Bucks Animation Student Kalim Momen is Rusty - For a Day

As everyone at Bucks knows, Rusty is our official university mascot, the big furry character with antlers who welcomes you to our University Open Days and to Freshers’ Week. This week we did some filming for a short video about life at the university, and we needed someone to play Rusty. Fortunately, Kalim Momen, one of our 2nd year animation students, was game to try out the Rusty suit, and see what life is like as a loveable cartoon deer.

Kalim gets suited up

Animators sometimes forget that we are actors too. Unlike most actors, we act out our performances (for the most part) with a mouse, or a pencil, and most of our work is done in our imaginations. If we act something out, it is generally for reference only. The final product will be the animation itself.

On this occasion, Kalim had to try something different – using his body to become the character, like regular actors do. To get into the part, he had to get dressed up in the Rusty costume - which took a lot longer than you might think.

As it turned out, Kalim was a great Rusty; he quickly got into the swing of things, doing silly walks, hugging visitors, and generally putting a smile on everyone’s face. Rusty is the official mascot of the Bucks Students' Union, and the SU could not have been more helpful getting us up and running.

Kalim also discovered some other things about spending the day as a cartoon buck. Big antlers make it hard to fit through doorways, and even on a cold day in November, the inside of a thick fuzzy deer suit gets very, very hot indeed.

Suited at last!

I know this from personal experience because years ago I got to play Goofy at DisneyWorld. Out in the Florida heat and humidity I thought I was going to boil alive. Twenty minutes was enough for me. Kalim on the other hand managed well over an hour – a fine achievement of endurance.

Rusty gets a big hug. Go Rusty!

In the end, we got the footage we needed, and Kalim got some great experience being an actor and performer. Now all he has to do is apply those skills to his animation....

For more on the experience of studying at Bucks New University, come and visit us at one of our Open Days,  take a virtual tour of one of our animation studios, check out what our students think of our course, and see why we're ranked in the top 12 creative universities in the UK. Find out why we're giving free laptops to all our students, and why we give all our students free access to videos at Lynda.com. Also, see what financial assistance might be available to you. Learn which is better for animation, a PC or a Mac? Get hold of a copy of a map so you can find your way around campus, and learn about motion capture at Bucks.

Student Showcase - Kalim Momen explains snow simulation using After Effects

Kalim Momen is one of our talented first year animation & VFX students here at Bucks. One of the first year modules that all our students must complete in order to graduate to the next academic year is Broadcast Animation, which tackles the part of our industry that used to be known (rather dismissively) as flying logos. By definition, Broadcast animation counts as animation, just as important as character animation, creature animation - or any other kind of animation. Broadcast animation is where many of the biggest modern digital VFX houses got their start. The brief for Kalim and the other students was to create a title sequence, using Adobe After Effects, for a famous movie - using titles, animation and design to create a sophisticated piece of work, something that could have been used for the movie itself.

Kalim animated a title sequence for Edward Scissorhands

Kalim chose Tim Burton's Edward Scissorhands, a film that helped to define the director's style and also launched the career of led actor Johnny Depp. We asked Kalim a few questions about his project, and how he came to create it.

Bucks: Why Edward Scissorhands?

Kalim: The reason why I chose Edward Scissorhands for the assignment is that it was one of my favorite movies from my childhood.

Bucks: What software did you use to create it?

Kalim: The software I used to create my first broadcast title creation assignment was Adobe CS6 After Effects


Bucks: How did you create the snow effect?

Kalim: The snow effect that I used is located in Effects and Presets, in a tab called Simulation. It is called t2_snownight2. What you do is you go to the tab called Layer and then scroll down to New and then scroll down and click on solid. When you have clicked on Solid, make the new Solid black After you have done this, drag and drop the t2_snowynight2 trap code SD presets effect on the Solid. When you do this, you will be able to customize your snowflakes to be big or small and you have the perfect background that never ends. 

