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Arts Council DYCP Fund

Research/Development

Approximately 6 months ago I was lucky enough to be accepted for the Developing Your Creative Practice Fund by the Arts Council. This fund gave me the time to develop my skills in Video production, 3D design & animation, Augmented & virtual reality design & implementation.

Arts Council England

2022

As I started the development period I realised in order to be the most productive I needed to create tangible goals. I decided to focus my learning around characters / individuals in order to have markable results. in which I could assess the progress for the skills I learned.

I felt the key to this was using "real world" artists & people, something that would help me focus my skills development around. I chose local artist singer song writer Samh & myself. between us I was able to create content via online resources & tutorials.

Video Production

In terms of video production I mainly wanted to build my understanding with Story boarding, lighting, focal length, green-screen work, linear & non linear editing, Compositing & Sound arrangement. I managed to secure a space to test out my ideas and gather footage for the project by liaising with Kirklees Council and utilising there "Temporary Contemporary" Spaces.
Software used: Adobe Premiere, Blender, Adobe After Effects, Various Plugins, Eb Synth

3D Development

My main things I wanted to learn within my 3D Development were; Building shapes & hard surface objects, Modelling characters, Texturing, Painting, Animation, Rigging, Basic Lighting, & compositing. I used photography as reference footage in order to create a 3d models, I experimented with 3D scanning to make realistic like-like models and I used Blender in order to creature more caricature style models.
Software used: Blender, Adobe Photoshop, Unreal Engine.

Animating Scenes

From the model I created I entered the stage of rigging, & animation. From there I took motion capture data and applied it to the models to create life-like motion using a non-linaer editor.
Software used: Unreal Engine, Blender, Mixamo

AR / VR Development

Once I had created the characters & objects d I was able to to follow a range of tutorials I had earmarked & develop filters & user experiences based around those models.
I also experimented with designing immersive environments for use with VR headsets, building environments in blender then, converting & porting them to an Oculus Quest 2 for testing. I fashioned this around the creative space I was using at the time.
Software used: Spark AR, Oculus Quest 2 + various addons, Android Studio, and Side Quest.

While working on the project I happened to pick up way more skills & knowledge than I initially expected. This period has allowed me to delve into the field Geo-tagging in relation Augmented Reality application as well as learning how to use googlemaps & satellite data in order to produced 3D graphics, ideal for my future goals of virtual & augmented & immersive performance utilising location based data.

Sound Design / Composition & Supervision

When talking with on of my contacts Dr Lee he informed me that he had developed a VST plugin that was able to mix music in 3D he provided me with a copy to try out and learn. He also offer me the opportunity to visit the 3D sound studio at the Huddersfield University in order to test out the system when its back up and running. I also made progress in with my music supervision aspirations gain a contract towards the end of the period.
Software used: Pesonus Studio 5, Audacity, Adobe Audition, Mircosoft Excell, Microsoft Outlook

Google Earth Studio Data Integration

I had a range of skills that were picked up as a happy accident while I was learning more about blender. I was curious about re-creating locations in 3D. I managed to learning how to Hack my GPU, aswell at pull satellite data from from google maps to create 3D recreation of an environment.
Software used: Blender + plugins, Google Maps, Google Earth Studio, Render Doc, Adobe Photoshop.

Machine Learning + AI Generated CGI

Now this was the complete wildcard in respect you my development, I actually didn't know much about AI generated graphics, however it seemed like a logic skills to pick up as I know it will play a major role in the future of the arts.
Software used: Adobe Premere, Adobe Photoshop, & Eb Synth.

3D Sound Mixing

When talking with Dr Lee he informed me that he had developed a VST plugin that was able to mix music in 3D he provided me with a copy to try out and learn. He also offer me the opportunity to visit the 3D sound studio at the Huddersfield University in order to test out their system & Plugin for 3D audio production.
Software used: software 3D-MARCo & IAR (VST plugin)

In Summary

The DYCP fund has allowed to expand knowledge and understanding of sound design, music composition, arrangement and supervision. I now know how to properly score music for video and film. From these skills I've learned have enabled me to gain a contract with local council which will utilise these new skills for the Music Supervision part of the project. I also now have a strong understanding of how to shoot, direct, edit, and grade for video ,film & animation. I now know how to model, rigg and animate in 3D integrate as well as motion graphics in conjunction with audiovisual work and Immersive experiences ( AR & VR) Overall I picked to a range of new skills which I'm already applying to my work.

Music Discography