COLE THOMPSON DESIGN & PHOTOGRAPHY
Animation
3D Animation Showreel
3D Animation Showreel
Full Stop animation
The Full Stop animation was a simple project after my masters degree and due to my main job no longer requiring these services inside office hours I wanted to create a short 2D animation to exercise the various new skills I had just capped with a professional qualification and to test out new plugins for adobe after effects.
Full Stop animation
Edge of tomorrow creature design
I was testing various techniques for my animated series and loved the creature design from the blockbuster film - The Edge of Tomorrow. I must emphasise that this is not my creature design, but is my animation and render following the step by step tutorial available on YouTube.
Edge of tomorrow creature procedural animation
VK and Global products Ltd
This was an advert created for VK to be distributed to Tescos social media (Instagram) over the Halloween period. Although I was ultimately not chosen for the position due to a more qualified individual within the drinks industry being offered the position, this advert went from storyboard to being ready to deploy within 72hrs. All assets were created by me within this timeframe. I was also given a selection of photographs from a recent shoot to also turn into an animated series. Both briefs were executed within this 72hr window.
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I want to bring my work ethic, creativity, leadership skills to work within a team of my own. If I can create 2 separate adverts from scratch within 72hrs, just imagine what I can do for your team as either a part of it or leading it. I am just waiting for the right company or studio to recognize the level of work I bring to the table.
Animation was my natural progression from still art to moving art. I am fully trained in motion capture and 3D animation techniques used for productions like Disney Pixar films but the whole point of my Masters degree was to not only put together animation quickly reflecting world events creating an IP similar to the adult animated series South Park but to inspire people without professional skills in animation to tell their own stories in an expanding digital world.
I devised a basic pipeline with minimal 3rd party scripts to organize and utilize basic assets created in Adobe Illustrator and easily arrange scenes in Adobe after effects. Within the test screening of my concept video I was asked 11 times out of 20 by artists of all ages with no reported animation skills (determined in the questionnaire filled out before the screening)
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I want to inspire people to tell their own stories and not feel left behind by a rapidly growing golden age of digital art.
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Check out my concept trailer for 13DARK at the bottom of this page, thanks for watching.
Twiggs Ltd
My main duties were creating rapid graphics and animations for Twiggs, Oakwell Training & Red Shop Deli . This is parts of various ways I presented data to key stakeholders.
VFX, Mocap, Pixar 3D animation
VFX is essentially animation so a large part of my masters degree was creating my own VFX shots and experimenting with Mocap data. The 3D animation was created using hand made keyframes using Maya.
Experimenting with MOCAP in the studio.
3D Animation test in Maya
VFX Test using Mocha
Helping people tell their story, in their own way...
Part of the Masters Degree program for me was helping people tell their stories. Storytelling is an important part of our society. From the dawn of civilization it has been the ancestor of all modern media, it is how we understand the world and how we understand each other from their eyes and not our own. The only problem being during this amazing golden age of media you either learn lengthy processes and are already an artist to tell your story or you rely on someone who is. I wanted to help construct a pipeline that offers simple 2D animation with a beautiful Armory of effects and scripts in order to easily achieve the look they want keeping the concentration on the creative process and not complex processes. I have begun to write my own course for people with no prior knowledge in the Adobe creative suite and approached Adobe to help me push this concept out into the world. There are so many fascinating people with such a rich history and tales to tell. I want to do more than have them write down their experiences, I want them to create experiences that other people can watch or re-live through VR.
This method although simple could be easily absorbed by people wanting to tell their story without facing a steep learning curve which might dissuade people.
What about my Story?
13DARK Concept
13DARK is an Adult animated horror comedy series in a similar, simple format that South park was created using. The Idea was to create episodes on a monthly basis as a team of 1 person about current events to ensure it remained relevant. Most people attribute South Parks success to its shock-comedy and toilet humor but one of the things that kept it popular was the current events based storylines following some of our society defining moments until South park itself became a society defining moment. The series main protagonist is an ex-military operative who left after being badly injured, suffering from PTSD he was finding it difficult to adapt to civilian life until meeting "13" a warden of something hidden deep underground, the series follows my life, famous historical event and current events with obvious fantasy elements.
Post research I devised a way that required minimal scripts but vastly improved all times especially rigging using Duik. These bypasses not only reduced the time it took to publish pop culture relevant horror based animations including storyboarding and scripting but this process also vastly increased the intuitive nature of the adobe suite.
