Thursday 28 February 2013

Info for the Voice Actors


I found some interesting blogs and websites about voice over artists and things you need to think about when you do voice overs.
Also think back to the lessons we had with Tim in DDD. We did some great warm up exercises, warming up our vocal chords, lungs etc.
- Caylee

Sound booth / Recording Turorial's


I thought this may help George and Remus tomorrow morning with recording the voice overs.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rlhXcjY-j40  - if you have problems with the hand held device you could use Adobe Premier Pro to record the voice over?
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/indepth/audio/buying-guides/voice-over-equipment   – Possible voice over equipment you may find, this may help you to understand what does what and how to use certain types of equipment in the room.

Sound Booth


I thought i would post this information as evidence for our hand in, and also for everyone to read.
I booked a sound booth on tuesday morning for us to use Friday 1st March 9.30am-1.30pm. I also book hand held recording devices to use. However, later wednesday evening i recieved  phone call from the hire department saying that a group of Film Production students needed the sound booth desperately and if there was any way of us moving. I replied no, due to voice artists we have booked and other preparation we have put in place to get the ball rolling. However, the hire department said we had no choice and we have to move. There fore we have lost the sound booth (which i feel is very unfair, i thought the whole point in booking things in advance mean that you are guaranteed what you need… obviously not). I am going to go and speak to the hire department to see what room they have moved us to.
We have a hand held recording device which i am concerned about for the voice over as it is difficult to know when and how to record. For instance, once you have recorded something it is hard to then rewind and listen back to it to see if it is what you were looking for and to a high quality.
I have spoke to Remus and George and unfortunately due to personal reasons i can not attend the beginning hear of the sound recording how ever i should be able to get in at 1pm for the last half hour. I will be sending proof for my absence to Remus later.

Allocating Roles for the Weekend.


Scene allocation: 
Scene 1 = coin spin – george – and maybe mule line test
Scene 2= characters and coin spin – remus start working on.
Scene 5= owl sad – remus,
Scene 12 = happy owl – Caylee eyes on separate layer using AE and also research  into Deviant Art, and look for textures and brushes for George, Remus and Felim to use.
Shaun + Felim + Caylee- research into problems we could meet during production
 Remus: Caylee, seeing how you don’t have a tablet to work on photoshop with, you could just draw the frame of the owl on paper and scan it in to edit on photoshop later on.
Me: okay – well i will hand draw a frame of the owl tomorrow which will be very similar to the drawing in the story board (as i think that is that you were going for?) and i will do basic AE stuff on it if i need to, and i will bring it in tomorrow!

Wednesday 27 February 2013

Final Character Designs - Remus's Designs




Other examples of Animations.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPY-FZT9ME8   = this is brilliant for imagination and i thought it was a brilliant idea – doesn’t strictly relate but i found it whilst i was researching.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACQWKVfgyJI – this is more along the idea of what i was thinking, rather simple in animation and design but its pretty effective – SOMETHING to really think about.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z60qEocUYAg – I have seen this animation a few times and i love the style of, very simple, the backgrounds hardly move, and the characters movement at time is rather minimal.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCa98MrZztI – Again using negative space to actually create an environment and a feel to the animation. Clever use of suggesting colours- light pink wash to the tips of the flowers petals, this is something we could use. 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eak9Q6r4kvo – WATCH THIS .. this is a great material in relation to our idea. I know we have mentioned about creating layers in AE, this animation uses layering and 3D styles to create something really unique.

Examples of animations and colouring.


