The story of a blind woman with cerebral palsy us pushed to use her hands by nurses which uncovers a dormant skill for art. We wanted to show this as an awakening to her surroundings shown through a sunrise
The final thing
Breakdown reel
AE puppet animation on its own
This is the layout for the last sequence. It also acted like a multi-plane camera.
This was scrapped from the layout above due to it not having the right colour tones and it looked out of place.
This was the layout for the cubist bit. As she discovered more with her hands the word became more and more solid.
The verion of Das Rheingold's Vorspiel I modified to fit a minute long video. I made it with premiere pro.
The pencil test for Vik's charcoal bit. I animated it rotoscoping the keys and then doing the breakdowns and the few inbetweens
A test to what it may look like
This was back when we had around 5 or six parts to it.
Colin presented us with voice clips in his
presentation. I had my eye (or ear) on three of them. 1st was the Hot Fuzz one, another was Jim Carry’s one in
Liar liar. However I
went with the Lost In Translation clip.
While Colin and Jordan told us to pick films we
haven’t watched I felt the idea for the sound clip was good enough to warrant
an attempt for a dialogue scene. Time will tell if my hunch is correct.
I have decided to use the LoT dialogue
under a welsh mining community as it seemed to match the contents of what Bill
Murray and Scarlet Johansson are
talking about. In the film it seems as if they’re talking about relationships
from when I watched it but thankfully it’s vague enough to be applied to
anything (that was probably the intention). I was reminded of back when I lived
in Barrow-in-Furness, a former mining town up north, when I thought of ideas.
I’ve always been very interest in history, especially that of “ordinary”
people, so I felt that this setting would be an interesting one (especially if
it gets other people interested).
What I was
attempting to achieve
In terms of the work itself I hope to achieve high
quality character animation that portrays believable characters with a
relationship that’s relatable to the audience. Hopefully this will show in the two
characters I’ve designed and animated in the animation that’s offered.
Hopefully while I won’t make it an active element I
hope it gets people interested in history, which is what I try to do with a lot
of ideas.
Other things include improving my skill in animation
and the tackling of my faults in the previous term work. While I may not have
done this I do feel I gave it a good crack.
The piece de
la resistance (French: The video).
And Breakdown Reel
The animation
The breakdown reel
This is the work on the production I’ve
done for now. I’m not too happy with the result, however I do feel it’s the
best I could’ve done in the allotted time. Drawing out the Keys and breakdowns
took me a lot longer to do than I first thought. I tried to make the first
roughs tidy but I realised that it was
taking too long to do. I’m confident in saying if I stuck to the initial
drawings in the first few key frames there’d me no animation.
I believe that this year I got confused
by the advice I got from Colin and Vincent. In Vincent’s lessons we’re
encouraged to draw rough throughout the whole animation which made me think
this was the way to do it. However from the feedback of last term’s group
project I felt that I was given conflicting advice. This made the production
phase somewhat frustrating as I tried to do work which reflected both Vincent's and Colin’s advice.
After “finishing” this work I’m just
going to follow Eric Goldberg’s advice, which is to do the feeling first, then
the anatomy; I’ll do the roughs in Keys, Breakdowns and the important
in-betweens, and then I’ll do the final line work on top of it.
Some faults in this animation I see are
in some of the anatomy in certain
sections and the changing size of their hands. I believe this came from
the difference in sizes of the keys which I should’ve fixed at that stage.
For the entirely of the animation I used Pose to pose,
due to the nature of the animation. If there were any fast spontaneous action
in the clip I would’ve used straight ahead. However because it’s a character
development scene I felt straight ahead wasn’t needed.
I used flash for the animation, although this wasn’t
my first choice. I originally wanted to use Toon Boom to make it, however I
didn’t have that much knowledge on the software and I didn’t have the time to
both fiddle about with the software and have something worth presenting.
Storyboards
"Final" version
First version
When considering what shots to use for
the dialogue part of the scene. I considered making multiple shots at different
angles. However I realised that the cuts and different angled shots would muddy
up what I was trying to convey.
I was trying to show the closeness
between the two characters despite the differences they have. I felt that a mid
shot that faces them directly helps show this and that the duration stops any
distraction we could get from a shot reverse shot. The angle of the camera
helps with a sense of objectivity and mutuality between the two, whereas if I
had it in shot-reverse-shot with low and high angles it could be interpreted as
one character having power over the other.
