NEW BRIEF! Character and Narrative: Acting Up

Need lyrics from a chorus or a verse of a song, that I can lip-synch to a character to create a narrative, with a prop and surroundings. 

Potential ideas

Alestorm- Black Sails at midnight- dark moody atmosphere, candlelight.. pirate in a tavern with a beer?
'Go, the cold moonlight reflecting off your blade
So many centuries spent waiting for this day
Ride across the seas beneath a blackened sail
Know that a painful death awaits us if we fail.'

'Out of the darkness they came
With cannons a'raging and torches aflame
Slaying all poseurs who stand in their way'

Afroman- Because I got high. Boy sat in his messy bedroom. talking like he's disappointed in himself? 
'I was gonna clean my room, until I got high
I was gonna get up and find the broom, but then I got high
My room is still messed up and I know why.. 
Because I got high.'

Blink 182- Aliens Exist. Boy creeping around the house with a torch peering round doors, calling to his mum/ talking to himself. Discovers alien creatures in the room
'Hey mum, there's something in the backroom
I hope it's not the creature from above..
You used to read me stories
As if my dreams were boring
We all know conspiracies are dumb..
What if people know that these were real
I'd leave my closet door open all night 
I know the CIA would say
What you hear is all hearsay
I wish someone would tell me what was right.'

Alter Bridge- Metalingus. Maybe a knight or soldier? After a fight? 
'On this day I see clearly, everything has come to life
A bitter place and a broken dream,
And we'll leave it all behind
On this day, it's so real to me
Everthing has come to life
Another chance to chase a dream
Another chance to feel alive'

Bruno Mars- The Lazy song- man lying on the sofa with the tv remote watching tv talking to the camera.

'Today I don't feel like doing anything

I just wanna lay in my bed

I don't feel like picking up my phone,

So leave a message at the tone

'Cause today I don't feel like doing anything.'

Bowling for Soup- BFFF ?
'Playing poker Friday night,
Beer-o-mids and golf cart races
You think that my sister's hot
I accidentally shot your finger
off your writing hand oh well,
you get disability.
I broke my leg you laughed so hard
and told my ambulance to stop at the bar.'

My Three Finished idents.

Just for fun, I thought I'd post all 3 idents together.

CBeebies ident finished

Here's my finished CBeebies ident. It's not up to the standard that I would have liked it to be at and that's because I ran out of time, as the deadline is tomorrow, however I am happy with what I've created. The movement of the juggling works well, thanks to rotoscoping again. 
I also cut a couple of corners at the beginning, by zooming in on the CBeebies blobs, however I think this improved the ident considerably and I like that the camera moves with them. 

Originally I had wanted the background to move slowly around but again, I didn't have time to make that happen.

I've also used the CBeebies song from one of their previous idents, as I needed to include sound, and my friend that was going to do that music for me couldn't get it done in time due to other commitments.. (hopefully that is okay)

The only things I would change about this ident if I had more time, would be to neaten up the colours of Mr Tumble's clothes, and sort out his face a little as it looks slightly off.. 

Finished Discovery Channel ident

This is the finished final version of my discovery channel ident, with sound. The sound was done by my friend Sam Benjafield, who's a music student in London, especially for my ident and has no copyright issues or anything.

I'm quite happy with how my ident turned out, although as I was running out of time towards the end of the project, I had to cut a few corners in the production stage. For example, I was going to animate the water to make it look more realistic and moving, however I just didn't have the time for that. This was because, even though I had planned out my time to work on this animation and the other two, the splash took a lot longer than I had anticipated which cut into my remaining time for this ident and my CBeebies time.

I'm very pleased with the movement that was achieved through rotoscoping and definitely think I will be using this technique in the future, even though it was a very long process. 

Finished E4 ident

 Here is my finished E4 ident. It has turned out differently to how I had intended it to, however l am happy with the finished result. I had to change my idea of what is seen through the telescope from dolphins to an Island and treasure chest due to timing issues as I realised I would not have time to do my other two idents as well if I did dolphins.

 l was also concerned that the animation zooms in and out too frequently, however feedback from my peers has concluded that it isn't noticeable.

I got the soundtrack from the online application for the Estings competition, which has a selection of E4 soundtracks for use in Estings and are royalty free.

I have added the E4 logo at the end in the water, and I would have liked it to ripple in the waves, however I did not have time to sort this out as I had the other two idents to work on. Since the presentation, I've also made the boat sit better in the water and move along less flatly so that it looks like it could actually be in the water instead of on a track of sorts, as suggested by my tutor.

