Pikcells - Architectural Visualisation

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Last week we let off a bit of Christmas steam and headed over the west of the north. It got proper Christmassy as the snow started to fall so it looks like we went to Lapland but actually it was Cheshire.

First up was a trip to Catton Hall in Cheshire where we had some delicious bacon butties waiting for us before a Clay pigeon shooting session began.

Old JB cleared up on the shooting missing 1 out of 30! Too much XBox. Inside again for a very nothern pie and chips and to dry off our socks and gloves by the open fire.



Careful when drying synthetic iPhone gloves next to a roaring fire, extreme shrinkage can occur.


After the meal we went on a 40 minute quad trek in the now snow covered grounds of Catton Hall. It was a fantastic experience and we cant recommend this highly enough.

After snowy Cheshire we went into Liverpool, firstly for a meal at a Japanese restaurant named Etsu. Above is the last known photo of everyone as the battery ran out in the camera. After this we went to a comedy club then to a discotheque till the early hours.

So…what is the best way to show off a new moustache?….. drinking some Guinness! As you can see it doesn’t really work unless you take a massive gulp and have predominantly dark facial hair or considerable facial hair.

Some quite impressive ones here, some where trimmed some were just left to grow unkempt and some were false! We managed to raise about £250 notes, matched by the bosses making around £500.

Last Friday we downed tools and ventured over to Bradford for the inaugural animation festival. A very informative event packed with inspirational talks from some of the industries big hitters. If you have yet to get to BAF it is well worth it and we highly recommend it to anyone with an interest in the field of creating moving [And still] CG imagery. BAF verteran Jane provides a summary of the Friday.

We arrived slightly behind schedule and had to sneak quietly into the world of Mainframes production of Swagger Jagger by Cher Lloyd.  This presentation was great in terms of showing us the sheer amount of pre production that goes into this type of project as well as the methods which they used 3d and 2d.  It also warned us of the dangers of lack of saving work due to a horror story of 10 years worth of work being deleted. God forbid. There was however one major blow from this presentation being the fact it was on Swagger Jagger and a fair number of us have been suffering from the song stuck in our heads for a number of days, just writing this I’ve got it in my head again.. not good…

The second event of the day was Andy Schmidt from Pixar animation.  The main part of this was formed around the pipeline of Cars 2.  Something that was found particularly surprising was that last on the bill even after special effects, as well as the lighting and feel of the majority of scenes were based purely on an image painted via one individual which from the images to final renders were almost identical!

This was a great presentation in general showing how the team put together things, something I found disappointing was they don’t do storyboards the old fashioned way on a board anymore it’s all computerised.  As well as being a good all rounder it gave us all great inspiration, their water is amazing and the general details all round and passion they put into all aspects of their work shows through.

Our final event of the day involved an official selection of professional films.  These were all random films made presumably for festivals.  I loved Nullarbor, an animation about an australian driving in the outback for its humour, animation and style with another film The Maker coming in second for it’s nice twist at the end and stop motion finess.

The day was tied up [As usual] by going for a beer followed by a lovely curry, more beer and karaoke finale.

http://www.nationalmediamuseum.org.uk/bradfordanimationfestival

This month we are mostly growing moustaches to raise money for prostate cancer.
There are concerns that at the end of November when this is all over, 2 of the team may look like these 2 spritely young wiper snappers.

If you would like to support us and donate please follow the “Mo Space” link below;

http://mobro.co/pikcells

http://uk.movember.com/

We took on the evil spirits again this year by carving these terrifying designs into our pumpkins. The least scary pumpkin sported a moustache which we think is a first in pumpkin carving. Although a trailblazer, the poor chap would probably get laughed out of town if he turned up with that.

JC went over to East Street Arts Patrick Studios in Leeds yesterday to do a bit of R&D into stop motion techniques for an upcoming project.

The workshop was headed by Ashley Dean, from Broken Pixel Animation and was a chance to design, rig and animated a character using stop motion techniques. Above is Jane’s creation “Magic Bob”, the rabbit didn’t quite make it.

http://www.animatedyorkshire.co.uk/?p=2157

Most of us went over to Leeds university on Wednesday night to see the D&AD GBH lecture. Some very inspiring work on show which got the creative juices flowing for a few upcoming projects we have lined up.

http://www.dandad.org/dandad/events/2011-09-12/d-ad-north-lecture-gbh?page=1