Responsive: Do It In Ten - Transition: Idea Generation

This months Do It In Ten theme is Transition and I wanted to use this opportunity to practice animating transitions and improve upon my timing and pacing, as I feel that I still struggle with these principles of animation slightly and would like to become more confident with them.

Because the term was so broad, I felt that I could keep the idea simple and focus more on developing my skills as an animator. 

Before I can move on to actually animating though I need an idea. Like I said I wanted to keep it simple and easy, as I wanted to focus on developing my skills, however, I didn't want it to be too easy that I didn't challenge myself in some way. So I started with a mind map of ideas to see what ideas I could come up with that related to the theme of the brief. 

Mind Map

Although I wanted to keep it simple and focus more on developing my skills, I explored a few ideas that weren't so simple just in case I came up with something else that I also wanted to explore. However, in the end I focused on exploring the idea of metamorphism. I want to create a shape that I can morph over the 10 seconds I had into different shapes. I feel that this will allow me to develop without getting too distracted by the subject I am animating. However, to make it a little more challenging for myself I also want to try and make the shapes link and 'morph' fluidly, as this will make the animation much more interesting and help me to develop my skills further.

Idea Development

With this in mind, I decided to focus upon light and dark, as I felt that this would be the easiest to create recognisable symbols for as well as providing me with numerous shapes to choose from. So I did a small amount of research into opposing symbols that represented light and dark and I found that the most common ones were the Yin and Yang symbol, the sun and moon, the king and queen and not so commonly, the alchemical sun and moon and the alchemical ouroboros and fire drake.

Symbol Research

Having a quick look over what I had found, I decided that it would be best to stick to things that were more commonly known, this led me to focus on only 3 symbols, yin and yang, king and queen, and sun and moon. Given that I only have 10 seconds of animation time, I feel that 3 symbols will be appropriate for the animation and give me plenty of time to animate the transitions in between.

Chosen Symbols

I feel that I have a good starting ground to begin working from and I feel that this time around I won't feel rushed or under pressure, as I have given myself a much less ambitious idea with more time to complete it, unlike the last time I attempted to complete a similar Do It In Ten brief.

Applied Animation: Refining Textures

Following on from our progress meeting, I looked at the two environments we had discussed and decided to explore further and experiment with refining these a little to create more depth and make the textures and colours work together as best as possible.

Possible Boar Environment

Possible Wolf Environment

Taking on board everything we discussed in our progress meeting, we went away and pointed out all of the aspects that we liked in each environment, so I could go away and produce some final environments to show Katy what we would be working with. I also had to extend the Boar environment, as this will also act as our opening title scene when the camera pans along.

Pan Environment Progress

Development

Development

Development

I started with the pan shot and decided that it would be easier to make the trees different shades if I drew them out in stages. This way I was able to see where I was placing each different shade and it helped me to make the shades more varied rather than in lines like before. Straight away I saw a different and I was pleased that I had managed to include more depth within the environment, as it made the scene look a lot less flat and gave a better idea of what kind of environment the animation was to be set in. 

Adding ground

Adding sky

I then went on to add the darker ground texture Katy had created, as this is what we had decided upon and the lighter sky texture to finish the environment, However, after taking a step back and looking at the environment as a whole, I noticed that the bottom of the tree lines just seemed to end and I felt that it didn't quite fit together and it looked odd, which would distract from the main focus of the animation. This led me to look back at our mood boards and animations that were created in a similar way to ours and see how they had achieved it. I took the most influence from The Secret of Kells, in which grass and plants were drawn over the tree trunks and out of the ground. This gave me the idea to draw grass at the base of the trees and on the skyline to help the layers blend together a little better. 

Adding grass

After doing this, I showed Katy and she agreed that the drawn grass did help to bring it all together. However, I still felt that something was off with the perspective, the ground was too flat and I felt that it was letting the whole environment down. So I decided to add another layer of ground, which I feel helps to give it that extra little bit of depth and it doesn't make it look like the trees are floating on the horizon.

Final Boar Environment

I then moved on to the two wolf environments, adopting the same technique as before. For the rock and I used the same texture as before, however I simply rearranged it and removed the majority of the green as it stood out from the ground a lot better. I also darkened the grey using levels slightly to make it contrast a little better. For the second environment I left a lot of the green on show, this was to help create variation within our environments and to help keep it clear that it was a different camera angle. 

