Applied Animation: Editing, Cutting and Re-recording Sound

Whilst Katy was working on creating the textures and storyboards for our animation, I was in charge of editing and cutting the recordings we had gathered earlier that week. Again, this is something that I'm not familiar with, yet I was eager to learn, as it I am genuinely interested in sound editing and wanted to see what could be achieved within the software available to me, this software being Audition. Audition is a program that I didn't even knew existed until I started my degree and it is something, until now, I have never actually used or thought about, or even knew what it was used for, for that matter. Despite this however, I found the software extremely straight forward to use in terms of importing a sound file and cutting it down and I was able to put together a rough cut to accompany our animatic.

Editing/ Cutting Sound

However, this is as far as I have managed to get with the software, although I did learn that I could alter the height of the sound waves as a whole and in certain sections. I feel that this would be extremely useful, as I found that Max's recording is a lot louder than Matt's and Katy's is a mixture of both. I will need to learn how to use this function properly though and I have decided to research how to achieve this and go and see workshop support to see if anyone is free to teach me how the program works.

Adjusting the height of the sound waves

I will also have to research/ learn how to blend together our recordings with background sound to help make it appear as though the characters are in a forest setting. I feel that this could possibly be a factor that will make or break our whole animation because if the sound doesn't match our visuals it won't have the same effect and it will let the rest of the animation down. Sara also stressed that this is a very important element of the animation and whilst both she and Martin are pleased with our voice recordings (they are very clean), I need to consider sound very carefully and try my best to make the two blend seamlessly. Again, I feel that I would benefit from reaching out to workshop support to gain some 'hands-on' help rather than just sitting at my computer reading about what I should be doing.

Whilst editing, I realised that some of the clips weren't as clean as I would have liked them to be, and because the audio has such a huge impact on an animation, I requested that they be recorded again, which our voice actors were more than willing to do. 

Matt and Max recording Audio

These recordings came out a lot cleaner and I was happy with the overall dialogue and felt that it was what we were looking for. I was really pleased with how well the pair did and I'm really pleased with what we have to work with in terms of dialogue. Having said this however, I do feel that some of Katy's clips need to be re-recorded, as I feel that they seem to portray the wrong mood, for instance in one of the questions she sounds incredibly bored and uninterested, which is the complete opposite of what we want our characters to sound like, as this would imply to an audience that the subject matter isn't important or interesting. We also need to record some of the actions that take place within the script, for instance Katy's character attempts to pull up a worm at one point and struggles a little, yet she didn't make any noise to accompany the action.

For now I am happy with what we have and I feel that we can re-visit the sound booth throughout the post-production stage. Right now I want to focus on production and will return to sound editing as we come closer to post-production. 

Responsive: Dazed - Progress Meeting 04/02

During today's progress meeting Molly, Katy and I sat down and discussed what ideas we had thought of during the last week. I feel that we had a few good starting points and we were able to expand on a few of those and develop them into 4 rough ideas for each of the videos. For each of the videos we will require the use of a model/ actor and this led us to start thinking about who should be director of the project. I wasn't personally interested in taking this role, as I am already directing one project and I felt that it would be too much for me to take on responsibility for two projects and Molly didn't seem bothered about the role either, so Katy took the position and was more than willing to do so. From here, Katy and Molly decided that they would both split the load of design, as this is what they are both interested in and we would all work together to create the animations, whilst I focused on post production a little more.
I am quite happy with how we have split responsibilities and I feel that the work load is split evenly between everyone and that everyone is working towards their strength, which we hope will help to keep motivation up, as people are working in areas they are particularly interested in.

We looked over the time sheet and was shocked to see that we only have 6 weeks (including the end of this week) to complete our brief. This made us seriously think about out ideas and we all agreed to keep it simple and use this as an opportunity to experiment and have a bit of fun. However, I do feel that we all need to start putting more time aside for this brief, as we have such little time to achieve quite a substantial amount of work, which the others agreed to.

With nothing much else to discuss, we decided that we should go away and experiment with creating patterns, animated patters, drawings onto pictures/ magazines to help us decided what we actually wanted to do and to finalise our ideas. We also suggested that we complete and share our mood boards to help us get on the same page with style and colours. We will meet next week and will hopefully be able to start production.

Responsive: Dazed - Idea Generation

During today's session I sat down with Molly and Katy to discuss ideas that we had been thinking of during the last week. Based on what had been said in the previous session, we began to look further into the idea of drawing/ animating patterns and colours over the top of live-action footage. We needed to come up with four separate but related ideas for our brief and we came to conclusion that all four could possibly be live-action videos with animation over the top of them, but in each video it is something different that is animated. Before going further, we discussed what the brief meant when it asked us to 'declare independence' and decided that it referred to creative independence, based on the research that we had done into the company and we kept this in mind when discussing ideas.

The first idea that we explored was Molly's idea of taking a video of someone doing something quite mundane and ordinary, such as reading a book, but possibly having the book as an animated object that transforms in the readers hands. This could be accompanied by animated patterns in the background or certain pieces of clothing being animated to relate to the fashion aspect of the company. I personally like this idea, as I feel that it reflects the magazine quite well in that it demonstrates something extraordinary existing in an ordinary world. The contrast also helps to separate the animation from the rest of the shot, allowing this to be the focus.
For the second idea we looked into focusing more on music and fashion, as these are the forefront topics the magazine focuses on. Again we wanted to create a mix-media video that incorporated animation. We thought about having a video of a person dancing that we could animate clothes onto. these clothes would be inspired by the latest fashion (such as vogue) and would change very so often. We also thought about how the shot framing could be used to help portray the creative side of things and thought it would be nice to explore how this would look.

