Research/Concept Art

Testing

So the past couple of days I've attempted to do a bit of animation based on the statements people emailed me/got through facebook.

One was 'I hate pennies', which I msyelf can identify with, I keep all my coppers in a little teapot in my room, so I decided to a bit of pixilation with them. Sadly I only had enough to make "I hate" and "pennies" separately, but for a little test, I thought it wasn't too bad.



Someone else said that they hated the Mac wheel of doom (aka, beachball of death/wheel of death/rainbow of doom...), so I thought the penny could turn into one. Done in Flash.



Aaaand today, I rented out a voice recorder from the Media Center, and with Dan as my back-up, went and accosted random people about campus who didn't look busy. I got quite a fe voiceclips, but I realise I will have to ask lots more people. Kathy is my mentor up until the pitch, and she suggested recording younger children, which will be a good idea since I got a lot of "I hate early mornings/lectures" and "I love drinking/getting drunk/beer". Oh you students.

So, here's a little mock-up of the kind of introduction I'd like to have... I'm thinking of calling "Love/Hate" (because I'm god awful with names), since it's quite a simple themed project...

Project Help

It would be really helpful if you could take less than five minutes to
help me with my project,

Could you please tell me,

A. One thing that you hate or really annoys you...

and

B. One thing you really enjoy or love.

You can email your answer to: an122335@falmouth.ac.uk

or you could always leave an anonymous comment here on blogger.

It would be much appreciated :)

Third Year Beginnings.

I was tempted to name this post "The Final Countdown" or something equally as corny, but nobody wants to start the year off with a terrible pun, (unless you're my Dad, then it's standard practice).

So, yes, third year, the beginning of the end and yet it feels like my University experience has just started... (Obviously this post already appears to be filled with clichés and all that jazz). After a lovely (albeit very geeky, but not very productive) summer, I'm back and ready to work my ass off. Currently this has involved acquiring a large wall chart and marking all the important (and scary) hand-in dates for Final Major Projects & Dissertations, it also has days marked off for when I need to update my blog... The plan is to update it at least every other Tuesday, so we'll see how successful that is. Days are also marked off for when I need to attempt to do academic reading for said dissertation. For those of you who wonder exactly what a pile of dissertation research is looks like, it's currently a little something like this:

Rather intimidating, yes? Especially when I tell you that the yellow folder is filled with photocopies and printouts of essays and book chapters as well. Eep.

However, on a slightly better note, this term will be spent developing our ideas for final films ready to pitch (in front of all three years of Animation, the tutors and a panel of industry professionals... although perhaps this is just as intimidating as the dissertation) and, hopefully, get selected to be put into production.

After spending the first half of the summer fretting because I had a complete lack of any creative ideas, I had inspiration hit me while I was on a train (somehow trains appear to be good for my creativity, in the past I've had a couple of ideas for other projects suddenly come to me while train travelling). Being paranoid about the possibility of potentially having to stand on a six hour train journey (Falmouth really isn't the most easily accessible place), I always book a seat reservation. And someone, it doesn't matter how empty the carriage is, will always pick to sit in my seat. Always. It annoys me so much. And then I thought, well, why couldn't I make this into an animated film? Obviously not just about a train seat, but why not ask people about all the random little things that specifically annoy them or they really hate? I could run around with a sound recorder and ask people the same question (a la Creature Comforts), then take their responses and turn them into an animated sequence.

Everyone I ask will have different opinions, so I want to replicate that with a range of different animation styles. In my Foundation year for our first 'Time and Image' workshop we had to create two images of ourselves and animate from one to the other, then we had to take our last image and animate it to the next person's first, it was really effective and despite everyone having created very different images, the piece worked as a whole. Sadly, I do not have the original video of everyone's work, but I have the section that I created, which you can watch below. I want to do the same for this project, animate all the 'phrases' separately, then take the last frame from one and animate it to the first of the next. I also want the film to have a kind of spontaneous feel, like the 'Lightbulb Boy' animation I did at the end of last year, each bit was really different, but it all flowed together.

After telling Andy and Derek and a few of my classmates my idea, it was suggested that instead of doing just things people disliked, that I include their likes/loves. So, currently I am in the process of juggling between the ideas of creating two separate films, a "Love" film and a "Hate" film, or making a completely combined one.

