LAUAN504 (AfterLives) - Week Six

Another productive week.
I finished my animation ahead of schedule and only have the colouring to do. I also offered to colour Prathik's scenes if he didn't have time. In addition, I wrote a comprehensive blog post/guide to help Damo animate beaks for lip syncing since he was having trouble (https://cameroncookart.blogspot.com/2019/04/how-to-make-birbs-speaketh.html)

Here is my work so far. I unfortunately cannot show you the first half of the girl gang scene as the video file size is too large to insert into the blog.

With all that said, we still haven't heard back from the voice actor we contacted last week. I should have probably contacted either him again or other potential actors during the mean time.

LAUAN504 (AfterLives) - Week Five

A lot of good progress was made this week;
We held a group meeting via Google Hangouts to discuss character design, voice actors and scene allocation (among other things).

Our character designs went through their final adjustments, refined for the sake of appeal and what's easiest to animate. We sent an email to an actor on Mandy.com who we thought would be perfect for the voice of our interviewer, we're still waiting for him to contact us back.

Animation finally began!
I took the liberty of handling "Girl 1", who is the character with the longest sequence of uncut speaking animation, not to mention the fact that she takes the form of many animals during her scene. Below is my progress so far, I am very pleased with it:

I think my teammates will agree that in future projects we need to have our animation commence much sooner as we are having to rush ourselves a little bit here. That said, I have a good feeling that we will make the deadline with a good quality film at the end.

LAUAN504 (AfterLives) - Week Four

This week I shot reference material for the Girl Gang scene (as we collectively refer to it). I did this by filming myself acting out the scenes, replicating the camera shot we needed, and showcasing the kind of gestures I would like to see animated with the dialogue.

With my other teammates working hard on finalising the character designs and animatics, I definitely felt as if I wasn't pulling my weight for the majority of the last seven days. Sure, I provided as much detailed feedback as I could when new designs and scenes came in, but in future I would like to improve upon my ability to merely ask for more work to do. Perhaps even attempting some animation tests.

LAUAN504 (AfterLives) - Week Three

This week, the audio files were trimmed further based on what parts of them we decided to focus on in our storyboards. We encountered a mishap where my voice could be heard during a moment in the girl's interview, which could have had a huge effect on the scene if it weren't for a creative work around; cutting the girl's sentence short to give the impression that she stopped herself mid-sentence in a convincing way.

We also decided on what animals the girls should start of as before they morph into different ones later. This of course required more character designs (sorry Damo) but I feel confident that animation should begin next week.

In future, I would like to improve on my efforts in the pre-production process. Although I handled the longest storyboard myself, I think the team would have benefited from me helping out with character design and/or backgrounds.

LAUAN504 (AfterLives) - Week Two

This week we conducted many interviews in and around town with a completed consent form.
We collected around 15 or so audio files with people from a variety of backgrounds - it was a very tiring experience, not gonna lie, but well worth it.

After narrowing down which interviews we wanted to use and trimming down the audio files (removing our voices asking the questions), we created transcripts of them to make storyboarding easier. I took charge of the last interview we did; a group of girls we met in a community church.
There's was interesting because we could have them morphing between different animals all the way through.

I would like to improve on my confidence when it comes to approaching people for interviews in public. I feel as if my anxious nature hindered our research somewhat.

LAUAN504 (AfterLives) - Week One

After proposing our initial idea last week, we spent the last seven days researching and planning our way of going about making this documentary - After Lives: focusing on people's interpretations of life after death.

I created a consent form (that was soon improved with tutor feedback) and gathered a few interviews over the weekend. I also created a test storyboard purely to demonstrate what we're going for.

LAUAN504 (KFC Brief) - Week Eight

I had way less time than I hoped I would to work on the KFC ad.
With many deadlines approaching and only half of one of our Applied Animation classes to animate this, I only had chance to further work on this sequence.

The ad will not be completed in time for the initial deadline.
However, there is a chance that we will be able to get it done for the competition deadline. It's hard to say. Perhaps I need to disregard animation quality in favour of time? I'm not too sure.

