I have been spending so much time, animating, lobbying on behalf of the growing animation industry, working out the kinks in the animation association among other things, I ended up really missing doing Short Films. After doing "Friends till the end" and Robin Chin from Enhanced Realizm saying he wanted to do another short. Marlon Walker and Jean Paul Levy begging me to pull another idea out of my hat, having met the talented Rushciene Deidrick at a Voice Acting workshop and Trisha Bent at and ERS audition, I figured why not. 

When you have a collaborative team, a good team, willing to work on a project, you might as well. I had a script put down from about 2010 called "Heart Shaped Box". I was originally supposed to do this film with Kurt Wright. At the time I wrote the script, Kurt was available, but right around the time we were going to film this, he started getting busy flying in and out of the country and getting some really good jobs in the industry. His hard work paid off and he was on his way to becoming what he is today, probably the best AD in Jamaica. I'm not just saying that because I know him. I really think he is best at this point. Anyway, I digress.

Even though I had scouted a location and done up a storyboard, I decided to let the script rest, because I really wanted the film to have a much higher quality than I could achieve with my limited experience and equipment. Robin Chin was definitely the man for the job. He had the equipment and most importantly the skills to pull it off to the level I wanted. He lit this bad up perfectly. I can't wait for it to come out, but we are taking our time to do it properly.

We had rehearsals the week before. I called up the owner of the location and he was still down and all the actors showed up. Robin even went half way on funding the short with me, so everything worked out nicely. We used 1 Canon 7D, ARRI Lights and Enhanced Realizms dolly track. The video is not finished yet, but check out some screen shots above. Behind the scenes coming soon too. NivekPro out.

From time to time, my actors (I call them that but they are really my friends) bug me about when we are doing another short film. They are very passionate about acting and the work hard at their craft. Every time I film them, they get better and better. 

When they feel the rust coming on, they call me up and beg me to pull one of my ideas out of a hat and make something happen. I am lucky to have such idle friends like them and Robin Chin from Enhance Realizm who is just as idle as me and is always willing to shoot something. There is a joke about that coming up, so keep reading.

So, we started a facebook group convo and came up with 3 or 4 ideas and we chose one and said let's film this on Saturday. Actor Marlon Walker came up with the concept. I wrote the script, but gave him credit because he literally told me the dialogue word for word. 

So I vaguely remembered that the ingredients for movie blue was red food colouring and corn starch. So I went out and bout these ingredients. I didn't bother to look up the measurements for these ingredients so we just started mixing. I have behind the scenes footage I will release someday, for now you have to read about it.

So while mixing the blood we weren't convinced it looked right so we kept adding starch and adding colouring. Eventually when it was all done we said screw it, let's make it work. So we ventured out up the road to Mountain Spring and went into the river bed and found a spot that looked like what I envisioned and we started setting up the shot and applying blood. The blood looked more real on the body than we thought it would...and it stained, it stained good. We had to apply blood to JP's mouth corner. You would see him later with this blood stain and wonder "is he a vampire or does he dine when it's that time??? hmmm!". Anyway, I digress. So after shooting this short and getting some great shots of blood in the water we wrapped up to go back to base to to ADR. JP thought it would be funny to pretend he was stabbed for real and stagger after cars passing by. Everyone got scared and drove off.

We all parted ways, but later on I got a call from JP telling me the police nabbed him and dug him down asking him questions about whether he stabbed someone because they got calls about someone running down another person with a knife. Of course when JP explained himself, to the officer, he said "Officer, mi just done shoot sum'n you know." to which the officer replied "Wah, you just done shoot somebody?" JP recovered quickly explaining he was shooting a short film. The police had a good laugh about it after a while and they started discussing guns. Good to know there are still some kool officers in this world attempting to do their job when duty calls. 

Thanks again officers for being cool. NivekPro out.

