My Final Major Project Rationale

for my final major project i want to make an animation which really focuses on the narrative. By decision for this was developed over the summer but the final "i definitely want to do this for my FMP" decision came while researching for COP. In The Illusion of Life II there is a quote from from the creator of Astro Boy; Osamu Tezuka. Once when an animator asked about adding additional animation to a 3 second reaction shot that only consisted of one frame, he said; "Forget the movement ... If we have a really strong story, viewers will not care about movements" This quote really resonated with me.

Throughout second year i was incredibly passionate about the state of storytelling in the animation industry. I felt that many animations, particularly ones that i had seen or had been spoke about at animation festivals i had been to, though visually very compelling, had unstimulating story. Pixar is simply re releasing previous IPs rather than creating anything new to the standard of Pre Wall-e movies, and Laika are creating visually compelling films with weak stories.

For my FMP i want to create something entirely story focused, while using visual storytelling and shot framing to really push a compelling narrative. This will likely lead to a lesser animation quality to that of my peers, however this will likely mean that if a section is animated, its animated for a clear reason to push the narrative further.

Applied Animation 20: Titles and Credits

For the titles and credits i simply made sure that the font stayed consistent with the font used for the subtitles of the astronaut sequence. It didn't need anything else other than a black background and a white font for the title, which was simple and easy to make, and effective.

Applied Animation 19: Sound Design

I always enjoy adding ambient noise, its an area I can really push my creativity but without much effort needed, so i was very excited when Greta said i could do it. Compared to other projects i kept this one quite simple.

For the professors office i added some fire and a clock ticking in order to give the impression of elegance. It was quite hard because there was nothing in shot that would indicate it is giving off this sound, but i still feel that it works.

The least amount of sound was added to the cosmonaut scenes because space is silent, i did however take the liberty of adding a NASA beep noise (which i now know is called a quintar tone) at some of the starting points of the cosmonauts talking. I didn't add the beeps to every time they started and finished talking as it would be too much. I also added one at the very end which was a nice touch. While i remember i also made sure that each scenes audio faded in slightly before the animation begins in order to give a nice transition.

The sound i am most proud of finding and editing was that for the surgery. Finding a heart rate monitor was quite difficult, but eventually i found a royalty free download online, but i didn't feel like this was enough, so i attempted to find an oxygen mask sound effect, which i could not find, so in order to remedy this i downloaded the sound effects of a man breathing heavily, and simply slowed it down and lowered the pitch, giving the impression of breathing inside of a mask.

I always thing environmental audio is important, and i really feel this work has helped push our animation to a higher level.

Applied Animation 18: Animating the Face

Animating the movement in the arms wasn't anything new for me, my technique often relys on the length of frames themselves rather than the amount of inbetweens so i simply draw the position of the arms that is in the middle of the other two positions, and it seems to work well, it was simple and effective. The really new thing for me was animating facial expressions, and the lipsyncing talk really came in to practice for it. I first focused on the mouth. I kept it simple, switching between mouth shapes for the noises at the time without focusing on any in betweens. I then added some extra little touches, such as his eyes looking across the room, and scrunching up when he gets passionate. In the end i feel like this was a very successful scene, and it was extremely time effective.

Applied Animation 17: Animating in Flash

Animating in flash was a very new and quite scary concept to me. I did use flash a little for PPP1 last year for the building breaking through the ground, but i wasn't very confident with it, and when i first began using flash for this project i wasn't very confident, and in turn made me less motivated. However once i got started i found flash to be quite fun, though there are still moments where i am unsure exactly what has gone wrong, i feel much more confident animating now i am around half way through the Ethan scene, and after getting used to vectors from colouring backgrounds. Though i am still unsure exactly how to animate symbols and tweening, the ability to select entire segments of a character by colour alone is a very nice touch, and i can definitely see me using flash again in the future.

