Applied Animation: 15th - 18th May 2017

This week was an intense one to finish everything off. The main thing I started with was finishing off the monkey's second swing. This didn't take too long since I was keeping it simple as to move on and get everything to an even level of completion. I kept the swing itself as just one drawing with the monkey reaching out toward the tree. There were then some little finishing touches like adding the vine and making sure the vine the monkey was swinging on was more visible.

The spaceman was the next big thing. I looked at many different types of spacesuits, but gathered references for the type I wanted to go with since it is the most iconic style. I created the keyframes first but in order to get the really smooth, weightless motion I was looking for, I actually opted for tweening him in the end. When he is floating through space towards camera, I had each limb as a different symbol layer so that I could tween it. I am very happy with the result and think that it achieves the weightless look I wanted because I made sure to offset the motions to make it feel more natural. Easing curves also helped to make it feel natural.

I then had the frame by frame movement of him grabbing onto the square. I did as many keyframes as I had time for but in the end I think it could have looked better. The motion goes too quick and breaks the slow and weightless feel of the rest of the movement, which could have been solved with more inbetweens.

I then got onto adding sounds for all the idents. I downloaded all the other idents in whatever stage of completion they were in and put it all together in Premiere. I searched online for many different sounds that I needed. I really tried to think of any sound possible to really make the ambient sounds feel alive. I really enjoy playing around with sound effects, changing the way they pan from different sides on headphones and changing pitches to fit the scene. I find this sort of thing really satisfying which is why I volunteered to do all the sounds.

After finishing up with adding sounds, all that was left to do was to replace the unfinished ident footage with the final finished ones and then render the big compilation.

Applied Animation: 8th - 14th May 2017

This week was continued work on backgrounds and animating. I was upset to find that the document I'd started for the jungle background had corrupted and wouldn't open, so I had to start this background again. 

We then had the critique on tuesday. It was unfortunate that any feedback we received was either about it simply being unfinished or things that we already planned on adding. So this crit wasn't as useful to our group as expected.

The most time this week was actually taken up with creating the jungle background. It took a long time to make all the many different layers of trees, though a few nearer the beginning were duplicated and flipped or otherwise distorted, as I got closer to the camera I didn't think I'd be able to get away with doing this. 

Once I had finally finished this background, I imported it into After Effects and displaced all these layers in 3D space. I separated them all by quite large distances to ensure that I got a great feel of depth in the jungle. 

I then finally got into actually animating, I only have 2 characters to animate, the monkey and the spaceman. I thought I should start with the monkey since this is what I'll struggle most with. I'm not confident with drawing animals at all so I knew this would be a challenge. I gathered reference pictures of monkeys swinging but started to narrow down to a chimpanzee. I found a few videos of chimps swinging through trees too. This proved very helpful.

I struggled to draw the chimp consistently. I think I found it hard to draw because it is so close to being a human figure that it makes everything feel wrong and out of proportion. Though I'm not happy with the monkey itself, I am very happy with how it moves and pulls its weight throughout the swings.

The second swing was more difficult because I wanted to have him swinging in a different way but this was hard to work out the physics of how it would actually work.

Going into the final week, I have quite a lot to still do. I need to finish the monkey and composite him into the scene, then do the spaceman floating in space and finish compositing all of that. I then also have to do sound. It's going to be a push but I think I will be able to manage it.

Applied Animation: 1st - 7th May 2017

We started work on creating assets and backgrounds for all our idents. I started work firstly on the jungle one since I knew this would be the most work. I knew I had to make many layers of trees to make the jungle feel much deeper and full. I want the monkey to really feel like it is swinging forward toward the camera so therefore I need more depth. 

I also started on the backgrounds for the space ident. While thinking about this one, I decided that there wasn't much visual interest with things happening on screen. To make something of interest in the background, I started to make a 3D model of the international spacestation to draw over afterwards. This is a very efficient way of drawing such a complex shape moving. This lets me not worry about having to keep proportions on different angles. I really enjoyed creating this 3D model too. When I added the many different lights it really made the whole thing pop and I am so happy with the result. The orange lights I added behind the spacestation, to act as the sun, reflect very well on the panels. I also added a blue/white light over the top to add some ambient light in the way of light bloom from the earth. This adds contrast to the shapes metallic structures and makes them stand out. My original intention was to use this as a reference to draw over but after adding all these lights, we agreed that this model itself could work in the final thing. It will require maybe adding a filter or something but I think it does fit very well. 