(April 15, 2014) The 5th NCU Lignum Vitae Film Festival was held on April 9, 2014. I entered last year and won Best Animation and Best Foley. The Foley category didn't exist before I entered, but it seems my martial arts piece inspired them to make the addition. That was definitely very flattering.

I didn't enter this year as I didn't have the time to create any new pieces, but I was invited to give a workshop on animation and I humbly accepted. I was on a panel of other animators, some I knew like Stephen "Bigbomb" Williamson and Carlton Gordon III of Island Interactive Studios from the Jamaican Animation Nation Facebook page, others I was meeting for the very first time from GSW Animation ltd. I gave a talk on careers and earning potential in the animation industry, while Island Interactive spoke about the 3D animation pipeline and GSW spoke about the 2D animation pipeline and the studio life.

The students were very receptive and so were their lecturers. It was good to see a lot of women in attendance and showing interest. Animation tends to be a very male dominated art form. I really hope we inspired a few of the students to get their feet wet.

NCU wrote and article about the experience.

http://news.ncu.edu.jm/news_item.aspx?NewsID=6092
NivekPro Animations

(Mar 28, 2014) Another collaboration with One Blaze Studios Nedrick Mclaren and Nivek Pro Animations Kevin Jackson complete. This is based on a meme that was going around with an image from the perspective of a passenger in a plane observing another commercial jet flying below. The caption of the meme was "Attention passengers, this is your captain speaking. If you direct your attention out the right side of the plane, you will see flight 195 has challenged us to a race. I have turned the fasten your seat belt sign on, so buckle, right now, sh** is about to get real."

Ned approached me and Jermain Fraser about doing the voices. Jermain did the first pilot with the American accent and I did the second pilot with the Jamaican accent. Watch, like share and do enjoy another Nivek Pro Animation collaboration and check out Nedrick's blog. http://indyfilm.oneblaze.com/?p=2193Stay tuned for more animations from NivekProAnimations. 

Check me out on youtube (http://www.youtube.com/user/NivekProAnimations) and don't for get to like share and subscribe.

(Feb 24, 2014) Animation like film is an expensive business, even in its cheapest form. Whether one person is working on it or thousands, the combined effort doesn't change. I've seen clients scoff at costs and determine that us animators are too big for our britches, asking for prices that are exorbitant. Hopefully during this article I can explain why it costs so much and offer solutions to help keep costs down, to facilitate those on a budget.

The generalized costs in the following link, are cheap in the grand scheme of things, but this would still get many laughed at here in Jamaica. http://www.mairperkins.co.uk/how-much-does-an-animation-cost/ The client is focusing on the end result and not the process. So they get a one minute video with animated objects and characters. Big deal! Why am I (the client) paying thousands of US for 60 seconds of work? You aren't Mike Tyson. Well Mike Tyson wasn't really paid millions to work for 30 seconds and neither are we. Just the same way Mike Tyson had to train for months, paying his coaches, gym, publicists, nutritionists, bodyguards and so on and train hard for months, in some cases adopting and sharpening new techniques to deliver this explosive 60 seconds, it's the same level of preparation required to deliver you 60 seconds of animation.

Operational Costs
It starts from the very first meeting. Clients often only remember themselves in the equation which is understandable and why I have to highlight that for every potential customer that I have to meet with, their is a transportation and opportunity cost associated with that. Gas is not free, potholes don't replace front end parts and cars do not stop on hopeful wishes. If we meet 5 potential clients for the week that's practically a full tank of gas and you are not guaranteed to land the job. That also equates to 5 - 10 hours of lost working time. There is the electricity used by high powered expensive computers to do sketches, renders, story boards, animatics and simulations.  Renders can take hours and even days. Imagine that electricity bill.

There are storage space costs to consider as well. When a client gives you 150 GB of footage to sift through, that's 300 GB you have to keep free, for storage and editing. This means you probably cannot accept too many other jobs or you will run out of space. In some cases, you can bill the client for extra storage but many clients find it difficult to pay upfront. That leaves you in a bind. Do you buy extra storage and trust you get the job? What if you don't? Sure you have extra storage, but can you afford to buy extra storage every potential client that comes along with larger needs?

