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Thursday 30 May 2013

IT IS DONE! Group 5/Team Beeble Sea Stories Animation

Here it is! At long long last, I present Group 5's (aka Team Beebles) Sea Stories group project animation. There may be a few tweaks to the final official hand in film, but this is essentially it!


Our roles:

Me (Katie/Lokii) : Director, 2D animator and animatic designer.
Summary: Made sure everyone was happy with their jobs and workload, made sure they all communicated with each other, animated the first couple of scenes for the flashback sequence (up to the sinking scene, that was Beverly's awesomeness), and made the groups animatics.

Charlotte Grant (Char): 2D head animator. Lord of the lip sync, innovator of interviews.
Summary: The fabulous Char took on the truly epic challenge of animating the interview scenes, mainly by using the symbols created by Beverly. All the movements and lip sync (as well as the cat) was thanks to our Char.

Georgi Urumov (Georgi): Background designer, 3D animator, Music director and Head editor.
Summary: Our very own Master of Maya, Georgi made all our 3D backgrounds and environments, created his very own 3D wave rig specifically for this project,
animated said 3D objects (wrecking ball/crane, and waves), made a unique music track for the animation, and finally, put everything together using after effects. He is an awesome, awesome guy.

Beverly Charoensap (Phanutchanat/Beverbee): Head of Character Design, Storyboard artist and 2D animator.
Summary: The highly skilled Beverly made our initial character designs, and helped us all refine it further for the final animation, she also took the final storyboard plan and drew it up properly for use in the animatic. She also animated the key most dramatic scene in the animation, the sinking scene.


 Overall experience:

In this project, I sort of ended up taking on the role of director early on. When the other totally, totally awesome members of my group gave suggestions about ideas, or explained what they felt should be done, there was always this sort of silence...and I ended up being the first to speak after the awkward silence. When it came to meeting up, usually it'd be Georgi who'd request a meeting, then I'd contact the others and arrange a date and place for everyone to meet. All in all, my OCD tendancies came in handy. Usually I'd write down what we planned to do, and assign the tasks to the people who either wanted certain scenes or tasks, or were the best for the job.

It unnerved me at first, and I still feel almost guilty for essentially saying 'I am in charge', but the thing was, it was a complete team effort. All I essentially did was keep them contained in a space as they spouted wisdom, and tested ideas or designs on my friends and relatives (namely the 'how to kill Andy at the end' scene) to make sure our ideas and jokes were understood by people who hadn't spent months pouring over every single detail of the plot.

We worked together really well as a group primarily (I feel) because we tended to specialise in certain areas. Beverly liked the idea of character design and storyboarding, which I admit I did want to have a go at, but because I know Beverlys style would be much better than my own I didn't argue, and instead asked if I could then have the job of adapting the storyboard and collective work into an animatic. Both of us were happy as a result.

Char was easily the best at lip sync, and with her intense attention to detail and body language we were more than happy for her to 'claim' the interview scenes. I know she spent many sleepless caffeine fueled nights studying the movements and gestures as well as painstakingly adjusting the mouth movements to fit the audio track. And Georgi, our Master of Maya, I felt guilty for letting him take on so much, but he announced from the start that he wanted to take on those roles, and demonstrated he had the knowledge and skill to pull it off. It didn't stop me checking on him via facebook practically every single day to make sure he was handling the workload, but it was enough to make the rest of us take a step back, hand over our trust and let him work his magic.

Our DVD cover: with original artwork by Beverly

We worked so well as a group, and I think this is because right from the start, we kept the communication flowing, we made our own facebook group to keep in touch so we could upload our work and have the others evaluate it in the early stages. And for the plot, I told everyone to go home, and draw up their own storyboards (each frame on one small piece of paper) to bring to our first official group meeting. We taped each storyboard on the walls beneath the stairs by the bean bags (was masking tape, no damage to the walls), and pick and chose the best bits from each storyboard and arranged them into a final storyboard that we all liked.

This meant from the offset that we were all happy with the sequence, even though since then it has been heavily edited and altered to better suit the mood of the final animation. Because we all contributed, we were all more familiar with the overall story, this meant there was hardly and issues when it came to creating the various characters, backgrounds and styles.

