OUAN505 - Applied Animation - Production: The Set so Far

OUAN505 - The Set so Far:

Despite the long gap of a week we had with no work, we set to work straight away by getting the curtains set up, cut and ready for the stage. Alex and I also worked on putting in the armatures by sliding wire through the plastic fruits and then securing them in place with pliers. We then used Milliput on the joints to keep them stiff and realistic.

So far, we have the curtains cut and ready to attach with the curtain rail I bought (with hooks), we have the plasticine to mould around the fruits and veg so that they're finished and ready to animate, the song needs to be produced which I shall do on my return from my holidays next week, the drums are done but need painting and a logo attached, the guitars are arriving through post soon, and the lights are all set up and working but need electrical tape to secure them.

What we need to do:

- Lighting electrical tape/secure power supply for RGB LEDs
- Varnish stage
- Fit 'parquet flooring' (holographic card)
- Secure 'Hi Vit' in glitter card to back of stage
- Model the characters further
- Produce song
- Finalise a storyboard
- Paint drums and secure logo
- Make a keyboard
- Make a microphone
- Attach curtains
- Fit back curtains
- Animate!

OUAN503 - Responsive - Collaborative Practice: Submission

OUAN503 - Submission:

Here is some evidence that we have submitted our work to D&AD. I managed not to delete the evidence this time around like I did with YCN. Also, here are the final pitch boards that Anna kindly neatened up for submission. 

OUAN503 - Responsive - Collaborative Practice: Working on the Final Piece

OUAN50 - The Final Piece:

Whilst Anna was t start work on the flipbook aspect of our designs, I was to start finalising a character design, colouring it in, shading, finishing, then adding some subtle animation. I believe I can get all of this done by Saturday at the least, though it might run over into Sunday as my animation skill set isn't brilliantly developed yet.

The subtle animation I wish to add would be simple things like the eyes blinking, mouth moving slightly, hair flickering, shirt creases rustling, and lastly feet shuffling a little bit to act in a way that seems like both of us: a little bit nervous, quite quiet, and fairly timid.

We were to take our inspiration from such artists as Rebecca Mock and 'ofsparrow' on Pinterest.

an example of ofsparrows's work. They include subtle animation in their pieces also.

Here is the finalised sketch of our collaborative piece. I will go on to animate and colour this in to make sure it's okay for submission.

Coloured:

OUAN503 - Responsive - Individual Practice: YCN Confirmation Email

OUAN503 - YCN Confirmation:

Regarding my submission for YCN's brief that was to be handed in last week,  I submitted roughly a few hours before the deadline which was just in the nick of time. However, sadly whilst clearing out my emails the other day I deleted my confirmation email! I am horrified and sadly I will not receive any marks now for this brief due to my carelessness. I will learn from this and will blog about my submissions AS and WHEN I receive an email.

On the brighter side, I managed to submit and was rather pleased that I could at least submit something for the module. I am not so pleased with the work I produced as I feel it was not a high enough standard for my liking and in order to improve I should have conducted some questionnaire research for my product design relating to my target audience for better feedback. I could have then used this to create better label designs as the ones I did churn out were a little bit rough and ready and weren't really that well thought out. I could have sought out advice from graphic design regarding typography and layout, and the illustration team for colour coordination advice.

All in all I have learned from my horrible mistake and there is no point dwelling on the past. I can move forwards from this and make sure it doesn't happen again.

OUAN505 - Applied Animation - Production: Bought Materials

OUAN505 - Bought Materials:

As it's my nature to love spending money on artsy things, I went on another shopping spree for curtain hooks, red velvet curtains, and an eyelet puncher and eyelets! Here are the things I have bought today and how I plan to use them:

I plan to, as it's quite obvious to see, punch holes for eyelets into my fabric after measuring and cutting the velvet (against the grain to minimise fraying). I then plan to fit the eyelets, screw in the curtain wire hooks and then set up the wire to hang the curtains off. This will give a lot more realism than simply using glue on the curtains as we want to be able to move the curtains as realistically as possible.

OUAN505 - Applied Animation - Production: The Plan

OUAN505 - The Plan:

Here is a fairly detailed plan of what stages we need to be at at certain points in our module schedule:

OUAN505 - Applied Animation - Production: MDF Staining

OUAN505 - MDF Staining:

As part of the MDF board process for our theatre, I decided to do some research into staining MDF board and how it would affect the wood and how exactly the lighting would be affected also. Our tutor told us that varnishing the wood would make the surface sticky when hot lights were shone on the surface which would be a pain to animate with. Also, large pools of light would show up as varnish is highly reflective and shiny.

