Extended Practice: Timetable

For this module I decided to make a timetable scheduling where I should be at certain points throughout the module. I feel like this should help my time management and keep me organised because I have sometimes just forgot what I need to do next or rush one stage and then take my time on another, so this should equal the work load out between each stage in the process.

I also have to think about managing my time working with Emma on her project where I'm a background 3D builder and background animator. Working with Emma, I'll have to go through with her what I'll be working on and how much she'll want me to build because I can't be doing too much due to the fact that I will be working on my own project and I'll need to focus on that as my main priority.

Extended Practice: Further Idea Development

For my extended practice I wanted to continue on from my CoP 3 with particle simulations, however for this I want to incorporate a character and then have particles flow off of the character to then reveal something from underneath the skin. I do have more ideas than this but they stay in the same theme of using a character and having particles flowing off them.

One idea was to have a character dance around but have there skin or appearance change using particle simulations so like there body is full of hair, or dust is flying off them etc. I figured that this would be a series of videos trying out different simulations using motion capture to record the movement of the character and then paste the data onto a model I create within Maya. This idea would be very experimental and I would need to organise my time so that I can use different methods of motion capture i.e. having someone in a Mocap suit and make them dance around while cameras a set up in a circle surrounding the dancer to capture the data, or use the software IPI and capture the dancer using two or more xbox kinects.

My other idea was to just have a 2 minute video where I can get a dancer to perform to a piece of music, that I will get someone to make from the Leeds College of Music, and have particles emit from the dancer which will then reveal a robotic like form underneath the skin. This will be harder to create because I'll be collaborating with others so I'll have to organise them both and gather what I need early so I can start experimenting with different materials for the particle simulation. I figured that I would start the video off with live action and then go into a CG character I have build in Maya but again I'll have to do test to see if this would work.

Extended Practice: Start of My Final Project and My Rationale

Subjects and Themes

Broadly speaking what are you interested in exploring and why?

I'd like to explore into motion capture and 3D environments because I feel like it will help me gain new skills and help me with compositing my work in post production.

I'd also like to experiment with performance in Motion Capture and see how I can apply the data from the performance to a rigged character in Maya.   

Rationale

What you want to do during this module? Be as specific as you can at this moment in time.

If you plan on working on multiple briefs to demonstrate your practice, identify clearly each brief.

I plan to work with Emma as her 3D background designer/builder, working in maya and testing out using 2D textures on a 3D plane.

I also want to experiment with motion capture and see which software is better to use than others for capturing a performance. but then make an animation out of the motion captured performance and create a 3D environment. I haven't thought about a story for the animation yet so I might ask my peers to help out there.

Creating an environment will also continue me research from CoP into environmental vfx/fluid/smoke/dust simulations.

Explain how this will be developing your Specialist Practice?

This will develop my specialist skills by making myself work within 3D elements and learn visual effects to apply onto my animation(s).

this will also help me research and develop my knowledge into the specialist area of my study.  

Resources and Workshops

What do you need and by When?

I'll need to try and go to sheffield and experiment with their motion capture facilities, this will be around February/March time  

Will you be working on a group project or brief?

( If YES explain )

Yes I'll be working with Emma on her project as the 3D background artist/builder as she would like to try a hybrid of the two 2D and 3D.

Are there any stakeholders in your project?

If YES, explain who they are and what their responsibilities are? - This is essential if you've got a Live Brief from a client

No

What, where and when do you need to research. Begin to identify and artists, practitioners, companies or organisations that you will need to talk to. This could include getting to speak to people at conferences, events and other organisations.

Research into Motion capture softwares/Facilities, I'd like to talk to Blue Zoo/Double negative/ imaginarium, visit festivals like Animex, the vfx festival, Chester international film festival, and Leeds young film festival   

Please identify at least 6 books, periodicals, websites or other media that may be informing your rationale. Please use Harvard referencing.

Hayes, D. and Webster, C. (2013) Acting and performance for animation. Oxford: Taylor & Francis.

Kerlow, I.V.V. (2009) The art of 3-D: Computer animation and effects. 3rd edn. United Kingdom: John Wiley & Sons.

