Final Animation

Here is my final Animation, I hope you enjoy it, I am so pleased with the outcome.

Photoshop Exercise

I much prefer using photoshop to flash and found this exercise a lot easier than the flash exercise. I think the easing has improved on my pendulum swing too which makes me happy.

Sounds and Final Tweaks.

For my sound work I did stick with the free sounds I got for the animatic, mainly because I thought they worked really well, and it would keep it simple.

However I did make some changes to the positioning and equalled the levels and faded the sea in and out on adobe premier.

For the dialogue, I got to use the sound boothe for the first. Such an exciting experience! Although I have to say it isn't completely sound proof, I definitely could still here the builders whilst in there! However it can't be heard on the recordings so that's fine. I really enjoyed the fact that I was in there alone and I went a bit mad making as many silly voices as I possibly could. In Audacity for the mum's voice afterwards I then changed the pitch of it so it was a lot lower and for the bird I increased the speed of it which affected the tempo and pitch by 29% mainly because I knew it had to fit into a really short time slot and it altered the pitch to be higher too. I think its really important I did this so that the characters didn't all sound like the same person. One comment that was made is when I put them all together was that the sound, sounded a bit mushed in the middle so the final final edit was alter this and make it clearer in the middle.

So above you can see the final tweaks I made and you can see I changed the opacity of the end of the film to fade to black so it looks like it has more of a definitive ending.

www.freesounds.org.uk

Michaela Pavlatova

Tram - Michaela Pavlatova from Film Club Productions on Vimeo.

I think theres alot to be said about flash animations, I think there is a big problem with this software and a certain style of work being produced by numerous creatives and it all looking like it's done by the same person. I believe this piece of software requires a lot of commitment to learn the details to make an animation with a personal touch. This is why I really don't like Michaela Pavlatova latest animation called Tram. She did do a talk at Bradford animation festival and said that using the computer did make creating animations faster a lot easier and therefore cost efficent, but i just found her new style cheap and nasty. The character design all follows the same style of eyes and goofy faces, the line quality doesn't look clean and the colour palettes are just garish. I did however find her a really lovely woman and very inspiring but I rate her traditional hand drawn work so much more.

I have also included Tarboy as to not isolate one animator and flash, this is a common theme with flash animations. I especially wanted to mention this animation as it uses silhouettes in an unsuccessful way. I think there hasn't been enough work into the detail of the animation. And the motion is a lot less effective in comparison to Bendito's machine, even the starting couple of frames are just zooms into a a still illustration. I don't think the characters are likeable the are awkward and the colour scheme is bland it's not a visually stunning piece of work. And I think this is a reoccurring theme with many flash pieces and that's why generally I don't like the program.





Just to have some positive in the post I'd like to share Michaela Pavlatova's words words words, commenting on how people intereact with each. I think this piece is visually interesting with interesting use of lines and shapes and I think the notions presented in the piece about people who don't listen and gossipers is very intelligent. I think the colourful speech marks work really well with the dulcet tones of the people, and that this piece is everything I would want to be successful in a piece of my work. It's a real masterpiece.

Here is a short exert.


Words Words Words - Michaela Pavlatova from Film Club Productions on Vimeo.

Captain Pugwash

Pugwash is a cartoon from between 1957 and 1966, this is a remastered coloured version from 1974. I think this is for me, a key piece of animation in the history of animation in Britain. It's beauty is in the simplicity of hand crafted bits of card puppets. I think what makes it so interesting is that it's one of the first comics that was then comissioned by the BBC to be turned into a tv series, by puppeteer Gordon Murray, whose biggest success was Trumpton in !967 the childrens stop motion tv series. I however think that Captain Pugwash is much more beautiful because of it's simplicity. Generally there isn't a lot of motion the eyes roll, the mouthes move up and down and arms waggle, but there are no joints as such. The part that I am most interested in is the sea because the waves never break they just wobble up and down yet they still give the feeling of being on the sea. It is this key detai that I plan to take forward into my animation.

I think another key element that plays a massive part in the success of this tv show is the theme tune. The accordion song, The Trumpet Hornpipe goes back to the 19th century so it's origin is unknown but the fact that this tv show was able to take this song and make it it's own so that whenever it's played Captain Pugwash is immediately thought about says a lot about the success of the character design and association. I think these two elements play off each other and make it successful.

