Experimetal Final

Alrighty then... Here is my final experimental piece.


Experimental Project Evaluation

At the start of the first term of our second year, we were given a project brief which was very open in terms of criteria and creativity. The project was set so that we were given a choice of sound tracks to pick from, to base our idea and style around and plan specific movements that fit the music for our final animation piece. The boundaries of the project consist of using non digital media to physically create the animation. However the post-production side to the final animation can be edited in various programs. This project acts as a great way to push ourselves into mediums which we would normally shrug aside, and also broadens our opinions and views on how versatile animation can be when experimented with in unique and clever ways.
Before we got started on all the planning and idea developments for our experimental piece, we had to choose one of the soundtracks provided which appealed to us most. After weighing up the pros and cons of each song, I decided to choose the “Drones “track. This seemed to be one of the least popular songs amongst the group, and for some reason that made the track appeal to me more than the others. I also liked the aggressive harsh tones within the duration of the song, which suggested an abrupt design would fit well with the atmosphere built up in the track. Therefore I decided that I had to include something striking and sharp in my chosen style.
After I had chosen the song I began thinking of all the different mediums that I could choose to explore for my experimental. I was originally going to use lasers to match the flow of the music track, but then I decided I wanted to do something that was directed a bit more towards the styles that I was interested in. I spent a whole day with my headphones on listening to the track nonstop whilst completing all the dope sheets I needed, and made sure I wrote down or drew any ideas that came to mind. It was after then that I came up with ideas for a war themed experimental animation. The loud cries and eerie tones seemed to fit the idea well, and I got to work planning what I wanted to appear in my project. I did spend quite a while with an idea of how I wanted it to look, but I couldn’t decide what medium to do it in. After some thought I decided I wanted to use acrylic paint seeing as I haven’t really experimented with it that much previously, and I wanted to base the animation around a very war like style with striking colours and a defined look. Therefore I decided to combine the style of “Frank millers Sin city” with the messy war-inspired style that I wanted to focus on. To fit in with the experimental brief, I also chose to paint my animation on my bedroom wall, so that I could get really expressive images and not be held back by space or boundaries. This idea came from the artist BLU who paints animations onto street walls, and I really like how the animation looks so expressive.
I spent many days drawing out the scenes onto my bedroom wall that I had previously planned out from when I listened to the track, and figured out when and where I wanted images to appear. I had never done a painted animation before so I pretty much had no idea how long it would take to complete, although all my previous planning came to good use whilst I completed the animating. During the second week into the project I took out a tripod from the media centre and began setting it up in my bedroom. I began painting the first second of animation, and by this point I found out things which helped me out later on throughout production, for example using the flash on the camera makes the images appear too shiny and doesn’t fit with the war-inspired style. It was only after completing the first second that I realised how long it was going to take to finish 56 seconds of animation, since it took me around 5 hours to do 1 second of animation which wasn’t even the most complicated part of my experimental project.
After I had completed all of the painting and animating, I then took loads of pictures of each piece and then loaded them all onto After Effects to see how the animations looked and how well they worked with the music. At first I tried to use Premiere but for some reason it did not accept my images, but through recommendations I decided to give After Effects a go seeing as the quality you can get from it is apparently very good. I have never really used After Effects prior to this project, so it took me a long time to figure everything out seeing as I had to pretty much learn the software as quick as possible in order for my project to be completed on time. I found the software extremely difficult to use, because for some reason it would not save my work properly resulting in frames and sections of animation going missing each time I turned it off. It also had a habit of crashing at the most inconvenient moments which also resulted in lost work and a lot of time being wasted. It became increasingly tedious and frustrating as I struggled to get my animation looking how I wanted, and even when I did get it all in the right order it would just randomly ‘lose’ sections of it and I would have to look for the locations of the separate frames. But the programme did allow me to add certain effects that made the animation look eye catching, for example I was able enhance the individual images to give them a bold and almost raw look which fitted to the war themes.
I encountered many problems throughout the duration of this project which have made time-keeping quite difficult to manage. I have never done anything like this before so everything was new to me, and only through trial and error could I see what worked and what didn’t. Little things like having to dry the paint with a hair dryer after every single frame and having to re-do a lot of the animations due to the lighting changing slightly took up a lot of time. A good example of this would be the animated running horse in my project, which had to be re-painted and animated about three times because a couple of frames looked odd. Initially I didn’t realise how time-consuming this technique would be, and even when I spent hours on certain animated sections I could not always include them in the final film seeing as they didn’t fit the timing. I painted a battlefield scene which ran across the entire top length of my bedroom wall which I was going to use for a panning shot, but it did not fit into the aggressive fast- paced animation style I wanted to achieve. Also, the tri pod that I used to capture the images would not reach high enough to take the pictures. If I were to do this project again, I would try and plan out my time more carefully, and consider the pros and cons of techniques into more depth before planning everything out rather than just play it by ear.
I really learnt a lot and had fun making my experimental project. At times it was stressful and frustrating but I really think that it broadened my mind in terms of animation and the expansion of different mediums which can be used effectively to create what is intended.

Battlefield

Im coming to the end of editing now and it seems that the track has very aggresive notes and tones which i did know but as soon as a scream or shout would happen there would be silence and i planned to use the battlefield painting i did to fill in the gaps. I have used a bit of it but i thought i would how you some close ups of the painting. It looks better in person but yeah heres a few pics.

Update Experimental

Ok a couple weeks on since i started the experimental and i have done enough painting to put it together. I really did not know how long it takes for a paint animation to do. Alas it's experimental and i guess thats the point. Ive never done this before and i hadnt touched paint in many years so yeah. If the point of this project was to do something i had no idea what to do with and had never done it then i have done that. I personally would do it again for all the problems put ill type that up when i upload the actual piece.



