Masters Semester 2

Here is a summary (a bit of a long summary post but it's been a busy semester!) of my work from 3 modules in Semester 2 on the MSc Animation & Visualisation course, including links to blog posts for each project.

All blog posts for Semester 2 (including notes from meetings and tutorial/workshop notes) can be viewed HERE.

Going Live
All relevant Going Live blog posts on this blog can be viewed HERE.

Here is the final film:

Concerning Dragons from Kieran Duncan on Vimeo.

To begin the project, lots of research was carried out. I then produced moodboards to help the group with inspiration and reference for each aspect of the story that had been developed:

Next I contributed some character designs for the Eagle and Dragon characters:

Relevant blog post at: Going Live Character Design blog post

One character I took through the pipeline from concept to animation was the Tree-Hand.

Relevant blog post at: Going Live 3D Modeling blog post

Relevant blog post at: Going Live Rigging blog post

Relevant blog posts at: Going Live Animatic Work blog post and Going Live Character Animation blog post

This is the animation I did for Shot 1:

All Xray - Frame 257 to 565 from Lilly Durrant on Vimeo.

One of my other roles within the team was Production Manager.
Relevant blog post at: Going Live Production blog post

Once the film was completed, we all went through to Glasgow to present it to Axis Animation Studio.
Relevant blog post at: Going Live Final Film and Presentation blog post

Some of the slides from the PowerPoint presentation

Photo taken at Axis Animation by Phillip Vaughan

Advanced Production
All relevant blog posts for Advanced Production module can be viewed HERE.

One of the first things our group worked on at the start of the Semester was the story and storyboard. This involved a couple of story meetings and lots of post-its:

Photo taken by Kirti Goenka

I then took all of the post-its and put them together into a rough animatic. The story was then divided up between the team to draw out the shots more clearly, which I then updated the animatic. The story then went through some more changes and development. It was then my job to draw up the new storyboard and animatic. This was the most up-to-date 2D animatic I created:

One of the first parts of research was creating moodboards to explore style:

3D style

2D style

Capturing my own reference footage was useful research and can be used as reference when it comes to animating. I set up the same scenario as the story and filmed my own dog taking a biscuit into the garden:

Put a bird feeder in the garden - reference for the bird character

The dog character took the most work to get right, and involved multiple group meetings to discuss and draw out variations before getting to the final character design:

Dog character sketching

Sketching Dog faces

Dog character sketching - decided on a Jack Russell Terrier breed

Colour variations

Colour variations with jumpers

Color variations for Owner and Dog - the Dog is held by the Owner in 2 shots, therefore the dog's jumper could not clash or merge with the Owner's jumper.

I quickly did an edit with Concept Art that Sheng had created to test whether these colours would work in the environment that Sheng had designed.

Trying out a variety of hairstyles for the Owner character

Through research, I decided that the Linnet bird would be the best suited for the film. It is on the Red List for Conservation Concern and has a pop of bright pink/red to help it stand out in the Autumn/Winter environment:

Sketches and digital painting of Linnet Birds in different poses

These are some watercolour studies I did to explore how the watercolour-style of our film will look:

Watercolour plants

Watercolour studies

Watercolours of props in the film

This is the 3D animatic I created, using two rigs I downloaded (including the Malcolm character courtesy of AnimSchool.com - http://www.animschool.com/DownloadOffer.aspx ). The initial environment was modeled by Sheng. The temporary bird was created by Giorgos. I am responsible for the layout, camera and animation in the 3D animatic. The 3D animatic will continue to be used into the production, swapping in more finalised assets, and re-editing the timing if the film needs shortened:

Through working on the 3D animatic, I learned how to set-up and use an animation picker. This is something I found very useful to use and will most likely incorporate into my animation workflow:

As the Director for this project, my role has been to help make creative decisions, overseeing the creation of designs in Pre-Production and review the progress of assets being created in Production. In order to communicate efficiently and gather notes discussed at team meetings and reviews, I produced documents such as the one below, detailing any adjustments that were needed:

I also worked with Kirti to help with the creation of a Shot List, as I realized that a Shot List would be very helpful with the creation of the 3D animatic and could be used throughout the production to keep track of the progress of each shot:

Working out how to divide the shots up for the Shot List

A page from the Shot List

Reflection On Practice
All relevant blog posts for Reflection On Practice Module can be viewed HERE.
The title of my research for this module was: 'How to create empathy for a cartoon dog - An investigation into the connection between an audience and animated dog characters.'
This relates back to my Programme Of Study and original goal for animating, which is to create believable and convincing character performances.

