Storyboards and Pre-viz

I decided to create a pre-visualisation for my animation (found HERE), this is quite a standard thing to do now within the industry and it's normally the layout team which undertake this part. I did this within a few hours just so I could get a better idea of camera angles and timing of the whole animation. It's very rough and some shots are too fast but it's helped me a lot with understanding the different shots and how it will all look when it comes together. I found it hard deciding upon camera angles without seeing how it would look and work out, so by setting it up and creating some pre-viz it helped make my ideas more concreate, and was also able to see what bits still needed improving upon. Visualising in a 3D space is much easier for me to get my head around, and from the pre-viz I was able to complete my storyboards with my chosen camera angles.

The characters that I used are the ones I'm going to be using for my final animation, using them rather than just any model gives a better sense of how the shot is going to play out and how they would fit within the scene. The trees that are shown were just used for layout purposes, I won't be using these ones as they are just from Maya PaintFx and aren't great. I'm getting a friend to work on the trees for me and using the PaintFx ones, also helped him get a better idea of where I was going to be positioning them and in what quantities. In some places there are no trees visible in the pre-viz, mainly because they were very heavy on my computer's processor and I wasn't able to put them in there, they are drawn in the storyboards however. Because of already working out some of the timing in the pre-viz I don't think it's necessary to produce an animatic, however I may go back and add in the dialogue to the pre-viz once it's recorded in order to see how it will all work out together as a whole.

Character Rigs

For my animation, I have mentioned before about using pre-made rigs. The rigs that I have chosen to use are Morpheus Rig by Josh Burton and a Fox Rig created by mooses on Creative Crash. The images below show the rigs in their standard form. What's great about the Morpheus Rig is that it is fully customisable, body shape, skin colour, textures, you can even add on extra geometry to the character. The UI that's shown with Morphy, is a quick and easy way to change the body shape and features of the face, there are also extra controls built in to change the face shape, it gives you that bit of extra control. The Fox rig, is a simple quadruped, it does the job. I wouldn't have time to build my own and the last one I created needed a lot of changes and fixes for it to work in the correct way. I may change the eye texture at some point, just so it matches with the style of Morphy a bit more.

There's a tutorial on how to change the texture of Morphy, so I will be following that when it comes to creating the clothing texture for my characters. Morphy is really extensive and I think I will be looking more into the features and functions after this module as it has the ability to be changed drastically and this would be a real benefit for myself.

Character Designs / Clothing

As I'm using the morpheus rig, it allows me the flexibility of changing the characters appearance and gender. It's really quite comprehensive and there are also other tools available in order for you to attach other pieces of geometry to the character, and make it deform like the rest of the body when animated. I haven't really had the time to look into these, but it's something I plan to do in my spare time. The image below shows the two characters I came up with when changing around the aesthetic look of the morpheus rig. There is a custom UI built in where you are able to change all the different parts of the body, and there is also other deformers available for that extra control.

The Morpheus rig just comes in a basic grey texture, however this can be changed. I followed this tutorial that was posted on 11 Second Club which takes you through the process of changing out the texture of the grey jumpsuit to the orange one. The original grey texture connection has to be broken in order for you to replace it with a new one and reconnect the smooth node back to the geometry. Following the tutorial, it's a fairly simple process - the orange texture was just what was supplied from the tutorial. You also have to copy the UVs to a new UV set in order for the texture to work. This second UV set is a lot cleaner than the original so when it comes to changing the texture of Morpheus, I would use this orange texture map as a basis and recreate my own.

I have already looked into clothing ideas for the character, but haven't gone into great detail and right now I'm concentrating more on the animation. I'm struggling quite a bit to get everything done on time, but right now the animation is the most important aspect, as if that's not all complete then the story isn't told and my main objective was to produce a decent animation that explore performance. I'll see what can be achieved in the time but it may be that the characters are just in the grey texture for the handin, but I will revisit it after this to complete it all, if this is the case.

Fox and Grapes

This animation is based around Aesop's Fable: The Fox and The Crow, however it has been adapted in a way that changes the story, almost flips it the other way around compared to the original. Not only that but it extends upon the whole story, the scene is established more at the beginning and sets the stage up for both characters. The original fable is quite short and wasn't descriptive in terms of location, so the animation below, created by Frank Tashlin explored this further and adapted it to his own style. It shows how an adapted piece of writing can be transferred into another medium really well and kept interesting and still feels like a new thing. It has been extended by quite some measure as this is about a 7 minute animation, for my one it's only going to be about a minute, but I can easily see how it is possible to extend it by substantial amount. Just padding it out won't work however, there needs to be a reason and a good script behind it to make it work.

