Documentery weeks 8 and 9

Animation
This week after finishing all of my backgrounds I worked on my portion of the animation. Due to time constraints and the fact that i'd done the backgrounds which took quite a while, I was given fewer scenes than Ava and Tessa.

I used After Effects to animate. I animated by using key frames. We did discuss using Duik to rig the characters, however we where able to get away with just key framing. I still want to learn Duik at a later date. I started and finished the last 2 backgrounds they where the newspapers that feature Mary Annings.

Final Crit
In the final crit Mat and Dotty mentioned that the proportions where off, something I knew already. They also recommended that we put writing over the scenes with the dinosaurs in. We also acknowledged that most of the scenes where incomplete and that there might be a problem with how they are framed also Overall the crit was super helpful, afterwards we had a meeting to discuss the changes that needed making.

Documentery Weeks 6 and 7

Finishing drawing
Over the Easter break I worked on getting all of the background sketches finished. In addition to this I also worked on finishing the colouring. I found Marys room particularly challenging as I had to take into consideration the direction that the light would be shining. As it was the most detailed background of the entire project I took longer than expected to finish. Although I am especially happy with the way this one turned out. In particular I am very pleased with how the floorboards came out.

The hunt for a voice actor to play Mary Anning continues. We have found one person, however, she has been slow to reply to us. But we are making progress. She has a wonderful Dorset accent and she has done a recording of the script for us however, it needs re recording/spreading up just a little so that it matches with the animatic.

What went well?

• I have had a very relaxing and productive 2 weeks 
• I had good time management over the two weeks
• I have 98% of the backgrounds finished and coloured

What could be improved?

• Lighting and proportions are still an issue
• I haven't started animating yet

Documentary week 5

Easter plan
Over easter we are all going to be working on our different roles within the group. We have all agreed that we would take one week off to rest but other than than we would be working. I continued to work on the backgrounds. I focused on finishing off the sketches and starting the colouring process.

Mary search continues
After 2 weeks we still haven't found anyone acceptable to play Mary. Although we have narrowed down our search. I have asked people to send over samples of there Dorset accent. I am still waiting on a few people one I have them all I will notify the group and we will select someone.

More sketches and rough colouring 

What went well?

• I had quite a productive week
• We worked well as a team

What could be improved?

• The lighting on some of the backgrounds
• The perspective on some of the backgrounds
• The composition, there is still a lot of empty space.

Documentary - Week 4

Background sketches
This week I focused almost entirely on the sketches for the background. I decided to change the angle of one of the sketches. This took longer than expected. This is what I managed to produce.

Continuing the dialog with Richard at lyme Regis
I asked him more about backgrounds specially
What did the interior and exterior of house look like?

What would her village/town look like?

Would she have used a feather or steel nib to write her letters?

Was the term for her field palentoligst or just geologist?

his response was this



















I also purchased actual fossils to aid in development of backgrounds this will be especially helpful for the scenes where Mary has to directly interact with the fossils

Documentary - Week 3

Contacting the museum at Lyme Regis
After not hearing anything back from the national history museums. Ava suggested that I contact the museum at Lyme Regis. I was put in touch with Richard the Volunteer Curatorial & Research Assistant who was very helpful. I asked him about the letters and if the museum had any. 

Richard said
"the only true images of her are the two similar paintings in a green coat with Lyme Bay in the background. An oil is at the NHM in London on display with her first ichthyosaur and plesiosaur and a pastel is on display at the Geological Society at Burlington House in Piccadilly." In addition to this he also provided us with a folder full of Mary Annings letters and her only 2 true portraits. He also recommended reading Tracey Chevalier’s Remarkable Creatures

Script
I started writing the script this week. We had to main ideas, the first being poetry, in the vain of the tong twister inspired buy Anning. she sells sea sells by the sea sure. However, Dotty pointed out that that would be more suitable for a younger audience. which is not what we are going for. So I suggested that we write it as though it was one of her letters. The idea when down well with the group and dotty. I wrote it in what I imagined people to sound like in 1800's British. 

Mandy ad
I also created an ad on Mandy.com to find a voice actor to be the voice of our Mary Annings. We initially thought that we would need a posh english, received pronunciation accent.  However, after discussing it with Dotty we decided a Dorset accent would be more appropriate. 