Idea Notes

We also had an idea which included going into town and gathering footage of a group of people and covering their faces and animating there clothes and other aspects. We thought that we could do this to only a select few to help portray the idea of independence as a collective rather than an individual. However, this would require us to get consent from the general public to do this, so if we ran with this idea, we would gather a group of friends/ actors and film them in a similar environment to avoid consent problems.
For our final idea, Katy suggested that we could create a stop motion/ pixilation of patterns moving across someones chest/ face. I feel that this could turn out really nice, but we would have to explore and experiment with this a little more.

Overall, I feel that we have a good starting block to work from and begin experimenting with and I feel that we have managed to come together successfully to create something appropriate for the brief we have chosen. I'm excited to see what we will produce in the short amount of time we have and I'm pleased that I have engaged in something that is out of my comfort zone and that is going to allow me to learn and explore new skills and techniques.

Responsive: Dazed - Progress Meeting 28/01

Last week we deiced to meet up to establish what we had done so far for the brief and what needed to be done for us to move forward. We reminded ourselves what it was that Dazed Media were actually looking for and started o brainstorm some general ideas that came to mind when we looked at the online magazine. We realised that the magazine was fashion forward and we thought that we could look at incoprporating fashion in some way into our 15 second videos, which Molly suggested we do with animation. From here Katy and I bounced ideas from Molly's about possibly animating over live-action footage or rotoscoping. However, I was less keen on the rotoscoping, as it would take a lot longer to achieve than simply animating onto live-action. Molly also agreed with this idea and we decided that we should explore more into that idea and see what we could create.

We were struggling a bit with other ideas, as we didn't fully understand what it was that Dazed wanted us to declare independnce on and we all agreed to go away and research more into the magazine to try and figure it out. Other than this, we didn't actually do much in terms of work, other than discuss what action needed to be taken for us to move forward. We all agreed to put together a mood board of styles and colours that we liked the look of that related to our ideas of placing 2D animation over the top of live-action footage and that we should present what we have suring our next progress meeting.

As an afterthought I decided that it would be useful to create a time sheet to help us manage our time between us and around other projects. Overall, I feel that we are on the right track and I am confident that we will work well as a team and achieve the task ahead of us.

Time Sheet

Responsive: Dazed Collaboration

During our final twilight session we were given the task of finding and choosing a person (or persons) to work with collaboratively for the second part of our brief 'Collaborative Practice'. In preparation for this meeting and greeting we were asked to choose and analyse a brief that we were interested in completing for this module. I really struggled with this task because I really didn't want to add anything too big to my already huge work load and I also wasn't sure what skills my partner(s) would bring to the table. In the end I chose Dazed because it seemed to be the easiest to create across multiple disciplines and it also seemed like it would quite fun to play with and give me the opportunity to create some animation that was quite fun and playful.

Dazed Brief

Whilst anaylsing the brief I noticed that the main aspect they wanted to focus on was creating and portraying a sense of independence, now whether that was creative independence or something else wasn't clear at all and the remainder of the brief seemed pretty vague. So I did a little research into the company and Dazed Media is a magazine that appears to primarily focus on fashion and music and focuses on the independence of those areas.

With this in mind, I felt confident that I would be able to team up and come up with a few ideas that were appropriate, so I went with it. 

By the end of the session I had found myself two partners, Molly Fairhurst from illustration and Katy Mulvey from my own class. I'm pleased with the fact that I have managed to partner up with someone from outside of my own practice and I'm excited to see what we can achieve together. I'm also pleased that I will be working with another animator, as it means that we can split the animating between us and make the work load easier to handle. 

From here we filled out the sheets we had been provided and agreed to meet in 2 weeks time to discuss ideas and begin work towards our brief. 

Individual Contract

Applied Animation: Material Tests

In the last two sessions Katy and I conducted some material tests to see how we could use watercolours and Brusho to create the textures for our characters and backgrounds. I found these two sessions to be extremely useful and I enjoyed being able to use traditional media again after such a long time.

Working!

We decided to create small samples of different textures to see how the materials would react to each other so we could get an idea of what kind of textures we could create with them. Using the mood boards we had created we took colours and texture ideas from them began to create our own. I focused more on trying to create depth with the use of lighter shades, whilst Katy focused on textures and colours. I feel that I managed to create a really nice effect by using light blue to draw tress in the distance. This made the foreground stand out a lot more and made the colours seem more vibrant. Katy also really liked this effect and is going to experiment with it when she creates the larger environment sheets. I also did a few experiments for the wolf's texture and colour. I really liked Katy's texture tests for the wolf but I felt that she wasn't getting the colours right so I suggested that she attempt to create something similar but with the colours I used.