This animation is a piece of transmedia, the story has been adapted but has reference to it being an Aesop Fable, and the fox and the crow characters have been used again but this time in the form of animation. By creating an animation, people are able to see the story in a visual way and this also allows for more exaggeration and personality to come through in the characters. It also brings the story into modern day, the fables themselves have been around for a long time and creating an animation is more current and can open it up to a new audience.

Transmedia

As part of the responsive brief, one aspect is to make what we're creating transferrable across different mediums, so it becomes transmedia. Not only is it story, but characters, and sometimes environment too that can be cross transferrable. FMX Conference which is going on right now in Stuttgart, Germany is a conference on animation, effects, games and transmedia. The video below is a clip from yesterday giving an overview of transmedia and how it's not about a story changing for a new medium, but it should carry through and be an extension. Transmedia is a very common thing today, what may have started out as just a story, can now be branched out into a huge franchise, books, films, games, comics, toys, the list goes on. It's interesting to see that conferences are addressing this topic too, by covering a range of different mediums and seeing the link between all of them. It brings people together and also opens up the story or characters to a new audience in a new medium.

Whatever we create, we should consider the life it has after. Things can be changed and added on to, create new stories to tell. As it is now a common thing, it's something to really take into consideration, everything can be easily moved between mediums, even more so now because of technology. For my piece I'm not fully decided on what would be transmedia but either the story or characters would be transferrable.

Anthony Ward

Yesterday, Anthony Ward came in to talk to our course about his career in the industry and how he took the leap into becoming a freelancer. Anthony is a freelance digital artist, animator and digital tutor who began his career in a small company, and learnt 3D in his spare time. He spent around 15 years working in studios before deciding to finally go freelance and has done a range of jobs including modeling, animation, lead artist, and even wrote a few books on character development and modeling. Anthony gave some really useful advice regarding if you were to go freelance that the best thing would be to work within a studio first, here you can then gain the valuable experience of working in a team and understanding the pipeline. When going freelance people are more likely to trust you more if you have this prior knowledge and experience. Along with being a freelancer, Anthony also produces tutorials for 3D World magazine and Digital Tutors.

What was also interesting to hear, was that he woud suggest learning MEL scripting as it's a useful and invaluable tool to learn, because it can save you time and create shortcuts for yourself. It's something that I had in my mind before hand and I think I will now delve into it more, at least getting to grips with the basics. Having a wider knowledge will always be beneficial as even though you should be focused on a specific area, knowing how to rig for example, will not only benefit yourself but make you more attractive to employers.

After his talk, Anthony came round and spoke to people about their work and I got some good feedback from him on my animation. I would love to improve on the animations he commented on, but I will take this advice and implement it on my future works, otherwise I'll never put a piece to end. I know I have a lot of confidence issues when it comes to my animation, so it was nice to hear that he thought I was doing well and should just keep going.

El Vendedor de Humo

This animation, originally I liked for the style and story, but looking back at it now, it's a really good example of how an animation doesn't need dialogue in order to get across the meaning and actions of the characters. By just using gestures and certain poses and expressions, myself as the audience was able to grasp what each character wanted and it was made pretty clear. I was really torn whether or not I should include dialogue in my animation, as by just using gestures and expressions it would give me a good chance to practice performance, but I found in some areas it would be hard to put across the context without dialogue. It brings to mind that if I were to create a non-spoken animation, the story would have to accomodate for this. The animation below is one that can be either with or without dialogue and I think either way, it would work. It's not an English animation so it makes me think that without dialogue there is no issue of language barriers, everyone knows gestures and emotions and if done right, the audience should know exactly what the creators intended.

Just because my animation will have dialogue in it, I think it's important to realise that the performance, gestures and emotions should still be as clear as if there was no dialogue. The emotion of a specific scene should be able to come across without the need of anything but the character itself. El Vendedor de Humo makes each scene clear with the animation, but also the tone is shifted with the lighting. I need to keep all these things in mind when creating my animation, especially when I do my reference videos as this is where I can really act it out, and get a feel for the scene and what I want my animation to look like.


El Vendedor de Humo from PrimerFrame on Vimeo.

