A cut of the film exists with a female voice actress in the form of one of our tutors Dotty. However I found that the female voice was too soft, and did not fit with the aesthetic with what I wanted from the film. Originally I wanted no voice over, however I agreed with the feedback that it was too distracting. Therefore we enlisted the help of a first year by the name of Zhama to voice over our animation.
This voice was far more fitting, his London accent and deep delivery was a far better fit for the tone of our animation, I matched the levels with the rest of the audio whilst my team mate fixed the positioning of the frame so that it was all centred. There was also some timing issues which were fixed, so it added an extra 20 seconds on to the end of our animation including Zhama's credit. Due to wanting to upload the final short to festivals, I will not be uploading the final animation here.
Wednesday 16 May 2018
For Arguments Sake
This is a separate thing from the documentary. In this we had to present an argument for a given prompt, which we did not necessarily agree with. My argument was for "Non - Compulsory Education Should not Be Free".
This was my final presentation, I actually spent a long time on forums with University professors learning about the arguments for and against. I spent about a day on this with research and putting it together.
Jack the Ripper - Putting it Together
This week, the final version of the camera motions and everything were finished and I was happy to call it a finished film, for the final crit. I spent a long time on the sound considering it, after originally intending to use some music from youtube, I was worried there would be a copyright issue which would mean that we could not submit it to any sort of festivals if I so choose to.
Originally Considered Music - This is the music I was originally considering for the animation, which my teammates approved of, however I took the decision as Director of this project not to use this, as my concern for copyright was too great. So I took to a website I trust called bensound which allows for use on some music as long as they are credited.
THE PROBLEM
In presenting in the crit session, the class as a whole determined that it was in desperate need of voice over, as the text is too intrusive of the animation so that you do not pay attention to 1 if you are looking at the other, so we now have to very quickly find a voice actor for the final cut of the film.
Originally Considered Music - This is the music I was originally considering for the animation, which my teammates approved of, however I took the decision as Director of this project not to use this, as my concern for copyright was too great. So I took to a website I trust called bensound which allows for use on some music as long as they are credited.
This is an in progress shot of the sound with me adjusting levels for individual segments so that it is not too loud, some sound effects reach the red level however these are quieter sounds and even with headphones on the sound is not too intrusive.
In presenting in the crit session, the class as a whole determined that it was in desperate need of voice over, as the text is too intrusive of the animation so that you do not pay attention to 1 if you are looking at the other, so we now have to very quickly find a voice actor for the final cut of the film.
Jack the Ripper - Gotta Rework the Text
For this week it was another slow week for me, after applying the animation to all the text, I realised there were some mistakes, and due to this, I made a new original word document so that I could rework it slightly.
This was the final version of the text that will be going into the animation, it could potentially be cut down when it is being reanimated, which is going to take a long time but it was my own fault for making mistakes.
As well this week, myself and a teammate spent a long time in a studio with coffee and tea to make some real old looking paper textures we could use for the final film to make it look like an older newspaper.
I also made a table top texture for the background of the documentary so that the paper is not just sat on a black background. It is supposed to feel like an actual run through of a newspaper.
Jack the Ripper - Type Animation
This week was pretty laborious in terms of what I got up to, first I made the final version of the text to go on screen, with the help of one of my teammates, who checked my spelling and punctuation etc. For this week I purely did the animation for the text and how it will appear on screen.
This is what the type will look like for the on screen text, I will pair this with sound effects to make sure that it fits on screen, we also need to make sure it stays on screen for a long enough period of time for the audience to read.
Jack the Ripper - New Script, Richard Jones and the Type
At the end of last week myself and my team mate conducted a skype interview with Richard Jones, an authority in the Jack the Ripper case who has co published many documentaries and books, as well as hosting the London Jack the Ripper tour. This was an incredibly insightful experience where we were able to gain some expert advice on how to change our documentary to make it better and more accurate with our information. I had a set of questions I asked which were answered with incredibly detailed responses.
1. Do you think there was anything else the Police could have done?
2. Which were the largest newspapers at the time and which one had the most impact on the case?
3. In terms of wider impact, how significant do you think the Eddowes case was to the Ripper murders?
4. What enticed you into looking into Jack the Ripper to begin with?
Due to the great insite we were able to gain from our interview with Richard Jones, I updated the script in order to adapt the story of our animation.
1. Do you think there was anything else the Police could have done?
2. Which were the largest newspapers at the time and which one had the most impact on the case?
3. In terms of wider impact, how significant do you think the Eddowes case was to the Ripper murders?
4. What enticed you into looking into Jack the Ripper to begin with?
Due to the great insite we were able to gain from our interview with Richard Jones, I updated the script in order to adapt the story of our animation.
