Bee Detective

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Recently I’ve finished work on a series of animations for a live theatre production called Bee Detective, which is produced by Tin Bath‘s Gemma Fairlee, and Sophie Woolley. Gemma directed, and Sophie wrote the script, and performs the main character.

I’m really pleased with the work I did for Bee Detective. It was all bit of a blurry forced march towards the end, but, with much relief. the deadline was made.

While I was lost in a sleepless world of animated bees, somehow squeezed into the narrow gaps in space-time, between my dad duties, my full-time job at SquintOpera, and fighting off a persistant cold/flu bug; it was hard to be aware of what else was going on around me. One of the things that happened was that Sophie had managed to injure herself in a cycling accident, and hence had to swap roles with Gemma. I’m sure lots of other things were happening too, but it was all a bit of a blur.

I haven’t been able to see the live production yet, I’m hearing really good things about it, and the photos look fantastic. I can’t wait to see it when it comes to London in the Autumn. In the meantime, here are some portraits of the main characters.

Sophie Bee, flying around with a magnifying glassHRH Queen Bee, flying, accompanied by 6 drone bees

General Destructor, wearing a military uniform, and looking very pompous

Bee Detective Trailer

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I’ve just finished work on the new teaser-trailer animation, for Bee Detective. Bee Detective is a new Cultural Olympiad funded interactive performance for children, written by Sophie Woolley, and directed by Gemma Fairlie.

This is just a practice run though really. The real work starts now, for the animation to be included as part of the actual show. Watch this space!

In the meantime, here is an exploded diagram of a very important bee.

Exploded diagram of Sophie Bee's animatable elements

Exploded diagram of Sophie Bee's animatable elements

After Effects Project Organisation

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While working at the white-hot coal face of After Effects, I find that I am often asked by wide-eyed youngsters, just how I do I organise my projects? (NB; a complete lie).

Being organised is important! As an After-Effects-er, you’ll find yourself dealing with so many files and comps flying around, that it pays to be a bit anally-retentive with your project management. Everyone has their own preferred method in organising their projects, so use what works best for you. The important thing is to be consistent, and to label everything as clearly as you can. This can save your brain from imploding later on.

When I start a new project, the first thing I usually do, is set up a folder structure, like this;

How I like to organise my After Effects project window

I’ll set up 3 main folders, and I number them, so they appear in the order I want to see them.

01_OUT
This is where comps for rendering go. I usually put my main comp inside a container comp, with the appropriate shot name and number. This is so I can seperate my working comps from my render comps. It’s my After Effects equivalent of a Nuke “Write” node.

02_WORK
This is where all my working comps go. The main comp will usually go into the root of this folder, and then all the nested comps below that will go into a sub-folder, imaginatively named “subComps”.

03_IN
This is where all my imported assets and footage gets stashed, to keep them seperated from my working comps, and my renderable comps. Within this folder I’ll usually organise assets into contextually relevant sub-folders, eg; ‘Audio”, “PSDs”, “3d_renders”, etc.

That’s all! I’ll try and think of something a bit more exciting to write about for my next post… :|