Major Project 1 - Drone Moodboard

I made a mood-board of inspirations that I had in mind for the drones in my film. I have now given this to Bach so he can do a final design. I mainly have the Star Wars probe droid in mind when thinking about this film, but I have given Bach many different examples of what it could also be combined from.

Statement of Intent

For my final film I am going to be making a live action film with CG animation composited in. This will be the story of an apocalyptic future in which a wandering survivor must collect points to be allowed access into a Utopian city. These points are gained by hunting and killing futuristic military drones.

There is a western tone to the costume and atmosphere. The character sees the Utopian City on the horizon. He then encounters another survivor to add some conflict for stealing each others points. This gives me some more room to have a character arc as they could end up having to work together to defeat the drones. But the premise is basically an action fight scene between the main character and 3 (probably) drones. There will be a struggle to win, with many different gadgets and weapons used giving me many opportunities for a range of effects.

I am collaborating with others based on their strengths. My girlfriend, Joanna will be creating the costumes for the two characters. Alex will be storyboarding my film. Bach will create the concept art and designs for the drone, and then Dan will model and rig that in Maya. I have a music student from LCOM to do the score. I need to cast two actors for the main two characters.

For live briefs; I have one planned and in the works with another student from LCOM. I am creating a 360 atmospheric animation to work in a google cardboard headset for an art installation about dreams. I am currently experimenting with the logistics of how to get it to work but I think it will be fun and interesting.

I am also planning to do at least 1 D&AD brief, though none have really jumped out at me yet from an initial look through the briefs, I will have to have another look. I will then also find some competitions or something to do effects for.

Applied Animation: Documentary: Week Nine: 14th - 17th May 2018

This week was stressful. I realise now nearing the end of the project that time management was not good this project. I had a lot to do in just this week. The greatest challenge was creating the fight between Blackbeard and Maynard. It was incredibly in depth due to the way in which they had to interact and act off of each other. I believe that the end result is something dynamic and interesting, especially considering the restraints of the style we are using. 

I composited everything in the animation. I really enjoy this part of the process as it is so satisfying seeing everything finally come together. Some issues I faced in this were the sheer file sizes of the final segment. Since there was such immense zooms between extreme wide shots and close ups, the file had to be very big in order to preserve quality when zoomed in. This caused the process to take a bit longer than it should have done, but there really wasn't much to be done about it other than using a better computer. 

I had some issues rendering the final film in which it would fail at the same point every time. After much dissecting, I discovered that it was the backgrounds characters in the fight scene that was making it crash once they appeared in the composition. Unfortunately I didn't have time to work out the issue and still render in time, so the final film is without the crowd on the ship at the end. This is a shame since I think it really added to the scene, but I will definitely fix this for myself after the hand in. This kind of issue again comes down to time management. If we had been on schedule, I would have had time to fix the issue and keep the characters in. I feel bad because of Andy's hard work in creating the character assets, and Nicole who animated them.

I am really happy with the finished result of our film and I think it really tells the story of blackbeard's death in a very informative way that someone with no prior knowledge would find it interesting and educational. 

Applied Animation: Documentary: Week Eight: 7th - 13th May 2018

This week I finally started animating. Andy sent the first of the character rigs, LT Robert Maynard. So I got straight to work on animating him in the office scene.

The method of animation we are using is tweening assets within Adobe Animate. Each limb has been made separate allowing them to be animated individually. I quickly found that the best way to make this style look good is with a lot of follow through and overlapping action, along with very strong easing. Otherwise, it is very easy to fall into these styles of animations looking very robotic. I made sure there was always a delay between each limb moving and the next joint following it. 

I think this has made for a really satisfying look, and it is very quick to do. I finished Maynard's first scene in an afternoon. Realising Andy was rather behind on his characters, and with quite a lot to do after he'd done them, I made the decision to take the task of sound design from him.

I went in search of all backgrounds sounds we would need online. Baring in mind that the narration should take focus and so these effects will all be pretty quiet. I started syncing up the sounds I'd gathered but I haven't done any work on properly mixing them yet. I'll do all at a later point.

Nicole sent her big background for the ocracoke section. This is a very wide document to allow for lots of camera movement. The only thing I did with this was add a turbulent displacement effect to the water to make it look like it was waving and rippling. I think this effect was very successful and works well with the aesthetic we are going for.

