MATT HOBSON

For the pitch to Nickelodeon I also made a small book (3"x5") which contained frames from the animatic and character designs (as suggested by Jared!). The cover was spray-painted and cut from heavy card - the title was cut out of black card, and bright orange showed through from behind. Unfortunately I finished it in the early hours of the day of the pitch, and I forgot to take any pictures! I left it with the creative director, and it was very well received, along with the rest of my pitch.

Some negative points they made were that the characters were a little too scary, and needed to be 'rounded off', and also that the names I'd picked for the characters weren't good. I'd chosen them at the last minute and they weren't intended to be final choices, but in hindsight I should have left them unnamed.

They really enjoyed the animatic and got me to play it a couple of times, on the whole I felt the pitch went well and gave me a big confidence boost.

I think that I’m good at doing, reflecting, and planning, but not always on the same project. It’s hard to find a balance, for example, between planning and doing sometimes. I can spend too much time planning or I can jump in and start working too soon, but on my last assignmant I think that I made a lot of progress in terms of finding the right balance. I made sure I allocated enough time for each stage of production and stuck to my schedule, even though it meant being less perfectionist than I would have liked.

Now that I’ve completed several assignments, I’ve realised that time spent tweaking models until they are perfect is actually wasted because it may not be seen in the final animation and it could cause you to miss your deadline. I think it’s important to be a perfectionist when it comes to the final outcome, and this may mean compromising individual stages of production –spending less time than I’d like on concept art and modelling, for example. I think that I’ve become a lot more objective towards work, identifying what is a necessary standard for each stage and focusing on the final outcome and the production process needed to achieve it by the deadline. I’m confident that my creative skills will develop through practice, so I’m really trying to improve my working practices so that I can cope in a professional environment. This will be essential if I’m to be a successful freelancer, as I will have to motivate myself and set accurate schedules for myself.

I’m confident working independently and I’ve found working in a group a big challenge. The group assignment I worked on last term taught me a lot about the problems that arise working in a group, and I look forward to giving it another try. I know that communication is of great importance, as is tight scheduling and clarity when it comes to indentifying what each persons individual role will be. I feel more confident because I’ve seen the problems that can arise, and I also learnt things about my own way of working which need to be changed in order to be a good member of a team.

I’ve discovered that in order to complete briefs on time and be a useful team member, I need a different attitude towards my work than the attitude that I have towards my personal work at home. When I work on personal projects with no deadline I can be a perfectionist and have total creative control, but this is not the case with doing art for a living. I feel quite comfortable now to ‘step back’ a little when working on industry-style briefs and concentrate on just giving the client what they want, or doing my job within the team. I feel it’s more important to concentrate on proffessional practices because I can always do my own projects on the side. I feel happy to have two attitudes towards work, one is ‘art for a living’ and another is ‘art for myself’.

I feel that my modelling and animation skills have increased significantly from last year, but I think my animation would be a lot better if my model’s rigs were more advanced. I know that I need to concentrate on rigging, and also UV mapping/texturing, as these are areas that I’ve paid less attention to. Now that I have completed a few projects I understand why certain practices are important, and why rigs need to be set up in a certain way to make animation smoother. The extra time spent rigging something properly is more than made up for at the animation stage.

I’m not confident with some of the more technical aspects or 3D animation, such as rigging, writing scripts and setting up shading networks. I think my strengths are design and directing but I would like to have a basic knowledge of the whole process, which I think I am gaining, slowly. I’ve found learning 3D modelling much easier than I expected, and I actually find it easier to develop concept designs in 3D rather than on paper, with only a few sheets of thumbnails drawn by hand.

I need to be less perfectionist towards concept design and modelling, but also a lot more methodical in my 3D work. I need to pay more attention to topography and rigging so that my animation looks smoother and more professional, models deforming in a more realistic way, for example. Now that I’ve seen how complex a 3D scene can become, I understand the importance of being methodical in my work to avoid problems later on in production. If I’m working in a team I don’t want to create problems for the next person in the pipeline. I would also like to pay more attention to texturing, as I’m confident in my 2D and Photoshop skills and it seems like a waste not to incorporate them into my models. So far my 2D skills have only really been demonstrated through concept drawings and background art because I haven’t tackled UV mapping, although this is one of my priorities for next term.

I chose to do this brief because it didn’t really interest me, but I felt it was similair to the kind of briefs I will be getting in the future, and I wanted to practice motivating myself and finding something interesting within the brief.
-Instead of just working in my own style I tried to meet what the brief wanted as closely as possible. It made me feel a little ‘detached’ from the project but because it was someone else’s brief I enjoyed it and I am satisfied with the outcome.
-I animated a walk cycle and lip-synced 2 characters which has increased my confidence as an animator.
-I worked in a style that is not my personal style which has increased my confidence as a concept artist.
-It was nessecary to record voices for the characters and organising voice actors and recording has given me experience of another part of the production process.
-Sticking to the schedule meant modelling the characters very quickly, and I was surprised by how little time was needed to produce models of an acceptable standard. I now understand the benefits of quick and efficient modelling.
-I tried to get away with using very basic rigs to save time, and found that it cost me more time later on at the animation stage. I know that I need to construct more complicated rigs in order to efficiently animate.