Through out this module, I have learned a great deal in terms of collaborative practise, but also individually. Whilst working on my individual briefs, I realised how sometimes working alone can be much more of challenge, which isn't what I expected. I am very pleased with the individual work I have produced, however, there are some areas for improvement. For example, my LoopdeLoop animation could have had a larger variety of shot framing and angles, instead of the two characters being completely stationary. However, the production of this animation taught me a lot, because I realised that my original way of animating on a timeline in Photoshop, was not the best idea, so I began animating on different layers for each frame, which proved to be much more practical. Therefore in the long run I think this brief did teach me a lot. Also, I have become more used to entering my work into competitions. This is something I used to be scared of, however now I understand that it is something which is supposed to be enjoyable.
Through out the collaborative brief, there were some difficulties and some set backs, however I do believe that these were recovered from well. This brief has allowed me to become more used to working with other creatives, which is something that I know will be needed in industry. Working across courses proved to be a very interesting yet challenging experience, because I found that I was then working in a style that was new to me. This however was very refreshing, and I am now more aware of the fact that as an animator and as an artist in general, I am able to branch out and extend onwards from my own individual style. This is something I feel will bode well for me in the future and during the rest of the course.
During the collaborative brief, I wasn't working on post-production, however after some mistakes made with the setting of the camera during the filming for the stop motion animation, I realised how important it is to keep a very close attention to detail. Because although the camera not being set to wide screen was something that none of us realised until it was too late, it did result in more work being required in post for Emma. This was a reminder how one mistake can impact badly on everybody in the group, especially those who need to fix it. However, despite this, I am extremely happy with the work I have produced during this module. I have never focused on making short live action films before, let alone animating over the top of them, so this was really exciting and enjoyable. This module overall, has taught me how to conduct myself when working alongside others, as well as how to adapt my style to fit with the required brief. This module has given me the opportunity to work towards new, external briefs, some of which have been more challenging than others, but all of them have resulted in work that I am proud of.
Wednesday, 13 April 2016
Presentation Board - Onform
After completing all of the briefs chosen for this module, I gathered together all of my development work, as well as the final outcomes, to be presented on presentation boards.
Thursday, 7 April 2016
Onform Sketches - Part 2
Week 6.
Once again, I wanted to go down the route of creating a character. However at this point, the work I was doing for another module inspired this drawing. The animation I had been working on was focused around animals and one of the characters I had designed was a chubby robin. I was able to draw this bird that was partially inspired by this Robin.
Week 7.
When I first looked at this shape, the first idea that came to mind was something along the lines of a cat or a dog. However, I really like the idea of giving living features to an object that wouldn't usually have them. I loved the idea of a little salt and pepper set being stood together.
Week 8.
This shape was quite a tricky one for me, because the first few ideas that came to mind had proven to be quite popular. This included, a bird or a mermaid of some description. I did't really want to draw something that had been drawn many times already, so I decided to create an eye out of the shape. This isn't my favourite outcome, however it was something new and quite different to the other drawings I had produced.
Week 9.
After playing round a lot with drawing wings, anchors and Elvis, I decided to go with this drawing of a dog. Part of the reason I went with this is because it isn't completely side on like a lot of my other drawings, it is more of a 3/4 angle. Plus it was keeping up with the character theme that had been running through quite a lot of my previous drawings!
Week 10.
This is probably my favourite out of all of the drawings I had produced. I decided to go produce something completely unexpected, especially after seeing that a lot of other's had transformed this shape into a head of some description. There were a lot of different interpretations of this shape, so I decided to try and draw something totally new. One of the reasons I turned this shape into a small Island held down by an anchor is because I am TERRIFIED of the sea and of anchors (which I know is strange) but I thought this could inspire something quite interesting, which I think it did!
Week 7.
Week 8.
Week 9.
Week 10.
