Today we were introduced to our new briefs. In this brief we are going to be doing character and story developments. The characters will be developed throughout the workshops. This can be made with any materials that we choose to work with. This project should be done within 12 weeks.
The project will be focused more on the character development and how we progress from there and on and produce a storyboard as a group. Our blog should consist of everything that we undertake and explained thoroughly. It should be able to make sense to everybody. In your blog you should also put down failure and explain why you failed not negate it.
Reference everything that you collect whether it's from internet, book, videos, museum etc. Because its internet we should put access and date it was visited on.
Alexandra showed us some works of the past students and explained us what to do and how to do it. She also showed us the videos done by students before.
Character Creation
Reflection
My character design will be simple but it will have something even more important behind the character design itself. The style of the character will be somewhat rigid and limited. It wont be able to have all the freedom it may want.
I know that I will be facing a lots problem while creating a character that will have restricted movement. But I think the during the challenge I will somehow find a way to create something to match my idea. Even if I fail I will try another way to achieve my idea.
I will be putting down the process of my character development here in my blog. All the feedback's and things we talked about in the tutorial will be written down here and I will be putting down my thoughts upon the discussions and advice's. I will make sure it will also have visual images along with the written words.
For this week we had to bring materials that would help us give an idea towards our character design. I bought hardboard, coloured papers, small rope, decorated thin white paper. Like I said before I want to restrict my character of its movement so i decided with the shape circle. I cut the hard black board then cut another coloured paper. I then placed black inside the orange circle. After that I choose to give to more movement. I choose to give it wings. My character would eat air instead of other normal things so I made a little pipe like thing on the circle. 
After the session our task were to create a 3D character from the ideas that were sparked from the workshop. I stuck with the circle shape because its simple. 
After the session our task were to create a 3D character from the ideas that were sparked from the workshop. I stuck with the circle shape because its simple.
After that I used another bigger circle shaped glass and stuck it rubber bands. I formed a plus sign because this character is was born with great math knowledge. He eventually grows up and becomes mathematician. The pipe is for him to eat air through. 
I painted it white to make it stand out from the rest of its body parts. 
Next step was the wings. I used tin foil for this because it can be used to fold and be bent. I decided to give it eyes. I used the plastic cover used for holding eggs. It had many good shapes. It managed to hold up with the help of the bands. 
As you can see i coloured the part to make it look more like an eye. 
He would roll on the ground but I needed him to stand still on the ground whenever he stopped rolling so I tried out some materials to make it stand. 
The pipe idea didnt look right, I thought something different. The idea was to use sponge like material with which he would trap in air and absorb it into its body. 
The glass part of it was exposed. This character would live in the clouds so I thought of something that would make him a residence of the sky. I used cotton which resembles fluffy and soft cloud. I covered the front and the back part. 
After getting stuck on this part for a long time on how to make him stand up I finally got an idea. I decided to give him a tail that would help him stand when stopped. When rolling his tail would be folded up allowing him to move freely not hinder him. I painted the tail white.
I stuck it in the back with glue. I also cut out the black board to make it fit in.
This is my 3D character done. Here are the pictures from all the angles.
Whenever I was with him he always liked to fly into trees and look down. Maybe hes too used to flying, he didn't want to come down. I tried to convince him to roll but he wouldn't. I think he didn't want to because it was raining little bit. 
I think rolla was really missing his home up in the sky. He would look up in the sky and start flapping his wings. I felt bad for him. 
My time with rolla was fun even though he wouldn't come on the ground. I didn't see him on the ground once. He wouldn't tell me why. Maybe because he didn't like rolling in my dirty floor. I guess he wanted something close to his home in cloud to roll on. 
He was flying into all sorts of areas mostly really high off the ground. I really tried to get him on the ground to roll but couldn't manage to get him. Most of our time was spent like this me trying to get his attention but his mind was totally on different place. 
He was sitting on top of the light bulb, I told him to get to down from there before he gets burnt but as usual didn't listen to me. I guess he was kind of enjoying getting his bottom really heated up.
He would often stare out of windows looking up at the clouds. We also had good times together like when he listened to my music and he really enjoyed it. That was the first time I saw him in a good mood and enjoying his time with me. 
From there on we started to click and get along together. He even played around with my friends. For some weird reason he liked to sit on top of my friends head. Unfortunately my friend didn't enjoy that.
He really like playing with one of my friends. Maybe he liked how he looked. He hanged out him a lot too.
Sometimes he would joke around how he would love to not fly and just roll for rest of his life. This one time he drank an alcohol and almost jumped off the window. We told he him what he did the other day and he promised that he would never drink again.
Story for a 2d cutout animation
Trisha is having a house party. She invites matilda and rolla. Trisha decides to turn her radio on and dance, everyone joins her and have fun together. Suddenly door bell rings. A bad guy appears and threatens all three of them, trisha is scared. Rolla flies over him and hands him his favourite umbrella but he throws it back at him. Matilda can't handle him and decides to eat him up. After she eats the bad guy they continue with dancing like nothing ever happened before.