Documentary - Week 2

Parkinson building
I showed Ava and Tessa the Parkinson building as they didn't know it was actually a big library. My brother works as librarian there so I thought it would be a he'd good resource. Unfortunately, on the day we went we couldn't find him. I had to let Ava and Tessa wonder because I had a dyslexia support tutorial to attend. I think they got lost.

Contacting the national history museums
Our secondary research led us to the national history museum in oxford and London. to start our primary research I contacted these museums to request information on Annings. Unfortunately I didn't get a response in time for the presentations.

Presentations
Because we failed to get much primary research in time for the presentations we had to rely on secondary sauce material. However, I was able to identify i number of letters that Annings wrote to other palaeontologists at the time. This became one of our main focuses within the presentation. In addition to this I was also tasked with creating mock up sketches and colour pallets of potential  backgrounds. Ave wanted a "crunchy" or grainy look with a mostly sepia colour pallet.

Documentary - Week 1

Picking groups
I decided to group up with Ava and Tessa as they needed a background artist. Which is something I was happy to do.  We chose the topic of Mary Annings a palaeontologist from the 1800's. I felt passionate about her story from the beginning as she was never credited for her work because she was a female.

Assigning roles
As I mentioned, I agreed to be the background artist and I also wanted to write the script. Due to my past experiences organising music, I was also put in charge of the voice actor. Tessa would do the character design and Ava as director would do the storybords and animatic. We would all animate.

Initial Research
We flocked to the familial comfort of the internet for our initial research. We found some of the information we needed to start the primary research such as museums and locations.

Weeks 8 and 9 finishing up

Editing
Petra asked me to finish editing the animation because she was going away to Nottingham for a few days. i took this time to re familiarise myself with premier pro. I also corrected the levels of the audio and finished putting in the last few pieces of animation.

Submission to the YCM Competition.
Because Petra was away, i was left to submit to the YCN competition. For the submission to the I created art boards documenting all of the development work. I was careful to adhere to both KFC's guidelines and YCN's as-well.

Week 6 and 7 Finger Licking Good

Finished backgrounds coloring
This week I finished colouring the backgrounds. Whilst they turned out well they could be better. I could have taken lighting more into consideration and put more detail into some of them.

Animation - walk cycle
Following on from learning how to create a walk cycle last year. I used a youtube tutorial to refresh myself. I was able to get a rough idea of how to create one from here but in order to understand the walk cycle better, much like last year I made a 3D model out of plasticine. I acknowledge that this wasn't completely necessary but it was helpful in getting the animation right. I still struggled with proportions and creating an armature.

Because I still struggled with proportions the walk cycle it ended up creating ended up getting scrapped in favour of a much simpler animation. I regret spending so long on the backgrounds as I would have had more time to get the walk cycle right and have it be included in the finished animation. Instead I had to create a more simpler animation.

Week 5 Feeling Plucky

background progress

Norris

what started off as a need for something to fill space in one of the scenes. Ended up being one of the funnier aspects of the background process. We bounced ideas off each other until we came up with the idea of a handsome rooster statue in the style of the ancient Greeks/Romans. It fitted well with out theme of  peace and tranquillity.

I did him in 3 different styles. The left has fuzzy edges, the middle has a bold outline and the right has smooth edges. We decided to go with the left one as ot matches the style we're going with the most.

The last Supper

I was thinking of things to fill the wall space in the last background and thought about  having the last supper, since it is the scene where Audrey gets a "hot oil Jacuzzi" As it was a piece of art I used a black outline to frame the characters.

I was concerned about people finding it offensive I asked multiple people what they thought. With there help i came to the conclusion that it fitted the advert and ultimately people where ,ore likely to take offence the the whole advert rather than one individual thing.

What Went Well?

• The chicken statue turned out quite well, I think it shows a good level of creative problem solving
• Likewise so did the last KFC supper. When i asked people for feedback they all though it was funny and well placed considering the toe of the advert. 

What could be improved?

• Due to my experimental colouring progress I have fallen a little behind with backgrounds. They'll still all be done before the competition deadline but i'll have less time to animate. 