Applied Animation 16: The Final Crit

The final crit was extremely frustrating. After no one had anything new to show we were all given a lecture on the importance of organisation. I felt that the crit itself was a waste of time, and would much sooner had been working on the animation itself in the morning, rather than sitting around listening to peoples excuses for not getting on with work, and the unfortunate repercussions of Martin and Sara telling us all off as a class like children. It was embarrassing.

Applied Animation 15: The Final backgrounds

For the final backgrounds i was extremely happy. Though the colours were all quite flat it works well with the characters. I am particularly proud of the colour schemes for all of theme, but the background i'm most happy with is the surgery, i have often struggled with perspective, but i have still managed to make something i am proud of. Next stop is animating.

Applied Animation 14: Cutting Out Granddad

Because its getting so close to deadlines and we still haven't made very much progress, Sara suggested we cut out a scene, which seemed like an obvious suggestion but we just hadn't considered it, so was very useful to chat to her. We decided to cut out the scene with my granddad as it was the only scene that didn't have any kind of comedy element to it, it was also going to be the hardest to animate because he was so wrinkly, and despite all the planning i was still unsure of what background to do for him.

Applied Animation 13: Lip Synching

Though usually i zone out whenever Martin is talking, i found this tutorial he gave on lip syncing to be quite useful. Stuff like making the mouth shapes appear a few frames before the sound itself in order for the brain to register it properly, and using a limited number of mouth shapes to still convey talking.

                                      

Here it an example of my attempt at lip syncing with the assets martin gave us of some of our audio.

I feel like with the limited number of mouth shapes we were given it is a little bit choppy, particularly at the end, but this exersize definitely helped my understanding of lip syncing.

Applied Animation 11: Interim Crit

When it came to the interim Crit we were quite behind schedule, we had an animatic to show, and some of Greta's key framing and an animatic made from my background sketches. i felt that we were behind because we had focused on other modules going on, such as responsive which quite frankly i was enjoying much more, so i was focusing a lot more on it.

The feedback wasnt useful. Granted if we had done more we would have had more useful feedback, but we both just wanted to be left to get on with it.

Applied Animation 10: Background Plans

Despite the moodboards i made in order to help decide on the layout of some shots i was still unsure for the fisherman shot and the professor shot, in order to remedy this i decided to draw out a few plans for how they could be sat in frame and what kind of objects could be around him. I then showed these plans to greta and she helped decide of a final plan for each of the shots

 The other two shots were easy, using the moodboards i roughly planned out the shots so i knew the plan to draw them properly in flash next.

 I was most happy with this drawing, i almost felt it could be used as a background itself, however Greta wasn't happy with it. She didn't like the earth (despite me thinking it was a nice touch) so i simply chose to re draw it in flash when i do the others.

Applied Animation 9: Reference MoodBoards

In order for me to plan out exactly what should be in the backgrounds i compiled a bunch of reference images to get a feel for the background. Because i haven't focused on backgrounds before i was quite daunted by the idea so made sure that i had plenty of reference images of the things i felt i would need to draw in the background. For some of the backgrounds i had already gotten a good idea for what i wanted in them, and the layout of the room, but for others i was completely lost, this is why i made these moodboards, to help decide on a background for some scenes, and to reinforce my knowledge of what to draw for the scenes I already had an idea for.

Applied Animation 8: Reference Filming

Because its such a heavy character based animation we decided it would be best to film ourselves as reference to animate from. Because Aardman films a lot of reference footage we also felt it would be helpful to do so. We also made sure to place ourselves in frame to get an accurate idea of the movement and what would be seen.

Acting out exactly what we wanted the characters to be doing and the mannerisms we wanted them to have was a lot harder than i was first expecting, we had to re shoot so many times because we either forgot the words, didn't act out the actions we wanted to, or generally just felt a touch uncomfortable doing it. I heard that the last years second years had an acting workshop, though it would be daunting to have had to "act" in front of people i feel like it would have been helpful for this exersize.

We ended up with a lot of reference footage, and after we compiled the best elements of all of them we have an accurate idea of how we want out characters to move.

