http://www.mercuryfilmworks.com/
A place i like the look of, a bit out of the way, being in ottawa, but i have family in ottawa so that could be a solution if i were to get a placement out there. I think going to Canada could be massively useful also for the contact with other major studio's and i believe i can gain a decent network of contacts being out there.
Mercury Filmworks have worked with cartoon network, mtv, disney, warner bros, bbc and loads more massive companies. They are an award winning family entertainment studio is currently ramping up on several exciting new high profile animation projects.
I will try and get in contact with them about internship type things they could do, It does say on their website they are after talented people to join their team so who knows. i could be talented...
Mercury Filmworks - canada
I think i have a problem, i dont plan out what im doing in detail, i know everything i want to do in my head, so i just do it from that.
anyway, here is a sneak preview of my robot. its no where near finished so don't judge yet.
www.nexusproductions.com
I really like a lot of what this company has produced, iv'e been through a lot of their stuff and its very impressive, doing work for high end companies, creating commercials and movie shorts.
Unfortunately they are based in London, i came across them in the latest 3D world magazine for a Panasonic ad they created, which is very good.
Ok so my main idea is for a fat robot to be walking a tightrope across the golden gate bridge, as the golden gate bridge will be hard to make, i've started now, so this is a first image of development of this. as i develop it more i will update my blog with images.
You can tell its still in development because it just cuts off at the end of the bridge :)
I was looking through the statistics of my blog, checking out how many people have been on it, where geographically its popular, and most importantly (in relation to this post) how people are finding it in the first place.
One of the main links was due to the Thundertank i created, the Tag of 'Thundertank' linked people through google and google images to my blog to view what i had created early on.
(If you want to see the Thundertank its under March on the side bar)
So i thought i would have a look on google images under the search of Thundertank to see what came up, I saw my image and figured it linked to my blog, but instead it linked to this Sci-fi Anime website. Just go on the website, you'll see what i mean, but this made me very happy, especially the first line of what was written.
http://scifanime.com/toons/thunder-thunder-thunder-tank-hooo
http://www.rockstargames.com/
If i was to set my expectations high, Rockstar Games would be a company i would LOVE to work for, they have 4 studio's in the UK; Edinburgh, London, Leeds and Lincoln, but then they also have studio's in Canada and America, so location wise they have diversity, and If i was to get a placement I wouldn't mind the move.
Rockstar Games are the creators of one of my favorite PS3 games 'Grand Theft Auto', They also develop games such as Midnight Club, Max Payne and Red Dead Redemption, its fair to say the games they create cause a bit of controversy but are some of the greatest console games around, in my opinion.
To work for a company of such stature would be incredible. A large company such as this works in all areas of games design and animation so finding something im suitable in within the company shouldn't be hard. Even now posted on their website is a job vacancy for a character animator, so if that was something i could eventually pursue i know there is my line of work at Rockstar Games.
http://www.editz.co.uk/
This company do more post production animation, a lot with compositing, but they still interested me, they do a lot of visual FX and editing, still with animation but a lot more realistic compositing and post production. What they do really stood out to me and made me realise that a lot of what i see on the TV isn't actually real.
another studio in manchester, i'll try and research them more but i'm not to keen on them by the look of their website and work, they seem very boring unfortunately, but i'll still keep them in mind.
http://www.subobject.co.uk/
http://www.studioliddell.com
Another animation studio in Manchester, but they also have a place in London.
They not only do animation but graphic design, illustration and interactive applications, this excites me because i not only have the animation interest but i also have a background in graphic design, so they are a diverse company which i could easily fit into, i hope.
Regarding Animation, they have done work for a wide range of well known companies, ranging from Vauxhall to silent night, and many more, they don't have the companies listed but the show reel they have on the website shows most of them.
http://www.the-box.co.uk/
Box Productions, based in manchester, which would be local for me, specialise in 3D animation, motion graphics, editing and visual FX. They do TV commercials, title sequences, pop promo's, feature films, architectural fly thru's and filming and screening for live events.
They've done work for the BBC, Channel 4, Sony music, MTV2, Intel, Sky TV, Nike and Adidas.
So they look like a pretty decent studio, supplying work for major companies at high standards, so the next step would be for me to get in contact with them and find out more about them.
first brief initial ideas
ok so iv'e begun to think of a few ideas for the brief, i have been told that it should probably include a banana but im going to try my hardest to work around that as i believe i can think of better scenes related to slap stick.
I have a few ideas at the moment but ive been doing a mock up on 3DS max of one of the ideas so i thought id post a picture of a mock up environment.
the idea is for the robot character to be very carefully walking on a tight rope very high in the air, struggling all the way, and then the part i havent decided is what is going to happen to him, but for now, iv'e created the environment of it, so take a look, only playing around.
IM BACK - new brief
hello bloggers, I'm back, its been a while
I haven't blogged in, well, 4 months, as i've been on holiday and got lazy, but now I'm getting back to my usual self sitting in front of the computer attempting even harder 3D work.
Second year has begun and so here goes brief for this term...
The task is to Design, build and animate a model of a complex Bipedal Robot that can walk trip, slip and fall. It has to be at least 1 minute long.
Basically a Laurel and Hardy or Charlie Chaplin type sketch but fully animated, the example given was a man slipping on a banana peel, but we can create anything we like as long as its relative.
This was written on the brief about how we should go about it, from Charlie Chaplin's POV.
"Silent Comedy… Charlie Chaplin once explained that there are two ways to film the old guy-slips-on-a-banana-peel joke. The first, unfunny, way goes like this: Cut to the guy walking, oblivious. Cut to the banana peel, lying in wait. Then cut to a wide shot of the guy approaching the banana peel. Cut to a close-up of the banana peel, just as the guy's foot hits it. Cut back to the wide shot, as the guy slips on the peel and lands on his rear end, which, as everyone knows from cartoons, is the funniest part of the human body and one that registers no real pain.
The second, funnier way to film that same sequence is as follows: Cut to the guy, walking. Cut to the banana peel, lying in wait. Then cut to a wide shot of the guy approaching the banana peel. Cut to a close-up of the banana peel, just as the guy's foot almost hits it. Cut back to the wide shot, as the guy deftly steps over the banana peel, smiling smugly . . . and falls into an open manhole…
Get the difference?"