Different tree layers

Textured trees

Ground, rock and sky

The most challenging part of these two environments was the fog that we wanted to have. I played around with different brush sizes and hardness and found that a soft brush sized 800 with an opacity of 33% worked the best to create the most realistic fog effect without the help of plug ins and effects. Although such effects are available to us, we wanted to animate the fog in the background and we felt that we would have more control over the outcome if we animated it in Photoshop. 

I found that the brush strokes worked best when I layered them up rather than increasing the opacity, so I created 5 separate layers that were in between the different tree layers to layer up the fog. Katy is also happy with the results and we've agreed that this would be the most appropriate method to take for this aspect of the animation.

Final Environment 1

Final Environment 2

Overall, we are both happy with the final environments and feel that we have what we need to animate with. If we feel the need to alter some of the camera angles within our animation I think it will be easy enough to add a new environment now that we have the main ones complete.

Responsive: Dazed - Submitting

Today Molly, Katy and me sat down together and submitted our response to the Dazed brief on D&AD. 

Our Submission

The ' Face'

The 'Book'

The 'Crowd'

The 'Dance'

The Making Of

Overall, I'm really pleased with how we managed to turn this project around in such a short time frame. I feel that we have managed to portray our idea of creative freedom as an individual and as a collective, whilst having fun and taking a relaxed approach to the brief. I am also pleased with the development I have made in my communication skills and as a team member. I feel that I have managed to work a lot better as a group this time around compared to the first time I worked collaboratively. I feel that I can communicate my ideas in a more coherent way and keep up communication. I also feel that we worked really well as a group and that we managed to split the work load quite evenly. 

Working with someone from a different course has also given me an insight into how working with someone with a different skill set can be beneficial and help to create interesting and fun work. 

Responsive: Dazed - Further Post Production

Now that the stop motion video was complete, I was able to help Molly and Katy with the remaining 3 videos. I can happily say that there wasn't much left to do, as they had been busy working on it whilst I was editing the stop motion.
Katy was working on the 'Crowd' video and Molly had taken the 'Dance' video, which left the 'Book' video, so I decided to take this and work on the first 4-5 seconds whilst I waited for the animated clips from Katy and Molly. Sticking to the theme of fun and 'wacky', I stuck to simple line work and patterns like the others had and I feel that I managed to replicate what the other two had created.

Once the others had finished, Molly took the the last of the 'Book' video and Katy worked on the description, title and statement for our submission. I began the process of post production once more to add in the floating patterns that Katy and Molly had designed and prepped earlier in the project. The idea was to have the GIFs masked out and floating in the background of the videos.

Making out the pattern

Adding the masks to the footage

It was a simple process of masking and key framing, which took no time at all and I had no difficulty with the process. I then attempted to add them to the footage, however, I wasn't too sure whether the floating blobs fit properly with the rest of the animation, so I asked the others what they thought. They seemed to really like it and didn't suggest that I remove them, so I decided to stick to it, as the others felt that it looked good and agreed to have the blobs in the final footage. 

Overall, I'm pleased with the final outcome and I feel that we are in a strong position to submit.

Responsive: Dazed - Stop Motion Post Production

As Katy and Molly began production on the edited footage, I got to work on the post production of the stop motion. As I mentioned before, the levels of the frames are off due to us not taking more care when setting up our equipment, meaning I had a lot of work to do before I could say it was finished. 

Mike had suggested that I edit the levels frame by frame in Photoshop, which I did however I couldn't achieve the consistency that we wanted through this method. I also found that it was extremely time consuming, which is something that we couldn't really afford as the deadline was only 3 weeks away at this point. I was also struggling with the file size due to there being so many frames. 

This led me to attempt to fix the issue in After Effects, as this would give me the ability to alter them frame by frame. Although I had to alter the levels frame by frame and key frame almost every frame, I found that I was able to achieve much more consistency than when I attempted it in Photoshop, it was also a lot less time consuming. Having said this, there was still a flickering of colour however, it wasn't as noticeable. If I had more time I would have put a lot more time into making the levels as consistent as possible. Despite this however, I feel that the levels have turned out quite well considering there were some huge level jumps on certain frames. 

