OUAN403-Animation skills: Brief 3- Animate it - finished animation

Finally completed the animation with exactly 15 seconds of video time (apart from ending scene). I have to say , I was really pleased with this project and the finished products. Animation quality is good and actions are clear and smooth. The "boiling point" squiggly lines gives it style , while not hindering and obscuring any important details, partner that with the sound effects and we have an animation that communicates the plot really well (especially with the dramatic SFX that emphasise the "fear" and "panic" factor of it ).

However, there are a couple nitpicks that caught my attention , first is the transition between the 2 scenes below: 

 

This works well on storyboard but when it came to the animation , the sudden change in the position of his arms from holding the belt to gripping the seat handle makes the scene seems really detached from each other, creating a bump in the animation. Second problem would be within the latter of the two above , when he's pushing his feet against the seat , his legs should straighten out a bit to make more visible that he's pushing against it . These problem was caused mostly due to frame limit , so I can probably fix it with additional frames thrown in . But overall , it's a good effort !

**Update : Fixed errors , the final version where the adjustments mentioned above have been made. It definitely works better ! 

OUAN403 : Brief 3 : Animate it (Animation)

 This is first 5 seconds done in my 15 second animation. I'm quite please with it actually , the pacing is close to what I had in mind ( a bit slower would be perfect ) , the style is good and it has that "dramatic" sense. Also, animating in Photoshop is more intuitive than I expected it to be , albeit not without some minor technical difficulties. Timeline were easy to comprehend and through some screw-ups , I've managed to learn the difference between a regular image layer and a video layer. I also learned that this squiggly-line style is called "boiling point" or something like that, I'll definitely comeback to this style more often in future animation as it really make animating much less labour-intensive and more efficient as it removes the necessity to have lines traced perfectly on top of each other , especially for scenes that uses a lot of repeated frames
With that said, I'm really excited to see what the full animation will looke like !

OUAN403: Animatic

I had to leave out a significant portion of the original storyboard in order to fit the 15 seconds time frame. However I think that I've manage to retain the main points of story with this , and also very happy with sounds added, as it really captures that feeling of fear and panic. One thing that could be add its more dynamic camera movement and angles but in my mind its not completely necessary. Now onto animating and I decide to animate it digitally as oppose to doing it on paper like before, as I think it will be more neat and easy to adjust. The style of the lines will be quite similar to the storyboard , but more swiggly and free form. The animatic breaks the animation down into 11 scenes with each scenes around 16-20 frames , so I'm going to break down my animating process accordingly, which should be efficient 

OUAN403 : Brief 3 : Animate it ! Storyboard

A finished storyboard for Turbulance. Overall I'm quite please with it from characters to scenes. I didn't focused too much on lighting or shading since the way I'm animating this is on paper, minimum shading is required. I'm also happy with the current pacing I have in mind , although that we'd still need to work that out on Premiere when I get started on the animatic. However , the thing that worries me is the length of the animation. Since I haven't made the animatic yet, I haven't been able to see whether the storyboard would fit in a 10-15 secs time frame, and worst case is it going over that limit. However , I've already worked out in my mind some scenes that can be discarded when that time comes so it's actually not that big of a deal. On the side note, should probably start learning some tips from the Japan Animator's Expo Intros that I mentioned in PPP

OUAN 403: Animation skills- Brief 3 : Animate it!

From the words that was given to us , I chose "Fear" as my theme to do a 10-15 sec animation on.
At first , it was a stalemate between doing a sort of Japanese horror story ( the slitted-mouth woman is a good one ) and a short of a WWI soldier right before the come over the trench , both differently but equally strong forms of fear. However , after some advice from Martin, I decided to switch to a more personal and, more common fear that is easy to relate to, which is fear of turbulence on planes. It is something that is very much familiar to me , so I probably can do a better job of translating that fear onto paper, plus , 15 seconds is a bit short to do a proper horror story or going through everything in the mind of a soldier. With that in mind the first stages were setting up the environments and characters , which was pretty straight forward :

Really took advantage of those tropes that are used to indicate fear on a character ( blacken eyes and shakes mark) . I also went for a very simplistic look , as I have to animate this on paper which mean drawing the character over and over again. Same thing goes for the plane back drop. Probably in-scene , only the character's seat will be drawn properly , while the rest can be omitted or done a very simplistic way ( silhouetted ) 

OUAN 404 : Visual Language - Brief 2 : Environmental stories

We had to choose 2 environments to study from , one interior and one exterior . For the former , I've decided to choose Kirkgate market. The market itself has a very impressive exterior , almost grand in some aspect ,such as the architecture of the rooftops and dome structures that would be fitting on a palace or museum. But for me, the interior is what draws me in the most

fanciest market ever !

Having the reputation of being Europe's largest indoor market , you kind of expected the sheer scale of the market's interior. Intricate and wonderful designs spread out along the walls near the roof and on the support beams. The style of architecture is very much Victorian-like ,having that blend between elegances and classics from the designs on the wall with the industrial tone of the metal columns and guardrails, which reminded me a lot of York train station.

  

However , what interested me the most, and probably the reason why I chose the market was the fact that, even though it is indoor, you feel like your walking in a regular outside market. Many little thing contribute to this, such as the stalls being these different large structures, the walk ways being very similar to regulars streets outside (which combined with the stalls makes you feeling you're walking through a small shopping corner of city block) the large skylight that lets in alot of sunlight, ....It truly gives of the feeling of a vibrant , diverse and alive "market" , and not like the cold , clean and organised ways of supermarkets and department stores. So, to sum it up, its like a bridge between interior and exterior , and that is very interesting indeed !

As for the drawing itself , I'm planning to do some rough and quick sketches with pencils  at the market itself and then inking them at home. It is a market so I expect LOTS of people , but right now I'm more focused on the structures and layout so , probably I'll add people later if the situation calls for it 

                                       

Storyboard : Broccoli

early sketches of the storyboard for broccoli's adventure 

In general , I was pretty happy with the  idea , the final thing would be done on Photoshop for a cleaner finish , plus shadings where it needed to be 

In the end , I'm very pleased with what I've done , as it is clean , visually interesting and easy to understand , the only missing thing would be camera and movement indications which would come later when I have printed this out. One negative thing about this would be , due to the limit of 12 scenes , some part of the story seems rushed , especially at the end. Personally I'd have like to add another frame between 11 and 12 , having just the tip of the pepper cracker to indicate a smoother transition/ better relation between the scenes, or splitting frame 9 into different frames , which would better explain it as a montage.