EP: Weekly Progress - 31/03

Yesterday marked my presentation screening of the work I had completed so far for this project. I was a little nervous about showcasing my work to the group, as I felt that I was behind the majority of people and had the least to show. I was also still wondering if my story was still confusing or not, as the last screening we had left me feeling a little unsure.

However, although I only had 8 seconds and a key framed shot, I feel that my screening went well and that I received some very useful constructive feedback.

The first point that was made is that I had to hold some of the frames for a little longer and allow time for these scenes to breath and for an audience to catch up with what they are watching. There are many places in my animatic where the shots seem to move too quickly from one to the next, and some of them were difficult for people to follow without the actual movement being there. I'm happy to hold shots for a longer period of time, as this won't necessarily require me to animate any more, but simple pause on a shot before moving on. Also, I'd like my story to be as clear as possible, so I will definitely add the time if I have to. 

The second thing that got mentioned was the fact that my introduction was really confusing, and people didn't know what was happening at all and decided that the many cuts back and forth from one scene to another wasn't necessary. They suggested that it would work just as well to have the action start immediately as the credits were on screen, as this would still give an audience an idea of what happened before hand whilst being clear and simple. Not only this, but it cuts down on animating, which gives me more time to focus on the remainder of the work. 

This is a change I've already made to my animatic since yesterday and I have altered the beginning of my animation. Although the introduction isn't any shorter in length, I have reduced the amount of animating needed, which has saved me at least a few days work. I've also mentioned this to Daniel and sent him a copy of the updated animatic. 

On top of this, people also suggested to me that I focus on the key points of the story and get them animated first, so it makes sense with the animatic filling in the gaps, as it is unrealistic to believe that I will get this completely finished for submission. This is something I will take on board and try work out as I go along, as I'm not 100% certain which bits are key to an audiences understanding and which aren't.

Finally, I was told that I need to do a few background tests to make sure that my character fits in with the environments, and to do these as soon as possible. However, James is away for the next few weeks, so I will have to wait until he gets back. In the meantime I will think about colour palettes and continue to animate.

EP: Weekly Progress - 26/03

This week I have managed to complete another small section of animating that brings my total up to 8 seconds. Although this isn't where I particularly wanted to be at this stage, progress is progress and I feel as though I am slowly getting quicker at working, however, I am struggling a little, as I feel as though I have fallen behind massively.
Having said this, I plan on completing a few small and 'easy' sections in the next week, as I feel that this will help to boost my confidence and make me feel productive and like I am making good progress.

Not only have I managed to do this, but I have also received a music sample from Daniel and have been able to get an idea of where he wants to take the music and how he feels the score should sound. I have also started to think about Foley/ background sounds as well and began to add in the sounds for the storm scene, as I wanted to give Daniel a better idea of how the animation will start, as I not sure I want music to start until the titles show on screen.

Although I only have a sample of music, one which Daniel says will change quite a lot when he figures out timings and such, I feel that it suits my animation quite well and he has definitely listened to my ideas and what I want my film to be about and portray. I feel that he has a very good understanding of the tone and mood of the animation and how to create emotion within his music and I am really pleased with where he is taking this.

However, I do feel that the music is a little intense in places and I'm not 100% sure that I would want the music that loud. But this is something we can discuss when Daniel has worked on refining his ideas a little more. 

Also, as mentioned before, I'm not 100% certain that I want music in the introduction of my animation, as the soundscape changes quite suddenly and rapidly from peaceful and calm to a thunderstorm and back. I have sent this copy to Daniel and I will see what he has to say about the changes I have suggested. 

Overall, I am pleased with the initial ideas and all I need to focus on now is getting the animation done. 

EP: Music Production

Last week I got in touch with Daniel to see if he had made on progress with music, as I was feeling slightly on edge because I hadn't heard anything work wise from him despite the fact that we have been in almost constant communication since January. I kindly reminded him that I have a deadline approaching and it would be great if I could have a sample of music or an idea of theme to discuss with my class mates and tutors.

Fortunately Daniel was very understanding and said that he would work on some initial ideas and themes and get them to me by the end of the week. With my mind settled I continued to animate and attempt to make more progress.

EP: Weekly Progress - 18/03

Last week marked quite a slow working week for me, as I spent the majority of the week learning how to create a walk cycle and then creating one.
Walk cycles are something that I have managed to miraculously avoid over the last 2 and a half years, yet has proved to be a bite in the bottom now that I have to animate so many of them in a short amount of time. However, they do make up the majority of my animation, so there is that as a plus!

