This week i was mostly working with premiere, compositing the animation and making sure everything is put together right.
This week was very busy because we didn't realise how much we still had to do in terms of getting the animation fully completed and putting everything together. I find this is always the case so maybe next time i will account for this more.
In terms of blogging i started off blogging a lot and making sure i explained everything well but as i got into the production stage i spent a lot more time actually practicing my craft which instead of putting lots of effort into blog posts which don't impact me at all really. Whilst learning and practicing animation is what's going to improve my skills and therefore get me job opportunities. Therefore i have sacrificed my grade for my practice, obviously these should be parallel but they are not.
Anyway moving back to the project, below is a demonstration of all the animating i did for this project. I did the majority of the animation work, so i did all the keys and alot of the inbetweens and clean ups. I also did all the audio except the sounds from the internet and the interviews which we did together.
Wednesday 17 May 2017
Applied Animation - Week 15
This week we started putting everything all together, i captured all
the frames using dragonframe as this is much faster than scanning them
in. Then using photoshop we all cleaned up the frames, removing the
white colour of the page except for the characters. Then whilst Guy and
Meg finished cleaning up the frames, i began compositing the frames in
premiere.
Before compositing in premiere we needed to get the backgrounds finished, to a standard we were happy with. I used research from a few layout books and used inspiration to create the feel of the backgrounds. I wanted to keep the backgrounds very abstracted and minimalist as to not complicate the scene and not to take away from the focal points of the characters.
I took inspiration from flicking through the book "The Noble Approach". This book had some interesting background designs. It showed me that using maybe only two or three colours can still form a very suggestive but abstracted background, which is what we wanted.
After we scanned in the background, Guy edited them on Photoshop and added additional light/shadow, which was a huge improvement and by this point we were very pleased with the backgrounds.
Before compositing in premiere we needed to get the backgrounds finished, to a standard we were happy with. I used research from a few layout books and used inspiration to create the feel of the backgrounds. I wanted to keep the backgrounds very abstracted and minimalist as to not complicate the scene and not to take away from the focal points of the characters.
I took inspiration from flicking through the book "The Noble Approach". This book had some interesting background designs. It showed me that using maybe only two or three colours can still form a very suggestive but abstracted background, which is what we wanted.
After we scanned in the background, Guy edited them on Photoshop and added additional light/shadow, which was a huge improvement and by this point we were very pleased with the backgrounds.
Applied Animation - week 13 and 14
I finished all the keys during these two weeks and since guy was bogged down with other work I've started doing the inbetweens also. I have managed to organise my time very well over the past few weeks. We have had deadlines for COP and responsive but i have still managed to set time aside for working on applied during this time, this is something which Guy and Meg have not done. However this is alright because i don't mind keeping the project on schedule whilst Guy and Meg sort out their other work.
I wouldn't say I'm the most organised person, I'm quite messy and i have never thought of myself as being organised. But i have managed the deadlines this year very well and have set myself more projects which i have done in my spare time as well as the set work. Due to this, i have naturally mediated towards the director role for our applied group.
I really like being the director because i like having control over the project, this isn't to say Guy or Meg doesn't, we all have an equal say in everything. I just feel like I'm naturally taking charge of the project, i think this is because i am organising my time well.
When animating the girl, the motions had to be more fluid than the other characters because she is younger. I really tried to get the anticipation and the arcs in there and i think i did a good job with the child's animation but it could have been better through more subtle movements of her face, more accurate and intricate expressions which narrow in more on what the character is thinking about.
I used reference for the girls motions, especially for her shuffling back into a comfier position.
I wouldn't say I'm the most organised person, I'm quite messy and i have never thought of myself as being organised. But i have managed the deadlines this year very well and have set myself more projects which i have done in my spare time as well as the set work. Due to this, i have naturally mediated towards the director role for our applied group.
I really like being the director because i like having control over the project, this isn't to say Guy or Meg doesn't, we all have an equal say in everything. I just feel like I'm naturally taking charge of the project, i think this is because i am organising my time well.
When animating the girl, the motions had to be more fluid than the other characters because she is younger. I really tried to get the anticipation and the arcs in there and i think i did a good job with the child's animation but it could have been better through more subtle movements of her face, more accurate and intricate expressions which narrow in more on what the character is thinking about.
I used reference for the girls motions, especially for her shuffling back into a comfier position.