Monaco, J. (2008) How to read a film: Movies, media, and beyond. 30th edn. New York: Oxford University Press.

TheAloomaX (2014) VFX: Going behind the magic, episode 1: ILM creating the impossible. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eDoVcGPw_3o (Accessed: 9 October 2016).

Wolfe, J. (2015) Autodesk tools used on 14 Oscar-Nominated films. Available at: http://www.awn.com/news/autodesk-tools-used-14-oscar-nominated-films (Accessed: 17 October 2016).

Motion, O. · (2016) Motion capture software and Mocap tracking Info.

Available at: http://www.organicmotion.com/motion-capture/ (Accessed: 9 November 2016)

Animated Documentary: Summative Evaluation

Throughout this module it has been a challenge and I've been out of my comfort zone because for starters the animation wasn't in my style, so I had to learn how to draw differently to how I normally draw. I've also been out of my comfort zone because this animation was done in 2D where as I normally specialise in 3D animation, so it took me some time to get used to drawing out every frame.

I feel like are final animation is how we predicted it would turn out to be, however it took us some time to get there with a lot of changes and fall outs along the way. If I could change anything or redo this module I'd try and stick to the work schedule that I'd planned and I'd also keep in better contact with my team mates so that I know that we are all on the same page and know that we're all doing the right thing. I also feel like if I had to re-animate everything again I'd animate it differently so that the animation is smoother and doesn't jitter as much as it does now, I'd do this by creating all on the characters assets on different layers in photoshop and then animate the character in after effects using the puppet pin tool, this way the animation will run fluidly.

Over all I have learnt a lot from this module and it's given my a great insight into the animation industry and how other people will work differently to me and how if I have good communication with my team things will run smoother. I also feel like are team click the best out of all the other groups, which taught me that no matter what group your in you still have to give your best and try your hardest to cooperate and compromise with the group so that the team is synchronized and works well together.          

Animated Documentary: FINAL ANIMATION

This is are final animation for this module, Molly finally gave me all of her work so that I could edit it all together. I also had to place some backgrounds in to her animation because they where just black so it looked weird compared to the rest of the animation. I'm relieved that this is now over and done with and no longer have to stress over the work or anything.

I'm happy with the outcome of are documentary animation and I'm pleased that the characters help portray the stories that Molly and I tell. I also like how the background animates to the emotions of the narrative of are stories and how the animation of the background increases when the story gets intents. However, if I could do this all over again I'd spend more time on the audio so that its clear but also has the right amount of emotion in it.

My experience through out this module was different from the rest of my modules because I my of made some things harder for myself and this was the first time I have been a director of a collaborative animation. I feel like my time management could of been better, and I also feel like I should of made more of an effort to keep in contact with my group as we hardly spoke throughout the module compared to the rest of the groups in are class.  

Animated Documentary: Editing Final Animation

Now that I've finished editing all of my scenes I decided to put the final scenes back into After Effects and put them in the animatic so that I can see what the final outcome will look like and if the scenes fitted in well with the timing of the animatic. I found that very thing was going well and the timing was correct but the only problem was that I've not received any of Molly's work other than three scenes, so I put them in as well however I'm still waiting for her to finish.

I also had an idea to do subtitles with the animation because I had word with my tutors and they said that adding subtitles would benefit the animation well because we'd have a wider audience of people who can watch are animated documentary. So I now had to edit in subtitles to are animation which didn't take too long but I did accidentally have some spelling mistakes the first time I rendered it out, however I've sorted it out now and there are no mistakes.

I feel like this animation work well even fill Mollys scenes aren't finished, I like the timing of the animation and it fits in well with the audio. I also like how the styles change slightly in between the stories because it makes each story seem individual but also emphasises the emotion of the stories as well. The only thing I'd change is probably the arrangement of the animation and make the stories intertwine more with one another. However, I do not like the final audio because I feel like my voice is to quiet and a bit croaky so I'd like to change it so my voice is more clear.   

