Goodbye

Dear All,

 Thank you for following me on my animation student blog for the past three years. In less than two months I will be graduating with a 2:1 in BA (Hons) Animation and Visual Effects and I couldn't be happier with the result! After three years of stress and doubt over my career and skill as an animator and artist, I can safely say now I am proud of what I have achieved.

 Despite the turmoil, this has been the best three years of my life, especially my third year. I learnt new skills, made many friends and learnt more about myself as a person. I wouldn't have changed anything!

 However within the past few months I have been having a career slump, being unsure whether I should pursue animation or film as a career anymore. Not because I don't love it anymore! But because I am tired of it and I wish to work in a different field. I crave new things and I want to learn more about the world from a different perspective. I believe this would be the healthiest life option for me to do.

 I look forward to what the future holds, but don't be too shocked if you see me working in animation again, I think I just need a long proper break! I don't think I would come back to this blog again, but if I do, I'd be one lucky woman if I still see you reading my posts.

Keep going and good luck!

Louise Isabel Gillies

Off the Record: Colouring

 Colouring for Off the Record is my favourite task to do for the project. The style really comes to life due to the colour and gives the film a unique look. Here is a shot I recently coloured of the nurse and Sasha.

Swamp Cheese: Photoshop Animation pt3

 Here is another shot I animated and coloured in Photoshop for Swamp Cheese, of the girl getting up after being hit by the swamp man.

Target X-Mas: More Layouts

 Here are some recent layouts I made for the back of the convention centre in Target X-Mas.

Off the Record: Keyframes and In-betweens pt2

 Keyframes and in-betweens I made for a long shot, where Timur replaces a record and turns on the machine.

Swamp Cheese: Photoshop Animation pt2

 Another shot I made in Photoshop for Swamp Cheese, this time featuring a background with the swamp man and his cheese, waiting patiently for people to stop.

Target X-Mas: Animation Shading

 Recently I have started to shade some shots for Target X-Mas. Here are the first two I shaded, one of them which I inbetweened before.

Off the Record: Keyframes

 The majority of animation tasks I have been given by Off the Record have been keyframe animations. Here's three of the latest I have made.

Target X-Mas: In-between

 I have done a lot of layouts for Target X-Mas within the past months, and even though I still help the project by drawing them, I asked for something new to do so my portfolio will have something other than layouts on it. Here is what they gave me, a shot of the hitman to in-between. My blue lines are my in-between animations.

Swamp Cheese: Becoming a Production Assistant

 Recently within the past few months I haven't been happy with the work I was doing during my final term at university. I was to make layouts and animate and do many creative tasks for the student films I was working on, but I wasn't enjoying it anymore. Making animation didn't excite me the way it used to, thus my work was looking sloppy. I noticed how my peers still loved doing what they were doing but I wasn't. It came to my attention that maybe creating animation wasn't for me anymore.

 Not to say I didn't love animation anymore! But I believed that I could be more suited for another role whilst staying in the same industry. I knew what my strengths were; I'm very organised. I love to plan and schedule things and I don't mind tidying. I'm also quick to learn and can handle things under pressure (except for the odd breakdown which everybody gets at some points during their life). I also knew a lot about media and marketing, not from education but from observing it in real life, it all made sense to me! 

 Because of this I considered a career assisting in distribution and exhibition. I love the idea of organising events and marketing schemes to help the public notice wonderfully made films which I believe deserve attention. Although I am still a creative person, making art became something I wanted to make a hobby out of whilst I wanted my professional work to be to do with something I knew I was good at.

 This lead me to become a production assistant for Swamp Cheese. For the moment I am helping the producer find film festivals and making a big list of them, ready to apply to them when we can. I am still helping the student films I am on with production since I know they need people to do as much work as they can for them, but it feels amazing to know I also have a job that's connected to what I really want to do!

Off the Record: Keyframes and In-betweens

Below shows the keyframe and in-between animation I did for the hand and record player stylus in this shot. The clean up is not mine.

Target X-Mas: Shading Big Ben

 This is another one of my favourite backgrounds that I have shaded for Target X-Mas. I painted the sky, shaded in the shadows and highlights of Big Ben and added the snow.

Swamp Cheese: Photoshop Animation

This term I joined a third project to help with animation. In Swamp Cheese, the animation is split into two styles, one of them being more abstract and done in Adobe Photoshop.

 I wanted to help out with its Photoshop animation since not many people on the team liked making abstract animation and I wanted to learn how to animate in Photoshop.

 I overall really enjoy animating in Photoshop! Below is the first shot I was given to animate for the film:

Off the Record: Gramophone

 Earlier this week I was given the job of designing the gramophone(s) shown in the film. At first I drew three different designs for the directors to choose from (first image). They chose the third one and so I tweaked the design to suit what the directors wanted the gramophone to look like. The second image shows the final design.

 The designs were based on images of Russian and European gramophones during the 1940s.

Target X-Mas: Background Layouts pt 2

 During the first week of term scene two was changed and therefore the backgrounds had to change. Below are the new layouts for the scene which I started and completed this week.

Off the Record: Keyframes, In-betweens and Clean Up

 One of my first animation jobs on Off the Record was to keyframe, in-between and clean up the shot where the guards walk up the stairs. Below shows the process:

Target X-Mas: Background Shading

 With the backgrounds for Target X-Mas not far from being complete, I have now moved on to shading the backgrounds as well as drawing the layouts. I still haven't quite got the hang of it as it is something out of my comfort zone and very different to layout design, but I still love it when the shading makes a background look complete!

 Below is my favourite one that I have shaded so far:

Off the Record: Timur

 Along with 'Sasha' I have also created a pose sheet and expression sheets for the second main character, 'Timur'. I had a difficult time drawing 'Timur' due to how little I draw male anatomy. It came to my attention whilst drawing this character that I didn't have a natural talent for drawing the human body and that I prefer drawing inanimate objects for the background.