We had a quick look at some initial artists and adverts that we were interested in as a starting point. The first artist that my partner showed me was Brittney Lee, who is a designer and animator that works with paper. I liked how crisp and clean the shapes were, as well as the bright colours that were used.
Brittney Lee
This prompted me to think about Julianna Szabo. The work she makes is mostly 3D sculptures made of just paper, and though we haven't really discussed working in 3D, I think her work is beautifully made. She has also made a few 2D paper cut animations which we could always use as a reference or inspiration.
Julianna Szabo
We both really liked the simplicity of this Kinder Chocolate Advert, and it has the general 'feel' to it that we're hoping for. It's child friendly, but also appeals to mother. We also liked how the text was used to highlight key features and pieces of information, and is something we might consider with our own work.
Kinder Chocolate Advert
Personally, I think this Ben and Jerry's advert is very accurate in terms of the style I'd like to capture with our animation. I like how the cows are constructed and how they move, almost like a paper puppet. The style is also consistent throughout the characters and the set; It's simplistic but works very well. I like that even though it is made up of 2D elements, but still has depth, which is something I'd like to recreate.
Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream Advert
At this moment we seem to have similar ideas in terms of what we want to create ourselves, but we still have a lot to discuss, and a lot of testing to do. We are going to try and carry out further research and make up some mood boards so we can gain a better understanding of where we both stand.
In our last Responsive session, we made a start at finding collaboration partners who were interested in the same competition briefs. There were only two people who was interested in the A2 Milk Company brief, and they seemed to be nice people who had a similar work ethic.
Unfortunately one of the group members has decided against the brief and has found a new group that is more suitable for her, so now we have a group of two. Which is fine.
Today I met up with my partner and we discussed the brief further. My initial idea coming into this particular brief would be to create an info-graphic style animation, not only because I thought this would meet the brief's requirements, but it is also something I had wanted to experiment with. Having researched into the company's past advertisements we found that they had already produced an info-graphic and thought it would be best to do something new and different. I pointed out that I was looking for an idea that was quite simple and wouldn't require too much intricate animating, especially as there was only two of us and we both have other deadlines to meet. We both agreed would be a good idea.
A2 Milk Infographic - A Year In Numbers
What is A2 Milk?
We constructed further research into what A2 Milk was so we could then better inform an audience with our own work. We found that the cows are NOT genetically modified to produce the milk without A1 proteins, and is in fact all natural.
We then brainstormed ideas on how we could make the animation appealing to the target audience (Women with children, and those with a perceived milk intolerance) and how the story-line could help do this, yet still be informative. We opted to base the story on Jack and the Beanstalk, but twist it so that Jack receives an A2 Milk Cow from the top of the beanstalk rather than a golden egg/goose. We thought by portraying the information in the form of a story this would appeal to mothers with children, but also be visually pleasing and entertaining to reach out to those who just don't agree with regular milk.
We also discussed what style we wanted the animation to be in, and decided that paper cutting was a nice idea. Having not done much of this before I was up for experimenting with it, especially as I would like to take a break from digital. By making characters into paper puppets we thought this might be easier on the both of us, especially as my partner doesn't have much experience with animation. Though, we will have to experiment with how we are going to get them to stand up-right, but we could always lay the paper flat as an alternative.
The script and story line was also discussed, and at the moment we have a rough idea of how it is going to go. This will be refined at a later date so we can test the length of the animation to make sure it is suitable, and from there we shall be able to make up storyboards.
Our next steps would be to begin designing. Because my partner is currently specializing in character design, I was more than happy to allow him to take control of that. I am going to tackle set design, and designing some of the props and we are going to report back with our progress next Friday.
I'm really pleased with our progress so far, and I'm happy that we both have similar ideas about what we want to do. I'm also happy that my partner is interested in trying out animation, as this means there will be less stress on me to complete it on my own. There's still the question of how compatible we are in terms of style, but I have seen some of his past work - which I actually am really fond of - and I think it wouldn't be too hard to adjust if needed, especially as the medium is going to be the same, and we are in charge of different elements. We will be able to find out for certain when we do some paper tests in one of our next sessions.
Today we got together to have a look at all the stories we had managed to collect, and from our selection we picked out three that we thought were interesting yet long enough to meet at least the minimum required length. We then refined the stories slightly to put together a script. We didn't want to change their words too much, but in some cases it was necessary to re-work because of lack of detail or direction.
