jordan-wright-2

[jordan-wright-2]

Reflecting on the Project

Reflecting on the Project, I can say that I have envisioned my original idea and concept well, I am happy that I was able to create the visuals that I had pictured in my head. I can admit that this project was very troubling to carry out because I knew that the idea was very ambitious for a short amount of time, however I did have full dedication and will power to create this subjective film and tell a story full of subtlety and metaphors. As well as being able to work with a song that I love.

Despite the film not being fully finished to my satisfaction, I would love to continue to work on this film, and tweak and add a lot of things to make the film even better, so I can promote this film, add this to my portfolio and possibly look towards submitting to festivals.

[jordan-wright-2]

Here are some more background illustrations that I included in my film

[jordan-wright-2]

Here are some images of the bats that I animated to include in the falling sequence, all the bats are the same animation and drawing but scaled differently and positioned differently, along with a different order of frames. These were then duplicated over and over and tweened in After effects. I feared it may have looked a bit unrealistic because I was only working with one drawing variation of a bat, but the motion blur in After Effects helped it make it look more realistic.

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For the falling Sequence I originally wanted to have a more purgatory sinister background with large vines in the background, however I feel this would take me too long to produce, so I decided to play around with some brush textures and After Effects compositing, taking advantage of the ripple distortion effect, giving the world a sense of depth without having to redraw anything. I am very satisfied with the look because I had a big problem with the backgrounds looking too boring or inanimate for a scene full of intensity.

[jordan-wright-2]

Most Challenging Inbetweens / Working on Lip Syncing

The most difficult inbetweens I had to work on were the lip synced shots, I was mainly assigned to produce the inbetweens with lip syncing involved, Jamie had some trouble producing the lip syncs because of Layout and Performance problems with Photoshop, however TVPaint made audio syncing very easy, making it more easy for me to produce the lip syncs instead.

[jordan-wright-2]

Jamie’s Consulting on My Cleanup and inbetweens.

To make sure that the cleanup and inbetweens were good enough to be sent for colouring, I consulted Jamie and made sure there were no improvements to be made to them.

[jordan-wright-2]

Voice Acting the Final Production Film

After voice acting the guide track to the animatic, I was assigned to voice the characters in the final film. I also had the ability to edit the voice and apply effects to them to make the Parasite more ominous and sinister.

For the voices, i decreased the pitch of the original track by 10 percent, reversed the track, added a small reverb, and reversed it back, this would give the voice a ghostly echo to it. Then I added a subtle echo to it, I then copied the original track and decreased the pitch by 20 percent, and decreased the volume.

Compared to the guide track, I made Paul sound more tired and out of energy, I feel he sounded too confident and energetic for someone battling with depression, the Parasite was voiced the same but applied for effects to him to sound more malicious.

What I found difficult was when the clients wanted some of the lines changing, this is because I couldn’t remember the exact numbers and the order of applied effects, I also couldn’t get the exact tone and pitch of the original recording due to either my voice sounding different or it was strained on some days. But I managed to get the audio as accurate as possible so it doesn’t sound too different to the original track.

[jordan-wright-2]

Consistency with Photoshop and TVPaint

Because Cleaning up the Keyframes and inbetweening them is a big job alone, Jamie and Amy helped on inbetweening some of the shots, however, I was concerned with the inconsistency of the brushes we were using because they worked in Adobe Photoshop and I worked in TVPaint, therefore, the brushes would be different, fortunately, Jamie was able to find a grainy pencil brush that was similar to the pencil brush in TVPaint, considering the TVPaint I was using does not have the ability to download brushes and import them in the program, in contrast to Photoshop. The most important thing to consider is how I’m using the brush and making sure it has that rough grainy texture, otherwise it would look different to the brush strokes that Jamie and Amy produced.

[jordan-wright-2]

Cleaning and Inbetweening the Keyframes

Heading into the main production stage of our film, I was assigned to clean up the sketch Keyframes that Jamie produced and draw out inbetweens for them. Some of these Keyframes were quite difficult to clean and inbetween because the style was more detailed than how I usually work, and because they were only sketches, I had to really consider how it should look and improve some of the movements, otherwise the inbetweens would look janky and some of the details would be wrong and inconsistent.

[jordan-wright-2]

Voice Acting the Animatic

Once the Animatic was finished, we needed voice actors for a guide track so the clients will have an understanding of the dialogue and the pacing of the film. Originally, Ronan and Alesha made a guide track however it was too quiet and difficult to understand, in which the clients asked us to redo the guide track so it was a lot more clear and well understood. I decided to take role of the voice actor and produce the guide track to the animatic, the clients were fairly pleased with the voices and how they sounded, in which they wanted me to voice act Paul and the Parasite for the final film.

[jordan-wright-2]

Producing the Storyboard

After the script received feedback and getting finalized, I was assigned to produce the storyboard so Jamie could produce an animatic out of it. The storyboard was quite challenging because we didn’t have any idea on what the environment would look like, so I stuck to drawing Paul and the Parasite. The storyboard was reviewed by the teachers and clients and were satisfied with the pacing, which we were happy with because we can get working on the animatic.

[jordan-wright-2]

Backgrounds for the Falling Scene

For the falling part of my film I didn’t really consider how it would look like, originally I was going to have it as a black void, however, I would like it to contrast highly with the forest area.

The first thing that came to mind was purgatory, as this sequence is to bring a chaotic and nightmarish mood to the film, I also wanted to show anger as I imagined the lion creature would be angry after Lewis fights back and yells at it.

By googling some images on what people perceive purgatory, they contain warm palettes of yellows oranges and reds, which I thought would be appropriate for the backgrounds that I want.

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With my film, I would like to expand on depth with my backgrounds my having multiple layers and keying them at different speeds depending on how close they are to the camera, this gives the illusion of 3D depth to make the film a lot more interesting and less flat.

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I slightly changed this scene due to the style change throughout making the animatic and the key animation, the more developed style did not work with the framing of this shot, so I redrew Lewis looking upwards to the tree whilst the paper flies down and hits his chest.

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Because I have major troubles with drawing lions freehand and the amount of time I have, I decided to find myself a free model of a lion and use it as reference for some of the shots, I also managed to make a basic rig for the lion so I can position him correctly,

[jordan-wright-2]

Here are the backgrounds for Shot 1, 2, 9 and 10. I was considering what type of style I wanted to go for, I originally wanted to go for a more oil paint style, but they took too long to produce, so I took advantage of the traditional Photoshop brushes and produced more simplified backgrounds, these were a lot easier and faster to make, but I’m having a bit of trouble picking the right brushes.

[jordan-wright-2]

This is the animatic to my film.