The Planet

After finishing the main character i thought it would be important to begin on designing the planet. This proved difficult as perspective drawings of landscapes isnt my strong point. Furthermore the pressure of the pop up show means i most likely wont be able to produce a finished work for it. Above was my latest drawing of a potential landscape. However i had also realised that i have plenty of drawings that i have been producing for my daily doodle project which could easily work as concept art. Not as a "oo quickly shove some extra work in to make it look like i've produced more than have" because these drawings were produced as i was thinking about this project so have obviously taken some imaginative versions of my idea rather than a researched set of concept art.

Character Design 2

Today i finished my main character. He looks particularly plain which is exactly what i was going for, and i am happy with the linework which is the most important at this stage.

At first i experimented with greens, i want the rest of the world to really have a strong opposing pallet, and as i only have blue and red right now, green would offset this well, however the character looks a little too boring with these colours. I want him to not fit in but not to look boring.

In order to make a poster for the show i decided to make him mostly blue and upped the contrast. Making the background much more red. Overall it makes the character design really pop.

The Space Station

The first piece of coloured concept art i produced was this one above. I want the animation to be sci fi so i want the delivery man to start in a space station. This initial first drawing was to help determine colour schemes for the planet and to try out textured brushes. These tests can be seen in my art book. 

I then decided that i should come up with a different design and i didn't find the original interesting enough, so i started by drawing out silhouettes of interesting shapes for space station. I took influence from a few spaceships in particular, namely the Icarus 2 from Sunshine, and a more boat looking design similar to Gurren Lagaan. I also added a layer with neon signs in order to further experiment with designs and was particularly happy with the spire looking space station.  

I utilised the brushes i used for the planet designs in order to come up with my "final" design which while i am quite happy with this space station it looks incredibly over the top and complex and looks much better when it was a small simple sketch, i need to do more experimentation but because it wont feature a huge ammount in the animation i need to focus on developing different areas.

Character Design 1

The first thing i began working on was the main character. He takes the role of a run of the mill delivery guy, with influence from Futurama’s Fry, and Squeaky-Voiced Teen from The Simpsons. I wanted to keep his design simple. This simple design would contrast with the wacky world around him, furthermore he will react unenthusiastically to everything around him, to hopefully add a comedy element. The design of him went through many itterations, with the two main ones being the one with the large square head, and oval face with the large cap. Another important element to consider is the complexity of the character. As the main character he will have a lot of screentime so it is important to keep him as simple as possible in order to make animating him a realistic job. 

Finally a Solid Idea

After a little too long i have finally organised my idea for the animation. The story goes something like this:

It's about a space delivery man who gets tasked to go down to a planet to make a delivery, he gets dropped from orbit but it's a pretty regular thing for him so it's all very deadpan, once he arrives a small old man drops off a super badass car, probably blasting gangsta rap as he approaches, the delivery man finally starts getting excited as he initiates an extensive startup sequence to build up anticipation and immediately gets into a traffic jam, no longer happy he slowly inches his way along until he gets to a quite dodgy part of town, as a group of alien thugs begin to approach he gets more and more concerned until he pulls out of the road and speeds across country, he loses them because he's going stupid fast, but then crashes into a rock (which is an alien tortoise thing that gets up and walks away with this rocket car sticking out of it) the delivery man pulls himself from the wreck and steadily walks across the desert to make his delivery. Eventually he gets to the house he's making a delivery too, kinda rekt at this point, so he knocks, the man answers and they have this extremely tense moment as they have to turn two keys at the same time to open it, big reveal with fog and shit, only to reveal that the object inside is incredibly mundane. Cut to delivery guy snapping and then it ends. Then as a credit animation I was thinking it could be him trying to get back to the space station, going through areas we already seen.

This idea still needs to be storyboarded but for a solid story plan i feel this works. An animatic is necessary however to make sure my timing is ok and that i have enough time to work on this whole story thing.

Discussing Festivals with Steve

In order to get some more insight into the festival selection process I decided to speak to Steve Henderson as he is one of the co directors of MAF, and will know more about what helps get an animation selected for a festival. While he can only speak specifically for MAF, and other festivals will most probably have a different kind of selection procedure, his experience will help me determine subjects about my animation.

We discussed what little of an idea i had initially and asked him about portraying drugs in the animation and if that would affect whether it would be accepted into a festival. He then told me that effectively i could portray the most brutal or unacceptable events but the only thing affecting is acceptance would be if the story was good or not.

I found this a little disheartening as i wanted to focus more on the aesthetic quality rather than story but i think i will still be able to produce a good story along side the colourful visuals.

Extended Pitch

I wasn't particularly happy with my pitch for extended, in retrospect i attempted to plan too many things for my animation, for example trying to keep the humour British is extra work that don't plan to focus on during this development however i do want to maintain the visual style that i pitched during my presentation, and the story focus on a delivery man will also be the same.

My Target Audience would be similar to that of works such as Rick and Morty and adult swim stuff, sort of an international internet audience. This is largely due to it being the audience i am familiar with and most identify with, but also the audience that i could get more creative freedom from.

In terms of subject matter i know i want it to be over the top and exaggerated however i havent figured out the details of the story yet.

Festival Plan

In order to get a little more organised i wanted to create a festival plan, so using the website: http://www.animation-festivals.com/festivals-list/ I created a list of festivals to submit to organised by submission date. I also made notes for myself on the specific kinds of animation they are looking for and other little notes for myself. This is to help organise my plan for finally submitting festivals. I only included dates after and around the submission date for this module as i feel i wont be able to make any earlier deadlines.

note: I don't mean to offend by any of my notes, for example the notes for the Underwire Festival where i say "quite feminist" is simply there to remind myself that a tasteless animation about banging chicks probably would be accepted there.

Inspired by MAF

MAF was incredibly inspring. This year i focused on seeing as many shorts as i could, and while i didn't enjoy absolutely everything, the variation of shorts really inspired me, both in visual style and subject. A particular favorite was Mr Madila, which was incredibly simple yet incredibly entertaining and left the audience in stitches.

The variation in styles definitely put me at ease about visual style, even the more simple animations, or animations with a much looser style were still entertaining and visually appealing. This will hopefully make me more confident at facing such a large task. One element that seemed to draw me in specifically was bright colours and a quick pace (though not throughout the entire animations, only for appropriate moments)

Going to MAF this year has also helped me decide on my goal for extended practice, which is to make an animation to be submitted to festivals.

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.