Initial Script/Selected Stories
My Collected Stories (Left) and Ideas For Visuals (Right)
Our next step is to begin to sketch out our individual ideas concerning characters and setting. We have said that we should all go away and draw what we visualise when we read through our initial script and proposed animation ideas, and then from these drawings we can create a refined/final design. We want the style to be consistent throughout so when we get together with our drawings on Friday, we shall assign one person to work on characters, whilst the others shall focus on other pre-production elements such as storyboarding.
I'm very happy with out progress today, and I think the stories we have selected have potential to be really interesting. I also like that we have a range of different responses from different people and questions, yet they are all quite light-hearted which will hopefully result in quite a happy, quirky animation. I am also really pleased that we are still seeing eye-to-eye on what we want the animation to contain/look like.
The only thing I had left to do was to do the sound design for my loop. I wasn't looking to have any music in the background as I thought this would be more awkward to loop smoothly. Instead I looked towards recording my own sound effects and character noises. I purposefully didn't create any dialogue so I could record me and my sister making odd noises and laughing, which is just what I did.
Audio Test One
Audio Test Two
I had two separate laughing tracks, and at first I was unsure of which I wanted to go with. In the end I opted for the second as it seemed less "full-on" and was instead more "giggly", which I felt suited the animation better, especially as the characters mouths weren't fully open.
Final LoopdeLoop Submission
I actually had a lot of fun recording the sounds for my animation. At first I was hoping to look for some royalty free game noises and the sound of being hit with a controller, but I found this time around it was much easier to create the sounds myself. For the gun shot sounds, I recorded myself making the noises that I thought the gun should sound like, then increased the speed of the sound clips so that they were more high-pitched. I did the opposite for when the character gets shot (decreased the speed for a lower pitch). For the sound of being hit by a controller, I simply let my sister hit me in the leg with one, considering she had let me lightly strangle her for a video reference; it seemed only fair.
My LoopdeLoop is now submitted and I am awaiting confirmation on whether it meets the requirements to be featured on the website. I'm really happy with how it has turned out actually, much more than my first submission. I think this entry is more fitting for the theme and it loops much smoother than my first attempt. I also think it's a nice touch that I did all the sound recording myself (with the help from my tremendous voice actress, Maressa) as it gives it more of a sentimental feeling considering it was based on the relationship I have with my sister.
I did find that I didn't enjoy digitially drawing the animation frames this time around though. I found myself trying to cut corners by selecting sections that stayed the same and shifting them, rather than drawing them out, because I felt it was the only way I could achieve consistency, especially because I was having to redraw the same lines over and over because I wasn't happy with how they sat. I still really enjoyed the colouring and the general designing of the piece, but I think it might be a good idea to give animating digitally a rest for a while and resort back to traditional. I feel much more comfortable and confident with my line making on paper and I think this would benefit my animating. I'm not going to completely leave digital as I believe I am able to produce some nice work in this way, and I would also like to continue to practice to try to overcome my issues, just not now.
Emma has also suggested to me to try and use the pen tool to try to animate with rather than just the brush tool, as you can create some smooth shapes easily. I personally don't use the pen tool often as I find it a bit awkward to use, but I shall definitely bare this in mind for next time and give it another try.
As an initial test/experiment with watercolour, I drew some fruit. I made sure not to be too precious with the line work, which was created with a very thin fine liner. I purposefully made some of the lines quite wobbly to give the illustrations more character.
When it came to adding the colour, I made sure to try a number of different styles but again not being to precious about it; after all, the colour is only going to be implemented when we are focusing on the child's perspective. I tried blending colours (mango), as well as just using block colour. With some of the fruits I also made it obvious that the colour wasn't sticking to the inside of the lines, both because of an artistic decision/style choice, and because I thought this would reflect how a young child may draw or paint. When I had drawn multiple subjects (for example the blueberries), I did one 'funky' brush stroke over a handful of them, to colour them all at once rather than focusing on them individually.
I'm really pleased with my tests, especially because they were so quick and easy to do, yet look quite effective. Others also seem to be pleased with what I have done.
This morning, Me and Oscar (sadly Wing could not join us) sat down to have a look at the mood boards we had put together that considered potential styles for our animation, and we seem to have a similar idea about the aesthetic of the piece. We're aiming for simplistic line-work with not a great deal of detail (to make it easier for ourselves to animate), that is not particularly precise but instead is quite naive and playful.