Because we all had the same vision in mind, I was more than happy to trust the others to do their tasks without any misunderstandings, this meant we made great time on our initial animatic, plot and overall designs. It also gave us a lot more time to work out the tricky details that developed later on, such as the difference between mine, Beverly, and Char's drawing styles in Flash (resolved by the three of us sitting down in a sort of round robin of sketching, drawing the same character based on the previous persons drawing until all our sketches began looking the same). Or in Georgi's case, the time to learn how to construct the wave rig he wanted and how to edit it in a way so that it fitted with our 2D characters.

To conclude: We had many a sleepless night, we have become nocturnal, human hibernation is looking to be possible, but we DID IT! I'm so proud of these guys, we've all come together to make something epic. Not only have I learned how to use Flash and Premier better, but also how to work with other like-minded people for the same goal, while having fun. I don't see my group as work associates, they really are proper friends that I can have a laugh with and rely on when the going gets tough. I can only hope they felt I supported them as much throughout the project as I feel they supported me, even just by accepting my obsessive need to make notes of just about everything each time someone spoke.

I really enjoyed this project and look forward to hopefully working with them again in the future.

Monday 27 May 2013

Shell and Paddy comission

Right, handed in a load of things for last fridays deadline then volunteered to take on a small project on the side. Thomas Spettel, one of the creators of the cartoon 'Shell and Paddy', wanted to comission someone to make a life sized plushie of the character Shell.

I was sent a character turnaround sheet (showing Shell in various stages of rotation) which allowed me to plan out where to start, as well as the rough size of the plushie.

I made a rough template of the fleece parts out of sticky notes, to see what would work best to avoid wasting fleece fabric. Once my sticky note Shell was working, I began cutting out the bits of fabric, making sure to double stitch each seam (haven't got a sewing machine with me on campus) to make sure its secure. I then basically proceeded like that, starting with the body, then face, then legs. Once that was done, I took some photos to send to Thomas to see if he wanted anything tweaked before I finished Shell up and stuffed him.

Once I'd finished making the adjustments (adding extra eye highlights and blunting his leg tips a little), I then stuffed Shell, using the stuffing in the cheap ASDA own brand pillows which is less expensive than buying stuffing on its own, yet just as effective.
I then took these pictures next to a diet coke can, to give whoevers looking an idea of the Shell plushies size.







The reason I was happy to take on this project so close to deadlines was because I've been a fan of Shell and Paddy for some time. When I came for the interview to try and get into Falmouth University I was lucky enough to talk to Joe and Thomas, and they showed me the animatic for the first Shell and Paddy episode, which was essentially what made me decide that I really wanted to end up at Falmouth Uni.

Recently they released another Shell and Paddy episode, titled 'Bath-Time Troubles. I showed it to my cousins (aged from 12 to 20) via facebook and asked them for feedback. The majority of them believed it was a cartoon episode I'd seen on Cartoon Network, or CBBC, and were shocked when I told them it was made by previous students from Uni.

In particular, Shell's reaction to being caught bathing seemed to be the unanimous favoured moment of the episode, followed closely by Paddy being 'converted' into an inflatable toy. The older relatives (four of which were aged 15-20) stated that these particular moments were popular due to the combination of the characters actions in time with the music and sound effects.

Overall though, they seemed to enjoy the fact it was a 2D cartoon, as opposed to 3D. It seems they were more forgiving of 2D character exaggerations in movements and behaviour than with 3D characters, such as in the cartoon show 'Bernard'. This leads me to believe that the current childrens entertainment channels available on normal digital tv (namely CBBC and CITV) has been over saturated with 3D generated or live action shows, leaving few newer or original 2D cartoons to be developed or shown on the channels. I think the creators of Shell and Paddy could use this to their advantage, as those under 10 would enjoy the slapstick comedy elements of the cartoon, and those in their teens would not only enjoy the plot, but find the actual medium of the show to be nostalgic.

And so you can judge for yourselves, heres the episode of Shell and Paddy itself. Enjoy.
Shell and Paddy: Bath time trouble

Friday 17 May 2013

Zoo trip

On Thursday, we went on a trip to Newquay zoo (the have lions, but no tigers...nor bears...but they do have fossa!). Heres a video I compiled using some of the movements and behaviours I recorded using my camera, with a few photos thrown in to be safe. I do intend to make some character animations based on this video eventually, but I can guarantee it'll be after my immense deadlines.

