Annecy Animation Festival 2012

This year myself, 3 friends and my fiancé travelled to Annecy in France for their annual animation festival, which was fantastic! I cannot recommend it more to animation lovers and animators pursuing a career in animation!

From pouring rain to sweltering hot! It was like we never left Wales!

As poor students, we were only camping there, which meant we managed to get soaked and sunburnt in the same week (or day, even!) thanks to highly sporadic weather, but the place is beautiful and the work was fantastic.

Arrugas (Wrinkles)

Particular works of mention were the features; Arrugas (Wrinkles) a hauntingly touching film about growing old with Alzheimer's, Approved for Adoption about a Korean boy adopted into a Belgian family and the difficulties with fitting in, Zarafa a 2D film about an African boy traveling across Europe to save a baby giraffe and A Letter to Momo which is Production I.G.'s most recent feature about a girl and her mother learning to cope with the loss of their father and husband respectively (with added supernatural demons).

Hi-no-youjin (Combustible)

The shorts; Tram, a hilarious film about female sexual frustration, The People Who Never Stop a lovely film about the effects of the Japanese disaster last year, Le Jardin Enchanté a cute musical about a down-to-earth hippy and a tech-savvy guy who don't get along, Chinti, a sweet mixed-medium film about an ant who wants to visit the Taj Mahal, Father about a handful of children in different mediums who share their experiences with their fathers, Pythagasaurus a funny CG Aardman film about cavemen and their encounter with maths, Hi-no-youjin (Combustible) a beautifully detailed and ornate story about a brother and sister who are forced into social roles, Paso Doble a wonderfully animated sequence between a dancer and a bull and The Making of Longbird, a British 'making of' film documenting the restoration and remake of an old animation that turns into hilarious banter between a paper cut-out longbird with a Russian accent and it's creator... just to name a few!!

There were of course more films that we didn't even get to see and then countless CalArts and Irish screenings showing fantastic films throughout the years. It was a fantastic event. The only downsides, were, as students, the exclusivity of some of the events. The Making of Brave, Wreck-it-Ralph and the premiere of Paperman were either invite-only or so limited to seating that you had to be at the front of the queue to even get in. For the Making of Brave, we stood in a queue for 2 hours only to discover that there were only 30 tickets available for students, 22 of which were already reserved so at least 100 people were queueing for only 8 tickets!

The DIsney Booth!

Fortunately our day at the Disney booth at the Mifa building completely made up for our disappointments. We spent the whole day speaking with real Disney animators, concept artists, story artists and talent seekers. Their talks were fantastic and we got amazing one-on-one sessions with them afterwards to look at our portfolios. Unfortuantely I didn't have much to show but it was still an unmissable event and I'll never forget it! I'm going to try submitting my portfolio too so you never know!

A life drawing of me and my fiancé that filmmaker Jake Nelson did at the same time that I was drawing him! I clearly wasn't being as secretive as I thought

The whole experience was amazing, the food was great, the gorgeous book shops, the atmosphere and place, the films and the people! You never know who you might bump into: we shared a taxi to Annecy with the lovely Shelley Page from Dreamworks without realising it (unbelievable!) and Peter Lord from Aardman was on our flight back to Bristol--three seats in front of me!

Me and Pascal Campion!

My friend Bryony and I also bought art books by the incredible Pascal Campion who was doing a book signing at the festival. He did marvelous pen and ink drawings in our books and was such a lovely and charming guy to talk to. Hope I get to meet him again one day!

My Annecy swag!

Pascal's drawing of his family at a Caribbean beach!

Pascal's drawing of his family at a Caribbean beach!

My friends and I hope to go again next year, cannot wait! :D ... As long as we don't have to camp again, ha ha!

A Very Busy Year Indeed

Activity on this blog has been pretty slow lately, reason being I'm on my final year of University and I'm now at the point of making a 3+ minute animated film which all of my time and work is going into. I have another blog on this account where I upload all of my progress, so if you wish to follow my film "Acorns" do have a look.