Once Andy sent the Blackbeard rig, I got straight onto animating his opening title screen. This was more in depth than the subtle Maynard animation and it required a lot of tweaking to get the sword flick and gunshot to a place where I was happy with them. I think I needed to play full tests more in order to get a real sense of time, as the preview window in Animate is sometimes a bit slow in bigger files. 

I am happy with how the character animation is coming so far and hopefully starting on these more subtle scenes has prepared me for the fight scene.

Applied Animation: Documentary: Week Seven: 30th April - 6th May 2018

I finally finished the animatic in the first half of the week. It took me much longer than I wanted it to, but I'm happy enough with the result. Nothing is drawn well at all, but I believe it communicates the timings and content of our documentary.

I have now been left with quite a quiet patch with not much to do until Andy finishes his character designs. This could have been planned ahead better in my schedule (that we have fallen behind on anyway), to make sure everyone had something to work on at all times.

I did however, do some quick typography inserts for the animation. When each character is introduced, a short fact file will be displayed next to them. I played around with different effects in AfterEffects, looking for something of an inky feel to link with typical pirate imagery of treasure maps and black spots. I ended up using the roughen edges effects along with a mask reveal to create the desired effects and I'm really happy with the result. These can all be easily dropped in on top of the animation once it's done.

Applied Animation: Documentary: Week Six: 23rd - 29th April 2018

Continuing with the animatic, I unfortunately still haven't got it totally finished. I've been struggling for motivation to draw it out and feel bad for holding my teammates up. I believe I have given them enough to work with for now. Andy already knows which 3 characters he is creating rigs for. Nicole knows what environments to be looking into and from the sticky notes, knows where to start with them.

I think that I could do better to force myself to work in designated time slots. This all comes down to my time management. I feel I have been getting easily distracted from doing the animatic because it's not one of the parts I enjoy the most. I am giving myself a personal deadline to work towards. 

Applied Animation: Documentary: Week Five: 16th - 22nd April 2018

This week we did our presentation detailing what research we had gathered and how we were going to be proceeding with the animation. Feedback was all mainly positive, with the main point being that we really need some primary research to back up our animation. We are going to try some more options to contact university professors to check our script.

Andy made the initial designs for our characters and Nicole has done a water colour background test, though she has decided to do the final ones digitally.

I have made a start on the animatic after we gathered together to plan the animation on sticky notes. Through this process we ironed out any kinks in the flow and came up with many interesting transition ideas to make the animation feel exciting. As I am starting to transfer the sticky notes to animate, I am refining some ideas and changing a few little bits and pieces as I go through (main how things transition and composition of the frame).

Applied Animation: Documentary: Easter: 26th March - 15th April 2018

Over the easter holiday, I didn't get as much done as I had hoped. I did a lot of research into our chosen subject by reading a selection of books and youtube videos. I read The Republic of Pirates by Colin Woodard which was a very good read to understand the pirate and the events of his death.

I also read Under the Black Flag by David Cordingly which was good to cross reference the research I had gathered.

As well as this, many YouTube videos were very helpful as it gave us some context for what had already been created regarding Blackbeard's death. Many of these different videos were animated or just voiceovers with some basic illustrations. 

We want to go for a relatively serious tone and make sure we are being faithful to the history. I have tried to make sure that my teammates are clear on what they need to do. For example, I told Nicole to be researching into the environments like Virginia and Ocracoke and Andy has been looking into the three main characters of our animation (Blackbeard, Governor Spotswood and LT. Maynard).

Toward the end of the holiday, Andy and I both wrote a script each, based on the research we had gathered. We have tried to contact a few experts so far but no response yet, we will keep trying. We combined the best bits of both of our scripts and then had to trim it down quite a lot to make it fit into 90 seconds.

This was a challenge because there is so much important information to get across but we made sure it was all said in an efficient manner in order to trim it as much as possible. 

Andy has a voice actor friend who will be recording this voiceover for us.

Applied Animation: Documentary: Week One: 19th - 25th March 2018

After finishing the competition project, I quickly got excited about the documentary project. While we didn't manage to really get much done about this project for the beginning of the week, we met up after the COP hand-in to discuss the documentary. 

I am working with Andy and Nicole. We all decided early on that we wanted to do our documentary on history. In the past, Andy and I had already discussed that we would both like to make a pirate history animation. This is something that I am very passionate about as that era of history is fascinating to me. I thought a crash course video on the golden age of piracy could be fun to do. However we decided that doing a video about a specific event would be much more realistic and manageable, while also allowing us to go more in depth on that event.