Adjusting Levels in After Effects

In terms of attempting to fix the jumpiness of our footage, I tried out the motion stabiliser in After Effects to see how this would effect the footage. This was something that I had never used before so I didn't know what to expect from using it. A lot of this was done by experimenting, as i was new to it, but I found that the motion tracker worked better when placed on an area of the footage that had high contrast so I tried to focus on these areas when I was placing the tracking points.

Position of Motion Tracker

Position of Motion Tracker

As the footage was separated into 5 different clips I had to place the trackers in different places to achieve the best possible outcome. After I'd done this to the first clip I played the footage back and showed Katy and Molly, as I was struggling to see much of a difference between the two as I had been staring at it for quite a while.
Although the motion track stabilised the jumpiness slightly, it didn't have all that much of an effect on the overall footage. However, I felt this had something to do with where I was placing the trackers, so I attempted it again but with the trackers in different places. This seemed to work a lot better, so I used the motion stabiliser on the remaining footage too. 

Footage before Motion Stabiliser

Footage after Motion Stabiliser

Once all of the clips were done and I had edited them together I watched it through and decided that it would be worth altering the position of some of the frames that weren't stabilised enough with the trackers. This was a simple task of key framing the position of the frames where I felt it was necessary. 

Altering position key frames

The overall effect seems to work in our favour and I feel that I have managed to fix the issues we had with the footage to a high enough standard to use for our submission. I also feel that I have learnt a lot in terms of how deal with footage that isn't 'perfect' and I have improved on my post production skills. However, this isn't to say that I realise the importance of getting the footage as 'perfect' as possible whilst shooting, as it makes it easier to work with in post production. 

To complete the video, I put the footage to a soundtrack in Premiere and also added the Dazed Media logo. We are happy with how this turned out and glad that I was able to edit the footage we had to create something that would fit with the rest of our footage and with our ideas.

The 'Face'

Responsive: Dazed - Searching for Sound

On Thursday, we sat down as a group and discussed our options for music. Whilst I had been working on editing the footage, Molly had gone away and sent out a Tumblr post to recruit someone who was willing to allow us to use their music for our videos. Molly had received a really positive turnout and we had a wide selection to choose from. However, we decided that we wanted to use music from the same artist, as this would allow for some consistency and would also make things like getting permission and payment if the artist, respectfully, wanted to be paid for the music a lot easier.

After listening to some of the artists that had caught our interest we finally settled on Vinnie Neuberg. We felt that his music fit well with the Dazed Media brand and our ideas. We wanted a kind of 'retro' vibe, which we felt Vinnie's work definitely had. We also felt that his work had a nice pace and would fit nicely with our footage.
After confirming it was okay to use his music through email, he very kindly gave us the album we were interested in for free and gave us freedom over which tracks we used.
Overall, I feel that we have music that is appropriate for our ideas, that fits well with the overall theme of the project.

Responsive: Dazed - Editing the Footage

Whilst Katy and Molly were busy designing the patterns to be animated for the footage, I was in charge of editing the footage together. I wanted to edit the footage together in a way that would portray the idea of fun whilst reflecting the aesthetic of Dazed. This led me to focus more on the footage that was slightly 'odd' or looked deliberately like we were messing around, as I felt that this would be the best way to convey our ideas and achieve what we wanted.

Using Premiere, I started with the 'Crowd' video and looked for clips that I felt fit in with our ideas. I actually found it quite difficult to choose from what we had, as we had a lot of good footage and it was difficult to select which clips worked the best together. In the end I went with what I thought looked best together and with what I believed achieved our goals visually.

The 'Crowd' Video

I had an easier time with the 'Reading' video, as this video is going to be focusing more on the animation. This meant that we didn't necessarily want too many variations in shot, nor did we want there to be too much movement, as this would distract from the actual animation. So I made the decision to only use three different camera shots, feeling that this would give us enough variety but allow us to focus on the animation instead. 

The 'Book' Video

For the dancing video we had originally had the idea to edit the footage to change on the beat of the music. However, we had looked at a few examples of music that we wanted and I realised that they didn't really have much of a beat to them so it wasn't particularly necessary to edit the video to the music. This also made it easier for me to get the footage edited together on time, as we haven't settled on any music at this stage. 