Script and Beat Sheet

I began writing up a script for my animation as this would take me through the proper workflow of the whole production, rather than just going straight to storyboarding. There's more to work with and seeing as I'm going to have dialogue in my animation, it's an easier way to lay things out and I can then refer to both my script and storyboard when it comes to creating the animation. You can view the script here: Script

It probably could do with expanding upon and giving some more description. If it was in a real production and was to be passed onto storyboard artists, they would need more information in order to create the drawings. When it comes to creating my next animation I'll be sure to expand on my script more as I might use someone else to create the storyboards. Due to time constraints I really need to get onto storyboarding and finishing it soon as I will need to start animating by next week, if I have a chance of completing it all on time.

From the script I also created a beat sheet, this breaks down the script into main sections from which I can identify specific sections, the mains 'beats' to storyboard. The next stage will be to create a shot list which would show the camera movements in more detail and also if the shot would be a close up, wide shot etc.

Moodboards

With my chosen story sorted, I then began to create some moodboards to help me gather my ideas together and get some inspiration for what I wanted to create. As I am adapting the story, it's no longer going to be set centuries ago in China, but more modern, somewhere around 1900-1910. As the husband has to go off and find a fox coat, I thought it would be best suited if they lived within the woods/forest themselves, and thinking about it, Red Dead Redemption, the video game, even though not set within a forest, has that wilderness feel to it. It was also set around the 1900's and looking into it further the clothing (being something that I will have to create for my characters) was a simple design yet quite appealing. I started looking at cabin designs and came across a wide variety, below are just a few I picked out with reference to some of the game assets within Red Dead. Right now I like the idea of having a porch and if I could start off the scene with this I also wouldn't have to worry about modelling the inside. I need to decide on the age of the cabin itself, I know it won't be brand new and pristine but I don't think I want it neglected and worn out. What was interesting to see what that there were either log cabins or wood panes. I think the older ones (older era) would have wood panes, I'm assuming these were easier to obtain and put together rather than actual logs.

The surrounding landscape is something I will need to design and actually isn't as simple as I thought. Just having a flat surface will make it too boring, you need the different levels in the ground to make it that more interesting, but also to break up the eyeline. The density of the forest is something else I will need to decide on, the more trees and foliage I have the longer it could take to render. I'm planning to get one of my friends to model the trees for me as he's working on his environment portfolio, so this would give him a good opportunity to create more assets and to a different design than just realistic. I will need to come up with some environment designs and concepts but I think it'll be easier to try and work it out within the storyboards first, as I can try and get an idea of how it can be set up with the other characters, objects etc. The images that I have chosen are all very green, but I think depending on what lighting I have, this can change quite easily. Also for the majority of the time the forest won't be seen from the tops of the trees, so this would also take out some of the green.

As I need to create the clothing for my characters, I looked at the style during the 1900's, quite simple yet very distinctive. The man will be quite easy to achieve, I just need to think about the woman. If she were to have a long skirt that would involve create a piece of geometry and also colliders to be attached onto it. I could get away from doing this, it would just depend on the camera shots. If her legs were to not be shown when she moves (not that she will be moving much anyway) I could get away with not having to create colliders. The last time I tried it was within the game module, and even though it worked, it wasn't as fluid as I wanted it and seemed too much like cardboard rather than fabric. It would be nice to try and give it a go again, but obviously if she is only going to be seen for not even 2 seconds walking, I could just try and use clever composition and camera movements. 

A Fox Tale

I came across this animation a while back now, but the story and style has been something that has really stuck with me. Watching it back with more of a focus on the fox animation and environment design I was able to pick out things that I liked the look of and what could give me inspiration. The environment itself is quite stylised and vibrant in colours, I know for my animation I am wanting a more stylised approach, but also it still holding some realism (possibly in the textures). This short is quite heavily populated with foliage and a wide variety of different plants. I won't be needing this many but it's interesting to see how by just changing the scale and rotation, you can quickly populate an area.

Another thing that caught my eye in this short is the lighting. I know this is something I will really need to look up on as at the minute, my lighting and rendering knowledge isn't up to scratch. I want it to look appealing but also lighting plays a big part in any scene. Not only does it tell the time of day and the weather but it can also suggest emotion, and this will be greatly influenced by the style of music that goes along with it. Light will also draw the eye to specific points, the objects that are in shadow won't be as important as the object that's in the light, it can change the way a composition is looked at, both layout and light need to work together to draw the viewers eye to the main object in the scene. There's a lot I need to think about and decide upon before I come to actually making it, so I think I'll be making a list of what I need to do and also the assets I'll be needing for my animation.


