Tuesday, 26 January 2010
Tuesday, 12 January 2010
Post Rough Cut Adjustments
the first thing i worked on after producing my rough cut was the animation of the boy turning into the ally. the main animation i figured was fine, but their wasn't enough frames in the turn. so i drew up another four frames to put in, and took out one that was originally their and ran the new animation through animation shop. it looked good so i coloured up the new frames and reproduced the whole animation. this whole proces took about two hours. after i looked at the scene again, i felt the actual backdrop of the ally itself was bland and plain. so i quickly drew up some bins, scanne din the image, coloured it and threw that in the scene too. it worked and brought a bit more to the scene, so i rendered it and it was done. the next thing i did was colour the frames for the mid shot of the monster running. after doing this i realised the colouring for some of the shots of the monster were a bit plain and 2d. so i added some shade to some of the clips just so they didnt look so flat.
i then moved on to doing the animation for the boy getting up and running off after seeing the monster. this consisted of 18 frames, and took me about 3 hours to complete. after doing the usual colouring process and checking, i produced the animation and the scene was done. then i thought, on my storyboard, i had the camera zooming out to see two girls who saw the boy running from this monster. i decided after some deliberation to leave this out of the final animation as that scene proves that the monster is a figment of the boys imagination, and i wanted to leave whether the monster is real or not for the audience to decide. so in its place, i added the monster standing in the shot of the boy running off, and then had him dissappear, reappear, then the camera zoom into his face and his eyes slowly open. i'm glad i decided to add this as it adds a bit more mystery to the monster, and also makes him seem more of a powerful force.
I also decided to swap some scenes around. in the rough cut, once the boy is 'killed' by the monster it fades to black then the time lapse of clouds comes in, then it proceeds to the close ups of the dead body of the boy. after watching the rough cut a couple of times, i decided on swapping the order a bit. once the boy is killed, i had the close ups of him dead come in straight after, then had the time lapse of clouds. i did this because i had the idea of putting a select few scenes in reverse within the clouds. i did this as i wanted to open another possibility as to why the boy appears to be alive at the end. now time could have rewound, or it could have even of been a dream (hence the clouds).
other changes i made was completely removing the idea of opening with a passing car. whenenver i redrew and redid the car going past it looked strange. so i then decided on a more in depth intro, where the car is shown from an off centre front veiw, and the driver throws litter out the car, the camera follows the litter as it falls through the air and then lands on the pavment, then the camera pans out into the long shot of the street it lands on which happens to be when the boy comes running in. the reason i didn't go along with this idea, is because, i didnt want the intro to take away from the whole point, it seemed to me that it would be too involved for the short film, especially when it had nothing to do with forwarding the narrative anyway. I also re-edited all the running scenes of the boy as they seemed slow and unrealistic.
i then moved on to doing the animation for the boy getting up and running off after seeing the monster. this consisted of 18 frames, and took me about 3 hours to complete. after doing the usual colouring process and checking, i produced the animation and the scene was done. then i thought, on my storyboard, i had the camera zooming out to see two girls who saw the boy running from this monster. i decided after some deliberation to leave this out of the final animation as that scene proves that the monster is a figment of the boys imagination, and i wanted to leave whether the monster is real or not for the audience to decide. so in its place, i added the monster standing in the shot of the boy running off, and then had him dissappear, reappear, then the camera zoom into his face and his eyes slowly open. i'm glad i decided to add this as it adds a bit more mystery to the monster, and also makes him seem more of a powerful force.
I also decided to swap some scenes around. in the rough cut, once the boy is 'killed' by the monster it fades to black then the time lapse of clouds comes in, then it proceeds to the close ups of the dead body of the boy. after watching the rough cut a couple of times, i decided on swapping the order a bit. once the boy is killed, i had the close ups of him dead come in straight after, then had the time lapse of clouds. i did this because i had the idea of putting a select few scenes in reverse within the clouds. i did this as i wanted to open another possibility as to why the boy appears to be alive at the end. now time could have rewound, or it could have even of been a dream (hence the clouds).
other changes i made was completely removing the idea of opening with a passing car. whenenver i redrew and redid the car going past it looked strange. so i then decided on a more in depth intro, where the car is shown from an off centre front veiw, and the driver throws litter out the car, the camera follows the litter as it falls through the air and then lands on the pavment, then the camera pans out into the long shot of the street it lands on which happens to be when the boy comes running in. the reason i didn't go along with this idea, is because, i didnt want the intro to take away from the whole point, it seemed to me that it would be too involved for the short film, especially when it had nothing to do with forwarding the narrative anyway. I also re-edited all the running scenes of the boy as they seemed slow and unrealistic.
