Animation Skills: 21st - 27th November 2016: Surprise Main Animation Week

This week, I really knuckled down to work on my animation. I had everything set up and ready to go so I just got on with it. I worked on each shot in a new document in order to make it feel more manageable and also, in the case of any file corruption, at least I wouldn't lose everything. 

When working on the first shot. I mainly just tried to focus on each feature at a time as I had set up each part of the face into a new graphic symbol within Adobe Animate. I went through with the mouth first as the sigh was the main character action in this shot, so it would be best for me to centre the rest of the movement around that.

The first shot was very focused on the main character and his mood. I wanted to try and communicate the idea of his character very quickly. I felt that the sigh and how he is dressed all shows he is a very tired man coming home from a hard day at work. I wanted to really show it on his face with how tired he was. 

Before starting the second shot, I wanted to have my background finished so that I could have a very clear idea of how it was going to be setup. I knew that I could draw one side of the street with the perspective curving around so that I could show the way down the street, like a fish eye lens. This would then let me use the same background for the second shot as well, as it was a different angle. I am not confident with creating background but I knew that this would be quite out of focus so I could make it rather simplistic. I used vector shapes within photoshop and curved them to the guide lines that I had created to help with getting a consistent perspective. I am quite proud of this background, though I know it is quite simple and could use more detail if it was going to be utilised more. 

I could then move onto shot 2. This one was quite quick to complete since it was only a basic walking motion on a mid shot so I only had to animate the bounce and swaying of the man. I did this using tweens in Adobe Animate. Inside these though, I did make sure to add more facial expressions and a bit of subtle head turning to add some more visual interest. There is also some movement in his jacket and tie to add secondary action. 
I went straight into the 5th shot after this one because they were the shots all using the same character model. I am very happy with the emotion that I have managed to capture in the ending shot. From surprise to frustration to a kind of sad smile. A very subtle effect that I added to this end scene was a darkening tint to the background. I did this so that the road would slowly become darker to make the focus much more on the character. This is done slowly and subtly enough that it is hardly noticeable but it just adds a bit more visual direction to him over anything else in frame. 

Shot 4 was the most complex after this because it involved all new elements. I knew that I wouldn't be able to draw all of the people inside so I made them all into silhouettes. This let me duplicate and edit them slightly to fill out the room. I then went through and added some basic tweens to them to make the room feel more alive. Moving from that into shot 3 was hard because I hate drawing hands, never mind animating them. I used my own hand as a reference for the first and last frames and then drew lots of inbetweens to smooth out and slow down the transition. I then put this frame by frame animation inside a graphic symbol to allow me to move the entire arm forward towards the door. 

The door was just a flat layer but I created a subtle 3D effect to it by adding a tapered version of it and then tweening into it. I also moved the door nob over as this happens to reinforce the effect. I am actually really happy with the way this turned out as it wasn't something I was originally planning on doing, the idea just popped into my head as I was animating the hand. This is another little technique that I learnt from the YouTuber, Draw With Jazza. About a year or two ago, he made a video on how to do very basic fake 3D effects within Flash by only using symbols and tweens. This is something that I have never actually done myself because I've never felt like I needed to but I am glad that I did it in this because I am really happy with the result. Obviously this is an incredibly basic method of making a 3D illusion and if I were to actually do anything more substantial I would have to use another program actually meant for 3D.

Once all the shots were finished and added into Premiere, I added the rain effects. To do this I just found some free rain VFX assets and set the blend mode to screen to take out the black. I went through each layer of these element and added blurs and scaling to them in order to make them feel more a part of the scene. 

This was a very busy week for this module to create this animation but I am incredibly proud of what I have made in such a short space of time. I feel that, since the last time I used this symbol method of animating, I have improved a lot and so I feel that this is quite a strong and consistent little animation. If I had had more time, I would have done more frame by frame elements instead of tweening as I think this can make it look rather flat. My least favourite moment is shot 4 because of the way the room is filled. If I did have more time, I would have loved to have animated the people in the room in much more detail and with more natural motion. This would really help to bring the room into the animation. On the flip side of this, I think, as it is, it helps to bring the focus onto the main character. 

