Tomorrow is Judgement Day...

Well, the last week has been a pretty eventful one and been super busy all in the run up to the pitch on friday.

Since my last blog post I've created a whole load more of concept art and some test animations...

Kathy suggested I put together a visual research file of the things that had inspired me to create the concept art, some are more relevant now than others, but in the process of trying to get the look for my project, they all inspired me in some way.
Style Inspiration Bible


One of my own loves (which I'm told by my housemates is very weird...):


"I love watching the sun rise" Sequence:




Newer version of Birds (as it would be animated):


"I hate fish":


Sea animation test done in After Effects:



The fish I hand animated... It was super frustrating, because it took me two hours to scan in, only to discover that it didn't work... it's not great: the tail flops around all over the place, but I feel my timing has vastly improved since last year.



I think now, (well, all depending if my project is picked...) that any rough animation I do will be done in Flash or ToonBoom Animate and then, when I know the timing is correct, I'll draw the animation in graphite or whatever other medium I'm using for that section.


The fish and sea combined look a little something like this:




Ah, I'd almost forgotten to add this, a video of the rough soundtrack that my good friend Rob Allen has been working on for me, which I was contemplating playing it at the pitch, but I have collected many more voiceclips since sending him the (very) rough edit I put together for him to play around with. This is only a rough version done in Midi, put gives an inkling as to what the final thing could sound like, however I think I need to spread the soundclips out a bit more, it's really rather quick at the moment.



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So, this is something I forgot to write on here earlier, but a couple of weeks ago I emailed six local primary schools asking if I would be allowed to come to the school and ask the children (and staff) the love/hate questions. I had two responses, one yes and one no.

Paula Ross, the deputy Head Marlborough School, was kind enough to invite me to the school on Thursday to record the students. The students were forewarned of my arrival in asssembly and many had already thought of things to say when I turned up at lunchtime. Paula's class separated into two groups and sat in a circle as I recorded them one by one, which worked really well, although the children who couldn't think of anything quite often said similar things (it turns out, alot of boys hate the colour purple...), Paula then led me around the rest of the school to interview smaller groups of children which provided a much larger range of responses and some absolute gems which I'm certain will go into the final film (if it gets picked). After interviewing the children, who ranged from 4-11, I asked the staff the same questions. The school was so helpful and accomdating, the whole thing was much easier to pull off than I expected thanks to Paula's organising. If the film gets put into Production, I'm going to keep in contact with the school and send them updates as progess (hopefully) continues, however it may not go anywhere, it's beyond my control now!

Which leads onto the deciding power...

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The PITCH. Both Kathy and Derek said that I should create some more concept art to show at the pitch, which made me think, why can't I explain my idea through concept art? So, to explain the process behind lovehate, I decided to do just that, have a corresponding picture to what I was saying.
My actual pitch was really quite short, my idea was very simple to explain, so it really didn't need long. I thought I'd try and keep it short and punchy, and the corrseponding pictures helped to do just that and even got a few laughs which was great (and intended I might add).
I was second to last in the pitching order, which made me mildly annoyed (I really wanted to just get the thing over with - I tend to get more nervous the longer that I have to wait to do something), it was probably better, as the rest of the third years relaxed around me, I felt alot calmer when it finally was my turn...
Lovehate Pitch

The presentation probably needs some explanation, so here's a small summary essentially of what I said:
- Everyone in this room has at least one thing they really love and one thing they really hate: it might be something completely unique to you, or something that you share with others. My current hate is standing in front of a room full of people and trying to explain my idea, something the other third years will share with me. I want to make these individual love and hates come to life on the screen. So the idea behind lovehate is quite simple:
- I will take a number of peolpe of different ages,
- Stick a microphone in front of their face,
- Ask them to tell me one thing they love,
- Ask them to tell me one thing they hate,
- Record their reply.
- Think about their reply.
- Visualise their idea.
- Storyboard the idea.
- Animate the idea, taking the last frame and morphing it...
- ...So that it becomes the first frame of the next sequence.
And then I showed the concept art of previous answers.

The panel (made up of 4 industry professionals), complimented me on my pitch and (I think) overall were fairly positive and quite liked the idea. I feel I got away quite lightly, quite a few people got some grilling from them and struggled to answer some of the trickier questions. I feel I did quite well, but I guess we shall see tomorrow when we discover which projects are going through to production. If my project hasn't been chosen, there's a multitude of other ideas I would love to be able to help out on. But then, if mine is chosen, that's a whole new fear altogether!

[100th post!] Pre-Production Complete

Celebrating my 100th Blog post AND the completion of my Pre-Production project. It's been a mission, but it's got done :)

The Final Design Bible:
Theatre of The People Design Bible
My Production Report:
AliceNightingale_ProductionReport
My Visual Research File:
Visual Research File
All my Sketchbook work for the Project:
Alice Pre Pro Sketch Book

Experimental beginnings and (slow) 11 Second progress...

