Chris Moran Portfolio Crit Visit At The Neighbourhood

I arranged a visit to the neighbourhood studio in manchester with Chris Moran who is a senior animator and designer there.

As i have had time to make a start on my current project i showed him a short section of my first scene that i have rendered to see what his opinion and advice for improvement was on this.


          

He said he liked the style and the atmosphere created, and said the boat could sail even slower perhaps to allow the viewer to take in the environment more.
He sugested i look at Eran Hilleli's between bears piece for environment inspiration as he liked the fog i tried creating in my scene and said i could amplify this even more to create a stylised feel.

This is the piece he suggested i look at and the style that has been used is very simpler to what i have had in mind for my animation. I like the shapes that he has used to create the elements in the piece as well and will consider using this kind of technique in my work (with regards to hills and objects). 




I then showed him my show reel to have a look at Mathew Lucas's work (who is also a designer at The Neighbourhood).
He showed me some examples of his work on Giphy which could be used as inspiration for my current project as well as for sprucing up my show reel "floating world" section of the video, as he explained that Lucas uses Cinema 4D to make his work and just looking at the various bits of detail and stylisation he has included in his pieces could be a good way for me to decide on how i can improve some of the 3D pieces i have made:


via GIPHY



via GIPHY

via GIPHY

My Show Reel first attempt that i showed him:


Show Reel - Rachel Fielding from rachel on Vimeo.

some of the feedback he gave me for my showreel:
The floating world shot could do with some added detail such as perhaps the trees swaying and potentially more lighting, which are easy touch ups. As we'll with regards to the fact that i have used ink in water for some parts of my animation (such as the bird flying out of the ink) i should use the ink shapes as a wipe screen transition for my next shot, as this would create more of an interesting flow to the piece.
He also mentioned perhaps trying rubber hose in after effects for animating the character animation for my silhouette animation.
I watched this short simple intro tutorial to using this plugin and i like the effect it has and how simple it seems to use and will defiantly try this:


He also said to perhaps ease the movement of the orchard pig when it lifts its head up to make it more realistic and less robotic, and mentioned that easy key framing could help this. And said that he liked the fact that i used the sound effect for the pig at this point.
He showed my this piece that the neighbourhood has made for the saucy fish co campaign, as an example of using the rubber hose and also to look more closely at taking care to add little details to movement that give personality and create realism.
The Saucy Fish Co. Frozen 30" from The Neighbourhood on Vimeo.