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.

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. 

Character & Narrative: Week Thirteen: 18th - 24th December 2017

This week I did the sketches for shot 18. I followed the reference video quite closely for the correct weight and speed. I made sure to match up the end with shot 19's opening. For the middle frames of the throw, I decided to add a smear and stretch out the arm and lantern to accentuate the quick motion. 

I did make a start on the keyframe skeletons for shot 12 however I didn't manage to finish them since it is the run up to christmas so I'm still a week behind, however I hope to set aside a good few full days of work late next week to try catch up. 

Character & Narrative: Week Twelve: 11th - 17th December 2017

I started by finishing off the keyframes linework for shot 14. This didn't take too long which let me get on with shot 22. 

To save time and make it easier, I decided that shot 22 could be done as a walk cycle, since he didn't need to be acting much and it was just him walking away at the same angle through the whole shot. I still found this quite difficult like shot 14, so I think it may be that I am not confident animating this character from behind. This shot still requires a few inbetweens to smooth it out but the shot is as complete as it needs to be at this moment in time. 

I later decided, while rewatching this shot, that he looked way too confident. After just being put through this hellish experience, he wouldn't be walking so normally. I now intend to come back to this shot and change or redraw it to be more downbeat and slow.

Character & Narrative: Week Eleven: 4th - 10th December 2017

This week I kept working on shot 7, drawing linework over the sketches that I finished last week. I enjoy doing the linework as it's relatively easy as I have already done the hard work of the sketches. 

Shot 14 took a lot longer than I expected. Even with the reference footage, I found it surprisingly difficult to draw the poses to a level that I was satisfied with. I kept redoing frames until I was happy. I am now in a place where I am ok with the keyframes. I still have to go over and do the linework for this shot but this means that I am running a week behind schedule as I should have done shot 22 in this week aswell. I believe that I will be able to catch up over christmas as I will have some good full days to slog away and get back on schedule. 

Character & Narrative: Week Ten: 27th November - 3rd December 2017

I started the week still working on completing the keyframes for shot 19. I knew this would be a hard one to do, but even with the maya reference this was still taking a long time. Most of the week was taken up with doing this. 

Once I had all the sketches done and checked and double checked, I could move a bit quicker with inbetweens and linework. This was much easier to do and I got through all linework on the keyframes and breakdown inbetweens within a day and a bit. All that is left to do on this shot is final linework inbetweens but I will be coming back to that in a few weeks since I had other shots to do too.

We decided shot 6 could just be a hand that is move across the panning screen since it would save us time. I just drew it three times to give it some wiggle. 


Shot 7 was the other one I had to do this week, but unfortunately I only managed to get the initial sketches done since shot 19 has pushed me behind schedule. I will have to fit that in next week with 14 and 22.

Character & Narrative: Week Nine: 20th - 26th November 2017

Shot 19. The 360 spin. This shot is at the major dramatic climax of the animation, which is very important. It is the most complex shot we are doing, as to why it is my only focus for this week.

I created a 3D reference using Moom in maya since this shot would have been too complex to attempt without some form of reference like this. The camera movement is the main point of this shot so it was very important that I got this correct. 

I imported this into Photoshop and started roughly sketching over the top to change some proportions (like the head). I only did this every 8 frames so that I could save time and then just do inbetweens later. This still took a long time however and even with the reference, it still proved difficult to continually understand the way he was turning, hence I fell behind schedule and was still working on sketches after Sunday.

Character & Narrative: Week Eight: 13th - 19th November 2017

This week was Manchester Animation Festival so I specifically scheduled in less work for all three of us, knowing that we wouldn't be getting much done. Therefore, I had one shot to complete this week, a rather simple one, where the camera only zooms out from the gnome and he doesn't actually move all that much. I only got to work on this on the friday, but I finished the sketches and linework for the two main keyframes. It was hard to get the angle looking right with this shot because of how high the angle is. When inbetweens come, it will slow and smooth this motion a bit, and it can then be duplicated and flipped to make him look back to the beginning.

