Collaborative project OUTSIDE w/Leo Cui
(20th August-26th October)
I started my DPS year with a collaborative project. I was approached by Leo, a sound student who offered me an opportunity to collaborate on a project.
Leo Cui is a first-year sound student from Sydney Conservatorium of Music, who for is the end of year project wanted to collaborate with an animator to produce a score and sound design.
He proposed a brief of creating a 4-5min length animated short with his sound design and score made by him with a deadline of 12 weeks. From the start, I knew that is an outrageous deadline to fully complete a short film by myself and have it ready for any competitions. But I wanted to at least create a visually coloured animatic visual for Leo’s score. I agreed to challenge myself and push to produce a project with this short deadline, and to work with a sound designer 50/50 on a project.
The visual and animation part of the collab was up to me. I wasn’t working on anything at the time, so his suggestion of extending my 2nd-year film OUTSIDE was an optimal suggestion I agreed to.
Throughout the project, we would call each other weekly to update about current at the time production stage.
The project heavily leaned on visuals and sound collaboration and fit together, so my nature as a visual storyteller and Leo’s as an auditory one worked wonders together. Where I fell short on my original rendition of OUTSIDE, mainly narrative and time limit, this time I had a chance to extend and rework it with the input of another creative voice.
I’ve spent much time in pre-production, trying to settle on the colour palette, character, and world in general. Even if we talked with Leo about re-using old footage if needed, I wanted to change the visual aspect of the whole film thoroughly if that was possible with the time we had.
The project itself was finished and submitted on time, although it is still more for the animation guide, not finished, and really rough for now.
Even if we reached the deadline, we both agreed to push the whole film as far as possible with our respective parts. I will be working on it to improve it and hopefully reach a level of finesse to put it up for festivals and competitions.
BlinkIndustries Logo Intro (Live Brief)
(13th October – 9th November)
For this project, we were briefed by Benjamin Lole, the head of the animation of BlinkIndustries. He proposed a project for us to create a BlinkIndustries Logo Intro animation sequence. The parameters of the project were 10-15sec animation fully rendered in 6 weeks.
While doing the research on BlinkIndustries brand, what stuck with me was their work on Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared and Love, Death & Robots.
I settled on working in Blender and using a mixed 2D/3D approach. I am working on sci, tech, and matrix-like ambience.
When we had our animatic review, Ben really liked my concept and green-lit it for further production. The only comment to consider he had was in regard to sound design, but I defended my choice and he agreed with me.
I made a set the mountain of old retro tv screens, that light up with static and distorted clips from different BlinkIndustries produced shows.
One of the main difficulties and time-consuming things was renders. My 16sec video had to be left to render for more than 18 hours in total.
I wasn’t present at the presentation event, but I am satisfied with my results, I learned new features of Blender, how to compose and edit the footage and how to improve it with 2D elements that I can use further in my follow-up projects.
MeinArt Internship
(7th November – 7th February)
I flew to Lithuania a couple days before the start of my Internship, to settle in and familiarise myself with Vilnius and my future workplace.
First weeks
The week started with me meeting the Studio director Meinardas, and him showing me around the studio. I met most of the people there. The studio itself is not big, it houses up to 18 people. Funnily enough, on my first day, there was also a celebration of one of the artist’s 10 years of him working at the studio. So I got to meet almost all the studio people on my first day.
When I arrived on my first day, I was shown my workspace that they freed for me. I was supplied with an Adobe package and a digital tablet to do my work. I got onto familiarising myself with my new workspace.
MeinArt studio works using Adobe production pipeline. Backgrounds are done in Photoshop, Character layouts – in Illustrator, and animation is fully done in After Effects.
MeinArt is mostly a commercial animation studio. But at the time when I came to do my internship, they got a huge commission to produce cartoon series with the famous Lithuanian children’s book character Kake Make (known as Nelly Jelly abroad). Kake Make is a really popular brand in Lithuania, ranging from books to plushes, teas, cereal and toothbrushes. The production was focused on producing six 11-minute-length episodes and connecting them into a full-length film for the premiere in spring.
Because I chose Animation for my internship (the studio was offering both animation and illustration internships), I was set up to work with After Effects, to animate a couple of test shots from their current cartoon episode.
It was my first time working with a full-on Adobe pipeline. I have used After Effects before, but more as compositing software, not character animation. The good thing was that I had the option to consult and ask for help from the other 4 in-house animators. After a couple of days of trying to figure out AE rigging and animation by trial and error, one of the animators, Rimantas, gave me an AE rigging course they used in-house to advance their skills. It was a truthfully useful 8-hour course going from the basics of DUIK (AE rigging and character animation plug-in). So by spending a couple of my internship days in the studio going through the course, taking notes and trying to apply the skills taught, I came back to my test shots with a new perspective and knowledge of how to fix existing motion problems.
My progress throughout the Internship
During my internship, I was tasked with the same as all the in-house animators: working on Kake Make cartoon. I didn’t get any ‘internship-specific’ tasks or personal projects. It provided me with consistency and a real glimpse into working in the animation studio on bigger, more time-consuming projects. See the real life and work that happens in the studio is the rawest type of experience you can get.
When I started working on my assigned shots at the start of my internship, I didn’t have any experience in AE rigging or project set-up or overall AE besides minimal compositing. But throughout the 3 months of consistent software usage with extra supervision of the more experienced coworkers, I can finally regard myself as at least intermediate in Character animation, and I know that the technical skills with be so useful to me working forwards. Before I was intimidated by using AE for my projects, but now, after the AE crash course that was my internship, I gained exposure, understanding and experience in such useful software.
