Animation Production Pt.4

 I've finished the Alpine forest today. I used the same method as I did the first one, but with different assets for it. I had trouble figuring out the placement of the trees, as well as how they would stand out from each other. I used key light to take off some edges that I didn't manage to get when I cut out the images in photoshop back in february. Apart from that it was pretty easy. I made the sky a different colour from the other one just so that they don't blend together.

The only other problem I had was the hue change aspect of the scene. I had to somehow turn these white trees brown and I was having the hardest time doing it. I ended up changing the brightness down so that they looked burnt which I thought was a nice effect.

Animation Production Pt.3

I've started working on the Outro scene since i haven't gotten some of the cutouts i need to finish the first scene. In this scene I was supposed to make 4 different forests, slide them together into the same frame then make them all die out. I just finished the first scene I need for this. I basically did the same thing I did for my last scene, but in a 2D way instead of making it into a parallax shot.



I'm planning to make 4 different types of climates for this scene, just so that they don't all look the same. Im thinking of making two deciduous forests, an alpine forest and a taiga forest.

Animation Production Pt.2

Ive finished the first part of the first scene, and I've started working on the next few parts of it. Initially Callum wanted me to make each of the parts of the scene slide out of view so it looks like paper craft, but Martin said that it took too long for each piece to go out of frame. So instead he's making me do this page turn effect on after effects. This is what it looks like.

 I personally don't like this effect, since it reminds me of a Microsoft movie maker scene changer effect. It just looks really cheesy to me. I wanted to do straight cuts, but apparently its already been decided for me so i'm basically forced to do it. I won't like it but It's easy enough to make it happen. I'd still prefer a straight cut to another scene though.

Animation Post-Production Pt.5

I've kept in contact with my musician friend from Chicago and he's been having some trouble finding ample time to record out his audio for our project. I told him our deadline and sent him some updated scenes from our project to try and see if that will help. I have faith that he'll get the work done in time but just in case I told Joe and Callum to start looking into some royalty free music just for backup in case it doesn't work out. Apart from that there aren't many updates, Joe told me we have time to figure out the typeface for our project and that it won't take long. I have history as a Graphic designer so I might be overstating the importance of the font type but I still feel as though its important to the overall aesthetic of our animation.

Responsive - Summative Evaluation

This entire module was a ride from start to finish. At the beginning I had little or no idea on what briefs I should undertake, who I was going to work with for the collaborative portion, or what it was going to be like. Safe to say I'm fully aware of what I need and how its affected me over the module. While finishing this module, I am aware that technically I am one substantial brief short. I have two half finished briefs, but one of them I missed the deadline for and the other stopped updating before I could finish the last 4 I needed before the deadline.
Apart from that, My other three briefs went as smoothly as they possibly could. I was originally planning to start work on my Responsive briefs all the way back in December. I was going to be getting a cintiq for christmas so I could work over in Chicago during winter break. However, my parents ended up buying the thing 3 months too late. I got it come springtime, and I was able to work on it over spring break, but I would have liked to relax that time instead of rushing to finish a brief that I needed to finish by the end of March.
 The first brief I actually tried to do after winter break was the Gold Panda Illustration and Cartoon Competition. I never actually finished the brief I was working on, but for some reason I am proud with the ones I did finish. The work I put into them was good, and I learned some useful skills while doing them as well. After I didn't meet the deadline I was still keen on doing them. So much so that I managed to finish another Illustration for the brief even after the deadline was over.
During February I ran into some more trouble. I worked on two briefs during that month, one I finished and the other was the second one that was half done by the end. The first one was loop de loop, a bi-monthly looping animation competition. The subject that was up on the website was for the word "tumble". Originally I didn't know that the deadline would be in March, so I was rushing up until the end of February to finish it. I did manage to by the end of February, which meant I was a month early for submission. Might I add, a submission that never came. I'm still waiting on the day that they announce the submission date, since they're changing websites and they've closed down their older one.
During the months of February and March I worked on a weekly illustration brief online called Onform. For this one I had to save an image that was uploaded weekly to the Onform website and draw over the shape they made and make it into an illustration of some kind. Everything was going smoothly up until the time where the person uploading the images stopped right after I finished the 4th one. They haven't uploaded since, and that is the main and only reason I never finished this brief. The module itself was fun enough, and let me experiment with new ways to digitally illustrate, but I really wanted to finish eight or nine and was only able to get half of that done.
During all of this I was also working on a Collaborative brief. This was D&AD's Desperados Brief. Everything in this brief probably went the best it could have in comparison to the others. I finished my animated portion of it well in advance as well as an illustrated portion that I wanted to get done. I actually had partners I could rely on for this brief so it's nice that I could work like that for once this year.
The last and final brief I did was called Do it in Ten, a monthly animation contest made by the people at Show me the Animation. They give you a word and you need to make a ten second animation based on it. The month I worked on it they had the word Transition. I knew that I was going to be going back to Chicago for spring break and I figured I might as well do a rotoscope of me going from Leeds to Chicago. I had never done a rotoscope animation before and I was keen on doing one, so this seemed like the perfect opportunity. I will say that It went better than I could have expected, I finished the brief a day early and on spring break that means more free time for myself.
Overall this module was pretty chaotic but I managed to get it done in time and I hope that everything I worked on is enough for me to pass.

