Nexus Diaries : Day 11 - 21

This is the end post of my NEXUS Diaries.

I had a great time with my work experience there, and I learnt alot of great stuff.

Thanks very much to Mark Davies, Nat B and Jim Le Fevre, as well as everyone else there for being so nice.

Week 1 : This was my first experience of a productions studio, and winin an hour of arriving on my first day I was set to animating some ducks! I've been told I've now set the record for the shortest time for somebody on work experience to start there and have work approved to actually be in the final product, which was 2 days (Which also included learning the software). Then I spent the rest of the week practicing my animation skills on a selection of bouncing balls. It may be the basics but practiced and perfected basics make all the difference.

Week 2 : In week two I worked on animating a ready made, fully rigged character from one of Nexus' current projects to practice my walk cycles and make sure I learn the process with perfectly clean and smooth graphs. I cannot upload the early stages of this practice as the character still looks like himself, which is against client privacy, but the later clip below is his skeleton so I'm allowed to include this one.

Week 3 & 4 : At the beginning week three there was a new project to pitch for and I was asked if I'd like to help do a bit of animation for it. All I can say is I worked on a bear. I spent two weeks animating this bear to an audio clip I liked on 11 second club. There were many edits to this animation to make him less exagerrated and more subtle and emotional... like an actor learning to be a better actor. The rig was very limited as the original intention wasn't to animate with him, but I worked around that. I again cannot include any videos or imagery of this animation due to the privacy of the character.

Overall I learnt LOADS and had a wonderful time with wonderful people.

Thanks NEXUS!

Nexus Diaries : Day 10

Day 10, Today was MORE character animation with the exception of a little celebratory champagne at the end of the day with the hand in of a project. I shall see if I'm allowed to eventually show an excerpt with the ducks I animated.

Nexus Diaries : Day 09

Day 09 was more character animation. It's taking so much refinement to try and get this walk symmetrical. 

It's all part of it though. So there's not much to write about.

Nexus Diaries : Day 08

Day 08, more character animation, then I took a break from that to model some cartoony clouds for a different project. Then back to my animating. It's a lot of animation focus on one character's walk cycle but I've clearly been improving on my skills so it's all worth it.

Nexus Diaries : Day 07

Day 07, I continued my progress on character animation. I also helped a project by watching the playblast of what they'd done so far, making a list of any errors or 'funny things' (not funny ha ha) that I could see and joining in with a spontaneous meeting with the director and team to talk through my list so they could be placed on the sheet of refinements for the project. - That was fun.

Then I continued Character Animation.

Nexus Diaries : Day 06

Day six included more intense work on animating this secret character. I spend they day doing that so not much more to write about....

Nexus Diaries : Day 05

So today was the end of week 01, a very interesting week. 

I was left to my own devices to practice my animation on a character from a current project. I would upload a playblast of my progress - but I doubt I'm allowed to, so I won't. 

It has been a fun day though, and I'm getting more and more fluent in 3ds Max and using the graph editor whilst animating. 

Since I've been home this evening I decided to fit in some Winnie Refinements.... I want to make her 3D animation sections smoother and with the noted adjustments.... after a week of using 3ds Max solidly.... going back to Maya feels like :

AAAAGGGGHHHHHH!!!!

My finger rhythms have become accustomed to the new software and the confusion in movements on the keyboard could make some people GO CRAZY!

That said.... it's great to get to know more about both.

Nexus Diaries : Day 04

Day 4 was interesting. After a day and a half of working on bouncing balls they were finished! Then I got to move onto practicing my animation on a character. A character chosen at random from one of the current projects which is fun. And on a geek note..... The rig is delicious! Sooo many options in there. 

Anyway... Here are some play blasts of the bouncing balls, one with the trajectory and one without. The graph work on them is very clean.

Nexus Diaries : Day 03

Day three was spent working on primary animation skills.... The Bouncing Balls.

I was given the task to perfect a series of bouncing balls in 3ds Max paying great attention to the animation graphs making sure they're perfectly clean and tidy and the balls are animated as realistically as possible. 

Can never get enough practice :)

....and I feel my animation skills have improved already....

Nexus Diaries : Day 02

Well Day 02 was great, I finished the first batch of animated ducks.... and the directer wanted MORE!

So I put animated ducks in another scene.... and the director wanted MORE!....

....In EVERY SCENE .... like Where's Wally... but I think he was just getting carried away :)

The first two days were successful, I've had two pieces of animation approved to go into the project AND learnt how to do it in 3ds Max.... Quite successful I'd say :)

I also sat in on a meeting between the director and the rest of the team, watching through the progress of the project and seeing the detailed amendment suggestions... was very interesting to see.

Nexus Diaries : Day 01

So today was my BIG FIRST DAY at NEXUS!

IT WAS BRILLIANT!

The day started off by catching the train, and the trip from the tube station to Nexus headquarters involved me looking like the biggest tourist ever - google maps walking sat-nav, watching to see if the blue dot representing me was going in the right direction. I still arrived early.

I had a grand tour of the building and met everyone inside thanks to the lovely Nat B.

Followed by an induction into the Nexus system and how to access the projects I need to.

Then THE Cool as a Cucumber Mark Davies gave me a quick tour of the 3ds Max program with the very clever systems Nexus have for themselves for a brilliant pipeline.

Then TO ANIMATING! I spent my day animating a few cute little ducks. I can't say who they are for, but I had fun getting in the 'Duck Zone' as it was referred to.

Overall, day 1 was fabulous, the people are lovely, the building is great - creaky floorboards and homely, and I'm looking forward to getting there bright and early for day 2!