LAUAN504 (KFC Brief) - Week Seven

We managed to acquire some background music this week that perfectly fits the tone that we are aiming for. I also began roughing out another scene as you can see bellow. This one is quite ambitious as it involves two characters, a curtain (which is essentially nothing but follow through), lip sync and part of a walk.

To improve further, I want to try and force myself to animate more even when we don't have Applied Animation scheduled. I think I tend to neglect this project too much when it's not placed before me, or I prioritise things like COP instead. I need to give everything an equal balance.

LAUAN504 (KFC Brief) - Week Six

This week we went over our storyboard and made some adjustments to the story. I offered to take care of drawing the storyboards this time as you can see below:

With these changes, I added a simple head turn from Audrey with the employee animation I had already completed - the sequence is now ready for the background art.

With the required background I needed for this scene still in production, I opted to at least rough out the action in the meantime. This scene does have dialogue so I will come back to it once we have the line recorded.

Overall, this was quite a productive week, however I could probably have fit in even more sequences to rough out or even helped with the background art a little - in future, I will give myself more roles to help speed up production.

LAUAN504 (KFC Brief) - Week Five

This week has our first feedback session.
It was greatly appreciated, but it meant that we needed to not only re-do all the backgrounds we had so far, but a complete restructuring of the storyboard is required, which we'll tackle next week. In the meantime, I'm working on my first piece of animation, which you can see below:

LAUAN504 (KFC Brief) - Week Four

This week I completed some dynamic poses for Audrey the chicken.
These are just to provide reference when animating and are based off scenes in the storyboard/animatic.

LAUAN504 (KFC Brief) - Week Three

This week I redid one of the turnaround sheets to refine a few elements.
I also created one for the employee and the colonel himself.

LAUAN504 (KFC Brief) - Week Two

Meeting up earlier in the week, we managed to produce a finished script and settle on an art style. As Jenny worked on backgrounds and Petra handled the storyboard, I produced two turnaround sheets of our main chicken - Audrey, including one where she wears a bathrobe.

LAUAN504 (KFC Brief) - Week One

My team and I have decided to take on the YCN KFC brief.
We need to promote the fact that KFC treat their chickens properly restaurant to offer the best quality food possible for their customers. To do this, Petra and Jenny came up with the idea of having an advert set in a spa for chickens (this is how they approached me to join).

My first task was to come up with some character designs and decide what kind of aesthetic we should aim for. I figured a cutesy feel would work best considering the tone of the setting and the humour of the "story".

Character and Narrative - Week Eleven

This week I finished my final sequence.

Character and Narrative - Week Ten

This week I finished the final sequence.

Character and Narrative - Week Nine

This week I finished another scene which you can find bellow.

This was the first time I had used 3D proxies to help layout 2D movement.

We also produced a half finished version of the final film for formative feedback. We had a mostly positive reaction, although some suggestions regarding music need to be addressed.

Withe the Christmas holidays upon us, my team and I aim to continue working on the animation until we come back in January.

Character and Narrative - Week Eight

Finished another scene this week.
We also adjusted the pacing of the film some more to make it snappier.
Overall, work continues as normal, next week should be when we do sound effects.

Character and Narrative - Week Seven

Things proceeded as usual this week.
On Friday we had a brief discussion regarding art style consistency, but all it resulted in was us agreeing to stick with thinner line work between us. I spent this week working on one of the last shots of the film. It isn't finished, but here you can see my progress so far.

Character and Narrative - Week Six

Animation fully commenced this week.
We all allotted ourselves to various scenes (Jess will be focusing on the important backgrounds before she attempts any animation herself) and got on with it. To start with, I completed the shot where the sloth has a bright idea. I will be using TVPaint, going frame by frame, for this project.