Sunday 14 May 2017
Applied Animation - Week 9
This week our priority was the character designs and the animatic. For the animatic we needed to get the voice of the grandmother recorded. On Thursday we went to the sound studio with a member of student support who had a slightly raspy voice. When thinking about the right voice for the grandmother we realized we didn't need an old person to voice her but rather a raspy, tired voice. This is because there's nothing really that different between a youthful voice and an old voice except from a more tired, raspy, mature tone.
Whilst in the recording studio, the words didn't sound right and sounded very forced so we told her to just imagine herself in the scenario of the character and just say what comes naturally instead of acting out these specific words. Instead of saying "nice weather today isn't it?" which was in the script, she said "nice weather today" which felt much more natural and believable.
To make the animatic i was working with Guys storyboards. This was quite challenging as there were way to many storyboard panels for the first scene. The subtleness we discussed before was absent in the storyboards but guy was open to changes to make parts more subtle.
I understand it's hard to get the story across clearly in the storyboards as our narrative is very subtle and needs very acute attention to detail so guy has had a hard job with the storyboards and although they still need some improvements they are good enough to work from.
Understanding the way people think about things and how different people have different approaches to solving problems is important when working together collaboratively. Guy takes quite long to do tasks but he usually produces good work. Understanding peoples weaknesses and my own weaknesses is very important also, being honest about weaknesses allows a greater workflow. For example in our project the idea of our narrative is to be subtle, Guy cant do subtle, but that's ok because me and meg can help out as we have more of an understanding of how to be subtle.
Another instance of this principle is when i took over the character designs from Guy. I thought i could manage to think of a good, well designed character but unfortunately I'm quite poor at design work in general. I am more technically proficient, therefore i was struggling and Guy took back control of the character designs and produced some really nice designs which i will come to later.
This is why acknowledging your strengths and weaknesses and being clear about them helps collaborative workflow a great deal.
On Tuesday we had another crit. I was glad there was another crit before Easter because we were still quite unsure about a lot of things. I showed the inverse hand drawn tests and some character designs which me and Guy had been working on and also a design Guy came up with about 10 minutes before the presentation.
Most peoples favourite design was the one Guy drew just before the presentation, i began to like the design, i thought it was well designed and could work well with our animation. The design does not fit in with the more realistic hand drawn style we were going for previously but i think we can still make it work. Just because an animation is more 'cartoony' does not mean it has a less serious message. It might even work in our favor to display our narrative in a more personal and warm way.
Below is Guy's final character design for the grandmother:
Below are the final character sheets for all the characters:
-------
Also in our crit most people found our animatic humorous instead of being emotionally effected by it. This is because of the "nice weather today" being repeated too much. Therefore i trimmed it down so she doesn't just sound like a parrot.
We also removed the key hole shot from the animation because this was too generic.
Below is the final animatic:
I wasn't confident in the watercolour background Meg made. I didn't think it worked very well to tell the story and set the scene. I didnt think watercolour was the right medium for us to use, we thought of using cut out card to make the backgrounds. We were unsure of the result and if it would look good or set the scene but it worked quite well and added a nice consistency of aesthetic between the backgrounds and the characters.
At first i thought because of the block colours of the card it might look too much like a motion graphic or something of that sort but when compositing the scene together on photoshop my worries were diffused and i was happy with the result.
Whilst in the recording studio, the words didn't sound right and sounded very forced so we told her to just imagine herself in the scenario of the character and just say what comes naturally instead of acting out these specific words. Instead of saying "nice weather today isn't it?" which was in the script, she said "nice weather today" which felt much more natural and believable.
To make the animatic i was working with Guys storyboards. This was quite challenging as there were way to many storyboard panels for the first scene. The subtleness we discussed before was absent in the storyboards but guy was open to changes to make parts more subtle.
I understand it's hard to get the story across clearly in the storyboards as our narrative is very subtle and needs very acute attention to detail so guy has had a hard job with the storyboards and although they still need some improvements they are good enough to work from.
Understanding the way people think about things and how different people have different approaches to solving problems is important when working together collaboratively. Guy takes quite long to do tasks but he usually produces good work. Understanding peoples weaknesses and my own weaknesses is very important also, being honest about weaknesses allows a greater workflow. For example in our project the idea of our narrative is to be subtle, Guy cant do subtle, but that's ok because me and meg can help out as we have more of an understanding of how to be subtle.
