10/3/12
We are now at the end of week 2 of the semester so I thought I’d better start my logbook.
I am decided that for my year long project I would do a short animation, and had pretty much settled on an idea from the holidays. Nevertheless we were meant to do a brain dump and put down EVERYTHING; so I did.
The main problem at this stage is whether to do it in 3D, or traditional hand drawn animation. My main (long term) interest lies in 2D, except I think that most job opportunities lie in 3D, and that the work developed over this year should be towards getting a job. But since there are no other courses in traditional animation I can take at COFA, I think this would be a good opportunity to learn, and learn from someone with a background in it: Susan. Then I can present myself as a general animator sort of person I guess. I think I’m decent at modelling and texturing, and would like to develop more techy Maya skills, just because I feel I should take advantage of my computer science background, but they’re not fields I would like to specialise in, so I guess it’s not priority. My next preference in regards to employment is being a concept artist/illustrator. But I think my skills are not up to scratch at this stage, and since I have another year to go at COFA (switched degrees from combined with Computer Science but still have compulsory 1st and 2nd year subjects to catch up on) I can work on that next year.
So I’m basically brain dumping all over again in words, but then, I have been mulling over a story idea all holidays, so it’s no longer a fresh sort of thing a mind map is prefect for.
Proposed Narrative:
A little boy is alone in a hall full of beds, dejectedly building a card castle. He goes to the window and watches the world for a bit. He wishes he could join them or that they could join him, but here there is only him. Sighing deeply he turns around.
And finds himself nose to nose with another boy where there was no one before. Yelping, he pushes the other kid over, partly out of some self defence instinct. The other boy tumbles over with a small oomph, rubs his head, then looks up and gave him a shy smile.
Despite himself, the boy grins back. It was such a long time since he was with another kid his own age, other thoughts of how familiar the other boy seemed dwindles quietly away. Thoughts of how when he stepped into the light, it was like looking into a mirror. They are forgotten as the other child suddenly engages him in a game of tag. The cheating rascal! And they are off, racing down the hallway, beds lining the wall like soldiers to evade, tall, narrow, windows blinding their path with the intermittent glare of the setting sun.
They play together for a long time, laughter ringing off the high ceilings, while outside the wind whips the leaves into a flurry of red and gold, like cards scattering in a flourish from a magician’s hands; or was that the other way around? At that moment his friend tags him and dashes around a bed. Breathlessly, the boy hurls himself after him, only to stop short as his vision is filled with a devilish grin and his own faded deck- when had he swiped it?- and a yank as he is pulled towards the window seat where the light streams in fading purple.
His face close and earnest, the other boy deftly shuffles and cuts the deck into two neat piles. Sifting through one, he pulls out a card and holds it up meaningfully.
A jack of diamonds. He wanted to play slapjack! The boy lights up inwardly- he was a pro at this! Grabbing the jack, he reshuffles the deck, placing the piles on either side, and slaps down the first card.
Card after card: ace, four, ten, ten, queen- his world is falling cards and falling light and the walls close in upon themselves as his fingers lift up off a little black J…
Slap!
There is a stillness in the air. The boy stares at his hand and hesitantly pulls it off his friend’s. A black jack. A little red headed black jack…
He feels a pair of eyes staring into his soul.
And a sudden warm embrace that exploded into the brilliant white sky.
And somewhere, on the other side of consciousness, a little card castle collapses.
^Way too long and detailed and ambitious maybe (I got carried away after a while), but I want to properly record the nuances and mood of the story. This version at any rate. And then I can cut down. The falling cards and card walls were a latter fanciful idea and not really necessary anyway. If I decide to do 3D, I might cut down the entire middle section even.
I have also had a little thought about the stylistic look of the animation. Having recently been exploring the SOTW (Short of the Week) site, I have been, well, intimidated, but inspired by the look and feel of animations such as “Blik” and “Backwater Gospel”. In fact it I’m aiming for a feel that is sort of a combination of the two.
Early thoughts anyway.
15/3/12
Completely decided to do this as a 2D animation, so will probably switch to Susan’s class. On a slightly related note, I borrowed a few books on animation, and found one about combining 2D and 3D assets. The more I read the more interested/fascinated I became; I had no idea so many 2D animation films had so many seamlessly integrated 3D elements in them. This hybrid animations opens up a lot of possibilities in my mind, because I am fundamentally impartial to the hand drawn aesthetic, but I don’t have amazing draftsmanship. Anyway, it’s a bit of a side note, because I don’t really want to do it here, aside from maybe environment or EFX but it’s probably too complicated, and sensible to cut out, therefore.