Week 4 - Finger Licking Good

Carried on with backgrounds. i created some new sketches for the revised ideas. I will now
grey scale them.

The anamatic is now done and I've sent it off to Simon. who has given us a rough draft of the music. i asked him to try it without the piano as i felt it sounded to much like a narrative story piece. I think without the piano there are less musical resolves, giving it a more float background effect. Which is what we where going for.

We also had group feedback for this week as well. Nothing really constructive came from this, just to carry on.

Week 3 - Hatching A Plan!

Dotty suggested we needed more subliminal messaging in the backgrounds. She said to use images of corn and have corn potted plants dotted around the spa. She also said to research more spa treatments. She says we should go for more of a spa retreat rather than a commercial spa that you'd find on the high street.

I'm finished with the initial backgrounds (sketching and grey scaling but not colouring) I've finished some animation for the anamatic.

I'm almost finished with the anamatic. when i am I can send it off to the music student Simon. He's going to be composing our music for this project.

Week 2 - 99 Problems and a Pitch is One

over the past 2 employability weeks, I have quietly been chipping away at the design and the aesthetic of the backgrounds. We decided to go with a lineless look to contrast with the lined characters. Because of the lineless look, the shapes and colours have to be distinct because there is no line to clearly define them. it's because of this that I decided to greyscale them first before adding colour. This lets me establish values. I tried to incorporate shape language as well. In the begging when Audry is waling into the KFC, the lines are straight and clinical, unnatural feeling. When she gets inside the spa everything is curved and wavey giving more of a natural feel.

Putting together the pitch. We all just talked about our individual contributions. There wasn't much initial feedback from Dotty or the rest of my classmates. other than we needed to speak up.

Everyone seemed to like our idea and everyone thought it was funny, which was our intention.

Week 1 - Lets Get Cracking

When Dotty was going through the briefs with us in the presentations. The KFC instantly stuck out to me as something I'd be interested in doing as it had a lot of potential for exploring a more comedic side of animation. However, I still wanted to give the other briefs a fair chance so after we formed our groups we went through each brief from both D&AD and YCN and generated ideas and concepts for all of them. However, we all felt the KFC had the strongest potential.

We divided up the roles in the group. As I had enjoyed developing the backgrounds in the last group project and I had success organizing and collaborating with music students from the music college, I was put in background and music. In addition to that, I also agreed to do the animatic as that was something that I didn't do in the last group project. As Petra hadn't had a chance to direct in the last group project it was decided that to make things fair she would direct, white the script and create a storyboard while Cameron would do the character design and turn arounds for the 3 characters.  We are all going to animate

Task 2

In this task we had a choice of 9 audio clips to lip sync, using Preston Blaire's guide to assist us. I did not however, find the guide useful, it was too humanoid for my anthropomorphic cat. I chose The Matrix clip as I could imagine a cat in place of Agent Smith. The actual character design was loosely based off an exercise we did last year. The characters design is a good for the role as it looked to be a 'thuggish' character.

When I tried to move the chin to lip synch, I found it difficult to get the mouth shapes I wanted, in order to portray the dialogue accurately.So, I looked at many anthropomorphic cats. i settled on a version of the Cheshire cat which I felt was perfect - as The Matrix is based on Alison Wonderland.

I had to choose whether to use the original version, or the Tim Burton version and I decided on using a combination of both. I took inspiration from the Tim Burton creepy teeth and the animation style of the original.Then I put Morpheus's glasses on the cat.

I struggled with the actual lip sync as I couldn't really process Dottys tutorial at the time. So i struggled with the time remapping in after effects. After someone was able to sit down with ,me and explain it at a slower pace, i found it easy and convenient. I also used a dope sheet for the first time properly. It really helped putting in all the expressions.
 
 What went well

• I felt like I really succeeded in creative problem solving.  I had a problem and solved it in a way which makes sense and I'm really happy with my idea.
• The cat looks really creepy and off putting. Staying true to both the original character and Tim Burtons version.
• I was happy with my character design, as it is easily recognizable as a cat.

