DGA260 Pre production

James henry ideas

We got a brief to do some designs for james henry. He pitched to us some of his ideas and we then had to go away and come up with some designs. 


I wanted to work on the idea "Rune Paw" which had a lot of animal characters in it. I began making some sketches and tried out a few different styles.

I started thinking about redwall as the idea made me think of it and that kind of style. I then went on to do quite a few drawings for characters and ideas.

I also tried out a few background ideas using a very simple style. 

 Once we had some feedback James suggested going with a very simple style might be the best way to go. Although he liked the disneyish styles he thought for the audience he was pitching for the simpler style would fit better. He suggested a style like Pepper pig but not as simple.

I then did these characters. A few simple ideas and different animals. I also looked the the silloutte version to see if the characters looked different from eachother. I believe most do but prehaps some of the mice need a different body shape to stand out more.

Pre Production Bible

We had to come up with a new idea or expand on our old ideas. We will be pitching ideas next year for 3-5min short films. It would be good to use this oppotunity to develop an idea for that.

I decided to try and come up with a short film idea.


I had an old idea about a magical lake that can detect what others true intentions are. If their heart is good they get magical healing power from the lake and if they have evil in their heart they get the power to destroy. I had characters and plot for this. The characters where going to go on a journey to find this lake. This idea was quite a long one and possibly one for a series or long movie. I then tried to adapt some elements from this idea to a new short film.

I had this character named Azil living in a world of darkness. He wishes for life to come back to his land and to bring the light back into it. I would then have a light character and a dark character.
It was going to be a very visual idea. The light and dark would fight and as they would everything the dark touches dies and everything the light touches comes to life. The plants and trees would be affected by their touch as they battled.

However I ended up changing my idea. I realised I had chosen to do something quite visual. I mainly enjoy script writing and character development so I thought I could do another idea for a series. The first bible I did I really enjoyed and so I thought it would be fun to do another.
I thought about all the series ideas I had delveloped before. I had done lots of fantasy idea, action, adventure and for my last project a detective one. I thought doing a Science fiction idea could be good. Its one of my fav generes and ive never tried to do one.

I did some brain storming and "animals in space" stood out.

I did a lot of moodboards for styles for characters, animals, background styles

I started on some character ideas and did some rough sketches.

I drew out some realistic versons of the animals.

I did body shape sketches

I decided to look at graphic type style. Samurai jack i found was a good example. I liked the way the character didn't have any outlines. I thought I could try this style for my characters.

I started off with the head designs and character ideas.

I got the crew lined up to show their sizes and see how they fit together as a unit.

I got feedback on the characters and it seemed that their body shapes were a bit too similar. They all posessed the "fit" body shape. I saw the problem when I made the characters silloettues. It was mainly between the panther and the wolverine. Decided to fiddle around with the characters bodies. I made the red panda rounder and the Hyena muscular to make sure there would be no confusion there. I then tried to change the wolverine but in the end I decided to change the animal to make him more distinctivly different.

I did a few colour tests for the panther. I liked the idea of her being blue and thought it would really stand out. I tried a more traditional black/grey colour and then tried a lighter colour. If I went with the light colour she would be changed into a lioness. In the end I went with a duller version on the blue so it didnt look too strange.

These are some other animal designs comparing them with the sillouettes to see what bodies stood out. I tried a komodo dragon, bat, otter and skunk. I ended up liking the otter the most. He seemed to fit in with the other four better than the others with his long body shape.

I brainstormed some ideas for ship design and thought it might be a cool idea to base the design on a fish. Maybe other ships in the series could be based off other fish shapes. I wasn't sure how extreeme I wanted this to look though. It would only be loosly based.

 

 Few design ideas

Space digital painting

More concept ideas

I did a lot of research into backgrounds style and particularly liked the style of Elle Michalka. I also looked at some concept backgrounds for samurai jack. I needed to find a style that fit with my character designs. After doing lots of research I made a few moodboards.

I then tried out some styles and made a few concept backgrounds and wow images.

First logline Idea

After the earth is mysteriously destroyed, a strong willed panther and her crew must explore galaxy in search of a new home for their kind.

Final logline

A crew of four animals, led by an aventure loving panther, must search the galaxy for a sustainable planet. They have to work together together against mind control aliens, emotion enhansing fog, space hunters or simply to aviod the captains terrible cooking.

Animation Practice 4 DGA 240

For this module we had two sections of work to do

One was the crew project where we had to work on 3rd year animations and the second was a group animation project.

RJ project

We were doing an animation for restorative justice. First we had a lesson about what restorative justice was then we had to come up with an idea. After we had a session listening to pitches of everyone's idea. After we had to start getting into groups for the chosen ideas. I particularly liked Jack's idea and Leonie's idea. In the end I decided to ask Jack if I could join his group.

His idea was about a person who had been turned into glass as a result of being a victim to a crime. At first it was just me and him working on the idea. I added some ideas to the story and then Jack began to do a storyboard. We then got a few more people to join the group. After I had scene the storyboard the group wanted someone to write a script for it. I said I would be interested in that as I quite like script writing.

We then showed it and got some good feed back. The tutors really liked what I had written which gave me a lot more confidence in my writing. We had to make a few changes to the storyboard and script for next week. We also split the tasks up. We needed to start on some designs for characters and we needed to edit the storyboard into an animatic. I worked with Rob to do the animatic. He worked on transition and I edited the shots together with timing. Jack also recorded a rough voice over and we added that in.  

Each week we then began to keep on making suggested changes to the animatic and the others began on animation tests. I feel like everyone always knew what they were doing for each week and it was handled very well. We always had a meeting after we had shown our work to the group which made sure we all knew what we had to do by the next week. I then had the job of adding rough sound effects to the animatic.