Despite it being a slow week I am keeping my head above the water and getting on with work as quickly as I can in the hopes that I can get as much done as possible.

EP: Animatic Screening

During our last milestone class, we each had the opportunity to show our animatics to our peers and get feedback on the overall story, timings and any progress we had made (if any) so far. It was also to see whether or not the story was clear and if there was any room for any bits to be potentially cut down or thought about differently.

The feedback I received was somewhat confusing. People seemed to be quite confused at first, yet when the story was described to them and things were explained, they understood the idea and where the story was going. Annabeth seemed pleased with my idea, however suggested that I get back with Sylvia and re-think the ending, as there seems to be no satisfying end to the story. However, I explained to Annabeth that the theme of the story was that the main character chooses not to do anything about it, but more just go home once she finds out that she must make a decision that seemed quite heavy and serious.
Once this was explained, everyone seemed on board and seemed to understand, with people saying it would make more sense if the storyboard panels were more detailed.

Feedback in terms of voice over was also given. With the atmosphere of the film being quite subtle, I felt that the voice recordings I had got didn't particularly match the overall feel of the animation, so I have decided not to add speech. However, this leave the whole question of how will people understand what is happening within the story and I have thought about the music being a huge aid in this and the characters expressions, alongside subtle expressive sounds and grunts from the character. Although some people suggested a voice over, I am not 100% sold on that idea, as I feel that it will detract from the overall story.

Having said this however, I am unsure if my story is okay or not to go ahead with, but Annabeth later said that there is nothing stopping me from taking this further into a number of small shorts that make a series, so I feel that my story is good to go.

With this in mind, I took the time to email Daniel (the musician for my film) and make sure that he was 100% sure of what the story was about and to answer any questions he might have had. He didn't seem to have any trouble understanding and he was happy with what I had sent him.

Overall, I feel that my animatic is fine for what I need it for and there are no problems with what I have done on Daniel's side either, so I don't think I am going to make any changes to it other than adding in my animated segments as I go and possibly altering shots/ timings if I feel that they are appropriate. Now that I have the green light, I am going to get on with the animating and hope that I can pick up the pace.

EP: Re-recording Voice Overs

As I mentioned earlier in the project, I felt that the voice overs I had previously gained from my last session didn't quite fit with the overall tone of my animation and that I wanted to focus more on the subtle noises and completely cut the speech altogether. Whilst Emily had recorded some subtle noises, they weren't actually all that subtle, so I decided to ask a couple of my peers to re-record them for me, so that I had the sounds I wanted and they would fit the story better.

I asked Katy to voice Emily, as I felt that she would be able to make quite subtle noises with her being quiet to start with and I asked Max to voice the Plague Doctors, as he is a pro at making the most weird noises known to man.

Overall, I feel that I have a collection of voice overs that will work much better in my final film and I am glad that I took the time out to re-record. However, due to the nature of the noises, I will have to add them as I go, as they are just general sounds. Doing it this way will allow me to choose the most appropriate sound for the mood of that shot, rather than having a pre-planned audio file.

EP: James' Cave

Before I started to animate at the start of last week, James sent me the cave he had modeled a while ago to check that he was on the right lines and to see what I thought of his choice/ decisions.

James' cave

James' cave

James' cave

In terms of overall design, I am really happy with the look and style of the cave. I like the toon shader that James has applied and feel that it works really well as an initial/ base background, which I will be able to add a little more texture and depth to once we have the lighting and camera set up and ready to go.

However, this does not mean that the cave is perfect. At the moment the lighting isn't a little off and is too bright and lighting too much of the cave up whilst not creating enough shadow. I've spoken to James about this and he doesn't know how to change the light, as we have a very limited option of lights to use due to us using the toon shader and not having mental ray at our disposal. 

We did try to adjust the colours, as I am not sure that I want the cave brown but more of a blue-y grey, however, we are still having issues with the lighting, despite James turning down the intensity and re-positioning the light. 

Colour and lighting test

I feel that the colours are closer to what I want, however the lighting isn't doing it for me. It may be worth experimenting with making the cave brighter and adding in lighting in post, as well a little more texture to the cave walls.

This is something I will experiment with alongside James to come up with the best solution. 

EP: James' Cabin

Last week, James sent me a screenshot of the cabin that he had been working on for a section of my animation. He'd decided to stick to quite a simple design using low poly shapes, but also tried to make the cabin look asymmetrical to aide in the result of an eerie atmosphere. I am really pleased with his design and feel that he has captured what I was looking for, with only a few minor tweaks being needed.