Example of test sheets

I left Katy to do this whilst I began to work on other parts of the project and once she was done I sat down with her and looked over everything that she had. I began to sticky-note everything that I liked and encouraged her to help make a decision on which textures we wanted to explore on a larger scale. Taking control of something like this is something that I struggle with quite badly, as I really don't like upsetting people or being centre of attention, however, I feel that I did really in this session and that I gave Kay some constructive feedback and that was both useful and encouraging. Having said this, I do feel that I was making the decisions and that Katy seemed to be fine with whatever I said making it a little difficult for me to really discuss why or why not to choose what we did. Despite this however, we have managed to select which textures Katy should focus on creating on a larger scale and develop further and I'm really pleased with the progress we are making. 

Chosen Textures

Applied Animation: Progress Meeting 01/02

In Monday's session Katy and I had a small progress meeting with Sara and Martin to discuss where we were up to and what we still had left to do before our pre-production critique. Katy discussed what she had done in terms of character design and they were pleased with the final outcomes she had presented. They also thought that her digital renders were nice and suggested that we go for a more cartoon-y colour for the boar as it will make it easier to see his expressions and such. I agree that we should at least experiment with this and see how the natural and the more cartoon-y colours work alongside the environments and the other characters. I also showed them both the script I had created and they seem pleased with our story line, reminding us to be careful with how much time the behavioural stuff will actually take up and for us to keep that in mind when we are animating. Martin also pointed out that we should try and avoid overlapping action as much as possible, as it will be difficult for an audience to focus on more than one action at a time making it difficult for them to follow the story properly.

In terms of what still needed to be done, Sara seemed a little worried that we still had a lot to do before the deadline, as we still haven't got any form of environment design, storyboards, animatics or animation tests. Due to this she encouraged us to get a storyboard started, but to only create small thumbnails at first to make it easier to make changes and scrap scenes without us feeling like we've wasted too much time. Sara also suggested that we create a picture test to see how our characters and environments would line up together in a final shot. This is something that I'm a little worried about, as Katy hasn't actually started to design any of the environments, as she is behind schedule, despite her efforts to catch up. This doesn't create a huge problem, as we can start to animate without the backgrounds, but it does cause us more stress than we should have at this moment. Martin agreed with Sara when she encouraged us to focus on creating the environments, storyboards, animatics and picture tests and encouraged us to keep going and try to get as much done as possible.

Despite us being behind schedule they were pleased with what we had done so far and thought we were off to a strong start. They particularly liked Katy's character designs and expression sheets and thought that our characters had a lot of appeal, which gave us a huge confidence boost. They were also really pleased to see that we were setting up to conduct material tests and suggested that we test how those would look when we animated over them.
I also began to talk to Sara about my ideas for creating fog in the wolf's environment. I wanted to create a thin layer of fog to travel through the environment but I wasn't sure how I was going to go about it. Sara suggested that I could attempt to animate the watercolours in the background and I feel that this would be a really nice visual to have and would make the background more interesting to look at, but it is something I will have to experiment with.

Overall, we seem to be moving in the right direction and have had a really strong start to this project. However, we are behind schedule quite a bit and I would feel more comfortable if we could try and push ourselves a little to get ourselves back on track. In order to try and achieve this I have offered to help Katy with some of the pre-production such as thumb-nailing the storyboard and creating some sketches for the environments.

UPDATE:
I spoke to Mike today about our ideas and how we intend to move forward with our work and he was pleased with our progress. I also spoke to him about my idea for creating fog in the wolf's environment and he suggested that I look at the opening sequence for Marco Polo and maybe experiment with making something similar. I really love the effect that they create with the ink and would definitely love to experiment with it, however I'm not sure that we would have the time to create something like this but I'm more than willing to try!!

Applied Animation: Recording the Voice Overs

After editing the script yesterday, I asked Matt and Max if they were free to do a final recording for our animation so I could begin to edit the final recordings and put together an animatic and so on. They agreed (as they always do) however this time I was lot more strict on them and didn't allow for them to add lib and distract each other, as I wanted them to sound as clean as possible. Despite these efforts however we were dealing with Matt and Max and it took a lot longer than it should have and I'm not 100% sure we have a clean edit of Matt's character at all. Other than this Matt and Max did a fine job in the sound booths and I feel that we have enough recordings to edit and create our voice overs with.
This experience taught me a lot in terms of directing because I had to really take control of the situation and encourage them to be professional and do what they were supposed to rather than mess around. This is something I struggle with, as I don't like to upset people and I actually feel that this experience has been very beneficial to me because it allowed me to gain a little more confidence in my choices and ideas and to share them with others.

Katy and I struggled a little with the voice of the robin because Katy couldn't decide on what accent she wanted to go for. All of her attempts to sound slightly higher pitched than she is resulted in the voice sounding a lot older and as though it should belong to an old lady rather than a bored robin presenter. However, in the end we did manage to get a recording that we can work with, although we may have to record Katy's parts again if we aren't 100% happy.

(I'd post the recordings but there are too many - sorry!).

Applied Animation: Finalising the Script

Yesterday I sat down with Katy and went through the script to help me write up a final version for Katy to create the storyboards from. Although Katy had been struggling to help with the script earlier in the project, she put in a lot of input when deciding where the scenes should be cut and so on. I really appreciated her input and I found it really useful to hear what she believed would be the most effective way to split the story up. This helped me to eliminate some unnecessary dialogue from our robin character, which freed up a couple of seconds extra from behavioural actions.