My idea is a relatively simple one, but I feel that if it is picked, it will have a much higher chance of getting completed than an a 5 minute long scripted idea. Working so closely (well, practically as a third year myself - I even got a 'medal' for "Wannabe 3rd Year" in our 'award' ceremony at the end of term last year) on Barista, I know that even with the best intentions and time management, it is not always possible to get everything done in time. Hopefully, by having an idea that works in segments, even if a section is not working, it can be scrapped and work without it. Even if I only worked with two other people on the entire thing, if we created five 10 second segements each, that would equate to a two and a half minute film to hand in.

Some inspiration:

http://www.postsecret.com/

And I leave you with a screenshot of the fruits of about an hour's work on Maya achieved (I've attempted to make something in order for a little test sequence I'm planning...):

[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

Barista Work: Animatic

It's been a while blog, I've been busy neglecting you and half starting and not finishing everything else...

So, here's an updated version of the Barista Animatic, the first minute and a half is by Alex and the rest is by me...


Due to techincal problems and compatability issues, only me and Alex are going to be working on the final film, we're definitley animating up to the end of the animatic and anything after that will be a bonus! No more animatic we're heading straight into animating next!

Tomorrow, with the aide of Alex's girlfriend and armed with P2 cameras, we're roadtripping to some fancy coffee place Alex has got in contact with to shoot some refererence footage for the opening coffee-making sequence, so I'll be uploading some pictures of that soon :)

I'm currently working on pre-production like a boss, after my fairly successful pitch (I feel it went well... considering I didn't have a practice and Derek & Kathy hadn't heard anything about my change of idea...) things are coming together fairly quickly and easily.

Also going to be doing our second shoot for Cinematography tonight (our first was fairly successful, but there are a couple we need to reshoot). I'm also going to take my "monkey" camera and take pictures and do some interviews for our "behind the scenes" kind-of-thing we have to do to accompany it, as well as perform my role as shot keeper (or as Frankie says, 'shop keeper'), so that'll be up on here soon too.

Pre-Production: Sketchbook

Apologies for the post spamming today, but I was waiting for this to upload before I started my other two posts, aaaaand it only just finished. Here's a .pdf of all my sketchbook work for this project, so far:

Alice PrePro Sketch Book

Pre-Production: Characters

Now this one has been annoying. Like a cool whiz kid I successfully added hyperlinks to all of the Character names with links to a piece of the music they're famous for. They all worked fine when I exported the .pdf (I felt GCSE I.T. had actually taught me something useful...) but when I tried to upload it to Scribd, they didn't work and the typeface they were written in didn't work either. SO, to hear some of their music, click on the text before the picture.




Joseph Goebbels:

Lale Andersen:

Hans Hotter & Elena Gerhardt:

Igor Stravinsky & Paul Hindemith:

Marlene Dietrich:

Charlie & His Orchestra:

Pre-Production: Inspiring Artwork.

So, had my internet been faster then I would've uploaded these last night...

A small section of some of my research, looking at watercolour artists and other artworks to inpsire me:
inspiringartworks
The artists, in order, are: Paul Cezanne, John Constable, William Blake, Whistler, Milford Zornes, Elliot O'Hara, J.W.S. Cox, Ernst Ludwig Kirschner, Joh Heartfield, George Grosz, Gustaf Tenggren, Mary Blair and Barney Tobey.

Barista Work: The League

My latest work for the Barista project... I had to go home this weekend, and without access to a computer with Animate I suggested to Alex that I get designing some characters for one of the most important scenes... where Tim, the coffee-making Hero, ends up face to face with his exes. 16 of them. So, I designed 16 exes.

Being obsessed with Scott Pilgrim it was awesome to be able to create a "league" of "evil" exes for Tim to face...

Before I left for home I found a hairstyle website and saved what I thought were the most appropriate hairstyles, (the only instruction Alex gave me was for them to "be hot"), which I got Alex to approve before I went:


Rough Doodles:




Final Designs, some look more similar to the photographs than others:

Pre-Production Inspiration/Research

Somehow, when Kathy told us to research Character Design, I don't think she would've expected this to pop up in what the website it's from calls "100 inspiring character designs".

However I did find an awesome blog that interviews different character/pre-production designers and showcases their work: http://characterdesign.blogspot.com/
It has quite a variety of different artists/animators on there, and the videos/pictures are really interesting, especially when you come across something you know and love. I especially enjoyed stumbling on the interview with Carlos Grangel who talked about his methods and designs for characters in The Corpse Bride (YAY BURTON!):



I recommend people check it out, it's a really cool website.

Workwise for this project so far I have been doing lots of research, mainly gathering images of wartime Berlin, watercolour artists, German wartime artists, concept art, clothing studies aaaand lots of doodles/mindmapping/scribbles.


