Neale

This post is primarily about identifying a location I’m very interested in outside of the UK – Ireland may just be a stones throw away but it feels as though the industry is blossoming there in an entirely different way to that of the industry in London.

The country is home to a plethora of studios with many different production methods, including Brown Bag Films, Lighthouse Studios, Cardel Entertaiment and Boulder Media, just to name a few (among others that will be mentioned later in this post). While Ireland may be a small country, the scope of the work these studios produce reaches across the globe, and many of them have contracted with big companies like Disney, Nickelodeon, Netflix and Cartoon Network.

It’s quite inspiring to see so many Irish studios working in a hand-drawn style, which is the field I’m most interested in working toward right now. Obviously one of the biggest studios in the country is Cartoon Saloon, known for their award winning features Song of the Sea, The Breadwinner and Wolfwalkers. Their work over the last decade has arguably driven the industry in Ireland to new heights, and despite the consistently high standard of quality content being produced in the country, it’s hard to argue right now their talent isn’t at the forefront of it all.

Arguably one of the biggest driving forces for new talent in the country has been in the form of web animation (or webtoons). Anecdotally speaking, I didn’t quite realise just how many were from Ireland! The site Newgrounds in particular seems to have fostered a community of animators that have garnered high profiles online, including OneyNG and Speedoru, with millions of followers between them. Though they might not create as much content due to their status as independent freelancers (and other commitments), they have nonetheless made some of the most popular animated works on YouTube over the last decade.

One of my favourite Irish animators right now is Seán Cunningham (aka PaperBagAnimator). A few years ago he set up Studio Meala, an animation studio with a focus on hand-drawn shorts. The studio itself been creating content since around 2019, have gone on to work with video game developers and other web animators, as well as creating their own set of IPs. They’ve established themselves as one of Irelands most competent studios in only a few years, and their track record so far of making content accessible online has definitely increased their profile (and is just generally very consumer friendly!). Once I feel confident enough in my abilities, Meala is definitely a studio I will be looking to apply for even if it means having to relocate for the duration.

Ireland is certainly somewhere I’d like to work – and the fact that the industry has steadily been growing there is a great incentive. It’s great to see a vibrant array of styles flourishing, and that opportunities seem to be increasing year on year in the country. Going forward Ireland seems like it’ll be producing content that rivals some of the most popular

In my continued research of understanding more about the animation industry in relation to video games, I’ve been trying to narrow down what kind of work I’d like to focus on. Up until now I’ve more or less prioritised digital hand-drawn animation, because it’s something I’ve always been interested in, been keeping at for a number of years, and just what I know most out of all the disciplines. But the amount of games that utilise hand-drawn assets, while growing, is still limited compared to the amount that use 3D material. It’s not that I’m uninterested in 3D projects – I think the idea is just very daunting compared to drawn work.

Half the hurdles for 3D to me are learning the software, and learning it quick enough to deploy those skills on a current piece of work. The first steps are always hardest to push through, but they’re the most important! Experimenting is equally important, but sometimes when you don’t have a guide it’s easy to lose motivation, when just making stuff should be the motivation (I’m bad at taking my own advice).

As well as 3D, there’s Pixel animation, which is something I’m a little more comfortable with, but still not entirely familiar. What I do love about Pixel animation is the economics involved with it – pixel artists are often limited in some capacity to what they can use (whether that be space, colour palette, style, etc) and it’s something I have toyed with in the past. The problem is that it’s not widely used outside of indie circles, and it feels like your prospects in the industry are a little more limited focusing solely on pixel art.

I’ve watched a few videos on the subject, but this one by New Frame Plus is pretty informative. It’s helped me put certain qualities that a video game animator needs into perspective, and where I should push. If I want my prospects to be more secure, 3D definitely seems the way to go. I don’t think I’ll put it above everything else, but I think looking at Game Jams would be a good jumping off point. I’ve tried once before (rather unsuccessfully) but I think I need to put aside some free time and join a Jam before I try to dive headfirst into the industry.

Right now I think I’ll continue to focus primarily on 2D skills and translate what I know to 3D work as and when I can find the time. 3D definitely seems like a lot of fun, I just need to get myself past that initial hurdle of learning to make and rig models myself!

I’ve been looking at what I might like to do once I’ve finished the course – I have a rough idea of where my strengths lie and what stages I enjoy in production, but it’s hard to know how exactly to specialise. Video games are something I’ve been interested in for a long, long time now, and I’ve researched development in the past, but I’ve not got the brain capacity nor (ironically) the patience for programming and coding!

