torisanimatesba3a

[torisanimatesba3a]

After making the edits suggested to me I re edited the sound, I think this has helped make things easier to read for an audience who doesn't know much about the film. I think the added length of the scene where she realises how ridiculous her frantic changing is definitely helps convey that moment better. I am considering having the pan at the end be without the dress to make sure the message is about being accepting of the way you are and not about material change, like new clothes, but for the animatic i think it works to bring the film to a close. 

[torisanimatesba3a]

After showing the final version of the animatic to my lecturer I was given some feedback. It was helpful for me to have things pointed out to me in terms of making sure the characters actions link up from shot to shot so I have added frames to help the flow of the film to show where the character is looking mand moving to. I also added some exposition at the beginning showing the character using the dating app to give some context as opening just on the phone could be a little hard to understand for some viewers, this way it makes more sense as to why the film opens on the phone and also gives a little introduction to the character. 

[torisanimatesba3a]

This is my final animatic with sound. I chose a light sounding piece of music (source: Ketsa - Longing, Free Music Archive) as I felt this fit the content of the film, I wanted to keep it fairly light hearted as this topic can be quite difficult to talk about. I played around with different sound effects mostly from FreeSound and BBC Sound Effects, I really liked how the phone vibration and notification sounds came out. I think when I make this film i will try and edit some of the sounds more to make them feel more like they exist in the same world but for now I am happy with how they sound. I have got all the key points of movement with corresponding sounds and so I think it is really clear what my final outcome will be like.

[torisanimatesba3a]

I finished colouring and timing the animatic today, I am really pleased with how it is taking shape and I think it the idea is now coming across really clearly and looks good! I am excited to begin animating this story as it really means a lot to me and I an happy I have been able to make it read much better since the last feedback session. I showed this version of the animatic to some friends blind and they could understand the story well so I am really pleased it comes across as I intended it to.

[torisanimatesba3a]

Today i finished the linework for the animatic, I am pleased with how it is looking so far and i think once I have added the colour and made sure it is timed correctly it will give a really good feel for the film I am going to create. I have taken on board the feedback from the presentation and changed some elements of the film such as having more prompts from the phone that encourage cassie to change herself and having her fall into a big pile of discarded limbs at the end to emphasize the ridiculousness that she has gotten herself into by trying to be someone she is not. I think this has helped with the clarity of the story and makes her feelings of defeat when the transformation doesn't work out much clearer. 

[torisanimatesba3a]

I started making my animatic, it is not timed properly yet but I think the posing is clear so far and i will be able to finish it with the studio time I have booked for the next two days. 

[torisanimatesba3a]

Body Dysmorphia

One of the key ideas in my film is the way that many people feel uncomfortable in their own skin. An intense fixation on parts of your body that you don’t like can be a sign of BDD, Body Dysmorphic Disorder. This is mental illness where a person spends an abnormal amount of time worrying and fixating about the way they look and feel that there is a certain part of their body that makes them ugly. It is a condition that is unfortunately very prevalent in modern society and although it is unclear where it comes from common causes include past trauma relating to body image and chemical changes in the brain. In modern society the illness can be significantly worsened by the influence of social media and the obsession that a lot of celebrities and influencers have with ‘perfect’ bodies.

With the rise of ‘diet culture’ and social media that relies on images such as Instagram and TikTok, a lot of people within a younger generation are bombarded with ideas about their body not being ‘right’ and this has created a generation of people who feel insecure and upset about they way they look when in reality they are completely fine the way they are.

This is something that I have some experience of, I have often felt a self-loathing towards my body. I don’t remember not hating my body. With this film I want to try and combat my own beliefs about my body and also to encourage others who suffer from this that it can get better and that people can begin their journey to self-acceptance and hopefully also self-love.

Sources:

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190311-how-social-media-affects-body-image

https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/body-dysmorphia/#:~:text=Body%20dysmorphic%20disorder%20(BDD)%2C,in%20teenagers%20and%20young%20adults.

