New Animation Showreel

To This Day Project

I was recently involved in creating an animation for a project called To This Day. This was an anti bullying initiative from the Canadian Poet Shane Koyczan (who I saw at the Edinburgh Fringe last year- He was fantastic).
The brief was to anime a short section of one of his poems (To This Day) and then clips from various animators will be edited together. This was my first piece of animation for a while and my first piece of Machinima animation since 2008.
Below is the final video. My clip unfortunately got edited out, however my name is still in the credits and my animation can be viewed at this link.

Animation on Bad Robot Poetry

Bad Robot Poetry is an excellent blog on Internet and New Poetry. It is run by Catherine Woodward and I have an animation the incorporates poetry on the website.

This is what Catherine says about Bad Robot Poetry:
Bad Robot is a UK based blogzine which publishes Internet Poetry, short essays and features. Given that the internet has done for literature what the camera did for art, Bad Robot would like to encourage as many people as possible to create and engage with an avant garde art that incorporates the dominant media of the 21st Century. Comprised of, about and/or using the conventions of the internet, Internet Poetry is a relevant mode of poesis which truly engages with life in the contemporary ‘Western’ world.

My animation was created in Flash and the text is short and succinct. It is the first in a series of new media poetry experiments which follows on from my other Poetry work. This will incorporate a web comic which I am currently developing. More on this soon.


Please view the video over at Bad Robot Poetry.

 badrobotpoetry.wordpress.com/2012/10/29/never-knowing-a-video-poem-by-steven-fraser/

Medical Modelling – 4

The fourth and final set from this series. Here we see the interior of the brain and also the human intestines.

Medical Modelling – 3

A third set of medical images, created in Maya and Zbrush. I created both interior and exterior anatomy for a series of teaching modules. Below are three different screenshots from these teaching modules.

Medical Modelling – 2

A second set of medical images, created in Maya and Zbrush.

Medical Modelling – 1

These images were created using Maya and Zbrush and are part of the animated teaching modules I created in my old job in Medical Imaging. The models were created to teach children about anatomy.

Walking and Running – After Effects Test

As mentioned earlier I was due to have an animation screened at the Neon Digital Arts Festival in Dundee back in November. This screening did not happen, but I’ve uploaded the video here for people to view it. It is not a great piece of work and was just to test as I’ve been learning to use After Effects as an animation tool. This is a precursor to a longer (and hopefully better) animation I plan to start early 2012.

Disappointments

Unfortunately I’ve had a few disappointments over the past few weeks.
One major disappointment was that the animation that was due to be screened at the Neon Digital Arts Festival was cut from the programme at the last minute. I got an email the day before the screening to say that there was not enough time to screen it.
I was disappointed but can understand why they would want to screen an experimental piece. I personally think this animation would work better in a gallery rather than the big screen. Never the less it was still annoying considering they accepted the animation on the first hand.

The second disappointment was the fact that the Comic Book anthology Murky Depths has stopped publishing their anthology. I had a script accepted to this publication and it was waiting for an artist to complete it before publication. Murky Depths is a well respected anthology and having m work published in there would have been a major coup. I also enjoy reading it. So another missed opportunity, considering Wasted Magazine went into liquidation earlier this year and they were due to publish another 2 of my comics.

At the moment I have a script waiting for an artist at another publisher. They have had the script for about a year, so I’m keeping my fingers crossed.
These set backs happen and I’m getting use to it now. The work that was due to be printed in Wasted Magazine, has found its way as a webcomic at Somnambulations. I also plan to release my Murky Depths comics as webcomic, but more on this later – this is one of my new projects that I will blog about later.

Current Projects – Part 1

Project 1- After Effects Animation – Shadow Puppet

A few posts back I mentioned that I would list what I am currently working on and the projects I am either trying to get off the ground or about to begin. I’ve decided to separate this post into sections – one for each of my 3 new projects and a reminder of the projects that are still ongoing.