Acorns - Production Blog for a Short Film by Gemma Roberts

As 2011 draws to a close, I'm very excited to get into the production of my film. I'm just finishing pre-production now, so designs and story are still being tweaked until they are final for about mid-January. I'm animating, colouring and compositing by myself with assistance from a composer and my housemate who does sound mixing for the post-production soundtrack side of things. It's a lot of work so I'm anxious, but still excited!

So yeah, don't expect a lot here, but do see my other blog for production updates!

Apart from that, I had a fab 21st Birthday seeing the Zelda 25th Anniversary Symphony in London... utterly fantastic performance and atmosphere, I have the recorded performance too from the special edition of Skyward Sword which is incredible, but only 8 tracks! It was a great night and I highly anticipate their return next year!

A week after I visited home to catch up with family after my Birthday and to see Tori Amos in Manchester who was stunning, not everyone's cup of tea, but an amazing singer and she did lots of classic songs including Precious Things which my sister did a fantastic music video of in college last Spring.

Then in November, I saw Lee Evans in Cardiff followed by Alter Bridge a week after, which were two more great nights. Lee Evans was hilarious and it was my first time seeing him so it was a great experience. And Alter Bridge were supported by Theory of a Deadman and Black Stone Cherry so that was amazing goes without saying.

Things settled down late November/December as work picked up. I was creating a detailed production bible for my first deadline which was far more work than I realised. It's a collection of my art showcasing what my film and characters would look like and contained my latest animatic, synopsis, schedule, budget, storyboard and other information that would be necessary to make my film. Basically it should be enough information about your film (visual + written) that if you were not able to make it, the bible could be passed to someone else to finish, so it has to be really thorough.

Fortunately I got everything prepared for the deadline after two weeks of non-stop work and then spent the next 3-4 days writing 4000 words for my dissertation first draft, which I so wanted to start in November but kept favouring other work instead. My dissertation is about the portrayal of men and masculinity in animation with examples to Tangled and Beauty and the Beast. It's based on an article by Susan Jeffords called The Curse of Masculinity which spoke about Disney's Beauty and the Beast and how the story was about focusing on the Beast instead of Belle by making him childish and selfish instead of sophisticated but not actually taking responsibility to change himself. All very interesting but I won't delve into it now!

Now I'm home for Christmas and New Year which has been lovely and flying past much too quickly! I've recently rediscovered a love of watercolour that I've been using to paint friends and family personalised Christmas cards. These are my paintings! :)

These are characters from my friend's films, excluding the direwolf 'Snow' and the Moshi Monster 'Zommer'!

These are for my family, the animals are originals (the bunnies and the daschund are based off pets) then there's Link and Zelda from 'Skyward Sword', Cloud from 'Kingdom Hearts', a dragon-esque 'My Little Pony' and a homage to James Hance's 'Wookie the Chew' crossover.

I'm using watercolour now for some of my film's concept art, which I can't wait to upload and paint more of. I've done an expression sheet for my character Amber and she looks very cute coloured... it looks like it would make a sweet children's book, so I might see about putting it together if I ever have time!

I've so much to read at the moment too, I got lots of art books for Christmas... The Art of The Lion King (amazing! My Mum managed to find it on eBay), Harry Potter: Page to Screen (a massive, in-depth look behind the art of all 7-8 films), The Art of Kiki's Delivery Service, Watercolour Impressions of Nausicaä and then The Art of My Neighbour Totoro left over from my Birthday... they are the best inspiration I could ask for, I just hope I have time to read them all! My youngest sister got the art of Okami as well, which is the most luxuriously designed and presented book--utterly beautiful and may just have to get a copy myself! And on top of that, the Game of Thrones book series, so I'm set for the next year!

All in all it's been the best Christmas in a long time, it's been great to be home and I'm not really ready to go back to Uni yet! Hopefully I can get myself back into a working frame of mind soon!