The script has now been edited to account for these changes.
As well this week I had put myself on to type research, which I did by looking into fonts used during the time and I tried to match the font in the best way possible using many font websites and also the adobe typekit. I spent a long time pouring over old news articles in order to match the font as best as possible. In the end I ended up with a typekit font called "Mrs Eaves Roman All Petite Caps"
This is an example of the text, which is going to be used for the title page.
Jack the Ripper - Rough Asset Creations
After making the storyboards, it was now time to make the rough assets so that my team mate could make the assets which will be made to animate over my other team mates backgrounds.
These are the assets I designed using my storyboards, they were the most important to me to get right, I added notes where necessary to let my teammate know exactly how to animate these. I also let him know where we would need multiple versions of the assets in order to create the idea of a crowd, or people in the background. This was not an overly large week for me, however I took a lot into consideration and I did not consider how quick these would be to design.
Jack the Ripper - Storyboards
This week was my time to do the storyboarding, my favourite part of the animation process and the one I will be specialising in. When doing the storyboards, for reference I used the proof of concept I had previously done, some concept art from my teammate and also some outer sources which have had similar aesthetics to our own.
The Casebook of Nips and Porkington
This first animation is one that I was heavily inspired by when making our animation, however I wanted ours to have a darker, more educational tone which would not necessarily target children, but 16+ and for people who wish to learn about the case.
Harry Potter newspaper
The Harry Potter movies have plenty of examples of moving newspapers that have moving images on them, I wanted to bring this across in the same sort of way, which mixes moving letters and animation together.
The Casebook of Nips and Porkington
This first animation is one that I was heavily inspired by when making our animation, however I wanted ours to have a darker, more educational tone which would not necessarily target children, but 16+ and for people who wish to learn about the case.
Harry Potter newspaper
The Harry Potter movies have plenty of examples of moving newspapers that have moving images on them, I wanted to bring this across in the same sort of way, which mixes moving letters and animation together.
These are the storyboards that were made, this deviates slightly from the script, so I will be sending this to my teammates so I can see what they think of it. After this I will decide on how to improve the script.
Jack the Ripper - The Script
After doing extensive research onto the case itself, it was time to write the script, which I was not planning to do originally. Originally I was going to give it to my team mate who had written the scripts for the Burger King brief, because I have no experience writing scripts for other people to follow. However I took my best shot at it anyway. There is not much more to say about this, I think I am going to have to revise the script at some point.
For now though this will be the script we are using for the storyboards which will be my role for next week.
Jack the Ripper - Research Time
Now that we had pitched my idea to the rest of the class, and been given the go ahead of approval, over this easter I had set stuff for the group do. For this I knew we need a schedule to stick to so that we were all aware of what was going on.
This schedule includes my Director notes on it, on each week for the other 2 I have notified them on what they can be doing if they should finish early, as well as some wider expectations on what they should be doing specifically in the weeks. For example on the layout section of Oliver's, it says:
"Using my storyboards i'd like you to make the full layout for the final outcome, I don't imagine this will take all week, but i'd like these to be in depth, so if the rough layouts get done you and myself will work on getting the textures and stuff down to overlay the animation on to.
Also in this layout section, i'd like for you to add in some space for of the time ads which can be input into the corners of pages so we can make it feel authentic" (the screenshot was too small to put in without being pixelated).
My next stage was to do the research so that I could plan out the story so that I could script in the most factual way possible. For this I used a few different sources. Firstly I used 3 books which I had been reading before the project.
This schedule includes my Director notes on it, on each week for the other 2 I have notified them on what they can be doing if they should finish early, as well as some wider expectations on what they should be doing specifically in the weeks. For example on the layout section of Oliver's, it says:
"Using my storyboards i'd like you to make the full layout for the final outcome, I don't imagine this will take all week, but i'd like these to be in depth, so if the rough layouts get done you and myself will work on getting the textures and stuff down to overlay the animation on to.
Also in this layout section, i'd like for you to add in some space for of the time ads which can be input into the corners of pages so we can make it feel authentic" (the screenshot was too small to put in without being pixelated).
My next stage was to do the research so that I could plan out the story so that I could script in the most factual way possible. For this I used a few different sources. Firstly I used 3 books which I had been reading before the project.
These books were incredibly useful in introducing me to the story of Jack the Ripper. My next sources were the documentaries, which I will link down below:
Jack the Ripper tour Documentary ( this one was written by one of the people we want to contact.
All of these documentaries proved an interesting watch and were easy to follow. I want to use some of these as reference points into ours to be so formal and easy to follow.