For the snow effect for the text in the video, first you will need a text: so you go to Layers, scroll down to New and click on Text.  When you have clicked on Text, a box will appear.  You write in any random name and, make the text colour white because you want the snow effect to look real before adding in the effect. 

After you have done those steps, you go to the tab Effects and Presets, type in the search bar "card wipe", and then click on Card Wipe Pixel Storm. When you have dragged and dropped on to the text, the next stage is the hard part - making it look like snow. To do this, first you go to the Effects window on the left side of the screen. Go to the card wipe master control and set the Transition Completion to 100.0%. Then go to the brackets (Card wipe) and go to Rows, and set it to 104, and then set Columns to 161, set Timing Randomness to 0.10. After you have done this you must add in the key frame for the transition completion, so you set a key frame at 0 and make the transition completion to 0.0%. Then, set another key frame at 20 or 30 and set the transition completion to 100.0% - and you will get a snow effect. 

Bucks What tips would you offer to anyone trying to do an exercise like this one?

Kalim: Stay calm and and keep trying again and again. Making this effect was not easy;  there will always be some problems in After Effects that can be difficult to overcome, but stay calm and you will eventually find the answer to your problem. 


Bucks: What were the biggest challenges in getting it done?

Kalim: The biggest challenges in getting this assignment done were the technical issues in After Effects that kept being a problem. For instance, when I was applying Effects in After Effects, the software kept on being difficult by closing itself down or sending up error messages. But I got through it all by remaining calm and, where necessary, asking a friend of a teacher for advice.

(Editor's Note: For more impressive work done by our students and recent graduates here at Bucks, check out the work of Jens Kopke,  Ben Gray's Moonbeam, and the architectural visualisations of Sabah Masood and Anton Alfimenko. Also take a look at the work of Andy Thomas here, see our latest commercial project for Rocketseed, our short film done for a global aid agency, and take a look at the excellent work of designer Monika Dzikowicz, architectural visualisation specialist Krsytof Michalski, Alex Whitfield and the 3D artwork of Mike Swan. And don't forget to see the simulation work of our students done in RealFlow. To see our student demo reel, click here.)

Student Showcase - Animation with Realflow by Kalim Momen, Georgia Nichols and James Hatton

Recently our first year animation students have been experimenting with fluid dymanics, using Realflow to produce animation effects. The results have been excellent, all of which goes to show that technology is rapidly changing what we think of animation, and the way that the medium can be accessed by students. Traditional key-frame animation is just one way to make things come to life. Dynamics and simulation software should be as much a part of an animator's toolkit as motion capture or motion graphics - all part of the way we breathe life into our work.

What is Realflow anyway? According to Wikipedia: "RealFlow is a fluid and dynamics simulator for the 3D industry, created by Madrid-based Next Limit Technologies. Currently at version 2013, the stand-alone application can be used to simulate fluids, water surfaces, fluid-solid interactions, rigid bodies, soft bodies and meshes. Victor Gonzalez, Ignacio Vargas and Angel Tena were awarded a 2007 Technical Achievement Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for the creation of the RealFlow software application".

Below are two examples of our students' work which turned out especially well. The brief was to create an advertisement for a real product - showing how dynamics can be used in the commercial world. First up is an advert for Lush cosmetics by Kalim Momen:




Below is a commercial for for Powerade by James Hatton:




Finally, a commercial for hair colour by Georgia Nichols.


 
(Editor's Note: For more impressive work done by our students and recent graduates here at Bucks, check out the work of Jens Kopke,  Ben Gray's Moonbeam, and the architectural visualisations of Sabah Masood. Also take a look at the work of Andy Thomas here, see our latest commercial project for Rocketseed, our short film done for a global aid agency, and take a look at the excellent work of designer Monika Dzikowicz, architectural visualisation specialist Krsytof Michalski, Alex Whitfield and the 3D artwork of Mike Swan.)