Until then, have a great new year! Ta ta for now! :)
Love Gem xoxox

Alex's Birthday "Link" Drawing

Below is a drawing I did for my boyfriend for his Birthday... got to see The Adventures of Tin-Tin: The Secret of the Unicorn in celebration tonight which was pretty cool--the animated transitions between sequences and storytelling/flashbacks in the film was fantastic. Still not too keen on the style, but I enjoyed the nod in the beginning to the original artist and style. It was very entertaining with some good laughs and action.

Tomorrow we are off to London to see The Legend of Zelda 25th Anniversary Symphony in celebration of my own Birthday (my boyfriend and I are one day and a year apart) which will be fantastic. It's going to be difficult to top this year's outing!

Anyway, here's the drawing of 'chibi' Link as he appears in Wind Waker playing an Ocarina in homage to the Ocarina of Time artwork, I thought it only appropriate and he liked it rather a lot. It's drawn with pen and colour pencils using reference. :3

How to Make a Scott Pilgrim "Plumtree" T-Shirt

Hi all, here's a little tutorial for a shirt I customised for my boyfriend, Alex, to cosplay Scott Pilgrim for a party. Below is a step-by-step of how to make a "Plumtree" T-shirt like the one Scott Pilgrim wears in the movie, Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World!

You'll need:

• 1x blank Yellow T-Shirt
• 1x sheet of sturdy A4 card that can be printed on
• A craft knife or scalpel
• A mat or thick card to protect surfaces from the knife
• Spray mount/spray adhesive
• Red spray paint (for fabric)
• Scrap newspaper to cover surfaces
  

I had most of the necessary equipment already, but the T-Shirt and red spray paint only cost £6 all together! Look in pound shops and cheap clothing places like Primark! Firstly, print off the Plumtree logo onto an A4 sheet of sturdy card. You can grab the image I used here courtesy of http://s18.photobucket.com/home/rpaterson

Once it's printed, use a craft knife and a mat or thick card to protect whatever surface you're using to carefully cut out each letter, removing the coloured letters and leaving the white card to create the stencil. This can also be done as a sticky stencil if you have the right materials, but this was all I had at the time!

Remember when cutting out to connect the inner sections of letters like "P" and "R" to the main stencil to make it easier. Or keep the bits you cut out to stick on the shirt later. When you're finished it should look like this:

Next, stick the stencil to your T-Shirt using adhesive spray on the back of it. Make sure it is securely stuck to the fabric, so that none of the spray paint will bleed through the lettering. Put some card or newspaper inside the shirt (beneath the stencil) so that the spray won't seep through to the back of the shirt.

Before you get spraying the paint around, cover nearby surfaces with some old newspaper to avoid ruining the carpet! Cover the rest of the T-Shirt too as the spray has a large radius!

Now you're ready to get started! Make sure you have a little practice spraying the paint on some scrap newspaper first to make sure it's not blotchy or dripping and to get a feel for spraying evenly. When you're confident enough, spray the shirt from several inches around and move quickly and evenly left and right to avoid blotchy coverage. Don't spray too thickly or the design might bleed through!

Slowly peel off the stencil and place to one side on some extra newspaper.

Ta-Dah! Not bad, though there is some bleed on the letter "P", which goes to show how careful you need to be to avoid messy mistakes like this! I didn't want to risk spraying the sleeves and collar red too, but you can give it a go yourself if you're up to it! Leave to dry and enjoy your new Scott Pilgrim shirt!

As a final note, depending on the spray paint you used, your design may come off in the wash, so definitely wash on low temperature between 15-30 degrees and don't mix with whites!

Enjoy! :3
Gemma xox

Abstract African Art

New art up on DeviantArt tonight!

An 18x24 Acrylic painting I did as a 'thank you' present for my Nan and Grandad, for all of their support during my Uni years. <3

They love South Africa and their culture and fab animals and art, so I painted this inspired by African colours, designs and creatures (and the land mass itself) for their living room.

It was great to go back to real paints again, though it looked pretty awful to begin with and took many layers of paint to get the colour and shapes right! Just goes to show that I should have planned it more! XD There's a load of gold paint on it too, which looks a lot better in person, but hopefully you get the gist!


