Study Task 9 - Who's who? What do they do and who do they work for?

Nick Kondo is a Senior Animator at Sony Pictures Imageworks. I discovered his work through Twitter after I watched 'Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse' as he released several behind the scenes videos and concept art from the film after it's release. I particularly liked a short clip he posted from his demo reel where we can potentially see an early influence of Spider-Ham's run cycle.

Next year I wish to experiment more animating in 3D.

British concept artist and animator Carol Wyatt worked on the children's television show 'Fosters Home for Imaginary Friends'. She provided the artwork for the backgrounds, including the exterior of the main house. She has since worked on shows such as 'Rick and Morty' and 'Over the Garden Wall'.

Over the past few months, I've noticed that I have an interest in background design. Carol Wyatt's work is incredibly inspiring as at the moment, the backgrounds I am producing seem to be rather unimaginative; as if I am still trying to make them look too realistic. I feel Wyatt's work is able to perfectly portray a realistic environment whilst still exploring creative and cartoon-esque themes due to her use of colour, shape, and her ability to manipulate perspective.

Yaoyao Ma Van As is an art director and illustrator who also worked on some of the backgrounds for season two of 'Rick and Morty'. She has also worked for Disney and Warner Brothers, and works as a freelance artist.

As well as colour, something that stood out to me while looking through this practitioner's portfolio was how much she paid attention to detail. Each piece is extremely meticulous and as a perfectionist, this level of detail is something I hope to include in my own work next year.

Nicolas Weis is a French visual development artist, who has worked for Dreamworks, Paramount and Imagi. I first came across his work while looking at concept art for the 'How to Train your Dragon' franchise. He also worked on 'The Croods' and 'Astroboy'.

I appreciate how functional his designs are as he often labels them or adds certain characters to demonstrate scale or weight. Next year we will be producing work in teams which means we have to be as communicative and helpful as possible. I aim to work so that my concept art speaks for me and therefore the team will know exactly what is going on, rather than creating several pieces of conflicting designs.

Kieran Belshaw is a visual effects and concept artist based in London, who has worked for HBO. His concept artwork for 'Game of Thrones' is something that interested me as similarly to the previous artists I have mentioned, his work is incredibly detailed and in most cases, translated perfectly into the show. He previously worked on films such as 'The Man from U.N.C.L.E.', 'Dredd' and 'Allied'.

Before coming to university, 3D CGI and visual effects were an area of animation that interested me as I thought the idea of combining live action footage with animated visuals in order to realistically bring fantasy or science fiction to life is something I wished to achieve. I haven't explored this area much in my first year so hopefully next year, I can experiment more with visual effects.

Cam Sykes is another freelance illustrator and concept artist, who specialises in environment and character design. He has a YouTube channel where he uploads tutorials (which is how I discovered him) and is currently based in Sydney.

I like how much of a variety his videos offer and I hope to pick up some tips and tricks for when I design my own settings and characters next year.