Extended Practice - Animation?

From the beginning of extended practice, I told myself that I was going to animate my final film as well as produce an awesome animatic would showed off some dynamic angles and framing, whilst telling a cool story. Which I held on to far too much. Before I had finished my storyboarding, I started animating on the first shot, getting way too ahead of myself. Here is this animation:

What changed? 

As I was working on this animation, and looking at the schedule I had laid out for myself before the hand in, I decided to take a step back and ask whether I wanted to rush this film I wanted to make my most dynamic animation yet. The answer I came to was no, I had not yet finished cleaning up my animatic and my last live brief was still to be done at this time, so I decided not to animate my final film. Yet. As of now my plan is to give myself time after this hand in to animate on it with some help from others, to have it in our final year show, as I want to give it the necessary time to make it as good as it can be.

My main specialism this year has been storyboarding, and that has not changed, so I wanted to give the storyboards their due respect and have them be as good as I can currently make them, rather than rush to finish my storyboards and then rush to animate a final film that I wouldn't be happy to submit.

I believe my animation will look awesome in the final year show alongside the others, and that will come from giving it the time and work it deserves.

Extended Practice - Animatic Final Clean-Up

After responding to the feedback that was given to me, I made a final pass on the clean up of the animatic. I also was able to put in all of the final backgrounds so that all the cuts make sense in relation to where the characters are in the frame. Here is my final animatic:

I am pretty happy with how this animatic turned out, there are some definite timing issues, however overall I think the work is solid. The backgrounds fit really well with the style of the animation.

What worked:

I think the framing and the movement is clear, I think it translates well for animation, and it has a clear narrative whilst following the basic cinematography rules. I think the drawing is clear, and the characters are separate to the point where it is clear who is doing what. The layouts I had in the original version of the animatic also helped the perspective of the backgrounds which come across really nicely with my style of drawing.

What could have been better:

I think some of the movement in this animatic overall is a little awkward, when I came to clean it up I seem to have changed some poses ever so slightly and that has broken some of the flow in some areas (in my opinion). I think sound will really help bring this to life, but that is something I will work in as I get further along with animating this project.

Extended Practice - Live Brief - Yeti Storyboarding

For my final live brief, I wanted to take on something more closely related to my specialism in storyboarding. Through the recommendation of a storyboard artist from Blue Sky Studios, I found the YETI storyboarding classes online, which offer new briefs every Monday for those wanting to learn the practice.

http://yetischool.com/index.php/storyboard-lessons

The brief I decided to take on, was more about comedy and staging, which had a concept I found funny and interesting, as most of my storyboards tend to be more action based or serious in nature, I thought it'd be fun to take on something a bit more light hearted.

This is the brief I decided to take on, and here are the thumbnails which I produced for my idea.

Overall I was quite happy with my thumbnails, and decided to take them into storyboard pro just for practices sake as it is such an industry standard. Here is the animatic I produced: 

Overall I think there are definitely improvements I could have made to this in storyboard pro, the character's often feel a bit too static for me, and some of the movement is awkward and unfunny, and does not translate as well as it should. In terms of positives I think it reads clearly overall, and the framing is nice (enough) so that the story comes across to the audience. 

I think this animatic would have benefited from sound, as it is such a comedic story, the silence breaks the immersion, which is a shame, but it is sadly something that slipped my mind until it was too late, over summer I am going to take this further and practising storyboards from sound clips, in order to better understand the relation of visuals and audio.  

Extended Practice - Individual Background Specs

Although I had made a base background spec sheet, I still needed to make a spec sheet for each individual backgrounds, of which their ended up being 12 I needed. I made an individual spec sheet, and a map showing the camera for the scene which the background went with. This was the spec I sent to the background artist:

I included the layout used in the animatic, as well as showing the highest point which the character reaches, I did this so that the background artist would know to make the background larger than the standard 16:9 aspect ratio. There was also specifications like making the back 2 rocks on editable layers for fx animation to go on top of them and any parallax that may need to occur. 