I feel like I am slightly behind after this week but really when I think about it, I am still on track, since we specifically scheduled just keyframes to be done in these weeks, and because I did the inbetweens for the first few shots, we are actually ahead. I am anxious about this next week however, because I have the 360 rotation shot to do. I have to finish my Maya reference using the Moom model to help me keep the angle consistent. 

Character & Narrative: Week Seven: 6th - 12th November 2017

This week I had to get shot 4 and 11 keyframes done. Surprisingly enough, I found shot 11 the harder of the two since it is a much more close up shot, meaning I have to be much more precise with my lines to keep it consistent in details. I spent a lot of time sketching this shot to make sure I got the facial expressions right so that they would clearly illustrate what the gnome is really feeling. I did use reference footage to get the basic idea, but I exaggerated and changed details quite a bit from it. This shot is left with many more inbetweens to be done to smooth his motion.

Shot 4 wasn't as hard as I expected it to be. I filmed reference footage of me slowing to a stop and synced that up to the shot. I drew my keyframes based on the contact frames of the video but changing the angle slightly to get it to work with the background. From here I ended up doing most of the inbetweens at the same time since I was getting carried away with this shot. I'm really happy with this shot imparticularly and I am excited to see it finished with all inbetweens done. 

Character & Narrative: Week Six: 30th October - 5th November 2017

This week I had two shots to animate. I think that having the schedule is really helping me plan and see what I should be doing, and will easily tell me when I am running behind on our plan. 

I finished the first shot very fast as it was only a foot with rather simple movement. This was a good one to start with to get me back into the mood of animating. Since it was such a simple shot I decided to do the inbetweens at the same time. 

My second shot was shot 3. This took much longer since it was a more action based shot, with full body running. Not only that, but it was from the front and from a low angle, making it even harder to draw. I took reference video of me running to try to understand the difficult angle however my first sketches looked very off. He looked as if he was more hopping from side to side than running. 

I asked for feedback from multiple sources and then changed a few key things. I redrew the arms on every frame to make it swing much more. This really helped sell the weight of him pulling himself along. I made his body twist a bit more with these more drastic arm movements. I then also changed the feet so that for 1 frame of the cycle, the under sole can be seen. These changes really did so much to fix this shot. After I had drawn over these sketches with the linework and done the inbetweens, I then added the subtle squash and stretch in the bounce of his steps by resizing the frame. 

I am really happy with the result of this shot especially because it was really frustrating me when it was not working. 

Character & Narrative: Week Five: 23rd October - 29th October 2017

This week I continued with the animatic. There were some concerns in the group about the length of our animation. This was because when I had only added about half of the panels to the animatic, it was already 36 seconds long. I tried to trim this down as much as possible here and there but we didn't want to spoil the tension and atmosphere in some of the slower downtime parts. I was worried about it feeling too rushed and it ruining the story.

When I put everything together it came to 57 seconds. We have tried to trim as much as possible but not much was able to be removed without compromising the story. We have gone through and worked out how much work each shot will need and we believe we will be able to achieve what we plan. 


Also this week, we recorded all voice effects we would need. This involved me imitating the gnome with panting, grunting and shouting sounds. It took a while to go through all the audio footage and select the best takes. I'm really happy with all the sound work I did on the animatic. I really enjoy doing this and making certain sounds more prominent in left or right sides of speakers depending on where the sounds are coming from. 

Character & Narrative: Week Four: 16th - 22nd October 2017

We were introduced to the Maya model, Moom. I had fun playing around with this and thought it would be especially useful for planning out our 360 rotating shot at the end of the story. This kind of shot would be very difficult to draw ourselves, but using moom as a pre-vis reference will help tremendously.

As Alex was creating the storyboards, I was scanning them in and putting them together in Premiere to create the animatic. I was doing basic timings based on instinct before I added sound effects. For the time being I am only adding ambient background sounds and I will add more specific detail sounds once I have a much clearer example of timings like footsteps and other interactions with the environment. 