Tuesday, 15 December 2009
Production diary and Reflective thoughts after veiwing rough cut (wip)
Producing the basic running animation:
In order to save time, I plan on animating a person running on the spot, the using my editing software, pan and crop the animation across the screen so it looks like he is running.
My first animation I produced of the main protagonist running was unsuccessful. I tried to do it quickly, and tried to have the clothes waving and his hair being adjusted by the wind. It took me hours. And the final product was nothing short of terrible.
I had a look on the internet for some suggestions and tips on animating, found a few, then watch some work by some of my favourite animation studios and thought how they would have done that, or drawn this, or how many frames would they use to do this etc. I then went back and started drawing up the rough sketches for the second attempt at the running animation. Once I had the rough sketches done I could think about adding more detail like his clothes and hair, each time placing the previous frame underneath my current one, so that I could trace the hair so it didn’t change too much and so that the proportions between each frame stayed relatively alike.
Once all the final sketches were done, I scanned each frame individually (which takes ages) and used animation shop to put the frames in sequence and see if the animation is smooth (obviously because I had spent hours producing these little animations, I was very forgiving if something may have been a bit out of place). Once happy I’ll get all the clean frames and trace them with my amazing pen ;) traditionally in animation, once the clean drawings have been made, producing the clean solid black lines would be done on the computer by using an onion skin and producing a vector path over the top so you can see the original sketch and produce a vector image as a separate picture using a pen tool. I didn’t do this, as I’m hopeless at using the pen tools and vectors. So instead I found a pen, that when used and the image scanned, left you with relatively solid lines to work with. So I traced every frame with a pen, then with these final clean solid, frames, scanned them all in and opened each image on Paint Shop Pro. Here I had to colour in each frame individually, which took a long time. The backgrounds of each frame I made one solid colour. This is so when it comes to editing, I can use the ‘chroma keyer’ to remove the background, and lay each animation over the scenes that I produced on simply 3D. this is pretty much the same as the technique used in movies, known as green/blue screen. Once coloured in, I would produce the animation in ‘Sony Vegas’, and render it as a separate video file. I actually reproduced the running animation three times befor ei was happy with how it looked.
Above are two frames that I drew, the first two show the original animation and how that looked (after my poor first attempt), and the second two show the redrawn animation after realising the second version i did still looked incorrect.
I had to use a drawing style that i could easily and quickly draw, and that was quite flexible. By flexible, i mean im able to manipulate it easily. Due to time restrictions, i wasn't able to produce high quality drawings, that were 'really' pleasing to look at,as the drawing and colouring process would take twice as long, instead i had to keep them simple, and because of that i feel the final look of the whole animation isn't going to look as polished as i would have liked.
This process is what I went through for each of the animations I produced. As I did more and more I began to get much better. The last two scenes I animated for my rough cut were the mid shots of the main protagonist running frantically, and the very last animation you see were the boy raises his head. These are my two favourite animations I did, as I feel they are quite smooth and although I thought I would struggle to do them, and yes, they did take a long time, they look nice and are pretty close to more professional animations I’ve seen, which I am personally proud of.
After putting together my rough cut, i noticed i still had a bit to do. some scenes were still not coloured, or, completely incomplete, such as the monster running mid shot, and the scene where the boy gets up off the floor and runs off (sample clip in the rough cut). I also felt I needed to redo the running long shots, as the running seemed too slow and looked unrealistic, and also the shot where the boy turns into the ally looks like its lacking some frames of animation and skips round the corner too quick. Also the car that passes at the beginning needs to be redone, and completely thought over.
In order to save time, I plan on animating a person running on the spot, the using my editing software, pan and crop the animation across the screen so it looks like he is running.
My first animation I produced of the main protagonist running was unsuccessful. I tried to do it quickly, and tried to have the clothes waving and his hair being adjusted by the wind. It took me hours. And the final product was nothing short of terrible.
I had a look on the internet for some suggestions and tips on animating, found a few, then watch some work by some of my favourite animation studios and thought how they would have done that, or drawn this, or how many frames would they use to do this etc. I then went back and started drawing up the rough sketches for the second attempt at the running animation. Once I had the rough sketches done I could think about adding more detail like his clothes and hair, each time placing the previous frame underneath my current one, so that I could trace the hair so it didn’t change too much and so that the proportions between each frame stayed relatively alike.