Character and Narrative - Week Five

I spent this week focusing on remaking our animatic.
Reason being is because ours looked substantially poor in comparison to everyone else's; it lacked movement, detail and clarity. It also needed updating to fit in all the general changes to the film we had received as feedback. With this finished, we hope to finally move on to animation next week.

Study Task 2 - Talk This Way

Here's the lip sync I rushed spent some time on using a voice clip of Hal 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey. I traced over the Preston Blair Phoneme Library to get the mouths. I used a dope sheet to time the mouth shapes with the sounds and, as bad as it looks, I think I understand how to do it. The same cannot be said for After Effects though. We were required to use the programme, and I cannot tell you how long it took for me to get started. I find the software to be difficult and confusing and I personally do not like using it.

Study Task 3 (Aesthetics)

A lot of what makes 2D animation appealing to both audiences and artists is that there are several well established animation styles. It also allows for much more creative freedom than its contemporaries. Hand drawn characters are typically more appealing to people as a whole and tend to age better over time, unlike 3D animation. The traditional process is also just more impressive to most people. The common consensus is that 2D animation takes more time and effort, and the results are more engaging to observe from a technical view point. From a production angle, 2D is easier to storyboard along with being (generally) cheaper to produce. However, 2D has a stigma of people “kiddy” to some groups as it cannot convey realism to the extent that CG can. Also, hand drawn animation has become synonymous with Disney, which is itself a very safe, family friendly brand that everyone recognises.

Sources:
https://www.quora.com/What-benefits-do-you-derive-from-2D-animation-videos-over-3D-animation-videos
http://www.slurpystudios.com/2d-animation-vs-3d-animation/

Study Task 3 (Process)

2D animation was by far the most popular form of animation throughout the 20^th century and it’s easy to see why; whatever one can draw, it can be animated. In this sense, the possibilities when using this method are endless, limited only by the skill of the artist. When traditional animation was pioneered, it was done so by using cells and paper. It wasn’t until the dawn of the new millennia that studios traded their expensive physical equipment for digital workspaces and graphics tablets. Despite the freedom 2D allows, the process requires a steep learning curve. Not just when it comes to artistic skill, but also when learning and taking full advantage of computer software. Programmes such as Photoshop, TVPaint and ToonBoom can take a lot of time to learn, and all offer different features and have their own share of flaws. This in turn might have caused 2D to become less accessible.

Sources:
https://www.bloopanimation.com/types-of-animation/
https://learn.org/articles/What_is_2D_Animation.html

Character and Narrative - Week Four

I made the animatic and at first it was 2 minutes and 15 seconds, which clearly meant that it needed some work done. The following day I spent most of my time trimming it down and speeding up/improving the pace of the film, with help from Rory. We're now at a reasonable 1 minute 30 seconds. Our film doesn't have that much intense animation, so the length hopefully won't be an issue.

I have also began work on the swan's turnaround sheet.
Overall, progress is running smoothly and animation should commence in the near future.

Character and Narrative - Week Three

When we met up this week, we mostly agreed that the storyboard was fine, only minor alterations to specific panels had to be made, so I adjusted them accordingly. I also planned on producing an animatic over the weekend. However, I only have access to Sony Vegas, and it does not allow me to render video in h264, so I'm opting to wait until I'm next in uni to get it done. I have, however, "cut out" the panels of the storyboard, ready to be inserted into Adobe Premiere.

Shadows, reflections and compositing in Maya

Today's Maya lesson taught us how to composite a CGI animated object into live action footage by making use of convincing shadow and reflection effects. I managed to follow along quite easily this time around, and a lot of the steps made sense. Maya is still somewhat of a daunting challenge for me, but this session helped me out a lot.

Character and Narrative - Week Two

When my team and I met up again this week, we compared our storyboards and combined our ideas together. While the other two went ahead to focus on potential character designs, I made a 2nd draft of the storyboard and wrote the script.

Character and Narrative - Week One

This week was when our second year really kicked off.
After being organised into groups, we were tasked with creating a simple story idea based on what we ended up getting with story dice to turn into a short animated film (around 30 secs ~ 1 minute in length). My idea won... somehow.