Edited Boar script

Edited Boar script

Edited Wolf script

Edited Wolf script

We looked at ways in which we could make the two separate scripts flow into one running dialogue whilst keeping the message clear and coherent to an audience. This required some sticky notes and lots of pen squiggles, but I feel that we managed to split the two scripts and stitch them back together in a way that creates some humour but keeps our message clear. Katy seemed pleased with our final decisions and I was also happy with what we had decided upon.

Final script 

Final script

With the elimination of the extra wolf character and cutting from one character to the other for the same questions, I feel that we have managed to cut down our script to a decent size that will easily fit into 2 minutes with the behavioural actions included. Overall, I'm really pleased with our story and I feel that is clear enough for Katy to start creating storyboards from.

Applied Animation: Refining the Script

Last week I had a session with Matt and Max again to see how the scripts were working out and to see what I needed to amend within them. I also timed the two interviews to see how long each one would take to give me an idea of how the content I had put in the script worked in the time frame.

After getting the pair to not add lib as much, I managed to get a few recordings that gave me a rough idea of how long they are going to take to read out. However, the pair didn't really leave time for the actions to take place and I'm a little worried that the script runs over 2 minutes. I asked Katy to take a look at the script and to listen to the recordings I had taken to get her opinion on the matter, however she was behind schedule and didn't get the chance to read through the script and told me that the recordings were good because they were funny. I was glad that she had found the time to listen to the recordings, however I would have preferred her to read the script and add her opinions as I thought this would have helped me a lot more and I believe I would have received more constructive feedback.

Despite this however, we did manage to speak to Sara about our script and she thought that it was really good. She shared my worries about the script seeming too long and suggested that we cut the second wolf character, as it wasn't necessarily needed to help the story. By doing this we have given ourselves a lot more time to act out the actions and make our gags more effective.

Edit to Script

Overall, I feel like I have done a good job with the story and that I have managed to create a clear, effective script to portray our message to an audience. Despite not liking pre-production very much, I did enjoy creating the script and I feel that I have learnt a lot about story writing and how to create an effective, yet informative story.

Applied Animation: Style/ Aesthetic Mood Boards

In preparation for Monday's session, Katy and I went ahead and created a few mood boards that express what kind of style we are interested in exploring. Although we know we want to use watercolours we hadn't actually discussed how we wanted to use the watercolours or what we wanted to create with them. Taking a step back from what we already, we thought about different styles and techniques of watercolours and put together a varied selection of what we would like to explore during material testing.

Styles for backgrounds

Styles for characters

I focused upon creating a mood board for both characters and environments, as I feel that it may help to use a slightly different style for the characters to help them stand out more, however, I also wanted to explore different ways in which texture could be created for the characters using the medium. This isn't necessarily something we want to create for the backgrounds, as we don't want to draw attention away from the characters. 

For the environments I focused on looking for methods that created simple, slightly textured effects but that were still appealing and interesting to look at. I also wanted to find examples of depth created with this medium and found that a lot of paintings tended to blur the trees that were in the background or make the colours lighter and less obvious. This is definitely something that we should look at, as it help to give depth and perspective to our environments and help to make them appear less flat. 

For the characters I wanted to primarily focus on how to create interesting textures. Personally I want the audience to be aware that watercolours are being used so I searched for images that used the medium in a messy, unstructured way. I really like the idea of using a range of colours and letting them blend together to create a texture that somewhat resembles fur. 

Whilst I was looking at colours and textures Katy was looking at a more basic use of the materials and explored how the materials work and what they look visually and suggested what they could be used for. 

Katy's Mood Board

I really like what Katy has been looking at and I feel that we have a really good ground to start our material tests with.

Applied Animation: Further Environment Mood Boards

As an after thought I began to wonder about whether it would be worth exploring the idea of interviewing the wolf at twilight, as they are nocturnal creatures and I put together a small mood board.

Twilight setting

However, after researching what a twilight setting would look like, I feel that it may be too dark for our purposes and may lead to our character not being fully visible. Despite this, I feel that we should still experiment with settings like this to make sure that this is or is not something we would like to work with.

Applied Animation: Environment Perspectives and Colour Pallet Moodboards

As we decided to work on environments together, I wanted to put together a few mood boards that would help us to stay on the same page in terms of aesthetic, perspective and style. I also wanted to source out some extra influence to go with our primary research, as I'm not so confident in designing and I wanted to make sure that I could produce something that Katy could at least work with.

General Environment

I showed Katy this mood board and she agreed with what I had been looking at and said that perspective was also a really important factor to consider alongside colour. Taking this into account, I went away and created a few more mood boards on the specific environments for our two characters. I looked back at our research and found references of the forests that our characters actually live in, as this would help give our work some authenticity and help to tell our story better. I wanted to focus on colours and shot framing and think about perspective too.

Boar Environment

Wolf Environment

Although the locations are in separate parts of the world (The Forest of Dean, England and Bavarian Forest National Park, Germany) I found that the colour pallets were very similar. However, there are quite a few slight differences that will help us to distinguish between the two separate environments. For instance, the Bavarian Forest has a lot more rocky terrain than The Forest of Dean. the Bavarian Forest also appears to have a lot of fog in certain areas, which I thought could be used to help strengthen our wolf character, as it links in with the whole idea that wolves are secretive creatures. However, this is just a thought and is something that we are going to experiment with when we come to do our material tests. 