E4 ident update

This is my E4 ident as it was ready for presentation today. I need to ask about the zooming in and out issue because I feel it does it too often and makes it look disjointed and strange. 

I also feel I should add some point of focus on the Island as it looks a bit bare and pointless at the moment..

It has been pointed out by my tutor that I need to include the E4 logo at the end to make it absolutely clear that it is an E4 ident so I need to add that in. 

Discovery Channel Ident update

The splash is taking so much longer than I'd anticipated and people keep mistaking the shark for a whale..... Solutions: I'll attempt to fix the whale issue at the end of the project- perhaps a slight colour change would do it.. The splash, however, is cutting into my time for my other two idents and this poses a problem for my deadlines/ the quality of the other idents...

Roto-Mation

This rotoscoped animation uses a really nice blend of animated characters and real world back grounds. I really like this idea and think it would work really well with my Discovery Channel ident, if I can successfully get rid of the logo and ibm watermark in the corners of my discovery channel shark footage. 
I also really like the block colour used on the character. I think it makes the animation the perfect blend of realistic and stylised. I will use this simple block colour idea on my CBeebies animation and also perhaps in my E4 ident, however in my CBeebies ident I will have to make the colours very bold and bright to make them engaging and fit within the CBeebies image. 

Rotoscoping research.

This short film demonstrates an example of rotoscoping and shows how it helps to create realistic movements. I really like the use of minimalistic colour in this animation, as there are only subtle amounts of colour to emphasize and help recognise items like the lemons. The simple line style is really nice and interesting, however for my rotoscoped animations I will not be able to do this, as my ideas require colour. CBeebies especially needs bright engaging colours.

Rotoscoping in Snow White

In Disney's Snow White, the character of Snow White was rotoscoped to get the movements flowing perfects. This rotoscoping of a person shows how realistic the movements can be and how rotoscoping helps to get the proportions right within the Character. It demonstrates the act of taking a real life person to capture the proportions and movements, and then creating an entirely different character over the top of these basic movements. 
This will help me get the proportions right for my Mr Tumble character in my CBeebies ident.

E4 storyboard new and improved version.

As my E4 dolphin idea was not quite right, I have put some more thought into it based on some of the feedback from my peers and have re-storyboarded my ident. 

My new ident now consists of a pirate ship sailing, with an E4 pirate who looks through a telescope at a nice scene and without him noticing, some giant kraken tentacles sneak up and pull the boat under the water, leaving only the pirate hat behind.

The colour scheme will be mostly purple, with small element of other colours where necessary, for example the sun will be a yellowish colour and the tentacles will be green to add some contrast and to draw attention to them.

I think this idea is a lot better than my other one and more suited to the E4 style.

E4 storyboard

Here is my storyboard and animatic  for my E4 ident, I'm not too sure about it, I think it need to be more quirky and strange as it's E4...

At the moment it's just dolphins jumping and creating the E4 logo. I've been really struggling with ideas for this ident for some reason..

Sketchbook- Fun drawings.

We've been encouraged to use our sketchbooks to just keep drawing all the time. Here are some fun little drawings I've done in my moleskin that I like.

Rotoscoping

I got this video from the Discovery channel of a shark breaching water and imported it into photoshop at every 15 frames to make it run faster.

I then rotoscoped it to form the basis of part of my final ident. 

I actually really enjoyed rotoscoping, even though it was quite boring and repetitive, but I really like how realistic the movement is and I'm happy with my choice to use this method for my final animation. I do, however, really need to work on the water and splashes in this animation as they look a bit crazy. 

Flow, Form and Force: Some final images.

Rhythm is a dancer. (12 short 10 second poses moving across a space.)

The short 10 second poses task was quite funny to do but at the start I found I was taking too long drawing each pose and running out of time. As the drawings went on, I found a simpler, easier way to draw the figures, with shapes and continuous line.

Like a Puppet on a String. (12 short 10 second poses of squashing and stretching.)

I had the same issue with these drawings in that I kept running out of time,  I also found that, when I tried to draw each pose like the person was staying in the same place, there was quite a cool effect from drawing over the top of each drawing, but it quickly got too confusing and just became a mess of lines. This meant that I went back to drawing across the page.

Ah, Push it! (5-10 minute poses of someone doing a push or pull movement.)

This task I found I could put more detail into the drawings, but I found myself putting too much detail into the first couple and running out of time again. The first of the two images I have posted on here I thought had worked quite well, the proportions and pose seemed right, but it looks like she's boxing instead of pulling a rope, which is what she was supposed to be doing. The second drawing I think worked better.



