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.

Sketcbook : Broccoli ( Part 2 )

More sketches done , specifically the 12 images that rooted from the most successful image from before ( The broccoli's adventure ).

                            

being more of a concept designer, I focused alot on characters , backgrounds and such

                              

the maker bled through the paper !

                      

All in all , it was a good choice going with the broccoli's family for the final 12 images as the heavy character-based style of it allows for alot of work to be built upon , which in the examples above focused on creating stories , backgrounds and narratives for those characters. This of course would be extremely useful when it comes to the next part of the brief, "creating a visual narrative", as we have already laid the groundwork for it ( the characters ) .Now I only have to think up a plot to go with them !

As for the negatives, some technical hiccups like the marker bleeding through the paper were unfortunate. Also, Mike had advised me that the images can benefit more from the use of more colours ! It is true ,I myself have always had a habit of sticking to the things I'm the best at , in this case are the ink pens and monochrome palettes, so definitely I'd have like to had more colours in, and in more medias like markers , watercolour and such.However , due to the use of double-sided pages and the material of the paper, water-based colours can't be use on the sketch that had been done already ( the hiccup above is an example)

Sketchbook ! "Broccoli"

Im quite surprised that managed to squeeze out this many ideas on a piece of broccoli , albeit they're so ridiculous, in a good way that is ! The most successful probably would be the adventures of the broccoli on , as it just fun to draw and have more potential to generate a narrative!

The 3rd one is the most successful

Interstingly enough , some of the sketches were inspired by the broccoli's adventure one and some serves really well as world building material (back ground, scenarios,....) like the first 2 above !.

fun fact: Rom , Rabe and Raab are all real broccoli types

the 2 on each sides above was inspired by Ratatouille

               
I really the disco broccoli and the colouring ! Especially please with the lighting , for my first time using markers!



 

OUAN-404: Visual language - week 5

The start of visual language was just a basic introduction to the module, which highlighted the ideas behind and the importance of keeping as sketchbooks as a tool help us develop both practical and theoretical skills. Sketch books should reflect the world we live in , and from those reflection, we as creator can be inspired to build a world of our own, in our own ways. With that in mind , the first brief was set out to us, requiring us to pick a random word and from that key word , create ideas and sketches in our sketchbook. Mine was interesting to say the least : Broccoli - the stable of a college's student diet and the bane of all children in the world. I started out just brain-storming words that in my mind, connections to broccoli : crunchy , green ! , delicious, frozen , healthy , Chinese ( which makes me laugh ) , stir fries ,... , unsurprisingly most were related to food ! However , there were interesting stuffs like an afro ( which is OBVIOUSLY OBVIOUS ), that movie " Sausage party ", terrible puns,...etc...So.... the sketching start now ! (will update with sketches ASAP )

In the meanwhile , have some Broc Obama

OUAN403 - Animation skill: Brief 2: Telling stories -Storyboarding review

This week was the first "crit" for the any kind of work I've received , and it was on the storyboard that was done for last week. On my part, the overall comments were pretty positive, complementing me on the visual quality, lighting and style of my storyboard, which is awesome because that is something that I was striving for. More importantly though, negative critiques focused on the inconsistent flow of the story scene-to-scene and the lack of movement indication ( another minor flaw would be the the 18-frame limit that was crossed ). On reviewing the critiques, I found that all of them made a excellent point, as I did put much of my movement indication ( cameras, characters ,...) in text below rather than on the screen itself ( there was white arrows but they were indeed a bit obscured ). That would probably make it easier and clearer for the animators to work from, and having tasted the hardship of animating, I'd probably appreciate that greatly. The point on the the flow of story is also good as I did have to fast-forward some scene to keep up with the pace of the rhyme, (especially clear during the transition between the stile and the pet shop ).With that in mind , probably in the future, I should take more into consideration the speed of the narrations if they are presented as to have more fluidity to my story. However there was one critique that I disagree : "Could do with more colours". The monotone theme that I chose served 2 purposes: first is to simplified the storyboarding process, having not to think about colour composition in order to focus more on movement and characters , hence enabling me to produce scenes more efficiently. Second is for the gritty, dark style/theme of the animation itself .So in the end, I fail to see the need to add more colours.

As for others, I found myself giving out a balanced set of critiques, with some of the work being very cool and unique ( the silhouetted dove in particular ). More importantly though I've managed to acquire a set of "guild lines" that my critiques can be placed upon, which would not only help me to judge the works of other but myself also !

