Ockeroid

Ockeroid is a web animator and composer of music.




Ockeroid has a really unique style with is very angular drawings and low framerates, it gives his animation a unique charm that I really like.

CatFat

CatFat is an online animator based in London. Me and CatFat were in the same tournament (NATA) during first year. He is a very talented animator with an excellent eye for detail.

Web precense

Here is a list of places I am on the web.

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFgFFZYmCPJ7xZ_8cExzF2A

Tumblr: http://ryanlancaster.tumblr.com/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Lankie

Gmail: lancasteranimator@gmail.com

Ryan & The Ghost

In the first year of college me and Lija both had an inside joke in which I am a detective and I have a partner who is literally a ghost. Over the years this inside joke has changed and been brainstormed on to form a full on show that me and Lija plan to create.

We want to create a series of irreverent web cartoons based on it. Maybe this isn't the most professional thing to do but we both find the project very fun to do and it is a good opportunity to work on my animation skills and to collaborate with my peers. Also Ryan and the Ghost is literally the best thing in the world.

Weebl

Weebl's stuff has been producing original animation since the early 2000's and is still going strong today. I actually had the pleasure of working for the creator of Weebl's stuff (Jonti Picking) in making some small sketch animations for  a separate youtube channel last year. I also met him during a small meet up of youtubers in Leeds this year and hd a good talk on animation. Weebl's stuff is a great source of irreverent web cartoons and a good source for potential work.

Cartoon Brew Student Animation Festival

Cartoon Brew is having it's 5th annual Student Animation Festival. This is the first time I have ever heard of this festival and I feel it is a great opportunity to submit my own student film. the deadline for this is June the 6th, with a prize of $700 to the 10 films that get selected for screening and a Microsoft Surface Pro 2 tablet as the grand prize. Hopefully I can complete my student film by the 6th so I can submit it in time.

BAF 2013 and 2014

Around November time of 2013 I attended the Bradford Animation Festival. Truth be told I did not find is as engaging as I did in the past two years. I found that there were an over abundance of short films and not enough interesting talks from animators for my liking. It didn't help that I left through the third day half way due to illness. Still I managed to watch a lot of interesting films from professionals and students alike.

With BAF 2014 coming up, I have the unique opportunity of being able to submit my Extended practrice project as a student film. This could mean that it would be shown to a lot of people in the festival and I could potential win an award. It is something That I would definitely want to try out at least.

Zane Whittingham

Recently I went to a lecture featuring Zane Whittingham, an animator with 20 years of experience and organiser of All Animated, a network of animators in the north of England. He has worked for companies such as CITV and Teleimagination and primarily works using Flash animation, which is very interesting to me as that is the software I use the most. He spoke about the importance of knowing how much you are worth in the industry and that college work is essentially your first job. When it came to working for free he instead suggestion working 'for other things' such as publicity, but never truly for free. He also suggestion making networks and interacting with other animators through conferences, making a strong network is the best way to succeed when going freelance.

Ga-Ma-Yo

Ga-Ma_Yo is an informal network of people in and around Yorkshire who make games. While videogames are not the area I want to go in, A lot of the teams that are local are often indie companies, which usually make more use of more 2D graphics than 3D. This could provide a good opportunity to collaborate with game makers by making graphics or animating for them. Animation can be applied to a lot of industries and doesn't necessarily have to stick with short films or series'

NATA 2014

The Newgrounds Annual Tournament of Animation has begun again this May! NATA is an excellent opportunity to test your animation skills. Unlike other competitions, NATA brackets you against other animators of you pass through to the open round, Should you win you'll go to the semi finals then the finals. Their is often a cash prize at the end as well as the opportunity to get a trophy. From past experience the tournament is very intensive and requires a lot of work over a long period of time. I will not be entering this year as the open round is already half way complete and I feel with other college work I would not have time. Next year will be my first time having the chance to enter NATA without college work to do though, SO I will be looking forward to that.

11 Second Club

The 11 Second club is always a great opportunity to practice animation. Despite this I have found that I have never entered in for one in the past three years. Truth be told I always thought that it was primarily for 3D animation but It is clear that 2D animation is showcased and wins sometimes too. While it is preferable to start working on this at the beginning of a month, I have decided to entered onto this months competition and practice my animation skills. 11 Second club gives you an 11 second sound clip to which you can animate anything you want to it, the prizes include 3 month training access to professional webistes and the grand having your animation checked out by a board of professional animators. It also provides excellent work to put into showreels and CVs

Loop De Loop

LoopdeLoop is a bi-monthly animation challenge where you must make a small animation based on a certain category, the only restriction being that the animation must loop. This is an excellent way to practice animation as loops generally are pretty small and quick to do. While there is no prize, the loops do get shown at screening at the end of the deadline and the winner is featured on the website, giving good publicity. I plan to enter this competition as it would be good footage for showreels as well as a good addition to my CV.