Visual Language: 21st - 27th November 2016

When starting on the character design task, I was a bit unsure of what to do. Using the scenery of the train as inspiration, I was trying to think of a type of character I could create from that. I saw the typical businessmen kind of people who commute and thought of doing something like that.

I messed around with basic geometric shapes to try and communicate this idea. I was going for creating a salesman that was overly enthusiastic. Trying to communicate this wasn't really working for me. I didn't feel very good about any of these ideas or shapes. None of them really stood out to me. 

Using this method of creating shapes to influence the characters design is a very common thing throughout animation and film. By creating a character that resembles a certain shape, you can instil certain feelings and judgements about them. This video covers this topic in quite an interesting way. https://youtu.be/lLQJiEpCLQE The key ideas from this are that if there are lots of circles in the character, it means they are generally nicer and more lovable as they create a soft shape. The flip side to this is that the sharper the angles used, the more dangerous and cruel they usually are. These principles influence how we see a character and what we think about the type of person they are, so I am trying to keep this in mind through the process. 

I didn't do all that much more on my character design stuff this week as I was really crunching on completing my animation skills 15 second animation. I think that I need to come up with a new and more interesting idea for a character because I am really not feeling enthusiastic about this at all. I need something that will give me more to play with with more interesting and with more room for changes and individuality. 



CHARACTER DESIGN USING SHAPES https://youtu.be/lLQJiEpCLQE

Animation Skills: 14th - 20th November 2016: Surprise Animatic and Rigging

This week was mainly taken up by MAF, but I did manage to get a bit of my animation done.

On the Monday, I managed to assemble my animatic. I cropped the frames straight from my storyboard and put them into Premiere. It was very helpful to finally have the frames timed up. This really let me get an idea of the pacing and it actually fluctuated more than I anticipated. I extended the final shot by more than I thought I would but it just felt much better. I think after later adding the sound effects, it really helped to capture the mood and atmosphere I was wanting. I went to the sound studio to record voices and other vocal sound effects. I first recorded lots of exasperated sighs and then shocked sounds. I then asked about 10 different people to all come and be recorded shouting 'surprise', 'happy birthday' and some cheers and woos. I'm very happy with the result. I feel that it really does help to fill out the room. It was also very fun to do, I really enjoyed the recording session and the editing of it. I intend to use the sound booth many more times in future.

After these sounds were added, I again made more tweaks to the timing. The voices made some shots just not feel quite right. The shot looking in at the party was shortened a lot since I wanted to really focus on the mans reaction. It also makes it more of a surprise to the audience but helps to reinforce the character because of how much it means to him.

After completing the animatic on the Monday, I didn't get any chance to do any more until the Friday. On Friday, I started working on the first shot. I had to start by creating the car. I did this with lots of vector shapes. I made this car so that the layers would allow me to easily place the man inside and also blur the elements further back to add depth of field later. The windows were all done using an alpha layer to make them slightly transparent. I can then tween animate the transparency in order to sell the effect of the camera movement later. 

At the weekend, I finally started on the character. I made him using lots of symbols. So I made the top of the head one symbol and the jaw another. This allows me to then animate them separately when he opens his mouth. I also drew quite a few angles of the head to let me simply pick one out when needed. This will make the actual animation process much easier to manage and much more efficient. This has set me up to be able to jump straight into animation and get through it at a reasonable pace. 

This is a technique I learnt and developed from an animator called Josiah Brooks on YouTube. This was the main video I learnt from but he makes a range of Adobe tutorials on his channel, Draw With Jazza. I have learnt most of what I know about animation from him. This technique not only allows for flexible and easily editable animation, but also speeds up the process a lot and so I felt that since I didn't have that much time left, this technique would be the best suited for me on this particular project. Also, I haven't attempted this technique in about two years so I felt I would see how I have improved in it since then.

This technique also has a similar look to the show 'Archer'. Archer has this similar near realistic style and the animation isn't redrawn for every single frame. There are a lot of reused elements just like how I will be doing. I think the style works very well because Archer is based around the comedy and the writing. I think that the expressions can look a bit limited and flat but I think that in mine I have given myself more elements to work with in order to give myself more flexibility to get more expressive faces.