My next point of research was to look at the casefiles website which exists for Jack the Ripper. The case has such a following that people have set up this page to include all the facts and news articles which have ever existed on him.
This has been the most useful link of all, as it explains the timeline perfectly and gives a lot of information about the case itself and the wider context.
Jack the Ripper - A New Project
I knew towards the end of the last project what I wanted to do, so before ending the burger king project, so I decided to enlist the help of 2 of the people in my class, one of which being my director on the last project, on the understanding that this would be my project and I would be the director. I chose these people specifically due to their great work ethic, and for their skills.
For the project I will be pitching I will be doing a Jack the Ripper documentary, specifically on 1 case which would be the 2nd murder on the night of the "double event" Catherine Eddowes. I wanted to do this case as it was the most influential of the murders overall on the Police, and the whole thing happened in around 10 minutes. I had the idea of doing it in kind of a wanted poster kind of way, but I didn't know how to pull this off. So my team mate offered the suggestion of turning into a newspaper format, which would allow us to work in a lot more.
For the project I will be pitching I will be doing a Jack the Ripper documentary, specifically on 1 case which would be the 2nd murder on the night of the "double event" Catherine Eddowes. I wanted to do this case as it was the most influential of the murders overall on the Police, and the whole thing happened in around 10 minutes. I had the idea of doing it in kind of a wanted poster kind of way, but I didn't know how to pull this off. So my team mate offered the suggestion of turning into a newspaper format, which would allow us to work in a lot more.
From this I made this proof of concept for the other 2 to work from. As one of them was assigned backgrounds, and the other was assigned asset creation and animation. For this we knew we had to do a lot of research, so we made a list of possible people to contact, some documentaries to watch and some books to read.
Burger King - Animation
This is the final week of the burger king project, we are finally able to animate after myself and the director backed all of the assets, he also had to make some assets due to time constraints and our other team mates not meeting our deadlines. This week I animated 3 different small sections of our brief, I animated the original story idea, "campfire" i also animated "the bard of burgers" and "a funeral fit for a king". I am very happy with how these turned out. Using after effects in this way presented some problems, and with me and my director Oliver animating at the same time, we were able to animate together and help each other when we encountered a problem. A problem we faced was with the "auto bezier" function when making new key frames. As the animated was supposed to feel quite rough to emulate the hand made aspect of it, the auto bezier caused nothing but issues.
These are the final versions, they had sound added by our team mate, however for the reason of them being submitted to a competition I cannot post the full thing here. I am proud of the product we have made, and it has been successfully submitted to D&AD.
Burger King - Asset Creation
For this week it is one of great distress for me, we were under the assumption that we would have the assets done by now so that we could animate and have lots of room for post production. So this week I am now having to take on his work so that we can still get finished on time, as I designed all the assets it was easiest for me to do these as I already know how they are supposed to be. This is obviously not the most ideal thing however we cannot animate until we have the assets. I also did some tests with the backgrounds so that we could change the colour of the background as and when we needed it.
These are the assets I had to create, I had to do this so that we could animate with them on time, I also had to back my teammates assets on to the textures because for reasons unknown he had not considered the textures when creating the assets.
These are just examples of assets I had to back on to the textures, and incredibly time consuming job, as they were to go on paper to seem like they had been hand drawn (with a brush I created to seem like a pencil) and then go on to cardboard to seem like a puppet show. There was also a drop shadow that needed to be added, as well as consideration into how they would look had they been glued on and cut around with scissors.
These are the background experiments I made. When doing this I considered the colours that were on the burger king briefs and essentials pack, we also did this when creating the assets.
Burger King - Finished Storyboards and Cows
This week was more or less the continuation of last week because I had not yet finished the storyboards. I wanted to prioritise the storyboards first as we wanted to be animating as soon as possible. Although we have seen minimal assets by our other team mate, we are still confident in getting all of our animation done by the deadline. I also made the assets for the cows this week, there had to be a few different versions in order to made them seem more animated, and keep with the humour we were going for instead of seeming more morbid.
These are the cow assets I made afterwards, they are from a stick free png, I did an advanced search on google to make sure that it was for commercial and editable use, which is why this specific cow was used.
After this I had time to still do the character assets I was to make using my character design. With the stories we ended up choosing, the character design's are only to be used in 1 of the animations however it was still a necessary part of the process as this allowed us to just slot it in where we needed.
These are assets interchangeable as we need them and where necessary are on separate layers for some movement in after effects. On the next week we are expecting the assets to be done by our team mate so that we can begin animating. They are still running late however we have decided to take on more of the animation between ourselves (myself and my director) so we will be animating 3 each as opposed to animating 2 each so that our other team mate can get the assets done.
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