One of the first methods of research was to carry out a focus group. During this focus group I asked the participants questions relating to two video clips. First was Walt Disney’s Pluto – Bone Bandit (1948); the second was Walt Disney’s Bolt (2008). They both showed a cartoon dog hungry and searching for food. An interesting aspect I analysed was the different responses between dog owners and non-dog owners and how this had an effect on their empathy towards a cartoon dog.

Making notes and highlighting important points on the transcript.

I then investigated different techniques to create empathy for a cartoon dog that I can use for the dog character in my own film project 'Tug of Biscuit'. Here are a few of these techniques below:

From the focus group, it was clear that both dog expressions and human expressions are needed to create a believable performance. This helped me to add a new shot into the Tug of Biscuit storyboard, showing the dog stop to look around suspiciously for the bird, before deciding to dig a whole to hide the biscuit:

Three Storyboard panels I drew for Tug of Biscuit, with the new shot added in the middle

Incorporating realistic dog behaviour is important, therefore collecting reference video footage and doing observational drawings from life are ways to capture subtle mannerisms and movement that can be incorporated into final animation:

Observational drawings of my own dog

 Another technique to help with anthropomorphic characters is to draw a human's reaction to a similar situation, then draw the dog again but with the human expressions incorporated:

My own drawings showing a human’s reaction to their food being stolen by a bird.

My own drawings showing a dog’s reaction, merged with human expression, to their food being stolen by a bird.

All of these techniques and methods I can incorporate into my practice as an Animator, on a variety of projects.

Slides from the PowerPoint presentation for the Mock Conference

Life Drawing and Observational Drawing
Drawing and observing life is something I still value as an important skill in animation. I managed to find some time to attend some life drawing classes this semester. As there are two animals I will be animating in Tug of Biscuit, I went up to Camperdown Wildlife Park to do animal sketches. I've also using my own dog as a reference to draw from. Relevant blog posts at: Life Drawing and Observational Drawing.

Cakes and post-its...

On Monday 13th the Level 3 Animators hosted a bake sale, to raise money to replace library books that were stolen from the studio and to put money towards a printer for the studio. It was a hugely successful day, managing to raise over £215! We have many talented bakers among us!

All set up and ready to go!

My baking contribution :)

Dramatic lighting included!

More baking goodies! :D

Sarah Rettie's "Hunky Men" biscuits

Yesturday the Krokodi team was swimming in post-it notes as we tried to sort out the storyboard all day. I think we made good progress, there will probably some changes made to camera angles etc over time but i think it's a good start. Next stage is to get some final storyboards done and an animatic started. And start beginning to do concept artwork and character designs!

Thank goodness we have a big wall behind us!

The post-it notes took over my laptop too!

A rough layout of the swamp made from post-its.

KROKODI - new project update

An update on the new project I'm working on, 'Krokodi' - a short animation. The team is made up of Laura McNaughton (Director and Idea Originator), Mike Webster, and myself (Production Manager). Here is the link to the group’s blog:

http://krokodi.blogspot.com/

We have gone few a few drafts of the script but here is the most up-to-date one :

Krokodi

30/01/2012 

Director: Laura McNaughton

Script Writer: Lilly Durrant

EXT. Louisiana Swamp land – (EVENING)
Opening shot of a track in swamp land. Everything appears calm. Title ‘KROKODI’ appears. There is a distant sound of car engine which gradually becomes louder. Suddenly a BURGER VAN speeds into shot, driving over a fallen tree sending the van flying out of shot.

