Process and Production: 20th - 26th February 2017

I continued animating again after finishing shot 2, I moved to shot 4. This is where the man looks shocked and accidentally drops the ring while trying to catch it. 

The first half of this shot was going well. I believe that I used anticipation in a good way with him squashing down before bouncing up in shock. I'm happy with the expression and exaggeration of his face. The part that I struggled with however, was the second half of this shot. I continuously struggled to achieve a look of the arms moving up in an attempt to catch the ring that looked believable. I couldn't get anything to look right. The keys that I did just look unnatural.

I tried using reference footage but I was still finding it really hard to draw. I've decided I will come back to this particular shot since it is just frustrating me and I've spent too long trying to do this one already.

So I moved onto shot 5. This was one that I was quite excited to do and actually turned out better than I was expecting. I knew that I wanted to use some dynamic camera movements in this animation and this is the main one that shows this. I envisioned this being a very interesting slow motion shot. I created the ring spinning inside a symbol so that I could then rotate that outside to create an even more dynamic and natural spin. I used a simple circle stroke to create the ring as I could then squash it to create the angles I needed while keeping the line weight consistent. I only had to create half of this turn and then I copied and reversed these frames and tweaked the diamond to be on the other side as if it was going round the back. 

Then came some frame by frame lip syncing. To make this easier, I mapped out the timings of each phonetic sound on my labels layer corresponding to the audio. It was then as simple as drawing the mouth shapes and inbetweening them as I did for every other part. This turned out much better than I expected and when it plays out, I feel that it works well in sync with the audio.

The next shot I will be starting is shot 7 where my character tries to act casual as his girlfriend arrives at the table, this shot will involve more lip syncing and I think that the method I used here of mapping out the sounds with a label layer works very well and I will do this again in the upcoming shots. 

Process and Production: 13th - 19th February 2017

This week I got onto actually animating. I finished off the 1st shot quite quickly as it wasn't very complex and didn't require much animating with it being an establishing shot. So I then made a start on the second shot. This, again, wasn't a very complex one as the first half is just a still shot with a focus shift. The second half however was done with more frame by frame movement. I want to make sure that this whole animation is consistently made with smooth, flowing animation. 

In this shot, all he is doing is very slightly turning his head and looking up, but I wanted to make it a little more exaggerated than that. I wanted it too have the same feeling of fluidity as the Looney Tunes animation has, so I made the face drag behind slowly before catching up with the rest of the motion. This is only subtle because it is only a small movement and I didn't want to overdo it and lessen the more exaggerated shots later in the animation. The hair and the eyes do give this effect. The hair follows through with the motion of the head just as I intended (as to why I designed him this way). The eyes also have a subtle smear in them to sell the effect of them darting back up. 

I feel incredibly happy with how this shot turned out. I have used more frames than I usually would for such a basic movement but I feel that it really pays off. With the motion created from this movement, I feel that my later shots will hopefully make a much bigger impact just like the Looney Tunes style I am using as influence. 

My plan going forwards is to just animate all of the shots of the man and then go back through and do the shots of the woman. This is because they are all at the same angle and with just the same character so it will be an easier workflow, keep me focused on each character at a time and keep the style more consistent. 

I also recieved a bit more feedback on my first shot. It was suggested that I add some ambient animation to the silhouettes in the restaurant to make the room feel more alive. I could also add a waiter walking past. This is something that I do think will really help this shot a lot, but it depends on time. I think that since I am being very ambitious with the animation of the main two characters, I need to make sure I get them finished first before adding any extra bits and pieces. If I do have time I will make sure to go back and add stuff like this.

Process and Production: Research 2: Tex Avery

Someone that I really admire a great deal when it comes to animation and visual comedy is Tex Avery. Avery was one of the main leading directors of the Looney Tunes and a very influential animator from the golden age. He was a major part of creating and/or popularising and developing characters such as Porky Pig, Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and Droopy. 

His use of exaggeration was incredible as he took it to a new level that no one had really done before. He stretched his characters further than anyone would think to try. He had some really great ideas of how to convey emotions in very comical and visually interesting ways. By expressing the characters in such an absurd way it added a extra shock value to the moment, often catching the audience off guard, hence making them laugh. 

This example shows how he communicated a moment of extreme shock. Instead of just widening the eyes and opening the mouth, he made this characters limbs detach and fly off the body for a moment as the whole character hovers in the air. 

He wanted to make cartoons that could appeal to adults as well as children. There was something for everyone in his films. He frequently broke the 4th wall with his characters addressing the audience directly or popping up in the credits. This made the characters seems more real and was a very new and interesting use of them. 

Process and Production: 6th - 12th February 2017

Unfortunately due to train delays, I missed the crit session itself, however I did show people my animatic later on and got some good feedback.

I received quite a few positive comments about how the establishing shot and the ambient sounds set the scene quite well and the expressions being funny. 

The main thing I was told could be improved was making the moment when he hints to the champagne a bit clearer. This can be easily fixed by just swapping the audio for a take where 'champagne' is a bit clearer while still carrying the nervous voice. This also comes to my audio mixing which I haven't done properly yet. So from this feedback I can work on making the moment a bit clearer to understand.

