Horizon Call of the Mountain

I was honoured to work on the flagship PS VR2 title of one of the most fun franchises in recent times. I led the work on the thunderjaw and scrapper machines. Here is a reel showcasing some of my animations, which were carefully tailored to suit the VR perspective of the game.

Special thank you to the following: Simon James, David Chambers and Richard Oud (from Guerrilla).

©2023 Sony Interactive Entertainment Europe. Published by Sony Interactive Entertainment Europe Ltd. Developed by Guerrilla and Firesprite. “Horizon Call of the Mountain” is a trademark of Sony Interactive Entertainment Europe.

Tranquil Tarifa, 2021 (Leica M 262)

Last year I spent a few days in Malaga and wanted to make the short trip to Tarifa - a small surf town in the South. After multiple failed attempts with a ride-share service and a torturous coach journey, I finally made it a day later than planned.

I was exhausted and feeling sick after several nights of drinking, so coming here and feeling the tranquil, slower pace and cooler climate was much needed.

That’s not to say there’s nothing going on in Tarifa. In fact, it’s a very popular spot for watersports, trekking, horse riding and yoga. And because of all the people having come here to have fun, there’s of course a vibrant nightlife too.

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On my second day the town was covered with fog for most of the day. You couldn’t see much past 200 metres.

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Most of these pictures were taken in the morning after a sleepless night thanks to a motor-nosed dorm mate.

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Tarifa is the southernmost town of Spain and its long pier separates the Atlantic and Mediterranean oceans.

The red tuna caught and cooked here is incredibly tasty.

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As you can see, the town is incredibly serene. It has great food, great people and great watersports and other activities. I must come back again.

I did my second session of kite-surfing here. My first session was in Devon (UK). If you look up videos of it you’ll see it’s an amazing looking sport. You need a lot of guts, energy, dedication and time for it though, and unfortunately, I’m lacking in all of those things.

Shot with my phone by a friend I made called Bob, whom was out here finding himself again after having separated from his wife of 30 years.

I met some awesome people here whilst staying at Tarifa Kite Hostel. I hope to meet you again Roel and others.

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Shot with Leica M Typ 262 and Voigtlander 28mm f2 Ultron or 35mm f1.4 Classic II S.C.

Spain was my first outing with a Leica camera. It’s a beautiful machine which I will write more about later. Suffice to say though it lacks the dynamic range of most modern cameras, so a couple of these shots are stacked exposures.

Shooting Joe (on film)

Who is Joe?

Joe is a buddy of mine who does coding at the same game development studio that I work in.

But he’s more than that.

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Like me, he has a bunch of hobbies. He skateboards and he climbs. And he’s also a great, stylistic photographer.

https://www.instagram.com/joeno_photo/

https://www.joenoseph.co.uk/

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He’s also a bit of a style icon.

Shot on Zeiss Ikon ZM with Voigtlander 35mm f1.4 on Kodak Portra 400. Processed and then scanned by me using Nikon Coolscan LS-50 and Negative Lab Pro.

A Postcard from Longsight, Manchester (2020)

For 7 years I lived in the Longsight area of central Manchester (UK) and I never thought to photograph it until the last few weeks before I left.

This was during semi-lockdown in 2020 whilst many places were shut and you couldn’t generally mix with people. So people like Vinn (above) took to sitting on their porch, talking to passer-bys and getting their exercise inside. This guy killed two birds with one stone by sitting on a spin bike.

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Why didn’t I photo the area? Well whilst I lived there I just thought it was a run down area with not much going on. I was much more interested in shooting things happening in the city or elsewhere. What I’ve come to realise though is that every area is special in their own way, with their own characters and vibe.

Longsight is an area full of 1st and 2nd generation immigrants and an ageing white population. There’s a bit of a clash of cultures but they make it work.

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Remember lockdown? Those were simpler times…

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I photographed this jolly fellow through his metal gate. He maintained a small but beautiful, lush garden.

This boy was with a group of other mates practising parkour. I meant to take the shot mid-jump but I was too quick on the trigger and you’re left with this awful shot because I was being stingy on my film.

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This is Katsu. Someone had abandoned her on the street not far from my house. They left her in a cat cage with a note and some leftover food. How could they abandon such a cute thing? I theorise they were scared about cats carrying covid (this was very early on in the pandemic).

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A takeaway bravely opens to a few customers at a time.

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A bike tyre hangs from a signpost

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Government austerity

Shot on my Nikon FM3a with Voigtlander 40mm f2 SL-II, on Kodak Portra 800 pushed 1 stop in development. Processed by Photographique.