Onform Sketches
For my third Individual Brief, I decided to do Onform, because I really loved the sound of it. Some other people on my course had said how enjoyable it was, so I thought I'd give it a go! Onform is a weekly challenge set up by Karoline Pietrowski. Each week a new shape is released which is available for download. The challenge is simple, to draw something over this shape, to turn it into something new. The rules are simple, the shape can not be rotated or changed in size, and the only colours that can be used are black and white! My aim was to produce at least ten different drawings for this brief.
Week 1.
This first shape sparked some ideas off pretty quickly, straight away the image that kept coming to my mind was something side on, to me it looked like a head with bobbed hair, so I decided to go with this. I kept it quite simple, but did quite a lot of experimenting with different opacities of black and white, as well as differently proportioned facial features.
Week 2.
The second shape here on the left, triggered a lot of ideas, most of them either to do with hills and mountains or people with big bellies! After seeing this be done quite a lot by other people, I decided to go down the BIG NOSE route. As an artist I often draw faces side on, I don't know why, this is just something I have done a lot of. And it was also around the time of completing this challenge that I realised my love for character design, so I tried to apply this to this shape. I love an excuse to draw a big nose.
Week 3.
This third challenge made me realise that I had focused on the theme of faces a lot, so it was time to produce something that wasn't a face! This shape made me see a lot of things, a jellyfish, a cake, a turtle, but the object that I wanted to draw the most was an ice cream, purely because an ice cream of this colour is some what odd, so why not?
Week 4.
This shape is one I actually struggled with quite a bit, and after looking online to try and get some inspiration, I noticed that a lot of other people had chosen to use the shape as an outline for long flowing hair, with face in the centre. Once again, the kind of image that was coming into my head was a side on face with a large nose, possibly quite a snobby looking character. Although I had already produced faces from side on, I decided that as long as each face was clearly a different character, there wouldn't be a problem. Also, I liked having a theme running through them.
Week 5.
The idea for shape number five arose much faster than some of my previous ideas. Once again, I thought BIG NOSE! Whilst I was sketching and playing around, I thought to myself that this could quite easily be turned into something from Night Fever, so this is what I went for!
Week 1.
Week 2.
Week 3.
Week 4.
Week 5.
Tuesday, 5 April 2016
Final Animations
Here are the final animations that were produced, including our Behind The Scenes video!
The Crowd
The Book
The Dance
The Face
The Making Of
The Making of..
As part of our submission for this competition, we were also expected to produce a 30 second behind the scenes video, explaining the idea behind our work and the way in which we went about it. This therefore meant that during the different stages of production, we needed to film what was going on, as well as take photos!
Through out the production of the Stop-Motion animation, the Tutor whose room we were using, very kindly offered to get some shots for us. This was brilliant because we had a lot to choose from!
It was also really important to get footage of all three of us having an input, because this was very much a joint effort, as were the rest of the films.
We did however,
forget to shoot footage of us actually animating on the computers. However, we already had a lot of footage to work with, so we made sure that the commentary refereed back to the digital animation, and the reason why we used it.
Also, we did gather some footage of the outside filming, however, we used a phone to record these and the resolutions weren't right! This is something none of us really thought about, so we definitely learnt from our mistake that attention to detail is massively important. We were very lucky to have so much good footage of the Stop-Motion footage!
It was also really important to get footage of all three of us having an input, because this was very much a joint effort, as were the rest of the films.
We did however,
forget to shoot footage of us actually animating on the computers. However, we already had a lot of footage to work with, so we made sure that the commentary refereed back to the digital animation, and the reason why we used it.
POST-PRODUCTION
This is the animation that I focused on. Once Emma had added the finishing touches to all four of the animation in Post, they looked much more polished! As you can see on the right, area of the live footage have been masked out, so that the animated giffs can move around the screen.
This animation, is one we all worked on together, by alternating roles. Once again, Emma focused on the post-production side of it. This is the animtion that made is lean more towards using the white logo, because otherwise it would have blended into the background too much.
Producing this animation took around six hours of non-stop painting and shooting. It was tiring but it was well worth it!
