#there will be more to come....i have storyboarded an entire animatic in the span of only a few hours

[spaciebabie]

heres dahlia :3

she has suns for irises b/c she is unamed's sunshine and everything good in the world <3

[tracle0]

WIP Bops Tag

So I got tagged for.... two music/listening related games in the span of two days so I will. Do both in one to save myself idk making another post lmao

First one: I think you just list things you’ve been listening to. Maybe the last ten things you listened to? I don’t know man. Tagged by the wonderful @kaatiba​ thank you boo 

I have been listening to...

Cloud Cult - I stand by the fact that Cloud Cult 500% have the best bops for apparently all my wips. ‘Time Machine Invention’ is peak Leon, don’t try and tell me otherwise. ‘It’s Your Decision’ gives me big Percival vibes. ‘Good Friend’ apparently works for every single WIP I have because I write about friends too much.

Night Vale - I missed Night Vale ok. I’ve listened to it all already, but I wanted to hear the Strexcorp arc again, and the liveshow and Carlos man. Carlos. 

I’ll Follow You Into The Dark - isolated song, but I have been listening to it over and over again, because it’s somehow playing my heart strings rather than a guitar. I am obsessed with this song. I learnt it on the ukuele as soon as I could. Major Mika vibes. Made me realise ‘ohhh he’s Catholic ain’t he’ and also made me figure out his friendship with Lynne more. Thanks, song.

Vienna Teng - someone else mentioned her recently, and I went ‘oh yeah I used to listen to her I should do that again’ the only memory I have of hearing her songs is. Not good. So I’m trying to get other memories down lmao.

I need to listen to...

Jake Parker Plagorised My Book which is a very cheerful subject. Quick run-down; Jake Parker is the creator of the yearly Inktober challenge. He plagorised the book of a black artist. I figured I should understand the Drama and then decide what I’ll do in October if not Inktober. 

Okay that’s like five, good enough. Next tag game;

Rules: Share some songs that have inspired your WIP or characters, then tag some people to play! - tagged by @albatris​ thanks homie and I’ve decided I’m going to jump around between WIPs becuase I want to. 

So first off I feel like the songs that first made me go ‘oh I could make a story out of this’ - DIAS spawned from ‘Hopeless Opus’ by Imagine Dragons. I got the idea for like. Two characters who were seperated for some reason, both regretting something, and went ‘okay! How.’ and my brain spat out Leon and Ant.

Whereas wip4 sort of spawned from both ‘On Melancholy Hill’ by Gorillaz, obviously, and also ‘Light a Roman Candle With Me’ by fun. And I cannot tell you at all why this story spawned from these songs. I think it was mostly... for Melancholy Hill, it gave me isolation vibes, and Roman Candle was more... a desperate reach for connection. wip4 has a focus on friendship. I guess that works? 

DIAS again - ‘The Cave’ by Mumford and Sons is. Peak DIAS, not gonna lie. I have officially storyboarded out an entire animatic that is just the entire plot of DIAS to this song. Every verse sort of follows each act of DIAS and uhh

So make - your sirens song and sing - all you want I will not hear what you have to say

I can’t say why because major spoilers, but that lyric. Fits. Very well. 

I mentioned ‘Time Machine Invention’ by Cloud Cult being a major Leon song, because it is, so I’ll talk about that here; Leon gets blown up at one point, and loses his leg. This, along with the fact he thinks Ant is dead, makes him Very Depressed. Vincent comes along like ‘hey dickhead stop being depressed’ except said in a slightly nicer way, and gives him a vote of confidence he needs to get up and try and fix one of the problems he has, that being the leg. 

If we give this moment our fullest attention, we’ll just keep moving forward, with no need for going back.

Which is honestly, just really good life advice, but is also kinda Leon finally starting to let go of the guilt he has over possibly killing Ant and starting to live life without any new regrets. 

wip4 again because this is getting long but I still have things to talk about; ‘Turn The Lights Off’ by Tally Hall is big It vibes, and I cannot tell you how but it does. I’m delighted to put ‘Holding Onto You’ by Twenty One Pilots as a major Keaton song, for the simple reason that Holding Onto You has tried to be a wip song for EVERY SINGLE wip, but it finally actually fits. Heck,

I’m taking over my body, back in control, no more shotty,  I bet a lot of me was lost,  t’s uncrossed and i’s undotted

is like. The first verse, and is also major Keaton being like ‘WOW WHAT THE HELL I WASLITERALLY DEAD UM WHAT’ and also the entire struggle against It. Fun times. 

