GC's Adventures in Animation

Examples of Iconicles Work

2011-11-23T11:04:00.000Z

Just a sample of some of the shots I completed on the Cbeebies Production "Iconicles" whilst working at Dinamo Productions.

I will be editing a shiny new Demo Reel together soon for future job-seeking exploits.

GC

1 year Dinamo-versary

2011-06-16T23:01:00.000+01:00

That's been one hell of a quick 12 months, especially as I was only supposed to be at Dinamo for 8. I'm not actually going to make the 1 year Anniversary 'tho as the project and therefore my work-contract finishes 1 week before.

But we ain't finished there yet tho' and the next month is going to be super-busy getting everything finished. Then a holiday...then the wrap-party...then my new job ;]

G

New Job + 2 weeks

2010-08-08T22:36:00.000+01:00

Job is going great, in fact, this is probably the happiest I've been in my job in about....8 - 9 years! At the moment I'm working on "Grandpa in my Pocket" which is a Cbeebies program starring James Bolam from "The Likely Lads" and "New Tricks". At the moment we're getting used to the Production Pipeline as they've just finished shooting all the Live-Action and Green-screen scenes. The scenes get tracked and then passed to the Animators to add Grandpa. It's really cool as my background is in Games so I've never really animated to Live-Action plates before. We visited the Studio to see some of the scenes being filmed last week which was cool.

Plus the old animation confidence comes rushing back when you're doing it 40 hours a week.

G

Operation Robot

2010-06-24T11:30:00.000+01:00

Here's an image of some work I've done for a friend. It's not finished yet, still have some decals to paint on, but it's ready for print for a Prostrate Cancer Fund-raising event tomorrow.

Examples of work past and present

2010-05-17T21:40:00.006+01:00

Animation Showreel 2010 from Gareth Cavanagh on Vimeo.

This is a scene from the series "Fireman Sam" that I worked on for Calon. It was a Stop-Motion Show, but we wanted to see if we could incorporate CG elements into it. This was the only full CG shot that was broadcast.

This is an old 'reel from 2005, some of the work classed "Modelling and Animation" isn't my animation, but the majority of it is.

Spring Clean v1.9

2009-11-17T19:36:00.003Z

Hola,

I've got rid of my old domain www.goodegg-productions.com as that egg has long since been scrambled. Which means the link to my 'reel is temporarily un-available [not a bad thing at the moment.]

Will hopefully have a new, more relevant domain and page up and running soon.

GC

Guess who's back?

2009-06-08T13:09:00.001+01:00

Going to start posting some work up soon...promise!

Gc

Sometimes...

2008-06-17T10:07:00.004+01:00

...life can be very bittersweet.

Finish Animation Mentor :)

Stan Winston passes away of cancer :(

http://www.aintitcool.com/node/37106

If you don't know of Stan, If you're a fan of the movies, I can confidently say you'll know his work.

One by one, my hero's are going and I don't seem to be finding any new ones.

Class 5...

2008-04-08T20:10:00.003+01:00

...has finished and I'm going to post my animatic up soon.

Gc

Animation Mentor-The Story so far; The abridged version

2007-09-20T22:54:00.000+01:00

Animation Mentor - lot of work, but I love it!

Gc

Animation Mentor....The Story so far

2007-09-20T21:34:00.000+01:00

So, i've just completed Class 3 of Animation Mentor, but I don't want to put my work up just yet because it's not really finished and I'm a little embaressed by it :(

Don't get me wrong, I don't think it's rubbish or anything, I'm actually quite pleased with the standard of it, I'm just not happy to post something that I haven't finished polishing yet. Trouble is, it's the same with all the shots I've had so far :(