Strike a pose! (The longer 20-30 minute poses.)

 This was my favourite of the 4 briefs as it meant I could actually get some kind of detail in and spend some time working on the proportions. I think the one at the top worked best and the one at the bottom I found the most challenging because of the angle I was drawing from. 


Overall, I think I enjoyed this project a lot more than I thought I would, as I've never really been a fan of drawing from life, however after this project I think I would like to do more to work on my drawing ability.

Update: Sound

I have been thinking about the sound for my three idents.

I think for the E4 ident I'm probably just going to have sound effects of sea and splashes, maybe getting one of the E4 sound tracks they supply for their ident competitions, as they're license free.

For the other two, to avoid having to try to get permission for songs and soundtracks to use and it maybe not quite fitting to what I would like, I've asked my friend who does music production at Ravensbourne in London to make me a couple of 10 second clips for my idents, which he has agreed to. This means they will be license free and hopefully exactly what I'd like them to be as we can work together on them.

Flow, Form and Force

Disney's Snow White uses rotoscoping to get the movements correct in the film. Rotoscoping from a dancer that they got to model is another way to draw from life, getting each and every movement in. This shows the importance of life drawing as it captures the movement really realistically.

Sketchbook.

I did a quick sketch of a figure in my sketchbook. This has helped me work out proportions in the female form.

Flow, Form and Force

When making Sleeping Beauty, Disney used a live action model to capture the movements and make them realistic. This was done by doing really quick sketches as the model moves, similar to our project brief. Above is a video about how they did this and below is the finished movie scene that they were working on. It shows the importance of life drawing in animation.

Ceramics Workshop numero 2,3 and 4

Workshop 2: I covered my robot in plasters, to help the plasticine stick, and I then covered my robot in plasticine and added the details I wanted. The only problem I found with this is that I keep having to re-do the elbows and knees with plasticine because of the detail i put into the arms and legs, which means whenever I move them, the plasticine squashes. 

Workshop 3: I made my robot's head out of white earthenware clay. Unfortunately My robot cracked overnight. 

Workshop 4: I remade my robot head out of red earthenware clay and glazed it. This clay was more robust and easier to work with. It was a challenge though because we had to make a hollow sphere and then modify it to the shape of my characters head, which was oval and meant I had to squash the sides down to create the shape which put pressure on the structure and the air inside, which is why my first one cracked. I think I made the first one better as the eyes and nose on this one were a bit too big, however I do think this one worked well. My glazing, however, didn't work as well as I'd hoped because you can see the brush strokes through the glaze.. This kind of gives it a rusty effect though which does look quite cool.

Flow, Form and Force

Ryan Larkin's 'Street Musique' has elements of drawing from life in it, in between morphing these images into other objects. The life drawing elements are well drawn and I really like the way he seemlessly morphs them and changes them. 
The figures in the animation look relatively realistic- the proportions are correct, which would come from drawing from life, although they are simplified to fit with the style of the animation.

Flow, Form and Force

Thought of You- Ryan Woodward

This animation by Ryan Woodward shows the importance of life drawing and capturing the idea of a persons shape quickly to give the impression of movement.

This animation was done by rotoscoping and obviously has more than a few 10 second poses like our movement brief but it's done with really simple lines and not much detail which helps the movements flow. It's a beautiful animation.

Ceramics workshop numero uno

 Today, we had the first of four ceramics workshop. After a short introduction to the facilities, we got started on making an armature. First this involved twisting some wire to make it strong enough to hold its form in the model, and cutting and bending some metal rod to make the arm that the model leans on and attaching it to the board.


Then, we got started on our armatures. We had to design a simple humanoid character- I chose a robot- and then create the skeleton of it form the wire we had twisted. Where we had to join wire together we used a thinner, more flexible wire to tie around it which held it strong. There are little loops on the hands and feet to make it easier to attach the milliput.

We then added milliput to the parts of the figure that weren't to bend- like the thighs, the bit across the shoulders etc... everything but the joints that needed to move. We also made eyes out of the milliput so that we can move them while animating. We then left this to dry.

And then.. PLAY TIME!

You Spin Me Right Round - 360 drawing

Here is my 360 degree turnaround of a minion for my "You spin me right round" brief. 

I chose to draw a minion that I got in a happy meal because it is a relatively simple shape and I thought it would be fairly easy to draw, but it also has shapes and parts that extrude and make the shape more complex.