‘Hello, My Old Heart’ by The Oh Hello’s is a Big Percival Mood, and I can’t really explain why - extreme protectiveness over himself and trying to save himself??? Maybe. Uhh. I’ll give you an Abby song and then done with wip4 - ‘Icicles’ by The Scary Jokes fits her freakishly well. I just found out the artist is nonbinary, which is cool, but I’ll talk about that another day. 

I can only be forgiven if I'm givin' myself up to you  On a silver serving tray  Must I bare myself to the stabbing of your knife and gnashing teeth  While our lovely company appears so entertained?

I think Abby recognises that she is in the wrong for a lot of the story, but also thinks that admitting this to Percival would sort of... reverse their roles? That he’d want revenge and would inflict the years of pain she’d put him through onto her. He wouldn’t but she doesn’t realise that. So ‘must I bear myself to the stabbing of your knife and gnashing teeth’ is just. What she assumes she’d have to deal with. 

Okay! Final song and it’s for DIAS and also for Simon cause we’re talking about villains okay. He’s got ‘The Greatest Show’ but specifically the cover by Panic! At The Disco. Simon is, to quote the lovely Summayah, ‘a dramatic fuck’ and this song is dramatic as fuck. 

Don't fight it, it's comin' for you, runnin' at ya It's only this moment, don't care what comes after Your fever dream, can't you see it gettin' closer? Just surrender 'cause you feel the feelin' takin' over 

Which is a pretty good way to explain Silvertongue commands and his general attitude to them, don’t you think? 

I’m done now. I have more songs and entire playlists but I’m done, I’ve rambled enough, this is long. I will tag: @joyful-soul-collector @druidx73 @petrolstationflowers @scmalarky @the-starlight-chills and you sir, over there, please, tell me about songs.

[zak-animation]

Mystery Box: Final Storyboards Review Today, I took the opportunity to develop two refined storyboards for my Mystery Box sequence: working from my live-action reference and breaking this down into six key images that work to convey the overall action of the scene. Additionally to this, I wanted to take the ideas of the previous storyboarding workshop and produce a storyboard using a few different shot types to further communicate the narrative and emotional beats of the story. Ultimately, this was simply an exercise in storyboarding due to the locked, one-shot camera nature of the mystery box brief - but in this experiment, I have explored some interesting visual ideas.

Before I began work on the final storyboard, I wanted to take the time to develop upon the ideas of the storyboarding masterclass: to present our story using a range of camera angles, working beyond the limitations of the brief. Whilst beginning to sketch out ideas, I couldn’t help but see the potential in the use of multiple shots to convey this sequence.

Storyboarding Masterclass Development Whilst having all of our action take place in a single shot can be an effective technique to present our character performance, it’s not exactly an industry practice. Typically, artists tell the story over a series of different shots which work to communicate the story. As Helen established in the masterclass, having different type shots and camera angles can really influence the emotional impact of a story. Utilising different shots can ultimately allow the story to be conveyed in a way that heightens the themes and ideas of the narrative itself, from long shots to indicate a character’s isolated emotional state, to compositional techniques demonstrating the balance of power in the scene.

These concepts that I’m discussing here are initially pulled from film theory and cinematographic techniques, something ingrained in modern storytelling animation. As industry professional Helen said, ‘we don’t tend to use a locked camera, it’s quite difficult to tell an interesting story’ with such a limitation. Although we are given a locked camera for the mystery box, this is an unlikely industry practice, and this is the main reason why we have been asked to explore the possibility of multiple shot types to tell our story. Typically, the camera moves with the action of the narrative as a further way to tell the story. Taking this away from us effectively forces us to focus on communicating a single action in a visually clear way, rather than an actual story.

