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).