But yes, I have not yet had a consultation with a tutor yet, so I am really apprehensive about deciding on anything, but I should start scheduling.
Stuff to do (that I am sure of right now):
-story development
-character bibles
-look development
-colour script
-script breakdown
-storyboard
-2D animatic
-preliminary sound design
-look frames/R&D
^Perhaps not in that exact order, but I more or less have to get it all done by this semester. I have 9 weeks…
Oh yeah and some inspirations:
Backwater Gospel: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVkDrIacHJM
Matter Fisher: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTNYGTCEDP4
16/3/12
Wrote up a schedule and oh boy…
^emotional bullseye + my ‘storytelling beads’
^visual intensity graph. It gives me the illusion of control.
I’ve been also reading some amazing books by Tony White on traditional animation and animation in general. It’s got a lot of wonderful stuff on process and just animation in general. Apparently the author founded The Animaticus Foundation, and through their site I found a cool film festival called 2D or Not 2D which I would love to enter. Just a thought.
Finally found Animator’s Survival Kit by Richard Williams in the library, and boy, is it BRILLIANT. Unfortunately, it is in the high use collection with a maximum 2hr loan. I managed to read a couple of chapters though, and some things I took away from it was that animation does not imitate reality, but invents it. So basically you do what you want but you make it believable. Also, getting the structure down first is more important than pretty pictures at first. But I have to remember I am inventing reality, especially for this project, as when I animate I tend to get too bogged down with accuracy and physics. For my boys, I want to emphasise their character. Subtly, yes, but character comes first.
Also found Bruce Block’s The Visual Story. It goes very in-depth about everything that goes into telling a story in film. Awesome stuff, about space and lines and shapes and colours, even visual rhythm. Blew my mind how people think about all these when they make their film, but I do find that an awareness of composition to control visual intensity would be useful for my animation, so I am drawing alternative shots into my storyboard, especially the middle part.
Anyway, finishing off first storyboard. I am using Celtx to put everything together now, as it is awfully convenient. My only qualm with it is the inability to vary timing upon playback (and turn it into an animatic), but that it has playback at all is pretty cool.
26/3/12
Finally had a talk with Susan. Her only issue with my story was the end bit (surprisingly, because that was the only bit I was happy with), and suggested showing the Jack at the end. I was always bad at making changes to things, but since I really want to do good storytelling, I decided to try incorporate the idea. My friend also watched my untimed animatic, and had difficulties understanding the card game. So in the animatic I tried to make every aspect as obvious as possible so that anyone I showed it to would not have problems understanding the story just because I had bad storyboards or whatever.
I did have problems with the animatic however. I wanted to animate some of the basic movement so I did it in After Effects, which took me a while to learn (I still don’t think I’m doing it right). But I definitely timed everything wrong because the whole thing turned out to be 1.5 mins and for a story like mine, I’d give it 3 mins minimum. Except since the slower shots were either more still, or had little movements I didn’t bother making a separate storyboard panel for, it felt wrong to me to give them more time. Or maybe it was just I knew my storyboards too well. Anyway, after timing shots in a movie and some short animations in my head, I concluded I had to at least double the times I gave some of my shots. There were a lot of 4, 5 sec shots in those works whilst I think the most I gave mine was 2 seconds!
I briefly tried animating with a Cintiq today. It is, indeed, much better than a normal graphics tablet, and quite comfortable to work with. I did find the gap between pen and cursor disconcerting, but I would imagine I’d get used to it, and seriously that’s asking for a bit much. The Cintiqs need a converter to use though, and as far as I could tell, only F106 had them. F106 being pretty much full of classes all week. Also, I tried animating in Photoshop, which had improved animation capabilities since last I looked, with its timeline interface, but as far as I could tell you couldn’t adjust the timing once the frame was drawn. I was surprised they omitted such a basic feature, well, to me, coming from a background in Maya. Real time retiming is one of the main advantages I see to a digital environment. In fact, it even beats not having to scan in drawings as a pro-digital factor. I do want to be using a raster program, but I don’t know of many besides Photoshop…
I have a new schedule, as requested, with the aid of Tony White’s animation book again. It went in depth about the importance of pre-production, which I already knew, but the detail in which he carried out everything, storyboards, layouts, whatever, scared the hell out of me. As a single person production team I feel I am permitted to take shortcuts, but I still allotted a massive amount of time to those areas.
10/4/12
Woah really behind in logbook…
Well, I tried using a Cintiq for longer, courtesy of Susan, and I guess it was something I could get used to. She showed me how to retime it too, thank god.