Business cards

To help with advertising myself, I have decided to get some business cards. I have decided to use the online service Moo to create the cards. Moo offers a lot of already designed cards, as well as a templaye for creating your own designs.

These are the designs that I have set up so far. I was unsure what I wanted in the design for these cards so i decided to keep it simple. I am not sure if I want more information on the card, such as a link to where people can find my work, however I still need to set up a Vimeo account for easy hosted of my videos.

Animation help

During My work in Extended practice, Alex asked me if I could help him with character animation in his game. I was happy to help out!

Alex made a document listing all the animations he required and some information on the character. The plan was to create rough animations for these action which Alex would use as guides. Unfortunately due to time constraints I could only manage to create one for him. It got to the point where I had to focus on my project and I couldn't afford to help out.

Showreel 2014

I have finally composed a professional show reel for myself. This will be very useful when entering the industry to show off what I can do and to get my name out there. I have collected work from over the past three years of me making animations, while I would of preferred to to more recent wok in, the reel would be far too short if I did just that.

BUY CEREAL.

Earlier in May I finally got round to doing my green screen footage for my animation. I also did the extra cereal thing for Lija, Tom and Luca's project. Me and Lija filmed the footage in the flat we live in.

Unlike my part playing U-1, this was considerably less serious and I had dialogue. Luckily the role required me to be pretty hammy, which I am exceedingly good at.




The filming only took an hour and was a lot of fun to do! I definitely want to play around with green screens a lot more in the future.

Cardboard box on my head.

Over Easter I decided to help out with Lija, Tom and Luca's Extended Practice project by being an actor in their film. I played the main character U-1, acting out all of the indoor scenes.

Originally I was only going to play a small role as an extra that appeared on a cereal box, however the team couldn't manage to get their original actor to work as the main character so they asked me instead. I was more than happy to help! While I have very little acting skill myself, the role required me to have a big cardboard box on my head, so I figured I could manage. Also I do enjoy playing characters in front of a camera.

All the filming took part over three days startign around 11:00 am and finishing around 5:00 to 6:00 pm. It was very tirinjg and a lot of hard work, mainly as the filming process was very stop and start, setting up different camera angles, offloading footage, etc. It didn't really help that the set was very warm, especially when in costume.

In hindsight it was probably not the best use of my own time to take three days doing acting, however I had a lot of fun and it was a nice change of pace to what I usually do. I don't think I'm going to be pursuing a career in acting anytime soon but I still enjoy it nonetheless.

Dynamic scene

One of the the most difficult scenes to animate was the part where the camera pivots to follow the sword beam and the claw.

I had to redraw each element in scenee multiple times to get illusion of a 3D environment. It took two days animate the 6 second scene.

There are elements of this scene that i'd like to improve, I feel that the claw moves a little erratically And I'd like to angle the characters with the camera angle, however I am pretty happy with how it came out.

Crit Talk

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For my final crit I showed what animation I have completed up to that point. Unfortunately I am not going to complete the entire thing to the deadline. I did get some good feedback from my peers however. A lot of people liked what animation is there  and they really like the music. There were some improvements that people suggested, such as varying up the camera angles and adding more shadows to make the characters less flat. I'm not sure if I can implement these changes in time but it is something I will definitely consider when working towards the end of year show.

Pixel scene

For a small scene in the animation the style reverts to a videogame style for a flashback.




I have changed the style of the sprites form my initial test, I believe it looks better minus the black outlines that I had. I am happy with how this scene has turned out but I feel that I could add more detail. I used a pixel add on tool in flash to create this pixel animation.

Shaun McGlinn (Blordow)

With only roughly two weeks to go I was skeptical whether I could find someone to compose a soundtrack for me. I knew that it was too late to contact the music college for help So I began looking for a paid solution.

I knew that Newgrounds was a good source of creative individuals and that there was a way to get good visibility from a post with the front page post system. o I posted an advertisement for my animation, saying that I would be a paid job.

After a single day I got around 7-8 people interested in my project. I eventually settled with a musician called Shaun McGlinn (Blordow) I got in contact with him through Skype and we quickly settled payment and what style of music I wanted in the animation. He then proceeded to work very quickly through the project, finishing the soundtrack on only just over a week.

I am very happy with the music he has produced and I feel I handled our interaction very well.

2nd Animatic

With help from the initial animatic I have created a 2nd animatic with more detail.




With this animatic I will be able to show this to a composer to help me make a soundtrack for the animation. The timings in this animatic are finalised and will be followed in the final animation. I also have some voice acting where the green screen video parts will be.