#I also had to storyboard out the frames and make the snail (which then had to transform into an alligator) tonight

[leapdayowo]

snail

Had fun doing a 12 frame animation with this snail tonight :3 even if my feet hurt by the end :’) I managed to get all the frames done in about four hours which I think is a record for me👀

I had to make this when I was a few frames into the project cuz it was too silly not to :3

[briannas-casebook]

Storytelling Script To Screen: EVALUATION

For my project, Storytelling: Script to Screen, I was tasked with coming up with a story for an animated short film, pitching a synopsis with concept art to my peers, writing a screenplay/script and creating a 90 second animatic of my story.

I first started by doing research into different philosophies of storytelling and the different types of story structure in order to get a good idea on how to make a well-structured story for a short film. Looking to creators like Andrew Stanton and his rules of storytelling, and Dan Harmon’s story circle – a narrative structure formula created by Harmon loosely paralleling Joseph Campell’s theory of The Hero’s Journey. I analysed several animated short films, taking note of how they fit into or, in some cases, subverted the steps of structures like Harmon’s story wheel, what that said about the types of stories being told, and how I could apply these types of rules to my own story.

With these theories in mind, I brainstormed possible ideas. After collaboratively brainstorming with my classmates and on my own - based on the prompts unrequited love, mysterious portal, obsession, and heist, I eventually came up with two ideas: a short where a bird becomes attached to a snail who she mistakes for one of her own eggs, and a plot where an activist breaks into an animal testing lab and discovers something sinister. After writing a synopsis and artwork for both, I pitched my ideas to my class and received their feedback which was more favorable for the serpent synopsis. I ultimately agreed and chose the second idea, as I felt the story had more potential for interesting visuals and would convey a message I felt more connected to.

I then made a second draft of my synopsis that refined some details and cut down the length significantly. That way it could fit into a shorter runtime for my animatic short film.

After this, I used the synopsis as the basis of a script which I wrote on the script writing website Celtex. I then edited and redrafted the original script and created a final script in which I added more location detail and refined its format.

With this script in hand, I set about drawing some concept art for the two main characters; Sam the activist, and the Uktena serpent Sam frees from the water company lab. I also drew concepts for maps of the film’s locations, such as the interior of the lab, some thumbnail sketches for storyboard shot compositions, and created a Pinterest board to gather reference material for inspiration. I also studied material such as Peter Loomis’s book ‘Figure Drawing for All Its Worth’, as reference for figure drawing and drawing multiple figures in a 3d plain with two-point perspective.

For the animatic, I used the storyboarding program Storyboarder on my laptop whilst using my iPad (connected to my laptop) as a drawing tablet using the app Astropad Studio. The storyboarding process was going well as I drew each shot. But at some point, the program crashed, and I lost a few drawings, even though I was saving frequently, and the program was supposed to save things automatically. So, to prevent these shots being lost, I started screenshotting each shot and saving them to a folder.

Once the animatic was completed, I took all the clips and screenshots and put them all together in Adobe Premiere Pro.

Some clips and frames did not fit into the 16:9 aspect ratio. So I selected the clips, set the frame to fit to scale and the image fit the screen.

I also sought out sound effects on Pixabay (royalty-free sounds/music site) and edited these into my film.

Originally, the animatic was two minutes and twenty-seven seconds in length. But the brief specified the animatic be ninety seconds to a maximum of 120 seconds. So I edited down the footage. Eventually being able to cut down to one minute and fifty-seven seconds, including the opening title and end credits.

After this, I exported the video as an MP4 and uploaded the whole thing onto my Vimeo page.

I also arranged the animatic shots on a PowerPoint in three-by-three rows, much like a professional storyboard. This way, I could put these frames in my visual portfolio.

I’m overall proud of the work I’ve done for this project. I gained a better understanding of the animatic short film production process. I gained valuable experience writing a well-structured narrative through studying theory and other short films, writing a synopsis and a properly formatted screenplay. I learned to use new software tools such as Celtex for script writing and Storyboarder to create my animatic. As well as gain more experience with editing an animatic on Adobe Premiere Pro. All these programs I will use in future creative projects. Most of all, I’m very proud of the film I created through this project, and I feel it’s one of the most high-quality short films I’ve produced so far.

[guyhobbsart]

Animation practice week 4: Graphic Novel

Now that the characters were completely designed and decided on, it was time to create a story for them to be in. The story i settled on was along the lines of:

A poor orphaned boy living with his manager at their snail taxi business is woken by said manager early on an important day. He is to take his first important client, an old but rich lady who regularly frequents the business after shopping. After initially being nervous, the boy is comforted by the news that he reminds the old lady of her own son, who is off to war. Being sheltered and uneducated, the boy does not know of war and soldiers, and as passing some soldiers the lady explains to him about the honour of serving the country. The boy drops the lady off and she mentions how well he did as a driver and she’ll put in a good word with her friends immediately. After taking a long route home he arrives at home, to a distraught manager, telling the boy he had been conscripted into the war the ladys son had been fighting in.

In this story i wanted to show the conflicting opinions between the social-economic classes on war and serving the country. For the rich it was status and pride, for the lower it was losing a loved one and a financial provider.

I made my first draft for the story this week and storyboarded it out over 4 pages which i feel happy with, i will absolutely come back to it and change it a tiny bit to better make sense.

I also did some slight colour testing on 2 of the frames to see how i would like to colour it and the pallet i wanted to use, im not too sold on it however it feels too soft and polished.

[artfish2099]

Weekly summary

Week 15

Fantastical Creature project

Monday

We had a session with Jon exploring functions of Substance Painter such as baking, baked textures, smart materials, generator, grunge. I love the magic of making things in CG but I find the process itself a little too boring and my brains are not young enough to remember all the keys and their functions. I can follow step by step instructions whilst I am in the class but struggle to repeat it when I am practicing on my own.

Tuesday

Though stop motion isn’t my choice for the Fantastical Creature project, I decided to attend Tracey’s session on After Effects where she explained how to place the puppet (in our case a snail) into the background and how to create a shadow to make the composition look more realistic.

Wednesday

I went for another session with Barry to progress with my puppet making. Barry have helped me with installing the wooden ball onto the wired armature from which the upper limbs will be coming out.

I also started to carve the head from a hard polystyrene. It proved challenging. I will need to look at home for a better tool for this job.

Media roles project

In the morning we met with our group in the student Launch in SA building to put a draft of first 3 slides together in accordance with the final decision of what each of us will be working on. We have done it in Google Slides and shared it with every group member. I am to explore the storyboarding and animatics, which I already started to collate information about but waited for this meet up to confirm with other group members that they are happy for me to dive into this role in the pre-production phase we are going to talk about at our presentation.

In the afternoon we had an interesting session where speakers were invited. One of them was NUA Animation student who talked about Gobelins Summer School in Paris, France. She went there for 2 weeks, explained us how it all worked out for her with regards to logistics of the trip and how impressed she was to work along other professional and emerging animators. It is a costly but worthy experience.

Other speakers were a small team of ex NUA students who formed a small collective business named indigo Illusions. They talked about their experience of being students and how they came up with an idea of setting up their own studio soon after the graduation.

Lip Syncing

At the second session Katherine we have progressed with drawing frames against the audio beats. It is a long winded process, as everything in animation but even more challenging as one really needs to have a ‘good ear’ for sounds. Those who play musical instruments should be good at this task.