Applied Animation: Progress Meeting 29/01

Yesterday Katy and I shared what we had done in terms of characters and script and discussed what else still needed to be done in order to complete pre-production. Other than completing her character designs, Katy had also decided to conduct some digital colour experiments to try and gain a better understanding of what kind of colours we were looking for.

Katy's Colour Tests

Whilst I appreciated this, I also felt that it wasn't necessarily needed, as it didn't give us any inspiration for textures so I suggested to Katy that she looked at the mood boards I had created for the colour pallets and suggested that she made some of her own too to help her find inspiration for more appropriate colour tests. I also suggested that we both create mood boards for the style of watercolours we want to use, which she happily agreed to.

In terms of project development, Katy did mention that she is a little behind our project plan, however she feels that she can catch up without putting too much pressure on herself. I have also encouraged her to try and get on with the small tasks such as mood boards as soon as possible to get them out of the way and to keep the project moving forward.
Environment design is what we are looking at next and we have agreed to start by looking at colour pallets and perspective mood boards on top of our primary research to give us a solid starting ground. We agreed early on that these were going to be done in watercolours, as we both wanted to explore using both digital and traditional media, but we have yet to do any material tests. 

Although I managed to get the dialogue scripted and record Matt and Max in the sound booth, I am struggling a little with finalising the script and writing it up to start storyboarding. I mentioned this to Katy and we agreed to work on the script and storyboards together in next weeks sessions. On top of this, Katy and I are going to conduct material tests and start to work on environment designs. 

Overall, I'm pleased with the progress we have made despite feeling like it is moving a little slower than I would like. I believe we are heading in the right direction and that we will be able to pick up the pace and keep on track with our production plan. 

Applied Animation: Character Positions and Colour Pallet Mood Boards

Colour is going to play a very important role in our animation as it will help to make our animation feel more natural and realistic against our talking animals, so it is important that we use the right shades and tones of colour. Katy and I feel that by incorporating natural colour schemes it will link in with our message and help to drive that home to the viewer. We also wanted to gather some research into the positions of the animals to help us when we are animating. So Katy and I decided to create some mood boards to make it a little easier. I started with the colour pallets of the characters and found that each character has a very similar tone in terms of fur/ feather colour. Although there are slight differences, I have a feeling that they may be slightly harder to see against the environments if we stick to the neutral brown tones of these animals and this is something that Katy and I will have to discuss. However, I went ahead and tried to find animals that had slightly different colours (e.g lighter or darker fur), as I think it will make the characters more appealing if they have unique and unusual colours.

Boar Colour Pallet

Wolf Colour Pallet

Robin Colour Pallet and Positions

Despite the fact that I'm not a huge fan of character design, I actually enjoyed researching colour pallets for our characters, as I have a huge interest in colour within animation and I am fully invested in choosing the right colour themes within our animation. After researching all of the animals, it's become clear that we will need to experiment and explore a very neutral colour scheme with only small splashes of colour. Having said this however, I do feel that there is plenty of room to incorporate blends of colour in the fur of the boar and the wolf. Particularly in the wolf, I have found that they have a very distinctive pattern around the eyes, similar to the distinctive red breast on the robin, which would help to make our character very appealing. I definitely want Katy and I to explore using these patterns and colours to find the right style for us to use in our animation. 

Boar Positioning 

Wolf Positioning One

Wolf Positioning 

I then looked at the perspective and position of our characters, as this is something that will also be really important. If the characters don't fit into the environment properly, I don't think that the animation would work as well because it would be distracting to look at. Not only this, but I also want to improve upon my perspective, and I feel that this is a great time to do so. When looking at the references I wanted to collect images that would not only help with perspective but also get the ball rolling on shot framing and depth of field. I was looking for images that made the characters the focus of the frame through positioning and how much environment was focused on around the animal. As you can see I found this task a lot easier with the wolf than I did the boar, as the position we've chosen for the wolf is very common among wolf photographs. Despite this though, I feel that I managed to gather enough information that will help to inform both characters and how we should approach shot framing in our animation. I also managed to find a few images that may help us deal with the problem of texturing the boar. It may be worth considering putting in a slight pattern for the boars texture to try and suggest the coarseness of its fur. 

I also decided not to do a separate board for the robin, as it will be standing throughout the whole animation, so I incorporated the positioning into the colour pallet board. 

Overall, I believe that we have a enough visual information to start conducting material and colour tests and I'm actually feeling pretty excited about getting started. 

Applied Animation: Refining Characters

Whilst I was drafting an initial script, Katy set about designing the characters we had chosen for our animation. Although Katy was the leader of this process, we wanted to make sure that we were on the same page and decided to each create a mood board for the characters so we could compare our ideas and then decided what kind of line style and aesthetic we wanted to work with.

My Mood Board

Katy's Mood Board

We had very similar ideas when it came to the character design and I was pleased that we were on the same wavelength and I was happy to let Katy go ahead and start designing. Once Katy had completed her initial sketches of the characters, she sent them to me so I could have a look and give her feed back on what she had done. I think she has done a nice job of designing the characters and I am pleased with her progress. 