Me: I know this is not exactly how we envisage the animation to look like. But i thought it would be really intertesting to look at animation examples who use negative space as the background. This is something we should think about more the the colouring. However, i am not saying these colours….
At the moment i imagine out animation being tea stained in colour, it doesn’t have to be completely one tone. I can see the drawings having back outlines and maybe in Post-Production we could photoshop each frame by adding white lines in to highlight certain aspects.
Animations made in the 40′s like this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TxK1AYtJfdE (superman animation) used a basic colour pallet with very minimal animation… I also was really inspired by the credits at the beginning maybe we could copy this kind of style for when we finish up out animation.
-Also another thing that just popped into my head that is VERY important is the actual finishing of our animation DVD. This means we need to make a DVD case -DVD cover etc. We should all be in charge of the designing as i think it should definitely be a collaborative effort, however I am happy to finish it all off at home – i have DVD cases and labels.
I will upload more links to different animations in due course and i will also upload a photoshop document of the inspiration for the background design.
Also when we have a finished example frame, im not sure who is doing this? 
**** Im assuming it will be either Remus or George – could you upload it asap and i can demonstrate the design for the background that could be useful. If you give me a JPEG of a frame i will do a few examples of different finishes and then we can see what you all think?
Sound okay?
Remus: Sounds ok so far, we’ll be discussing the colour more tomorrow as I’ll be posting up the final character designs with colour this evening. I think the DVD cover should be a later concern: after we’re finished with production. For now we should concentrate on getting the animation done as efficiently as possible.
Me: Of course. I think that we really need to carefully consider the colour of the animation and we need to have a group input. From my point of view (you might not agree), to get this animation done and to a good quality we need to concentrate on churning out the animation and then doing after effects to it to make it look professional. Colouring each frame individually will be too time consuming and frankly we don’t have enough people on board to create and finish it. I will hold out my scepticism until i see your finished designs with colour. Although i do think something more minimal (three colours per frame maximum) is the way forward for our animation to be of a high quality. – I’m sorry to be negative but i’m trying to be realistic.
Remus: I’m hoping to keep the colours as minimal as possible (same: thinking around 3 or 4 colours per frame – even less). I realise colouring is a time consuming process that’s why I’m planning to have the backgrounds a bit more stylised – possibly with only 1 or 2 colours. I’ve also taken into account the time we would have to spend on animation when storyboarding the scenes – that’s why I added so many reaction shots that require minimal animation. Since I work a little quicker with animation in Photoshop, I’ll start working on the more complicated scenes right after we’re done with tomorrow and Friday’s meeting. I think it’s too late at this point in pre-production to change the whole visual style of the film – as that would imply doing the script, storyboard and animatic all over again to fit with a new style.

Tuesday 26 February 2013

Slow Motion Coin flip reference.

Just a short film of a coin flip in slow motion to help us get a idea of how a coin flips, it is pretty much how we all expected it to move. Its also good to see how much the hand/ wrist moves up when flipping the coin to give it momentum. 

Slow motion Coin flip

This is a video i found on YOUTUBE of a coin spin in 4D animation. Its actually really realistic in movement and also the design is spot on, but it put it on here to demonstrate the timing of a spinning coin, and the slowing and fall of the coin.

Coin spin

Just Checking how Mules, Owls and Wolfs blink


Owl - According to the Honolulu zoo’s website, they are the only animal that blinks the way humans do, by lowering the upper eyelid, they do have a lower eyelid that blinks up that is transparent. It only comes up when sleeping or when they have something in their eyes.
Mule – they have a film that glides over their eye to clean out the gunk, not to blink.
Wolf – Wolf’s/dogs don’t blink like we do. They close their eyes to rest or remove gunk, and often they “wink” one eye at a time. The majority of the time, however, they are not blinking.

Monday 25 February 2013

Timing and Preparation

Me: Due to time restrains – I have made a full schedual of what we are to do, i have been realistic and generous and included a few lye ins etc, but ive tried to be realistic with the work load per day and weekends etc. We together have to create 1,500 frames of animation. THIS is if we were going to work at 24fps. However Andy said today that we could work on double. This means we only have to animate 750 drawings. I have given us 14 days (which includes other work loads + weekends) As a group we need to sacrifice at least one of the weekend days per weekend to this project. This means we as a group of 5 have to get either on single frames, 1,500 framed animation- 22 frames done per day MINIMUM! This should be EASY to do guys!………… and if we worked on doubles at 750 frames over all we would need to animate a minimum of 11 frames per day!!!! Again we could churn this out. If we worked on doubles and we all did 25 frames per day we could get the drawing done in 6 days….. 750f/25f=30/5people=6 days….. I think though we should aim to get something like 30 finished frames per day. This means we could get it done in 5 days if we all work hard at it. We obviously need to make sure that each section of the animation runs smoothly, but ive been thinking about it, and as daunting as it sounded thismorning, we can get it done. But Remus – The feel i have got from your idea/ proposal is that we need a lot of computer graphic work done to it afterwards, so this will leave us with MUCH more time to do what you would like to be done to make a high quality finished product!!! I hope that makes sense? 

Remus : I’ve looked through the schedules and they look great. I’m obviously willing to work overtime and animate a bit extra in order to get things moving more smoothly. I’ll also post some tutorials on animating in photoshop on the blog on Wednesday.

Me: Brilliant – i will make sure that everyone gets a full print out copy tomorrow or Wednesday!

Owl Attempt 2


Slightly photoshopped but i don't have a tablet so i had to use my mouse which is why its rather... poor.