I was made director of our group and decided that, after finalising the plot of the film, we get to work on creating a basic storyboard. When we next meet up, we will compare and contrast our storyboards to see which ideas we like and what we'll keep. After this is done, I will handle writing the script and a "final" storyboard will be produced which will later be turned into an animatic.

Finished Short

Here's the finished version of the Beryl the Peril short film that I submitted.
In other news: I won a DNAD award for it. Wowzers!

Walk Cycles

Walk cycles are hard.
I've re-read the section for walk cycles in the Survival Kit over and over and they still prove to be a pain. I am getting the hang of them though, and here are two examples: one in 2D and one in 3D.

Beryl: In the Flesh

Here is the puppet of Beryl I made in ceramics.
It is awful and I hate it.
She doesn't move very well and her leg is falling off.
That being said, I am glad I at last tried - experience is always cool.

A Pencil... made in Maya

Yeah this is a bit late, huh? I honestly forgot to upload this when I made it.
Here's an object I created in Maya, a pencil to be precise.
It's very basic, but for a very early practise, it's fine I suppose.
Could use some shading and colour though.

Presentation Feedback

Today I showed my animatic to some of my peers. Here was the feedback and suggestions they gave:

• I need to work on the Teacher's walk cycle some more in a W.I.P piece of animation I showed off.
• I need to prioritise getting the characters coloured in once the base animation is finished on them - the backgrounds are fine if they're left blank.
• I also need to consider remaking the title sequence and making it more exiting and relevant to the rest of the film.

Animating in Maya - Walk Cycles

Today we learned how to animate a basic walk cycle in Maya using the Moom character model.
I still find the programme to be quite daunting and complicated to use, but I think that I am slowly getting the hang of it.

The walk cycle bellow is nothing special, of course with it being a test. It needs some more "personality" (i.e. more bouncing, flipping of the foot, dynamic head movement etc). That, and one of the hands is a bit fidgety (possibly due to some slight confusion I faced when trying to rotate certain joins). Aside from that, you can easily tell that Moom is walking, so as a first try, it's fine.

Today we focused on walk cycles in traditional and 2D animation.
This was the practise Haraldur and I made in Adobe Photoshop.

Animating in Maya - Getting Started

Today I was taught the basic tools for key framing, easing and object manipulation (squash and stretch) in Maya.

I would have liked to include the short bouncing ball I made but I couldn't get it to render properly. Baby steps, I guess.

LAUAN404 - Week 7

During the final week before submission, I animated two sequences from my animatic in TVPaint.
This was my fist time using TVPaint properly, as I had only casually dabbled with it in the past. This week was a good educational experience for me, as I learned more about the programme as I animated; in future, this will be my tradigital method of choice. The intro of the short film was done in stop motion via Dragon Frame. It was a small and quick addition to the finished product but I feel that it adds a lot of character.

I added the animated segments into the animatic, and after adding a few finishing touches here and there, it was finished by the following Monday.

LAUAN404 - Week 6

I spent this week working on my storyboard and animatic.
The storyboard was fun to make and it was satisfying to put it all together in Adobe Premier with all the proper timing to see how it will play out. However, I think I have gone overtime and it needs to be edited and trimmed down, which may be a problem.

I also produced a brief powerpoint presentation based on my development process during this module.

LAUAN404 - Week 5

This week we created a character profile in our sketch books in order to properly solidify what our character's personalities were and what they're all about.

I decided to make Beryl a troublemaker that craves the attention of getting caught as whenever she tries to make the lives of those around her a misery, she only makes things better for them instead without them even realising.

We also jotted down ideas for our short film and organised them into sections which would help us with story boarding during the following week.

LAUAN404 - Week 4

This week I worked on the backgrounds for a hypothetical Beryl reboot.
I wanted to not have any black outlines for the backgrounds so as to help the characters stand out more. I also made sure to give each location a distinct colour scheme to match the tone of the environments. With the examples I gave in the sheet, the classroom is in blue and purples and the street has different variations of green.