I suggested that we cover the events of Blackbeard's death, and the others agreed. To gather research for this topic, we will be looking online for accounts telling of the events. I also own a book called 'The Republic of Pirates' which has a chapter dedicated to the life and death of Blackbeard.

Andy suggested styling the animation like an old 18th century illustrated book, which Nicole and I both really liked. Doing this, we then decided that making the animation 2D tweened would fit that style the most. An example I used was like the Horrible Histories animated sections.

Neither Andy or Nicole wanted to direct this project and suggested that since I am the most passionate about the idea, I should direct it. I am really excited to direct this one and make an interesting documentary on Blackbeard. Andy will be in charge of character designs and character assets, while Nicole will be working on backgrounds and background animation. I will then be doing most of the animation, though we will all be doing bits of the animation.

Applied Animation: Competition: Week Five: 12th - 18th March 2018

I finished off the cathedral, initially starting colouring and lighting it. I was really happy with how the lighting was coming together. However, it decided that we should just stick with the simple wireframe look. It was a shame that I didn't get to incorporate the fully lit render into the animation as it was supposed to show the full capabilities of Surface. We have discussed that I would be doing that many times before but now we aren't doing it, it's a shame that I wasted quite a bit of time working on the lighting and rendering. 

Shot 8 required more masking than any other shot. This was because of how he jumped in from outside the greenscreen and we needed that screen space to make the composition feel natural. This wasn't hard to do, it just took time to make sure it was a neat mask without any strange looking edges. I then worked on the anchor point for this shot. This worked very well because I simply made a line with the actual anchor point tracked to his hands, and then made another line following that to act as the visible anchor line. I'm really happy with how that shot turned out.

Some of the last parts I did was adding shadows to each full body shot. This involved drawing a black mask under Liam's feet and just keyframing it's shape to the movement of his feet/body. I then just added a blur and lowered the opacity and I am very pleased with the result. I believe it is subtle enough to just add to those shots but not something you really notice.
I also tracked Chloe's bird animation to Liam's hand and duplicated the flying loop in the next shot to spread into multiple birds. 

To finish off, I added shot 15 onto the screen in shot 16. I did this using AE Mocha to track the screen. While this was fiddly, it created a much smooth result than the inbuilt tracking in AfterEffects could do. Then all that needed doing was importing shot 15 into a pre-comp which contained the tracking data. This method also makes the footage easy to swap out for the short versions.

Overall, I am proud of the final result. I think we did work well together to create the final product dispite some communication issues when not speaking in person. There would be misunderstandings which when we met in person to discuss it, would be easily explained and solved. I believe we are all really pleased with the result. 

Applied Animation: Competition: Week Four: 5th - 11th March 2018

I sorted each shot into it's own After Effects file which was then dynamically linked into the premiere file. This created a smooth and clean workflow in which anyone can edit and add to any shot, and then it automatically get's updated back into the full edit. This system made the editing and the fact that we were all working on different shots at different rates, very efficient. All that needs doing is dropping the animation into the pre-determined after effects files and then it is done.

There was some confusion where it was thought I had gone ahead and cut every frame down so there wasn't room to work with, however this wasn't the case as I had just keyed each shot and then left the framing as we shot it. Now we can move and resize the footage within the frame to however it needs to be to make space for the animated elements as we do them.

Once I had finished keying the shots, we could start working on the accompanying animation.

My main section is the architecture art at the end. For this I was to be making a cathedral in Maya. We were originally going to have a city be built around him, but decided a cathedral would more manageable and look less cluttered. I gathered visual research of cathedrals that I could create.

As I was building it, I stayed aware of how things would be reverse engineered to be animated building themselves. Most objects could simply be lowered below the ground but some needed to be more interestingly animated. The main challenge was creating the offset in the pillars rising. I discovered that I couldn't simply copy the pillar as it's animation wouldn't come with it. Then I tried making an instance but that meant that moving the timings of the keyframes did that for EVERY copy of it, which defeated the point of making the offset. In the end, I was told to try exporting one pillar as an object and then re-import it and offset the keyframes from there. This worked to create the effect I was envisioning. I am really pleased with the result of this and once textured and dropped into the shot, I am confident it will look really interesting and appealing. 

