In March, we began the Blink Industries Live Brief. This brief was given to us by the new ‘Blink Games’ subsection of the blink industries company. We were presented our brief in an in-person session with Nicola, a representative from Blink Games. Our brief was ‘INSERT BRIEF HERE.’ Initially I was disappointed that this brief would be tailored more towards the game design/art students. Also, because the final submission needed to be created in Unreal Engine, I thought I couldn’t use any of my more traditional art techniques in the project. As we learnt more about unreal engine, I learnt I could still fit in some analogue techniques and the game engine was more expansive in what it could achieve than I expected.
Together we came up with our idea for the animation during a brainstorming session over Microsoft Teams. We decided upon our log line which was: “A zany, unpredictable hero crashes into a surreal mixed media world and comes face to face with a corporate looking creature.” We chose all these elements after taking a look at Blink’s previous projects and we distilled blink’s creative practice into some distinct core values. These values were that of mixed media creation and bringing creative twists to mundane appearing things. With our log line decided we began work on preproduction.
I wasn’t able to attend the unreal engine tutorials since I was at work, because of this I wasn’t able to contribute myself to the file we were presenting. Despite missing out on this I still plan on testing out unreal engine in the future to learn more about it. Around this time we also delighted each member of the team a role. My role on the project was as Animator and Storyboard Artist. I was in charge of animating the puppet another team member created and half of the protagonist’s scenes. I created many storyboard over the course of the project as shots changed and I converted 2 of them into animatics.
From the start of the project we knew we wanted to include some stop motion elements. To achieve this in Unreal Engine we realised we would have to 3D scan a model. We recieved a 3D scanning workshop during a scheduled in person session where each member of the team got a chance to try out 3D scanning a model whilst also learning about the different types of 3D scanners and the best methods to get a high quality scan. We learnt that the scanner does not work well with reflective surfaces, initially we wanted the boss character to have a metallic design due to it resembling a computer and machinery.
I thought I’d be working alone on the stop motion as the only animation student however one of the game art students also worked with me by building the puppet by themselves. I was worried at first because it would be their first stop motion puppet but in the end it ended up feeling professional and easy to use. I learnt that I need to have more faith in my teammates skills as creatives.
When animating the puppet using the 3D scanner we had to book a time slot of 1 hour in the 3D workshop. This made me panic as I know stop motion takes a long time to complete well and I was worried it wouldn’t be nearly enough time. To counter this I simplified the action the enemy was going to take, getting down to around 10 poses. I figured having a much smaller amount of time would not only be able to cut down the time spent with the 3D scanner, it would be easier for the students working in unreal engine to import in. I am not used to compromising this much when it comes to working on a project so it was good practice to learn how to cut down on time when needed. I was mostly satisfied with the final animation of the puppet however I wish I had more control when importing it into Unreal Engine. I instructed the Unreal Engine head of the project how to position the puppet over Discord however I still feel like I didn’t have enough control of the timing used. If I could redo this project I would want to be the one to put the 3D models of the puppet into Unreal engine.
I communicated with my animation team over the online service Discord, which we found to be the most convenient resource as we were all familiar with it. We created a discord server specifically for the project with multiple text channels to remain and topic and divide assets accordingly. Using discord, we had weekly meetings that we could use to designate tasks and update each other on our progress. I found these unscheduled student only meetings to be one of the most crucial parts to the success of the project, being able to communicate with each other often and give feedback on our contributions helped us stay on schedule but also be aware if we were falling behind. In the future I want to keep up this type of communication and see if it can work out in other settings.
After we finished our animation we got to present it to the creatives at the Blink Industries studio in Camden. The day before we went to the studio I hand made my own business cards to give out, they included my email and social media. I knew that this was going to be a good time to network and make industry professionals aware of my work. When it came time for the presentation I wished I had done more preparation, I spent so much time working on the project that I didn’t set time aside to properly plan what I was going to say when we went to Blink. I ended up causing uncomfortable pauses during the presentation that made me cringe. In preparation for my next project, I will work on my public speaking skills and speech preparation.
The Blink Project gave me a new appreciation for teamwork which I had not gotten out of any team project before, the way we communicated with each other gave me faith in each team member that they could complete their tasks, unlike other experiences I’ve had in group projects I wasn’t stressed worrying about other people finishing their sections because I felt aware of where they were at with their work. In future group work I’m going to make sure to keep up this level of communication so I can work effectively.
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