The earth was quite fun to make, I used google earth as a reference for the part of the world I wanted in frame. I am really happy with the result of these elements, I think I've struck the balance between realistic and stylised. 

The background for the city ident is one that I am really proud of. I went into more detail than I was expecting. It also took me way longer than I intended because of the amount of buildings I added. I also am very happy with the buildings further in the foreground since I made them more 3D. I added all these layers together in Animate and displaced them in 3D space. This allowed me to move the camera to create the parallax in layers. I only had to copy the animation from my animatic over onto the new elements since I was really happy with that movement. 

Applied Animation: 24th - 30th April 2017

We came together and viewed all 9 animatics we had. Main changes that needed to be made were to do with framing and compositions. We had to make sure that every ident ended with the square in the right place for the final logo to show. I had made a basic document with the final logo sized on a plain white 16:9 document. This gave some proper proportions and a consistent position and scale for us all to work to. 

The biggest change was probably to do with Alex's dinosaur animatic. We thought that it simply had too many shots in it which made it feel very fast. All of the other idents have been rather slow and calm with very few hard cuts. Alex redrew and re-edited this one to be much more in keeping with the pacing and style of the other idents. 

Chloe's excavation had been done with a panning birds eye shot, whereas we had previously discussed it being a zoom out from the woman to end with the logo being in full frame ready to transition. This was an easy fix since she had already drawn the most zoomed out version of the shot so all she had to do was change the keyframes to scale instead of pan.

For the rest of the week we all started working on backgrounds and starting actual production. For this, Alex and I recorded 2 reference videos. He filmed me walking up and brushing off the logo as the caveman in his second ident. He then also recorded me 'floating' in space and then grabbing on to the passing logo which I will use quite loosely.

Applied Animation: 17th - 23rd April 2017

This week I started work on making my animatics. Before this though, the group and I discussed the issue with the city ident. The problem being that this one didn't really gel with the others since it was an illusion of the yellow square instead of a physical thing in the environment.
To fix this we have now settled on an idea that is in a construction site with one half of the logo being lifted by a crane to fit together with the other half in order to form the square. This still keeps the individual modern and technological feel and theme of this particular ident while making it fit better in the group of idents we are creating.

So after changing the idea I had to remake the storyboard for this ident. I added a little extra interest by making the crane accidentally bump into the other half and then having to go up and over it otherwise I think it could have looked a bit boring. 

To make the animatics, I simply took the assets I had drawn in the storyboard and exported them separately. For the jungle animatic I placed each layer of trees on a new layer and enlarged them over time at different rates. This creates the parallaxing 3D effect. For the real thing however, I think I will have to make many more layers of trees to get much more depth and I will also be doing this in After Effects to allow for more flexibility and ease with the camera work.

The city and space animatics are both a bit more simple and also I can more or less take the animation from the animatics and replace the assets with the final painted ones. The physics of the half square hanging from the crane took a while to get right since I wanted to add the swinging and realistic looks to it. The space animatic is very simple with only the camera pulling out. In the final thing however, the spaceman will be drawn frame by frame as he is floating and then as he grabs onto the square. I want to make this very smooth to look natural and also just give the scene a bit more interest with something actually happening. 

While I'm happy I got these animatics done, I didn't manage to do as much work as intended over the holiday because of the immediate COP deadline and also because it was the holiday. This week we will review what we have made with animatics and then go forward onto production.

Applied Animation: 10th - 16th April 2017

This week I was mainly working on creating my storyboards. The first of these, the jungle, was rather simple since it was more or less just the same exact idea that I made in my sketch. I first made the complete image and then worked backwards because then I could simply hide other layers to show how the camera pulls back through the layers of trees. One small change that was combined was an idea from Chloe's sketch where the monkey was swinging from it's tail. 

The second storyboard was made in a similar way. I created the finished image where the crane, buildings and train are all in line to create the square, and then I moved them further down in earlier frames to show how they move into line. I really like this idea but we have also had doubts about it because it is the most different to the others. The other idents have the square actually involved in the scenery, whereas this is just that there is an illusion of the square from other objects. We will talk about this as a group and see what could be done to make it feel more included.

The space storyboard was very simple since the main thing that is happening is the spaceman moving towards camera as the camera keeps backing away too. There wasn't too much to show in the storyboard other than camera and framing actions. The interaction of the yellow square bumps into the astronaut and makes them both float through space. I like this idea though the action of it is rather simple. I will add some subtle movement to the character as he is floating through and also some frame by frame action when he gets hit by/jumps on the square. I am very excited to do this. 

Next step is animatics. I will do this by taking the layers I have made in photoshop for my storyboards and using them as assets to animate and show the movements. 