So far I have only been assuming that you are the only person working on the project? What if you need to bring in someone else whether for assistance or a special expertise? That's another added cost. Later on I will talk about how to work around this, but these are strong things to take into consideration. If you get paid but it can't pay your bills, the career suddenly won't make sense.

Service Costs
Many times clients are not entirely sure what they want and rely on the experience and expertise of the animator. That is fine, but bear in mind that the less information you come to an animator with, the more work they will have to do, figuring out what you want. This might mean many sketches and drafts. We try to keep it to 3 concepts but when you really have nothing to guide you, it can be more. Each concept takes research and time to develop. Let's say a week for arguments sake. Let us say for argument sake the animator charges $1,000 per hour (US$10/hr). This mind you is a conservative figure. It would be unreasonable to work for that little because of how many skills and tools we would need to use. When I say sketch, I don't mean pencil markings on a piece of paper. We have to do that too which takes time, but, we also have to scan these sketches into a computer with a scanner which we bought and has a life expectancy. We have to use software we purchased to clean up the art and make it presentable for you. We have to develop our reasoning behind the design and how it can be used etc. So let's say this animator took 10 hours for arguments sake to finish these sketches, which again is conservative. The pencil and paper sketches alone would take 10 hours. So we are looking more at 20 hours to get it computer ready. You know what, I am working with 20 hours. So we have gone $20,000 (US$200) and the animation has not started yet. So we send these to you the client and you must approve these sketches. If you didn't know what you wanted in the first place, this is usually the time when you the client start to figure it out. You see the illustrations and now ideas are flowing. You see things you like and don't like and you make suggestions. Now the animator or illustrator, depending on the size of the team has to make adjustments, which could take another 5 hours (being generous). So now we are at $25,000 (US$250). Now, say we have gotten past the illustration/concept phase and we now get into the script. Let's say the script is 2 pages long at $1000 (US$10) per page (still keeping things simple for math purposes). That's another $2,000 (US$20) bringing our total up to $27,000 (US$270).

Now we have to story board. The storyboarding can take as long as, if not longer than the the concept and illustration process. I am going to put it at 10 hours however, just for simplicity. So taking on another $10,000 (US$100) assuming $1,000 (US$10) per hour. So we are up to $37,000 (US$370) and animation has not started as yet and these are understated figures for mathematical simplicity. Now we have to create an animatic, which is the storyboard made into a slide show. Sometimes you add more illustrations to demonstrate movement better. This process involves video editing or storyboarding software you have to purchase. By the way, please assume an approval process in between and perhaps a few face to face meetings which will attract a transportation cost and maybe food. I am going to up the price a bit here because the animatics require a different level of skill as an editor and specialty software that must be compensated for. So Let's put it at $2,000 (US$200) an hour for 10 hours. Now we are up to $57,000 (US$570). Assuming all of that is approved and we can start the animation we are now looking at 20 - 40 hours of work. I am going to use $2,000 (US$200) an hour at 40 hours. That's $80,000 (US$800) tacked on to the $57,000 (US$570) bringing us to a total of $137,000 (US$1,370), Please bare in mind, this does not involve voicing, lip syncing or audio recording. All this is assuming that lip syncing is not required and that audio if any is already provided. If the animator must arrange those then he might have to pay someone for that, and pay actors for voicing. This can easily creep the budget to $250,000 (US$2,500). These figures sound high in Jamaica, no doubt, but the fact is, like a Mike Tyson fight, a lot of preparation goes into an animation.

Solutions
Makes no sense I rant on about what animation costs and not offer solutions for those who can't afford high end animation. If you know what you want ahead of time, that makes life easier. Every single detail counts along with why you need that detail.

1. Whether you know what you want or not, still consult the animator for ideas and let him know what your budget constraints are. That way, the animator can make suggestions to still give you what you want with some intelligent compromises that can save significant costs.