My gained skill set ranges from Adobe Illustrator, and AE project set-up, to intermediate knowledge of motion graphics and character rigging and animation in After Effects. I’ve learned how to use motion more effectively and how to custom-rig needed characters, from animals to people.
Studio Community and life
As a smaller studio, Meinart houses around 4 in-house animators and 6 in-house illustrators/graphic designers. It is a studio of roughly around 20 people counting in all managing staff, directors and freelancers.
The studio has a really bright and welcoming atmosphere, and I noticed, that the studio culture is very well built on team bonding and celebrating each other. As I mentioned previously, My first day in the studio was a celebration of one of the staff’s 10-year anniversary. For the occasion, the director organised a pizza party for our lunch break.
The breakfast and lunch times were seen as communal ‘events’, to catch up with each other, share the news, share personal achievements or gym streaks. And every Friday there was a shared breakfast when one person would make breakfast for everyone.
Besides day-to-day studio life, throughout my time there, I got a chance to go to a Lithuanian movie festival and see films that people from the studio worked on. And also got a chance to go to the cinema with the whole studio team to watch Disney’s ”Strange World” and ”Puss in Boots 2 The Last Wish”.
I got a chance to take part in a couple of the office celebrations. A couple of them were the end of the autumn and the next Christmas/New Year party. It was really awesome to get to know people outside of the office spaces and hang out with them while playing pool and having drinks.
My overall experience
I left the studio with an actual positive experience The studio and staff gave me a chance to participate in animation production and studio day-to-day life and be a part of the team for 3 months.
After the internship, I realised that I like working in the studio, and I wouldn’t mind getting a 9 to 5 studio job after graduation. In a welcoming space, that kind of work helps you grow and learn from more experienced people around you.
I would love to come back to the studio after graduation if they would have me, and they already let me know that they would love for me to pay a visit to the studio anytime I am back in Lithuania.
Museum of Brands Social Media Post Animation (Live Brief)
(6th February – 7th April)
I was offered to take part in another Live brief organised by the uni in collaboration with the Museum of Brands, led by Nicky Francis. We were briefed on our task: Create a 5-10 sec animation with chosen holiday as a motive. We were assigned a photo of the museum facade as well to make an animation in which the first and last frames would be the provided photo: produced looping animation.
My main two choices from the start were either earth day or Pride Month. I think in general brands are trying to ‘go green and that would play into the Earth Day theme very well. And brands changing their designs and releasing their limited edition pride stock would fit Pride Month as well.
When I was brainstorming about the holiday to choose, I wanted it to be significantly connected to the theme ‘Brands’, something that has a significant impact on the brand and its product looks.
After my first tutorial with Nicky, when I showed my ideas for the Earth Day motif, I finally settled on it. My initial idea was the vines, emerging from Museum doors, piling out and covering both entrance wall sides, simultaneously changing the packaging mural into a mural full of nature: vines, coral, mushrooms and moss. It was my rough first draft. And after my consultation with Nicky and a couple of her insights, I made a list of changes. Nicky mentioned that the brand mural should still be visible, that is the point of the museum after all. So for my new animation draft, I chose to take a different direction. Instead of variety, I chose to use vines. I reimagined them as semi-sentient creatures, bursting out of the entrance of the museum, with one goal in mind – to cover and grow over the front of the building.
In my following tutorials, I got more insight on timing and camera transitions, As well as a couple of vine design ideas and an idea to include a possible nudge towards a sustainability message.
While the whole process was pretty straightforward, and my animatic was done a couple of days after the initial concept confirmation, going forward I experienced a bit of creative block on the project. I couldn’t focus on it or get the inspiration to continue. I knew that I liked the concept but the execution of it was lacking. But I knew that it was better to have something completed, so I finished the animation and added an extra bit of detail, composited in After Effects.
In conclusion, I was glad to work in collaboration with the Museum of Brands and show my work to MoB associates in the museum itself. It was a learning opportunity to work on tailoring a project for a specific client and trying to connect to the Brand and its values.
Freelance Graphic Design for Email Newsletters
(November 2022 – Ongoing)
In November 2022 I got an offer from Laisvidas Karvelis, the head of Growth of Tupperware Direct about possibly doing freelance work. It was a graphic designer role, focusing on consistently producing newsletter emails for upcoming product launches, sales and discounts. I was really interested in the opportunity so I took it.
The start was pretty slow. I wasn’t fully sure what kind of feel the emails should go towards, and that required a lot of revisions and experimentation.
It was on-and-off-job, around 15 – 20 emails a month. But moving forward, around December/January I had built a consistent design guide, colours and elements. Earlier it would have taken me up to 2 hours to finish the email’s first draft, now I can do it quicker, and it takes up to an hour.
It is still an ongoing gig, every month I get new email briefs to complete. I get paid on an email amount basis, so months that have big holidays are more work for me, such as Black Friday or Christmas.
Throughout my whole experience working, I understand the need to work more efficiently and use software to your advantage. For example, using colour and gradient palettes, saving their specific swatches for later use repeated elements from past designs to compile new ones.
The opportunity was a great way to trial my graphic design skills and understand a little bit more about newsletter construction and the ways to market products from a designer’s perspective. I find out that I don’t mind graphic design too much, and feel quite comfortable with possibly sticking with some other similar type freelance gigs if they come about.