Applied Animation: 3rd - 9th April 2017

I continued gathering research for my 3 idents. This was very helpful I think as it helped me to get accurate references for the types of scenery I wanted to create. 

Jungle. I looked for examples of many really deep jungles because I really want to bring a focus on the depth of this ident. If the camera is pulling back through the trees, I need many layers of trees to sell that 3D effect. These images have really helped to refine what I and the group have been thinking. Also here is research into the monkey. I'm not totally confident in drawing or animating animals so I am going to have to pull a lot of references in order to make the monkey look right. I really want to challenge myself to do things that I'm not always great at doing. Creating the jungle will also be a challenge, but one that I will keep trying at because it is something that I know I need to improve on. 

This parallax city idea is one that I'm so excited for. I am really interested in creating this effect as it is more dynamic camera use. I think it could be quite a challenge to make it look good but I am very excited to try. I was struggling to find exactly what I was thinking for the look of the city in the background. I am very keen to try to make the timing of each element creating the rectangle very satisfying. 


This idea is one that I originally thought of but then we have chosen to go forward with Alex's interpretation of it. It will be all in one shot that pulls back as he comes closer to the screen and further from his shuttle. I am excited to animate the weightlessness in the character and the impact on the logo itself. 


Chloe brought up the importance of using a colour scheme and sticking to it, in order to keep consistency. This will be good to make sure we keep them all in a similar feel by restricting us. We also decided to try to avoid yellow as much as possible in all of the environments and characters, in order to make the rectangle really pop. The next step is to create the storyboards for my selected 3 idents. 

Applied Animation: 27th March - 2nd April 2017

This week we came back together on the Monday to review our sketches. The versions we had were generally quite similar which made it easier to decide between. The major differences between ideas were to do with shot framing and timings. A few ideas were thought about from different angles and using a different number of shots.

We went through and decided which version of each ideas we liked the most or if we should combine them to create something better. This method worked really well to be able to satisfy each of us with the different interpretations of the ideas. From this process, we decided that the ideas of the spitfire flying and the city lights flashing just weren't really working. The spitfire just seemed a little out of place and the city lights sounded like a good idea when we thought of it, but none of our sketches were anything we really liked visually. The caused us to adapt our ideas. The spitfire idea was swapped out for the idea of a volcano erupting and the lava running down the cracks into a square shape. This ties in more to an environmental idea. The city lights idea was adapted into an idea that still keeps the city theme but instead has a view from a car passenger window driving down a motorway or big bridge. Then the buildings, a train and a crane to parallax into view to create the illusion of the shape of the rectangle. We all very much prefer this idea and I am really excited for it.

We decided that we would each take 3 idents to lead more than others, but this does not mean we will be just doing them on our own. We will still be doing little bits on each ident but we will just focus more on our own 3 idents and how we split up the workflow within them. I am focusing on the ideas of the jungle, the city and space. These are the ones I want to focus on because of how each of them play with interesting uses of the camera and less character animation. We are now setting off on doing more specific research into each of our idents and their scenes.

Applied Animation: 20th - 26th March 2017

I chose to do the ident brief because I wanted to focus on something that wasn't just character animation. I usually animate characters so I want to do logos or objects in order to break out of my comfort zone a bit.

I am in a team with Alex and Chloe, since they both also liked the ident brief. We started off by working out which of the 4 channels we wanted to do.

We looked into each of the channels and tried to determine what the focus of the channels were and if any ideas sprung out at us. We decided upon the National Geographic channel because it had a very wide scope of options to explore.

We looked at the types of programs on the channel and also looked at many examples of the idents they currently use. We chose to go more in the direction of involving the yellow square into the actual scene of the ident rather than it just being an overlay like on some.

We quickly thought that we wanted to have all 9 idents link to tell some sort of story. Through the process of coming up with ideas this became the idea of a much looser story as we needed to make sure each ident worked on it's own and telling a more complex narrative across these 9 scenes would be very hard to implement.

We narrowed down the ideas to ones that we were each most interested in and which worked well together. Originally more of the ideas involved mostly environments and scenery but then more ideas with characters came into the mix.

We are thinking of splitting the work with the types of thing that each of us are more interested in or want to practice in. So most of the character stuff will be done by Alex, Chloe wants to focus more on environments and layout and I want to practice working on the more graphic and object animation rather than character work. I also want to implement dynamic camera animation into the idents.

For next week we are each going to have sketches of all 9 idents so we can bring together each persons interpretation of the idea to play with.