Instead, I thought about staining the wood to simply change the texture and colour a little bit as I know you can get small sample pots for around two pounds at most paint shops and hardware departments. I looked up some videos on how to achieve this look of 'floorboards' that I was after to make it a more realistic stage.

The lady in this short clip demonstrates how easy it is to get a streaky effect simply by wiping with tissue to get a floorboard effect, I think by doing this, it would be more cost-effective and save on wallpaper paste and brushes and printing pictures of floorboards out to then paste onto the wood which was our first idea. However, if we were to paste images of floorboards on, from prior experience the paper would peel off under hot light and be effectively useless to us.

The lady in the film uses sponge brushes that can easily be found in kids' craft shops for about a pound for a set. I will pick some of these up with the varnish. I believe that it is less messy and means you can simply soak the sponges in hot water to use again. Varnish easily comes out if soaked whilst still tacky. Here is another research video that I watched to help with my choice:

OUAN505 - Applied Animation - Production: Band Logos Part One

OUAN505 - Band Logos Part One:

Ad part of establishing a well-known band brand, we needed to create a cheesy-looking logo that fit in with an 80s theme. I looked up some popular band logos like The Beatles and decided to create a similar one just for reference. I looked at 80s colour schemes and eventually came up with some of these small examples. I will message these to the group to see what their suggestions are in order to move forwards and get these logos sorted as soon as possible.

My personal favourite is the 'Beatles-esque' logo alongside the vinyl record logo as it looks futuristic and very pop-cultured. I like simplicity over all other aspects of logo-design so I reckon that these two might be the most successful among the group due to ease of visibility on stage and lack of complication which is an advantage when displaying these on the drum kit. I measured out the size of the drum kit for accuracy before creating the logos.

OUAN505 - Applied Animation - Research/Pre-Production: Waltz with Bashir

OUAN505 - Waltz with Bashir:

This particular animated feature-length film responds really well to the theme of documentary animation. It uses a very sensitive subject and animates and tells a story well in an appropriate manner for the viewers. By animating actual interviews with Iranian war veterans, the director is able to approach a subject from an animated viewpoint. He can recreate many effects and processes that would not be as easy or available with live action.

However, many mistake the film for being rotoscoped when it is actually in fact cleverly made using After Effects cutouts and dark hues to give a realistic aesthetic. The film was heavily praised globally but was not so successful in Iran itself which was unusual yet maybe understandable as so many might not want to revisit the memories of the war and the horrors it brought to Iranian citizens. The film is actually banned in certain countries across the globe, including Lebanon which is featured in the film.

I personally haven't watched all of this film and I do plan to. So far from what I have watched I think it looks and feels fantastic. It approaches documentary animation on a new angle and does it very well. For that time, this technique was very new and practically unseen in feature length animated films. The fact it is so realistic brings it home that the war did have a huge impact on so many lives. You feel part of the film and feel a strong connection with the characters.

OUAN505 - Applied Animation - Research/Pre-Production: Sesame Street - Healthy Habits

OUAN505 - Healthy Habits:

Upon looking for additional inspiration and research into our music video for lyrics, facts, and styles of executing our animation, we came across these little gems called Healthy Habits by Sesame Street. As a child I loved watching these and remember the music videos so, so well. I thought it seemed only appropriate to talk about how they influenced me as a child and how they've managed to give me inspiration now as an adult for potentially successful animation.

The above music video is a fantastically catchy little number by Cookie Monster regarding all the different ways eating healthily can affect your growth and life in general. It is informative yet fun and contains the 'Healthy Habits' of which is the name for the group of puppet foods that are featured singing on the screen. This is heavily influential to children as by using mascots and cute characters, children will become more attached to them rather than using humans to drearily moan on about a topic. A song is always popular as it can stick in the minds of those who enjoy it - almost everyone! 

Although this isn't technically animated, it's still a documentary in a loose sense of the word. The below video clip is more towards documentary as it features more facts and helpful tips that are likely to be seen as more realistic and truthful. 

 

'Happy Healthy Monster' is a series of short clips featuring the monsters' choices of food and how it will affect them. They are taught by the foods themselves, other humans that are usually special guests like Michelle Obama for instance, and other monsters. This is a great way of helping children understand healthy eating as it's obvious that the creators of Sesame Street really thought about engaging a young audience with all the bright colours, interesting characters and fun, engaging episodes. We want to take the bright colours, the use of well-known, named mascots, and factual, relevant informative song choices away from this show as use it to our advantage. 