A fox tale from A Fox Tale on Vimeo.

Story for responsive brief

The story that I have chosen to base my animation on is called "Ask a fox for its skin". It's a Chinese fable based around a man having to go out and find a fox coat for his wife. I chose this because the story itself gave a good grounding for me to expand upon with performance and animation, I was also drawn to the fact that it included both biped and quadruped characters. I know I have only just started lip syncing but I think trying to do that with an animal will be quite interesting, as it will have to be a believable performance and feel natural to that character.

I'm going to adapt the story that I have chosen to best fit it being an animation, I will need to write up a script and produce storyboards and an animatic before I can begin working on the assets and animation. The original story is quite limited in what it describes, so this gives me a good chance to change some areas and also think about how it can be told through animation. I know that I will need to look more into camera movements and overall composition of shots, as this in itself can easily change the meaning of a shot. Where things are positioned and what objects are in focus will determine where the viewers eye will be and where you want to lead them next.

I was in the process of writing up a script, however when I started drafting out some story boards, I found that I got new ideas and this in turn changed the script, I will have to go back and revise this. Also with having the crit yesterday, I feel more inclined to go back to it and edit quite a lot of it out, in particular the dialogue, as the majority of it isn't needed and instead I can come up with creative ways of getting across the message using actions.

Interim Crit

Today we presented our thoughts/ideas and progress with our responsive brief in small groups. I found it was realyl useful as it was more concentrated with people doing similar things, but also as it was smaller groups, I felt people were more inclined to give more feedback. As it's still in the early stages of the module I just had to explain my ideas and show moodboards more than anything, but even with a limited amount of production work I still got some useful feedback that I can implement in my work.

I showed the group the rigs I intend to use and the most useful feedback I got was to make sure I change the fox's texture, in particular the eyes, as the rig itself wasn't as stylised as the main characters, therefore could look out of place. However if I changed the texture a bit and created more 'cartoon' like eyes, this may make the fox fit in more with the surrounding environment and characters.

Before the crit I had some issue with trying to decide how I was going to get across the point of the story, that the wife of the man wanted a fox coat. Initially I had planned to animate this out but realised that this wasn't very creative. I then had the idea of having either a voice over of the man recalling what had previously happened, or a flashback showing the events of what transpired. What was suggested to me was that I could have a bit of both, and have the flashback at the most important part so I could animate that, and get the idea across more clearly. I also got asked whether there would be dialogue in the animation and how it could be really nice to not have any and just play off the emotions and performance. I'm quite torn with this because I can see the benefits of it, however I also want to give lip syncing another go and more specifically, working with a non-human character. It's made me think about it a lot more than I originally had, I think that now I may cut down the amount of voicing and try and find a balance between that and performance. I think the hardest part will just be trying to convey the ideas through actions and performance.

The crit has given me stuff to consider and work on / change before I got too far in the development stage, I feel now, I can really push on without any major worries and just get it all done and keep on track with my plan. I will continue to get feedback from others whilst working, and I also need to have a chat with a few other people to help me with camera movements and composition, the more cinematography side of things as this really isn't my specialism.

The price of animation

An interesting article came about today in The Huffington Post about the difference in cost it takes to create an animated movie between the larger studios, Pixar, Dreamworks and Blue Sky compared to smaller studios such as Sony Pictures Animation. Recently there have been a lot of layoffs within the animation industry - "bigger is no longer thought of as better in Hollywood."

Sony Pictures Animation have consistently brought out stunning animated films, with their most recent Hotel Transylvania being my top favourite right now. They manage to bring out these high standard animations on a much smaller budget than the larger studios. This article has really made me wonder why there is a need for production cost to be so high when other studios are managing to do it for a lot less and sometimes to a better standard. Is it the technology? Too many staff? The production is too long? All these factors, and others may account towards the cost but is it all necessary? 

