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.



_____________________________________________

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...

____________________________________________

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!

Concept Art [1]

So this week has mainly consisted of trying to transform my scribbly doodles into [hopefully] nice pieces of concept work.

First up, is the bacon:





Birds:





Toilets:





I've also been spending a lot of time trying to come up with a logo and playing around with different typefaces, I know some people think it's silly to spend hours agonising over a typeface, but I feel that having the wrong font can break a project, or misrepresent it entirely.



I asked the good people of facebook to pick their favourites, and now it's just down to these two, (currently B is in the lead, but [ironically] I'm in love with the 'love' font in A). So, you could help by voting for your favourite in the comments...

Animation Test [1]

Probably the first of many...

Inspired by this drawing:


Combined the drawing with a bird cycle I animated roughly for practice last year.

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...):