I also created a shot tracker and schedule in Google Sheets for the project. The shot tracker lets us tick off what stage each shot is at, giving us a visual representation of how far along the project is and if anything is lagging behind. The scheduling is then based on how complex certain shots are versus how many weeks we have. I'm strangely proud of these minor aspects of the planning as time management is something I have continually stated needed personally improving.

Character & Narrative: Week Three: 9th - 15th October 2017

This week started with me finishing off the script. We reviewed the script together and decided that with how much time we had and how ambitious some of the shots were, we would have to cut it down quite a lot. We decided that we would take out a world of tunnels and just go straight from the snowy desert to the mars like world.

However we still wanted the claustrophobic feel of the tunnel sequence, so we made our mars world have a much more enclosed and rocky environment to keep the gnome feeling trapped. I took elements from shots and little details from the tunnel and mars scenes and combined them to make the scene we now have in the script.

 

I'm happy with how the script came together and I'm glad that I got to do this part of the project since I really love writing stories and scripts.

We are working very well as a team so far. We have a group chat that we keep sharing ideas and progress on, so we are all on the same page. Commutation is such an important thing and I think that we have that going very well in our group so far.

Character & Narrative: Week Two: 2nd - 8th October 2017

Throughout the week, I thought on my idea more but I was struggling to think of anything new and exciting. I thought more about the idea of the the heroes journey and the return at the end. This doesn't have to be an actual return to how the story starts but it helped me to think about maybe the spaceman bargaining with the aliens to help him go back through the black hole and get home. 

• Spaceman’s ship start getting ripped apart into a black hole. He puts on his spacesuit before the airlock door flies off. He's hanging onto a door frame after the airlock is ripped off. He hangs on as it gets sucked into the black hole. Wakes up crashed on an alien planet. A group of aliens find him. They seem friendly bring the spaceman back to their camp. They have a party and they let him use a ship to get back through the black hole to earth.

I drew these basic sketches to accompany my pitch.

The idea selected by the class vote was Eloise's. I'm actually really pleased with this because I think that it is a better idea than mine which has more scope for animation.

We decided on the roles that we would take. Eloise will be doing character design and background work. Alex will be doing storyboard, animatic and colouring. And I am to be lead on script and animation, taking on the keyframes, breakdowns and inbetweens (though we will be sharing inbetween responsibilities when we get to that part of the project)

Though the idea is Eloise's, we all took it and shared ideas to develop the specifics further. Over the weekend I started to write out a full detailed script for the animation, which once finished, Alex and Eloise can read it through and add, take away or change bits of it.

I'm liking the prospects of this project and am excited about splitting up the job roles like we are. 

Character & Narrative: Week One: 29th Sep - 1st October 2017

These are the dice I rolled in the briefing session.



I was struggling to think of these images as anything not literal. I see them basically as Spaceman/Astronaut, Galaxy/Black Hole, Alien/King. 

My favourite idea so far is as follows:

• Spaceman’s ship start getting ripped off into a black hole. He's hanging onto a door frame after the airlock is ripped off. He hangs on as it gets sucked into the black hole. Crashes on an alien planet. A group of aliens find him and have never seen a human before.They hit it off and have a party.

I was struggling to think how to end this and I'm still not totally struck on the idea. I will need to think and develop it further before the pitch on friday. Some of the other ideas I had and wrote down are below:

• Spaceman is in his spaceship, door flies off and spaceman is sucked out into space. There is a black hole in the distance. He is flying towards it but an alien flies past and saves him.
• A spaceship is hurtling towards a black hole. He is putting on his spacesuit and all that as the ship is falling apart. He goes through the black hole into another world and is greeted by the alien king.
• Spaceman and alien traveling around the galaxy.
• Spaceman fights the alien king to become king of the galaxy.
• Spaceman falls through a wormhole / blackhole and turns into a blob
• Spaceman crash lands on a distant planet after being sucked through a black hole. Aliens save him from the wreck and take him to the king. 
• Spaceman shape shifts into an alien
• Alien kidnaps spaceman with a wormhole/teleport