Do you have a script? Building a script ahead of time, instead of just having a raw concept, can go a long way in the animator figuring out how each scene plays out and how long it will take to animate each scene. Try to be as detailed as possible as to what the scene contains. Is it on a beach. Is it in the city. Is there a beach, City and Kitchen in it? Are there 3 characters or 5? Are they all interacting or are some just standing in the background?

Do you already have the characters designed? If you do, it saves the time the animator would have to take to design a character or the cost of getting an illustrator. He still has to recreate the characters to build the assets for the software they are using, but this rids the process of sketching endless concepts. So you may have shaved US$100 or more off there.

Do you already have audio, and can some of your employees act? Get them in a studio and have them voice out a script you created. Providing this audio saves a lot of time as well and shaves a lot of time off the production. 

2. Be flexible with the timeline. The sooner you want the animation, the more expensive it will be. the animator has to put all jobs on hold to accommodate your project. So if you want Usain Bolt running down the track beside Warren Weir, Yohan Blake and athletes from other countries, followed by Bolt posing for paparazzi and taking the bouquet from the track gofers and then throwing the bouquet into the crowd, and you want that in 1 week. Be prepared to pay. If however, you want that in 3 months or 6, you might be able to reduce the cost, because it will require less people and less equipment to work on it.

3. Be realistic about your expectations. Disney cartoons look kool but they take years to achieve with a team of 200 or more. If you are working with one or two animators, you will want to reduce the amount of movements and actions in your animation. This ties in optimizing factors of the previous two suggestions. Instead of having Bolt take a bouquet from a track gofer and throwing it into the crowd, how about we have Warren, Yohan and Usain run on a private track during practice and the runners only interact with each other? This reduces the amount of characters on the screen. It reduces render time, it reduces background settings, it reduces props, and it reduces length of the animation and gets straight to the point.

Each character, each background, each prop, has to be created, optimized, animated and lit. Each take time and resources. Reducing a script from 5 characters in 3 location to 2 characters in one location make a huge difference.


The End Result
In the above I have ignored the time frame in which the animation is required and the complexity. The quicker you want it, the more expensive and the more complex it is. These may require the animator to put in more hours, or hire extra talent. In North America, these prices can double or even triple or even quintuple depending on who you get and what you want. So potential clients, this is not to scare you off. I understand you have budget restraints, but we as animators also need to live. If you desire to use animation as a marketing tool for more exposure or to stand out, do not just look at animation as this end product you receive, but look at it as a driving tool for your brand and communicate same to your animator. Figure out together how you can push that end product to reach as many people as possible. Really that should be the clients marketing teams job, but sometimes the animator can tell you "Hey, I know you want Disney quality, but for the people you are trying to reach, the cost may not be worth it. How about we adopt a Dora style and go for simplicity and cuteness. That way, you won't hurt your budget and the cost will fit the returns realistically.


Stay tuned for more animations from NivekProAnimations. Check me out on youtube (http://www.youtube.com/user/NivekProAnimations) and don't for get to like share and subscribe.

(Feb 8, 2014) I have this reggae musician character I call Robert Mckenzie aka Makka. I just wanted to show you the 2D rig I did in Anime Studio Pro. Showing the range of motion the character has, as well as the dynamic of the character. I am hoping his persona comes across in the range of motion and postures that are possible.

I will be working on him some more soon, so that I can accomplish a full turn with him before moving on to other characters. Hope you enjoyed that.

Stay tuned for more animations from NivekProAnimations. Check me out on youtube (http://www.youtube.com/user/NivekProAnimations) and don't for get to like share and subscribe. Support the Jamaica animation movement.