Tim Minchin's Poem, Storm

Storm from KerShoot on Vimeo.

This is a flash animation that I have decided to write about just to show I'm not negative about all flash animations, because I think this one is really successful and works well because it doesn't follow the generic style of many of them out there. A key feature that is present in this one, that is also present in the Bendito's Machine IV, is the use of Silhouette's and again textured backgrounds. I think that the character style does strike me as being very cartoon network-esque but i don't think that is a negative thing because it has sophistication in the narrative and through the camera shots. There are some very high quality zooms and pans and the staging regularly abides to the rule of thirds so if anything the cartoon style adds to the fun element of it. I really like how it flickers between block colours when they are at the dinner party and then when it goes to visuals of what they are talking about it's a lot more textured. I think this combination of the two styles provides the extra detail that's missing in the characters so gives it the professional look and makes it stand out from other flash animations.

Reflections

By: Bosmat Agayoff & Alon Ziv

As featured on short of the week, the graduation piece for Bezalel Academy of Art and design, animation titled Reflections is a whimsical tale of a youthful boy forced to grow up and see his younger reflection forced out of light and he always continues to chase it. The actual narrative has dark under tones and is most likely a statement about working life being no fun or some original jargon like that. But what appeals to me is the charm and style of the animation. I really like the grey tones getting darker as the narration develops and texture and the feeling the way it boils and so forth makes it a really visually beautiful piece.

They have managed to capture the essence of hand drawn animation in a very computer generated piece. Software used includes TV Paint, Photoshop and After Effects CS6. I think it's inspiring that this old charm is still at the essence of modern pieces, and that this particular piece emulates hand drawn greats whilst still remaining new. I believe its the character design and like of outlines yet clean colours that keep it looking fresh and modern. It's a really successful piece and piece to be very proud of.

Bendito Machine IV - Fuel the Machines

Bendito Machine IV - Fuel the Machines from Zumbakamera on Vimeo.

http://www.zumbakamera.com/

Although I've mentioned in other blog posts, generally if somethings done in flash and it looks generic i won't waste my time with it. But this is one absolutely visually stunning animation created in Flash. I love how the creators have stuck with a silhouette theme and therefore the characters look like exquisite paper cut outs. I really like how throughout the entire piece theres a textured gradient background occasionally mountains, the black silhouette layer then the water layer on top. Theres usually three layers and this is good number to work with, this piece is just so successful at being simple yet intricate at the same time, it's such a difficult skill to master because it so easy to get bogged down in detail. And then there's the actual movement, so fluid honestly i wouldn't of been able to straight off say this was made in flash.

I think it's important to note that this piece is from a studio not an individual. It comes from Zumbakamera based in Barcelona who have cliental all over the world. They have some really good quality animators working for them and they have produced some very beautiful illustrations to go along with each project. It looks like a really strong team of creatives one that still up and coming and worth keeping an eye on.

Little Monkey

I knew as soon as I saw this animation that this style appealed to me. I absolutely adore the textures, like they are copic marker pens that have bled onto thick paper, also like recycled paper. I also love the colour scheme the combination of pastels and dark colours add a light heartedness but also sombre tone to the video. I also think there is strength in the shapes of this short, especially where the little monkeys fingers are concerned the roundness on all the characters gives them added appeal which is a really nice feature. The main reason I chose to look at this short is because of the way the author characterised the fire into a solid mass and how this could be applied to any element. I like how he played with the structure and exaggerated facial features and the size of it as the story developed. The main feature I really like was the boiling of the monkeys cheeks and i think that's definitely something that can inspire my piece and i can get that naturally through hand drawing it.

I looked into the animator behind this piece who is called Delphine Dussoubs and a lot of her pieces feature layering film and animation and experimenting with textures, she has a really good eye for colour too and one animator I'll add to my 'watch out for' list.

• http://cargocollective.com/delph

Ink in Water used in Animation.

CCTV "Ink" Making-of from weareflink on Vimeo.