Idea for music


In the 40′s and even now, in bars and restaurants they used to have a almost juke-box where the customer would select music they wanted to listen to. We could use something like that to introduce the music. We could simply have a character looking at the jukebox and picking out a piece of Jazz music. This means that we don’t necessarily have to get a piece of music to work with the animation e.g. create suspense etc. I say this because from short animations we have spoke about the music/sound track is a key asset in creating the comedy in the animations, and i am not too sure whether this is what you were going for or not? If you were, this could be a much easier and QUICKER way of using a sound track – less research into a really suitable piece to fit the imagery etc… I’ll paste some images of jukeboxes below..

Remus: Sounds good so far. I’ll look some more into juke-boxes and do some research for tomorrow. I’ll also be bringing some songs I had in mind for the background music.
Caylee: Great – i look forward to hearing them! I will have a hunt around and see if i have any Jazz CD-Roms at home i can bring in for us to listen to! 

Evaluation of Remus - Over head bar

(Remus's Design)

Caylee: I love the design, but i think it would be a good idea to show where possible windows / and or lighting would be so we can get a feel for shadowing etc, also it would be handy for design purposes and letting the audience see out the window can help them piece together the time of day/ time of year, and the possible geographical climate (obviously the accents will give it away.) Also the main entrance/ exit too!

Remus – Sorry, I should have gone more in depth with explaining the setting in my last post. I was thinking more along the lines of an underground establishment (hence the stairs). I think it would set the mood better and also make the place look a bit more dodgy. As far as lighting goes I’ve already marked the main sources of light on another version on the overhead plan I’ll be discussing with you guys on Tuesday. The time of day will be revealed when the outside entrance of the bar is shown in the final scene. I’ll post a more in depth explanation of how the setting works after we discuss it and I have the final version of the overhead view sorted out (with all the background characters included)

Caylee - perfect! sounds great! Yeah a underground bar sound a lot more ‘illegal’ then a normal road bar! Okay brilliant well i look forward to seeing all your designs – my copies of your character designs will be uploaded shortly for you. And the schedule is rather…. But that can wait until tomorrow when we have our meeting.

Realistic Schedule Seminar Notes


  • Producing a realistic film, break this down from minutes into seconds and seconds into frames.
  • Do the maths – how much time can we devote to it? We have 5 weeks. 25 days. We need to make 2.4 seconds per day with is about 60 drawings. If we do this each we can get it done in 10. – work on doubles to make it easier for us, if it is good enough for Aardaman its good enough for us. That way we only have to do 30 drawnings a day.
  • BUT… those 25 days look realistically at how much of the time will be taken by other tasks. Look at the schedule around 2 days per week for film production – allow time for DDD or theory work.
  • So out of 5 weeks we have 2 days a week where we can work. Now 25 days is cut down to 10 days, which is a slashing of 60%. Singles – 150 drawings a day on singles. And doubles will be 75 drawings a day. In a group this is feasible.
  • Going into production: this does not factor in the time you need for postproduction, you should spend the most mount of time as possible to do postproduction.
  • Production schedule:
  • Post-production – edit, sound, you don’t need to grade the work – for sound legal limits, and colouring. We should have at least 1 week post production, its really needed, however this is only 2-3 days. LATE NIGHTS IT IS…
  • Again – 60 seconds of animation with 8 days of animating, you need to produce 90 drawings on doubles or 180 on singles.
  • In production – if the project slips or we miss a day of animation – that will add an extra second per day. The rest of us have to pick up the animation.
  • Producers – its essential for a smooth running production and make a production schedule for the work.
  • Everyone is responsible for the smoothness between each shot. We need to find out how the previous
  • DVD – PRINT CASE – FINAL HAND IN.
  • Production schedule – benefits the production scheduling, by setting realistic targets and keeping to it, to complete the film. 

Friday 22 February 2013

Group Blog Link

This is the group blog link. We decided to call ourselves the Gin Mill Hustle to tie in with the era that the animation is based. All the information, development and work will go onto this blog so please go on there and leave some comments.

Gin Mill Hustle

Group project

The presentations have been done and the results have been verified and we discovered which groups we were to be in and out roles. I have been allocated he role of being the producer and i will be producing Remus's animation idea. The Director - Remus is making sure that we have everything we need to make sure we understand what he wants from us and what the outcome will be.