Applied Animation 7: Moodboards

As we approach the end of pre production i began to take less of a leading roll, after idea development and audio. I felt that Greta should take more of a leading roll because she is much better at character animation than me, and had decided to animate in flash, and i don't know how to use flash very well. We decided that she would character design and key frame, generally taking a leading creative roll, and i would do the inbetweens and backgrounds. 

In order to get a better understanding of what Greta wanted for backgrounds i put together a quick moodboard of particular styles we had mentioned in previous meetings. Though the selection was small i all felt that they were the kinds of backgrounds i would be capable of doing. Greta said she prefered the style of the bottom left, so that is the style i shall attempt to replicate.

Applied animation 12: Backgrounds In Flash

Having never used flash before i was quite daunted using it, which again contributed to my late start in production, however working on backgrounds before animating was a very useful order for me to work in. I also chose to work on the simpler background first. I also first made the back space background and nebula in photoshop as i wasnt sure if flash could do smooth colour transitions or gradients, however when i got stuck in to drawing the space station, and with help from Greta i really started to become more comfortable with flash. I had some trouble with some elements becoming symbols and was unsure how to fix them, but overall it was smooth sailing getting the background done. From here i feel very confident in completing the other backgrounds.

Applied Animation 6: Audio Editing

Before we had picked the interviews we were going to use, i decided that since we had so much time i would go ahead and cut down most of the audio i had recorded so that when Greta comes back to the UK it will be easy for us to decide on which interviews to use if all of the best bits were there.

When it came to editing the audio some were easier than others, some had obvious points that were extremely funny, such as my dads audio which has a good bit about italian food, some were short enough to cut something together like my nephew, who didn't say much but what he did say was cute and funny. however some had no particularly good bits, or too many good bits such as my sisters interview that had nothing particularly funny stand out but was still a decent interview.

i used audacity as its a program i know how to use and it was as simple as cutting out long pauses, my questions, and umms and aas. I also tried to make sure all the audio was at a similar audio level by increasing the volume and judging the waveform, i didn't need to do this too much however because i forgot a pop filter for some of the interviews i just had to make sure they were at a good audio level.

Responsive: Evaluation

This module has definitely been enjoyable for me, on a personal level i have met some new people and achieved my own personal goals of producing work to be presented to people, which i initially was uncomfortable doing. I now feel a lot more comfortable collaborating with other people and allowing them to develop their own ideas and then work on them myself, or allow them to further develop my own ideas, which i was initially quite concerned about. This is largely due to the people i worked with, who were all extremely supportive, organised and talented, though this may be more detrimental for any form of collaboration in the future as i have not picked up the skills necessary for working with a partner i don't necessarily get along with. Working with other creatives from other courses has also had an additional benefit for me, it has made me a lot more confident in both my own abilities as an animator, and also my abilities to professionally show my work to both potential collaborators and clients, after emailing Leeds college of music, despite only having the need for one musician, it put me in contact with a lot of musicians who were interested in an animator working with them, and though initially I blew it by not selling myself enough, that will not be an issue i will face again.

  One aspect that I did struggle with myself was communication with regards to feedback and creative suggestions. There were multiple instances where I felt i was more unhelpful and just waffled until a different work partner stepped in to either explain what i meant or to help me snap out of some kind of loop. This is something that i will need to work on in the future, particularly if i want some kind of directorial roll in the future.

Overall i am incredibly satisfied with the work i have produced over this module, compared to previous work i have produced there is a definitely noticeable improvement, particularly with my frame by frame animation. This is largely due to my constantly improving drawing skills, but also my knowledge of techniques to speed up the animation process, for example in my Dark animation I animated the hands as they there was a lot of movement there, whereas the body simply had a few frames to repeat in order to give the illusion of movement. My passion is in dynamic frame by frame animation, particularly of that from japan, so despite not quite being at the point where i can create a dynamic samurai fight scene, my abilities of drawing perspective and more 3D environments and characters feels more improved.