Film Research
http://vimeo.com/85759165 (copy/paste this link)
In this video there are lots of small papers joining together to form a whole visualization. I like how all these small pieces are formed and making a flow. I was surprised by how good it flowed. The video also consisted of shots from many different angles. So in 2D cutout animation adding these 3d like scenes really pushes it even further technical and visual wise. The use of colour is very effective as it is the first thing that stands out in the video. The only thing that's not a paper in this video is the bag that's because it's their product and they are advertising it.
http://vimeo.com/35192621 (copy/paste this link)
This video is a 3D of a character made of wood. I like the story of this because it's really simple and is straightforward. The movement of the main character is the main focus for me, how he moves and acts. Also the design of the character is simple just like the story. The whole set supports the main character making him more relevant. The part when you get the whole view of his house and the tree outside and the leaves are falling so gently. The camera movement was also spot on as how it was moving away from the house slowly adding nice effect fitting to that moment of the video.
Animation 2d cutout
On our first day of animation we already had a story board ready but we didn't have one of member present so we had to quickly improvise. We quickly made a short clip of two characters. Basically one of the character was walking, minding it's own business then out of nowhere another character comes clashes with him. It's a really short clip which we decided to do in that day in a short amount of time. Here are some images.
You can see from the images that one of the character gets knocked out by the other one, it is straight forward.
Workshop
On our first day of tutorial we were taught how to use after effects to create animations. I don't use after effects so I knew this wouldn't be easy for me. On the day we created an animation of a character with wings flying showing the movement. Also the landscape behind would be moving, it will give it that extra effect to make the character going up. First we had to gather few images. The first image was to find of a character through web. I got an image of an illustrated monkey that I thought will match this small project. Second image was going to be of wings but just one side would be fine because later it could be duplicated and adjusted. It needed a background so I went searching for it. Right after that we got an image of sky which would be placed over the landscape after I delete it's top half.
We had to make sure that the white space around the character was deleted. This was done through photoshop by just deleting the white area. After that everything was layered in after effects and next thing was to make the wings move. This was done through the puppet tool. Three points was added onto the wing one at the middle and the other two at both ends. Then go over position and press on the key frame button which would come up with and diamond like button. You just simply move that key little bit away which would result in the wings movement. This step would later be copied and pasted few times to repeat the same movement. The final step was to apply the same process onto the background images. With this step everything would look like it was working together; especially the character benefits really well from the movement. This brings a completely different dynamic to the images.
Workshop .2
On this day we were going to use same software. We were shown few clips about how the green screen works and how you can manipulate it to your own will. We saw the full potential of what the green screen can produce.
We going to use this technique in this session. First we opened a footage of dinosaur with green screen behind it which we would later play around it. For the green screen we had to find 2 images. One is where the dinosaur was going to be roaming around and the next was just the image of a sky. I had to cut the sky section of the abandoned building image then replace it with the second image. This would be be moving sideways to give it life. We then placed the footage on top of the two images and took away the green screen.The dinosaur was suddenly placed onto the image. Then we gave it some colour effects to match it everything together; to make it look like they were both from same footage. Smoky effects video was placed onto the composition give it that chilly and deserted feeling. We also added a camera shaking effect so whenever the dinosaur stepped it caused the ground to shake. After that we did few tweaks with the hue/saturation and other effects.
Links to research and ideas
Links to research and ideas
In this video I liked the idea of how characters were missing facial features but it worked really without. That was the main reason why I was attracted to this very animation. How without any expressions it managed to keep us entertain with the comedy side.
I chose this as one of my inspiration because of the simple drawings. The outlines aren't very detailed and doesn't look any complicated. I really like the bright colours and will be using it some in our final piece.
Aesthetic wise this is a very good animation, I like how the minimum use of colours are so effective. The narrative is complicated which I think is good better than having a simple story. At the end all of a sudden bright blue is exposed and is very beautiful how it contrasted with the colours before.
This one I chose because of the simple use of black and white. I also like how everything is showing little movement. This brings all of the animation to life. Most of the things in this video is drawn simply with lines.
Cutout animation video and the film experiment
Final Video
This is an idea of our characters movement. As you can see we didn't go for cut out animation instead we went for something new. This involved an use of software adobe after effects. Each of our characters are very different movement wise so it will be our main aim to focus in those aspects more.
For our final video we wanted to try something new other then just doing the same cut out animation. We discussed what we wanted to try out for this final video. We searched through few videos and found a lots of different styles. One caught our eye, it had a really dark style with lots of drawings needed. After discussing it with Alexandra she gave us really good advices on it how it would be very hard for us to do the similar style.
We decided to approach it differently, the colours we will be using were going to be a lot brighter and fun. Everything we will be done in paper first with watercolours and then we will scan it later to be played around in after effects.
These images are the final ones that will be used towards the final video. It consists of everything that will be needed for the animation. The trees will be used in the background with the sky, bush, ground etc. The characters will be on top.