My Mood board
We also briefly discussed the colour aspect of the animation. We don't particularly want to animate water colour, but want to implement the water colour style digitally. Alternatively, we are thinking about having traditional watercolour backgrounds. Another thought we had was about whether we wanted the colour to be on the inside of the line work or surrounding it. We can't say for certain at this stage, but for the time being we are going to do a few material tests, and experiment with different photoshop brushes and programs to see what kind of watercolour effects we can create. We shall start talking visuals when we have collected responses to our questionnaire, which we refined in our previous meeting.
Thought of You - Ryan Woodward
I also showed Oscar "Thought of You" by Ryan Woodward. We had both seen it before, but I pointed it out because of the background choice. We're not wanting to have a plain white background, but instead a subtly textured/coloured one, and I thought this was a good example. I like how there is a subtle highlight on the ground to give the illusion of a surface.
I also brought this animation to our attentions because of how the woman in the piece materialises out of nothing and how she deconstructs. It was something we had briefly discussed yesterday, and was something we were considering doing with some of our visuals to transition from one interviewee to the next.
Last week we were presented with the opportunity to show off our work and receive feedback. We were asked to make boards of our responsive work so far and bring them to the session, so we could lay them out amongst the work of both Animators and Illustrators and take a look at what we had all been up to, and how we had been tackling briefs.
Art Boards
It was definitely a useful session (that I would have appreciated a lot more had I not felt like death warmed up) as I have received some nice feedback about my work, and I now have a better understanding of what my final art boards for submission could look like. I think I was able to present my work neatly, but my future boards would definitely benefit from a few sentences that explain what is going on and what the briefs were asking from me.
Feedback
For any future peer review sessions we may have I think it would also be beneficial for me to try bring along a laptop so I can show off my animations too. I think my work doesn't have the same appeal as a still image, which is all I could feature on my boards.
Today we all sat down to discuss the stories we had been able to collect over the weekend about potential white lies we were told as a child. I, personally, had been able to get quite a few stories that I had been told about but nothing that was necessarily substantial enough to animate as such. The only ones that were lengthy were too long and not suitable for what we wanted to do (a collection of different stories).
Wing's Research With Notes
Wing seemed to have gone beyond expectations, and had put together a handful of questions that she asked different family members, though the answers she got were quite short and not long enough to create a narrative from. From Wing's sheet and further discussion of our ideas, we decided on asking parents/interviewees two questions (How did you explain to your children that a family member/pet had passed away, and how did you explain to your children that they would be having a new sibling?). From the responses we get we are going to pick out our favourite stories which we shall build upon.
Meeting Notes
In our discussion we also revised the technique we are wanting to use. At the moment we are leaning towards traditional animation, to create simple, animated line drawings, and having splashes of colour to show the children's perspectives. We talked about keeping the line drawing consistent throughout the piece, but experiment with the way that colour is implemented to show the difference between the children's views as the differentiation between the parents will be apparent in the dialogue and voices.
In terms of visuals and what it is exactly that we are going to animate we are still unsure. For now we are just going to create mood boards of styles that we like and could consider working in, as well as example animations to take inspiration from. Once we have narrowed down our story and worked towards a final narrative (which is scheduled to be the end of next week at the latest) we shall be able to make a start on visuals and storyboards.
We are going to sit down in tomorrows session and look at the mood boards we are each going to be making tonight.
I have been assigned as being the organiser of the group, which I am chuffed with as I am bit of an organisational nut. Taking on my new role, I thought to make a schedule for us all to follow, so I sat down with my fellow workers to get one put together on Excel, which I haven't used since high school. Talk about blast from the past.
Schedule in Progress
To start I laid out all of the weeks we have to work on the project and outlined the important dates and critiques. We decided it would be best to initially plan up to our first crit and plan out the remaining weeks after we have received feedback and assigned each other with roles and jobs. We have left the remaining spaces blank and printed out our sheet so we can write on to it with notes and jobs we need to do as appropriate. I may create a revised schedule when we get further into the project.
As part of our Applied Animation module, we have been asked to work in groups to produce an animated documentary that ties into one of four themes; Mental Health, The Environment, Sport or Family. Immediately family stood out to me, as I am very much family orientated and they are a massive inspiration/influence. I also thought this would be the easiest theme for me to generate ideas for as I have a lot of memories - both fond and unhappy - with my family and have always liked the idea of incorporating some of these into animations.
