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 - 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 - 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.

Extended Practice - Clean-up Tests

As I was waiting for feedback, I decided to start cleaning up the shots which I was the most happy with, as I was pretty confident in them, and I also had backgrounds for them already.

I used shot 1 as my starting point for this, of which I started by adding in and lining up the background where it needed to go.  This is that test: 

The background works incredibly well and really elevates the scene, the background artist stuck to my layout beautifully and it really helps bring the characters to life. I was so happy with this when the background was in that I decided to clean up the rest of the shot just to have it done. Here is that version: 

I am incredibly happy with how this shot turned out, I think it really adds a lot to the shot having his hair in, and also giving him the expression as it gives a sense of character. The same goes for the monster, adding in some facial detail makes him a lot more aggressive and the subtle mouth openings make him feel more alive. Ultimately I am happy with this shot, and I do not have to do anything more with it now, so I will move on to finishing off the other shots when I have gotten some feedback on how they could be improved. 

Extended Practice - Storyboard Progression 3

After the crit session last week, I had pointed out to myself that there needed to be some amendments to my animatic, such as flipping shots to make the flow of the story more coherent. I have also now finished what I am calling the "rough pass" of my animatic, which I will send off for feedback from some of my connections from PP. I will also try and get feedback from my class so that I can make sure it reads well before I start making a clean pass. I will start a clean pass of the first shot as I am confident in it, and I do not want to change it as I personally think it works well enough on it's own.

This is my rough pass:

I am quite happy with how some of this has worked out, I have forgotten to flip the close up shots of the monster here so it is making those cuts look pretty jumpy, which I will amend this coming week. I have the bliss of being able to take my time on this animatic, as if it were a longer film, I would have had to have a final rough pass by this stage. I also want to work on fixing up the ending shot, as I think it could be amended to give a little more emphasis on the monsters death, as there is a long build up with little pay off, so I think I could push that a little more.

I am also wondering whether the cut at around the 06:05 mark to the landing shot needs an insert shot first, as it may be causing a little bit of a jump in the cut. The ending shot also may be a little too similar to the opening shot in terms of how he moves, so I feel that that could be amended to read a little better for the audience.

Extended Practice - Storyboard Progression 2

Following on from Hostelworld, I knew it was time to get back into my own project, so I started again with my animatic. There is not too much to say about what is happening, there has just been some progress on shots, with some revisions in places where stuff doesn't quite make sense, I have a couple more shots to rough out before I start cleaning up, and I will try and get some feedback before I clean-up so I won't have to scrap anything that is particularly time consuming.

During my crit session, I noticed that at 09:12, the animatic sort of breaks the 180 rule, almost, and doesn't is making the cut quite jumpy, I will amend this going forward. This will also mean I have to revise the close up shots of the monster, and easy fix as I will just have to flip the shots. Flipping this shot also means I can establish to the audience that he is still holding the gun after being hit, this will make it read more clearly ultimately and will help with the pacing.

Extended Practice - Starting my Project

After turning down the work on the music video project, due to missed deadlines, I started on my own project. The first thing that I did, was flesh out my own story, as I had the basic idea from the pitch, but it had no real substance. One thing I had to keep in mind was that I needed to keep it short, as I had less time than anyone else. So when writing it out, I cut out a lot of stuff from the initial story idea.

This was the document that I put together to tell my story. It included my initial mood board and also the initial story idea which I had come up with in my planning stage. In consideration of my time left, I needed to split the story up into separate parts. So I set it up as the main fight scene, which would be my main animation, and the story set up, which in my mind was integral to the story, but not necessary for it to make sense. Therefore I wanted to make this my plan for the rest of production time, so that in the chance that I could not get the animation done in time, I could split it into the two sections and have the fight scene stand on it's own. 

My next stage from here was to make the script, as it is a necessary part of production, and is incredibly useful to storyboard from.

 

This was the script that I put together using my story overview. From here I decided to ask for feedback from my peers which lead to me revising the script to make some shots a bit more clear, and to help the flow of the story.