• www.weareflink.com

http://www.campaignlive.co.uk/news/205685/




The way ink flows in water is truly captivating. I just love the visual intensity of movement and flow of it due to the different in compound densities. I'm not entirely sure which person decided to use it in video footage first. However I think the first one that occurred to me as being a fun and vibrant use of the media has to be the Robinson's Fruit Squash inky man dancing to T-Rex. I really like the chain of other designers using it in animation but the fact that no two of animation in this style will be exactly the same because the reference of ink in water is never bound to react the same. I also found it really interesting how the three that have stuck out to me that's been big on our tv screen and around blog websites, is how each of the contexts are so different. The next one I'd like to discuss is the use of this fluidity in Harry Potter and specifically when Harry puts his head in the memory bowl and the flash backs and individual threads of memory. The way it's used with blacks and greys make it seems a lot darker and add a threatening element to the scene to show that it's going to be a bad character in the next scene. I find it extremely interesting how this same technique has been used in two completely different tones of scenes.

The final video I wanted to add in to the comparison is the CCTV Ink video, this is because I also wanted to compare the detail in the animation. I think it's really stunning how much work has gone into this animation. And I think it marries the Robinson's advert and the harry potter version really nicely as the ink has a dark tone being dark colours but then again it's not really setting a scene it is more like an advert. I think it works really nicely with the calligraphy as well and these mix really well together. Over all these styles inspired me because if I was to do a fighting idea or movement of any of the elements i'd want the movement to be as fluid as these and these nothing fluidier than a fluid in a fluid, that's why I thought it was important to look at these.

Coloured In and Titles

Colouring in the process that I thought looked best took such a long time that when I got to number 138 I decided that my time was becoming very precious what with me having to go to work as well as catching up with work for other modules, therefore I decided half way through that I needed to start saving time as much as possible. So I started leaving half the boxes from where the scanning had taken more than the image in and I started making more use of the inversion tool. Where the waves are I decided that actually I didn't need to colour them in that the texture of the line fit into the style just as much. During the Monday crit before hand in I'd only just managed to get all the images coloured in at 2am the night before therefore there was no audio with dialogue to spread the coherency of the story. One thing that was mentioned is how the style was like an old projector so therefore I decided to play on that and the projector sound sourced also from freesounds.org.uk. One concern raised with using my voice for the dialogue was that there is three different characters so I need to think about using different people or finding another way round it. Also a lot of people had a title screen and I think that actually this would round my short up, so I took the last eighteen frames and removed the little princess from the image and inverted the colours to mirror the final scene with the beginning and chose a classic font to mimic an old film style. I think it's a nice intro to prepare the viewers for what they are about to watch.

The Croods

Unfortunately I have been unable to isolate the single part I would like to highlight of this film. The Croods was a big sensation of the year 2013, and I was lucky enough to go to the cinemas to go see it. Although I thought some of the gags in the film where very witty and the story of the film is very charming but the actual character design leaves them just less than likeable. The appeal of the characters is just so appalling it's actually quite upsetting that something so basic could let a piece down. You'd of thought for a feature length film from a studio so big something like this wouldn't of occurred. There is a solid point that appeal in a character is subjective. But at the end of the day, I know I'm not the only one who thinks this because it has formed many a discussion with other students on this course. After much thought the feature that I think is the main reason the characters are unsuccessful because of there shapes. I understand the reason why the shapes are a lot chunkier than they are supposed to be to, the are supposed to represent big rocks and cave like structures. But I think there silhouettes are too short and stumpy and therefore a bit too awkward. I think this is especially the case for Emma Stones character. Although this is probably the main feature of the style of the film it does prove to be quite distracting of the rest of the elements.

Although that isn't actually the part I wanted to feature, one of the main parts I really like of this film is during the title sequence and later on during the movie, their is an alternative animation style with cave like paintings. The style is very minimal with a severe simplicity with the use of finger and hand hand painting of reasons not to leave the cave and a family portrait. I think it's so successful because of it's simplicty and the way it contrasts the CG animation.

I met a Robot at a Ballet Once

This charming hand drawn animation is by a student called Isabella Dos Santos at CalArts who had this to say about it

And for the record, I did go to a ballet this summer in NYC after making this film (American Ballet Theater of course, with Daniil Simkin performing that day BECAUSE WHAT A GORGEOUS DANCER HE IS). While I did not have a robot sit to my right, there was a middle-aged woman there who after the first intermission magically transformed into an old lady, and at the second intermission that old lady started up conversation with me about how much of a gem Daniil Simkin is and about what it takes to be a truly captivating artist, that intelligence and being truly human to your audience will take you further in life than talent alone. Close enough, I suppose. She did not eat her playbill, however.

