels on Vimeo.

The whole thing was done without Maya or any kind of 3D effects. A mixture of edited photos and other images were used within After Effects to create the shadows / silhouettes that cast over the cityscape at night. For those that look closely, you might find a few duplicate buildings, but knowing that it was going to be spread across three walls and only looked at every so often, I think I was able to get away with it!


Making of:

Before I started this I did some visual research on the themes.








This was a mock-up I did in Photoshop before I went ahead with the final video.


I did start constructing this in Maya, but came across a rather large problem with both the Maya Software and Mental Ray Renderer in Maya, and that is that they can't render shadows (depth map or raytraced) cast by flat planes correctly. Weird!
Basically I created a wall, then positioned a small card with the silhouette cut out just in front (exactly parallel), then created a spot light and aimed it from one side. I expected it to cast a distorted silhouette shadow, but alas, the shadow was undistorted although appearing larger. Thinking, "is this how the real world reacts?", I did a test with a real torch and a card and the shadow was indeed distorted on the wall (a bit pedantic but I had to make sure!). So there we have it. I was amazed that I couldn't find anything on this on the internet. Whether other 3D software or different renderer's have this same technical inaccuracy is another question entirely.)

At this point I decided to do the whole thing in After Effects, using lots of edited images.

Lastly, here is a video of the video projection at the event.




A Flock of Pixels

Work Experience - Update

Back again, with not much to say, but I've still been working on projects.
First of all I finished and handed in my most recient essay, I've also ploughed through the rest of the Maya tutorials and am now almost up to date. (I'll blog them later)
The last project I was working on as part of work experience has finished, so I'm sure that I will soon be albe to post my stuff for that soon. Another project was also briefed during the holidays. This is going to be projection for a jazz themed party. I think that event is this friday so its a tight deadline. That also means that some time after then I should (in theory) be able to post my work on this too.

(Too much text!!! :( )

A Flock of Pixels

Work Experience - First Week Over

The first week of week experience now over, but all the rest of the weeks are still to come. Its been a good week all in all. I've done three initial animation loops and a few other tests in Maya for the project that I and a few other people are working on. I assume we all will be getting some feedback over the weekend, although in the coming week I'm not going to be at a computer or with internet, and have said that I wont be able to do any work in that week.
I've practically finished my essay, which is good because all I have to be doing from now on are the Maya tasks and any projects for work experience... and relaxing over the holidays!!!

A Flock of Pixels

Work Experience

Had first meeting with Pete, who I shall be doing work experience for. He is associated with two companies as Head of Production and Art Director, namely Butch Auntie and Microchunk.
They deal with live event visuals and projections. He talked about the sort of projects that I would be working on. He showed some reference material so I know the style of work he will be requiring.

I will mostly be using Maya to create visuals to be processed in After Effects for various projections.

A Flock of Pixels