My initial storyboard begins with a close up on the father: we can see he’s got his hands over his face, playing ‘peek-a-boo’ with this son. He opens up his arms, ready to surprise his son and suddenly - he’s not there. The main focus of this section of the story is highlighting the character’s facial acting - and so I’ve opted for a close up here. The reveal is conveyed through a reverse shot: we see the father’s point of view, and can easily see his son isn’t there. This idea of shifting to the character’s perspective is the easiest and clearest way of demonstrating the surprise to the audience, which then cuts to a long shot of the father looking from right to left, before dropping his arms in disappointment: ‘where has my son gotten off to now?’. 

After crouching down to look under two (unseen) tables, the angle then changes to an over-the-shoulder shot - as we see the box when the father does. This was a key shot in my initial vision for the sequence, something that isn’t possible with the locked, one-shot camera description of the brief. We have to present the box already on screen, and so the reaction isn’t in-line with the main characters. Whilst this is perfectly fine, and there’s room for some exciting ideas within this restriction, it does place a separation between the viewer and audience.

Within the feature film animation industry, there is a heavy focus on character - and getting the audience to resonate with the protagonist is the main goal of the entire film. This is achieved through an interesting character and design, but also how the director chooses to tell the story - and if it can make the audience truly feel what the main character is going through. Whilst the majority of this is created through an engaging, affecting performance - it is also achieved through purposeful shot composition to tell the story through visuals.

Looking at my first storyboard here, I feel like this series of shots present a more exciting and engaging sequence. The array of shot types allow the audience a window into the father’s character in a way that a single locked camera simply cannot. Whilst I’m ultimately going to follow the final, single-shot storyboard, I’m very tempted to work on this sequence in my own time beyond the requirements of the brief: creating a sequence using these multiple shots and comparing how this conveys the story in comparison to my one-shot iteration.

Despite this, there are a few reasons to use a locked, one-shot composition: firstly, it places the focus on a convincing character performance. With film, this would mean the pressure is placed entirely on the actor to tell the story. With animation, this effectively puts the entire success of the piece on the character’s performance and challenges us to convey a character through the acting and how the character moves than a series of exciting compositions.

Lastly, using a one-shot camera removes any potential for distracting editing and cutting, allowing the actual animation to speak for itself. This is the main reason for the limitation, and it’s one that I honestly understand and resonate with. The success and focus of our sequences should be the character’s performance and how we can use acting to convey a personality and emotion, rather than distracting cutting to obnoxious camera angles.

Final Storyboard Review With this in mind, I began work on my final, refined storyboard for the Mystery Box assignment. Using my own live action footage as reference, I was able to break the sequence down into six key panels, each one working to tell the story through simple pencil illustrations. With both of these storyboards, I placed a focus on clear, legible drawing and storytelling - to put it simply, we can easily read what is happening within these sketches. This is something core to the storyboarding medium, and is a skill I hope to develop over the course of the project.

Looking at my storyboard, it was a challenge to simplify my shot into six storyboard panels, however I feel as if it successfully tells my intended story simply through visuals, conveying the motion and action of the sequence nicely. Given the ambitious nature of my sequence, I had to note down longer elements such as the ‘character steps up and walks to box’ and how the arms drop in reaction to the box, though this storyboard does cover all my narrative beats successfully.

A common storyboarding practice found in the industry, the use of arrows in my panels allows me a guide on the travelling paths of various parts of the character: the hands, head, and torso. Given the restriction of six panels, we have to break our sequence down into the bare essentials of the narrative and use storyboarding techniques such as arrows, notes and motion lines to further represent what’s happening on screen.

With this, however, comes my main gripe with the storyboard. Given my ambitious sequence, I feel as if this storyboard doesn’t reflect my idea as well as my video reference does, which allowed me to explore ideas and principles crucial to the actual animation process such as posing, staging, and timing firsthand. Whilst a viewer could understand what is happening, the six-panel nature of this assignment’s storyboard feels a little restrictive and I was not able to illustrate all of the actions in this single board. I can’t help but feel that my own drawing skills will hold future storyboards back from further representing the story, and as a result, I want to focus on developing my skills within the actual animation process instead.