After this I got to work in creating the background for the opening and final shots. I knew that I wanted to do a bit more of a detailed background this time, but I also liked the idea of making it somewhat sketchy and textured.

I looked at backgrounds from many classic animations, focusing mainly on the painted style ones. I really love the contrast of background to characters, especially when black outlines are not used on the backgrounds. This creates a great difference between what we should be focusing on. 

I built the background in a way that would let me easily create a subtle 3D perspective effect. I'm incredibly happy with how this effect turned out. I exported 5 separate .png images to work with in creating this effect. The 1st was the backing wall and decorations followed by the 3 layers of tables and then a light bloom effect coming from the lights on the roof. Each of these was animated enlarging slightly more than the last to create the effect that the camera was moving through them. I then also added a subtle blur to sell the depth of field. 

In Adobe Animate, each of these layers were made into their own symbols so that I could go into them and animate anything inside. So for example, I went into these symbols to add the main character and silhouettes while keeping the movement and depth of field consistent. These images are also linked with photoshop so that I can always go back and edit the colours or textures. I will also have to make a variant of this scene towards the end where I can animate the chair falling backwards onto the floor.

This week we also got briefed the pixilation task. I have only done pixilation a few times before so I'm quite excited to do this. I want to really use the medium to my advantage by creating something that couldn't be done normally. I had an idea for animating someone punching someone and them sliding all the way down the hallway and slamming into a wall. I will keep thinking up ideas before I eventually create it as I think I need to make a bigger start on the main task before I can do anything else.

Process and Production: Research 1: The Golden Age

The Golden age of animation was a period from approximately 1928 until the 1960's in which the animation industry really picked up in the mainstream media. Animation became incredibly popular and the techniques advanced faster than ever before. This era introduced a great many iconic characters and invented and refined the 12 principles of animation. 

The era started roughly with the release of 'Steamboat Willie' in 1928. This was a big deal in terms of mainstream animation innovation. This was very popular and was one of the first animations to include synced sound. Disney became one of the key driving forces of animation as a media. Many animated shots were made involving a wide range of new characters that have become staples of the animation genre in general. 

The first big feature film of this era, and possibly the main key event kicking off the golden age, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was released in 1938. This was an incredible achievement and started a long line of classic Disney films to come including Pinocchio, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty and many more. These animated features took an awful long time to do, weren't cheap to make, and rarely made a profit but they are incredibly well loved films and have amazing animation skill with innovative use of techniques and processes.

The 12 principles of animation, while not officially stated until the 1981 book 'The Illusion of Life', were created and used by the 9 old men of Disney and have gone on to be the fundamental laws of physics within the animation industry. These terms are used between animators as a common language so everyone knows what to refer to when talking about the work. 


The golden age started to fizzle out when interest shifted towards live action films. The animation industry was becoming harder to sustain and much harder to break even on films. The era really took the biggest kick when Walt Disney died in 1966. The company really struggled to come back from this for a long time, making films that were rarely box office hits, though adored by fans and critics. This also had a rather big impact on the animation industry in general, with audience demand lessening. 

This era of animation produced some of the greatest animated classics ever. It was a time of incredible progress with the techniques used to create animation. Possibly the most prominent thing to come from this era are the 12 principles because they have been the guidelines for so much mainstream animation since. 

Process and Production: 29th January - 5th February 2017

I got to work designing the two main characters. I started with drawing out a variety of head shapes. This was rather enjoyable and something that I developed upon through the visual language module. However I still didn't want to spend too much time on this because this animation is very ambitious and I want to leave myself as much time as possible to work on that side of the project.

The thing that I really struggled with in this was designing a hair style for the man that I liked. I wanted something that wasn't too tidy and well kept in order to show that he was a bit clumsy and careless. I started to like the shaved sides but I wasn't fond of much of the stuff I created for the top of his head. I wanted something that could be a bit floppy to help me show motion but also I didn't want it to be too detailed since I am going to be animating lots of really expressive frame by frame motion.

I eventually settled on the one with three simple strands hanging down and the rest being neat and more simple to draw. This gives me something to move around to accentuate the motion. I decided on the design for the woman very quickly. I was pretty happy with just the first few drawings and so I decided to roll with that since she wasn't featured as heavily as the man.

Once I'd finished these it made it much easier to do the storyboard. I made sure to try and add detail of the characters to act as a good reference. I used many frames in this storyboard, more than I usually do. I made a new drawing for the main key poses I could think of. This is much more detailed and helpful as a reference when I come to animating and it also makes the animatic much simpler because I have already drawn the main keyframes. 

I scanned in my sticky notes to use for the animatic. I timed them up to the text files I'd made before and as expected they had to be tweaked to feel more natural. I then took this to the sound studio and brought in two people to record the voices. I described the kind of sounds and reactions that I was thinking about but also just let them play around with it. I let the video loop and asked my voice actors to just keep doing many takes in time with the video. This worked very well since I had many options to use when editing. I cut together a few different bits from different takes for the final thing. 

I'm really happy with this finished animatic. I think that it does communicate what is happening and the voices and sound effects really help that along. I will have to go back through and properly mix these to make sure the important bits can all be heard over the ambient sounds.