With the second iteration Colin suggested
some changes in the animation. The original had them simply standing and
chatting, which may be fine for film, however for animation there had to be
more. A good suggestion that helped with the believability and likability of
the characters.
Sample of
reference
Film Reference. It was definitely
helpful. I should’ve done it by myself 1000 times prio to
filming though to get every movement down.
Special thanks to Chloe, Viktoriaand
Jade.
Character Designs: Miner
Based on Bill Murray’s voice, I thought
of the Miner as a family man. My original vision was to make him physically
strong and tough, whilst keeping a softness
that made him approachable. He isn’t that old, if you were to shave his
moustache he’d look much younger. Around 35 years of age. However his work in
the mines has had it’s toile, as he now somewhat reflects a large pillar of
rock himself.
In my design I tried to make him look all
these things. His overall body is made out of cubes or long rectangles. This
would make him look strong and dependable. I included a moustache and big round
eyes to make him look friendly.
I gave him a Greek Fisherman’s hat to
hint at a possible political leaning. I felt this was fitting for a character
based in the late Victorian/early Edwardian period. Perhaps he’s a (then)
future trade unionist.
Character
designs: Boy
With the boy I wanted to show what the
miner might’ve been when he was a young boy. Someone thin, pale and
inexperience, while still showing a design where the transformation from boy to
man isn’t unbelievable. I think of him as someone around the age of 11-13, the
age range of a son (though I wouldn’t think them the two characters being
related).
The boy’s design I feel is a nice
compliment to the Miner’s; one that’s still round and scrawny. Though on
reflection I felt that I could’ve added some sharp edges somewhere to suggest
his exposure to the harsh environment of the mines.
Other sketches
The original idea was to have the miner
come home from work and have his wife make him a cup of tea whilst the dialogue
occurred. This first came to me as it seemed to make more sense; Scarlet
Johansson was a woman, after all. Though I’m glad Colin suggested the idea of
making it a boy, as I feel the idea was a better one. Still I feel this one was
a good one and could be taken somewhere interesting. Perhaps in another scene.
Concept art
and environment art.
The environment was my biggest challenge.
After a visit to Milestones museum I realised my skill at sketching machines
and buildings was very poor. It was good that all the animation was in the
interior of a café. Hopefully after Jordan’s lectures and lots of practice I’ll
be able to make adequate primary sketches
Using the techniques provided by Jordan
helped make the environment sketches better looking overall.
Whilst some improvement in detail making
and fineness in edge I feel these helped capture the mood I wanted for the
scene
At one point I was struggling to make a convincing
looking interior to the café. This was when I decided to get some primary
sources down in my sketchbook. I went to the Café Parisian (a café 5 minutes from the uni) to get these
sketches. While it did seem rather “fancy” for the café I wanted to portray (my
original choice was different) it helped out in the texture, the props and the
atmosphere of a café.
This was my first sketch on how to make
textures. The walls look okay. I wasn’t able to make a finished layout
unfortunately.The layout below was a blue pencil one to
create a final drawn layout for the animation. It was really helpful in the
production as I knew where everything was going to go
Layout
Animation thumbnails: Final chosen ones
These were the thumbnails I ended up
taking reference for the final animation. I also did the timing before drawing
the key frames. I want to create an inbuilt clock in my mind so that I won’t
have to rely in pressing the enter key. However upon revision I did do that; I
will say I wasn’t far off in my first timing.
Boy
Miner
Overall view
on the project.
Everyone’s
going to say it was a learning experience, so We’ll take that as red. It was
definitely a tough assignment to get through, I’ll admit. I was least
successful I believe in my pre production phase and the tidiness of my
keys and breakdowns. Some areas of the animation can be fixed as well, like the
Miner landing on the counter (his slow out and slow in could’ve been pushed
further) and the interaction between the Miner and the boy at the end of the
scene could’ve been coordinated better (perhaps animating one character fully
on that section before touching the other would’ve been best, the way I did it
was doing both their keys and breakdowns at the same time.)
However if I get to
finish this properly, refine it, colour it and flash it up in after effects, it
could be a really nice piece of animation.