Visual Language: 14th - 20th November 2016

Continuing on with my enviroment drawings, I did another in the Leeds station. I went upstairs since this is somewhere that I don't often go because of the platforms my trains usually go to. I sat down at the end of the big pathway and attempted to draw across to the other side of the station. It was very cold here and there were lots of people constantly blocking my view. I didn't spend very long on this because I just wanted to go home. I did, however, later that night, make the main lines much bolder to make the shapes stand out more. 

I did another quick one at my hometown's station. There are no benches here and the only shelter doesn't allow for any interesting composition, so I leant against the fence further down the line. Since it was incredibly cold, I wanted to get this one done very quickly. To aid in this aesthetic, I chose to use a marker instead of a pencil to get more sporadic and expressive lines. I feel that both of these look rather messy because of how my hands couldn't stop shaking. 

After attending Manchester Animation Festival, and seeing Ethel and Ernest, I was in love with the style and use of the backgrounds. This is done in pretty much the same way as I talked about with Treasure Planet, but the 3D backgrounds in Ethel and Ernest have been painstakingly drawn over to achieve the same soft water-colour painted style as the characters. While it is still easy to be able to tell which are 3D rendered backgrounds, this does help them blend with the characters. This technique is used mainly for panning or tracking shots where the background is rather geometric, like buildings and roads. 

Another example is the backgrounds used on the classic Disney film. These backgrounds were all more painted and had a great look and texture. This always makes a great looking contrast between this and the black outlines characters. I like how they will paint a big background that allows them to pan across it as a panorama to create a big scene that can sometime achieve a subtle and simple 3D effect. 

These drawings weren't all as bad as I was expecting. I've never been confident with backgrounds and dynamic angles and compositions but I feel that this task has been somewhat helpful for me in choosing more interesting looking backgrounds. Focusing more on the shapes rather than details will help in creating brand new backgrounds.

Animation Skills: 7th - 13th November 2016: Surprise Storyboarding

This week, unlike the last couple, have been very heavy on the animation skills module. I had already established and developed my idea for the 10 - 15 second animation and so I just had start working on it.

Finishing up and refining the designs that I started last week led me to completing a facial turnaround for my character. I am very happy with the final design I now have. I feel that he is nicely stylised and not quite the normal cartoon shapes I tend to draw. Since the face is such a vital part of a character, and even more so in this short animation as it needs to tell so much in so little time, I am very glad that I've reached a point that I think works well.

I started rough story boarding on sticky notes. I'm very happy with how these turned out as well. I believe that it tells the story very well and once everything is timed up properly with all the voice and sound effects, it should be very clear.
When I translated the rough notes into the final storyboard. I decided to drop a couple of shots. This was done for multiple reasons. The first and main reason was that they simply weren’t essential to communicating the narrative, and second they were cut in order to ease the work flow. There was a shot of the man stepping out of his car while throwing his jacket over his shoulder. I decided this wasn't needed because in the prior shot, I will be making him move to exit, and then in the next he is walking up the drive with his jacket on his shoulder. This easily tells the audience what they need to know. This would also have been quite a complex shot to animate.

A few things I took into account after the last storyboard task, were the point with the amount of detail on the characters. In my humpty dumpty storyboard, this was something that I did with just basic construction skeletons in order to show where they were looking in a very basic manner. With this however, my main focus of this animation was to convey the emotion on the face of my character. So I made sure to actually draw him properly in every frame of the storyboard. While this took longer, it did work much better in communicating the actions and emotions in the piece before I went any further with it. I also tried to reduce the amount of zooms that I used as this was something I recieved a few comments about last time. However there are some points in this animation where I really do feel that zooms are more necessary to convey the surprise to the audience. 

Visual Language: 7th - 13th November 2016

This week I made a start on my environmental drawings. Originally, me and a few others were planning to drive to brimham rocks and draw them since they are very interesting and unusual things. We never got around to going and then also it would simply be just too cold to keep going. After that I was struggling with where to go and where to draw. I had considered drawing the interior of the pub that I work in but I would have felt far too uncomfortable doing that. 