Class 1 was pretty straight-forward, The Foundations of Animation, as my old-Lecturer and now good friend Chris Webster said, if I did have any trouble with that stuff, I may as well pack up and go home now....bless him. As it was, it went fine....the hardest part was adapting to animating with Maya after nearly a decade of on and off animating with Max, but after a few days it felt like second nature. My mentor was Ryan Donoghue who works at Rhythm & Hues ( and used to work on Futurama...cool!) He was great, really good attitude, nice guy, super talented animator. I hit a a bit of a rough spot at the end when it came to animating a walk, which bugged me a bit because when I worked in games, I thought walks were one of my stronger areas. I was in a great class, had to get up every Friday at 4am for my Q&As but that was cool, my son was 6 months old so any sleep at all was a bonus in those days....I bet Mr. Rees would agree with me there :) The other good thing about Class 1 was that it slotted in nicely to my work schedule. It kicked off in July and finished 1st week of October, which meant that I had no students and also had a 5 week Summer break....one of the perks of working as a College Lecturer :)

Class 2 was Body Mechanics. Started great, cool little rig, just a ball with legs and had to do a side-step animation. My Mentor for Class 2 was Michelle Meeker who at the time was a Lecturer at UCLA and had worked at PDI on Shrek, Weta Digital on Lord of The Rings and at Pixar on Geri's Game and the THX ad with the Robot and the Cow Can. She was great, used to have some great Q&A sessions with her, felt a bit sorry for her sometimes as my class was full of guys and she was the only female, but she more than held her own. Plus my Q&As were at 7pm GMT so that meant I actually was getting some sleep. 'Course now I was back in school full-time, which is 9-4 which sounds pretty easy, but the amount of 'after-hours' work that you have to put in is phenomenal, so I was trying to fit in full-time work, some quality family-time with Kel and the little un' and then start AM about 9pm and work until 1-2am every night. I wasn't complaining tho'...I kind of knew it was going to be like that when I signed up and at the end of the day I was animating which I don't get to do as much of as I'd like these days. I did an animation of Stewie jumping across some poles and Stu pulling a heavy box, which were ok but I just haven't had time to really apply some quality polish too. They're really close to being finished actually, they just need a really good 'adding the sauce' pass. I took a break after Class 2, wanted to spend some time with some family members who were ill and have now passed away, so I'm very glad that I did.

So Class 3...Intro to Acting, the main reason that I wanted to do Animation Mentor. I worked in games for a few years after graduating from Art College, but have never worked in Features and haven't really done much animation that involved any 'acting' as such. I really missed AM while I was off, the whole community thing was great and although I kept in touch with a lot of the guys from my class, it wasn't the same. Features is where I'd like to be at some point of my career. Class 3 has been wicked. learnt an absolute shed-load. My mentor was Kevin Koch, who worked at Dreamworks for years, originally as a Traditional Animator on films like Road to Eldorado and now as a CG Animator on films like Madagascar and Over the Hedge. He was a great mentor, very inspiring, on of those guys who you can just tell that he knows what he's talking about. Very harsh bit fair critiques. I experimented with some different working methods, tried working with Copied Pairs on the Pantomime project and then working stepped on the dialogue with my key-poses on successive frames before timing it out. My first hand-in was disasterous, Kevin ripped me a new one (in a very nice way tho'). He was absolutley right with what he said, there wasn't enough information in the blocking. Looking back I approached it a bit naively and rushed it last minute, mainly because of the lack of time I had to spend on it.
Then I had a major panic attack when it came to splining it, I don't know what the hell was the matter with me but I just didn't know where to start and when I turned everything to flat tangents all the animation just went mushy and, well, shite! Mr. Rees was a big help tho' and talked me out of jacking this whole animation thing in (Thanks bud!)

So my dialogue shot went much better, the blocking and everything was a great improvement over my pantomime shot. It just bugs me that I have about 3 to 4 hours a night to spend on it. I start to get a bit knackered after 12 o'clock and no amount of coffee can get me going at that time of night. Kel actually found me asleep in front of the computer one night..cliched I know but it happened, there was drool and everything! It isn't finished yet, it just needs a really good polish pass and then we're starting on the facial stuff at the beginning of Class 4. I have learnt a ton this class, but I've also learnt (and been told, thanks Kevin) where my I need to improve my game: basically body-mechanics, showing motivated movement and my work-flow.