We as an audience have come to expect too much from cinema, it has reached a stage now where everything has to be high impact, pristine and complex visual, visually stunning and making use of CG.  You see films that have been made with a budget of hundreds of millions of dollars, and it's actually quite hard to comprehend, that all of that just goes on one film.  It would be really interesting to see how studios could cope on a smaller budget and if they could still produce their high end animated features. Budget will always play a big part in anything but it seems like, as technology has progressed, the price of creating animation has also increased, obviously this makes sense however if it carries on it will just become far too expensive, and the studios will take a loss in their makings (which some are already doing). Cutting the budget to an animated feature may mean cutting their production team down which would involve job loss, so that's another thing to take into consideration and how it could impact the animation industry and coming out to find work. 

Responsive Brief

This is the last module we are to be briefed on this year and we pretty much have free reign of what we want to do, anything that we have an interest in or something that will help us become more specialised. I've known for a long time that I want to be an animator and recently I've been developing on character animation, for this module I want to keep pushing this and improving on performance and lip sync.

In order for me to be able to push it as far as I can I'm wanting to use pre-made rigs that will have the control and flexibility that I need. They are readily available for animators to use and are some are close to what you could expect in industry, so this too would give me good practice. My main focus will be the animation, however I will still need to write up a script that I have adapted from a short story or fable. I'm choosing a pre existing story because I can then try and adapt if for animation and give it some more performance. Along with the script, the storyboards and animatics need to be done with the voice recordings in order for me to plan out the timings. As I am using pre-made rigs I need to model the environment but I plan to keep this simple and not over complicate things.

It's going to be challenging to get this all completed within 4 weeks but we'll see where it takes me and hopefully I can get what I want out of this module. Performance is the main thing I want to push so when it comes to reference videos I will be referring to my storyboards, as an actor would, to know what actions to push for.

How my essay relates to my own focus

This year we we abel to choose our own topic to write about for an essay, as I am primarily interested in animation, I wanted to explore a topic that dealt with animation and some of the issues that have occurred within them. A major topic is feminism and how the female characters within Disney films are portrayed. I wanted to expand my knowledge on the topic and see how the female characters could affect the audience and if this would then have any impact on their lives. I also introduced The Gaze Theory and how it could be seen that the female characters could be related to this theory.

By looking into feminism and the portrayal of characters, I found that there needs to be a lot of consideration when it comes to designing characters and the story around them. The majority of Disney films are princess movies, and over the years they have grown and not stuck to the stereotypical traits of how a woman should be, they have gone from being passive and only wanting to find love, to having ambition and a great deal of independence. How a character is designed will affect the audience greatly, the audience needs to be able to empathise with the character and connect with them on some level, in order for them to be engaged within the film. It's made me realise that when I come to creating my own animations, with my own characters, I should really spend a good amount of time developing the character and the personality. Yes the story may drive the film, but the character supports it, without characters, how else will the film progress?

As I introduced The Gaze Theory, it has also led me to think about the design of female characters. The first impressions of Jessica Rabbit from Who Framed Roger Rabbit may be that the audience doesn't like her because of the way she is dressed and how her body is revealed, however she specifically says within the film, that it's not her fault that she was designed this way. Jessica Rabbit has been created in a way that, even though she is quite sexualised, she ends up choosing to marry the one that makes her laugh, she could have any man she wants but she chooses Roger Rabbit. Audiences may still disagree with her design, however the fact that she doesn't conform to the stereotypes of her looks is a good thing. There are many things to take into consideration when designing characters, more times than most, the majority of characters will be visually appealing, especially the leads, whereas the villains will be less attractive. Everyone wants to make a good looking character but is it always needed? It's something to think about...

Networking

We've always been told networking is something you can't just forget about and not do, we need to get ourselves out there and make contacts with people. When attending Animex, it's all I heard from the speakers, that they got their jobs through the contacts they had, through the people they knew and met along the way. I've only started networking recently, so it's still a new thing to me and I honestly find it hard to just strike up a conversation with someone. It feels like unless you have a common interest with that person you're bombarding them with your business card. I was lucky enough at BAF to meet a couple of people there who were really friendly and for my first time networking, it was a nice experience. At Animex I found that everyone was more interested in talking to the professionals and getting advice than networking with each other. That was my view, but I may have just been too shy to talk to other people. I definitely need to build up my confidence more. Once I get talking to someone it's fine, it's just that beginning point. 