Project Report

Powered by Issuu

Publish for Free

Individual Briefs

Collaborative Brief - Boards

Responsive - Doitinten - Transition

‘Do it In Ten’ is Show Me The Animation’s monthly animation challenge. They gave me a theme to go with, which is Transition. Immediately when I heard the word I thought of how many flights back and forth from America. Maybe it will have something to do with that.

I've roughed out a storyboard for the animation. I want to try and make the transitions in the animation really smooth, since this months theme is "Transition". I want to have It start out with me in a cab driving to the airport. I turn and open the door, get out and I'm in an air plane flying to Chicago. I put up my bag and it turns into the trunk door on a car and I'm in Chicago. I might have to change it up if its too ambitious. Im going to be working on this over spring break while in Chicago so I'm going to try and film some footage so I can rotor scope it and hopefully finish it before the turn in date.

I managed to get it done a day before the turn in deadline. I wasn't able to get the transitions I wanted, instead I decided to use blinking to transfer the scenes to different parts of the trip. I also added a scene in at the end, where basically the viewers "face" hits a pillow.

This is the final piece.

Responsive - Collaborative - Desperados D&AD

I finished out all of my project and my partners have done their parts as well. This is the boards that we're going to turn in along with the ident.

Responsive - Collaborative - Desperados D&AD

I made the video. It turned out to be 15 seconds long, which is longer than I expected. The added time was due to the feeling that the sound was too cramped, so I lengthened it out so it would sound better. I made the bottle out of 5 different layers to make it look transparent and like it has depth to it, which my instructors didn't seem to like. I also layered up a bunch of other stuff and made copies of the entire setting with the lights turned off. Here's how it turned out:

Responsive - Collaborative - Desperados D&AD

An update on the Ping pong ball portion of the project. I've mocked up the final design on Maya. I got a design from Daniel that I thought went great on a ping pong ball. I asked my classmates "Would you buy a set of beers if they sold you this ping pong ball along with it?" and all of them pretty much said that they would. I tried making the ball in two different ways, through a quad sphere and a regular sphere made out of two halves. In the end I went with the regular sphere since the texture binding around it was much better. It also gave it a distinct "lip" that I think a lot of ping pong balls tend to have. As you can see I went through three different sizes before I finally got the size right. But I'm pleased with how it turned out.

Responsive - Collaborative - Desperados D&AD

I decided that I was going to create the Ident through a process I like to call a "digital collage".  Its not going to have much action in it, just a few lighting effects. I want the sound in the ident to be what carries the message across. Im going to have a Desperados bottle on a barrel under a lightbulb in an empty room. You hear flies going through the room, then the lightbulb shining on the desperados bottle breaks. After that, the desperados bottle glows in a neon colour and you start to hear a party going on in the background. It's going to be fairly short, 5-10 seconds should do it.

Responsive - Collaborative - Desperados D&AD

A breakthough came in with the ping pong portion of the project.

I decided to use the logo on this bottle cap for the design for the desperados ping pong ball. I cut out the logo and used photoshops 3-d tool to superimpose it onto a sphere.

I want to make the final product on maya, preferrably with a bigger logo and maybe something that ties it in with the new brand design Daniel is working on.

Responsive - Collaborative - Desperados D&AD

We roughed out what we're going to do and who's going to be doing what. I'm going to be working on an Ident for Desperados as well as a design for some ping pong balls to be sold along with the beer, with the desperado's logo on it. Daniel will be working on a design package for a new kind of Desperados product to be sold for a limited time, Desperado's "Fuego". Amelia, The graphic design student will be working on a website for the product. I hope we'll be able to finish it by turn in.

Responsive - Collaborative - Desperados D&AD

Me and the illustration student, Daniel have been working together to get an idea together. We've been brainstorming by looking at the current design schemes for Desperados as a brand. I figure since Desperados wants the project to show how desperados can "bring the party" we could use a sort of neon theme and maybe some other stuff, like making the packaging into a game somehow.
 We also talked about how some other brands of beer have advertised their products and wondered if we could draw any inspiration out of that. Overall I'd say we had a really good brainstorming session and I hope that this workflow continues further into the project.

Responsive - Collaborative - Desperados D&AD

I knew that I wanted to work on this brief from the beginning, and I had a list of potential ones as well. But since the instructors said that this was going to be a competitive brief, no one decided to do that one. Which ends up leaving the competition in the hands of other schools. I'm going to be working with an illustration student and a graphic design student. Hopefully this project will go better than my last one in terms of partner dependability.

Animation Pre-Production Pt.5

They've done another storyboard and animatic this time and extended it to last the full length of the actual video. Joe and Callum have also re-recorded several audio files because the ones they recorded before weren't very clear. The new animatic isn't coloured so its a little bit more confusing but its much better than the old one since it clearly times out everything. Which will make it a lot easier to use as a reference for when I'm making the animation.
This is what the final animatic will look like.

Animation Post-Production Pt.4

I've talked to my classmates about using some common Typefaces throughout the course of the animation. I feel like it will help pull the animation together, and help make it seem more professional. I know that we're going to need at most three, one for a titles, one for header text and one for body text, and we need to make them all look like they go together. Either that or use less than that. Its also going to need to look good inside the animation as well, so that's something to consider as well.