OUAN505 - Applied Animation - Research/Pre-Production: The California Raisins

OUAN505 - The California Raisins:

The California Raisins are a fantastic group of singing and dancing raisins that initially inspired us to make a healthy eating band for Applied Animation. We were drawn to them for their very obvious upbeat, cheesy, and cheerful personalities and the ways in which they went about setting the mood and atmosphere to an instantly uplifting one. We really loved the technique of using stop motion animation to make the band move and bring life to them. I felt that personally, a completely 2D animated band or hand-drawn wouldn't have been as effective as seeing a miniature stage with a band made out of real materials with that signature aesthetic really plays with your mind and allows you think it's more believable.

The creator of the raisins is a man named Will Vinton. He created them with the intent to entertain and he certainly managed to achieve that as the group received one Emmy award and one nomination! The original idea of the raisins was to be used for a 1980's commercial which of course became incredibly popular, thus giving it the fame and fortune to create a whole series of songs for the band. Such songs as "I Heard it Through the Grapevine" usually are a play on words and are incredibly comical to watch. The music genre features mainly around Motown and classic rock which seems obvious really as the band have that 'funky' look to them with all the accessories such as sunglasses and guitars. Even the black and white jazz shoes give it away!

In 1988, CBS aired 'Meet the Raisins', a mockumentary which of course featured the band. Their growing popularity meant that they're probably (at a guess) one of the most well-known fruit bands out there and I'm sure there are a few thanks to all the inspiration they've given us.

There have been such brilliant ratings with the TV shows that eventually merchandise such as 3D glasses, lunchboxes, and even shirts was released. I've never known a fruity band to be that well-loved!

What we really took from these music videos though on a more serious and academic note is that we really were inspired by the way the creators could manage to make the band look a certain way to be representative of a music genre. Our aim was 80's cheesy pop, and for that to happen we needed a cheesy-looking, cheap and cheerful set with groovy-looking characters using all the correct instruments. We needed to learn about the ways bands were made up and what roles were used etc. Our group wanted to be as successful as the California Raisins for a completely different purpose: to inform and instate healthy eating in teens.

OUAN505 - Applied Animation - Production: Being Ethical, Being Good

OUAN505 - Being Ethical, Being Good:

As part of our learning curve in our second year and particularly in this module, we are learning what it means to be ethical and professional. How are we working with our peers? Are we being a suitable animator with respect for our team members and staff? Are we treating everyone fairly? Well, for me to blog about this and demonstrate how I as a member or team work with others, I can safely say that so far we've done a really good job in keeping in contact with others and staff regarding work and other matters.

To begin with, our group (Alex, David, myself) contact each other predominantly using Facebook chat. This might seem unprofessional to some but it is really the easiest way of getting hold of someone and distracting them from their daily browse through their News Feed. Who wouldn't want to talk about work whilst snooping through someone else's profile out of boredom? We felt Facebook was clean, simple, and easy to use. It was always at hand on our phones and wherever else we may need to contact someone.

In terms of emails, our student emails were used to send emails to members of staff regarding questions, advice, guidelines and general help with our work. We didn't actually email Roger Berry regarding the set making as we intended only to pop down for an initial chat to see when he was free but being a helpful member of staff, he kindly offered to make it there and then for a small fee of MDF board.

When it comes to sharing work, Google Docs/Drive/Slides was perfect for what we needed. If a set of work boards or ideas needed to be discussed in person but not everyone was available, sharing it to those members on Google Drive meant that they could view any images or pieces of work and we could then discuss without losing out on time. This was particularly helpful when coming up with a band name as there was some squabbling (light discussion maybe?) when it came to that.

All in all, we've treat everyone fairly as best we can. There have been some team issues not with myself regarding politeness to others, but hopefully this will resolve as we're all old enough to deal with this and sort it out. I as a member of our group wish for peace and understanding, and mainly just to make a fantastic piece of animation!

OUAN505 - Applied Animation - Production: Whacking out a Logo

OUAN505 - Whacking out a Logo:

For the drum kit we were thinking about creating a logo that would stand out so that the audience could easily tell what the name of our band was. After much discussion and quarrelling, we ended up going with Hi-Vit, a catchy, nifty name for our band. It featured a vitamin-related word which was a good idea as words solely revolving around fruit OR vegetables wouldn't be so appropriate.

The size of our drum kit had to be measured so that the logo could be accurately designed. We wanted to base our drum kit on that of such bands as The Beatles and the way that most popular bands have their logo on the drum.

