More Story Boarding

After showing my initial test to John, I knew that he liked the style I was going for, and started to plan the other kind of visuals I was going to use. However I had been unable to start any more scenes for the DFT film as I wanted to complete Bryony's backgrounds first.

With these kind of shots, I could record reference footage and then work from then, saving me time working out the motions myself. They also save time when it comes to lip syncing. I sent these to John for his review.

Assigned audio

Today I received the edited audio clip that John would like me to animate to. It isn't a particularly sad one which is good as I would find it very upsetting to listen to. My recording talks mostly about why people would come into that industry, talking about graduates and the recession. As they would like to have the animations by the 10th / 12th I need to get straight on this. This evening I have been thinking about how I could illustrate some of the words and points in an interesting way, and story boarded a few images and a few character designs, which they asked for.

One thing I really have to think about is style relative to the time we have to animate this, and I really want my piece to work well. I would like to go for a more stylised design hut I don't think it would be appropriate or wise to do anything too detailed. Tomorrow I hope to experiment with digital animation and a compositing test to see how ping it takes me to convert a short animated sequence into a digital form.

Here are the designs I started this evening.

Student services award ceremony certificate

I was approached yesterday (24/04) via email by my student mentor leader Kerry, who I had done some art and design work for before. I have previously worked with another student mentor to design and produce a comic style poster for a national conference. Myself and Sam were sent the details and information that was needed in the poster, along with some doodles for layout ideas. Sam produced the individual drawings for most of the characters, and I then coloured and composited them together in a comic book style, adding all the information and relative logos. It was received massively well and made quite an impact at the conference, and is on display in the university student services offices. This was over the Easter holidays, and we utilised emails I get it done whilst being far away from each other. We also got paid for our work, around 5 hours.

So Kerry asked for a nomination certificate design for the student experience staff awards ceremony taking place next week, so I only had 2 days to design, finalise and get the finished piece to her for printing. However, if my design was picked it would be used at every event held after this one and distributed to the runners up, I also get student mentor pay for this. I received the email around 5, along with the old designs, and I could see why they wanted new ones as they were quite garish and child like. I had something sophisticated in mind that had a hand made look to it. I created quick images in photoshop to communicate my ideas and emailed them to Kerry for feedback that same night. She liked the colours and idea, and said that she'd show the others involved the next day to get back to me.
Today I had a nice lull in my work load and so created some really nice final pieces to send to her. She responded saying that she really liked them and would show the rest tomorrow, and get back to me if they wanted any changes made.

I'm really pleased with this few hours work, and hope that they choose to use my design!

Initial Concepts for Speach

After meeting with John, I wanted to think about how I could show emotion during the dialogue without too much lip syncing. I also wanted to start thinkign about what style I was going to use.

I sent these images to John over email and he was really enthusiastic about them, and said that he had a recording in mind for me to put the above kind of imagery to. This girl has an innocence and a high pitched soft voice that he feels will fit well with my style.

DFT Student Film

I first met with the DFT group on the 22nd of March, to discuss the main theme of their film and the possibilities for the animation. The film is looking at the Sex Industry in Newport, in particular a woman who looks after the prostitutes, and a few women from within the industry. We discussed possible lengths of the animation and styles. The group was very enthusiastic to have the animation and made me feel the same way. They mentioned that they had 5 minutes of recording they wanted animated, but that they would like an animator per minute. So 5 animators with a minute each, which sounded a lot better than just me! And so I asked my fellow animators who would be interested and enlisted Nina, Cassie, Rory and Alex.

We then exchanged emails for some time, keeping me updated with how the filming and recording was going, and sending examples of how they would like to the animation sequence to vaguely look like. Examples were Persepolis, the story of Mohammad Mostafaei and Waltz with Bashir. They also thought that a grey scale/monochrome palette would work best for this film, we all agreed as this would only make it is easier to not have to work with colour.

Today, 23rd of April, all 5 of us met with them again, and showed our work. John (Director of Animation) and Johnny (sound) gave the others a run down of the film structure, content and message, and played us a few clips that we could be animating to. They were extremely moving and tragic, and I really hope that I can portray this through the animation I produce.