Despite this, my final storyboard is a large improvement upon my initial iteration - which spanned two boards and was ultimately too cinematic and ambitious for this project. Here, I’ve been able to develop an idea that I personally find to be really interesting engaging, and allows me the opportunity to pursue an original response to this mystery box task - instead of presenting two shots with moving the camera, I’m moving the character instead.

Something that I found to be quite helpful whilst physically acting out the performance was to verbally say what my character is thinking aloud, whilst I’m moving. This idea has translated to the storyboard, acting as a way to further develop the character beyond the brief’s expectations and allow me to properly understand how this character would think and move. Ultimately, this practice would only allow me to create a more convincing and engaging performance in my animation.

Here, I’ve been able to develop two final storyboards for the mystery box project: exploring the potential of telling my story through multiple shots to further convey the emotional beats of the narrative, and producing a final, refined storyboard which I can return to when animating. Having produced a developed storyboard that I’m happy with, I will now be turning my focus towards creating an animatic. 

[darlinedishmon-blog]

Mastery Journal Process and Reflection

Mastery Journal Process and Reflection 

Reading Animated Storytelling by Liz Blazer:

Animation is a limitless medium for telling stories. Artists can create worlds, defy gravity, flip from factual to fantasy, and transport audiences to places they never imagined. The challenge is having the discipline to reel it in and be intentional about your storytelling choices.

Whether our goal is to create a short film, a compelling message to broadcast or put online, or merely to gain a better understanding of the storytelling and animation, she simplifies the entire process.

I’ve learned how to create stories using animation and motion graphics by following the 10 simple guidelines that she writes about that take its readers through the stages of concept development, pre-production, storyboarding, and design. She uses clear examples and easy-to-follow exercises to help readers with the instructions, by giving encouragement, and by providing tools, we will need to get our designs up and running.

By reading her book, I’ve learned that you need to start by writing a creative brief to explain the objective or goal of the story. I’ve learned how to get inspired, I’ve learned the structure of a story, I’ve learned the importance of storyboarding, I now understand why keeping a journal can spark ideas and inspiration, I’ve learned how to properly communicate my story’s message, and I’ve learned all the details of taking a storying and turning it into an animation.

The research I conducted:

Most of the research I did was on motion graphics which are created in After Effects. After all my research, I’ve learned the following information about motion graphics…

Motion graphics are the latest inclusion in the world of designing. One of the main intentions of using motion graphics is to offer viewers the same experience which they can get when they watch any other videos which are shot by real cameras and in real surroundings. Motion graphics can be used in all sectors and be used for serious causes or much lighter situations.

By creating a motion graphics video in After Effects to engage an audience and convey a message has endless opportunities and possibilities. Motion graphic videos can vividly and effectively express emotions from being absolutely elated to being drastically melancholy.

By using photos, created artwork, background music, narration, sound effects, various motions, scaling, rotations, special effects and animation within an After Effects file, a person can create a video that can turn out to be a memorable video that many viewers will never forget.

Videos created using After Effects can be used for commercials to promote products or be used to show upcoming TV shows and episodes, it can be used to promote brands and/or particular products, it can be used to create instructional videos or tutorials and it can be used to promote just about anything on social media websites. Basically, if a person can imagine it, it can be created in After Effects.

The more creative and more innovative a person’s mind can be, a person or group of people can create the most incredible and mesmerizing videos that will be around for years to come because most viewers will profoundly remember them with much detail.

Motion graphics works much better in attracting the attention of viewers than static pictures or graphics. This is especially effective for the kids now. This is probably the sole reason why children are addicted to cartoon channels rather than reading comics in books. Sometimes it works very effectively for children or adults who have very short attention spans. Motion graphics can teach something through the animated videos which draw in and keep their attention, and they learn things very quickly and can remember them for an extended period.

The production cost of animated videos compared to the cost of shooting real videos are quite lower. Animated videos can be shot with few animated characters with the same background and with the help of After Effects and other software, but shoot real videos requires many actors, supporting cast and crews, lots of equipment and technicians which increase the cost of the production immensely.

The use of motion graphics in animation can quickly help to simplify a message. Creating a video in serval parts actually helps to present the information in a way that is more attractive and easier to comprehend and remember.

Motion graphics can create different characters which can be incorporated into animation videos or movies depending on the type and the age group of the audience they are catering to.