I was also very happy to have picked up some new skill sets in this module, i now know premiere a little better, but the biggest skill i picked up would be 2D animating and rigging in After effects. Initially an animation with a program and technique i had never used before was incredibly daunting, but after educating myself and then practice i picked the skills necessary up very quickly and i now consider myself to be quite proficient with rigging in after effects. This has made me more confident with after effects, but it has also made me less put off by trying new software or techniques for important projects, a problem i have found myself facing in the past.

The brief i made the least progress on was the Onform one. Unfortunately i never put the effort in to really create something spectacular and noteworthy. Though i produced some nice gifs, they were far from anything extraordinary. If i could revisit this brief i would force myself to go into more detail with the drawings and gifs i produce, as i feel like details are often things i skip over when producing work. Also, my time management, though improving, could still use a bit of work, though facing personal hardships is something everyone has to deal with and take time off for every now and again, procrastination is not excusable, and regrettably, leaving the loopdeloop brief until the week before deadline is not a good working strategy, despite creating something quite high quality, with more time management i could have created something much better.

I've learnt a lot of things from this module, and i definitely feel i have improved as a professional animator, in both my confidence and my animating ability, and collaboration is definitely something i will continue to do and feel comfortable doing, long into my professional career.

Responsive: Project Report

Responsive: Loopdeloop: 5 Glitching

Having already used a glitching effect on a previous animation i was quite confident i could create a visual glitch that would be simple to make and not too time consuming. After first animating the rigged character falling down the stairs, i then moved it to a separate comp in order to copy it easily. I then duplicated the comp and colourized it to appear bright green and bright red. I then shifted them from the original position slightly and used the wiggle command to add some randomisation. I then changed the opacity to 0, and made them reappear every time the triangle hits something. At this point i also made the whole comp bump slightly to make the hit seem even stronger.

And this is the final animation. Overall i am quite happy with it, the more i go back to it the more i wish i had done more, but this would most likely have only been added cheap effects to add some kind of VCR style to it, but i am happy with the result none the less.

Responsive: Loopdeloop: 4 Making noise

For the noise that plays whenever the triangle hits the stairs i used an online generator that I've had my eye on for a while that can be found here. in truth i have no clue what any of the sliders mean specifically, but i kept playing until i heard a crunching noise i was happy with, and decided to use it. Thankfully this tool is open source so I can use this without getting in trouble, and potentially use it in future too. Next up is glitching out our little triangle.

Responsive: Loopdeloop: 3 Rigging again

This is my final character. nice and simple. Having already had practice with rigging character with Duik with the collaborative brief from responsive i confidently rigged this character. I had planned on giving this character a face, but i feel like this wouldn't add anything to the animation.

Responsive: Do it in 10: 10 additional extras

The last touch i brought to the animation was a few fish, i made sure i painted them with a few green elements that i can animate the hue in after effect. I made all of these frame by frame and then animated the major movement such as swimming across the screen in after effects. These additional extras will help push the underwater but also in space setting, and also serve as a little bit of a distraction from all of the obvious flaws that you can see if you watch it for too long.

Overall i am really happy with this animation, it really helped bring back my motivation for animating.

Responsive: Do it in 10: 9 final shot

For the final shot i started with a much larger imaged than 1080 by 1920 so i have the opportunity to zoom out a touch. I kept the character animation simple again, this is by far the least dynamic shot in terms of the character animation, though i did still take pride in the fact i kept his arms keep their proportions. I'm not so happy about the black hole fire, its quite jumpy. I used a youtube tutorial sent to me by Guy and Bash in first year in order to get an understanding of how to animate fire well. I feel this is because i didn't want to put the time into something i deemed to not be as important, and in the final animation it doesn't seem so bad.

Responsive: Do it in 10: 8 Standing up

Next i began work on the guitarist standing up behind the anglerfish in the very first shot. This was quite easy at this point because i had practice drawing this character, so making sure he kept the same proportions as he stood up wasn't as hard as i thought it would be. I also made him tilt the guitar in time with the first major note in order to help push the idea of the song actually being played by the character in the animation. Though the fingers don't move at all in this shot, the slight wiggle i added by making it switch between two frames gives the impression of his fingers moving.