This was the final background that was produced by the background artist for this project, based on my layout and specs. I will not show all 12 of the background on this blog for sake of time, but for consistencies sake I made a birds eye map of the area which the animation takes place in, so that it would be obvious where the camera is.

This is the map that was used for background 5, and there was a map for each specific background.

Extended Practice - Live Brief - Godzilla Talenthouse Artwork

For another of my live brief's, I decided to take part in the Talenthouse Godzilla : King of the Monsters artwork submission. I would usually choose an animation or storyboard brief to do, however as Godzilla is such an important topic for me, having inspired a lot of my creative endeavours.

Godzilla Trailer

This was the material I had to use for inspiration, so I chose to go with Godzilla facing off against King Ghidorah, which I had done storyboards of previously, and I felt comfortable that I could pull it off. This is the progression of my piece, from thumbnail to final piece. 

Overall I am really happy with how this turned out, and I used the titles provided by the competition, and submitted both versions, as you are allowed up to 8 submissions. I decided, in response to feedback to get rid of the fire behind on the buildings as it would be too distracting. I wanted some strong blue lighting as that seems to be the theme of all of the marketing for the movie. I do not usually go for a finished piece, and I feel like it works well, I am especially happy with the atmosphere of the piece, I will try and improve on my general drawing skills from here on, as I think it would look a bit more 3 dimensional. 

Extended Practice - Responding to Feedback

After receiving feedback from professionals, I have reworked my animatic to make the necessary changes to my story and to cuts to make sure that it is readable and cohesive. I tried to take on all the feedback I received, and I feel that I responded to it relatively well. Here are the scenes I improved:

This is the first revision:

With this first revision, the concern was that the cut from the hero character landing to the next shot was a bit jumpy, so I added in an extra insert of him landing and ready to fight, which showed more of his character and helps the cut to the next shot feel a bit more natural.

Revision 2:

This revision adds more character to the monster on his approach, I gave the monster more intent behind his approach, adding in a small victorious roar and a close  up insert before he jumps towards the hero, showing that the monster believes it has won at this point. I also wanted to show that the monster is angry with the character, thus the angry close up insert, possibly territorial? I think this helps the shot a lot with it's intent and showing the character's emotions.

Revision 3:

A couple of minor revisions, the most prominent being the character's head, he now looks towards the gun so that the next cut makes a bit more sense, so that his eye leads the transition. The next couple of things was the flipping of the monster looking down on the hero, it now reads better with the monster's screen direction being consistent between shots.

Revision 4:

This is definitely the most significant of changes to the story, with the entire ending being different. Originally I had staged the shot as though the monster was lunging down and the shot was revealed through the monster's head, however now I have the shot directly leading into itself with the gun coming into the scene and visibly shooting the monster on his lunge down, showing the damage, and setting up for the next scene where he falls, and the hole falls on to the hero character, inspired by many different classic scenes where the hero then emerges from the hole, and stumbles out to fall next to the monster.

I also changed the close up scene to reflect this, as he is now giving a sigh of relief, up against the head of the dead monster. He then hears an audible roar, which causes his relief to turn to surprise, at which he climbs up the monster, and the camera tracks him up to reveal the other 3 monsters, at which point he leaps into action again.

Here is how the full thing reads now:

I am much happier with the flow of the story now, I think the professional feedback has helped greatly with the action and flow of the short. It is now slightly longer but the shots that are there, are all necessary for the intent of the characters.

Extended Practice - Professional Feedback

After finishing my rough pass of my animatic, I sent it off to 2 highly regarded storyboard artists in order to gain some professional feedback. This is the feedback given by Jez Hall:

This was all incredibly useful feedback which I will respond to accordingly. It felt very professional and I got the feeling that he took me seriously as a board artist so I was appreciative of that.

Here is the feedback given by David Bunting:

I liked the critical nature both these professionals treated my board with, I did not want a series of compliments as I would not have felt like there could be any improvements, however this feedback has given me a lot of good insight into what I need to improve, and how I can make it a lot better.

Over the next couple of days I will pick up the pace a lot more and I will make the suggested improvements, some of which were solidifying some of the thoughts which I had already had, but some of which I just hadn't considered.