[torisanimatesba3a]

[torisanimatesba3a]

I wanted to mock up some full scale backgrounds to see how this new style will look and to check whether it is working. I really like how they are looking at the moment and I think this is a good way of me being able to include all the little details that will tell the viewer about who Cassie is without being too time consuming for me to animate and colour, I wank to keep them quite flat so that the focus can stay on the character animation and show off the more subtle animation that I am aiming to achieve.

[torisanimatesba3a]

When thinking about the end of my film, it was really important to me that it reflected the way that this issue isn’t a quick fix. I dont want to give across the idea that body-image and societal expectations can be fixed really quickly when in reality they are long term issues for a lot of people myself included. Therefore the ending of my film is more nuanced, it keeps a hopeful note with Cassie being more accepting of herself but not wholly confident. She’s feeling better about how she looks but is still apprehensive about being expected. I think this better reflects the real life struggles that people face surrounding body image issues.

[torisanimatesba3a]

I created some new style frames for the second presentation using the backgrounds style from Ed, Edd and Eddy, I am really pleased with how they’ve turned out and I think this background style works well with the feel I am going for with my film. I think it gives a good insight into Cassie’s personality without drawing away from the main action of the scene which is what I was hoping for. Going forward I am going to try and mock up some other perspectives of the room with this background style.

[torisanimatesba3a]

After initially struggling with how I wanted to do my backgrounds I cam across a tweet talking about the background art for Ed, Edd and Eddy, I really like the way these backgrounds look and I think that being able to include lots of detail with the line work but having only one or two colours is a way that I could draw the bedroom decor the way i want but have it not be too time consuming when it comes to making the film. Having backgrounds like this also helps to emphasise the main characters who are outside of the bg colour scheme which I think will work particularly well with cassie as her colours are very contrasting to the purple I am going to use for the backgrounds.

[torisanimatesba3a]

In preparation for my first presentation of my film, I created these style frames and character art for some of the slides. With the style frames I have really tried to narrow down my colour palette so that I know exactly what feeling I am getting from the film and checking to see if it is right for the idea i have in my head. I think it still needs refining a little bit but overall I am happy with how they have turned out. I especially like the one in the mirror as I think it really captures the idea of struggling with how you see yourself which encapsulates the overall idea of the film.

The character art page really helped me to consolidate all my ideas for Cassie, I had a lot of loose sketches of different faces and heads so being able to pull them together and have a solid final design that I can use to start a turnaround is really helpful for moving the project forward. I am really pleased with her design and I think the colours are working well.

[torisanimatesba3a]

After getting to know my character better I felt in a much better position to settle on final designs, I took the face shape I liked best from my initial sketches and combined it with the other hairstyles and face plate design that I felt fit Cassie’s aesthetic better. I wanted to show how the face can be removed as this is something that will come into play during the film when Cassie experiments with different body parts to try to change her appearance.

I then worked on her body shape and clothing. I wanted to accentuate the circular basis of her design which is partically inspired by the ‘SHE ROBOT’ illustrations by Hajime Sorayama whic feature a very sleek “curvy” feminine robot drawn in a pinup style. I wanted her initial outfit to be comfortable and quite casual, I started with jeans/ trousers and more casual shoes. I felt that this was almost too casual as I think she would make more of an effort for a date than this. My next version was a pinafore which I really liked, however I felt that the heeled boots might be too much so I opted for something more similar to the shoes in the first design.

I really struggled with finding a good colour palette for this deign, the grey scale one was based on 2B from Nier Automata’s colour palette and this helped me to see where I wanted the colour values to be however I felt that having plain black didn’t suit cassie’s personality as she is quite bubbly so I felt she would definitely have mor colour in her wardrobe. I wanted to stick with a cyberpunk/futuristic colour scheme so I used colour palette reference from Neon Genesis Evangelion, Bladerunner and Va11-Hall-A. My final desciosn is colour palette two. I want to keep a pink theme running through the film and the peach colour for her short works well with the dark purple feeling bright and age appropriate without becoming too overwhelming. I also wanted to add a glowing element to he design and using the bright blue against the grey of her inner mechanisms will work nicely I think.