I used to think that I was ok at Animation, not brilliant, after all I wasn't working at Pixar or anything, but I was doing ok you know? Now, I think what the hell was I doing animating when I didn't really know what I was I moving and why I was moving it.

The one thing that's really come out of AM for me so far is it's confirmed to me how much I love animating. One night in particular I was near suicidal after I'd spent 4 hours animating an arm and then realised that it didn't work at all. I went to bed and couldn't sleep, just hated myself and realised how crap at animation I was. But the next night I was back in front of that computer at 9pm ready to start again and nailed it in about 20 minutes. After that I knew no matter how hard this stuff is, how much I beat myself up over how rubbish my shot is, I'm still going to be back in front of that computer or reading the Illusion of Life (again!) or re-drawing my scene thumb-nails again.

'cos I love this stuff!

Gc

ps: by my calculations, I'll probably post again at the end of July 2008 :)

The Return of The Mack!.....honest!

2007-09-18T14:56:00.001+01:00

Hello!

Forgot my log-on details again, really got to start writing them down somewhere :)
If anyone is interested, I'm just finishing Class 3 of Animation Mentor and about to start Class 4 in a couple of days time. I want to post some of the work of I've done but they all need a real good curve clean so I'll see how I feel next week.

Later,

Gc

The Return of The Mack!

2007-04-02T10:43:00.000+01:00

It's been a long time, but I finally figured out what my Blogger Dashboard Username was so I can start posting inane drivel again...yippeee!

No Retreat, No Surrender!

2006-07-20T19:42:00.000+01:00

Damn it!

This pose ain't getting the better of me!

Ryan approved of the changes I made, but thought that the supporting leg was a little far-back in camera space.

So I fixed it!

NEVER GIVE UP!!!

First E-Critique

2006-07-19T17:40:00.000+01:00

Bore da!

Had my first E-Crit today. It was cool, I wasn't 100% with my final pose and Ryan gave me some cool feedback on how to make it stronger and what mistakes I made that I can learn from for the future.

So I had a quick go at a revision of the pose, changed the camera angle and the supporting arm- position and moved the supporting leg under the head-line a bit more.

I'd appreciate some feedback if any-body's reading this :)

Week 3 already!

2006-07-17T22:33:00.000+01:00

So week 2 has been and gone. It was our first real assignment week. We had to go to a public place and draw some quick thumbnail sketches of people going about their everyday business. We then had to choose what we considered to be our most successful sketch and translate the pose into the computer using 'Stu'.

The first thing I found out was that I have sorely neglected my drawing skills over the years!! i think the next few weeks is going to be a process of 'de-rusting' and getting the old 'pencil-confidence' back. I enjoyed it 'though. I went to Brighton on Thursday and Friday as part of a Games Education Conference and spent the day carrying my sketch book around and trying to catch some interesting poses. Unfortunately, the speakers were standing behind a lecturn so I only saw them from the waist up and every break we had everybody was guzzling tea (which is why most of th sketches have people holding tea-cups.) On the up-side tho' we went to a party on Thursday night and there was a free bar...all night!

Anyways, I've put my thumbs sheet and the Stu pose up below for people to have a look at. I'm not 100% happy with the Stu pose. I screwed his Right Arm up and lost a lot of the weight from the pose, but I'm going to wait for my e-critique from Ryan before I fix it.

And Stu:
Saw Superman Returns on Sunday. I thought it was ok, didn't enjoy it as much as I enjoyed Batman Begins.

Later,

First Live Q&A

2006-07-07T06:36:00.000+01:00

Man that was cool!

Just had our first Q&A with Ryan, seems like a good guy. It was just a meet & greet to get to know everyone and put a voice to the Avatar, but it was cool. Everybody in the class seems to be hyper-excited. I though I was going to be a bit sleepy seeing as how I had to get up at 4:30 am, but now I'm wired and want to start animating....WOOHOO!