Responsive: Do it in 10: 7 Vertical tracking shot

 The next thing i worked on was the vertical tracking shot, for this i wanted the guitarist to look up at the camera, and the camera tracks down to his hands playing the guitar. I created this as one large animation in photoshop so that i can just slowly pan down in after effects. This also meant i didn't have to animate the hands when the head looks up. I once again added a few more frames to switch between for the body just so it doesnt look too stationary.

This time i used the video that Bryan sent me as reference rather than to rotoscope from,and the hands certainly look a lot stiffer than they did when rotoscoping, however the shot doesnt last too long, and i dont want to rotoscope the whole thing as it would be useful to get more practice frame by frame animating i feel.

Responsive: Collaborative Practice 9: Quick Fixes and Final Audio

Before everything could go together i had a few final jobs, i had to make the Ferris wheel spin, luckily this wasn't a big job, however Hattie had the original file, so i had to chase her up in order to get a cope where the carriages were on separate layers to the Ferris wheel scaffolding, then it was simple a case of parenting the carriages to the scaffolding, then make them rotate in the opposite direction after changing the anchor point so that they remain facing downwards. I thought it was going to be a much more difficult job than it actually was. 

I also had to make our seaweed forest sway. I had known about this job for a while but i kept putting it off as i wasn't sure exactly i was going to do it and i didn't want to animate every individual plant, but in order to do it quickly i simple used the bezier warp effect and animated it. I then duplicated this layer multiple times, but played around with the spacing, colour, and timing so that it wasn't as obvious it was just layered on top of itself multiple times. 

As i was in charge of putting together the final edit i had a lot of creative freedom when it came to the ambient sounds. I started by making sure that the lines of narration were nicely spaced with the video. Next up was ambient under water noise, this included a splash at the beginning and multiple sea life sounds such as whale calls and dolphin calls. I also added some ambient gym noise to the gym section, and some ambient theme park noise to the theme park section. I finally added some old projector flicker sound effects to the ident at the beginning because its all the fish used in the animation flicking very quickly.

Overall i am really happy with how this turned out, collaborating was a lot of fun and i cant wait to do it again!

Responsive: Collaborative Practice 8: The Script and recording

Having already developed some script so that Oscar could do a quick version of the voice over, making the final script was very easy. As we weren't too sure how good some lines sounded, we made sure to add some other variations so that i could easily remove any that sounded silly or if others sounded better. This was out script.

Hello there!

Here at the MSC, we’re in the business of fish (emphasise fish)

they account for a sixth of the world’s protein, which makes them pretty damn important!

So we make sure that our fish are strong and healthy.

good job fish.

[pause for transition]

We also work towards ensuring the survival of future generations of fish

That's why we built a theme park! Fun for all the family…

But why the theme park?

Well, A happy fish is a tasty fish

Who doesn't love theme parks

[pause for transition]

And, to make sure the ocean gets the respect it deserves

we make sure our fisheries are as eco friendly as possible!

The MSC is pretty great (will change)

• That’s why MSC fish are miles better than ordinary fish

• Choose MSC, because we’re pretty damn awesome

• Trust where your fish is from by choosing fish with the blue MSC label.

• Choose MSC, trust where your fish comes from.

after the script was finally finished we began recording narrators. We did this by first booking the sound booth, but we then went around our respective courses to find people we felt would work well as the narrator. In the end I found 3 people from animation to record, while Hattie found 3 from her course as well. Oscar did the recordings as he is best with audio equipment. We also recorded ourselves just so that we have more options for voice overs. In the end we went for one of the Graphic designers Hattie brought in named Chris, as we felt he had the best narrator voice. Other either pronounced words wrong, didnt come across as enthusiastic, or didnt have a clear speaking voice, and i felt that chris' recording was the way to go.

