Jacob Bentley Animation Year 3 Blog

Welcome to my blog, below you will find all of my research into the different techniques I use in 2D / 3D programs such as "Clip Studio Paint EX" "Flash", "Zbrush", "Maya", "Blender" and "Cinema4D" as well as some focus on compositing in "After Effects" 

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My experience at UCLAN

The past 3 years have really brought me out of my shell in more ways than just my confidence, I’ve always been a rather...not so shy person but more like a person that it takes time to get used to and also someone who takes months before he opens up to people, so coming to an incredibly social university has really allowed me to grow as...well...a human being.

Along with that my understanding of a variety of subjects has broadened dramatically, although I never made huge amounts of progress when it came to genuine 3D work, my understanding of lighting has been helped by my constant work and the life drawing I did in my first two years has given me more of an eye for detail...or maybe it’s better to say that it’s made me want to focus on the variety of proportions that humans come in in general.

I won’t be pursuing a masters degree here at UCLAN (just yet) as I feel like now is the best time for me to get out into the real world and try and get some genuine work experience in this field...something I may regret in the future, but UCLAN and my experiences here will stay etched into my memory for years to come...and i’ll look back on them fondly. 

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Future plans

I dabbled on this in my action plan but I felt like one of my final posts should be about where I’m aiming in the future. I’ve decided I’d like to specialise in editing and although it’s a very common route that people take, i’ll soon have the qualifications to back up employing me for such a role.

I’ve always felt like I wanted to improve on all the different aspects of animation while studying on this course and have felt myself straying more and more away from the subject that I already knew I loved for the sake of assignments and experimentation....which isn’t necessarily bad but it’s really what I wanted from the beginning.

Yet even though I spent the last 3 years experimenting I still feel like I’ve learnt some important and fundamental compositing skills in my last 3 years which I’ll hopefully be able to apply to my work in the future.

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Here is my creative CV that I made for one of my assignments, I made two versions of my CV, one of them is an interactive video where the two boxes on the right are playing videos to show the two previous projects I’ve worked on that I’m proud of.

I’m not a fan of gloating about myself but the point of a CV is to “sell” yourself to an employer so I tried to make myself sound like a good person to invest in.

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As I’m uploading the last of my work here at UCLAN I put together a DVD cover using the same design as my poster mixed together with a back cover that I made using the last frame of my film.

I also added some credits and some screenshots on the back to make it feel more genuine.

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My 3 minute film uncompressed

Although I altered my levels for my film yesterday, until it’s been properly sound tested in the studio I won’t know if I’ve done a good job or not, which is worrying me because creating my uncompressed version of my film yesterday took quite a bit of time and I don’t want to waiting on another upload when FastFolders closes at 4 o’clock.

Fortunately most problems involving the degree show can be fixed before the 31st of May, but if it effects my overall grade then I don’t want to be held back simply because I couldn’t mix my audio well enough.

I am, however, quite well aware that audio mixing isn’t my forté even though I’ve spent a bit of time in Adobe Audition.

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Assumption - A 3 Minute Film Bible

I recently finished my “Art of the film” bibliography for one of my assignments here at university which involved creating a breakdown of all the shots in our film, highlighting the different stages of production and then showing the final composite of what it looked like at the end.

Most of my pages were laid out as follows:

Each shot get a page to itself, each shot has 3 images, the top image is either the background layer or the 3D set before it was properly rendered out.

The middle image will show the foreground with alpha enabled (i.e it’s transparent of everything except the main focus which is usually a character). The middle image will show the foreground without any special lighting or effects over them.

The bottom image is the final composite, showing the foreground and the background together and with the 3D layer lighting and other effects layered over.

I also included my storyboard at the back of the book to show any differences between the original storyboard and the finished product.

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AX3002 Action Plan

Along with the main essay’s that we wrote about methodologies we also had to write a 2000 word “Action Plan”, meaning, what we planned to do after we finish university, what are goals are and the jobs we are looking to aim for.

This includes talking about both jobs that are available on the market today for us (i.e Junior roles) as well as the ideal jobs we aim for in the future, like describing our wishes to work for, for example, Disney as an animator and how it is we plan to achieve that goal.

Personally, my goals are a lot more down to Earth but I’m fairly grounded now in the area of which I would like to specialize. I’m not sure which doorway will lead me into the world of professional video editing but hopefully I find the right way.

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AX3002 Essay on methodologies

I recently finished my main essay for my module which focused on the careers and business practices of the lecturers we went and learnt from in the past year. We focused on their methodologies and the things they went through and achieved to get them to the place they are now.

The lecturers I chose to talk about are:

Peter Peake

Barry Purves

Linda McCarthy

Paul Davis

Will Becher

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Something I put into my “Creative CV” but not onto my showreel was the work I did in second year voluntarily for another student who needed help with some video editing. She wanted to create a smartphone application to reduce food waste.

She supplied the assets and I compiled them together and applied a couple of effects to add a bit of “wow” factor to the presentation.

I didn’t put this work on my showreel because it highlights a more business-centric side of editing but it’s definitely relevant to my CV. 

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Showreel Progress

I had a surprising amount of footage to use in my showreel for all the animation I’ve done in the last 3 years. I mixed it with the theme tune for Marvels “Daredevil” which ended up suiting it fairly well and I got a great mix of footage I made this year, last year and the year before,

Even in my showreel it’s evident that editing is one of my stronger suites in comparison to the other areas I’ve explored in the past 3 years. 

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I ended up naming my 3 minute film “Assumption” because you, as the viewer, are under the assumption that the person in the bed at the start in the first scene is the protagonist, whereas it turns out the person in the bed is in fact his daughter who he saves by going through an ordeal.

One of my peers at university noticed my heartbeat overlay and thought it would look good replacing the “A” in “Assumption”.....and he was right...thanks Nathan.

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My final shot of my film I wanted to be a mix of watercolours representing ice cream which my character recommends to his daughter due to his lack of teeth.

It didn't come out how I imagined it but it stills conveys my point as it fades to white and into the credits.

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My shot of the teeth in my story came off as a little forced and didn't fit the flow of my story, but this is probably a result of me cutting down the length of the film.

I knew I had to highlight that my protagonist had lost his teeth somehow before the end and this was the only way I could do it in the allocated time.

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I had a problem with the lighting of this shot due to the source of the original light being in an obstructed place so I had to create a couple of ambient lights to keep that corner of the room lit and bright enough to go together with my 2D.

The 2D in this shot could have been a lot better and the feedback I've got so far from a couple of my friends is that my character doesn't look like a girl but it was a design that I wanted to keep from early on.

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I had a lot of trouble with the shadows in this shot since the light behind the blinds on the 3D set was so strong originally that it created solid black lines for shadows instead of some nice soft shadows which we see here.

I flick between raytraced shadows and soft shadows depending on my shots in scene 7

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At this point in the the production of my film my time was running out and my panic became to make me rush when it came to my drawings so even though I'm proud of the 3D in scene 7 my drawings really bring the scene down in my opinion.

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One of my biggest weaknesses as an artist is keeping a consistent look between characters at different angles.

The "Fairy"'s appearance has changed around 3 times by this point within the film and although some might consider it an interesting stylistic choice, it's simply me needing to improve my drawing.