LO1: Understanding the Animation Industry and its products.

Animation Company: Sun & Moon Studios

Structure:

Sun & Moon Studios is based in Bristol, UK and was co-founded in 2008 by both Dylan Shipley and Louis Jones, who are also the creative directors of the company. There is then the producer, Emma Miller who makes sure the products are finalised on time, within the budget and that the product is at its best quality. Then there's the directors: Owen Simmons, leading the 3D projects, Dan Keeble, who leads the 2D projects and then the design lead, Sam Shaw. Finally, the illustrator of the company is Duncan Beedie who primarily focuses on the character and background design.
(Sun and Moon Studios 'About Us' 'http://sunandmoonstudios.co.uk/about/' [Accessed 12 October 2017])

Media Application:

Sun & Moon Studios have created animations for a few different media, mostly for TV and the internet. They've created a wide variety of animated TV adverts that promote a clients product or brand, such as; Clark's 'Jack Nano', 'Daisy' and 'Binkies' shoes advert, BroadbandGenie.co.uk's promotional advert, an advert for Aduanehene, a 'brand story' advert for 'Dr Jackson' and finally, a couple of promotional animations for 'Change 4 Life' which was also distributed online.
They have also produced TV idents and intermission animations for E4 and BBC. For E4 they created 'Woolly Package', a competion entry that won a place as an animation in the intermissions and then a ident for 'Movies on E4' which was shown when a film is about to be aired. For BBC they created an ident for 'Saturday Nights' on BBC One.
They have worked with an array of clients who wanted an animation for their websites for promotional, educational and entertainment purposes. BBC has hired Sun & Moon to create an animation for their sites serveral times, such as; their 'Homelessness' and 'Daylight Saving Time' animations were used for BBC iWonder, 'Math Crimes' was created for BBC Bitesize and they also were able to pitch a short animation for a reboot of 'Aesop's Tales' for BBC's Natural History unit. Square Enix hired them to create a promotional trailer for DLC on their game 'Just Cause 3' which was to be released on YouTube and various game review sites. Samller clients have also asked Sun & Moon for animations that'll be seen on their own and other websites, such as online adverts like the 'Captain Crust' for Wonder White Breadand, 'Not another PPI' and an animation for Spruced-Up.com for their own website.
Finally, they have also created animations that could be seen on the cinema screen, the first is a promotional advert for Clark's shoes that would play before the feature film started and the other animation is actually a short film for entertainment purposes called 'Bruce' about Bruce Lee and would likely be seen in smaller screenings.
(Sun and Moon Studios 'About Us' 'http://sunandmoonstudios.co.uk/about/' [Accessed 12 October 2017])
(Sun and Moon Studios 'Our Work' 'http://sunandmoonstudios.co.uk/' [Accessed 16 October 2017])

Animation Types:

Sun & Moon animate both in 2D and 3D, but even combine the two and many other animation types. In 2D, they usually combine it with a variety of visual styles and animation types, the first of which is Square Enix's 'Just Cause 3' advert that followed an 'Anime' animation style using 3D modelled characters whilst keeping it 2D. Their BBC iWonder animation 'Daylight Saving Time' was influenced from 1950s Cartoons and UPA (Another animation studio). Their short film animation 'Bruce' used live action footage and combined it with a 2D hand-drawn animation style. 'Math Crimes' for BBC Bitesize used a 'Surreal but somehow believeable' visual style. The animation 'Homelessness' for the BBC iWonder site used traditional 2D animation in a visual style of a comic book that used illustrations, text and motion graphics. A pitch that they did for a reboot of 'Aesop's Tales' used contemporary cartoon art styles and minimalistic scratchy stylised backgrounds. An in-house project that they worked on 'Willow Explores' used a slick graphic style with a watercolour visual style that was added digitally. 'Lets Get Sprucing' was a 2D animation that Sun & Moon tried to give a 3D feel. 'Movies on E4' was another animation they created that incorperated live action with 2D animation. The animation they created for 'Change 4 Life' was one that used 3D models, combined with a 2D animated background, that were texturised to look like plasticine models in a stop-motion animation style. Both the 'Grown in Ghana' and 'Presentation Skills' animation was inspired by cut-out animation but was created digitally, unlike traditional cut-out animation. There's also the traditional 2D animations Sun & Moon created such as; the 'Broadband Genie' advert, 'Jet pack boy' which was another in-house animation project, the 'Binkies' advert for Clark Shoes, a few idents for BBC One's Saturday nights and a Dr Jacksons advert.
Their 3D animations are less common but do have a varitey of visual styles and animation styles, their in-house project 'Stop-motion', as titled, is a 3D animation that was animated to look stop-motion. Their 'Woolly Package' animation for E4 with a visual style being a hybrid of CG and stop-motion. The 'Not another PPI' animation was going for a 2D look but was created in a 3D space. The advert they animated for Wonder White called 'Captain Crust' went with a hyper-realistic visual style with realistic character acting and lighting. Finally, they created two simple 3D animations, one being a in-house project called 'Dr Elephant' and then two for the Clarks Shoes adverts 'Jack Nano' and 'Daisy'.
(Sun and Moon Studios 'Our Work' 'http://sunandmoonstudios.co.uk/' [Accessed 17 October 2017])

