Bournemouth & Poole College CGI show 2015 Reveals New Talents

If you're looking for the best new graduates for your studio or agency take a peek at the work coming out of Bournemouth & Poole College this year.

What follows is a showcase of the final year projects from 11 of the best students. Some of them were snapped up by employers on the day, but there's still some amazing talent up for grabs if you need junior staff.

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01. Theo Thurston

Theo specialised in modelling, and his first project concentrated on the character of an Irish shoemaker who moved to New York during the potato famine and can only get work as a shoe-shine. He used 3ds Max, Mudbox and V-Ray for this work.

Theo's second project was inspired by Of Mice and Men. "The big robot, Clunk, is based on Lenny. He is big and loving but clumsy and not very smart," Theo explained. "The little robot is meant to be a bit more high-tech and new compared to Clunk. Clunk basically over-loves the small guy until he is broken and falling apart.

"All of my modelling was done in 3ds Max and textures edited or created in Photoshop. I rendered the project using Mental Ray and used After Effects to add a bit of post production and style to the image." Theo has been offered a job with Darc Studio in Winchester.

02. Ben Fooks

Ben created a windmill in the sea visualisation as well as an abandoned version of Goofy's playhouse in Disneyland, both of which demonstrate his good eye for detail. The later is a thoughtful film that showcases his modelling, texturing and post-production skills.

Ben already has a job lined up at Visualhouse, who have employed many past students from theCollegeCGI team.

03. Alex Mann

Alex Mann's project The Hallelujah Windmill is an exercise in low poly modelling that gave him a chance to put his research on waterfall dynamics to good use.

He also produced a visualisation of an abandoned theatre that was based on the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford and included modelling, texturing, lighting, with the main emphasis on post-production. Alex received seven offers of interviews at the end of year show.

04. Liam Curtis

Students are normally advised not to attempt projects of this magnitude, but Liam Curtis' passion and determination won over his tutors and they gave him the go-ahead to create this 3D model of the WWII Battleship, Bismarck.

The work is a model of the full ship with close ups from different camera angles and a technical cutaway of one of the main turrets showing how it fires and reloads.

Liam used 3ds Max to create details such as lifeboats, searchlights and a plane. "To add life the project a populate system was used so people would walk around and interact with the environment," he told us. "The most important area of the ship was the main turret where a cutaway showed all the interior workings."

"When it came to texturing the Bismarck I used several real life images so I could try and match it as realistically as possible but this proved to be challenge, as no original images were found that showed the interior of the turret." Liam won an award from theCollegeCGI team for his work and has landed an internship with Uniform in Liverpool.

05. Ben Steinberg

Ben specialised in animation and cites Disney and Pixar as sources of inspiration. For this project, an animation of a dancing character, he hired a breakdancer and used the university's motion capture suite to film the performance.

"I wanted to demonstrate my ability to animate realistic movement as well as stylised characters," Ben told us.

"I put the dance together to be exciting, but not so over-the-top as to look ridiculous. I wanted the film to have a sharp, clean look. You can probably tell I took a lot of inspiration from the movie Tron."

Ben won an award from theCollegeCGI team and is currently looking for an opportunity to work in animation.

06. Patrick McAndrew

Patrick undertook two projects for his final year coursework; a 3D into-the-painting project that kept the artist's style, and a visualisation of an abandoned ski lodge.

He made 3D versions of four Van Gough influenced paintings and worked out how to keep the look of painted brush strokes in 3D, particularly around the edges.

To prove his more conventional architectural visualisation skills, he produced a very effective image of an abandoned ski lodge. The work was produced by finding an image of a chalet and then making it appear abandoned using CGI. Patrick selected an image that looked 'homely' to him, so that this aesthetic would contrast well with the disheveled elements.

"The photo was recreated in 3ds max and then re-modelled and moved in many compositions before I was happy with the look of the destruction," he told us.

"The model was textured mainly in Photoshop. The majority of the background, sky, reflections, frost, and snow drifts were created in After Effects.

"It was probably the most enjoyable project over this year, mainly as it was refreshing to stand away from my main project for a couple of hours and create something more realistic."

Patrick won an award from theCollegeCGI team and currently has a few offers of employment under consideration.