One of the games I found most visually striking and inspiring a number of years ago was Skullgirls (developed by Future Club (formerly developed by Lab Zero Games)), a 2D fighting game that released back in 2012. The character’s are all hand-drawn digitally and I guess that’s one of its main draws; there’s been a bit of a resurgence of hand-drawn games in the last decade or so, especially in the indie scene, but hardly a few, if any other fighting games take this approach.

As part of my research I’ve been searching for breakdown images, animation pipeline tutorials and general development tool resources for video games. I’ve attached some images that have been really useful at breaking down some of how principles of animation are approached within Skullgirls specifically. It’s been really interesting to see how they handle player inputs to match positioning of characters on screen at any given time.

I’ve tried to reach out to Future Club but I know how busy they likely are and haven’t had a response as of yet, so instead I’ve been trying to keep up with some of their Twitch streams showcasing the development of animating their latest character.

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1537665397

I’m going to continue to look into and contact developers for information on animation pipeline and the like for video games in this context, because there’s plenty of studios out there, but I know they’re all pretty busy!

We’ve been working on the LIAF project for just over a month now and I’d like to say it’s been going pretty well! It’s been a tough balancing act between delegating work out and maintaining personal control over everything, and it’s been hard to switch gears from how I normally work, but I’ve been enjoying the experience.

My primary role outside of directing has been keyframing, inbetweening, and a little bit of cleanup (which I’ll be doing more of, but I’m trying to prioritise the animating over cleaning up right now).

It’s been a bit of a wild ride – constantly unsure of whether shots are working, asking for others to look over the work to work out whether sequences read well, that kind of thing.

On top of that I also took it upon myself to compile edits of the animatics, merging new shots into it as we develop keys and roughs, add in my own sound design (recording some of my own audio and sound effects but also grabbing some royalty free stuff off the internet), and writing a song for the short. It’s taken a little while but I eventually got the song to where I wanted it and I hope it fits the piece – I only know how to make really messy stuff but the film is all about chaos anyway so with any luck it’s appropriate.

this is the song here it is you can listen to it here click the play button

Directing in itself has been a unique experience. Right now I’m not sure if I really enjoy, and if I am enjoying it I know for sure that I need another go at it to work out how I should be working. Pipeline for me is something I don’t normally worry about when I’m working on my own because I know how disorganised I am and I can juggle things as and when, but keeping tabs on two additional people’s work while trying to maintain that consistency against my own stuff has been a challenge! I’m very grateful that my two team members, Chris and Sofia, have been unreasonably forgiving of my shortcomings.

With all that said, we’re slowly looming toward the deadline and I think we have a good grasp on reaching it. It’s coming up so fast and we still have a fair amount to do but I think once we’ve got everything lined up we’ll be able to move fast and get it ready to show.

Very lucky to have been selected to direct a sting for the Absurd to Zany category for this years LIAF! As intimidating as directing a little short sounds, I’m actually excited to get to make my dumb little movie considering I was worried the subject matter would be a bit too out there, but I guess that’s exactly why the category is called what it is.

It’s just about a crowd at an open mic night turning on the comedian, and tearing him to pieces, before realising that his discomfort is actually worthy of a laugh itself. I wanted to really go overboard with the cartoon antics, which is how it ends up pretty gross by the end. It’s almost certainly subconsciously based on Itchy and Scratchy, I have no doubt that’s what my brain was digging up when I was coming up with the idea.

We’re only on the storyboarding stages so far but the team I’m working with are super kind and helpful! I’ll do another post soon when the animatic is cut, but they’ve helped me feel less worried about the whole project. I’m real grateful they’re on board with how grim the premise is haha

Character design isn’t something I consider myself talented at but I’ve been enjoying the experience so far! The piece below was submitted as part of my Unit 1 assessment and although I do think it’s not entirely polished the way I’d like, it was in a place where I felt I could at least submit it and work on those skills later.

Here’s some of the stuff I’ve helped produce for Filipa’s second year film, which so far has been really interesting to work on! The first design below was really fun to produce and again, it’s not perfect, but I’m learning a lot in the process. It’s definitely made me appreciate more the challenges inherent to this line of work.

This guy took a lot more work than the last design though! It was still a really enjoyable experience, but I think the asymmetrical hair really challenged me. It’s still a WIP affair, and I’m glad I got to help out more even after our simulated work experience period was over.

As part of the course’s Simulated Work Experience I was assigned to assisted Filipa, a second year who’s currently in pre-production on their final film. They showed me some of the work they’ve done so far up to where they are in pre-production and I was glad that I could actually help make something that’ll hopefully be used!

I was asked to look at character design for a male character, where the face had already been designed, but the rest of the figure had yet to be filled out. I did some research into the design philosophy Filipa is going for with the environments, to see if I could pull some relevant designs to draw inspirations from; I spent a good few hours at least just looking at resources (watching PowerPuff Girls counts as research here, I swear), before starting to make some sketches and notes for myself.

