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: Maya Animating

I very much enjoyed doing the Maya animation tasks, it's a very easy thing to get used to with the interface being incredibly intuitive.

I found the graph editor so useful and also very easy to pick up because it uses the exact same principle as graph easing in Animate, Premiere, After Effects and many others.

I really like how each polygon object has it's own path. Especially when doing the segmented pendulum, it was so useful to break up with movements and even edit them from the graph editor. I can see so many great uses for this and I can see it making refining movements so simple and effective.

Obviously, I also animated the TARDIS and spacestation, the TARDIS was a bit more complex because I was trying to get weight in it's landing but I found this exciting to try.

I did have some trouble when I came to exporting these final playblast videos. Whenever I did it, it would just export as a blank green screen. I was really confused by this but it turned out that this was something to do with the default player it was opening in as when I opened the video file from its saved location, it was working just fine.

I think that I actually enjoyed modelling in Maya a bit more than animating. Maybe because it was more of a new feeling that the animating as that feels very familiar and comfortable. I did really enjoy animating though as it was great to see these elements come to life and it's so easy to do not having to redraw anything if you want a different angle or movement. I am very excited to further explore 3D modelling and animation in Maya.

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.