Installment 2 of onlineification of logbook.
21/4/12
Been working mostly on revamping the storyboard this week. I’m basically redrawing everything with layers in PS so that it serves as a layout, and with more specific poses. I haven’t gotten very far, because I was trying out a different shading style with a couple of them (killing 4 birds with one stone).
Also because I suck at perspective, I have been using a basic model of the room in Maya as a perspective reference. So I chuck all my cameras in there and wala! Camera map. Anyway, these two are basically the same set up, except the bottom one has an arbitrary paint texture chucked over it. I like the look, but I wonder if it isn’t too dirty for a hospital (still no one gets the hospital/sick boy bit). The top one is actually quite aesthetically pleasing, and my sister suggested I just leave it black, white and red, which is tempting, I admit, since I was having so many problems with colour. But it is so cliché!
Something I will have to consider for that though, is the outside/window shots. They won’t work in black and white. Or, I could have very desaturated colour instead, so that there isn’t so much jarring.
^paint texture chucked on it.
I have a composer now! My friend, Nick Kazantzis, who is very skilled and talented. His main instrument is piano, but he can work outside of that with the right program, so I will introduce him to Pro Tools. He also suggested a vocal overlay of children singing, which made me very happy because that is what I was considering as well. We will be corresponding regularly to work together on developing the music, as I have a bit of an indecisive-control-freak syndrome.
Finally found somebody who understood he died! Except he doesn’t understand why he died… I am at wits end at how to make the hospital look more like a hospital save filling it with sick people, which I will not do. I can’t give him eye bags if I’m colouring flat, and I can make his skin white/grey, but that too may be too subtle. I think the only other thing is to just ramp up the unworldly feel so the audience stops thinking too much in the realm of logic and is open to more possibilities, and the ominous/dark/sickly, just to nudge them more in that direction, even if they don’t explicitly see that it is a hospital. That would be what I would optimally aim for anyway, only I doubt I am skilled enough to pull it off therefore run a great risk of failing it altogether. I am not willing to go that explicit however.
On the animation front, I am unable to obtain a three round hole pegbar. I swear, the only place I can source them on the internet has a $50 shipping fee, which I am unwilling to pay for a $5 pegbar. Because that is simply ridiculous. The store suggested I buy in bulk and sell to pay for the shipping cost, but frankly, there are not that many people interested in traditional animation that I know of around here. Animation equipment is simply
ridiculous.
Storyboard/animatic deadline for this week. Concept art (which I have given up on) and colour script next week.
NTS: Print off some X-sheets and character designs so that I can have them on hand.
22/4/12
Quick update, going to try make my own pegbars cheapo method. There were a number of tutorials to be found on the web, of course, including some interesting ones involving punched binder rulers. Those aren’t that easy to source however, ingenious as it is, so I might try one of the other more cheapo methods, wrapping ballpoint refills in masking tape and gluing them to rulers: http://www.telugucartoon.com/tutorials/2D-Animation-PegBar.php
Worth a shot.
I might also mention here how I found a wonderful digital drawing option in Wacom Pen-abled tablet PC’s. Motion Computing’s LE 1600 in particular caught my eye. You can get them refurbished for less than $200, and according to the reviews, it is pretty much like a portable Cintiq. It’s made for field work type stuff which makes it sturdier and more practical than commercial products, though it’s a way old model, so it isn’t all that powerful, plus has a short battery life. Using it for animation isn’t that ideal, therefore, and apparently Photoshop doesn’t work that good on tablet computers anyway. But for digital sketching, hell it deserves a mention.
Plus, tested scanning and colouring. Sketched a random shot in blue pencil, then went over it in felt tip pen. If it worked I was going to purchase some Col-Erase pencils. Here is the method I found to get rid of the blue and colour in quickly in Photoshop.
1. Chuck on a Black & White adjustment layer and pull blue/cyan/everything to white.
2. Chuck on a Levels adjustment layer and eliminate the grey bits.
4. Set outline layer on Multiply.
3. Magic Wand relevant areas and Paint Bucket on a separate layer (coz I like layers).
4. Duplicate outline layer.
5. Apply 2.0/whatever Gaussian Blur to duplicate outline.
The last bit I added in because it looks pretty. I also realise I have been pretty slack in my look development (ok I had ongoing awareness of this), and have not factored in the style into the character design like I should have. However, I think that this linear development is working the best for me as a one man team right now because then I am not bogged down trying to perfect the look whilst leaving not enough time for pose testing, say.
^From left to right: colour concept after reading random colour theory tutorials, colour concept after reading tutorials and applying my own judgement.
I still give up on colour though.
25/4/12
Contrast tones to create an illusion of depth.
I made a peg bar.