James' Cabin

From here James sent me the UV Maps to texture. I wasn't 100% certain how I wanted to texture the cabin, as I felt that drawing individual planks and then adding in detail would be a little too laborious and wouldn't necessarily work with the tone of the animation, unless I spent a while layering up the colours on each individual plank and so on. 

With this in mind I began to think of environments within animations that reflected a similar environment/ colour range and texture pallet that I was aiming for and I came to The Boxtrolls. Even though this is a stop motion film, the texture of the set and the colour pallet used felt right for what I wanted to achieve, so I used this for inspiration and my colour pallet. 

A set from The Boxtrolls

This led me to create a texture with a dry media brush in Photoshop and layer them up to create a dingy and grungy looking texture for my cabin. 

Main cabin texture

Window texture

Overall, I am really pleased with my textures. All that is left is for James to test them on his cabin and for me to make any tweaks if needed.

EP: Starting to Animate

With my animatic ready for the screening on Thursday, I decided that I would make a start on animating. I initially decided to start with a walk cycle and try to get as many done as possible, as I will be re-using the walk cycles throughout the animation and it would have meant a huge chunk of work completed and encouraged me to keep going. However, they were proving to be quite difficult, and as I haven't animated properly since last year I was getting really frustrated with it. 

So I decided to move away from character animation and do some water animation. I've only ever done water animation once before and that was in my first year, so I decided to go back to the beginning and do my research again. 

Elemental Magic: Volume II by Joseph Gilland has been a God send for my water animation and gave me all the information I needed in order to animate it. Overall, I am really pleased with my final outcome. I feel I have managed to create a very smooth and fluid (pun intended) motion. 

Not only this, but the process didn't take me too long considering I was learning it as I went. 

I then decided to add my character falling into the water, which I also feel went well and I am happy with the overall result. I'm pleased that the character fits well with the style of the water animation, as I was worried that the water would be slightly too realistic, however this isn't the case. 

EP: Learning Walk Cycles

Before I started to animate, I realised that I would be needing to animate a walk cycle, which is something I have never actually done before surprisingly enough. So I thought it would be a good idea to get the good old Animator's Survival Kit from the shelf and attempt to animate my first ever walk cycle. As I've never done one before, I followed the book very closely and used the example model that the book uses just to test with. 

I started off with the key frames and poses and I was pretty pleased with the overall outcome, however, I did feel that the walk would come out a little bouncy and as though the character was determined to get places.

Which I was right about. The overall walk isn't bad for a first attempt and I am confident that I know the key poses and how a walk cycle works, so I should be able to create a number of different walk cycles for my film. However, it may take me a little longer than other parts, as I will be learning as I go.

EP: Time Table Update

Now that I have got the majority of my pre-production sorted (other than the parts that I have collaborated on) I felt that it would be a good idea to review my Gantt Chart and see how much progress I had made and what I still needed to do to stay on top of things.

Time management for entire project

Once I'd marked off everything that was complete and saw what still needed doing, I realised that I was getting confused because there was so much to look at and I was struggling to focus on what I had done and what still needed completing. 

Having said this however, I did notice that there were some gaps in my pre-production that needed seeing to. For instance, I have only managed to finalise my main character so far, as I've been struggling to design the other characters to match, so I have decided to reach out to Katy for help, which she has happily agreed to.

In terms of backgrounds, I need to speak to James and ask when he will be able to progress with them and give him a deadline to have them all complete by. I will also need to sit down with him and discuss colours and textures.

Branding is also something I need to focus on, as I have still yet to design a title for my animation and it would be nice to have my title sequence complete within the next couple of weeks. 

With this in mind, I decided to make another chart that was simpler in order to give me a clearer picture on the progress I will be making in the next 8 weeks and to help me keep on track of everything.

Revised time sheet

This time sheet focuses purely on the basics that I need to make a start on or continue working, as I didn't want to clutter the page and become confused again. The intention is that I review my time sheet at the end of every week to see how much progress I've made and to see if I need to pick up the pace and to make sure that I am on track and not forgetting anything. I also have a day to day planner that I can refer to on a daily basis and set daily goals. 

Hopefully this will help me to manage my time effectively, as this is something that I have always struggled with in past projects. 

EP: Layout Update

Last week I sat down with James to talk about the layout of the cave, as he wanted to start with this but was having trouble with figuring out how to model it and where the character would be based on my storyboard. In order to help him, I created a few quick sketches of the layout and where I wanted certain things to be.