Gc

And so it begins...

2006-07-03T22:35:00.000+01:00

I'm in!

It's like Wonka's Chocolate factory in there!
I've just watched a 75 minute lecture on why the AM guys love animation so much, their inspirations, Animation tips.....sweeeet!

Haven't stopped smiling yet :)

Gc

My 1st Mentor is....

2006-06-30T22:11:00.000+01:00

Ryan Donoghue of Rhythym and Hues.....sweet!

Check out his IMDB profile here: http://uk.imdb.com/name/nm1216303/

Garfield and it's sequel, Chronicles of Narnia, Stuart Little 2 etc.

Nice one.

Orientation

2006-06-27T20:25:00.000+01:00

Cool...received all my AM orientation stuff on the weekend and watched all the videos about 5 times each! Just waiting to find out who my first Mentor is going to be.

Getting a little excited now!

Gc

The Glammies 2006

2006-06-20T20:21:00.000+01:00

Every year, the Animation course that I teach on, has it's end-of-year bash, called 'The Glammies'. It's in it's 12th year now and is basically a great excuse for all the students to get together, have a drink and wind down after spending the previous 9 months toiling on their films, showreels etc. As a past student of the course myself, it's also a great excuse to catch up with ex-student friends who I don't see as much as I'd like.

As the course becomes more successful and word has started to spread, we also get a lot of industry bods visiting to view graduating students' work, which is great. What's even better is that a lot of our ex-students are now in great positions in the Industry, so this year I had friends turn up from Lion Head Studios, The BBC, Eurocom Games, Rock Star North to name a few. It's a shame that the guys that are working in the States couldn't come, we've got a bunch of ex-grads working at Sony Imageworks, but if I was in their position I wouldn't be rushing back to Sunny Wales :]

Anyway, The Glammies went really well. Had a lot of very positive feedback from Industry bods, regarding the quality of the students's work. We had a great party in the evening in Cardiff, with a Bucking Bronco machine and a Gladiator Duel Bouncy Castle thing. Had a few drinks and caught up with a lot of old friends. Said some good-byes to the graduating students, feel a bit sad to see them go this year, as they were the first group that I started teaching three years ago.

Would have enjoyed the day even more if I hadn't been in plaster up to the knee tho' :[

Sometimes I hate the cinema

2006-05-30T19:05:00.000+01:00

Saw 'The Da Vinci Code' and 'X3' this week.

My son is four months old now and before he arrived on the scene, my fiance and I were regular cinema-goers, we wouldn't watch any old crap mind, usually the latest Block-Buster wannabe's and of-course anything animated. Since his arrival, we obviously haven't had the time or inclination to venture far from home, but recently we have managed to rope some poor suckers...I mean Family...into baby-sitting the 'Shitting machine' so we can catch up with popular culture. We saw Ice Age 2 which I was pleasently surprised at, MI-3 which we both absolutely loved and now we've seen the Da Vinci Code and X3.

I'm just hoping that the rest of the films coming out over Summer are better than these two. I enjoyed the Da Vinci Code novel when I was on my hols in the Summer. It was a real page-turner and I managed to finish it in a day. After I finished watching the movie, it felt like a whole day had passed! I can't quite put my finger on why I didn't like it, maybe it was that Robert Langdon is just a bit of a boring character when translated to the screen...I don't know, I just felt a bit bored with it.

As for X3, again I came out really disappointed. I'm no X-Men geek, but some of the choices that were made with this film were just nuts! Vinnie Jones in a weird muscly body suit...wrong! Some major characters died and I just didn't give a toss about them (and it seemed neither did anyone else in the film at one point!) And don't get me started on the revelations at the end of the film, which pretty much rendered the whole plot of the film pointless.