But, anyway, it was a good day in my life. The weather was nice and I ate Goldfish snacks by the Lincoln Center fountain.

I think that this animation is particularly successful as it mimicks the charm of the narrative with simple animation. The colour scheme also works what with the robots hand matching her dress. And the charm is captivating in the hand drawn colouring flickering. This is the style I would like to adopt in my work. I also think the characters are really strong as a designer I have looked through other pieces of her work and think that her style is whimsical and works well with the textured childlike lines and block colours. I think that the fact that she does her own narration and animation is something that interests me because I think it works and that's a feature i want to work in my animation.

• beladossantos.blogspot.com

Development of Style and Colouring Animation

1

2

3

As you can see above I did spend some time trailing ways to quickly but effectively colour in the images. Number two is effectively the threshold changed to make the line thicker, the colours inverted and then a spray brush used to add a fuzzy effect to the line quality. Number 1 is this same process but then the face was lasso'd and reinverted. However number three is by far my favourite but took the most amount of time and has had the lines re-coloured in, a layer above the image. I don't think it would be efficient to do all 240 images like this so for the other scenes I will definitely try and incorporate inverting the image but without compromising the quality of the animation.

Avatar; The Last Airbender

When first set this brief along with many others in the class my first port of call was this anime animation, following a young boy called Aang who has been frozen in the ice for 100 year fulfil his prophecy of being the next Avatar and learn to master the four elements (coincidently the same as in the brief, earth, air fire and water) and end the war. I'm not actually a big fan of anime, I appreciate it as an art form to an extent and how it's affected animation as a culture on its own, however as it's own genre i generally tend to stay clear. However this is one anime Tv show that really captures my imagination. I just think it's got such a strong narrative. Now saying that it's the narrative that's so strong is one thing when it's based upon a book, but there is skill in taking a set of books and turning them into three seasons with roughly 13 episodes per season lasting twenty five minutes long each. I think that the anime TV Show works better than the film because of the beauty of the story is in the little details of the universe and the development of the characters through the tv show is better as it can show more traits and detail. I do however think that the casting of Prince Zuko in the film is spot on with Dev Patel, I think the prince is a lot more menacing in the tv show and it takes a long time for him to mellow. But I think Kotara and Sokka are better in the TV series because they have a lot more screen time and Kotara gets a chance to have her own story line freeing the earth benders and it makes her seem just as good natured and good hearted as the Avatar, also I think Sokka is more successful in the TV series as he's the comedy character in the Anime and his facial expressions are always spot on with the exaggeration. There is a rumour that a second and third film are to be made but as of yet there's no release dates announced only talk that the director is waiting for Noah(the guy who plays Aang) to bulk up some more. However I think it's been quite a while so unless Noah works on it after The Peppercorn Chronicles, I don't think it will happen. I did really enjoy the film though especially the effects with water in mid air.

Hand Drawn Animation Complete

I'm overly happy with the completed outlines. To get to this stage has taken some serious dedication and I know colouring is going to be a massive task and I've only got ten days to get all the colouring done so I'm going to have to test some quick ways I can get through it. But with the actual movement I'm really happy so far with how it's looking. I think that audio is going to make it really successful. I was a little bit concerned because I've made quite a lot of changes to the original animatic plan. I actually scrapped a couple of panels of the storyboard, the close up of her face has gone for continuity purpose as I didn't think about her getting up onto her hands and then why would her hands be on her face and then go back to be on the rock later on. I also cut down one of the scenes because it seemed to looking quite long but this worked out well because I had extra frames I was able to keep the opening scene with her face which showed for half second to a full second, and I also repeated the part where her eyes open and close to the night sky, because that flashed past really fast. So i think this works as it adds to the coherency of the story. With these extra added frames it does mean that this clip is actually only 238/240 frames therefore I have repeated 237 and 236 and I'll colour them in slightly differently to add to keep the consistency of 12fps. Overall I'm really pleased with my progress, but i am abundantly aware I haven't kept up to date with blogging so as colouring goes to take breaks I'll try muscle some in.

