For the simulated work experience I collaborated with Alina Besanidou on her film “Meowmission: Impawssible”.
During the first meeting with the director, she presented a couple of tasks involving character design and layout, and a clean-up of a scene. I was not very confident I could do a good job with neither layout or design, so I decided to go for clean-up.
I was hoping there would have been some clean-up or animation to do, as that is what I really wanted to help with, and I felt like I could have given the project my 100%.
My first task was to clean up a scene of roughly four seconds in which a goldfish is swimming in its bowl. Generally speaking, the rough animation I was given was quite clean, so it was not hard to identify what lines would be the final ones. I noticed that the character was going a little bit off model after few frames, so I tried to have the first frame underneath each one to try and keep the shape of the body consistent as well as the same distance between the eyes and the fins. To make the shapes a little bit neater I decided to create brushes in TVPaint to at least keep the eyes and the body more consistent and make the round shapes more defined. After an initial feedback of few frames, Alina decided she didn’t mind the eyes and the rest of the lines not being perfect, so I went to change that.
It’s been a while since I have done clean up, but it’s mainly been for my animations, so I was looking forward to try with someone else’s style. I was definitely too optimistic thinking the whole scene would have taken me a couple of days, but after the first day I only had ten frames. I have definitely learnt a lesson in patience, and even though we had been told that clean up takes a more considerable time to get done, I was naïve thinking that because my character was looking quite simple, it would have made the process much easier.
In the end the feedback was positive, so I decided to ask for some more work.
My second task was to key frame a two second shot of a cat licking its lips when looking at goldfish. I wasn’t given any particular directions except what I could see in the animatic, so I decided to make the character quite excited to see the goldfish. At first I thought I had possibly gone a little bit too far with the acting given the length of the shot, but it was met with a positive feedback. The only negative feedback was the way I drew the cat’s mouth: in the lack of an expression sheet for the character, I had improvised and went for a sort of anime style cat mouth which was quite off model, but could easily be fixed without any impact on the performance.
Overall, it was a very positive experience and I’d be willing to help the director again when her deadline comes closer.
I barely felt like a simulated work experience as I wasn’t really given any specific deadline except the two weeks when the project would take place, and Alina was generally really relaxed, so it felt more like a collaboration.
I unfortunately had to work from home a lot due to Covid, which made the process a little bit alienating for me, as I like working in the studio and Alina was there a couple of times as well, so it was easier to get immediate feedback. Nevertheless, I tried to keep her updated as much as I could, both on the project and on my health, which was affecting the turn-around time.
The distance also gave me the confident to just try my hands on a task and wait for feedback later instead of depending on the director to tell me exactly what they wanted. I think this might be the case in the industry, especially when you’re part of a big team and the director cannot spend a lot of time giving you direction.
I also find myself to be more open to criticism, as at the end of the day, it wasn’t my film so I trusted the fact that the director knew exactly what she wanted for me and there was no point in being precious with my work.