OUAN505 - Applied Animation - Production: Making the Set

OUAN505 - Making the Set:

Today after a long break from Applied Animation, we decided to get making to set and get on with creating some dummy armatures so that we knew how to go about making the real ones. We popped down to see Roger Berry, the woodwork guy, and he kindly offered to help us with our set. He created a top down view for us in a 3D woodwork software program and began to cut out our pieces and mitre them for us. We are to pop back at lunch and pay him for the MDF and pick up the set to then put together and fix in place.

We will then proceed with decorating the set and playing around with the lights in order to see if everything works on set. It is quite a large set so we decided to keep it in the stop-motion room so that it wouldn't need any transportation. Also, all the Dragonframe software is in there so it will make life a lot easier for us to have our own space there.

I will take some photos of the process of our set and pop them up here shortly.

- Afternoon -

We have very thankfully received our beautiful little (rather large in fact!) set with many, many thanks to Roger down in Woodwork. Roger kindly cut out the boards for us, mitred them and glued them in place for stability. We then paid him and proceeded back up to the room where it will spend most of its life as a mini theatre for our Hi-Vit band. Photos will be posted below:

OUAN503 - Responsive - Collaborative Practice: Merged Character Designs

OUAN501 - Merged Designs:

Albeit not finished fully, here are some merged designs for our characters. I incorporated some futuristic clothing with our own clothing. We plan to now choose from these and maybe sketch some more out for more ideas. We'll then think about colour and backgrounds whilst we draw up a finalised character for the brief. All we then need to think about is the small parts of animation and the flipbook.

OUAN503 - Responsive - Individual Practice: Animation Portfolio Workshop

OUAN503 - Animation Portfolio Workshop:


The Website:
http://www.animationportfolioworkshop.com/apw-character-design-contest/contest

The Brief:
http://www.animationportfolioworkshop.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/apw_char_des_contest_RULES_GUIDELINES_2015_11.pdf

Ideas:

Small female child, bob haircut, sharp, sleek, chubby body
Small male child, skinny legs, chubby torso, sleek haircut, chubby face

Only Canadian residents are eligible to enter, however I feel that this would be good practice for Responsive in general and would allow me to get some valuable hands on knowledge on character design and concept. I also plan to use the facial designs for our upcoming casting and moulding workshop as we will be modelling a complete face of a character we have created. Once the model is created, I can add this to the Responsive brief above that I plan to work on.

OUAN503 - Responsive - Collaborative Practice: Characters with Clothing Concept

OUAN503 - Character with Clothing Concept:


    

After abandoning the last character design idea, I moved onto looking at Anna's blog for some idea of where she was taking the brief in terms of design and style. I found that she was really god at drawing a more realistic anatomy so I looked up some reference imagery on Pinterest once again and got drawing some basic designs of which to place my own style of clothing onto.

OUAN503 - Responsive - Collaborative Practice: Concept Character Designs

OUAN503 - Concept Character Designs:

To start our responsive brief, I had a go at getting a base character designed using reference from my Pinterest boards (other artists' tutorials and work). However, after much consideration it was decided that it wasn't a very realistic character and looked rather 'manga-fied' which is a horrible habit I need to break out of. I tried creating a more voluptuous figure to suit what I thought would be a decent character, however I didn't really feel it was working and we both decided not to go with it. It was valuable practice and allowed for some colouring and shading work too. I learned a little bit about shadowing techniques and put it all down to experience and thought it would be best to move on and scrap that idea.

OUAN505 - Applied Animation - Pre-Production/Research: Proof of Concept

OUAN505 - Proof of Concept:

To test out some of the 2D animation, David also did a short proof of concept test to get a feel for the style he would be animating in and how well it would work. Although the bit Symphony is acting out is a part from a YouTuber's (JonTron) own video and seems completely irrelevant, it was just a quick test so isn't really a big deal.

I think it works rather well.

OUAN505 - Applied Animation - Pre-Production/Research: Character Sheets

OUAN505 - Character Sheets:

To get a better idea of facial expressions and to have some research and proof that he'd looked into different facial styles and so forth, David created a few character facial concept sheets for nearly every character. It wasn't exactly necessary that one was created for Larry the lemon as his huge leaves would resemble a moustache and cover his entire mouth, so no mouths were really needed. David had a good understanding of what eye movements Larry would make anyway, so to save some time he focused on the other characters.

David also sketched out some ideas of how the armatures would work inside the characters and where the joints would need to be. This will help with initial modelling and understanding of where we will need to add extra weight to support the rest of the character etc.