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.

Responsive: Do it in 10: 2 MoodBoards

 These are mood boards i've created for this project. I've only gone for two and only for deep sea creatures and african tribal masks. The mood board for fish is because these are the kinds of fish i want to feature in the animation, and wanted a reference for. The mood board for tribal masks was more for inspiration for when i do the character design.

Responsive: Do it in 10: 1 Idea Development

For my substantial responsive brief i decided to go for this month's do it in 10 challenge which is to the theme of Dark.

I really struggled to come up with an idea in the beginning of this project, and this problem lead to me missing the last loopdeloop brief of sisters, so i made sure i was more organised with it this time. However after doing a spider diagram (seen above) i still couldn't pick an idea from the ones i had written down. Then, as if an angel was sent from heaven itself Wing came over, and as a joke suggested some ideas that combined ideas i had written down already, such as a "creepy fish dystopia" and a "heavy metal black hole". We laughed, but i was inspired to combine these Ideas to finally create something that would look cool but make no sense, and i went for the idea of a tribal man, playing metal at the bottom of the ocean which is also a black hole. Pretty ridiculous, but i thought i could do something cool with it. I also thought it would be a good idea to contact someone from Leeds College of Music to do the soundtrack. I will have to organise this quickly though because i don't have much time left before entries close.