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: 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.

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.

Responsive: Onform 6

For this onform i wanted to do something a little more detailed, after seeing some really cool detailed shapes before i wanted to start putting more effort into the detail of the shapes, though proud of my previous shape, the dragon, i feel like it needed a little more detail for it to stand out. For this shape i struggled with an idea, and unfortunately has to rush it last minute, however i set aside an entire evening to play with some more detailed drawing. I feel like some of it worked and some of it didn't, i am really happy with the moon surface and the sky ( i even hid a little satellite ) but i'm not so happy with the ground, wheels and mechanisms of the rover. I feel like i will get better at this with practice though, so i will keep at it.

Responsive: Onform 4

This onform i was not particularly happy about, and so i was a lot less upset when it didn't get posted. I didn't really think this shape through and i think you can tell from looking at it. This was my first attempt at shading, though i'm definitely going to attempt shading again but with more effort next time.