Experimental Production Report

Alice Nightingale Experimental Production Report

11 Second Club, Finished!

finally.

Experimental Endings!

1 lamp,
1 screen,
1 camera,
1 tripod,
3 blocks of wood & a mobile phone,
4 bits of wire,
7 or 8 cereal boxes,
3 nights filming,
1 night compositing
and 138 cut-out shapes later...

MY EXPERIMENTAL IS FINISHED:

The end is in sight...

All the photographs for the experimental are complete, going to stick them all in After Effects tonight, 80% of the production report is typed up and the 11 Second Club makes me want to kill myself.

Roughin' it up.

After effectively losing 3 days to work I'm powering on ahead and I'm determined to get things finished. I took some experimental work home and managed to crack on with a fair bit: I sat in the car outside the hotel cutting cardboard rabbits out while the rest of my family helped set up balloons and other party paraphernalia... and starting to write my production report on the train yesterday (I went to Wales and back, Sunday trains are crazy).
My Dad has provided me with some garden wire so I can make something similar to a wire photo holder to hold my carboard animals in place (animation paper is far too flimsy) and I don't want to have my glass frame moving in everyframe (also it'd probably fall over, I don't have a stand for it, so i'm propping it up with massive Diet Coke bottles).

So, this morning, I have finished my rough version of the 11 Second clip. I'm aiming to have a neater rough done by the end of the week.

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 Panic

Well, I was panicking a little bit longer than 11 seconds.
I had no idea about which format I wanted to present my 11 second club clip in, I really wanted to try and hand draw it with my own lightbox, which I left at home this term *FAIL*. Luckily I have a very lovely mother who has posted it to me at the grand expense of £11 (though it was considerably cheaper than buying another lightbox), but it is too heavy for first class so should arrive either tomorrow or Tuesday.
Worrying that this weekend would be a complete waste of time if I didn't start animating (there are 15 days left until our deadlines for the 11 Second Club AND the Experimental) I headed to the studio on Saturday to start animating. But pretty much half an hour into animating (and only managing to produce 7 very rough frames) panic got the better of me. I realised that there is no way I can hand-draw it all to the correct time scale, I need so much more practice on timing before I can sit and know exactly how many frames each movement should be (especially when you are adding lots of secondary movement like I am [wings]).
Behold Saturday's failure:


I do not want to have to sacrifice my Experimental project for the sake of hand-drawing it all when I now realise (after some kind words of encouragement from my ever-so-patient boyfriend) that I can do it in Flash to the same standard, but quicker, and can clean it up far more easily (or, as he pointed out, I could always print out my rough Flash work and draw over the top).
I'm not really happy doing it in Flash, having used it for the practice pieces we did before we started making the actual thing, but I'm no where near confident enough to be able to do it in 3D and I know that I simply haven't got time to produce the final image I have in my head by hand. Yes we have 15 days, but I have to go home next weekend to celebrate my Grandad's 90th birthday, which is something my family have been planning for a couple of months and I really cannot afford to miss, so realistically I have 12. AND I still have to do my experimental project, which thankfully, has been alot easier to plan after dopesheeting it all and working out the exact number of photographs I need to take. I still need to make all my card animals for it, but once my lightbox arrives I'll use it to help me with that project.



However, after my initial panicking yesterday, I'm feeling alot more confident today and have already managed to do about half of the actual clip in rough in just a few hours. Yes, it is rough, but once I get the movement sorted I can go over it to a higher standard. Yesterday was not a total loss, I used the lightbox to draw outlines for one sequence animal shadows and my friend Liz came round (partly to cheer me up) and also to be my hand model for the Experimental which has begun :)

EDIT, I forgot that I drew out all the mouth shapes for practice the other day:

I used last year's lip-sync project and my housemate's compact mirror to help.