(Jan 25, 2014) I had prepared this bike earlier this month and started on this female character earlier this week. Today I got a chance to relax and focus on animation again. Rigged her up good, placed her on the bike and animated her riding and doing a wheelie stunt. Decided she felt alone riding by herself so I decided to pull for an old asset of mine from a previous Anime Studio animation I did called "Runners". You can search for it in this blog or on my web page http://nivekfilms.weebly.com. Anyway, I ended up using the yellow Mistubishi Evolution VII I believe it is and the character Spex from Runners and wind streaks and backgrounds from that same animation. Added some shading and lighting effects for more depth and this is how it turned out. Not too shabby if you ask me.

Stay tuned for more animations from NivekProAnimations. Check me out on youtube (http://www.youtube.com/user/NivekProAnimations) and don't for get to like share and subscribe.

(Jan 25, 2014) Idrin is a little rastaman/icon for my brother's business irie876.com a company that imports Jamaican goods to Japan. A lot of Jamaican's live in Japan, mostly teaching English. Beyond the diaspora, the Jamaican culture has permeated into the Japanese society, so Jamaican goods don't only appeal to Jamaican's. The Japanese love our food clothes and crafts. So my brother is doing this not only to make Jamaican's feel more at home, but to also spread more of our positive culture. 

My brothers,  a Croatian named Ivan and I all collaborated on this. MJENT aka Mr. Florida Keyz aka my little brother who has an extremely talented ear did the music, A fellow as I said before named Ivan from Croatia did the character design and illustration and yours truly, NivekPro Animations, did the animation. Idrin aka di don dada aka there is no other. 

Stay tuned for more animations from NivekProAnimations. Check me out on youtube (http://www.youtube.com/user/NivekProAnimations) and don't for get to like share and subscribe.

(Jan 11, 2014) Another little animation worked on by NivekPro Animations and OneBlaze Studios. Check him out at 

http://www.oneblaze.com/ https://www.facebook.com/oneblazeinc 

This guy is so talented and hard working. He really did a good job animating this, putting in the necessary details and shadows. The audio I provided him was poor, but I will try to improve that going forward. Hopefully this can be a long running series depicting some of the horror stories IT people face in the office on a daily basis. Some things will be exxagerated and some things will be extremely true. I will leave it up to you to tell the difference. In the mean time enjoy. As soon as I have developed a facebook page I will let you guys know.

Stay tuned for more animations from NivekProAnimations. Check me out on youtube (http://www.youtube.com/user/NivekProAnimations) and don't for get to like share and subscribe.

(Dec 15, 2013) I was recently approached by the Jamaica Environment trust to do a 30 second animation to the lyrics of the song "Don't Mess With Goat Islands" written by Inilek Wilmot, Vocals by Quecee and music and production by Jeremy Ashbourne. Took me 3 weeks to complete this animation from the design of the characters to the final output. I had a lot of fun with this project, learned a lot and the best part is, it has received two write ups so far. One in the Jamaica Gleaner and the other in the Jamaica Observer. 

Goat Islands Gleaner Link 
Goat Islands Observer Link 

Quite proud that the animation was worthy of mention in this way. Currently the animation is on Jamaica Environment Trust's facebook page and youtube channel. My aim not is to help them get it on TV, because it is a worthy cause. 

For those who don't know, China approached the Jamaican government, to build a shipping hub to facilitate a major shipping channel that will be opening up as soon as the Panama canal re-opens. It promises to provide a lot of jobs, however, the major concern is that these promises may be empty based on past projects of a somewhat similar nature like the cruise ship harbour built in Trelawny, that promised a boom in the economy for that parish, which has proven not to be the case. Fears are that most of the jobs from the goat island project will go to foreigners, and the fishing village in the surrounding regions of Goat Islands will suffer, as they do not possess the skilled labour or the means to acquire it and the fish sanctuaries will be destroyed, essentially ruining the livelihood of all the communities that depend on fishing as their source of income and food. If you want to do more, share the video and go to the website to learn how you can help www.savegoatislands.org you can also buy the T-shirt. Together we can save Goat Islands. 

Stay tuned for more animations from NivekProAnimations. Check me out on youtube (http://www.youtube.com/user/NivekProAnimations) and don't for get to like share and subscribe.