For my research into backgrounds and interesting compositions, I started looking at Treasure Planet. I have always loved this film and it's use of 3D backgrounds with 2D characters. Since they modeled backgrounds in 3D, it allowed them the freedom and flexibility to play around with compositions a bit more, but also to achieve some more interesting and impressive shots even with complex elements within. The style creates a contrast against the linework of the characters which I think is quite appealing. The 3D elements do almost look too smooth because they don't have the slightly choppy and personal feel of the hand-drawn 2D elements.

I eventually decided that, since I commute to and from uni every day, that I could just draw the interior of the train and the train stations. While I did still feel quite uncomfortable drawing with so many people around, at least I didn't know them, so that made it better. 

I made an effort to try and draw 1 drawing per journey home (30 minutes), so it gave me a time limit and stopped me from adding too much detail and instead, focusing on the shapes and composition. I also did a few while waiting at the platforms. I also sat down at the pub in the train station and drew the view of the ticket gates. As I was focusing on the environment, I had to draw what I could see when I could see it since there were so many people blocking my view. When drawing certain areas, I had to wait for a glimpse through the crowds to see what was behind. Because of this, it may be somewhat inaccurate in proportions but believe that I succeeded in making it recognisable in what it is. 

I did this same thing with the train itself. I didn't want to draw the people sat in the chairs so I used the empty chairs as a reference to draw the ones that were obscured from view. Doing these environment drawings hasn't been as bad I was expecting it to be. I get very uncomfortable drawing when people are around but I think that having actually done it, I found it easier to stop worrying about the people around me and just focus on the drawing itself. 

Visual Language: 31st October - 6th November 2016

This week I finished my rocket task. This was difficult for me to finish. I found it incredibly hard to find the motivation to finish all 24 drawings and then the next 12 and storyboard. 

I am proud of my work on the 12 final pieces as I could then refine them into doing something that I actually enjoy doing, therefore creating better work. I do feel that these vector art rockets are much better than any of the other rockets I created. I started messing about with more simplistic vector art using silhouettes and I feel that these worked quite well. I really like the look of these. 

I am always happier with what I can create on computer over anything practical. This is obviously something that I do want to work on but mostly, my proudest work is done on computer. Also work that I simply enjoy doing more, and I think it's very important to enjoy what you do otherwise what is the point? I do need to work more traditionally more often in order to keep building my skills.

Overall, I have to say that I didn't really enjoy this task. I found it incredibly tedious and I just couldn't get motivated to do it. I am happy with some of the later rockets I made but I am still very pleased that we are now moving on from this. I do understand why it was useful and why we did it. It was a tricky exercise that has worked to make me really think about how one word can be interpreted so differently. 

Animation Skills: 31st October - 6th November 2016: Surprise Character Designing

While I didn't get as much done as I would have liked this week, I did manage to make a good start on production of my animation.

First of all I made an Adobe Premiere document and used titles to describe the action and to gauge the timings of the animation. I had used this method before to try to see how long I actually had to play with. Working with time limits like this is never quite as you’d expect. Doing this text animatic made me realise that I didn’t have the time that I thought I did. 15 seconds wasn't as long as I thought when trying to tell a story. This made me make the decision to have a standby shot. The shot where the man is getting out of the car and putting his jacket over his shoulder is one that I decided wasn’t needed but I could still have there if it felt right. If not, I didn’t want this too feel too rushed by shortening all the other shots and everyone will still be able to understand that he has simple walked to his door. This depends on how it feels when I have finished the storyboard.

Before I could do the storyboards, I had to design the character. I wanted to really show the exhaustion on his face. This is a man who has been in a very tiring and stressful job and isn’t happy about it. I showed this by making his eyes always squinting and having bags under them. Only having a maximum of 15 seconds to communicate this idea means that I have to use stereotypical ideas to show who this character is. This is really a basic trait of many animated characters and is done all the time in order to communicate their person.

I looked at quite a few different references for character designing while doing these sketches. I was struggling to find a style of hair that I felt suited the character. I wanted to make him look very tired and stressed, but I didn't want to make him look too old. I find it really interesting to look at character designs of things that are finished to see what could have been. It is hard to even imagine them as the same characters sometimes. Like the ones below, while you can tell that it is the same characters, they really do look so different!