This video was the main inspiration behind our final piece. From this we chose to use the water colour but not just with few colours but various others. We felt the water colours would really compliment our characters and bring out their traits. The story is also really well narrated but with our final piece we're going to have to bring it down just around a minute.
At first our story was too long and wasn't easy to understand as there were many things happening all at once. We shortened the story and made it straight forward, after that we created all our characters and background with watercolours. And started to play around with it in after effects as puppet tool was the the important tool for us in this project. The process was the same all over again and again. When we played the small section there would be few problems with the position which we had to change it again until it looked perfect.
Feedback off the presentation
During the presentation we had many problems. Our final video didn't show the effectiveness of our cutout animation and 3D experiment. It just didn't work quiet well as we expected. The video came out glitchy in some parts and even had some sounds not being played which didn't make our video effective as it could've been. We were told to re design the bad guy because to be coming on the stage without any story was not working. We had to make its presence strong and right away others would notice it if he appeared.
Another big thing that was discussed during our presentation was about our narrative. How it wasn't as effective as before, maybe it was because of no sound and glitchy effects. If everything were working as planned the narrative would have been more easy to understand and fun. I understand where they were coming from though, how the story was kind of hard to figure out. I think it was too straightforward and didn't have any depth. In order to have a depth we should have broken down the story. The current story is a shortened version. We only took the important parts into the final section.
Our video wasn't at its full potential because of the few missing parts such as audio and glitchy section. We will be fixing all the problems.
This video was the main inspiration behind our final piece. From this we chose to use the water colour but not just with few colours but various others. We felt the water colours would really compliment our characters and bring out their traits. The story is also really well narrated but with our final piece we're going to have to bring it down just around a minute.
At first our story was too long and wasn't easy to understand as there were many things happening all at once. We shortened the story and made it straight forward, after that we created all our characters and background with watercolours. And started to play around with it in after effects as puppet tool was the the important tool for us in this project. The process was the same all over again and again. When we played the small section there would be few problems with the position which we had to change it again until it looked perfect.
Feedback off the presentation
During the presentation we had many problems. Our final video didn't show the effectiveness of our cutout animation and 3D experiment. It just didn't work quiet well as we expected. The video came out glitchy in some parts and even had some sounds not being played which didn't make our video effective as it could've been. We were told to re design the bad guy because to be coming on the stage without any story was not working. We had to make its presence strong and right away others would notice it if he appeared.
Another big thing that was discussed during our presentation was about our narrative. How it wasn't as effective as before, maybe it was because of no sound and glitchy effects. If everything were working as planned the narrative would have been more easy to understand and fun. I understand where they were coming from though, how the story was kind of hard to figure out. I think it was too straightforward and didn't have any depth. In order to have a depth we should have broken down the story. The current story is a shortened version. We only took the important parts into the final section.
Our video wasn't at its full potential because of the few missing parts such as audio and glitchy section. We will be fixing all the problems.
Evaluation
In this course we were told that we were going to produce a character first then for the final we would develop a final animation video which would be done in a group. We would first do the experiment video before moving into the final one. The first two would be a cutout animation and other one would be a our character in a real environment.
On the first week we were told to bring in some materials from which we were going to make something, this would go towards our final character idea. I tried to make it simple and bring in few materials such as coloured paper, threads, thick black paper etc. The circle was the first shape I cut out then from their I just worked around that shape. I tried many things around and thought on how the character would move, how they would eat etc. Our next objective was to take the idea of what we created in the workshop and make an actual 3D character. This for me was quite enjoyable because I enjoyed making it. The ideas were already there, I just needed the right materials. The main shape for me was circle, I just needed something that was circular. I used CD for its main body frame. Then I just used cotton for its body texture because he lives in the sky so I wanted to give him that cloudy feel. I also gave it wings for it to fly and tail to balance. For the wings I used tin foil and just folded it into triangular shape and bend it make it curvy. The tail was done with the card board and basically stuck it in the back of the character. That was all the important part for the character development I did.
Next we were put in group of three. In my group I had Russell and Jessica. All of our character had strong and different characteristics. My character is really shy and the other two are straightforward and bold which I think they contrasts really well. Our aim now was to create animation. For our animation we laid out the story first and then went to the studio. Our story was that Trisha has a house party. She invites Rolla and Matilda and then a bad guy appears who threatens the group. Then at the end Matilda just eats the bad guy and they continue to party. Another week we had to do a video of them in a real environment which we did with a concept of a friends opening track.
The final video needed to be something different. We didn't want to follow what we did before so tired out completely new look. Our aim was to make it look like a living story book, for it to have a sense of connection with the viewers; almost like a fairy tale. I feel like the story was good but the whole aesthetics came out different than we expected. Overall I am happy with the final outcome but if we had to do it again we would look more into individual style other than various ones.
The final video needed to be something different. We didn't want to follow what we did before so tired out completely new look. Our aim was to make it look like a living story book, for it to have a sense of connection with the viewers; almost like a fairy tale. I feel like the story was good but the whole aesthetics came out different than we expected. Overall I am happy with the final outcome but if we had to do it again we would look more into individual style other than various ones.
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