She also gave me some animation paper to try, and I must say, it is a process I find much more enjoyable. To be fair, the dude I was animating this time was much simpler, and the action very easy, but I guess I just like manually flipping. I would need to do a lot of timing studies to be able to judge timing better, and scanning really was an evil process, but Susan was having trouble convincing CSU to be more lenient with the Cintiqs anyway, so I think pencil and paper is winning at the moment.
^animating by CANDLELIGHT!
…I kid. But I actually did do a few frames by candlelight during Earth Hour :D
I modified my animatic again, and tried hard to make it make more sense this time, but I got mostly blankness from the class when I showed it for my presentation. This is most worrying. From the feedback I got, I gathered that the reason he dies has to be more strong. In fact, I’m pretty sure most people didn’t realise he died. I don’t mind that much, but I guess I could go with the slumping over ending to help it along. Maybe. And I worked out why it sort of stopped working for me in the second half; the camera angles were all wrong (thanks to amazing storyboarding skills). Hopefully it will feel better once that is rectified.
I also need to start working on the aural elements. Basic stand in foley shouldn’t be too hard to source, but I also need to work on the shape of the music. I definitely want music, so I wanted to get a composer. They’re all suddenly mysteriously busy when I asked them a second time this week, though, so there’s a dilemma. However, I have given some thought myself on how it could sound.
Nostalgic
Lilting
Ominous
Haunting
Minimal
Imminent
Sweet
Childish
Reflective
I really like the atmosphere and haunting mood of the first one, and I really like the French sound and sweetness of the Amelie soundtrack. I was thinking of giving the setting an old, French/European feel, anyway. Details, details.
According to the schedule I’m meant to be done with character design by now, so I’m behind. L I will have to finish most of it today. I have got most of his design down already, but I just needed to fix his hair so that it isn’t a pain to draw, and draw some of his expressions and poses. (Technically there are two characters, but they are a part of each other anyway :P) I have done most of his profiling as well, I just need to do a little more research and drawing.
As to what needs to be done this week: concept art, style frames, script (to specify details of storyboard), fixing/redoing animatic, and apparently layout and pose tests.
Gulp. O.O
Well, viz dev first, as it is really important and I really need to get started on it.
14/4/12
Holy cow it’s the end of the break. I’m still rather behind. I’ve fixed the animatic a bit more, finished the storyboard, added some rudimentary foley, scouted for composers, made a reference wall, tried to decide on style, tried to work on colour palettes, and started another animation test. It sounds like a lot, but the viz dev didn’t really get anywhere despite my efforts. I spent most of my time trying to get sunset lighting and failing because I suck at colour.
^style experiment. Oil pastel brush with brick texture. It looks like its snowing.
^The Wall.
^rough colour concept. I had so much trouble with this it’s not funny. In the end I eyedropped colours from a sunset photograph out of sheer frustration.
Finished (more or less) character designs. There are no colour swatches because all colour is relative! :D
Ok, asked a couple of people’s feedback on the improved animatic. Results were varied and depressing.
Impressions:
-Death is a spirit from the card
-Death is an imaginary friend
-they are girls
-he lives in a boarding school
Also:
-they don’t get the hug
-they don’t get he’s Death
-they don’t get that Death won
-they don’t get that Jacque dies
In short, they don’t get the main point of the whole thing.
Proposed remedies:
-make Jacque collapse
-remove Death from the snapped card
-change camera to sideways angle
-make everything more white and sterile
-also make window pause slightly longer
15/4/12
Implemented above changes except for the whiter one. Also lengthened a lot of pauses. Again, a mix of responses. At least I’m getting less, zomg he’s from the card!, responses.
Impressions:
-Death is a girl (my child_laugh track sounded girly apparently >.>)
-romance (again >.>)
-Death is an illusion
-Death is a memory
-Death is an imaginary friend dreamed up from the cards Jacque usually plays
-he lives in an orphanage
Also:
-they still don’t get that he’s Death
-they still don’t get that Jacque dies
Proposed remedies:
-uh change the laugh track (minor imo)
-increase the size of Death’s scythe on the card
-make Jacque collapse more convincingly
-increase the size and height of the beds
One thing you learn, rough storyboards are no good for subtle stories where minor details are important parts of the storytelling. Sure, you can keep them simple, and they save time for more standard story sequences, but with one like mine, where people are reading it completely differently after I revamp a couple of frames, I think I actually have to redo the whole thing at this stage. Sucks, because I need to work on my colour scripting/paletting, which I am utterly failing at due to lack of ability. Ah well, story first.
Sourced a promising potential composer today. We will meet up on Wednesday where I will see what he can do. I am hopeful.
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