Applied Animation: Competition: Week Three: 26th February - 4th March 2018

This week was very intense. We filmed all of the live action footage for the video. The first day of filming, we moved all tables from the studio to make space to look like a clean, white set like many Microsoft adverts. We couldn't book out the dolly or gimble because we needed tutorials with both that staff didn't have time to give us in time for submission. We worked around this by me sitting on a wheelie chair and Chloe gently pulling me backward.
This shot was tricky due to timing LiamS standing up and walking away in the correct timing as the camera moved away. I was focusing on keeping the composition looking nice and balanced while also changing the focus as we got further away. This was quite fiddly and resulted in many takes which drop out of focus. However I think we did get a good result and once it has been stabilised a bit in after effects, it should look just as we want.

The only time in the photography studio we could get was on Wednesday, and this was the only free slot for another month. However, due to snowy weather, the uni had to shut early and we didn't manage to film anything. This meant we had to use the animation studio again the next day (which was empty because of the snow). We spent a lot of time setting up the lights to be evenly lighting the green-screen as this would make keying much more accurate in post. Liam was concerned about shadows being cast on the floor, however I am confident they won't be an issue when keying. The filming process all went very well and smoothly, the only issue would be some shots had parts of Liam's body clipping over the edge of the green-screen.

Over the weekend, I sorted through all the footage to find the best takes of each shot. They are all really well lit with spot on focus (bar 1 or 2 shots which were only slightly out of focus). It took me quite a while to go through all the footage to narrow down the best. I had to also find the shots that lined up cohesively with the 2 shots before and after it.
I believe the takes I have edited together are all very good and flow with each other to tell the story. 

Applied Animation: Competition: Week Two: 19th - 25th February 2018

This week as LiamS worked on storyboard and animatic, I did a bit more work on VFX testing.

The first one I did this week was a paint effect trailing from a hand. I did this using a mask in after effects and keyframed it to reveal as the hand moved across screen.
I like the effect that this gives because it is something quite surreal as the colour changes after it has been painted.
For the actual effect, we would be filming against a greenscreen so the hand will be sharper, as for this I simply keyed it out from a white backdrop. 

The next test I did was in maya. At the end of our video, the character will build buildings around him by just raising his hands. To do this from all angles needed, I will be making a model in maya and then we will draw sketched construction lines over it as if they are leading the build before the model fills it.

For this, I created a city scape to surround the character which rise out of the ground as the camera moves across the screen. I animated some with details of the buildings only appearing once the building was at it's max height. This is the principle I will be working from for the final thing, since we are going to be doing him inside one big building now (something like a cathedral).

Liam showed us the animatic he had put together and it was really good and well considered. He had included many of the ideas we had previously discussed while also adding some new stuff too. From this, we made a shot list and I can flesh this out into a bit of a shooting script to make filming more organised next week. 

Applied Animation: Competition: Week One 9th - 18th February 2018

I grouped up with Liam S and Chloe for this project. We decided on doing the Mircosoft Surface brief because of the freedom in creativity and allowed us to make an animated solution. I suggested that we combine live action footage with animation to save time and also show the idea of how the person using surface can be creative.

I researched into the way that Microsoft create their promotional videos and took notes on the kinds of themes they go with;

Clean, sharp visuals. Cinematic. Smooth camera movements. Often showing real world equivalents of the things the surface can do (essentially trying to take away the aspect of technology and make it tactile and natural). Optimistic music which the visuals are cut to. 

We decided on roles. LiamS will be doing storyboards, animation and music. Chloe will be doing concept art and animation. I will be doing a little animation and all post production. This will include editing and chroma keying the footage, compositing all elements in, and animating/masking elements into the scenes.

We drew lots of thumbnail ideas and wrote out many keywords of the things we wanted to evoke.



As LiamS storyboards, I have started a few VFX tests for some ideas we have had. The ones I've done this week are echo trails left behind by the moving hand.



These tests are a simple idea of part of the visuals we are wanting to make. They show the weird, flowing and creative world in a slightly psychedelic way that once refined within our final product, should really help to get across the creativity.
When we come to do this kind of effect in the final video, I will work to make sure the specific shots that contain this effect are much more refined and appealing.

We have a good solid idea on what we are going to create. The brief asks for 1-8 videos that come to between 1 and 2 minutes. So we are making one main version that will aim to be just over one minute, and then from that we can edit multiple short version using the various sections within the creative world. 

Character & Narrative: Week Seventeen: 15th - 18th January

This week was a stressful one. We have had a mad rush to get it finished. I had shot 22 to do and many more inbetweens and compositing parts. 

As we got to the end, it was clear we weren't going to get our animation totally finished. We decided to scrap shot 22 since the two shots either side of it still communicated that the gnome was standing up and walking out of the box. 