Plot:

Based in a illegal underground bar in the late 1930's a wolf and a owl are betting on a spinning coin. The owl looses all of his money to the wolf, whilst the wolf consoles the owl he comes up with a plan to con another guy in the bar using a double sided coin. He scans around the bar and see's a mule, who is rather slow in appearance. The wolf welcomes the mule over to the table, they make a bet and the mule looses his money. Out of frustration the mule thumps the table and the double coin flips, and the mule see's the coin is double sided. He picks up a bottle and threatens the owl and mule, the wolf pleeds with the owl and they give the mule all of their money to keep him quiet. The mule leaves the bar with the money and waits outside, the wolf exits the bar and they walk off arm in arm splitting the money. They con the owl.

I love the idea as it really challenged the audiences perception, it wont be something that will be expected and that is what i love. Also i think it will be challenging for me as the director wants us to do it all on a graphics tablet and in photoshop which i don't know how to use. I have not used a graphics tablet before and i have only used photoshop for manipulating images or illustrations i have drawn, not for animating in! I'm looking forward to getting stuck into it. Once we have a group blog i will post the link on here.

Wednesday 20 February 2013

Story boards for my Proposal

These images of the story board i made for my story proposal

INSERT STORY BOARD BELOW

Monday 18 February 2013

Note from Andy's lecture


Story boarding:
 What is the point of story boarding?
·      The storyboard if the first time you draw out the key scenes, and movements in your film. Without one you can never hope you have a structured narrative that makes sense! So what do we need to start?
·      Follow these basic steps to get the point of storyboarding from idea to paper:
1.     Initial concept
2.     Synopsis
3.     Story development
4.     Camera script
5.     Blocking
6.     Storyboarding.
·      Initial concept: the initial idea of a few ideas you have, it’s the theme f the film – what is it about/ from this you can take your ideas & then write it up as a story, and from there divide it up as a series of theoretical shots. For our films however, this will be a ‘seed’ of your story. Don’t try and build your film too quickly, rather start with an initial concept and then layer it up.
·      Synopsis – summary of your film
·      Story Development – once you have completed your synopsis you should have a clearer idea of the direction of your story. This development should be somewhat organic as you go back over and make alterations.
·      Camera scripting –this is a process of turning your story into a basic script which in turn you will turn into a camera script. Put simply, a camera script is where you as a director make the decision on where to cut from shot to shot based on the action and dialogue that you have written. You should start thinking at this stage about how these shots will be framed.
·      Blocking / staging – this is where you turn your idea into a plan In it you plot the position of characters and key parts of the environment. You plan where the characters move to and from. Most importantly though this is where you decide from which angle to film, or to draw your subject. You should stretch cameras looking at the subjects.  Blocking gives you a clear sense on geography.
·      The story board:
·      You should now be ready to finally produce your story. By following the stages mentioned you will arrive at this point with a clear idea as to the structure of your film, as well as how individual shows will look.
Story boarding: draft story board consist of little sketches and thumbnails, Then this is developed to a standard to present to clients and 

Saturday 16 February 2013

Research

Thomas Marent - 'butterfly - A PHOTOGRAPHIC PORTRAIT"

I know there are thousand if images on the internet of butterflies and caterpillars and you could spend hours sifting through them all. I thought it would be a good idea to go to the library and check out what kind of books they had on either butterflies and caterpillars. I chose the book above, it has some amazing photographs with a range of close ups, long shots, action shots as well as interesting information about different aspects of a caterpillar/butterflies life. I have taken some scans of particular pages that interest me and have influences the idea for the design.








Thursday 14 February 2013

Inspiration for Protagonist

These are NOT my photographs - i have used these photographs as imagery to use for my character idea.
I found these image on google, some photographers i have emailed for their permission and others i was not able to find any contact information. However, these photographs are on my blog for education use only and are not in any way my personal work.

The protagonist has to be understated, and shy. A great way to do this is to do this through its design. I was thinking initially to look at caterpillars with dull colouring, longer and slimmer in appearance. Maybe a bit of individuality to make it different, but mainly browns and blacks. The design can not be too detailed as it this will be the main character. It needs to be simple so if my idea gets picked then it will 

  1. be easier to everyone to draw and animate
  2. more concentration can go into the acting of the character rather then the design
  3. less complication for morphing and changing in size.
  4. quick and easy production.
The acting of the character has to be spot on. With out great acting, this project will not work. Which is why i have not come up with the identity of the character unless my idea gets picked. This will then allow mean my team to come up with the mannerism, how the character will move and react to situations etc. My thought is that the group will feel more attached to the character, and feel more able to act out and draw everything accurately. It will also help everyone bond, creating a group moral. I want this to feel like a group project and not my project that everyone is helping me do!