Responsive: Collaborative Practice 7: The Fish

Using the skills i picked up rigging the divers i put together some fish. I kept it simple, i simply rigged them so that their fins would wiggle, and i then placed them in groups making sure that no more than 3 wiggled at the same time, also after the first school of fish i noticed they needed to weave in between each other, so i began to do so.

I also tried to animate some jellyfish, but unfortunately i couldn't use the version tom gave me to animate and make it look good, so in the end i left it out as i felt it would mean too much work to achieve in the time left.

Responsive: Collaborative Practice 6: Puppeting in AE

Because i haven't had any experience rigging i was relying a lot on oscar to help, and with help from him personally and a video he sent me. 

After following the video i began work on the female diver, and after following the video and oscars advice i had created some good assets for oscar to put in the final comp.

Below are all of the swimming divers, all animated so that they loop.

Responsive: Collaborative Practice 5: Storyboarding

Next up it was time for me to make the storyboards. I was very aware of the fact that a lot of people are going to be using this as a reference, so i tried to make sure i was as clear as possible, if i were making this storyboard for myself i would have been much looser with my drawing and notes. I made sure i made notes and I used the colour green for camera movement, and red for character/object movement, i also made sure that the notes and directions were on a separate layer so that when Oscar got around to making the animatic we would be able to see the characters and fish move for themselves rather than seeing the directions.

The animatic can be seen here.

Responsive: Collaborative Practice 4: Moodboards

After Hattie and Tom had some trouble with the design and style of the animation assets me and Oscar thought it would be helpful to throw a few moodboards together for them, to give them an idea of what we wanted for the animation. Oscar created one for the background which can be found on his blog here, and i worked on one for the people, and for the fish.

These were the images i got together to show Tom, we felt that any of these fish worked very well, and as Oscar had previously mentioned to Hattie, we wanted to do a bit more with texture, so i tried to include some more textural fish too.

As for the people i tried to find people that were a lot less textured and a little more geometric.

Responsive: Collaborative Practice 3: The Narrative

After two more meetings we have decided on a narrative for our animation. 

We started by organizing another meeting, i felt like we were beginning to fall behind on our gantt chart so deciding on the narrative was essential so we could all get to work. We all met in college in order to discuss what our narrative would be, the vibe was that we were all a little unmotivated to get started, but i feel that our lack of motivation meant that we tried to form an idea as soon as we could, which worked in our favor.

We all liked the idea of the humour being similar to that of the portal 2 ads, and the common theme of them is a charismatic narrator selling the company but the visuals portray the workers as more stupid (though meaning well). We thought we could create something along similar lines but without being a direct carbon copy, we decided that we would use actual things that the MSC does but put a more bizarre or literal spin on it, by treating fish as if they were people, though the fish are still fish. (writing this out formally for my blog makes it sound a lot less funny than it actually is, just trust me, it works)

We started by deciding what real world scenarios would be funny to portray fish in. Special thanks to Hattie for keeping such good notes.

 In the end we decided on 3 particular ideas, a gym, where we would show a diver lifting weights and a fish passively swimming around not particularly paying attention. A theme park, in which we would show a diver excitedly riding a rollercoaster with some passive fish, and finally a diver replacing an anglerfish light with an energy saving bulb, the last idea being my personal favorite, despite taking the longest to decide on.

 After deciding on the three settings, next was to begin idea generation for the narration and shot order, though by this point we were all itching to get off and do other work. Below is what we decided on at the time, but this was refined at a second meeting.

 The second meeting we refined out idea for the animation into rough thumbnails, most of this was done by me and oscar, with me focusing on what shot framing would look the nicest, and with Oscar thinking a lot more logistically, focusing on what would look best with animating in after effects. We thought it would work well if the whole animation was one long shot with everything being animated in after effects, this meant that me and oscar would have an easier time animating in such a short space of time, and would give a nice clean feeling to the whole animation. We also decided on some more of the transitional animations, such as how we could smoothly go from the theme park to deep sea, we will do this by making the animation seem like it is taking a picture as the rollercoaster goes in front of the camera. This would entail a flash of light and then as we fade back in to the animation we will be moving deeper into the ocean. We also liked the idea that in this transition we could have a diver wearing some extremely old diving gear and looking incredibly lost.