I think this worked well, I don't like how one frame has slightly crumpled paper- I need to take better care of my drawings before scanning them in. I chose to do it in fineliner with limited shading because I like the simplistic approach to the drawing and didn't want to overcomplicate the shading. If I did it again, I'd re-do the hair on the object because it was really hard to make the hair look like it was spinning while it was brushed over, although I think it turned out okay in the end.

You Spin Me Right Round (research)

360 degree character turnarounds are used often in animation, not only when designing the characters, but also in the actual animation when characters spin and twirl. The turnarounds allow the viewer to see the character from every angle so the animator needs to be able to draw the character at each stage.

360 degree spins can be seen in many Disney feature films, like here in Cinderella. The turnaround is at the end of the clip where Cinderella is admiring her new dress. The spin looks natural like how someone would actually show off their new dress. I like how the dress moves as she spins.

CBeebies ident

I have decided that for my CBeebies ident, I am going to turn popular CBeebies character Mr Tumble into a cartoon clown and have him juggling the CBeebies blobs. 

While he is juggling, he starts to throw the blobs too high and more jump in so Mr Tumble loses control of them and the smush together at the top and turn into the CBeebies logo.

After presenting this storyboard to my class, the general comment was that the idea was good, but the clown needed to look more like Mr Tumble, so I'm going to do some more character development to try and make him look more like the character.

CBeebies animatic

I need to do a bit more work on character development, as it was pointed out to me that my clown character doesn't look enough like Mr Tumble from the CBeebies show, but here's my animatic to give a general idea of the timing and how I would like my animation to run.

I'm going to use bright bold primary colours, perhaps a green background and the clown will be in Mr Tumble clothes.

It was suggested that I try to include some key features of Mr Tumble so that he is easily recognisable for the children who watch it, like his spotty bag.

Discovery Channel animatic

Here is my animatic for my Discovery Channel ident. 

This roughly works out the timing of the animation and fits into the 10 second time limit.. I might need to make the breach a little bit quicker, unless I make it obviously slow motion..

The colours will be blues and blacks and natural colours.

Discovery Channel ident

Shark week ident.

I have done some research into shark week on the Discovery Channel.. Shark Week is one of the most popular shows to appear on the discovery channel and so I have decided to theme my ident on this. It will be quite different to the other idents on the Discovery Channel, but the others are done with motion graphics and 3D and I have not yet got that ability.

I have watched hundreds of videos from previous shark weeks and other videos of sharks on youtube and have decided on either having the logo in the water with sharks circling it, having the shark eat the logo and us seeing inside the sharks mouth, or a shark breaching the water and grabbing the logo like it would grab a seal. I think this idea is the most dynamic and interesting, and I think it would be a fun challenge to get the movements and speed to look realistic.

I've done some studies of sharks for research to get a good realistic looking shark, as the Discovery Channel would not suit a very stylised cartoon shark as much as a realistic natural looking shark.

Here is my storyboard.

You Spin Me Right Round (research)

Character turnarounds are used frequently in animation while designing a character to make sure you get an equal amount of detail on the character from every angle. It also allows the animator to adjust shape and size to make sure the proportions are correct. 

A-ha rotoscoped music video

The video for A-Ha's take on me is probably one of the most well known rotoscoped videos. It combines live film with rotoscoped animation and does so really well. I like the sketchy style that it's done in and the movements look really realistic, as it's done over video.

Visual Language- Drawing sounds

Here are my final visualisations of sound presented in animation.

Firework Scream

Monster Blob

Rapid Warble

Fried Egg

Dripping Tap

I definitely preferred animating the sounds to drawing the sounds static, I found it much easier to visualise the sounds moving as it seemed to have more effect and relate more to the sounds in question.

Drawing Sounds

 Here are my Sound Drawings for my 10 sounds, followed by my 5 final drawings. If I'm honest, I really didn't enjoy this project. I found it really hard to draw sounds that change and move as a still image, as I don't think my drawings really represent the sounds that well. I'm hoping my animations of the final 5 represent the sounds a bit better. I would have used more colour in these drawings, but I could not work out which colours looked right in my head with each sound when I was drawing.

(The final 5)

CBeebies research

CITV used to use logo as their ident and they'd just animate the letters in the logo in a fun way. 

Recently they've recreated the logo and have started to incorporate it into images. For example in these 3 images from idents, the C of the logo becomes the mouth of the horse, or venus flytrap, or shark.

They've used real backgrounds and drawn over them a 2D cartoony style and animated over the image, which I think is a really cool way to do it.