Wednesday 13 February 2013

Inspiration for evil caterpillars - imagery

These are images off of the internet and out of books. THESE ARE NOT MY PHOTOGRAPHS.
I found these image on google, some photographers i have emailed for their permission and others i was not able to find any contact information. However, these photographs are on my blog for education use only and are not in any way my personal work.

I have created a little mood board of images of different caterpillars that i like the look of. I want to incorporate bits from each caterpillar, the spots, bright colours, spikes,  and even claw looking feet. I want to make the two caterpillars bright and bold, as the ugly sisters were in cinderella. I want to use the colours and spikes - the general design of the caterpillars to be intimidating and in your face, loud. I want them to be much chunkier then the protagonist which you will see in my next post. I have found that from looking at all of the brightly colour caterpillars they are all rather chunky in width but shorter in length. So this is something that i will have to bare in mind when designing the characters. The two ugly caterpillars wont actually be on screen for a long time. In fact they will only be on screen for the first 15 seconds of the animation and then they turn into butterflies. The acting that they have to do will also be very minimal which makes it more flexible to make the designs slightly more complicated. The ugly caterpillars actions in the 15 seconds are:

  • first shot - eating leaves
  • second shot - leaning over protagonist and being a bit aggressive
  • third shot - turning around to get back to their leaves
  • fourth shot - knocking protagonist off of branch with back end
  • fifth shot - turning into cocoon - (although you don't see it happen, the period of time will be represented by the sun going down quickly.)
  • sixth shot - they fly off and swoop past the protagonist.
So you do not see them a lot in the animation - it is more about how the protagonist overcomes and accepts their personal battles.

Tuesday 12 February 2013

Caterpillar idea.

After discussing our ideas in our groups i feel like i have made some successful progress in the development of my animation idea. I have refined certain aspects of the story and broken it down in to 6 main actions.


  1. Introduction - introduce the main character and the two horrible caterpillars
  2. Emotional attachment - Main character gets knocked of branch and left to look up at the other characters, for looking different.
  3. Sympathy - mean caterpillars turn into butterflies, and the protagonist feels sorry for himself
  4. Change of attitude - the protagonist accepts himself for being different and excels.
  5. Panic - protagonist worries that it will not change into a butterfly
  6. End - sudden change and protagonist turns into a bright beautiful butterfly. 
The stages above are the main stages in the story. I want the first two stages to consume the first 15 seconds of the animation as it sets up the story. I then want the third and fourth stage to take up 15 seconds each leave me with 15 seconds to finish the story. Ideally i would like more emphasis on the caterpillars change into a beautiful butterfly then the worry about changing. So maybe it could be split 5seconds to 10 seconds. Or even miss out the worry about turning into a butterfly? This still needs development.

Role within the group task - note form


Executive producer – Ron and Andy. Very hands off, ultimate decision of what gets made – name attached to companies.

Producers – bean counters, control budget. Generally tell you, get everything finished on time or they get sacked. Producers are responsible for putting together the production schedule. Make sure everybody knows what they are doing all the time.  Its about co-operation and being part of the team. Book voice talent, studios, pulling together the crew, wages, tax, insurance. They sign things off.

Director – stands between the crew and producer, director is a nurturing role, a good director will keep the team on board, so when you need to ask someone to stay on they will do so, a loyal army. Be aware of that the project requires, and what the team are good at, the director takes a project and story boards it, or a camera script and give it to a story board artist. Director is there to direct the action with in the shots to insure continuity. It’s a tough role, not very glamorous,

Animators – doing the graft, its your job to animate, when the animators feel like they have a contribution to a film works best, more passionate. A form of negotiation between the animators,  directors and producers work best.  Negotiation and compromise is the key.

Production designer – person that designs all the sets, backgrounds, over view of the charater designs, someone needs to step into this role by negotiation of the director. Everything you see on screen needs to be designed by the production designer.

Layout artists- these people generally do backgrounds, not glamorous, but essential, more of a 2D role.

Sound designer – the moment our project gets going we need to think about sound – its 50% of the film. Those of you who have a interest in sound should put themselves forward. Talk to director, what sounds do you think we need. Record dialogue, Foleys etc. No copyright issues, as it isn’t going on the web etc. But normally you have to be aware of copyright.  Carefully lease with the producer and director.

Editor – the editor should be working with the project from the start, The director would be working with the story, and break down into a camera script. Camera script – break down the story into individual shots – what action takes place and how would you frame it? Make sure you have got a nice rhythm between shots. Next stage is so block – a plan view of the set or location with the movement of characters and set. As much of the responsibility as the director – gather up all the shots as and when the come in. mail it to them on a memory stick so they can drop it into the time line, the editor and director will then short the shots.