James seemed to find these helpful and was happy to have a better idea of what I was looking for. We also used the time to discuss the aesthetic I wanted to go for. I knew that I didn't want it to look realistic, as I wanted it to work with my characters and fit with the overall mood of the film, so we decided on low poly with a toon texture on the top to flatten it out and add shading.
I'm looking forward to seeing what James will produce for me.

EP: Animatic - Second Pass

Yesterday I was finally able to put together a more accurate animatic for my animation. After reviewing my previous animatic, I made the changes that I thought would help the story and added in pauses between scenes that didn't flow together without them and added in the correct timings for actions, as I had been out to film references with Lauren the day before. 

I have also made the decision to not use speech within my animation. I feel that having no speech fits the narrative better and that it creates a nicer atmosphere within the film. I will however be having subtle sounds and noises, which I feel I will need to record again, as the ones I have at the moment aren't necessarily what I want. 

In terms of timing the animatic runs a little over 2:30. However, the timing doesn't worry me all too much, as I intend to re-use walk cycles and there are a number of shots that are still or hold. With this in mind, I am confident that I will be able to animate the film in time and I am comfortable with the amount of work I have. 

Having said this however, I feel that there are a few quick shots within the animatic that are simply depicting movement, They are a little bit jumpy and don't stay on the screen for very long, but I feel that it is understandable. 

I've sent the animatic to Dan (a music student from LCoM I am collaborating with) and he will be in touch with ideas when he's had a chance to watch it.

EP: Final Storyboards

After looking through the animatic I had created, I re-visited my storyboard, to see if I could cut anymore panels from it and create a smoother, cleaner animatic.

I started with the introduction, as I knew that I wanted this to be within the 30 second region including title time. Although I wasn't able to cut much I did manage to cut a couple of panels and I also re-adjusted the end of the sequence to make it clearer and flow better into the start of the film. 

Looking through my original panels I found that act one of the film is the longest and had the potential to be cut down the most. So I went through the panels and cut out the ones that I felt weren't necessary to the story. Once I had put them together in boards, I realised that I could cut further panels. Although this section still seems quite long, I feel that I have managed to cut it down a lot whilst maintaining a clear narrative. 

The rest of the storyboard was relatively straight forward and I managed to cut out a few panels and then more once I set them all out. 

Although there are still a considerable amount of panels remaining, I feel a lot happier with my overall story and I feel that my narrative will be much clearer in an animatic and will be a lot easier to follow. I also feel that I have managed to cut my storyboards enough to fit my animatic within the 2:30 minutes range that I have set for this project. 

EP: Animatic - With Voice

Last week I was fortunate enough to have my cousin visit to record the voice over for my animation, which really helped me with my second animation, as it gave me an idea of timings for speech throughout.
However, after recording I listened to what I had and I was having second thoughts. The animatic itself is still too long, and I haven't made the adjustments for the pauses or do I have the timings for the actions. Although the animatic is shorter than the previous one, I'm not 100% certain that I want this to be the final one, as I feel that the story could still run smoother and panels could still be removed.

In terms of speech within the animation, I feel that it would be better to remove it and just have subtle noises such as gasps and other small sounds that the character makes. This way I won't have to animate speech and it will to cut down the panels from my storyboard.

I think I need to sit down and go through my storyboard again and cut what I can and put the animatic together in a more accurate manner to give me a more appropriate suggestion of what I want to achieve.

EP: Storyboards and First Animatic

The storyboards for this project have taken me a lot longer than expected to complete due to the script being very detailed. Having said this however, having a very detailed script has allowed me to precisely pinpoint actions and story developments with little trouble.

Not only this, but the storyboard has turned out to be a lot longer than I would have liked for a 2 minute film. However, reading the script, I wasn't sure what I would be bale to cut and what I needed for the story to make sense, so I decided that I would storyboard the whole thing out roughly first and then figure out what I could cut,

Once I'd done this, the process of cutting things weren't any easier. I ended up with over 150 panels, and whilst some of the panels were only depicting expression changes and very quick actions, it was still too many panels.
I was having a lot of trouble cutting the story down, so I recruited the help of my peers, as they would have a more objective view of the story. Once they'd had a look at the panels I had managed to cut a small portion of them and put them together into my first animatic.

For my first pass I feel that the animatic works well. However, it feels really rushed in some areas and I feel that there's a lot of information to take in and it's quite difficult to follow in most parts. I also feel that some of the scenes jump from one to the other with no time to register what has just happened and give a viewer time to process the story.
I think I need to continue to cut down on panels to try and reduce the time of the film but make it clear and enjoyable, rather than an overload of information.