[torisanimatesba3a]

In order to get to know my character better I decided to do this character writing exercise that I found helpful last yer in the Jekyll and Hyde Unit:

Android Profile

Name: Cassie (Cassandra)

Model Number: H045-BLD

Cassie’ s physical age is around 3 years old, she is an older model of android and this causes part of her insecurities - why would someone choose her where they could have a newer model?

However her appearance and brain maturity age is more in the region of 18-22, so in social and legal aspects she is a young adult.

She has only recently moved into her own apartment, her guardians were reluctant to let her leave because they weren’t sure if she would be safe on her own, androids are not always treated with kindness even in this futuristic landscape but luckily so far she hasn’t had any nasty encounters.

1. Primary Drive: She really wants Jem (the girl who asked her out) to like her, she is quite insecure about her appearance which is what leads her to trying all the difference outfits, faces and body parts. She thinks by changing herself she will be prettier or more likeable before realising that she isn’t comfortable trying to be someone she’s not.

2. Fear (Major and Secondary) Deep Fears: That she will never be able to find love, that the humans will decide that androids are dangerous and there will be a war, that she will have to go into hiding. Tiny Fears: Children finding her scary, Running out of power in a public place, getting a virus and having to have her brain reset, clothes that were made for humans often don’t fit her as well as she wants them to.

3. Physical Desires: Mostly she wants to feel loved and understood, she finds that people often think she doesn’t have a desires for connection because she is a robot but in actuality her desire for connection with others be they human or machine is the same as humans - she longs for a special connection to have someone she can share all her worries with without having to be afraid of what they will think of her.

4. Style of Self Expression: Cassie is quite shy, she often has withdrawn body language and people sometimes thinks she comes across as rude or scary but really she is just overthinking what she is about to say or practicing the conversation in her head. If people are mean to her it really hurts her and it plays on her mind for a very long time, she will remember all the bad things and none of the good things.

5. How they express affection: Expressing affection is quite hard for her, she has had to learn a lot of human social cues later in her life than others because when she was created she appeared as an adult and so was expected by those who didn’t know her to have the same mental and social capacity, to this day she still worries about getting social cues wrong because it used to happen so often. She will often read flirting as just someone being friendly because she can’t believe that someone would actually be flirting with her.

6. What Controls them/ What are they weak for: Because she is so slow to open up to people once she has let them in she becomes fiercely protective of them, she really tries her hardest to look out for people and make sure they are doing okay. She is terrified of people who support the anti-robot agenda, she doesn’t understand how they can see her as less than they are even when all the science shows that she feels emotions in the same way that they do. She is afraid of confrontation so if someone were to try and have an argument with her she would probably just cry and run away.

7. What part of them will change: Over the course of the very short story Cassie will learn that it is okay to be herself and that this is often the best way to have genuine connection with people and get the relationships she craves. Eventually she becomes more confident in who she is and expressing herself in a more honest and genuine way rather than using all the latest mods to make her feel ‘more attractive’ or ‘more likeable’

[torisanimatesba3a]

When i was thinking about androids in animation one of my first thoughts was 2B and 9S from the game Nier:Automata, this is a game that in the past I have played a little bit of but never finished, as part of my research on androids I am going to try and play a little more of it and see if i can get a good understanding of 2B in particular. I like her outfit in particular as I think it has a good balance between memorable look and sex appeal without it being, for lack of a better way of explaining it, slutty. Some female characters in games of this genre are often reduced to bikinis so I like that she has a dress with a very distinctive sleeve shape.

[torisanimatesba3a]

As part of my research on android design I have been playing a visual novel called Va11-Halla (Made by Sukebansoft in 2017) I really like the style of android in this game as they are very clearly not Human - some shows portray androids in a completely human realistic way (Humans - Channel 4), they have white outer shell parts and then exposed machinery on their necks and hands but are also able to show a full range of human emotion, I looked at some of the sprites from the game to show this:

I particularly like the Character designs for Dorothy and Deal, I really like the idea of Deal’s eyes blinking inside of the lids rather than a full moving eyelid - I think it has real charm and this is something I would like to incorporate into my character’s design.