To start off today's studio session, we took it in turns to voice our opinions on what themes we wanted to look at and in what media, from here we were able to form suitable work groups. I have been paired with Oscar and Wing, and I couldn't be happier with my team. We all seem to have a good range of skills and strengths in different areas, so assigning tasks seems as though it is going to be relatively straight-forward, which will definitely make work flow a lot better. We have also been able to sit down and develop a pretty solid initial idea.
Notes From Our First Brainstorm Session
We are thinking of producing an animation that deals with how different family members perceive events. We have had many different variations/ideas that sit under this main idea, but the one that stands out the most is a child's account of an event compared to their parent's, or a document of how a parent may twist the truth to help explain something that might be hard on the child, for example death of a pet or family member. We are also wanting to use a variety of different media to complete the animation, which I think will be very fitting to show the contrast between the different perspectives/the difference between reality and imagination. I think this is also going to be a good opportunity to experiment with styles and potentially expand my skill set.
When I heard that Applied Animation was going to be another collaboration I was initially quite worried but now I'm actually excited to get working, and see whether I have a better experience this time around compared to my last collaboration and whether I can improve on some of the issues I first encountered (for example, lack of communication, taking over some jobs that were initially intended for my partner). I definitely think it will be a challenge to make our different art styles work, but my partners seem to be very dedicated people so I'm not at all worried.
In order to make my animation loop, I needed to create a little insert to break up the different scenes. I wanted the screen to say "*so much time* later..." to indicate the transition between fighting and getting along nicely, as well as how quickly this transition can take place.
I opted for a shade of blue/teal that was featured in the rug in the living room so that the insert fit well with the general aesthetic of the animation. The text I chose was also the font that was used to indicate the players' scores/HP in the game so that there was further consistency. As much as I liked the insert, I just thought it was lacking somehow, so I opened up the layers in After Effects and made the text fade in to make it more interesting and less static.
Five Minutes Later Insert
The only thing left to animate was my first scene where the sisters are happily playing their game. The scene didn't require a great deal of movement as they were only pressing buttons on their controllers so I was able to complete this scene relatively quickly. There wasn't even a great deal of colouring to do, as by copying the first coloured frame over to the next there wasn't much re-colour, just the area around the thumbs and the odd upper-body movement.
Happily Playing Game Scene
It wasn't until I'd finished animating that I realised I had made a mistake that I couldn't rectify. I realised I hadn't set the frame rate at the beginning of my work session and actually ended up animating at 30fps. It wasn't a massive deal breaker, and it was because the movements were quite subtle that I didn't realise that I was working at the wrong frame rate. It was a bit awkward for me working out the timings of the upper-body movements because of the fact I was oblivious to my mistake, but I think I was able to do a decent job in the end. The only issue now is that my clips are at different frame rates, so I shall have to make sure I interpret the footage to have to correct FPS when it comes to putting them altogether. I shall also have to make sure to check in future, as my issues could have easily been avoided if I had done so.
The scene I decided to move onto next was the fighting/arguing scene. I sat down with my sister and talked with her about what she thought we should do to express our disagreements, considering I didn't want to have any speech, as I'm not prepared at this moment in time to try and animate lip syncs. We managed to get a few ideas (waving our arms around at each other, slaps, fighting) but the one that stood out the most was strangling each other.
In order to try and make my animated movements as realistic/fluid as possible, I recorded a live action video of us attacking each other, which I have to say was a lot of fun.
LAV of Me and Maressa 'Fighting'
Animating the Fight Scene
The live action video was a massive help for me when it came to animating this scene, and I think I've done a good job at creating a realistic fight between these two characters. I particularly like the addition of the shadows as well as the glow from the TV screen, it is a subtle addition, but again I think it has improved the aesthetic of the piece and actually makes it feel as though they are sat in front of their game.
I would have liked to change the movement of the hair in the last couple of frames, just as it seems a little bit repetitive but I think for now I shall leave it be. I will see how the whole animation looks when I get it finished and put together, and from there I shall see if I want to make the changes, but I don't want to spend too much time trying to correct this as I have other projects that I need to be getting on with such as my essay. I also don't have much time left for this deadline, and I think it would be silly spending too much time on one detail such as the hair when I still have other scenes and post-production to get finished so I can submit my entry.