I’ve been learning to use the After Effects animation software. Instead of just following tutorials I decided to create a short film for the Neon Digital Arts Festival. This will be uploaded to my Youtube channel next week. I’ve also created some animated logos and titles – I’ll upload these later as well. Basically I’m trying to incorporate this to my work and use the character animation tools of the software. I’ve used Flash and Maya for several years now and it is time I expanded my horizons. I plan to complete a short character animation by early next year. The progress of which will be uploaded here.
A screen shot of the character design is below. After loads of sketches this is the design a came up with (the image was created in Adobe Illustrator and will be exported to After Effects). It is based on Indonesian Shadow Puppetry. In the New Year I will begin to Storyboard the animation and get started with the animation itself.

Cartoon Cinema

I’ve created a new interactive application to present my new Flash Animations. This is on my Portfolio website and shows 3 animations. The Dog walking, Dog Falling and the man throwing the ball. These were just animation tests, but I thought this was a good way to present them. I’m going to do some more Flash Animation over the up and coming months so I’m going to create more Cartoon Cinemas.
Please see my portfolio to view the cinema.

Animation Screening at Neon Digital Arts Festival

I am screening a short experimental animation as part of the Emerging Artists screening at the Neon Digital Arts Festival in Dundee. The screening is at 2pm on Saturday 12th November 2011 at the Dundee Backpackers – 71 High Street Dundee.
More info on the event here. Tickets are free but need to be booked in advance from here.

The animation is a very short experimental piece and it is called Walking and Running. I’ve been learning to use After Effects and the animation is the results of what I’ve been doing. I’ll post up the animation to my youtube channel after the screening. I’ll also post a link to this on my blog.

New Showreel - Winter 2011

I've just updated my showreel and uploaded it to Youtube.
It's about a minute less than my last one so I've taken a lot out edited a few clips and added some new stuff. The reel is viewable below. Eventually the link will be unusable when I upload anew showreel and take this one down. My plan is to update my showreel every 3 months. So an update should be due in January 2012.

Flash Animation - Throw Ball

Another Flash Animation, this one shows someone throwing a ball. Just an animation test, but I've added it to my Showreel and the Cartoon Cinema. The image below shows the drawings that make up the animation.

Flash Animation - Dog Walk

Been doing a lot of Flash Animation recently. It's been a while since I've done a four legged walk cycle so I thought I'd give it a go with a dog. The animation is on my showreel and is being presented as part of my Cartoon Cinema, which is on my Portfolio website. More on the Cartoon Cinema later. The image below shows the walk Cycle.

Flash Animation - Dog Fall

Now the I’ve pretty much wrapped up the live project, I’ve concentrated my attention on doing some Flash based animation (in my spare time I am mainly writing - I’ll blog about this later). The image below shows the sequence I’ve recently completed for a cartoon dog. It’s mainly just a practice but I think it looks good.
The final animation will likely make my portfolio.
The animation itself is short and I am about to complete a background for the sequence. I’ll post the final piece up here when I add to my portfolio and I also post up the another flash animations when I get around to finishing them.

Dare 2007- Part 3

In Part 2 I mentioned the problem I had with the other artist - but the team also had other problems. The characters I designed, modelled, textured and animated had to fit into an animation system one of the programmers was working on. He never finished this. So we had a game that involved daemons searching for a child, who the player was supposed to protect. The game itself had no daemons in it. The game didn’t work and looked terrible when compared to the other games in the competition. The games that tend to do well in Dare are casual games that are bright and colourful. Our game was a difficult, dark game that involved devils, an apocalypse and a child that could die. Not exactly cheerful.
At the end of the competition we had to present the game in Edinburgh to the general public- an event called Dare Protoplay – imagine a large room filled with games and young kids running around playing them- kinda like a trade show and a playground. This was actually fairly enjoyable, despite the fact no one understood the game, no one could work the FPS controls and the game was not finished. It would crash after about 5 minutes. Luckily most people had lost patience with the game by then. Not to mention after 10 weeks of working hard to get the finished the last thing I wanted to talk about was a game that wasn’t working.

Apart from these problems I believe that I completed a lot of great work and the team generally did get on and work very hard for the ten weeks. Never the less 4 years later and I don’t work in the games industry. But at least I can show some good work which I still stands up 4 years later and is still a major part of my portfolio. Some of the promotional images I created are below. The first image was taken by the organisers of Dare and partly used to promote Dare 2008. It was published in Edge Magazine and other publications. My association with Dare didn’t end there and I’ll post about this in the future. Never the less this years competition starts soon, but if I’m honest I’m not really aware of what’s been developed in the competition over the past few years.