I also drew two supporting characters: a teacher and a friend of Beryl's.
Both of these characters will play a role in the short animated sequence I will eventually produce at the end of this module.

LAUAN404 - Week 3

After finishing the turnaround, I went straight to work on creating a dynamic poses sheet.
We all received some practise in drawing dynamic poses by studying line of action and drawing a set of poses we made from a live model (thanks Ben).

A lot of this helped me with my final poses sheet and I also included some exaggerated facial expressions that were a ton of fun to draw. Additionally, we had to include a silhouette of our character to see if the design was eye catching and unique enough.

LAUAN404 - Week 2

This week I decided on a design for Beryl that I liked and developed a turnaround sheet.
Classic Beryl seemed to be wearing a school uniform from the time period so I have given her a more modern look, complete with a shortened tie to match her trouble making personality. Her shirt is dyed pink after a failed attempt to turn it red in the washer, and she has scribbled all over it with notes and plans for various pranks she wants to pull off.

LAUAN404 - Week 1

Our new assignment is to "reboot" a female character from either the Beano or Dandy comic strips for a new audience. We were allowed to be as different from the original character as we so wished as long as we kept the name.

From the list of characters provided, I decided on doing "Beryl the Peril", mainly because the others didn't grab my attention all that well. I spent the week researching and analysing old pieces of Beryl-related media and made a few initial sketches of what my redesign could look like.

Truck

LAUAN403 - Apply the 12

For the final task of this module, we were required to apply all 12 of the principles of animation into a short sequence around 10 seconds in length. I chose to do a short scene where a biker takes off a little too fast than he anticipated.

Pros
- good secondary animation with the scarf and helmet straps
- effective squash and stretch
- good feeling of weight and motion
- my first fully coloured animation with a background
- accompanying character model sheets provide a solid understanding of the character

Cons
- first two shots (close up of hand and helmet) could have been better refined
- line work could generally been better
- timing needed some work
- a bit too fast?
- animation didn't begin until the last week, could have been better with improved time management

Character Sheets and Story Board

LAUAN403 - Solid Drawing

For this task, we needed to demonstrate our understanding of solid drawing by sketching people we saw out and about on the streets or in cafes etc. I mainly sketched people in train stations since I go in and out of them a lot.

 Pros:
- sketches were quick
- I noted down the time it took me to draw each one
- didn't fuss about quality
- prioritised my understanding of form and anatomy
- filled the quota of 20 sketches

 Cons:
- not enough sketches of movement
- I clearly need a lot more practise
- could have gone to a more varied selection of locations to get more unique poses

LAUAN403 - Secondary Motion

For this task we needed to demonstrate our understanding of secondary motion and where/how to apply it by drawing over live action footage.

I think I did this rather well. The movement of the hair as I jump upwards is believable although I'm not too sure about how I did the movement of the hair as I go back down. Next time I will hopefully have better a understanding of Photoshop and I will be able to plan over the frames of the footage instead of going straight-ahead.

LAUAN403 - Follow Through and Overlapping Action

For this task, we needed to demonstrate our understanding of follow through and overlapping action as well as our knowledge of weight, gravity and the physics of certain objects and how they react to one-another.

I think that I executed this task very well. The boxes have a real feeling of weight and their movements are believable. However, the main issue with my work is that it ends too abruptly. The reason for this is because I ran out of paper (and time), so the video suffers from the action happening way too fast to properly analyse it and we don't even get to see the end of what is happening.

Next time I will animate this with cut-outs rather than doing it traditionally as it would be much easier and I wouldn't run the risk of running out of frames to work with.

LAUAN403 - Staging

This task asked us to demonstrate our understanding of staging by having us complete a six panel storyboard sequence based on a short nursery rhyme.

