Process and Production: 23rd - 29th January 2017

This week I made a proper start on the actual pre-production of my animation. I was refining the idea as I made my timed plan in Premiere. I used title files as the descriptions of each shot and timed them up to the space that would feel natural. I made sure that the duration reached at least 25 seconds but I did have to go back through and trim it down a bit since it was too long. When I actually come to creating the animatic, I expect these timings to change a bit again since I will have a clearer idea of the visuals.

After doing this I was much happier with the idea I had, but I do need to do some more research for the visual elements that I want to work with before I start. I also need to design the characters enough to do the storyboard and I can then refine them again before I start the actual animation. Since I want to create this animation to have very over exaggerated expressions and movements, I am putting more time into the pre-production by means of the expression sheets. These will be really important to me when animating.

The target audience that I am aiming for is young people - teenagers, though I believe that people of any age could still enjoy it because of how subjective humour can be. It is the same with Looney Tunes. Though it is intended for kids, people of all ages can still watch it and enjoy it. The visual slapstick comedy allows for a wide target audience. Obviously the age range affects how severe the slapstick can be. For younger audiences, it can't be very gory or anything like that. Cartoons exist in a unique place where they can experience extreme circumstances that would kill anyone else, but because they are cartoons, they can just survive anything the writers want them to. The classic example is that of an anvil being dropped on the toons. Depending on the target age, this could be very silly or incredibly gory.

I'm hoping to work on creating the characters this next week once visual language is finished. 

Visual Language: 23rd - 29th January 2017

I continued to work on the pose and expression sheets for my character design. Once I got going I was enjoying it much more. I just struggled to think of poses. Most of them are quite simple arm movements because his weight restricts his motion. I did one with his hands on his hips because I think he is quite a grumpy and sassy person. I then have him with his hand out. I imagined this as his 'tickets please' pose. Then one of him waving his hat as a signal or something of that nature. This one was when I realised that I'd not thought about what exactly was under his hat. I then also did one of him sat down. I decided that because he was so big. His legs would point straight out rather than bend at the knees. Him being a train conductor means there aren't many other poses that I could think he would be doing.

Most expression sheets are much more expressive and show a wider range of dynamic poses. This lets the artist and animators see how far they can push the characters movement. They can see how much it will squash and stretch and how fluid they will be. My character isn't a very expressive character so it works that he isn't showing many dynamic poses because he wouldn't be doing much anyway. 



The expressions were more fun to play with because his fat chin and jaw are more easily movable. His jaw is one big entity to just move under so it doesn't matter how his mouth moves. 

I really enjoyed creating this character once I got going. I think I've struggled with it because I wasn't enthusiastic about the idea for my character. I wasn't entirely invested in making him which made it much harder to stay motivated and actually do it. It became much better as I went along when I started to feel more confident with what I'd created. I started to enjoy it much more. I'm pretty happy with my character even though I'm still not entirely keen on the idea he's based on. I'm not too sure how effective he is as his conductor character as many people have mistaken him for a policeman. In hindsight, I should have probably added some more distinguishable features that really hinted towards the train conductor character.

Process and Production: 16th - 22nd January 2017

After continued thought on developing my idea, I decided that I really liked the idea of really over exaggerated facial expressions in order to tell the comedy of the moment. I think that if the man was to put the ring in her glass and then hints to it by nodding at it, then she could look happy and surprised but she means about the champagne that she hadn't noticed. She would then proceed to drink it and swallow the ring whole. The man could then look at her in shock at how she didn't notice the ring (perhaps his jaw could slam into the table to exaggerate the shock).

I am liking this idea much more and so I looked into more uses of exaggerated visual comedy in order to influence my ideas. I will still be trying to think of more ways to develop my idea and add more humour into it. 

I'm thinking about making this similar to a silent comedy and use the over the top expressions to tell the story and humour. The first thing that came to mind when thinking of the tone and style I want to create was the work of Chuck Jones on Looney Toons. His use of character to create visual comedy is, in my opinion, some of the best. Though I know that I like this kind of stuff, I need to analyse it more in order to understand it enough to be able to apply it to my ideas. 

I think after a bit more researching, I could make a text animatic to just get a guage on timings. This is something that always helps me to plan out the pacing of my initial idea before anything else so I will compile this as I think of more details.

Visual Language: 16th - 22nd January 2017

This week was quite heavy with finishing off all my character design stuff. I loved doing the animated character turnaround. I loved to be animating again.