Hand Drawn Animation First 126 Frames

So this was completed during the half of the first week back after christmas and I got approximately half way through hand drawing the outlines. Unfortunately although I love drawing animation by hand I do find it very difficult to flick through, near impossible to do at twelve frames a second. Therefore at this point I decided to take a break and scan what I had so far and review it to see if minor changes in the style of drawing needed to be made for the second half. One part of this half I really struggled with was where she shifts up on her hands. I had to act this out several times to make sure I got the weight in the right place as i did scrap a few frames when I first started it and the weight looked to be in her shoulder rather than the ball of her hand and elbow. Although filming myself and taking key frames may have been more useful I thought it was important to keep a certain style of drawing consistent. However referencing in more detail will be a skill I look to take forward and develop in the next brief. 

I also took this to my tutor and asked for his thoughts and got the feedback that the movement was very linear and maybe easing in and out could be improved. I didn't see it myself until it was said to me so I'm making a conscious effort to get the easing in and out right with the pendulum and other bits in the second half of the animation.

Flash Exercise

I found using flash as a program very difficult. Being a creative individual who prefers pen and paper and making stuff with my hands computer programs really are a weakness. But I am sure it is something that with practice I will improve. However I did just find this program frustrating, I like how simple it is to insert key frames then motion tween, but after that it rapidly gets more complex. I feel like it's really difficult to get your own imprint into the program because all the lines are vectors I think unless your prepared to get into all the nitty gritty intricacies of the program it is difficult to not create something that doesn't look like a character someone else has created using the same program. This is just my personal opinion I think that although this program is able to create cleaner shapes and move them much faster, I feel that with photoshop I can make my own mark/imprint much faster.

Animatic

For the animatic I basically put the storyboard image into a timeline on photoshop and twiddled with the timings of the panels to to get a coherent story. I also added some basic sample sounds to add to the flow of it. The animatic had to be done in a really short space of time and I've seen animatics before where there's quite a lot of movement. If I had more time I would of added more detail and description into what movement is happening because to an outsider who isn't viewing it with me I can't explain what's going on. But I think that for this project the purpose of the animatic was to show as part of a presentation where I was able to explain what's happening. But I know now in future that I need to leave more time to add this detail. Examples of what I'd go back and add in, is where the bird flies in, the pendulum swinging, her sitting up. 

Below is the image of where about the sounds are placed in the animatic, which where inputted through adobe premier. I really wanted to add a sound that clearly emphasised this dream state she's entered, and I came across the sitar and with it being quite foreign I think it might be too much, it depends how it works with the dialogue. I think I'll try it with the final thing before looking for other options because I do think that it precisely right amount of time long.

During the presentation one issue that was raised that I need to look into further is the fact that there are a lot of panels and the coherence of the story may be compromised by the intense pace of the animation. It is a lot of story to get into a short time. This may mean it's more complicated but one of the reasons I've chosen to do this is because I know it's going to be a challenge but I want to show off as many different principles as I can, obviously I've got the pendulum, the squash and stretch of the bird jumping, anticipation in her waking up and taking her time to get up on a rock in the sea before revealing she's mermaid, exaggeration in the facial features. The main reason for me taking this approach is because in the last brief I think I let myself down in not applying enough of these principles.

Long Lost Lempi

http://adamvian.com/
http://longlostlempi.com/

One of the main inspirations for my design work is the Long Lost Lempi comics by Adam Vian. I picked up these comics at thought bubble and they follow the adventures of a girl called Lempi (Finnish for Love), who is an adorable character with a fish tail hair style. It is quite fairytale-esque in the narrative, with towers and cauldrons. I really like the monochromatic drawing technique, I think it works well because the lines are so clean and he makes use of the white lines too. I really like this style and have decided to trial something similar with my storyboard just to see what it looks like as I also picked up some new pens at Thought bubble that draw in black ink.

Story Board

Inspired by Adam Vain's comics I decided to commit to a monochromatic storyboard. In reflection I spent a lot more time on panels working out the thirds and inking the black in nice paper, which probably meant that i was less likely to change the panels as easily, i did however a rough pencil version which was much longer in my sketch book (see below) but i think this process worked better for me personally as whilst inking them in I was giving myself more time to think about the details of each panel and therefore i was able to stage the screen and analyse the motion that was going to occur in each one and plan it out in my head whilst inking them.

I also planned out the timings in advanced which leads me onto my animatic. I think the success of the design of the storyboard is why I have decided not to do more character development because I think I need more time to focus on animating because it's going to be such a long process if I'm handrawing it.