All Animated is a networking organisation for the North, run by a group of lovely people. They are still in the process of creating their new site but you can keep up to date via Facebook and Twitter. I've only attended one meeting so far but hopefully can get myself to the next one. The one back before Christmas, was where I met someone to create the score for my last piece of animation, Invasion!. I also got some great advice from a freelance animator, Mike Green, about what to include in a showreel. Sometimes it's not all about getting contacts but the advice you can get from other people who have had more experience in the industry. I've also began to post more of my works in progress on twitter, to try and get feedback from other people as I have a lot of other animators on there. This also is building up my confidence of my work as I always think it's never good enough, but I know that I'm not the only one to think this. It's all about confidence at the end of the day and it's something I really need to work on.  

AnimSchool

AnimSchool Channel

By using the Malcolm rig from AnimSchool, I found that they put up a lot of their critique videos online when the tutors are reviewing students work. I began watching these quite a lot and found them really invaluable, it gives you a real example and you can see, from a professional stand point, how they would improve the shot by pushing poses, changing timing, having different expressions etc. The tutors point out things that may not have been obvious to the student and for myself, it's something I can bare in mind when it comes to creating my own animations. Not only do they give critiques, but they also offer tutorials sometimes, one was on blinking and through this it really made me realise how much more there was to it, than just the open and closing of the eyelids. Because they use the Malcolm rig too, it allows me to go back and try it out for myself and see what these controls can do.

Looking into AnimSchool, it's making me wonder if I should save up and enrol onto some of these courses after I graduate. They can be quite expensive but the standard of animation that comes out is pretty amazing, and the fact that you get real industry professionals critiquing you is even more invaluable. It could help push my animation even further and bring me up to the standard of others out there. It's something to consider, I originally wanted to do a Masters but I really can't afford that and I think online animation courses would be far more beneficial. It's all about the portfolio at the end of the day and a Masters would only be necessary if I wanted to become a teacher. There's always time to go back and do one if I wanted, but to improve my animation skills I think online courses might be the way to go.

Animation Practice

So I thought I would get in some more animation practice as I had some spare time just before and during Easter break. I wanted to get a pushing animation done as this is one of the basics and something that needs to be practised. I made sure I created reference videos so I could analyse these and refer back to them when animating. Reference videos is something I always do now, they are so useful, trying to do it from your head, I find just doesn't work. There may be parts of the body that move without you really noticing unless you analyse that video.

From this I broke it down to key poses which I started creating within Maya. I decided to use the Malcom rig, courtesy of AnimSchool. It's a really good, comprehensive rig that I've slowly got accustomed to. There is a lot of flexibility within the rig, stretchy limbs, IK/FK switch, good amount of facial control and the ability to use abxPicker (unfortunately I had issues with trying to get this to work within my Maya so couldn't get to try it out).

I really took my time with this animation to try and get it as good as I could, whilst I had the time. I made sure I got feedback from several people whilst in the process, to see what I could improve on and if the timings were correct. As you can see below, that's my blocking stage before I went into linear. I followed the same workflow as I did in the visual effects module and can really see the benefits of it. Below the blocking is my final animation, I spent the time cleaning up the keys in the graph editor and making sure the curves were smoothed out. This extra time does help, it smooths out the animation and makes it more fluid. I lost some work near the end and had to redo a lot of it, but it was for the best really as I ended up doing it better than the last time and in a quicker time. I've learnt a lot by doing this, and got to use the IK/FK switch for the first time. By changing the arms to FK, it allowed me to have the hands stay in one position whilst the rest of the body moved. The next thing I want to improve on is rendering, I want to render my animations out nicer, for example how Animation Mentor do it. By the looks of things it might be ambient occlusion or final gathering, but I will look into this further soon.

Competition - 11 Second Club

As part of the PPP module, we have been required to enter a competition. Because I want to specialise in animation, and particularly character animation I thought that 11 Second Club would be a great one to enter. Each month a new audio clip is published and you have a month in which to animate to that clip, in whatever medium you prefer. I've chosen to do this months as I have some spare time before a new module kicks in. What's good about 11 Second Club is that you can post your work in progress and get feedback from others so you can improve before the deadline. The winner of each month gets an eCritique from an AnimationMentor professional. Obviously I am nowhere near the standard of the winners of each month but it's something to aspire to.

I found that there weren't many animation competitions out there. They were either competitions for festivals or almost like live briefs. 11 Second Club, I think is the best one for myself, even though I find it quite daunting entering amongst much better people than myself. The best piece of advice I got was to just throw myself in there and attack it with gusto! The worst I can do is fail miserably but hopefully I would have gained experience and know how to improve next time!