Even though I was part of Dare To Be Digital 4 years ago I wanted to blog about it now. I feel my participation was wasted opportunity. Recently Dare was part of a channel 4 documentary. One of the industry experts in the documentary said (and I am paraphrasing here) “It’s unheard of a participant to apply themselves and not get a job in the games industry”. I disagree. I applied myself and even though I don’t work in the games industry (although I did after I left university), I still have a good body of work that allowed me to develop projects for Scottish Screen and Channel 4, not to mention the artwork I have exhibited recently.

Dare 2007- Part 2

I spent the first 5 weeks of Dare To Be Digital designing, creating and animating the characters in the game. I was then going to spend the final 4 weeks creating the game environment models and the last week cleaning up and tying up loose ends. However after 1 week the other artist had done nothing. His knowledge of 3D art and animation was minimal to say the least. He also wouldn’t ask for help and would not admit he didn’t know what he was doing. His major task was to model and texture a house. On the first day I ask him to design the house. He never did it and said he would model it without sketching and designing it first – this was his way of working. However, he did not have much modelling experience. When I asked him if it was going well – he always said yes and that he would have it ready in a few days. I gave him time to do this, even though we were behind schedule. Probably a bad move on my part but I didn’t want to boss him around. I just made the team know that we would have to scale the environment down, as he was taking too long on the house. This was how the first 5 weeks went on.
To cut the story short all the animation, art and promotional art in relation to the game was completed by myself. After 5 weeks I had enough, as a team we highlighted the problem to the organisers and they done nothing. As we only had 5 weeks left it was now my job to complete the art for the game on my own and leave the other artist to - pretty much do what he liked.

To put the problem in perspective the team that went on to win the competition and a BAFTA award had 3 artists. We had 1 – me. I don’t want to bad mouth the other artist but he had very little experience or knowledge and was a member of the team before I was – as mentioned in the previous post I joined the team only a week or so before the competition started. I joined Emergence Games in the understanding that, as the other artist had pitched the idea, he knew the game and had an idea of what he was doing. Turns out he showed the team a portfolio which had artwork that he never created. He joined the team on the backing of the folio and he hadn’t produced all the work in it. I had my work cut out. The organisers of the competition would do nothing as the artist has signed a contract for the 10 weeks and he was prepared to honour the contract.

In Part 3 I’ll talk about why the characters I created are hardly seen in the game.

Dare 2007- Part 1

In 2007 I took part in Dare to Be Digital. This is a Video Game design competition where teams of 5 students form a team to make a video game prototype over 10 weeks during the summer. The teams are made up of Artists and Programmers.
The competition is very prestigious and the reward for the winning teams is a BAFTA nomination.
In 2007 I was very lucky. I was in a team that put forward an application which was unsuccessful. I was then fortunate, as a member of my team knew another team with a successful application who were looking for an artist. I joined this team and we pitched an idea for a motorcycle racing game to a panel of industry experts. The pitch was unsuccessful and the team never got in. I thought my luck had run out- but it hadn’t.
Another team who did a successful pitch were looking for an artist. The team Leader in this team knew the team leader in my second unsuccessful team. So I ended up joining Emergence Games who were in Dare to Be Digital 2007 with the game Forgotten Souls (turns out it isn’t what you know but who you know).
Forgotten Souls was to be a First Person Survival Horror game for the PC. The concept of the game involved a post- apocalyptic world where a child had survived. The world was roaming with daemons who wanted to steal the child. The player had to protect the child by using different found objects (boxes, debris etc) to build up barriers and ward of the daemons.

I could write at length about the competition and the problems the team had. Unprepared, badly organised, lack of vision and basically not knowledgeable enough to make the game the team pitch to the panel.
As I joined the team late I expected the current artist (the team was made up of 2 artists, including myself, and 3 programmers) to have done some concept work – he hadn’t. We were behind schedule before the competition began. This was annoying as teams had to prepare before competition starts and this was a pre-emption of what was to happen during the competition.

In Part 2 I’ll talk about the development of the game and the problems myself and the had.

New Showreel

I've update my animation showreel. Added a few short pieces. I probably won’t have any new work to add for another couple of months so I thought I’d post it up here.