I really enjoyed the workflow of this final process however. When I would finish the inbetweens of a shot, I would upload it ready to be coloured. And I would often get messages from Alex as soon as another shot is coloured for me to then put it straight into the edit. 

I have really enjoyed the compositing of this project. I find it really satisfying and it really does a lot to make the image pop. I really love the result of 5 because of the parallax and the lighting bouncing off the foreground trees. I feel that this really helps to enclose him inside these trees and adds him into the environment. Shot 6 was a complex one because of how it transitioned between places, but I'm so happy with the result. I used a mask to create the effect of the light passing around the foreground tree. 

14 was the only one that I used after effects for because of the 3D camera shift parallax following the gnome through the canyon.

The extra effects where a water splash in the first shot, which was fun to animate because it was much more natural and easy compared to what I have been doing throughout the project. We decided to leave the fire out of the animation in the end. This was because I didn't have time to animate my own flames to use, and I couldn't find any free fire VFX assets online.

As we didn't manage to finished everything we'd hoped, we will do the last few things after submission just for ourselves. 

Character & Narrative: Week Sixteen: 8th - 14th January 2018

I started off this week by compositing a few shots that were already coloured. I did this as a break from animating as it was getting rather tiring. I am using premiere to composite most shots, simply because most of them don't require much complex post work so it doesn't need after effects, (also, I am much quicker at working in premiere). Most are consisting of the background, a ground shadow, the character, the lantern glow and then a mask to follow that glow and create the effect that he is lighting up the areas around him and only those areas. This really helps to add the atmosphere of this spooky jungle. 

Shot 23 was one that I started and finished much quicker than I expected. It does still need a few inbetweens, but this shouldn't take long. I then also started shot 24 and got to the point of doing linework for keyframes, but this still requires all of it's inbetweens. 

I also did the inbetweens for shots 11 and most of 14 so that Alex could start colouring them.

As we start to approach the end of the project, I am getting a little worried and stressed if we will manage to get it finished in time. This coming 4 days will be tough to get it done, but I think we should be able to pull it off.

Study Task: Talk This Way

I rather enjoyed the lip sync task as it was a new way of doing it for me. In the past I have created all the phonemes I thought I would need, but I have never made a dope sheet or used the time remapping in After Effects to do it. 

I found creating the dope sheet rather tedious and while filling it out, I just kept thinking I could be already doing it. When I actually started lip syncing, I honestly didn't find the dope sheet very useful at all, I much preferred just having the waveform under my keyframes and scrubbing the timeline. This made it so much quicker for me and made the dope sheet feel like a waste of time. 

I feel that doing the dope sheet would be much more useful and necessary for stop motion or cutout animation, as when animating on a computer, you can always bring in a waveform of the audio and you have the freedom to just play around and experiment.

I am happy with the result and I am gutted that I didn't leave myself enough time to do more detailed and coloured mouth shapes. 

Character & Narrative: Week Fifteen: 1st - 7th January 2018

This week I started off by finishing the linework of shot 12. I also did a couple of breakdown frames while I was at it, to save inbetweening time later on. This shot was trickier than I expected because I had to break away from the reference more than expected to make it work. I am happy with the result though, and think once it is inbetweened, it should look good.

I then worked on completing the inbetweens for shot 14. This took a while and I still struggled to draw him from this angle for some reason. 

For the rest of the week, I worked on completing shot 19. With this being the longest and most complex shot in the entire animation, this again, look a long time. As I got closer to the end of inbetweening this shot, I got really excited because it was really starting to look how I imagined. Now I have finished this shot, I am really proud of it. I think once coloured and in context of the animation, it should really work as the climax it is designed to be.

Also this week, my friend who studies music, sent us the original track he had made for us. I had taken the animatic and given him lots of notes about the moods we wanted at certain times. I really like it and think it brings a lot of urgency and intensity to the animation. 

Character & Narrative: Week Fourteen: 25th - 31st December 2017

Obviously I didn't get as much done since it was christmas week. I did however manage to take some time to get the sketches for shot 12 done.

I also did a few inbetweens on some shots to allow Alex to start colouring them. I went through shots 4, 7 and (started) 9, drawing all inbetweens that needed doing. I have uploaded these to the google drive for Alex to colour. Doing this worked well as it lets Alex keep up his schedule as much as possible while giving me a break from keyframing. I am still a week and a bit behind but I am still hopeful that we will manage it because we have already completed inbetweens for quite a few shots more than were scheduled for now.