Abstract Africa by *AmberDust on deviantART

Enjoy! :3
Gem xox

Anya's Ghost by Vera Brosgol

A couple of my Uni animation friends recommended this fantastic graphic novel to me by storyboard artist, Vera Brosgol. I enjoyed it so much I had to write a quick 'nutshell' review and spread the word! :)

Vera Brosgol captures an engaging story with realistic characters (even despite one of them being a ghost from 70 years ago!) in her brilliant graphic novel debut. It tells a modern story of a Russian girl trying to fit in with American culture in high school, get noticed by her crush, lose weight, get popular and of course avoid daily embarrassments to retain the remaining shreds of her dignity, but all that changes when she literally stumbles upon a ghost whose been waiting for a rescuer for 70 years. The ghost, Emily, has the ability to change Anya's life as well as be the friend she always wanted! However, when Anya gets what she wants, she starts to realise that appearances can be deceiving...

Anya's Ghost is a mature story that doesn't patronise or talk down to the reader, (like some teen books do!) and is entertaining for any age, but particularly teen girls, like Anya, who may identify by their current or past experiences. The artwork is carefully rendered in a simple, but very expressive way which relates you to Vera's lovely characters even more.

It's an utter page turner from beginning to end, and I remember savoring the last pages, taking everything in slowly in my attempt to make the book last longer! I didn't want it to end and sincerely hope Brosgol has a sequel in the works!

I highly recommend this to graphic novel lovers and teenage girls/young women everywhere!! If you need further convincing, the book is available on Amazon.co.uk for £7.61 (and for $13.59 on Amazon.com in America) and you can check out Vera's amazing art and style on her blog here:

Verabee.com

And of course it comes highly praised by critically acclaimed writers, Neil Gaiman and Scott McCloud... need I say more??

Enjoy! :)
Gem xox

Sunset Colour Studies

Here's a progression of a sunset outside my window yesterday, as a rough colour study. The first image took around 10 minutes in Photoshop and the following two took just over 5 minutes each to change colour, mood and make tweaks to the original painting.

I had to be very quick as the colours vanished in just a few minutes! Enjoy! :)
Gem xox

Final Film Idea 'Seedlings'

Hey all, (not neglecting the bloggin's today, hurrah!)
So, as previously mentioned, I've been racking my brains ALL summer trying to come up with an idea for my Final Film for the third year at University. This has proved unimaginably difficult as it's got to be a story that..

A. Has entertaining characters and story
B. Has personal meaning to me
C. Is actually FUN to do, otherwise I'm spending a year developing and animating (at 24 drawings per second!) something I don't even like!
D. Makes a statement
E. And (hopefully) displays my abilities as a character animator, designer and storyteller so I can get some kind of employment after Uni

So I've been really stressed out about this, though it's not like I haven't been coming up with ideas, the problem is coming up with the right idea.

After writing a couple of shorts that would work well as storybook animatic videos (but not my final film) I came up with a short animation idea about the creation of Earth, but from the perspective of twin creation students (or Gods-in-training). One (sister) is creative and passionate, while the other (brother) is wise and logical, so, naturally, they bicker and everything goes wrong. I also dabbled with the prospect of them creating humanity too, but eventually I decided against this one as the characters just aren't involving enough. Perhaps I will reattempt it at a later date.

Fortunately, just the other night I was hit by a brainwave while trying to get to sleep (isn't that always the way?). I'd been watching a DVD of Pixar shorts with the Director commentary on which was really interesting. I wrote a list of what I thought each short was trying to say, for example, For the Birds is about bullying and peer pressure, but not condoning it of course! Later I wrote a list of messages that I would like to say, such as self-acceptance and the grass not always being greener on the other side.

Eventually it hit me: I'm a very sentimental person and nostalgia the loss of treasured possessions means a lot to me, which is why Pixar's Up, really gets to me! Thus, I wrote a story that centered around sentimentality. Without further ado, here is an image illustrating my three favourite ideas (some old, some new) I'll explain them below. Open the image to view it at a larger size if the text isn't readable enough.