Heres a couple pictures of my wall that i painted on for the piece. It really looks scary in the dark when i sleep :P. Plus my landlord is going to kill me when he sees it.

Experimental Update

Okkk... Well today i started painting an image from my storyboard on my bedroom wall for the opening image for the piece. I did it quite quickly considering i'm no good with paint. Like i said before im going for a very rough/ blocked colour style. And at the moment im happy with it.

This is my room at the moment D: The wall there is were all the paintings will be done

Hobo bear

Just an coloured image of the hobo bear. Ive only done a few frames fully coloured and detailed at the moment because im still not sure if this is how i want it to look. Ah well i'll post what ever happens

Experimental

Alrighty then. Since ive been working constantly on the project i havnt had time to upload any of it. Well now i can show you.



Heres just the images put together in a sort of storyboard on my wall so i can see in order it goes in. You carnt really see the arrows but their there :)

To start with im doing the Drones and Refrains of Death piece. Since it felt like a piece that I was most interested in. The animation will be portrayed on the eastern front in WW1 through the Russians POV. And so ive done a few pastel drawing to show the different shots in which i will include. Ive done this is a certain style because i'm planning to do the piece with paint on a wall. Similar to that Blu guy.
I wanted a very stylised approach to to this, a bit between pop art and Sin City.
I did plan is all to be in black and white but i do like the red in these drawing as it is the Russians i am doing and war is the theme.









So at the moment i have it planned out, set up and done some tests. And it seems to be going ok. I might however do it in a comic/graphic novel style in terms of animation not style. By using still images with a mix of siloetted animations to flow with the harsh screams in the music piece ( wouldnt call it music but hey).

11 seconds update

Ok heres the first VERY rough draft of the animation. Last monday we had a talk with Andy about how to approach the actually animating and he said to keep the animation fluid and smooth. Previously i had placed all my keyframes in where i wanted them. When getting round to actually doing the inbetweeners i relised that just keep animating without stoping and looking back or matching up the keyframes helped alot. This technique proberly works alot better on paper but i felt more relaxed and in the flow :) SO Andy chat was a real help and i'm animating is getting there. Im on the second draft were i clean up the animation aswell as leave open spots for lip sync later into production.

By the way, the long intro bit will be binned if time is running short or it feels its not needed towards the hand in date.

Life Drawing

Concept and Animatic

Heres an early concept of the scene layout i did the other week.



I did this animatic recently to show the poses and expressions of the characters in the scene



Heres the reference i did. I think i got the timing about right to work from it. And the poses are good enough

Character Design and Storyboard

Ok heres the scene.
Im having a hobo bear and a posh bear.
The hobo bear will be just lying there on the street having a nap with his hat out.
As hes lying there the posh bear will be walking past.
As he is walking past, a note of money will fall out of his pocket whilst walking.


The hobo bear will be shocked and delighted with the money, hugging and kissing it.
As he is loving his money the Posh bear will reliese hes lost his money and shuffle through his pockets and look around until he finds his money in the hands of the hobo bear.

That is the intro to the 11 second bit. It sounds long and winded but ive planned to shorten it down as much as i can.
It explains why he will be angry at the hobo bear and saying he stole it aswell as including the hobo bear saying "happyiness" as if the posh bear ment to give him the money.
Towards the end he will be saying "he stole it" and during this he will be looking towards the audience as if he was talking to the bypassers in the street.

Hobo Bear

Posh Bear


Sorry if the images are a bit horrible. My scanner wont fit a A3 sketch book.

11 Seconds of stuffed love

Ok here was the idea back in the other week. I planned out that i wanted somthing cute and cuddly to be screaming whilst keeping its cuteness. SO thats were the teddy bears come from. Well to be honest i did play Naughty bear the other day and got some ideas. And no it was bollocks.





Anyways i had originally planned to have a more cleaner bear shouting "you stole it" to a more older and scruffy bear in a toy shop. He would be a accusing the other bear of stealing his button. However this didnt fit the whole bit of dialogue that was given. For example the happyness part would be hard to show without showing how he got the button and etc. Here are some early sketches for the idea i did in the first half of the week to get a look and feel of the characters.



So after noticing this i leaned towards another story but kept the bears since i had done a bit of planning in the character side of things.

15 min each speed paint.

Inspiration - Tim Schafer

Tim Schafer is an American games designer who worked previously in LucusArts on great games such as Full Throttle and The Secret of Monkey Island series. Tim's soon after being rejected the idea of his new game Psychonauts he founded Double Fine Productions. Tim's design and story telling is truely inspiring. Since we have just been given our 11 second clip, character design is something to keep at mind. And Tim's characters are beyond brillance, even the minor ones which pop up for a couple of seconds. All come with believble personalities which really connects with the players.




I personally have only played the first Secret of Monkey Island and Psychonauts. I expecially love Psychonauts. Its characters are amazing aswell as a great story. I played the game with a smile all the way through :)





The Art work here is done by Scott Campbell who worked on Psychonauts as there Lead Artist. His style fits perfectly and his work is a personal favourite.

Unfortuanatly as soon Tim started to push the action adventure theme with his own lead his sales didnt proof to gain the attention of the audience at the time. However resieving many awards and high critical review such as a Bafta for Psychonuats screenplay.
Working for Tim would be a dream job compared to working on the majority of the hollow shelled uncreative games which seem to roll onto shelves these days.

Sketch spread