OUAN403-Animation skill: Brief 2: Telling stories

Week 4 was quite a relaxed week , but then again ,its relaxing in animation so not much at all ! we started out finishing the task from last week , but quickly moved on to what is becoming my favourite part  of the animation production process : Storyboarding ! We learned about all the basics from the different effects of different type of shot frames (extreme close-up supposedly help developed intimate relationships while long shots isolate the character and tell where they are) to the line of thoughts that build up prior to storyboard itself : what the story is , who are the characters , lighting ,composition, actions ,…. Basically, my over-simplification of story boarding is , drawing a rougher, slightly more descriptive manga/comic, which I ended up doing a pretty good job of if I do say so myself !

    
             can you feel the intimacy yet !


   yep , he's in a trainyard all alone , lifting trains... 


Of course we would ended up doing a storyboard of our own, base on a nursery rhyme of our own choice. Mine was "The crooked man". While ,most of the table tried to find the true meaning behind the rhyme to base their plot on that, I decided to go with describing exactly what is happening in the rhyme, building the characters of "the crooked man" , the cat and the mouse. My thought was, realistically speaking , this animation would be aimed at toward young children, hence does not require a heavy and sophisticated plot that they might not understand! This choice also influenced the design of the characters as more cartoony forms.

  

The crooked man was design as both old,lanky and evil-looking as to cover all the terms of what "crooked" is 

 Having a background in illustration and eventually developing a thing for the tiny details, I found myself extremely focused on making each of the scene as "pretty" as possible (especially on the digital version) , with lots of lighting and background work. This was influenced by Miyazaki's style of story boarding where each slip was a piece of art in itself ( HOW DOES HE DO IT! )

  

unbelievable !

But in hindsight, switching to a more western style was a good decision as with my skill level right now , it allow me more time to develop the character and push out more scene more efficiently, which is logically and realistically better. But I managed just to retain a certain level of details , especially on the lighting, which in my mind really enhance the feeling of scene in general !

    

  

these scenes from "Tangled" are something very relatable !

OUAN403-Animation skill : week 3

The first sets of tasks that we’ve received through out the week introduced me to the basics of animations, all the while jumping straight to point, already having us start making actual animations through the use of flip books and regular paper, with help from the tools and software provided in the studio , most notably “Dragonframe”.In my view, the most important knowledge that was gained was Disney’s 12 principles of animation, 3 of which that up being a major help for me through most of my tasks ,since these tasks were set up specifically for them: Squash and stretch, Pose to pose and  Slow out/slow in . Having never make “proper” animation before, these basics rules really shed light the tiny details that I usually take for granted, such as in order to make an object or character move slower, more frames are required to be drawn, or how everything squash and stretch under different kind of pressure (which was really interesting seeing how real-life physics affect the production of  character/animation, albeit it was exaggerated). 

Talking about the task themselves, for my first time animating, I think I did a pretty decent job , working through all the problems that was presented. The “bouncing ball” was an absolute classic, which focused mainly on “squashing and stretching” ,with a bit of slow-in and out. The end product looked really good, with nice amount of timing , squashing and stretching. Keeping with that idea, I did a cannon firing for the “free-form” flip book, having the cannon cartoon-ishly squashing in just before firing, and then stretching to ridiculous degree as the cannonball was exiting. These actions indeed really help  to  give a feeling of “power” for the shot, which really open my eyes to how other actions can also be improved with this, from other forms of firearms to jumping or slamming a hammer down, which undoubtedly will change my approach on how character moves in future works. 

As for task 2 with the pendulum, which focused on spacing and timing, having the knowledge from task 1 of slow in/out , and a basic knowledge of how a pendulum really saves a lot of time creating the frames. Working in a set frame number was interesting though, learning how to divide of the frames to create good timing and spacing , again, a basic but important skill that would definitely help me a lot in future projects. However there was one thing that I’d criticized myself , was that I was still stuck on “straight ahead animation” for the first 2 tasks. 

Key frames are undoubtedly a major part of animating, and having task 3 pushing me to use it was definitely helpful in the end, although , if  I’m honest, the use was still very limited in my mind, but I’m sure I’d get more in tune with it as the time goes on and I have to deal with more complex movements. Overall it was a very exciting and practical introduction to animation, and I definitely learn more from the rules just by using it in practice, truly exemplify the idea of  “actions speak louder than words”