I thought animating my game would be relatively straight-forward, and it was to a certain extent but I had restarted my progress a couple of times. I found that when I was making the army men move, the motion paths that they followed started off to be very fluid and smooth, but about 5 seconds into animating the motion paths that I created were no longer curved, instead were straight and the movements seemed jagged. At first I thought I had simply changed something by mistake but couldn't figure out what it was, and because I hadn't done a great deal of work, simply decided to start again. At first the problem seemed to have corrected itself, but I found it started to do it again after a certain amount of time. Rather than start again this time, I googled my problem (which in hindsight is what I should have done the first time) and soon discovered that the settings for the curve were different on some keyframes. Rather than my keyframe interpolation being set to "Continuous/Auto Bezier" as they usually were, they were set to "Linear", which is why they were now moving in straight lines. It was a problem that I had not come across before but it was an easy fix, and I was able to get the scene done relatively quickly.
Game Scene
Rather than have layers upon layers for the different bullets that the army men were shooting, I decided to have just two be shot at any given time, and I simply set keyframes for those layer's opacity levels so you couldn't see the transition between each shot.
I also experimented with different effects in this scene. I wanted the TV to glow to show the brightness of the screen, so I added an effect to a null layer I created and hid behind the TV screen. I then made it large enough so that the light shone past the edge of the television and edited the values so that it wasn't as bold, yet instead was a subtle glow. I then animated the effect growing and shrinking for one cycle, then made this sequence loop for the duration of the animation. This was a quick and easy addition, but I think it has greatly improved the scene.
Now that character and environmental design had been taken care of, I decided it would be best to design the game that the two sisters were going to play. I had previously already opted for a console/video game over a board game, as this was more realistic for our characters and I thought a board game would be more fiddly to animate considering the pieces needed for a board game.
I began to think of simple 2D games that I would be able to take inspiration from. My initial thoughts were games such as Tetris, Space Invaders and Pong, as these would be quite simple to animate in After Effects and I could still make them look good. I was unsure about whether to go with one of these ideas, so I carried out further research into simplistic games, when I remembered about a game we used to play together on the Wii. The game involved tanks that you controlled, and in order to win you had to destroy the enemy tanks before they shot you. I didn't go with this idea, but it did inspire me to look at 2D shooter games, and that's when I found CSPSP which heavily inspired my game's design.
Wii Play - Tank Game
CSPSP
I started off by drawing the TV and it's stand, and I made sure to do so in a colour palette that was similar to my first drawing. I then drew all the different components of the game on separate layers so I could import them into After Effects and animate them individually at a later date.
As I had my narrative sorted, my next step was to tackle character design. I didn't want the characters to be too realistic but I did want them to resemble me and my sister considering I was basing the loop on our experiences. I started drawing simplistic characters that would be 'easy' to animate, and I know it's usually better to explore your options before you settle on an idea, but I was hooked with my first design and thought it would work really well.
Characters Based on Me (Left) and my Sister Maressa (Right)
As I was wanting to work digitally, I sketched out the characters in Photoshop then began designing a scene around them. This didn't take me too long to do as I was wanting the space to resemble my house. I opted for the living room rather than my room (where we would usually spend most of our time) as I figured this would be a more ideal space for animating my characters in.
Initial Environment
I think the environment works really well. The colour palette isn't too drastic and isn't harsh on the eyes, and it also feels as though the characters belong. I did give the features in the space more detail which I refrained from doing so with the characters as it would be more complex to animate, but I think this looks fine. It actually brings the characters out from the background slightly with them being more block colour than their surroundings which is nice.
As I have four sisters, I thought the best way to make a strong narrative or character design would be to look back at my own memories and photographs that I have, and combine this with what other people will be able to relate to.
I thought this would be really easy to do considering I've had 18 years of memories and photographs to use as inspiration, but now I have actually have to think of them, I can't seem to recall anything other than playing games and arguing 24/7. Which, come to think of it, will be representative of a lot of sisters relationships.
Brainstorming
I thought about it long and hard but I had my mind set on the idea of two sisters playing games together. It's all I've been doing when I've been going home to see my sister so thought it would be quite fitting a nice to work on while I'm away. I also think this would be quite an easy narrative to loop; I would start the animation with the two characters laughing and playing games, then "five minutes later" have them arguing and screaming at each other, which pretty much sums up my relationship with Maressa.