Our client wanted some loglines so I wrote a few:

This animated short wishes to show how restorative justice can help both the victim and the offender who have been affected by crime.

A person has been turned into glass after being the victim of a crime. They are now living in fear of everything around them they turn to restorative justice for help.

An animation in which a victim of a crime starts to feel like they are made of glass and anything could break them. They seek out restorative justice for help.

In this animated short we follow the story of a victim of a crime who feels like they are made of glass. They seek out restorative justice to help themselves recover.

This animated short tells the story of a victim who, after an incident, starts to feel like they are made of glass. They seek help and restorative justice is there to guide them.

A victim of a crime feels like they have been turned into glass. Now they are living in fear and they must turn to restorative justice for help.

A victim of a crime starts to feel alone and vulnerable and everything appears to pose a threat to them. They feel like they have been turned into glass and that they have become breakable.

In this animated short we follow a victim of a crime who starts to feel alone and vulnerable and everything appears to pose a threat to them. They feel like they have been turned into glass.

After being involved in a crime the victim starts to feel alone and vulnerable. They start to feel like they are made of glass and everything around them could break them.

Over easter we then got all the layouts complete and I wrote up the script in the right format with stage directions ect. The others began some animation tests. I also updated the storyboard with the new lines. I felt like we could have got more done over Easter break if we had access to some of the software we needed to use for the animation.

Jacks storyboard with my writing:

I felt like we were all given roles in the project and well all did our fair share. Jack worked on all the backgrounds and made assets for a lot of character we animated he was also director of the project. James and Dan were doing the main animation. James worked in TV paint animating the offender frame by frame and Dan worked on animating the Glass man in toonboom with assets. Rob was then in-charge of problem solving. He had to figure out how to get the Tv paint animation and the toonboom animation together. He also was the producer and he organised a google drive and schedule for us. I felt like I had lots of jobs all over the place. I was incharge of editing the animatics and the final animation. I also did some character animation for a lot of the background characters. I also wrote the script and did any other writing we needed. I was in charge of gathering/ making sound effects for the project. Rob booked the recording studio twice. First time we went and recorded the glass mans lines. The second we recorded any sound effects we needed. I would then go away and edit everything we recorded. I also coloured some backgrounds and helped rob with rendering out all the animation.

I worked on 3 shots from scene 1 with these characters in it.

I then did all the animation for both the RJ workers (purple and green character). 

I was doing very simple animation using assets in Toonboom. It had to be simple so as not to draw away from the main characters. I had to wait for the characters leading the scene to be animated first then I added my part.

I coloured all of the backgrounds in the scene where they are in the room. Jack did the line are and then added an overlay of texture.

Crew Project

For this project we had to continue working on 3rd year films. I was still apart of the Revenant group doing art work.

I wanted to be working on some animation but I found out the group wer'nt planning to make a trailer anymore. I was hoping to learn some Maya and do some animation in it. I thought I should go to another project and ask do some animation on that. Firstly I did a concept background art for Revenant group before I had to leave theres.

Lake scene

 

After Revenant the two projects I was most interested in working on were "headless" and "Claws for concern". I wanted to work on headless because I saw it as an oppotunity to learn more about animating maya. I am mainly interested in story and script writing in animation and my other interest is doing animation. I wanted to learn more about animating in maya as 3d is so big now. Claws for concern was a 2d project about a bear. My other passion is animals and most of my ideas and animations involve animals. I like animating animals and find them very interesting for trying to get the movements right. 

I went and asked Headless if I could do some animation on their project. I took a while to get a shot. The first shot I was given was removed from the storyboard shortly after. I then waited to get another shot. I got a shot of the head bouncing. I was starting from scratch and I began animating the key poses. I hadn't used Maya much before and it took a while to figure out some stuff in the program. I got to ask for help from the 3rd years a lot and they were very helpful. I showed them the first keys and they said they liked it but could I make it slower. I did this but then ended up re-doing the keys animation to get the timing better.

The head rig at this point didn't have squash and stretch in the controls. They said that would be the next step for the animation and if I didn't mind waiting until the model had it.

I waited for the squash and stretch to be added and after a while they gave me another shot to work on while I was waiting. At this time I also got a scene from "claws for concern" to inbetween.

They gave me a scene where the bear picks up a bucket and walks off. The key poses I was given had the bear bending down very slowly and the racing off with the bucket. I began to inbetween but when I got to him picking up the bucket I found it a bit tricky as seem to bend down for a long time. I decided to animate his paw picking up the bucket first. I had to re-do it a second time because I haded quite got the timing right the first time. They were using TV paint for this project and I hadn't had much expirence in this program except for a brief tutorial. I found the program a little frustrating at times and it took me a while to firgure out where the eraser tool was. 
 

 The animation for him walking off quickly had very little frames inbetween the keys. He makes a sudden turn and walks off. I had to think very carefully about what drawings inbetween would convay the movement best.  I felt like it ended up looking good at the end. I also think I learnt more about TV paint and I am considering pitching to do my 3rd movie in the program.

Then for the headless shot I did I had to animate the body getting up and walking out the room. I took a video of walking and watched some people walking. I focused on getting the timing right for the walk and then I added in the character getting up at the start. I first animated the body and feet. Then once the timing was all correct I moved on to the arms and body swaying animation. Once everything was approved I began to inbetween. I got up to a certain point and then noticed an error in the walk. I tried to fix it but in the end had to go back and inbtween again. Luckly I had many backed up files. I started again and the bug wasnt there so I began to inbtween. I got lots done but in the end didn't have time to finish the shot. I definatly leanr a lot more about animating in Maya. If my idea isn't picked next year I will want to have some more practice in Maya.