(Sigh) Anyway, I could rant for hours but I can't be bothered, just got to move on and hope to God that I haven't invested too much faith in hoping that 'Over the Hedge', 'Cars' and 'Superman' are going to be worth the sanity of our baby-sitters.

Gc

Double tick!

2006-05-10T22:44:00.000+01:00

The Computer Animation course that I teach on at GCADT has become one of just 4 courses in the UK to receive accreditation by SKILLSET for its Computer Games Artist strand. We have been officially branded as an institution that provides the best education and training development for people wanting to persue a career as a Computer Games Artist.....COOL!

'Ian Livingstone, Product Acquisitions Director at Eidos, and Chair of Skillset's Computer Games Skills Forum announced the courses accredited by Skillset with the industries endorsement at E3, the Computer Games trade fair held in Los Angeles, CA in 2006.'

http://www.skillset.org/games/qualifications/article_4336_1.asp

This is great news for the Course and most importantly the students. As we are already accredited by Skillset for our Animation we have now become THE ONLY institution in the UK to hold a double Skillset accreditation.

The selected courses are:
BA (Honours) Computer Arts, University of Abertay Dundee
BSc (Honours) Computer Games Technology, University of Abertay Dundee
BSc (Honours) Computer Games Technology, University of Paisley
BA in Computer Animation, Glamorgan Centre for Art & Design Technology

For more info on what Skillset is all about, take a look at;

www.skillset.org

Fancy studying to be an Animator or Games Artist at an industry approved training institution?

Take a look:

www.gcadt.ac.uk

Nice one!

Gc

MI-3

2006-05-06T22:21:00.000+01:00

Saw Mission Impossible 3 last night.

Fair doos to Tom, I can't say I'm his biggest fan after the Oprah Winfrey/Sofa media debacle, but the guy makes a pretty convincing super-spy.

Keri Russell - 'How much ammo do you have?'
Tom - 'Enough'
Tom takes out hired goon with one well placed bullet,
Tom - 'Now i'm out.'

Aah, action, thy name is JJ Abrams! Shame about the cheesy ending tho'.

Gc

I have a feeling most of these posts are just going to contain inane drivel about what films i've seen.

My name is....

2006-05-04T20:44:00.000+01:00

Hello,

I doubt if anybody is reading this, but what the hell 'eh, it's sort of like free therapy.

My name's Gareth and I'm an Animator hailing from the sunny shores of Merthyr Tydfil in the South Wales Valleys, you know, where Tom Jones is from! I'm starting this blog because I want to chart my progress through Animation Mentor which I'm starting in July. Of course for any non-animators reading this you won't have the foggiest what I'm on about, in which case, best be moving on, nothing to see here.

Thought I'd best post a bit of info about myself, so here goes.

I've wanted to be an Animator since I was a kid, I've always dreamt of working for Disney. I was lucky enough to be living 15 minutes from a well-respected Animation school, called the 'Glamorgan Centre for Art & Design Technology' (GCADT). I enrolled in 1996 and after 3 great years of learning Animation, making great friends and playing a lot of football, I graduated in 1999.

I walked straight into a job as a Computer Animator at a Games Production house in West Yorkshire where I worked for 18 months, before becoming a Lead Animator for a CG Animation Production Company in Cardiff in South Wales. I worked there for close to 2 years before moving to work as a Visual FX Artist, still in Cardiff, working on the children's TV series 'Fireman Sam'. Whilst there I started doing a bit of part-time teaching back at GCADT on the Computer Animation course and I set up my own Free-Lance Animation Company 'Good Egg Productions'.

Now I'm working Full-Time as a Computer Animation Lecturer as well as doing bits of free-lance animation here and there, but the dream of working in Features Animation hasn't dimmed. So I've enrolled on Animation Mentor, because I want to learn as much as I can from the guys in the trenches animating features for a living and I can't wait to begin!

Gc

In the beginning....

2006-05-02T22:17:00.000+01:00

Hello?

Is there anybody in there?

Just nod if you can hear me.

Is there anybody home?

Gc