Sometimes motion graphics used to promote a brand or product become so memorable, they take the brand or product to a different level.

Many motion graphic animation studios have been developed in various part of the world which are dedicated to making only creating animated movies and videos. Using motion graphics today has many advantages and has become a significant trend for the future.

Videos can be edited according to the age groups of the audience you wish to cater to. These are a lot of options available on the type and the length of these videos. These can be a short thirty second to a fifteen minutes video.

Motion graphics convey importance on every detail. They capture the details of all the characters in the script and also the surroundings of each character. Also, the production quality is much sharper and clearer than the traditional way of creating videos.

The use of a motion graphics video as a marketer is essential because they can create a video to what the target audience prefers. If done right, these videos can be an instant success and gain a lot of popularity among the audience. Sometimes, even the characters from your promotional videos can become so popular that people start associating the brand with them.

Overall, creating motion graphics using After Effects and additional software to enhance a video can easily become one of the most vital video mediums of the future.

Rationale

Connecting/Synthesizing/Transforming:

By learning the correct way to tell a story and creating a motion graphic video about that story, I’ve learned how to connect the story and message with an audience and how to transform it into a memorable video for viewers to experience.

Problem Solving:

By understanding my limitations in trying to convey a unique, unusual and particular message or goal, I worked around it by using narration and text to convey the intended message. By doing this, the audience was fully able to understand the message that I was trying to convey.

Innovative thinking:

As I noted above, I had a unique, unusual and particular message that I was trying to convey to viewers. By using narration, text, and images that supported the message, I believe this was an innovative way of thinking that reinforced the message, a method of grabbing and keeping the viewer’s attention and possibly enticing the viewers to consider the intended message.

Acquiring Competencies:

I’ve worked with After Effect in the past, but the last time I used it was almost 3 years ago. After reviewing several tutorials and getting back into it, I started to remember all that it can do. Re-learning After Effects will probably be one of the most essential software for me to be efficient in as a designer in the future. I’m grateful that I had the opportunity to work in it again. Knowing how to create videos in After Effects will be helpful and extremely benefice for me in the future.

Reflection on My Experiences:

I have to be honest and say that I had a difficult time during this class. I’m not afraid or embarrassed to tell others that I suffer from chronic depression and severe anxiety. When I start a course, the first week is the hardest for me, but I realized that the workload in the Master’s Program is much more intense than it was while I was obtaining my Bachelor’s Degree from Full Sail.

That being said, when I get stressed over an assignment, there are many times that I go into a major panic attack, and when that happens, I’m completely useless for several hours. To sum it up, when I have a panic attack, which is often, I lose a lot of valuable time that I could be using doing assignments, but my attacks are so extreme, I just turn into a basket case. I take medication for it, but it doesn’t help as well as it should. I will be meeting with my doctor soon to discuss my options.

On a positive note, in this course, we were required to write weekly journals. I was never the type of person to keep a journal or diary, but since it was required in this course, I can honestly say that it did spark ideas in my head and on occasion, it did give me inspiration for assignments. I also found it to be very therapeutic for my mental ailments.

I plan to continue writing weekly journals more so for the therapeutic reasons, but if writing them gives me ideas for assignments, that will be an added bonus which will benefit me in future classes as well as in the future as a Graphic Designer.

Overall, though I had a difficult time, my classmates were all awesome, and I’m glad I got the opportunity to work with them and share my work and my experiences with them.

Also, In the future, I plan to learn how to create Kinetic Typography, Cinemagraphs, Animatics, Motion Posters, and especially Parallax Imagery!

I want to become efficient in creating all of these types of videos. Knowing how to create these types of videos will be positively beneficial for me in the design industry.

                                                       References:

Blazer, L. (2015). Animated Storytelling: Simple Steps For Creating Animation

     and Motion Graphics. Creative Edge Classic. Retrieved from

     https://ce.safaribooksonline.com/book/animation-and-3d/9780134133812

This was the static board I created in my previous class.

This is my 1st Reykjavik Eco-Friendly Video.

This was the 2nd video I created for Reykjavik.

This was my 3rd and final, shortened video for Reykjavik.