Within the limited time frame I managed to produce a few pieces to show, and I got some positive feedback regarding the designs. Honestly I’m not used to having my work be used by someone else, so the fact that they didn’t come firing back with a million different changes or suggestions was a bit of a shock!

Ultimately we decided to move forward with the first idea, which is kind of funny because the whole time I think I was worried about not making anything better than the first, so at least my instincts were right!

Character design was something I haven’t really explored too much before! So this was definitely kind of different for me. Typically if I have a character, it’s not all that well planned out (I tend to just make things up as I go along haha) which can have its benefits, but for pose-to-pose animation it’s been a challenge to maintain consitent characters. I do really like the looseness of doodle-esque characters iny my own work, but in respects to collaborating with someone having a baseline standard for what a specific character should look like is obviously very very useful.
I think having the session a few months ago with Bianca really helped cement that information for me, and a lot of the artists and animators I really admire also have strong character design fundamentals under their belts, so it’s something that I really want to keep applying myself to.

I did enjoy the experience itself, but felt a bit pressured for time because of how close to the deadlines this assignment began. I was also worried that maybe I was trampling on Filipa’s preconceived ideas for the character. For all I know she already had a plan and was just being polite giving me something to do! I think this just speaks to my general worries and anxieties of working under someone else, and whether my additions are actually part of their ultimate vision for their film. I guess this is something that varies from filmmaker to filmmaker. Usually I draw and animate for myself, and by myself, so it was quite different to have to go through this back and forth process just to get to this stage.

I think more than anything this has really taught me the importance of communication in projects. Even though my role is very small right now and I only have a small task, Filipa was very kind despite our conflicting schedules! I’m sure the second years are just glad to be getting any help at all, but I feel like I’d really like to be able to help more right now. It’s been interesting to see what some of the other students in the first year have been doing, compared to the tasks that I was given, and I’m glad I actually got to produce something even if it was a bit of a shortlived experience before this deadline! I’m definitely going to try and continue to help (providing the help is wanted) as I think it’ll be beneficial to my development as an animator, as well as beneficial to reducing Filipa’s workload.

Last week we had a storytelling workshop that was a lot of fun! I think there had been a lot of worry that the session was a bit of a slog but honestly I found it really engaging and it taught me stuff about stories and characters that I didn’t really know all that much about.

I think the three act structure has always left me a bit confused and it really helped me understand how it works as a concept and how emotional beats lie along it. I’ve had a story planned for some personal work for a while now that I’ve been dithering on, deciding whether I could animate it or turn it into a comic, but I think more than anything I was worried about pacing and structure, and this session definitely helped me on that front. Not to mention it’s helped me understand how I want the main character to be perceived and how I can utilise archetypes to make them more interesting.

I wish I had more to show here but it was definitely more of a conceptual thing than a thing I took notes/sketches on! I’m looking forward to the next session on it in the second year and I’ll definitely come prepared with some story ideas for sure.

I’ve tried my hand at a bit of lip sync in the past and enjoyed it but I completely forgot how over-focused I become on the mouth shapes. I think I’m getting there gradually, and my personal lip sync (which I started after the assigned lip sync) seems to have better flow to it. It’s all practice practice practice I guess.

Assigned Lip Sync
Thumbnail(ish)

Almost Finished

Personal Lip Sync
About 3/4 Finished

I’ve still got a little ways to go on the personal lip sync but I think it looks a little more natural than the former? Or maybe in cartoony designs like these it’s better to go for something less natural – it’s probably something I’ll tinker with when deadlines aren’t looming!

The next couple of weeks we’ll be helping the second years with their upcoming films, and I’ll be assisting producing pre-production material for a student. I’m looking forward to it, but I’d be lying if I didn’t say I wasn’t a bit apprehensive!

Last week’s storyboarding workshop with Bianca was a lot of fun! Both of the sessions we’ve had with her so far have been really entertaining and I’ve left with a much greater understanding of what kind of stuff character design and storyboarding entails. I still think I’m a long way off being even close to a competent storyboarder but that’s just how learning goes.

Storyboarding was a lot of fun and it spoke to my inner comic artist. I’ve made a few comics in the past, but I’m well aware of my limits right now on that front. Last year I made my first one-shot comic (it’s only like 16 pages long) that I really enjoyed making at the time. I’ve got plans for more in a similar vein, I just haven’t had a lot of time to execute them since starting the course.

But yeah, generally speaking I had a good time with this exercise! Bianca’s pointers were helpful (working in 4:3 isn’t impossible but I guess studios don’t typically work in that aspect ratio anymore haha) and I’ll definitely use what I learnt for some personal projects in the year.