Development and Research

Have spoken with a few of my friends about my project and have recieved a few helpful ideas with things to watch for research!


Clym Smith, another student in my class, has recommended several useful films like Mary Poppins which I have found a useful clip for;



and Emma Wyton, has found these useful clips which show live action mixed in with animation...


and the same clip I found where the family guy makes substituted Jerry for Stewie;


These are all prime examples of the effect I want to achieve, and while I doubt I can get the same high quality they have it's always good to try!

Since time is fast running out, I have decided when animating I will focus on getting the key poses in, and then later going back and trying to add more animation detail, this project is not being assessed as much on the quality of my walk cycles so I think I can give it a bit of leeway if I have to.

Wednesday's Lesson and Correspondence

Finally had our first Industry Exercise lesson with Steve!
I pitched my idea to him, and he's allowed me to work in 2D for this project, since it's what I want to improve at :D Of course, I am still going to follow his 3D tutorials and complete them outside of lessons. I will post the results up here if possible...

So, after showing my storyboard to a few of my friends I think I am going to pursue my 'Singing in the Rain' idea. I was confused how to go about this though, since we won't be covering it in class, and so I emailed one of our heads of the course; Mike Smith! Below is the correspondence;


Hi Mike!

For my second industrial exercise project I want to animate on top of my
chosen film with a 2D character, and since you have experience of doing
this in the past, I was wondering the best way to go about it.

Can I animate my 2d character on toon boom/flash then import it on after
effects or do i need to animate the entire thing on after effects?

-Michelle



His reply;



Hi Michelle,

You can do one of the following production processes.

Traditionally draw your character animation on paper, clean it up then
scan to and if you require a specific look, import it into Illustrator
(or Photoshop) to tidy the line and colour. Import the coloured artwork
into After Effects, convert to 3D-2D and place accordingly into your
3D-2D BG - environment.

Using a wacom tablet complete your rough and some or all of your clean
up animation in either Toon Boom Studio, Toon Boom Animate or Flash.
Colour your character artwork in these software packages then import the
artwork to After effects.

Complete both of the above processes then separate out the artwork
(upper arm, lower arm, hand, fingers etc) and either complete pivoting
or hinging process either in the above softwares or in After Effects.
I'm pretty sure you can export to After Effects after you have completed
hinging but check the help files.

It really depends on what software you feel most comfortable completing
animating and what overall look or style your going for.

I hope that helps!

Regards,

Mike.


So my next step is to perhaps draw a more detailed storyboard, and generally just get animating!! Need to also finalise my old man design.
Here goes!

singing in the rain initial storyboard and schedule

Did a quick storyboard for my Singing in the Rain idea;



before I go any further I want to get feedback from my tutor, and hopefully that will generate some more ideas and let me know whether I should continue with this one!
The clip itself is nearly 2 minutes in length, but I plan to crop out most of the end and have a 40 second clip in total. 30 seconds of those will feature my painter character.

I have also quickly put together a schedule of the next few weeks that I hope to stick to!;

Jan 18th-22nd
Continue research into 2D/3D animations, finalise idea.
Jan 25th-29th
Complete character design and have ripped a copy of the clip from the DVD.
Feb 1st-5th
FORMATIVE!!! Begin animating - work out the key poses and go over them in detail.
Feb 8th-12th
More animating..
Feb 15th-19th
Finish animating, add shadows onto character and go carefully over the footage to make sure he doesn't move incorrectly with the camera.
Feb 22nd-26th
Improve animation if possible, get feedback.
March 1st-4th
HAND IN!! have all animation completed by the second at the VERY latest, then spend Wednesday and Thursday burning to disk and finishing blog.

Apparantly there's going to be more snow tomorrow but let's hope it doesn't settle :)

old man painter research

Looking at images and trying to develop a character!





In particular I'm using these photos as references for how to draw age in characters, where the wrinkles should go, their fashion sense and expressions.

Of these, the final picture is the type of character I want.. Need to try a few more sketch tests with him in mind.

initial sketches and ideas page;



To improve these I'm going to continue looking at the above photos and try to improve the outfit and the style I've drawn it in, keeping in mind I should try not to overcomplicate it as I did in my last project :D

Industry Exercises 2

This is the first post of my new project brief - industry exercises 2!

So far we have not been able to have any lessons for it at college because of the snow. I have already started my project however, and hope that this coming Wednesday I will be able to present it to my tutor, get feedback and then develop it as best I can!

So the brief...

"you must choose a short clip from a film and
composite in your own animated character, props or buildings. Perhaps you
feel that Four Weddings and A Funeral would have been better if there had
been more gorillas in it. Or that Titanic would have been better with
giant sea monsters. This is your chance to put things right. The clip you
use must, when composited, show at least 30 seconds of your own work. Do
not choose any animated films as you will have to match or better the
existing characters in the film. I can guarantee that the animators
working on that film would have had a lot more time than you have for this
project. So keep your choice to a live action film."

Our tutor, Stephen Crocker, has also stated that we can use either 2D or 3D.. and seeing as how I will be doing a lot of 3D work in my 'Digital Environments' project (see my other blog for info on that) I want to use 2D for this! (plus I had a lot of fun with it last time... might try and use Toonboom rather than Flash this time so I get a feel for different software).

I've watched a few films and television programmes over the past couple weeks in preparation;
One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest
Harry Potter 4
It Could Happen To You
Forest Gump
28 Days Later
Singing In The Rain

I picked these because I enjoy them and because they are all from different genres.
By process of elimination I want to either choose 'Singing In The Rain' or 'One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest'. These two don't have many special effects in them because they were made quite a few years ago and so animation might look better in comparison to films like Harry Potter which are full of special effects or Forest Gump where no good 'animation' moments jumped out at me.


My ideas so far...

This is the extract from 'Singing In The Rain';



I want to animated an eldery painter in the background getting bothered by their dancing and/or joining in!


And here's the extract from 'One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest' (couldn't find a youtube version without commentary so feel free to mute);



Since most of the characters in this film are 'crazy' I thought I could animate random animals or strange creatures that are part of their imagination.


I'm going to make a couple of brief storyboards for each idea and then pick which one.
For the moment, my main animation idea is to have it in the style of 'Who Framed Roger Rabbit' so I will watch that film again as well for reference...



Hope to post up some of my storyboards soon, so until then!