How to playblast h264 in Maya without Quicktime installed

Since April last year, Trend Micro have been urging Windows users to uninstall Quicktime because they had found two major vulnerabilities in the software and Apple had announced they would no longer be issuing security updates for it. This poses a problem for animators like myself since this particular piece of software is what enables us to playblast in the highly efficient h.264 codec.

Hot on the heels of my 5 year old "How to use Tween Machine" video, I have another hot tip for you Maya folk.

To get the codec back after having uninstalled Quicktime, simply start the installation process again (the program can still be downloaded on Apple's website) but at the point of where it asks the setup you want, choose "Custom".

Choose "Custom"

Then make sure to uncheck the "QuickTime Player" option. The player is the part that has the security vulnerabilities. The Essentials part contains the codec.

After that you are good to go again! That sweet, delicious mov encoder is all yours to abuse with crap animations. No need to thank me. Just send me money :)

Until next time!

Amour de Mimes – Progress Reel

This was made for a presentation we had to do in front of a 100 or more people. Originally I used Inception music, but for the internet I replaced it with a more subtle (yet very beautiful) track and light purple background instead of the original black.

We got pretty good apraise for what was presented so far, and we found out that all the other teams were at a similar production stage as us – which was a bit of a relief, although it doesn’t dismiss the fact that we still have a lot of work ahead.

Anyway, this video just briefly shows what we’ve done so far. Not all of it is there actually, and also it doesn’t really do justice to all the man hours that have been put in to the project by us five guys. Nevertheless –

How to use the Tween Machine

I created this video for a friend, but perhaps it will help a few others too.

Tween Machine is a little script that helps you create breakdowns. The video shows you how to install and use it.

What’s Pink And Fluffy?

It’s done!

A man who’s had a few too many to drink is surprised to find a woman standing next to him:

This was a really tough animation to do due to the drunken state. I’ve done my utmost to make this as good as I could and have learnt so much in the process. I’d say all in all, it’s about a month’s work. For 22 seconds of animation. That’s when I realised that well… art is never truly complete. There’s always room for improvement or other possible interpretations. So I decided to finish up and render it.. using Pixar’s Renderman :) I’ll talk about that in a later post.

Baby minotaur!

I can’t tell whether it’s cute, mischievous or frightening – but what I do know is that I never expected to do anything like this 😀

As one of our many non-animation related assignments in this animation course, we  had to make a high-poly character with some relation to the Narnia fantasy. I chose to do a Minotaur at first, but realising they’ve already been done so many times, I thought I’d put a unique twist on it. A baby Minotaur is not something you see often! Following this thought, I drew and sculpted (with real clay) a concept but ended up not being very happy with it. So I must now credit killintyme for their wonderful art, which I’ve based this model off.

As part of the brief, I had to lower the poly count from ~8million to a few thousand. Then export displacement, normal and diffuse maps. So all in all, I now have a little bit of knowledge in ZBrush sculpting/painting/exporting and importing it all into Maya.

Not ideal considering this is an animation course, but I had fun doing it :)

Animex: Meeting with Ed Hooks!

Animex is a week-long festival where professionals from many different backgrounds, countries and companies in the films and games sector come to Teesside University to meet and talk to aspiring students and hobbyists.

On Tuesday morning, Ed Hooks came in to see character animation undergraduates and masters students. This man transformed the way character animation was learned; he taught animators how to convey emotion and believability in their work. So as well as being a screen writer and actor himself, he also teaches acting to animators and published the renowned book “Acting for Animators”.

Our respect for this man is so great, that we applauded as he entered the room. He turned out to be a great guy and humble as well, and although he’s almost deaf in one ear, he still speaks clearly in a nice tone.

One by one, about 20 of us showed Ed our work, ranging from blocked animation to finished pieces. He gave brilliant, expansive feedback and made use of analogies when needed. Especially for mine.

I showed him my 6 Word Story. I asked him to ignore the horrendous animation, and just focus on the story telling. Being the last piece to be shown, it did quite shock the audience as it was the only “dark” animation. Ed sure had a lot to say about it though. He began with a little of admiration for me doing something so unusual and emotional. He then opened my eyes to what he called

“Masturbatory Art”

That is, art that you make for yourself for your own pleasure. He compared it to tribal meetings; when in old times, people would gather together and share stories. Some stories have purpose and are useful for the tribe. Then there are others, like mine, which is a story that wants to be told, but doesn’t quite have an audience for it. The lesson learnt is that although its good to create masturbatory art, you still need to shape it so that it’s relatable by the audience.

He also went over some of the hithces in the story telling, such as the purpose of the smoking man and where the baby came from.

At some point in the future, I would like to remake this short. At some point.

First poses with a CG character