What could be improved

the lip synch worked to a certain degree, however, I don't think this is one of my strengths.

my timing could be improved

my in-between frames could have been smoother

Study Task 3 - Pt 2

Secondary sauce image (1)

This essay will be focusing on the production and process used to create the puppets in our animation. I started off by looking at Cantonese (Hong Kong and Macau, China) and Pekingese (Peking,China) puppets. "The Cantonese puppets were bigger and less delicate than the Pekingese." (3) The puppetry rods were attached perpendicular to the puppets in order to avoid creating a shadow. "The rods of the Pekingese puppets were able to be seen because they were attached to the puppet neck before they were bent out of the way." (2) This avoided any interference with the shadow figure. The story goes that the puppets would come alive at night, so their heads were severed from their bodies and placed in separate boxes, but this is merely superstition.

Secondary sauce image (2)

We started looking at cutout animation with the intention to create something in a similar vain to the Cantonese and Pekingese puppets. 'Cutout animation is a form of stop-motion animation using flat characters, props and backgrounds cut from materials, such as, paper, card, stiff fabric or even photographs.' (1) I was inspired by Lotte Reiniger and her process and methods of producing puppets.She " was a German film director and the foremost pioneer of silhouette animation. She is also noted for having devised a predecessor to the first multiplane camera; she made more than 40 films, all using her invention.^"(4)
 

Primary sauce image of our dragon puppet

As part of our decision to go with tradigital animation, we wanted to create a digital version of these puppets. We decided to use after effects as you are able to rig characters easily and we are all most comfortable and well versed in this software. to create a more detailed puppet I made dragon scales from tiny pieces of paper on top of each other to add extra texture (fig 2) I also scanned in fur to use for the tail and her head. (fig 3)  although these ended up not being used.

Secondary sauce text links

1.https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cutout_animation

2.http://www.afyp.org/blog/2017/1/27/afyp-in-the-know-theater-history-chinese-japanese-theater
3.http://www.ibiblio.org/chineseculture/contents/entr/p-entr-c04s01.html
4.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotte_Reiniger

Secondary sauce image links

1. https://www.tour-beijing.com/xian_nightlife/the_shadow_show.php
2. https://www.kozaksclassiccinema.com/the-adventures-of-prince-achmed-1926/

Additional sauces i found interesting 
https://youtu.be/6C6m3aKjzLk
https://www.chineseshadowpuppetry.com/

Study Task 3 Pt 1

Secondary sauce (1)

Early on in the process we decided to use a watercolour as our aesthetic for our backgrounds and use handmade textures and digital paper cutout puppets. For the backgrounds, I took inspiration from Chinese watercolor and ink paintings."Chinese painting has developed continuously over a period of more than six thousand years.  Its growth has inevitably reflected the changes of time and social conditions."(3). The artists use nature as and their understanding of the laws of nature as a whole to create an aesthetic composition. 

Primary sauce, early watercolour texture painting from project

These paintings are often ‘told’ as though being viewed from a bird’s perspective or indeed a dragon’s. From studying these painting I noticed how translucent the paint was. I tried to capture this in my work by only blending the colours out with water and layering the paint thinly using multiple washes. of colour 

Primary sauce, background texture from initial watercolour texture

I decided to make them tradigital so that we'd be able to capture a more modem feel.  'Tradigital refers to the melding or combination of the traditional and computer based (digital) methods used to create something.' (1) To make my water colour backgrounds tradigital I brought them into Photoshop and edited them. 
 

Primary sauce, finished background

Secondary sauce (2)

Song of the Sea is a fantastic example of good tradigital animation.'Beginning with line drawings on paper and watercolour backgrounds, Song Of The Sea's animation is embellished further with computer graphics - an approach which, if anything, makes the movie look even more like a moving painting.' (2)

Secondary sauced links

1. https://www.techopedia.com/definition/23831/tradigital 
2. https://www.denofgeek.com/movies/song-of-the-sea/36038/song-of-the-sea-how-an-animated-treat-was-made
3. https://www.asia-art.net/chinese_brush.html

Secondary sauced imagery

1. https://www.artistsnetwork.com/art-mediums/watercolor/chinese-landscape-painting/
2. https://www.denofgeek.com/us/movies/song-of-the-sea/247440/song-of-the-sea-how-an-animated-treat-was-made