The next steps are for them to send us all the edited minute clips so that we can all decide who gets what clip and start working on them straight away. They did want to start editing on the 1st of May, but at one week away it would be impossible for us to have any finished animation by then. We should receive the first clip on Wednesday, we plan to look at it as a team to try and decide who gets it, and also to form some of our own ideas on how we'd like out segment to look. John had stressed that he wants us to have creative freedom and so we are all feeling extremely excited for this!

'Pond' Background Update.

I've been working very hard of the other half of the Proffessional Practise module for some time now, and have been touching upon the backgrounds now and then in between. But after the deadline if the film, and the easter holiday over the last 4 weeks, I got straight back into them, and completed the 18 backgrounds that Bryony had drawn up and given me. This is a heavy picture blog, but I'd like to pop them up here to show the huge amount I've done and also so that I have them online safe.

Looking at them all together now and in order helps me to look at the continuity and colour together. I am really pleased with them and I think Bryony is too!! Today she is giving in her rough cut and so the tutors will be able to give any feedback, so that I can make changes with enough time.

There are still more to go but I haven't recieved them from Bryony yet, so I'm on track :)

Scene 1

I have now completed my second background image! This one is quite a doozy as well. It's the initial, establishing shot of the Creatures forest, it's a huge long image, that will be panned down. I had to use the tone to communicate distance delicately in this one, as it's the first thing we see in the film. We used an interesting effect on the clouds, where we changed the colour of the lines to white, which made them stand out more and look a bit more interesting. I used a nice spotty brush on the trees going back in the distance, and I'm so so pleased with how it's turned out. Excited and extremely proud. Here it is...

I've been making tone sheets for each stage of the film, there's a night stage/dark (no light), medium stage (a small amount of light has been introduced) and the bright stage (all the light!) When I have completed all 3 tone sheets I will be able to dripper select the correct tones, and complete the back grounds a lot quicker.

More Feedback!

Now Caroline and Leonie have both seen that dark scene that we were working on, and have both okayed it!  So I just added a few more little touches that Bryony wanted and it was all done!

We had a quick sort of surgery with Stan, because we discovered that the images weren't the correct sizes for her film. Luckily the ones I had painted could be easily changed to the correct format.
Which is - Preset - Film and Video - HDTV 1080p - 1920 - Resolution 100 pixels per inch - RGB 16 bit.

So! Here is the first complete, final final, all done, correct size and everything,background image!!

I'm really, really pleased with. And now we know the colours and aesthetic for the dark scenes, I can just bash them out!

Feedback

After showing that image with all of James' notes added to Bry through dropbox, she still thought it was too light, which proves what James said about starting lighter because it's easy to go darker. She wants me to try a few different ways and pop them up on Dropbox over the weekend for Tuesday. Here are some I've revisited tonight -

This was my attempt at making it darker. I made the broken branches and leaves in the very front alot darker, Also the contrast on the big leaves is more pronounced. I've added some blockier, darker shading to the trees, and some foliage to the BG.

This one just has a soft brush of shadow to the trees, and a darker BG colour.

This one is mostly the same, but the trees have slightly darker shadows, and the branches have been shaded more. The foreground branches and leaves have been darkened.

I applied 2 really quick colour layers, just to see how they would be affected.

I'm still going, but I'm trying to keep on track of the feedback and my tests.

Post-James' Feed Back

 Here are my findings from 'DreamWorlds', it was a wonderful book to read, and has actually helped me a lot in my other modules and own work.

So I tried as James said, and it does make perfect sense and has really helped me a lot. Here are the saves I've got so far. I need to show Bryony soon to make sure she likes this way too.

I tried starting lighter like James said, even though this is the darkest scene I have. I also tried to have less contrast between touching colours in the background like he pointed out. 

I've tried to make less of a contrast between the colour and highlights on the trees in the back, I think it has worked. 

She had said that she wanted all this scene to be dark, but I put in the highlights on the foreground leaves and branches to try and communicate the depth better, I think it's worked really well. 

I just have to show this to her now, the very background hasn't been done, but I'm not sure what she wants beyond the leaves, so I've left it for now. James walked past and I asked him to look at it, and he said 'It's looking much better already!' I'm going to try and revisit the other two, maybe try a quick wash over the more detailed parts, but ultimately start those again.