Wolf Feedback Sheet

For the wolf character,  I suggested that Katy needed to look at the shape and proportion of the her character more and attempt to keep the character within the confines of a rectangle. This is something that I noticed happened a lot with the characters in The Secret of Kells and Song of the Sea, which are both influences to both Katy and I. This would make it a lot easier for us to animate the character, and it would also help Katy to make the character symmetrical and focus on her line work and keeping it simple. I also suggested that she work on the eyes a little more, as I feel that they are going to be very important to portraying emotion. I also encouraged her to look at creating more finalised version with clean smooth lines.

Boar Feedback Sheet

For the boar character I suggested that we used the bottom character design, as I found it more appealing. I also suggested that she attempt to draw it sat down, as this is how the character will be positioned in the animation. I feel that Katy did really well with this design despite the fact that she was struggling a little with the main characters. 

Robin Feedback Sheet

Katy did a great job with this character and I feel that she was very invested in the design of this character, I'm pleased with her designs and I feel that these are her strongest out of the three. I much preferred the blue and red designs however, I suggested that we went for the red designs simply because I like the contrast that it will create against the boar and the wolf.

Katy's Final Wolf Character 

Katy's Final Boar Character

Katy's Final Robin Character

I'm pleased with Katy's final character designs and I feel that  we can work with them in our animation. I also feel that she has done a great job at refining her designs and I'm glad that she took on my advice and adapted it to what she thought was appropriate. All the characters work well together and the lines are nice and simple and clean, as we discussed in our progress meetings. 

Applied Animation: Gathering Environment Research - Bolton Abbey

To help gather inspiration points for our environment design, we decided to go to Bolton Abbey, as we thought that it would be an appropriate location to gather influence. However, although the area had a few woodland patches, I personally didn't feel like it had what I had pictured in my head when we came up with the idea. However, it has given us some nice visuals for perspective and placement of the characters and I feel that they will do as a starting point.

Primary research mood board

In order to gain a better starting ground and understanding of how we want the perspective of our animation to look, I think it would be beneficial to create a few more mood boards that depict different perspectives and colour schemes.

Applied Animation: Learning to Lip Synch

As part of the animation, Katy and I will have to animate the animals talking. This is something I've never actually done before, nor do I know how to do it. So I started by looking at Richard Williams' Animator's Survival Kit. In it I found some really useful tips on animating dialogue and learnt that there are actually only a few main mouth shapes we make when we're speaking and that the rest of the words we kind of just mumble and slur. The book also suggested that you don't necessarily have to create every single mouth shape, but focus more on the important vowels and consonants that change the shape of your mouth whilst you talk and this will also create the illusion of speech quite well.

Because we are focusing on animals I searched for phonetic charts that showed the mouth shapes of animals to make it a little easier to create the shapes. Although the book and the chart will help me to get started with this section of the animation, I feel that I would benefit more from practicing with some simple sentences. To do this I will sit in front of a mirror at home and attempt to animate a few words to see how it will work. I've also decided to record our voice artists while they talk in order to see how their mouth moves when they are talking in character to help with the mouth shapes and the personality of the characters.

Animal Phonetic chart

Applied Animation: Drafting the Script - Focusing on the Dialogue

For our animation, Katy and I have decided to present the information in a Creature Comforts sort of way by interviewing the 'animals' in such a way that their responses reveal the information we found through researching our topic in a more interesting way. For this we decided to involve Matt and Max, as we thought that they'd be the most open when acting out the parts of a Wolf and Boar and that they'd bring a touch of comedy to the animation as well.

Not ever having written a script before, I decided to create a mock interview with Matt and Max to see how they would respond naturally to the set questions Katy and I had decided to ask (these are: What do you do in your spare time?, How do you help the environment? and What do you think of the humans?). From here I was able to listen to their responses to help me put together a more refined script for them to then read from at a later date. It also helped me gain a better grasp on the amount of time we had to play with and what we could actually achieve within our time constraints. 

However, the 'free-for-all' recording session didn't help as much as I thought simply because they each spoke for too long. This left me with so much content to play with and I struggled to pin point what I wanted to use and what I could discard as irrelevant. I also felt that they didn't necessarily touch upon the points I had given them in a clear enough way. Despite this, I did manage to get a draft script written up and from here I will be able to conduct another mock interview to see how the script works and find which bits aren't needed, as I feel that the scripts are still too long for the 2 minutes that we have.

Boar script

Wolf script

Overall, I feel that I have learnt a lot in terms of story from this small, yet important, part of pre-production. It is important to make the point of the story clear from the very start and to not stray from that point throughout the animation to help keep it clear for the audience. I found that it is also important to make sure that you leave long enough pauses for a gag or joke to be taken in and understood by the audience for it have the most effect. Although I have never done this before, I think that I have managed to do a good job at making our story clear and relevant. 

Applied Animation: Finalising our Ideas and Production Plan

After speaking to Katy in today's morning session, we came to a decision on what our final idea should be for our animation. Based on the research I had done, we decided that we'd like to explore the benefits that keystone species have on our environment and promote the reintroduction of such animals. To do this, we'd deliver factual information through characters (the keystone species we're focusing on) about the benefit that these keystone species have on the environment and this would be done through interviewing the creatures in a Creature Comforts kind of style.