1. The first, Princess-in-Waiting is all about a short-tempered Princess who is fed up of waiting for her Prince so she travels on her very own pet dragon to seek Mr. "Charming" for her revenge! She's a modern, arse-kicking girl who much prefers black glasses and leather jackets to her embroidered dress and tiara! It's a bit of a joke short as just when she thinks she gets what she wants (peace and quiet) suddenly there are Prince Charming's everywhere, all desperate for her hand in marriage!

So this is a fun short, but it's not particularly personal to me and a little too "Shrek-like" for my liking, so it's more of a back-up.

2. Second is an untitled film where I was thinking about self-acceptance through physically destroying your inner demons. This would take place in a surreal world, perhaps in this girl's mind, where she has trapped herself with her own thoughts and fears. I thought a series of trials would be interesting to see her tackle them in different ways until she at last realises the answer lies in eliminating the negative aspects of her personality, rather than killing the demons her mind has conjured around her.

Not a lot of development on this one, but might be interesting at some point to do a crazy Alice in Wonderland/Labyrinth style tale.

3. "Great Oaks From Little Acorns Grow" or "The Girl Who Won't Grow Up". This is my favourite story so far (not to create bias or anything...) as it's personal and has an emotional character arc. It's about a little girl, Amber, who grows up in and around this majestic oak tree, it's got a tree house, a swing and her friends would go there to play. We see snapshots of her life as she grows up, but she remains as childish as when she was young. It's gonna be all about growing up, letting go and moving on, but in an emotional and maybe touching/heartwarming way if done right.

There's a bit more to this story, which I'll cover in future posts, but for now, I hope you guys like what I've come up with, and if you don't please leave a comment with some constructive crits as any feedback will be appreciated!

Now I can relax and focus now I actually have some ideas! Many thanks, I'll be posting again soon!
Laters,
Gemma xox

Summer, Sonisphere and Stuff

Hi all, and surprise, surprise, another massive gap between journals. I'm really gonna have to break out of this seeing as I'll need to keep an up to date blog for my next film!

So, last time I updated was April, when I was developing a group film at Uni: Dimensionality. Good news is, we just about finished the film and passed, bad news is, we handed in late and lost a lot of marks for it. Moral of the story? It's better to hand in unfinished work ON TIME than it is to let it get overdue to finish it.

Unfortunately the film isn't online yet as the effects are still being finished by one of the group members, but here's a compilation video of all the animation I did for it.



Here's a matte painting example of the look of each shot... hopefully the finished film will be online soon!

And here's the stack of paper I went through... 1277 sheets!

Fortunately the rest of my work went well, I got a high mark for my essay about Masculinity in The Incredibles (using Susan Jeffords' The Curse of Masculinity 1995 as my source), helped third years in making three films by doing 2D animation and even a voiceover (!) and designed some new business cards below!

I asked family and friends and members of DeviantArt to vote for their favourite, turned out the giraffes won, so that's what I printed at Moo.com for my cards, although I will probably redesign it again to correspond to my final film next year!

I also applied for work experience at Beryl Productions in Cardiff with Joanna Quinn where I enjoyed three days of animating, drawing matte lines (for colouring the muzzles and tummies of the Charmin bears!) and learning from the talented animators and clean-up artists there! I can't wait to work there again next term!

Here's a lil' frame from a walk cycle I animated with help from Joanna for a pre-commercial... I don't think I can put it anywhere until it is broadcast though, so enjoy this taster! ;)

Now my second year is over, I'm spending the summer to gear up for my third year, in which I'll be writing my dissertation (similar themes to my previously mentioned essay) and making a short animated film, solo, with some help from second and third years (with luck).

No plans for my final film just yet, I've been actively writing stories and getting back into painting, it should just be a case of sitting down and writing a film idea that I want to produce and is personal to me... I've been putting it off for far too long, so this month I'm going to have to write it before my next semester starts in September so I can present it! I'll be posting progress up of course, either on this blog or a new one which I will link to. All I really know so far is that it will be a 2D film, possibly to do with gender roles! (Like my dissertation!)

And in addition to this, I'm drawing comics with a director/writer I'm working for, doing an animatic about a short duck story for a friend of mine and attempting to do some personal work while I have the "time"!