The quality isn't that good, and the camera is shaky most times, but it does give the general idea of the animals movement.

Oh, that lions roar at the beginning is mine by the way, managed to catch it on video just after it started. And I managed to get a peacock to flirt with me, but to save you all the embarrassment of listening to me cooing at all the animals and generally keeping up a running commentary, I've put in some music. Aren't I generous? Feel free to use anything for reference, some credit would be nice but I'm not too picky. Enjoy.



Friday 10 May 2013

Ident Project. Status: Complete

At long last, I have gotten my ident animation to a standard I am happy with.



The small psychotic creature is named Beeble, hes a character I've been working on for quite some time really, initially, he had three legs, then I consulted Derek (one of my lecturers) who advised that it'd be easier in the long run to give Beeble four legs. I have never been more grateful for advice.

I incorporated my experimental project into the ident by using an extract for the background. As the quality of the images for that project weren't very good and rather shaky (I created my own line tester using a cheap digital camera, some wire and my book shelf) I felt that it'd be good to give the full impression of an old film being projected onto canvas.

With this solved, I still had no idea how to incorporate the Falmouth logo, until a friend of mine introduced me to Deadpool comics, and began explaining how the character often broke 'the 4th wall' which made him a lot more entertaining.

This got me thinking about breaking -through- my experimental animation. Flipping through all my doodles, I decided on using Beeble for his first real animation, and went ahead with animating him 'burtsing' through the experimental animation using flash. To try and incorporate the two different styles, I had Beeble attack the dragon as it heads off screen, only for Beeble to fail and fall off.
 
At this point, I had a flashback to Andys' lecture about stretch and squash: exaggerate, you'll be amazed how much you can get away with.
So I properly flattened Beeble as he hits the ground. It definately makes the clip more entertaining.

With the 'entertainment' done, I still needed to incorporate the logo. Black writing on a white background, yet my 'background' was black paper....I needed white. So, I turned to tv and youtube for help. I was inspired by some of the old MTV and Channel 4 Estings idents, where creatures usually dragged the logo into place, or produce the logo from a place. I decided to have Beeble puke up the Falmouth logo, emphasising the splat it made so the logo took centre piece on screen.

I met with Adam Aiken to help evaluate my ident at this point. He gave me the advice on animating the actual logo to make it seem more at 'home' in the monster puke. I went back to Flash, animated the logo and added little 'feeler' tentacle things to the main logo and had them wiggle about. I even added a few microbe looking creatures into the rest of the puke for good measure.

With that done, I proceeded to locate the sounds to go with my ident. I ended up using some free sound clips from FreeSFX and recorded my friend Beverly as the voice of Beeble. I compiled everything together in Adobe Premier and exported it.

While there may be some minor issues with the sounds not quite matching up, and a couple of jerky moments in the animation (particularily when Beebles biting the tail), but from what I've learned, people seem to enjoy watching it two or three times without noticing these tiny flaws, so I think I can announce this project, done!

Monday 6 May 2013

Interior Background

FINALLY managed to get the interior background done. Well, not as done done as I'd like it done but close enough done to be considered done..... yeah.

Back to sanity, I have scanned in my background sketch for the interior background, which is in fact part of a pan shot, and traced it using a specific paint brush tool (size 3, I kept track of which brush types and sizes this time). I traced each specific 'layer' on an individual layer, such as the foreground, the chair, the desk, and the back wall.



 
 With the bare bones laid down, I added the wood detail using a different brush (size 1). With that done, I blocked in the colours for each section on their own individual layers (there ended up being about four layers to each of the main background segments), then added shading on yet another layer (to show shadow and light).
 
Wood detail, and colour blocking/blending has begun

Colour blocking and blending done

There was -lots- of 'smudging' involved. Well...Photoshops version of smudging at least. It took a lot of time carefully laying down various colours of similar shades so that they could 'blend' enough to be at least reasonably plausible.

Done!
 Overall, pretty pleased with myself. I made a good effort at the lighting (candles are evil) and the right kind of colours (also, evil). Took far far far longer than I'd expected it to, would take even longer, but other projects to do so, priorities and all that. Still! I'm proud of how it looks!