Kevin O'Shea - Showreel
The Reel
Track - Go! by Public Service Broadcasting - Louis La Roche Remix
Creating this showreel has been a real labour of love. To the point where finally finishing it has been bittersweet. I will very much miss working on it. While much of the work in this reel has been created from start to finish by myself alone, there are many pieces created in collaboration with others. I believe you can only be the best by working with the best and I have been very fortunate to work with some amazing artists.
One piece though that has been made entirely by myself is the reel intro, which if you'll indulge me, I would like to now go into in excruciating detail.
Reel Into - Narrative
The idea behind the Intro is quite simple really. It started as a memory from when I was a child and my parents bought myself and my sister a Gameboy each. I adored it and for the next 6 months I played with nothing else. The 10 second story is based on how resentful my other toys felt and their attempt to destroy this usurper.
Just like when I was a child, they did not stand a chance. The Gameboy transforms into the "Gamebot" and fights off the initial attacks. First from the original red Bionicle and then from a Venom action figure, both of which I actually had growing up. Off screen a Gameboy cartridge transforms into a blaster which uses the batteries as ammunition. A single laser blast is fired and destroys what the keen eyed millennials will recognise as the Green Ranger's Dragonzord. A toy I didn't have but desperately wanted. The stage is now set for an ultimate showdown, finishing on a cliffhanger. However if someone is willing to pay me for a year, I will happily carry on animating.
This project grew to mean a lot more to me than just a reel intro. I wanted to acknowledge the people close to me who helped me every step of the way to get where I am now. As such I have inserted as many personally relevant Easter Eggs as time would allow. While this added time to the project, it was my decision to make and I felt it was important.
Starting with my incredible girlfriend, who not only supported and encouraged me every step of the way, but also seemed to be in possession of a saint like patience, having to put up with me for the 6 straight weeks I spent making this. Right at the beginning in the upper left corner a small Polly Pocket is visible. This was her favorite toy growing up. Seconds later, in the background, the case is also visible. Her feedback and eye for detail was invaluable and it wouldn't have turned out the same without her.
My first mixtape was given to me by my mother, a mix of 80's and early 90's absolute tunes, carefully recorded off the radio to try and cut out the DJ speaking. Though its inclusion added several hours of render time, I feel it was fully worth it.
The set features many video cassette tapes. The clearest one is Jurassic Park, which my dad took me to see when I was 7. Seeing that film was quite possibly the first domino which led me to animation.
In that same part of the Intro, in the background, is a green skull castle which is from HeMan the original series. A toy which was given to me second hand so long ago that I don't remember a time when I didn't have it.
The final charge of the toys includes many things which shaped my childhood, Jurassic Park, Star Wars, Lego, Power Rangers and of course Gundam, from which I took more than a little inspiration when designing my own robot mech. There's also an RC helicopter which I never had, but really wanted.
There are many others but those are for the people I wanted to thank.
Reel Intro - Technical
I think a lot of artists in the industry have a sort of checklist of things they'd like to work on. A shoe advert, liquid sim, maybe character animation. One of mine was a transformer.
The first step was to create the Gameboy model. There are many beautiful, even free models online. I needed to create my own from scratch to be able to cut it apart to form the Gamebot. The topology needed to be kept simple, Ngons were acceptable since I knew I wasn't going to subdivide or deform the mesh. The transformation would be more rigid and techy as opposed to a motion graphics style.
Once completed the model was cut up according to the design of the Gamebot.
The standard Biped rig in Cinema 4d proved suitable for the Gamebot. I wanted the transformation to overlap with the animation. The machine would do a kip up before beginning to fight. I started animating the rig first and then worked backwards to fold it into the Gameboy mesh.
Once I was satisfied with the rig animation the next step was to animate the individual parts into place on the Gamebot. The complexity of the transform is achieved by layering simple animations on top of each other. The most important part was to keep everything organised within a system. Everything cleared named and in a logical structure speeds up the workflow and allowed me to focus completely on animating. The Gameboy parts were colour coded to correspond with the parts on the Gamebot to clearly show where they had to animate to.
Every object moves in increments of 6 frames taking no longer than 36 frames to reach their final position. The objects only move/rotate on one axis at a time. This makes it simpler to animate but the result feels quite blocky. When animating so many pieces, intersections are common. The animations of the individual parts need to be offset or moved out of the way to compensate. This is one of the rare occasions where one solution will fix two problems as once you have offset enough objects the full animation no longer feels as rigid.
I custom rigged and animated the two fighters at the beginning, since they were rigid and the limbs of the Bionicle were particularly awkward. Both were rigged with dynamics which activate once they were struck.
Most of the standard bipedal background characters were initially rigged and animated using Mixamo, which despite being ancient by industry standards and not updated in years, is still OP when it comes to quickly animating multiple characters. I repainted the skin weights on all meshes to match the fixed limb feel of action figures and used the built in Mixamo biped rig for Cinema to make animation adjustments as needed. Mainly making sure the feet stick to the floor.
I created custom rigs for the toy soldiers which is just a single bone with IK. The Lego figures are animated with Nulls where I attempted to match closely the look of the Lego Movie. The ATST is a simple custom rig and the Gundam is a C4D Biped which I hand animated.
To fill up the army even more without adding even more time to the project I used the Mixamo free Character models with Mocapped running animations. These are pushed to the back and only serve to fill in any blank spaces.
To fill up the army even more without adding even more time to the project I used the Mixamo free Character models with Mocapped running animations. These are pushed to the back and only serve to fill in any blank spaces.
So that's all folks, hope you enjoyed and hit me up if you need 3D work.
