ANIGP Term 2: Lost In T' mines

ANIGP Production Diary Entries of:

Lost In T'mines.

By Oscar Strokosz.

The idea (and justification of 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, Viktoria and 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.