Once all the final sketches were done, I scanned each frame individually (which takes ages) and used animation shop to put the frames in sequence and see if the animation is smooth (obviously because I had spent hours producing these little animations, I was very forgiving if something may have been a bit out of place). Once happy I’ll get all the clean frames and trace them with my amazing pen ;) traditionally in animation, once the clean drawings have been made, producing the clean solid black lines would be done on the computer by using an onion skin and producing a vector path over the top so you can see the original sketch and produce a vector image as a separate picture using a pen tool. I didn’t do this, as I’m hopeless at using the pen tools and vectors. So instead I found a pen, that when used and the image scanned, left you with relatively solid lines to work with. So I traced every frame with a pen, then with these final clean solid, frames, scanned them all in and opened each image on Paint Shop Pro. Here I had to colour in each frame individually, which took a long time. The backgrounds of each frame I made one solid colour. This is so when it comes to editing, I can use the ‘chroma keyer’ to remove the background, and lay each animation over the scenes that I produced on simply 3D. this is pretty much the same as the technique used in movies, known as green/blue screen. Once coloured in, I would produce the animation in ‘Sony Vegas’, and render it as a separate video file. I actually reproduced the running animation three times befor ei was happy with how it looked.
Above are two frames that I drew, the first two show the original animation and how that looked (after my poor first attempt), and the second two show the redrawn animation after realising the second version i did still looked incorrect.
I had to use a drawing style that i could easily and quickly draw, and that was quite flexible. By flexible, i mean im able to manipulate it easily. Due to time restrictions, i wasn't able to produce high quality drawings, that were 'really' pleasing to look at,as the drawing and colouring process would take twice as long, instead i had to keep them simple, and because of that i feel the final look of the whole animation isn't going to look as polished as i would have liked.
This process is what I went through for each of the animations I produced. As I did more and more I began to get much better. The last two scenes I animated for my rough cut were the mid shots of the main protagonist running frantically, and the very last animation you see were the boy raises his head. These are my two favourite animations I did, as I feel they are quite smooth and although I thought I would struggle to do them, and yes, they did take a long time, they look nice and are pretty close to more professional animations I’ve seen, which I am personally proud of.
After putting together my rough cut, i noticed i still had a bit to do. some scenes were still not coloured, or, completely incomplete, such as the monster running mid shot, and the scene where the boy gets up off the floor and runs off (sample clip in the rough cut). I also felt I needed to redo the running long shots, as the running seemed too slow and looked unrealistic, and also the shot where the boy turns into the ally looks like its lacking some frames of animation and skips round the corner too quick. Also the car that passes at the beginning needs to be redone, and completely thought over.
Wednesday, 25 November 2009
Tuesday, 20 October 2009
Thursday, 15 October 2009
The Pitch - Initial Ideas
I have chosen to undertake the production of a short story. The main reason I have chosen this brief is because it gives me the opportunity to produce an animated sequence, and due to my interest in Anime, it is something i would like to have a go at myself. I've had a go at animation before, but this gives me the opportunity to try harder and gain something from it.
Before i can start production on the short story, i will need to do some initial research looking into some of the generic conventions and styles that are apparent in short stories, and more particularly animated short stories. I'll need to look into the different ways characters are introduced, if any, and also the different techniques used to forward the narrative.
I'll need to produce a detailed storyboard that will help me in the production stages. this storyboard will show camera angles, camera and protagonist movement, and also clip duration. I'll also need to come up with a good plot, that may or may not follow the typical conventions of short films.
Before i can start production on the short story, i will need to do some initial research looking into some of the generic conventions and styles that are apparent in short stories, and more particularly animated short stories. I'll need to look into the different ways characters are introduced, if any, and also the different techniques used to forward the narrative.
I'll need to produce a detailed storyboard that will help me in the production stages. this storyboard will show camera angles, camera and protagonist movement, and also clip duration. I'll also need to come up with a good plot, that may or may not follow the typical conventions of short films.
Sunday, 11 October 2009
Production Company Logo Design
Here is my original sketch for my production companies logo. Seen as a lot of my work is inspired by japanese culture, anime and manga, i thought i would dedicate the logo in some way to the style or culture. i immedaitely thought of using a word and translating it to japanese and using that. i also looked at different Kanji symbols that i could use. In the end i used the word for crazy which is Muchuu. as i thought the word sounded quite cool. When designing the lettering i again thought back to japanese culture, and their 'Kawaii' culture, Kawaii meaning cute, and all things round, big eyed and cuddly looking. so i went for a soft bubbly bold font that's loose and curvy and bends round like a rainbow, further refering to kiddy things.
I wanted the colours of the logo to represent cuteness and fun and colour, so i went for a bright colourful palette and multicoloured lettering, again to refere to the kiddish look.
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