I did some research into industry turnarounds and character sheets. I love looking at this kind of thing because it's really interesting to see how the characters started out and what the animators used as reference to make sure the character is consistent. The most important thing from any of these kinds of character turnaround sheets is the proportions. The character needs to always look like the same person. 

I used Adobe Animate to create this as it is a program I am comfortable with and it allows me flexibility in my drawing. I can still tweak and edit things much easier. I used a circular guide on the ground to base my perspectives from. At first this was a bit tricky but being able to tweak proportions as I go really helped and I did soon get the hang of it and all my guides were incredibly useful and really sped up my workflow. 

I planned this out quite extensively by first creating a shape skeleton version, then a sketch version and then the final line work. This let me make sure that everything looked correct before moving on to more detail. This worked really well for me as I believe I have managed to create the three dimensional look of the character staying in proportion. 

I'm really happy with my finished turnaround. I've not done an animated turnaround before now. I've usually just done front, 2/3 and side as my turnarounds so this was really fun to make. Also it was just great to actually do some animation again. 

Through the rest of the week I started work on the pose and the expression sheets. I found it difficult to think of poses that this character could do. With him being so big and round, it made it hard for me to actually create poses because there isn't much room for him to move. This is something that I didn't think about when designing him and I think that while is immovability does tie in with the kind of character he is because of his shape, it does restrict him rather a lot. His face is less restrictive allowing me to create a greater range of facial expressions though I feel like his character would be grumpy most of the time so I wanted to also try and communicate that in different ways too.

Process and Production: 9th - 15th January 2017

After we got the briefing for this module, I was immediately excited. I’m excited to just work on producing animations. I want to animate. What was tricky was thinking of an idea. As the brief wants a comical piece, this makes it more difficult. I was struggling to think of many ideas linking to the available titles we were given. I couldn’t think of anything funny. I came up with a few different ideas from a mind map corresponding to the choices of titles. Only about three of them were ones that I liked. The first of which was of a blind date where the two people open their eyes to be people that would stereotypically be enemies, like a cop and a robber.

I quickly started to dislike this idea. I think this was due to the fact it would be difficult to communicate the ideas of the contrasting personalities without it being a bit too nonsensically stereotypical in order to make it obvious. I started to prefer the idea of a proposal gone wrong using the ‘restaurant’ title. I started thinking he could put the ring in the champagne glass and the woman just drinks it and starts choking. This is a bit more darker humour but I think that I could make the contrast of the joy and love and happiness of the start and the panic at the end quite funny. I will keep thinking about this idea and try to develop it more as I go.

Visual Language: 9th - 15th January 2017

Over the Christmas break, I'll admit they I didn't get as much done as I would have liked. I did some more research work and a bit on my character design. 

I started to refine my character much more. I still wasn't completely happy with it but I stuck it out and I am actually growing to like him the more I draw him. I moved on to creating my sketches on Photoshop. This was I had more freedom to play around and tweak as needed. I can just keep playing around with proportions to create something I liked. 

Doing this worked so much better for me and I quickly started to like my character. I did try a slight costume variation but then decided that I didn't really like it as it didn't look as identifiable as a train conductor. I am very happy with the small detail of adding a ripple chin. This was something that I just started adding in my last few sketches but I really like it. It gives some more visual interest and adds to the silhouette of the character. 

Once I was happy with my design, I then started working on the t pose character sheet. This is something that I always really liked doing because it's the first time that the character comes together properly. I did this in Photoshop to again give me more flexibility. I started with the geometric shapes, then a sketch version of the character and then the final line work. 

The colour was added layer by layer on a clipping mask that filled the shape of the character, this let me easily alter any of the colours of individual elements. By also creating the shading on a layer above on 30% opacity, I could still play around with the colours and the shading would automatically change with the base tone.

The final colours are actually the ones that originally came to mind. This is influenced by the uniforms the conductors on the northern rail trains that I get on. I did a hand full of colour variations to try and see if I liked any others but in the end the first was still my favourite.

For creating the other poses, I copied the base shapes from the original sketch and created the profile view first. I find that doing the front and profile views before the 2/3 or 3/4 views is much better to manage and keep proportions. This is because I can then create the middle pose as I would do an inbetween frame. I lowered the opacity of the previous angles and just drew in between. 

I am actually really happy with how this design has turned out. I think was hard for me to get into to begin with because I felt like I was doing the process backwards since we had to create a character from the backgrounds we drew. I grew to like it the more I drew it but I do still think it would have been more natural and easier to be invested in if it were done in the order of thinking up an idea for a story before starting to just design the elements outright. I am looking forward to creating the animated turnaround next.