Regulatory Bodies:

Sun & Moon Studios animations are regulated by both OFCOM (Office of Communications) and the ASA (Advertising Standards Authority). OFCOM regulates the content they release to see if its suitable to be seen on TV and covers things like; Harm, offence, crime, hate, religion and event protection of under eighteens. The majority of the animations created by Sun & Moon are for British clients paying for promotional or commercial adverts, whilst a few are for educational or entertainment purposes. The ASA would regulate these advertisements created by Sun & Moon to make sure they're suitable for the audiences that'll see them. They regulate with things like Misleading advertising, harm, offence, advertising aimed at children or featuring children, privacy, political matters etc. in mind.
(OFCOM 'The OFCOM Broadcasting Code' 'https://www.ofcom.org.uk/tv-radio-and-on-demand/broadcast-codes/broadcast-code' [Accessed 18 October 2017])
(ASA 'Broadcast Code' 'https://www.asa.org.uk/codes-and-rulings/advertising-codes/broadcast-code.html' [Accessed 18 October 2017])

Animation Product: Just Cause 3 Promotional Advert

Genre:

This animated promotional advert from Sun & Moon was for an action-adventure game, the animation itself is an action science fiction.

Individual Animators:

This animation was created by the small team of people at Sun & Moon Studios. The illustrator of the group, Duncan Beedie, most likely did the majority of the animation work as he mostly does the character and background design. With the 'mech' being a 3D model animated to look like it's 2D, Owen Simmons who is the 3D lead would have took over Duncan Beedie's character design of the mech and created it into the 3D model you see in the animation. The 2D side of the animation i.e. the background, clouds, buildings etc. would have been animated by the 2D lead Dan Keeble. With them all working together, they animated and created this promotional advert, and have done to create over animations such as; Change 4 Life, Wonder White's Captain Crust and Broadband Genie.

Production Process:

The production process for this animation started with them getting a brief from their client 'Square Enix' to create a promotional advert for their DLC to the game 'Just Cause 3'. After receiving the brief they would first plan a script, or a storyboard in their case to come up with a story for the advert to demonstrate the abilities of the mech in the DLC. They would then develop this animation into a 'colour script' which is similar to the storyboard but gives much more detail into the minor details as well as the main focus (The mech for example) and also adds colour, this gives the animators a better idea of where to start as they have an idea of how it'll visually look.

To create the final product they decided on a visual and animation style similar to 'anime', they then created a 3D model for the mech which they textured and rendered to look 2D and also added hand-drawn details such as the scratches and highlights. They also did traditional 2D animations of explosions, electricity and dust (the effects that were placed on matte painted backgrounds) and even some whole scenes. Finally, it was all composited together to created the final animations.

The composites of the layers that came together to create the animation.

Narrative and Storyline:

The story of this promotional advert is the main character of the game fighting the enemy, who are in an attack helicopter, the protagonist is piloting a mech which he uses to defeat the enemy.

Target Audience:

The audience this promotional advert is targeted towards are the people who purchased the game, typically they are people aged above 18 (As the PEGI rating for the game is 18) and up to atleast mid-40 year olds. It would most likely lean towards the male gender as they are stereotyped to enjoy the action genre more than females, especially shooter games. The advertisement would be targeted on an international scale due to it being distributed on the internet which can be accessed globally.

Characters:

The only character we see in the animation is the protagonist from the game this advertisement is for, and that is Rico Rodriguez. He fights the antagonist who can't be seen and is inside the helicopter with the mech Rico is piloting. They don't say anything as this animation is just to primarily showcase the mech and not a plot, this is due to the purpose being to promote, not entertain.