I am satisfied with how this turned out as I showcased an understanding of how to communicate camera movement along with character movement and action. The art also manages to strike a fair balance of being clear enough to read and being not overly detailed. I had to criticise this piece, it would be for it's simplicity; mainly in the way that half of the panels use the exact same shot. Different actions take place, sure, but I feel as if a more elaborate idea would have made for a more interesting storyboard, visual wise.

LAUAN403 - Anticipation

This task asked us to demonstrate our understanding of anticipation by creating a short sequence featuring a wind-up/build-up before an action.

I am very pleased with how my sequence turned out. It is on the short side, but the actual anticipation before the fox thrusts his arm into the tree hole is very good. I also like how the actual thrust of his arm turned out too. If I had more time I would have ironed out several things such as his tail and face drop at the end, but for demonstrating this particular principle I am more or less completely satisfied. However, a problem with this sequence that all my traditionally animated sequences share is the faint line work, which is, by no means invisible, but difficult to see unless viewing up close or in full screen.

LAUAN403 - Squash and Stretch

For this task, we had to create two pieces of animation to demonstrate our understanding of the principle of  squash and stretch. One had to be of a soft ball dropping to the ground, the other had to feature a similar ball travelling in a lateral motion.

I found this task quite easy, and I think I managed to animate the squashing and stretching of the ball appropriately. The animation of the character in the 2nd video could be improved but he wasn't the main focus of the clip so it doesn't really matter.

I also think I need to get better used to using both photoshop and graphic tablets in general as the line work is noticeably sketchy.

LAUAN403 - Exaggeration

I'll be honest, I didn't enjoy this task very much. Abstract animation has never been my thing and I was hoping that we'd by doing character animation for the exaggeration principle. But it doesn't hurt to try new things, I suppose.

When it comes to what I did, I am satisfied with how they came out, however I believe the pieces could have been more elaborate and complex (I'll justify the simplicity of the films by saying I didn't have a lot of time). I do personally think that my visualisations of the vague sounds were quite good and creative though, even if they weren't executed in the best way possible.

LAUAN403 - Arcs

To start with, I wasn't happy that it took me this long to get around to actually producing this animation as it stressed me out a little. I also aren't happy at how "scruffy" it turned out, since I insisted on redrawing each frame individually and I did it rather quickly. That being said, the actual motion came out fine, and I'd argue that it's the most important part.

For my pivot animation I decided to do a man dancing. Much like the pendulum, this one is incredibly rough around the edges and would have benefited to more time being put into it. And again, I think the movement turned out okay. It could have been timed better, I feel, but it had proper acceleration, acceleration and momentum. I'm also fond of the fact that I added in a few background characters to prevent the film from looking too lifeless and dull.

LAUAN403 - Easing

The work I did during the pose-to-pose task prepared me for this somewhat as key frames were a big element. I enjoyed this task as it was purely traditional and allowed me to practise an important principle of animation. I think however that I could have pushed myself to animate at 24fps instead of 12 as that was an option, I think it would benefit the film more. I also once again neglected to make my line work darker, resulting in the finished product somewhat tricky to see fully (I typically avoid doing this because I fear messing up and having to start over again).

However, I think that the motion was fluid enough and that the ball had believable weight. I'm also satisfied with the implementation of "personality" to the short film as it makes it more entertaining than just a bland featureless ball rolling down a slope.

LAUAN403 - Appeal

I was happy to be doing character model sheets this week. I enjoy drawing dynamic poses and I even had some model sheets in my portfolio when I got interviewed earlier this year. However, I did struggle greatly when it came to actually coming up with a character - I wouldn't say I have no imagination, but it's very rare for me to come up with something on the fly.

Regardless, I came up with a little alien character named Clonk.
His personality resulted in a character design that was fun to draw; he has lots of straight lines and narrow edges which, along with his dark colour pallet, indicate that he's not a friendly guy. He has a lot of good facial expressions, although I fear that I may have gone off-model in a few places. I also think I could have maybe added more poses to the model sheet, but overall, I am satisfied with how this came out.

Character Development Sheet

Model Sheet

Turnaround Sheet