Other than that, I've been to the Sonisphere Festival in Knebworth last month, camping with friends which was amazing... it was probably the biggest amount of people I'd ever seen in one place! I saw the Big 4 with Metallica, as well as Sum41, Airbourne, Weezer, Biffy Clyro and Bill Bailey... who were all awesome. I even got to high-five Rivers Cuomo--whooo! :D

Here's the four of us at the campsite! (I'm the short one!) :P

Apart from that, things have been fairly uneventful, I've been on the South Beach diet for a few weeks now and I've already lost a stone! I don't have much to lose, it's just a case of cutting back after having too many carbs at Uni! :P Will have to eat healthier this year! >.<

I've got some new artwork that went up on DeviantArt recently... here's the linkage! I submitted it to ImagineFX's 'Rising Stars 2011' competition, so wish me luck! :)


Guardian Spirit of the Forest by ~AmberDust on deviantART

And I'm thinking of investing in a new iMac 21.5" for my work and Uni, particularly after my sister got one a few days ago... but still mulling it over... And of course there was the epic Harry Potter conclusion recently, which I've seen twice but that's me just about up to date for now... I'll be making myself update more regularly for the next year to get into the habit of doing so... it's quite therapeutic really! ^.^

I hope this update wasn't too overwhelming... I'll be posting something (shorter) again soon though! Ta ta for now! :)
Gemma xox

So-Called "Break"

Hi all! Time for another infrequent update! I'm back home now for the Easter break, along with all of my Uni work of course! I actually hole-punched over 600 sheets of animation paper ten-at-a-time to begin animating my group project, (working title, Dimensionality) during the weeks "off". I've started some tests and will be moving onto completing rough animation later this week.

The short film is all about the relationship between 2D and 3D and how one is always trying to be the other in modern films, when really they should celebrate their differences! The film is for a brief called Recoding Conventions, so we do actually have to bring something original to the table which we're doing by showing (without dialogue) that 2D and 3D are equals but could actually better themselves by simply learning from each other.

The concept got quite complicated, so we've gone headfirst into production to make sense of it all! I'm working with animator's Ben, Vikki and Rob, all very talented people! Everything's looking great so far, I'll be posting progress when I can.

In the meantime, you can check out our blog where our script and pre-production is getting updated every day!

Dimensionality @ Weebly.com

At the moment, I'm on a juggling act between getting something like 35 shots animated for this project and spending time with family and friends. It doesn't seem to be going too badly, but I'm really going to have to knuckle down with this work as soon as possible! I saw Rio today with some friends which was a very enjoyable film, cliché at times, but fun and bright and colourful and very funny! Jemaine Clement as the bird Nigel was fabulous and he even has a song! <3

Other news... I met amazing artist and animator Joanna Quinn a couple of weeks ago, and what an extraordinary lecture and meeting it was! She's based in Cardiff and is the creator of a wonderful character called Beryl and the bears on the old Charmin ads! She's an incredible person and with luck I may have some work experience at her studio in the summer, I simply cannot wait! :)

I finished a short piece of animation for a third year animating some birdies. It may look short and simple, but was actually a beast to put together because of all the layers! D:



And I completed a quick commission for a friend's University project where King Arthur returns to a post-apocalyptic London... that was 6-8 hours work.


King's Awakening by *AmberDust on deviantART

I'm currently working on a collaboration with my friend Jess, drawing a lovely poster of Ariel from The Little Mermaid and Ponyo! Here's some progress...

It's very nearly done now and I'm hoping to get that online very soon!

Apart from that, things are busy and things are good! :)

Also, if you haven't checked out Feeder's new single, 'Side by Side', please watch this powerful and emotional music video of theirs of the recent events and if you like the song, please download it here as all proceeds go to help support the Japanese people during their time of need! http://itunes.apple.com/gb/album/side-by-side-single/id427857657



Ta ta for now! :)
Gem xox

P.S. So EXCITED for seeing the Winnie The Pooh movie this Friday! :DDD