We also decided at this point exactly who would do what from this point onwards, as oscar was busy with an external brief he would take a backseat roll for the moment as i refined the script a little more and created some more refined storyboards. Hattie was going to create the backgrounds for the long tracking shot, and Tom was going to create the divers and fish for us to animate. Oscar helped them out with the logistics and specifications of the files for us to animate as i have never animated using this method before. Next up should be rigging in after effects and animating!

Responsive: Loopdeloop: 2 Character and background design

So i decided i would start with designing the background, I used the images i collected to decide on a colour scheme for the stairs. I also decided to add a grid to both the background and the stairs but at different sizes in order to help add a little bit of texture, i also made sure the grids were different sizes in order to help contrast the stairs against the background and show a bit of parallax.

For the character i wanted to keep him simple, with responsive submission around the corner i want to spend as little time producing this animation without losing quality, therefore i decided minimalism would be the way to go for this character. I started with a bright green and decided that it just didn't go very will with the blue or magenta, similarly with the light blue. I made sure i had the colours i used for my background close by while designing the characters to make sure that the character stood out but didn't clash. I eventually decided on white as it goes with everything, however i still plan on incorporating other colours as the character falls down the stairs and glitches out. As for the shape i eventually decided on a triangle. I felt the square would fit too much in to the background, and the circle would end up looking less dynamic as it falls down the stairs as there are no definite points. i also decided to not add a face but add lines as arms and legs that i can turn into a puppet in after effects from the skills i picked up from collaborative brief from responsive.

Responsive: Loopdeloop: 1 Idea development and Research

For this Loopdeloop theme of Tumble, i wanted to keep it simple once again. Since i've already done my substantial brief i felt i would keep this brief as simple as i could, while still creating something visually appealing, and that of course loops.

I decided I would keep the narrative simple and focus on the style, and have it just be some kind of character falling down stairs.

As for style, i have always been very in to the idea of retrofuturism, but recently I've been focusing on the 80s aesthetic, which also ties in nicely with my fascination of digital glitches.

Here are some of the images i collected as inspiration.

Responsive: Onform 7

For this onform i wanted to focus on drawing something for fun, i was super proud of the background i did for my last onform so i thought i would do a similar thing again, and i was once again very proud of the outcome. I chose a to turn the shape into a poncho on a cowboy because that was what i initially saw from the shape, i was quite surprised to find that no one else had tried to develop the same idea, i felt it was quite an obvious choice. I wasnt as precious about my shading at the time and now i reflect on it i wish i had put more effort in, i like the way i shaded the legs, and despite being quite rough i feel the shading on the boots works well also, however the shadow and the shading on the hat i wish i had taken more time on. 

Responsive: Do it in 10: 6 Working with LCM and Rotoscoping

One thing i knew i wanted to do for this project from the very beginning was to get the audio from an external source, i had listened to a little bit of metal for reference, but i was definitely out of my element for music because not only do i not study music so understanding how to compose a song would be too difficult for me to do, but i don't listen to much Metal so i wouldn't be able to identify what would fit and what was good. I also knew i wanted to have the fingers playing as accurately as possible, and even set up a shot to really effectively show that.

This called for a collaboration. I had heard of students collaborating with Leeds College of Music before, but i wasn't sure how to go about doing it. After asking Mike he told me to take this to the union as they would know best how to contact LCM. After Emailing but not getting a reply i knew i had to go down and see Emma, the president of the union, in person. After writing that sentence i realise how for boding and grandiose i made it sound, but it was actually quite easy, which is surprising because talking to people i need something from is something i would always get anxious about, so its nice to know i had some personal development while working on my animation development. I digress, Emma gave me some emails of people at the LCM union to email, and their Facebook page. I composed an email.

Hello there!