1. CROCODILE HUNTER (Audience cannot see who is screaming)

“W-ahhhhhhhhhhhh!”

INT. Louisiana town, Burger van – (EARLY EVENING)

Cut to a happy crocodile clock ticking, with subtitles “45 minutes earlier”. Zoom out to see a bored and unhappy woman, called ‘DEE’, working in a crocodile-themed burger van. She looks up and out of van, face becomes angry and disgusted.

2. DEE

           “Ugh.”

Dee’s P.O.V of a CROCODILIAN HUNTER. Reverse angle shot of crocodile boots with burger van in distance. Crocodile Hunter approaches the van. The man seems very arrogant, as he taps a burger on the menu. Dee reluctantly starts to make him a BURGER. He points at one of the happy-looking crocodile logos on the van and laughs at it mockingly.

3. CROCODILIAN HUNTER

“Pah-ha-ha-haaa!”

He then produces his WALLET from which a long photo album drops out showing pictures of him and the crocodiles and alligators he has hunted and killed over the years. He points to different ones, acting out how he killed them,

4. CROCODILIAN HUNTER

Yelping, choking and gasping! (Imitating the crocodiles he hunted)

As he is boasting and showing off, he sneakily glances up and to see Dee’s furious face. Her immense anger causes her eyes to flash into a crocodile’s eyes and some scales appear for a second. He returns his eyes to the photos in his wallet – satisfied that he’s seen the evidence, that she is in fact the crocodilian creature he’s been after. She looks at him, shoves the burger into his mouth and slams shut the van window shutter in his face. He munches and crunches eagerly as off-screen engine starts up and gears grind.

5. CROCODILIAN HUNTER

Munching and crunching.

C/U Wheels spin throws up dust. Back wide the van shoots out of shot, but the Croc Hunter is nowhere to be seen.

EXT. Louisiana town – (DUSK)

Wide on burger van as it drives off out of town towards denser swampland.

EXT. Louisiana Swamp land – (EVENING)

Reprise shot 1 - Van drives over a fallen tree sending the van flying through the air for a second. Low camera shot reveals Croc hunter clinging on for dear life under the van!

6. CROCODILIAN HUNTER

“W-ahhhhhhhhhhhh!"

C/U Front bumper and wheel, as van comes to a screeching stop at swamp. The sound of a door slamming and the van shaking indicates Dee getting out of van.

Camera pan down to see under van, Hunter in F/G and feet beyond him as they pass by. Dee’s feet now morph into crocodile feet and a crocodile tail thuds onto the ground. Hunter looks gleeful.

7. CROCODILIAN HUNTER

“Mwah-ha-ha.”

Wide - The Krokodi creature jumps into the swamp causing a huge splash.

Continuous - The hunter confidently commando crawls out from under the van, camera pans along with action as he forward rolls to edge of jetty in a showing-off fashion as he gets his HARPOON ready to hunt. Screwing up his eyes, he peers into the water. He sneers and aims harpoon into the water, however the harpoon has lost its’ arrow as he dropped it while forward rolling! He reaches back quickly to grab it. There’s a sound off screen. He freezes in mid pose - A rumble builds, camera shakes, Hunter almost afraid to turn, but he spins around – H/U turns to wide on Krokodi creature as it suddenly leaps out of water,

8. Krokodi

          “Rooooaaaaarrr!”

Krokodi slams heavily on the jetty end, the planks ripple along, C/U Hunter gasps in horror.

9. CROCODILIAN HUNTER

High-pitched gasp!

The planks ripple up to Hunter, flipping him into the air, the croc opens jaws wide and he plummets in, jaws snap closed.

Credits roll. The sounds of crunching and munching can be heard from Krokodi creature, the crocodilian creature, eating the hunter.

10. Krokodi

Munching and crunching.

End. 

 And here is the production schedule I have created for this semester. The brief is to create a production bible by the end of the semester.

We are currently working on storyboards, to begin I've done some very rough storyboard thumbnails, (you may need to right click on them and open them in a new tab to view more clearly):