Attempt 1:
Cardboard ruler + straw + chopstick + masking tape + PVA glue = flop
Attempt 2:
Metal and cork ruler + fluted dowel + masking tape + PVA glue = promising so far
Moreover I’ve narrowed one peg to give the illusion of stress relief!
Animated pieces of string as timing tests.
Got a reply from Hunter about my story. He doesn’t get it either. He recommends tarot cards. I tried chucking some wispy nurses in the room but it wasn’t working. I think I will keep it as is until he replies again but I don’t know what else to do.
^Look! I got some lovely styles by getting rid of the outline. I’m a big fan of the look, but practicality-wise, it does mean it does become difficult in cases to define body parts overlapping.
26/4/12
I broke my cork pegbar.
But I bought wooden rulers.
The more amazingly inspiring books by Disney animators I read, the more I feel my characters become more ‘Disney’. I think I probably should have stuck with my original character design. Well too late for that now. The art direction will never be excellent but I can do what I can to make the animation shine.
Drawn To Life by Walt Stanchfield.
29/4/12
At some point in the week I tried testing out Maya for falling leaves/cards special effects. There were a couple of tutorials on the net, most of them involving nCloth. The results weren’t entirely bad, and it was fun playing with values and all, but Steve was right, dynamics are hairy. I don’t want to spend more time on this bit than I have to, so I am considering either just doing a rough set up and rotoscoping it for the rotation and path, or just doing it by hand like everything else. I am more worried about the cards though, because of the card designs.
I have finished a rough tonal script (is that what you call it?) and am procrastinating adding colour to it. Yes I am scared of touching colour now. I think having colour would be best though, if only to avoid the old black and white and red thing.
Scouting for children to tickle I mean record for the laughing and other related child sounds, but it is proving difficult. The closest option I have at the moment is an 8yr old girl, but according to my friend you can tell the difference between boy voices and girl voices even at that age. I could try recording mine and adjusting the pitch, but I am convinced it will just turn out chipmunk. This is problematic because I need the sound to animate to in that section.
7/5/12
Apparently I need to look and feel less and animate more. This involves a change to my schedule hmm.
8/5/12
NTS: Layout 3.03 needs perspective work.
Meeting with Nick on Friday; must remember to bring rechargeable laptop.
I showed the animatic to yet another friend, who, as per usual, did not get it. Despite Susan’s assurances, I know the storytelling is extremely murky, yet I think it is too late to change it by now anyway.
I don’t think I have mentioned- my head has come out of the kiln! That is to say, I attempted a head maquette or whatever of Jacque to help with angle and design consistency a couple of weeks ago. I was pretty sure I had done it wrong and it had exploded, but it seems not!
^I am not so bold as to attempt the body as well, unfortunately.
17/5/12
Attempted a straight run of animating a scene. Didn’t work out quite like that unfortunately; I spent the morning instead cutting up my storyboard and sticking it on the wall like I was meant to do ages ago.
I tried to break up the scenes so similar scenes were together, or the hardest scenes were apart. For example, all the scenes involving cards are at the end so I can worry about the props when I have more confidence. I think that, most likely I won’t even go in the order I have described, since there are a few scenes I can’t do outright, like the laughing, until I have the sound down, and a couple where I have not fully described the perspective as of yet, nevertheless.
Even after I was done with that I was still distracted until night, so instead I animated the scene over a few days. I arbitrarily chose scene 1 shot 6, which coincidentally involved a head turn. After printing out the background layout, I made sure to time everything out before animating. Overall, I think it took an equivalent of a day (6-8hrs) with cleanup. I’m rather worried I strayed off model a lot of the time… but it’s not bad for an early attempt. I had to retime the head turn in MonkeyJam to make it shorter, and it’s really very poppy, but the movement is fast enough in this case that I can forgive it.
Also this week, I met up with my composer, Nick (he was sick last week). I believe we got a bit done, as we managed to figure out a sort of structure between us in the couple of hours we had with the animatic and a piano. He had created a nice theme to repeat throughout. I still think the music is coming on a bit strong (partly due to his virtuosic tendencies), but we can always tone down later, and involve other sounds into the discussion. We will probably keep the main music piano, as Nick is, after all, a pianist.
Music:
-a few notes of the theme as an intro
-silence/pressure (first peak)
-music come in as Jacque watches Death laugh
-then more fast paced (no runs please)
-slow down for contemplating
-keep transitions subtle
-introduce vocals
-sustain tempo and vocals
-vocals fall and rise
-ominous/that chromatic thing (pre-card playing)
-repetitive build up, higher, faster (card playing)
-silence after slap
-come in slowly and subtly as Jacque looks at Death
-credits: go crazy
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