So, after my panicking at the weekend and the 2D session we had yesterday I'm feeling far more positive about the 11 second club project.
Andy liked the flow of action in my (very short) hand-drawn attempt, which led him to talk to us about practicing timing by mapping out the sequence with really really rough drawings. Trying to do as many drawings in sequence as possible, while resisting the urge to play it through until you have done a large number. As you can see below, my first attempt isn't great, I got to about 60 frames, it's very quick so the angel looks like he's buzzing around on speed:

I'd say my second attempt is better, but I still have a long way to go before I'll pick up the animator's "instinct" for timing.


One the other hand, my experimental project is starting to come along nicely. Following my plan I had mapped out using two incarnations of dopesheets...
And a surprising amount of maths involved when it came to working out how many photographs I would need to take...
(and that's only one of the 3 times I did that).

I now have a fully formed plan/schedule to follow, with the exact number of photographs needed for each bit of my animation, all mapped out (hopefully) to the music I've selected from our choices (which I now hear in my head rather alot, so thanks Derek...).


Using my (excellent) plan I have now completed taking all the photographs with live human hands, with help from my very patient friend Liz, who agreed to be my lovely assistant for the evening and my nice housemates for letting me commandeer the kitchen table. Here's a frame from what will be a part of the final animation:

I'm now using my lightbox to animate my transformations and drawing the shapes of what will become my cutouts to create shadows. I'm going to use the spare time I have when I got back home this weekend to cut them all out so I can get shooting quickly after I get back.

So currently I've been drawing lots of rabbits, which I'm finding fun (I'm not quite so looking forward to drawing lots of birds) and surprisingly easy. I think it's because I have four of them at home who I always sit and spend a bit of time with while using them for drawing practise. So I'm looking forward to seeing their lovely fluffy faces this weekend. And they're too cute not to share pictures of, especially since it's on topic anyway ;) (L-R:) Molly, Chilly, Arthur & Mim.

Shadow Puppets and the 11 Second Club

Everytime I hear the phrase "shadow puppets" I think of this Aardman animation my brother and I watched a few years ago.
It looks like a Fireman chasing an igloo to me..



I've been looking up different types of shadow puppets(and reserved myself a tripod) this morning in preparation for the Experimental Project, I still need to get a piece of plastic or glass, but I plan to get them after our Character Animation Principles lesson tomorrow. So here's some research to look at:


Our second major project this term is to animate the November voice clip from the "11 Second Club" website. The 11 Second Club, for those who don't know, is a website that puts up a voice clip each month (which is around 11 seconds long, although this month's is actually 12 seconds), that anyone can animate to and submit their work onto the website for others to view and rate. You can use any technique you want to, although their are restrictions on the rigs you can use if you choose 3D, but the winners always seem to be hand-drawn or 3D pieces.

Obviously November's soundclip was only posted up yesterday, but I've already had a few ideas which I've made a few doodles of. Though I'm feeling rather protective of them at the moment, so I'll post them later on when it's developed into a fully fledged idea I'll work on rather than scribblings. Also, I don't want anyone to nab my ideas ;)

In more preparation for it, (it's like I'm a rocket that's been lit and suddenly my creativity and productiveness [if that's even a word] has returned in full force), I created my own dope sheets and broke down all of the soundclip for lip-sync, I'm thinking this will make storyboarding an awful lot easier (and I'm also going to try to break down the music for the Experimental project, although I think music will be harder to break down).

Experimental Ideas

I've been kind of neglecting blogging about this project, mainly because I had a lack of ideas for aaaages, and then when I had some, they weren't particularly good. But, this post is to show, that YES, I have actually been doing some work towards it. But more importantly, have now got an idea I want to start working with.

Some reject ideas:

My final idea:

Reminds me of this YouTube video I had a look at (though hopefully my cut-out parts will be animated better):


Camera set-ups for the final idea, the one on the left is how I thought I'd need to set things up, but after talking to Derek, the plan on the right was formed.


So now I need to buy a large piece of glass or plastic, tracing paper, potentially get a tripod and lots of black card/paper.
Work out the music on a dope sheet.
Film the hands.
Prepare the card.
And then animate it all.

I think I'm going to initially use animation paper & a lightbox to figure out my creatures metamorphis and movements.

Also, check out the new header/banner thing, made from lots of scanned in magazine-y bits, because I like collage and the old one was annoying me muchly.

Little Piece of Heaven

Yesterday was a sad day for me. The drummer from my favourite band, Avenged Sevenfold died. At 28, it's far too young to be taken from this world. They were halfway through recording a new album and I was so stoked about the subsquent tour that would come with it where i'd finally get to see them. Sadly, even if they do tour, it won't be the same.

Jimmy "The Reverand Tholomew Plague" Owen Sullivan (aka The Rev) was quite possibly one of the most talented drummers on this earth and no other drummer could possibly fill the space he's now left in Avenged.

My favourite song, Little Piece of Heaven, was written by him, and has one of the most twisted concepts going. But it's fantastic, beautifully composed and has a brilliant animated video, which is why I'm posting it.

So, yeah, R.I.P. Rev x