07. James Gordon

Cartoon lung interior demonstrating the self-cleaning process

For his project brief on 'macro living', which was to create a scene that was larger or smaller than normal scale, James Gordon created an animated, cartoon lung interior that demonstrates how lungs remove contaminants. It shows hundreds of cilia with arms and eyes on stalks lifting buckets of mucus upwards out of the lung while other characters run around with wheelbarrows.

"After observing the effects that smoking has on people I wanted to create an animation that was able to visualise how the lungs clean themselves and how smoking effects that process," he explained. "I felt that by doing so the impact of smoking could be more easily seen and understood."

He drew inspiration from the film Monsters Inc. and used paper storyboarding, 3ds Max, Photoshop 3D and After Effects to make the animation. James is going to complete his degree next year.

08. Chris Hill

Chris Hill's Parkour animation, based on motion capture of a live performance

For his final year animation project Chris hired a local Parkour expert to do some moves , which he recorded using the XSens markerless motion capture system. He then edited the motion capture to take account of the different levels and jump distances required for his floating island project.

Chris explained that the use of motion capture in The Escape meant that he was able to create rapid prototypes of the animations and shots.

"This ultimately meant that, in the time frame before deadline, I was able to create a more engaging animated piece containing more accurate motion that I would have been able to if I were using only keyframe animation," he told us.

"The animation, which had been recorded as more than 65 individual moves, sequences and iterations, was cleaned and assembled into takes for the film in Motion Builder.

"The project was a really rewarding, educational experience and I hope to do a lot more motion capture work in the future," he added.

Chris is keen to become a mocap assistant and is currently looking for the right opportunity.

09. Wesley Hylton

Rex: an evil, bank-robbing clown character

Wesley chose to specialise in modelling and character design and created a female clown super-villain robbing a bank. The project is a series of 3D tableaus in which the character is posed in different stages of mischief-making in a bank one night.

"When first given the concept of a clown I instantly gravitated towards a dark, twisted version of the character, taking small parts from evil jester clowns and medieval harlequins," Wesley told us.

Wesley is a fan of DC and Marvel comics, with Batman, Daredevil and Deadpool being particular favourites. "I found that I was more intrigued by the villains of these comics," he said.

This fascination with the baddies led him to put a "dark but playful" comic book spin on his character, Rex. "The main focus of creating this character was to really sell her attitude to the audience with out any animation.

"I think this was accomplished by the facial expression of 'gleeful chaos' and the aesthetic given to her such as the sad faces and quotes sprayed onto the gear. The hard work this year paid off and I have discovered my passion for character concept design and creation."

10. Kathleen Shaw

Kathleen Shaw created an architectural visualisation of a room with objects corresponding to events and features of her own life

Kathleen went for an abstract approach to architectural visualisation with an image of a room with furniture and props on all surfaces, based on the 4-sider paintings by Jacek Yerka. She added items that reflected her own life to make the film into a kind of visual CV.

Kathleen Shaw's flying trireme modelled on Da Vinci's wing drawings and the body of a heron

For her 3D modelling assignment Kathleen created a flying vessel based on the design of the Greek trireme battleships and Da Vinci's drawings of wings for humans.

"Da Vinci researched the bird wing and created a contraption which was designed to make humans fly. The wing oars are referenced and modelled to match the Da Vinci sketch of a bird wing," Kathleen told us. She made her vessel look like a heron, as it's long body worked well with the long shape of the trireme.

11. Bryony Harris

Witch's treehouse

Bryony's visualisation of a witch's tree house shows her superb attention to detail, particularly in the foliage, the lighting on the lily pond and the thatch on the cottage.

Abandoned dojo

For her brief to produce an abandoned building, Bryony created a lifelike and flicker-free global illumination solution to make this atmospheric visualisation.

12. Camilla Mendes

Glass pots on a witch's shelf

Camilla produced a CG film of an abandoned church with atmospheric lighting effects as well as slow-motion falling stonework. It's only a piece of coursework, but it's comparable to the BSc projects.

There are six million polys of dead ivy lining the church walls, which meant hefty render times but she took advantage of the institution's 336 core render farm for this work.

Camilla is originally from Brazil and is still deciding whether to work there or in the UK.

An atmospheric abandoned church