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/
Rough Animatic: https://www.youtube.
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.
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