Now that we have our idea down, we were able to set up a production plan to help us effectively plan out our time and to give us an idea of how long each process would take and how long we should be roughly spending on each stage of the animation.

First half of production plan

Second half of production plan

From here we started to split roles and responsibilities between ourselves. As Katy is most interested in pre-production, she took responsibility for character design, pose sheets and expression sheets and storyboards whilst I took the script, as we felt that I was better suited to write the story, audio and post-production and we have agreed to both work on environment design, animatics and animation to help split the work load.

During this session Sara also came to speak to us about our idea and she thought that we had developed a good base to start writing a script from. The only suggestion she made was possibly having a small creature as the person in between rather than a large one like the sheep we originally thought of. This will help to create a better contrast and make it more visually interesting. She also advised us to possibly think about reaching out to the charity to propose what we intend to do in our animation to see if they are interested in using it for their website. Overall, I'm really pleased with the feedback received from Sara and I'm looking forward to moving forward with the project. 

Applied Animation: Further Research - Countryfile on Wild Boar

I recently watched an episode of Countryfile whilst at my grans that was focused on some issues surrounding the the peaks, however it was the section on the boar in Devon that interested me the most. I can't say that the section was particularly positive about wild boar in the area, however it did offer an insight into how people of the surrounding areas felt about the presence of the animal.

The episode focused on the fact that, whilst many of the locals are intrigued by these animals, some have had some negative experiences with the boar and fear that they are a danger to the community. the episode also focused on how the boar have become somewhat of a nuisance to local farmers due to them destroying land. However, the episode also pointed out that the boar are actually in fact quite shy and are nocturnal, so don't regularly interact with people. Again, although it isn't much different from what I already have, it is nice to have a rounded selection of information to begin building my script from. 

Applied Animation: Further Research - Sustainable Man: How Wolves Change River Flow

Continuing on with my research into the benefits of the reintroduction of wolves into Britain, I came across a video created by Sustainable Human (a transition consultancy company that helps to promote changing the world for the better to become a more sustainable world) that went through some of the advantages of the re-introduction of wolves in The Yellowstone National Park in the US.

I found this video extremely useful and it was great to be given so many advantages to choose from when I consider what content to place in my script. It was also nice to learn that the re-introduction of the wolves also encouraged the another keystone species, the beaver, to begin to re-populate the area too, improving on the ecosystem even more. 

Not only this, but the video also explains how the reintroduction of wolves also helped to change the behaviour of the rivers. By changing the behaviour of the deer, vegetation and plant life is able to grow and replenish, which in turn stabilizes and reinforces the banks of the rivers, thus leading to less erosion and the banks cave in less. This in turn causes the rivers to become more fixed in there courses, stabilizing the flow of water and creating more suitable habitats for creatures.

Applied Animation: Research - Rewilding Britain

In an attempt to gain a better working ground for our idea, I decided to begin researching the reintroduction of wild boar in the UK. After looking through a few unofficial sites I came across a site called Rewilding Britain and this is where I have decided to do my research to start with, as the site is very informative and explores the same issue that Katy and I are dealing with in our animation; the issue of reintroducing species once native to Britain to improve the environment.

Rewilding Britain is a charity set up to help begin to reverse the ecological damage we have done to the environment. They intend to do this through providing people with the correct information about the benefits of reintroducing 'keystone' species. These are species that are crucial to a properly functioning ecosystem, and they include animals such as wild boar, beaver, grey whale, lynx and even wolves. Research has shown that these keystone species are crucial to the environment, as they drive ecological processes and have a much larger impact on the environment than people realise. Trophic cascades refer to ecological processes that occur from the top of the food chain down to the bottom, and it is this discovery that has led to the realisation that living systems can't function properly when they are missing keystone species, thus, these species are to play an important role in Rewilding Britain. 

Reading through the rest of the site, I found that they had created small little fact files about each of the species and what effect they would have on the environment and so on. I found these to be extremely useful and have decided to create my own little fact files based on the information found on this site of the animals that Katy and I are focusing on. Having said this however, the site doesn't mention seals in any way, so I spoke with Katy and we have decided to focus on wolves instead, as this seems more relevant to the research we are doing. Although we originally decided to look at boars, I want to do research into the other animals on the site too to give ourselves more options when we come to finalise our idea. 

Example Fact File (of wolf)

Based on what the site has said about these keystone species I have been able to put together a list of facts about the advantages and disadvantages of these animals being re-introduced into the British environment that I will be able to refer to when I come to write the script.

Wolf

Suitability: There is no ecological reason why wolves can't live in Britain. Due to the high levels of habitat and prey available wolves would be a good reintroduction. 

Human Risk: Human risk is very low due to these animals being shy and avoiding humans where possible. Wolves have been re-established across many European countries with little trouble. 

Advantage: Wolves keep grazing animals such as deer on the move, preventing them from overgrazing on fragile tree seedlings. This in turn will create more habitats for hundreds of woodland species. Wolves are also likely to reduce the loss of arable crops, increasing yield for farmers. They are also a huge tourist attraction. 

Disadvantage: Livestock would have to managed differently where wolves were present, however this is already being achieved in Europe. There would also need to be a compensation scheme for the livestock losses that would occur. 