I'm still a little hesitant to put things up on my blog at the moment, because things really are still in the rough stage, perhaps when I have more solid ideas and style I'll be a little braver.

Back in the Saddle.

So, after what was, due to lots of personal reasons, a fantastically crap Christmas break, I'm back at Uni, not feeling very refreshed, but keen to get on with anything.

This term we have to help the 3rd Years with their projects, I'm working on Alex Jolliffe's project, Barista.

My job is to animate a pigeon flying through the opening shot of a city which Alex has already been working on (and I helped cut out a few of the buildings!):

Untitled from Joleaf on Vimeo.

Just a little bird-y test to get back into things:


Alex thought I'd be good at the pigeon after seeing my experimental video :) when I've finished the opening scene I'll then move on and help with the character animation. To do this I'll be using Animate (once I learn a bit more about how it all works of course...) I downloaded my own copy since it's a better version of Flash, which I've enjoyed using for previous projects, despite its limitations (and crash count...!). I love the 2D vector style it can produce.

Also for this term I've decided to do the Pre-Production Project, although I still really want to learn how to Composite (not compost...) so I'm still going to try and attend as many Post lectures as possible.

I feel like the Pre-Production project will be a lot more interesting for me personally thanks to the cards I picked (in our seminar, Derek got us to pick 4 cards, one for setting/character/type of show/style). Originally the four I ended up with completely clashed with each other:

Setting: World War II Berlin
Character: Astral Body
Style: Hokusai (which I had no idea what it was!)
Show: Pre-School Children's Show.

I mean really, teaching pre-schoolers about WW2 Berlin with crazy spirits in an ancient Japanese art story style? I can't see myself being able to achieve that. Hats off to anyone else who can.

I swapped Hokusai (which I would epically fail at attempting) and got Watercolour, and swapped Pre-School to Music show. Again a little bit incensitive WW2 Berlin/Astral Body to music, but far more managable.
I'm also alot more excited about this project because A. I've actually visited Berlin when I was on my foundation course, so it feels a bit more personal and I can relate to it more, and B. The Second World War interested me already, so I feel I know a bit about it already and won't mind putting in the time it's going to take to do the research and C. I get to splash paint around (that last one was a joke - I suck at watercolours but at least I feel I'll actually be able to achieve the style).

Despite this picture suggesting otherwise, Berlin is in fact a very interesting place:









(gosh my hair was short).

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.

11 Second Club, Concept/Storyboard/Reference

Voice One: "You stole it! I..."
Voice Two: "I thought you put it there!"
Voice One: "Why would I put it there?!?"
Voice Two: "Kindness?"
Voice One: "Kindness?! You stole it! He stole it!!"

My initial idea was to have two squirrels arguing over a nut, pretty basic, but also pretty obvious so I'm glad I didn't use that idea (also I'd've had to try and animate squirrels, despite watching lots of Disney films throughout my youth, I doubt I'd probably fail epically). This idea arrived almost instantaneously after listening to the voice clip, (a transcript can be found above), which was a minor miracle as this was early Monday morning.


My second idea appeared not long after while we were in the 2D session breaking down the soundclip to begin the start of our dopesheets: An Angel and a Devil (like the two little guys who you always see in films acting as the characters conscience) arguing over a stolen "feeling", the ending, where the Devil would shout "He stole it!" would've panned out to reveal the character who was having a battle with their conscience, and the Angel and Devil had been sat/floating by their shoulders.



After speaking with Derek he raised some problems with my idea (he's good at doing that), in that it wasn't obvious what my characters were arguing over, whereas with the squirrel idea it was too obvious, this wan't obvious at all. He also suggested changing the Devil to the one who says "kindness?" to make it more ironic and add a bit of comedy to it. So, my revised idea is still having an Angel and a Devil arguing, but this time, the Angel is the angry one, because the Devil has stolen his Halo and got it stuck over his horns.




Now having finished the storyboard, I have recorded some reference material (with horrendous acting once again) in order to make a quick animatic this week. I still need to use After Effects to composite the two clips (since I couldn't act for the Angel & Devil at once), but I have the cut that I want to use to emphasise the "kindness" line. Also note my amazing props. Yeeeah.


Aaaand finally (this has been a mammoth update) this is a quick drawing I did in Photoshop to give a (very) rough idea of what the final thing will kind of look like:


(The background picture is from ForsakeWolf at Deviant Art who put this up as a Stock photo so that others can use it for free).

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.