Another instance of this principle is when i took over the character designs from Guy. I thought i could manage to think of a good, well designed character but unfortunately I'm quite poor at design work in general. I am more technically proficient, therefore i was struggling and Guy took back control of the character designs and produced some really nice designs which i will come to later.
This is why acknowledging your strengths and weaknesses and being clear about them helps collaborative workflow a great deal.
On Tuesday we had another crit. I was glad there was another crit before Easter because we were still quite unsure about a lot of things. I showed the inverse hand drawn tests and some character designs which me and Guy had been working on and also a design Guy came up with about 10 minutes before the presentation.
Most peoples favourite design was the one Guy drew just before the presentation, i began to like the design, i thought it was well designed and could work well with our animation. The design does not fit in with the more realistic hand drawn style we were going for previously but i think we can still make it work. Just because an animation is more 'cartoony' does not mean it has a less serious message. It might even work in our favor to display our narrative in a more personal and warm way.
Below is Guy's final character design for the grandmother:
Below are the final character sheets for all the characters:
-------
Also in our crit most people found our animatic humorous instead of being emotionally effected by it. This is because of the "nice weather today" being repeated too much. Therefore i trimmed it down so she doesn't just sound like a parrot.
We also removed the key hole shot from the animation because this was too generic.
Below is the final animatic:
I wasn't confident in the watercolour background Meg made. I didn't think it worked very well to tell the story and set the scene. I didnt think watercolour was the right medium for us to use, we thought of using cut out card to make the backgrounds. We were unsure of the result and if it would look good or set the scene but it worked quite well and added a nice consistency of aesthetic between the backgrounds and the characters.
At first i thought because of the block colours of the card it might look too much like a motion graphic or something of that sort but when compositing the scene together on photoshop my worries were diffused and i was happy with the result.
Saturday 13 May 2017
Applied Animation - Easter holidays (week 10, 11, 12)
Over the Easter holidays i was mainly working on responsive and COP but i still managed to get started on the key poses for the grandmother. I wanted to make sure these were perfect as the grandmother is the most important character to get right. There are so many subtleties which can be easily missed when animating her character.
The backgrounds weren't finished yet so i had to work from a template drawn up from the backgrounds. I wanted to try keeping to model as much as possible and having nice arcs of motion and squash and stretch but most of all i wanted to communicate to the audience what the woman is going through and what's going on in her head. I was comfortable animating hand drawn but animating the woman was a challenge. Mainly because there were no distinctive movements except from head turns and the limited dialogue. However i imagined a good animator could add personality and appeal to even the simplest and basic movement, therefore i thought a lot about this and how i could approach making the simplest movement still interesting and beautiful.
I think the key to solving this problem is to really get inside of the characters head and control them, in other words act out the movements as if you were that character. I took some reference of me acting out the movements and looked for subtleties in the motions that are interesting and add character.
To keep on model with the character designs and to keep consistency of the forms, i used a few sources of reference whilst drawing out the keys. I used the character sheets guy drew out from his character designs, i also used a zbrush concept sculpt of our grandmother character which i created quickly when i was playing around with getting to grips with zbrush. This is an example of implementing computer generated workflow into traditional hand drawn animation, how i see it is making the most of the technology available to improve my craft.
The backgrounds weren't finished yet so i had to work from a template drawn up from the backgrounds. I wanted to try keeping to model as much as possible and having nice arcs of motion and squash and stretch but most of all i wanted to communicate to the audience what the woman is going through and what's going on in her head. I was comfortable animating hand drawn but animating the woman was a challenge. Mainly because there were no distinctive movements except from head turns and the limited dialogue. However i imagined a good animator could add personality and appeal to even the simplest and basic movement, therefore i thought a lot about this and how i could approach making the simplest movement still interesting and beautiful.
I think the key to solving this problem is to really get inside of the characters head and control them, in other words act out the movements as if you were that character. I took some reference of me acting out the movements and looked for subtleties in the motions that are interesting and add character.
To keep on model with the character designs and to keep consistency of the forms, i used a few sources of reference whilst drawing out the keys. I used the character sheets guy drew out from his character designs, i also used a zbrush concept sculpt of our grandmother character which i created quickly when i was playing around with getting to grips with zbrush. This is an example of implementing computer generated workflow into traditional hand drawn animation, how i see it is making the most of the technology available to improve my craft.
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