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. 

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.

Study Task: Walk This Way

I again really enjoyed this task to practice walk cycle theory. Using moom was straightforward and enjoyable to create this walk cycle. I personally found it easier to make the cycle with the default smoothing on as it would then make an inbetween that was close enough to what I needed, which I could then go in and manually alter anyway. 

When rendering, I also did a pass with the stepped movements to just show the poses themselves. 

In hindsight, I could have spent more time to give the walk more character and visual interest but do still I feel I have a good understanding of the poses and weight in a walk cycle, especially as this project progresses, since the character in our animation is nearly always running. 

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. 

Study Task: Strike a Pose

I tried to chose 5 poses that were rather varied in pose potential. I chose:

• Fear
• Awe
• Tiredness
• Pride
• Cruelty

I really enjoyed playing with the moom figure and it was much easier to control than I expected and therefore didn't take as long to do as anticipated. 

From using Moom in this task, we have decided to use this to aid us in creating our 360 spin shot. I plan to use moom as reference to draw over. 

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.

Study Task: Research 2: Process

If we were to do our animation in stop motion or digital 3D, I think one of the greatest issues would be the sets we would have to make. Since our animation covers 4 or 5 vastly different environments, it would be incredibly hard to create all of them for stop motion puppets to live in. This would take a lot of resources and potentially be more expensive than any other medium. This is also a process that none of us would feel comfortable doing since we aren't sculpters and don't really feel we could just learn as we went with such an ambitious story. We would have to drastically tone down our idea to make it possible with stop motion. 

However, with stop motion, once the figures and sets are built, the process of actually animating is much quicker than hand drawn.

But then again, we would be limited as to when we could animate with stop motion, having to work solely in uni opening times. Stop motion also is much more punishing when mistakes happen, there is no ctrl z and if you notice something is off after the fact, the whole shot will likely have to be redone. 

Digital 3D is something I would be interested in for making backgrounds, but I am personally not as keen on the look of 3D characters. However, this medium allows a lot of flexibility and the opportunity to make mistakes. Again in 3D, once a rigged character is made, the time it takes to animate is drastically reduced. 

Study Task: Research 1: Aesthetics

We have chosen to do our animation in digital hand drawn 2D. For this project I am also going to be using Photoshop rather than Animate, which I have almost exclusively used in the past. 

We have chosen to use this medium because we are all mainly 2D artists and that is where each of our interests lie and what we feel comfortable in. 

Obviously the potential of this medium is only limited by what you can imagine and draw. We are planning a 360 shot where the camera will spin around the character. This will be an incredibly complex shot to pull off because of the constantly changing angle but we are feeling ambitious to try it because it would be really good if we can get it right.

Doing something like this in digital 3D would be much simpler as you have control of the camera and can move it around to find whatever shot you want after the fact.

I also feel that the 2D look will give our animation a bit more of a fairytale and fantasy atmosphere than other mediums could because of so many traditional fairytales have been done 2D (like the classic Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, seen here).

All of this will rely on our drawing skill, something which I am not so confident with. However I am embracing the challenge and will hopefully improve lots from such an intense and action packed story.