Wild Boar

Suitability: Wild boar are already living in some areas of England and Scotland unofficially and are an excellent choice for reintroduction. 

Human Risk: There appears to be none, regarding that humans respect the animals and don't threaten them. 

Advantage: Wild boar can increase biodiversity through rooting and wallowing. They create space for trees and other plants to grow. Also Robins appear to follow boar. Wild boar are also a tourist attraction. 

Disadvantage: Wild Boar can cause damage to crops and gardens and there have been a few incidents in which boar have been a traffic hazard. They can also be a threat to domestic pets such as dogs, but this rarely the case. 

Lynx

Suitability: Lynx are a very shy animal that prefer the shelter of woodland, making them an excellent species to be reintroduced into parts of Scotland and Northern England. They currently live across Europe and have been successfully released into Switzerland.

Human Risk: Due to the Lynx being shy and living in large woodland areas, there would low risk to humans. However, this is inconclusive, as the site didn't actually state this. 

Advantage: Lynx help woodlands regenerate by controlling the numbers of roe deer and invasive species such as sika deer. They also prey on foxes, which would help to reduce the numbers.

Disadvantage: Lynx are a top predator and people may be afraid of such animals and attempt to kill them if ever face to face. 

Beavers

Suitability: Beavers have already been successfully re-introduced to Knapdale in Scotland and are spreading to other areas of Scotland and have even been reported in Devon. This re-establishment has also received widespread public support. 

Human Risk: None.

Advantage: Beavers can create habitats for hundreds more species and allow for the return of species. They also slow the flow of rivers, reducing the danger of flooding. Beavers also have a positive effect on the welfare of salmon. 

Disadvantage: Can't think of any right now. 

Grey Whale

Suitability: More research needs to be done in order to know if the grey whale could be transported from the Pacific for breeding purposes. However, two grey whales recently found there way into the Atlantic and was once common in Britain's estuaries and shallow bays. 

Human Risk: The grey whale appears to have a remarkable affinity for people, sometimes appearing to encourage people to touch it. 

Advantage: The site doesn't actually state one nor does it state a disadvantage. Personally, I think the grey whale may be something we avoid, as there isn't enough research on it to create an accurate study. 

Taking a quick glance at the information I have, I feel that Katy and I should probably stick to only two of the animals due to the time restriction of the project. Keeping this in mind, I think I'd definitely like to focus on the wolf, as I feel that there is a large amount of information on this animal, making it easy for me to create a script containing facts. For the other animal I'd either like to focus on the Lynx, as then it would make our animation focus on the reintroduction of top predators or on the wild boar. I feel that both animals will help to drive our message home and it is simply a case of choosing which we'd prefer to focus on. However, I will need to talk to Katy on this matter and see which animal she wants to focus on other than the wolf. 

Finally, I decided to look further into the site and found a section on the challenges the charity faces about reintroducing species to Britain and I thought it would be really helpful to know some of the opposing facts about Rewilding Britain. Rewilding is a long-term ambition and it isn't easy to achieve. For one, many of us have got used to seeing bare hills and the lack of native forests and species, so getting people to get excited about something like this, which would incur radical change isn't easy, especially when most people aren't a huge fan of change. Legal constraints are also one of the biggest barriers the charity faces and these include rules which govern the management of designated conservation sites. These often demand a fierce regime of cutting, burning and grazing to maintain arbitrary assemblage of creatures, yet this results in the maintenance of degraded ecosystems, where significant top predators are absent. The Dangerous Wild Animals Act 1976 also insists that certain dangerous animals only be released into enclosures, which makes it difficult to re-establish certain species into Britain. The Infrastructure Act 2015 also defines species that have recently become extinct in the UK as non-native and potentially subject to control and destruction. Some other other oppositions include; the danger to livestock; worry of over-crowding; the cost; having dangerous animals roam free is crazy; sport shooting; public perception; farm subsidy system. These are all valid challenges that Rewilding Britain is up against and they are also things Katy and I should consider when relaying information to our audience. 

Responsive : Final Peer Critique

In this weeks responsive session we held a peer crit with the illustration students. I was actually really nervous about this, as I didn't know what to expect and I was unsure of what I actually had to. At first I thought I would have to stand at the front and give a presentation to a group of strangers that was a lot larger that what I am used to and I must admit that I wasn't looking forward to it at all. However, this wasn't the case and I was extremely relieved to find that it involved printing out presentation boards and wondering around the room looking at everyone's work. I also really enjoyed this task, as it gave me the opportunity to see what others were doing and it also gave me an insight into the amount of work the others were doing, to help me focus on how much time I should be spending on each brief.

Although I didn't really have too much to show, I did receive some very positive feedback regarding my character design and clarity of story. However, I also felt that the feedback I received wasn't very constructive at all, it all seemed to be praising my choice of character design and storyline, which is a very nice confidence boost, but I didn't receive any feedback that I'll actually be able to apply to other briefs in the future other than keep doing what I'm doing. Despite this though, I'm glad we had the opportunity to have a crit with the illustrators and I now know what is expected of me for the next crit. Overall, I'm pleased with the experience and feel that I will be more prepared for the next crit. I need to focus on spending a little more time on responsive and plan out my animations a little better and work on finishing briefs and reducing my work load.