This animation is the one which Molly focused on, although she didn't have much experience with animating, she produced some really good visuals and it worked really well!
The stills shown here for The Book, again shows how Emma's post-production work has brought a lot more into the animation. Before hand, there wasn't a huge amount going on in this scene, so the incorporation of the giffs and the Logo, have helped bring it all into one.
More Animating!
As you can see, we really wanted to keep the animation bright and fun, to fit with the purpose of why we were creating it. So therefore, throwing in some cat ears and cheesy grins didn't go amiss!
It was a good job we were able to look at each other's progress, because this rally helped me towards the end when I began to hit a bit of a wall when it came to animating over the bodies. After seeing Emma'e work on the Reading animation, I saw that she had animated quite a lot of just patterns traveling up and down Max's body. I thought this worked really well, and this was definitely a case of simplicity going a lot further and working really well! So I took this into consideration when animating the end of the Crowd animation.
Here is still of Emma's animation, which I found really inspiring!
Below is another still, which is from the Crowd animation. I decided to go down a route similar to the one Emma went down, because not only was it slightly faster than the clothing I animated at the start, but also worked really well as something that gradually decreased back to nothing by the end!
The important thing to remember was to have all the different sections of animation on their own layer, to avoid confusion, and to have better editing ability!
Headway with Animation
Animating over live action in Photoshop is something I am used to doing, so the process of doing this was really enjoyable. I took this as an excuse to be creative and to have fun with it. The first section I animated was the scene below, where different outfits gradually drop down onto all of us. This was really fun, because I decided to try and make everybody's clothing completely different. It was really refreshing and exciting to be working in this wacky, geometric sort of style for a change.
There was a section in this film, where Molly had already begun adding some digital animation to the closeups of the faces, so I carried on with this by carrying on and finishing off the designs she had started, and then made them change into something new, which is what we agreed on.
Sharing of Work
Once Emma had completed the editing for the Stop-Motion, she decided that she was happy to start working on the animation for the Reading film. This was because, at this point Molly and I were still animating, so we had nothing to give Emma to edit, and also the animation itself was taking longer than expected.
We knew that it was taking a good while to get through, because we wanted to draw each frame individually, in order to give the animation a "boiling" effect. We felt this would give the patterns and shapes more life, and would also make them seem more separate to the live action.
We wanted to have an open flow of work between each film, so we would often share the files over Google Drive, which would allow us to edit each other's work, we thought having this option would not only be more collaborative, but it would potentially make each animation better.
Digital Animation
When it came to the digital animating over the live action footage, we had originally decided that Molly and I would be focusing on the animating, and Emma would focus on post-production.
The post-production would include rendering out each animation from Photoshop as JPEG sequence, which would then go through After Effects, in order to help improve the quality. Emma was also going to mask out certain areas of the live action which would then be filled with the animated giffs made by Molly and I. This would then be rendered as a lossless file to avoid loosing quality, so then each film could be rendered out through Premiere with the Audio.
We decided that the fastest way to get through this stage, would be to have production on more than one film going at the same time. So Molly worked on the Dancing animation, and I on the crowd. At this point, Emma was focusing on Post for our Stop-Motion animation, so we were all happy to just crack on!
We decided that the fastest way to get through this stage, would be to have production on more than one film going at the same time. So Molly worked on the Dancing animation, and I on the crowd. At this point, Emma was focusing on Post for our Stop-Motion animation, so we were all happy to just crack on!
The animation was something that we wanted to be improvised and expressive, so when it came to animating the clothes, we had some sample pieces for reference that Molly had produced. This was just to make sure that we weren't going down COMPLETELY different routes. Also, the fact that both of us had produced pattern samples and giffs, ensured that we understood the style to go with!
Giffs, Giffs, and More Giffs
The three of us decided that if Molly and I produced around 8 Giffs each, their would be a big variety to choose from when it came to Post-Production. We based our giffs off the original samples we had made.
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