My name is Ollie, and I am an animator from LCA. I was hoping I would be able to do a small collaboration with one of the students at LCM. I'll also put the below message onto the LCM Union facebook page.

I would like a 6-7 second metal solo on an electric guitar along with a video clip of the fingering. They would be credited in the animation description and a collaboration would hopefully look good as experience for both parties involved. The main thing would be to have fun with it, the animation isn't supposed to be thought provoking its just going to look and sound good. Entries close on the 28th so there's not a huge amount of time left.

competition link: http://showmetheanimation.com/do-it-in-ten/

Rough Animatic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1ZNDO0o2-g

Cheers :)

After a little while i got a response from Mimi, the union president, saying that she would pass the message along, and a few days after that i got my first email. Due to the fact that it was quite late on in the month and i only had about 2 weeks left i decided to go with the first email i got, which was from a guy called Bryan Chung. I told him what i needed and left the rest up to him. Around three days later he gave me a WAV file of the soundtrack he produced, and a video clip of him playing it so that i had visual reference. In all honesty i was quite underwhelmed, i didn't really know if it was a good or bad solo until i started getting more emails from other interested musicians that produced music to a higher standard. Nevertheless i was grateful and impressed, as without him i would have been lost, and his organisation made production a lot easier. 

After getting the video i decided i would cut it down so that the timing was right, so that i could rotoscope the close up of his finger scene and be as close to the actual audio as possible.

The most difficult part when rotoscoping this scene was making sure that it worked with a character that was stood up despite working from a reference video of someone sat down, but after drawing out where i wanted the body to be the rest was as simple as joining up the lines. I also made sure to add a few extra frames for the body to switch between so it didn't make it too still compared to the very very dynamic hands.

I watch this gif now and find that the wrists and forearms are incredibly wiggly, but i feel that the scene will be short enough that it won't be noticed.

Responsive: Do it in 10: 5 Animation Begins

When i initially started animating I decided to start with the angler fish swimming in at the very beginning. Because i was a bit out of practice my initial animation was utter shit. Above was my timing and as you may be able to see, the movement was atrocious, so i re did it. I created a path for the image in after effects, exported as an image sequence (in PNG to maintain transparency) and then filled in some in-betweens as the fish turns around.

I went through a few iterations, each with changed timing and added in-betweens. I first started with three frames for the turn around, but this felt too sharp.

I added another in-between nearer the end to hopefully smooth the transition but i then felt that it was too slow for a fish that was supposed to be scared off.

I changed the timings and found i was happy with the movement and timing.

So i added his teeth and other details and my angler fish was finished.

Responsive: Do it in 10: 4 Character Design

For character design i started off by developing the mask, i tried out a few designs, some more heavily influenced by my mood board than others. After drawing a few designs for the mask i went around and asked some of the people in my house which they preferred. A few people mentioned they liked aspects from all of them, so i tried to combine them into a design which ended up looking too asian when i wanted it to look african, and was also far too complicated. In the end I decided to go for the simplest and arguably most intimidating design.

 For the character i wanted to keep his body simple, i'm not the most confident at drawing people yet so the simpler the better for the most successful result. I wanted him to be skinny and kind of plain as his mask will all that is needed to give him character. It's a 10 second animation, there is no need for extreme background detail about him. I also gave him shorts, because a lot of metal heads wear shorts and they would be easy to draw.

Responsive: Do it in 10: 3 Storyboard and Animatic

Below is my Storyboard. (Note i drew the character with a left handed guitar in some shots, he will play right handed). I wanted to try some more dynamic camera angles in this animation so i tried to put some shots in, particularly the introduction of the guitarist, and the close up of his fingers playing.

 

After i had finished the storyboard it was time for the animatic. This time around i made sure there was a timer in the animatic for reference to time and frame number, this is a practice i want to get into more as i feel it will be more professional, as it was how the animatic for danger mouse that i saw at MAF was done. I also took the opportunity to flip the scenes where the guitarist plays obviously Left handed.