The 'Dance' Video

Overall, my group and I are happy with the edited footage and feel that it fits in nicely with the aesthetic of Dazed Media whilst portraying our ideas for the brief. 

Responsive: Dazed - Stop Motion

For one our four videos, we had decided to create a stop motion animation onto someone's face, this someone being Wing who very kindly agreed to be our model. The idea came from looking at Hattie Stewart's work and we thought that it would fit in with our idea of creating something fun and 'wacky' to demonstrate creative independence.
We had agreed to keep the theme of shapes and patterns running within this video and came up with the idea of using simple shapes, such as squares or circles and painting them in sequence onto Wing's face.

Molly Animating

Although the process was very straight forward and we didn't have any issues whilst shooting, it did take us the best part of 6 hours (not that we didn't expect it to take that long). We started off with the smaller patterns and animated them before moving on to the full face paint. Personally, I feel that the whole process went really smoothly, apart from someone occasionally knocking the tripod (I sat with it after the third time and made sure that it didn't move any more). 

Katy Animating

Although we managed to animate this part quite easily, we did encounter some problems with the finished footage. To start, we didn't set the camera up for wide screen, so all of the shots weren't 16:9 format, however, this can be fixed really easy as we allowed room for cropping in the shots, so this isn't a major issue and can be fixed really easily in post. Another issue is that we seated Wing on a moving chair, we didn't feel that we had much of a choice, as we couldn't expect her to sit on a hard chair for 6 hours, and this was a compromise we made so she would be as comfortable as possible. I can attempt to fix the jumpiness in After Effects using the motion stabilizer setting in an attempt to make the footage a little smoother. However, the biggest issue that we had was that we had forgotten to take off the auto white balance. This has resulted in the levels being different in every shot, which detracts from the animation as a whole. In order to stabilize this, I will have to attempt to alter the levels for each frame, Mike suggested that I do each fame individually in Photoshop. This might be the case, however I feel that it may be more time efficient to attempt to key frame the levels in After Effects.

I will attempt both of these methods to see which produces the best results. 

Despite the issues that we have encountered, which I feel were due to us not being as organised as a group as we were for the other shoot, w have managed to get a lot of footage that I can use to cut together to create our final video. I'm confident that I will be able to adjust the footage in post to create something of a similar quality to our other videos. If we had more time I would have asked to redo the whole thing, but we are quite short on time and I feel that it would also be a little unfair to Wing to make her sit there for another 6 hours. It has however taught me to double check that our equipment is set up properly before starting work to avoid as many complications/ issues as possible. 

Responsive: Dazed - Shooting the Live Footage

Molly, Katy and I had originally planned to shoot all of our footage in one of the photography studios because we believed that this would give us a lot more control over who was in the shot, not having to wait for the public to walk past before shooting, etc. However, when we went to see Matt in AV, he brought it to our attention that it would most probably be more time efficient and less stressful to go outside and shoot, as we wouldn't have to wait for a studio to be free and we wouldn't be on such a tight time slot. After discussing this, we decided that this would be a better option, as we wanted to take quite a few different shots and experiment a little with different situations. 

Matt also kindly pointed out that we should aim to shoot everything in the same location to save time and to give all of our work consistency (the only thing we couldn't shoot outside was our stop motion). Again, we discussed this as a group and sat down to come up with a few thumbnail sketches of our initial ideas of what we wanted to achieve during this shoot. We decided that we wanted to have a section in each video where we could place the Dazed logo over the footage but still see what was going on, so Molly suggested that we have a few wide shots that come in at the end so we could place the logo above the people.

On Scene 

The shoot went really well, we had no difficulty getting there and Burley Park itself was relatively empty so we didn't have any issues of people walking onto shot. At this point we had also gained the help of Mel to do our dancing scene for us and we are really happy with what we have for that video. Everyone was very co-operative and I feel that our time was used very effectively and that we, as a group, were very well organised. Overall, it was a great experience and I enjoyed being outside for a change, we gathered lots of relevant footage and I now have to edit it all together whilst Molly and Katy continue to work on pattern designs.