 

Animated Documentary: Editing and Backgrounds

Before I can start editing the scenes together I had to fix a couple of problems with the background because Malachi did animate them but I had to reanimate most of the backgrounds that he gave me so that the backgrounds would fit in well with the animations. Also I had to reanimate the leaves blowing in the wind because they were stiff and not bending so they looked kind of robotic and none fluid. This took some time because animating the background made my laptop run slower due to the size Malachi made the photoshop files (he made them 3 times the size of 1920-1080p). 

The first thing I did was the leaves because they were the most important and noticeable part to the backgrounds. I animated the leaves using the puppet tool so that they can bend with a smooth motion path and look more realistic to the wind. This was an annoying process because I had to animate the puppet pins on every single leave separately just so that I could get a random look of the leaves blowing in the wind.     

After animating the leaves I then had to animate even more leaves because the leaves on the branch were doing the same thing and just being really stiff. So I had to again animate the leave using the same tool as before, I also had to move the branch itself further down in the scene because it was too close to the top and the orangutans wouldn't fit on screen if I left the branch where it was in the first place. I also had to slow down the clouds as well because they were moving across the screen to fast and they weren't in time with the rest of the animation.

Now that the leaves are all sorted out I then had to fix the tree, this meant that I had to place effects onto the tree like the turbulent displacement and rough edges effects, but I did also have to fix the clouds again because they were moving across the screen to fast so I just slowed them down. As well as doing all this I also had to change the length of each background scene because Malachi had made then too short so I had to elongate them to fit the animations.

All in all I had to change quite a bit of Malachis' work which I didn't really want to do but I had to so that the animation would look decent and not unprofessional. Don't get me wrong he's done a good job but there where bit that needed tweaking and changing so that is wouldn't look odd in the final outcome of the animation. Not only have I done this but I'll also be putting together the final edit of the full animation with Mollys' work but I'm still waiting on her to complete it first before I can get started on it.

Animated Documentary: Scene 8

In this scene the mother orangutan is telling the baby orangutan about the bad news and the she comforts him. To me this scene was simple enough to do however it did take me some time to do because I did have to think of how I was going to animate the characters in the scene. Once I figured out what I was doing I found it simple to animate it, I think the only difficult thing in this scene that I had to animate was the beginning where the mother swings round the child and sits him on her knee. This was because I had to get the perspective of both of them right when they were turning round and for me that was quite hard to do.

What I like about this scene is the beginning of it because it doesn't just start off with the child on the mothers knee, plus it looks more emotional if the mother has to place her child on her knee to tell him about the bad news. I also like how the background gets darker at the end to represent loss and sadness but I also had to make some changes to the background just to make it a bit smoother and fit in well with the animation. However, I don't like how the mother doesn't look down at the child orangutan then she is comforting him but I didn't really know how to make the mother look like she is looking down without cutting off bits of the face. But I am glad that I've done animating all my scenes and now all I have to do it edit them together in After Effects but before I can do that I have to wait for molly to finish her scenes as well.

  

Animated Documentary: Scene 7

This scene took the longest for me to do because to be honest I wasn't in the right mind set on the day plus I was at home and not in leeds which put me off a bit. It also took me the longest to do because I had to animate two orangutans coming in from a birds eye view, which to me is kind of hard to do so what I did was I looked at me previous shot of the mother orangutan coming in shot but then visualised it from above and tried to draw it out. This worked well I think for me but I did have to do it twice because I didn't want to just copy and paste the same animation for the other orangutan because it might look a bit odd in the final outcome. For the background Malachi and I decided to have a still background because it will draw more attention to the characters if the background is still and the scene is at a serious point and the audience doesn't need to be distracted by things moving in the background.

I also just lowered the contrast and brightness of the background so that it doesn't shine over the characters or just look a bit odd and out of place. In this scene I like how the baby orangutans come in to shot because its a nice flowing animation and I also like how one of the orangutans grabs the fathers arm and if just falls back down when the baby orangutan lets go. But looking back at this scene I do not like that the father starts off with his eyes open and arms up because he is supposed to be unconscious, so if I could change anything I would start the scene off with the father just laying still to represent this.    

  

Animated Documentary: Scene 6

In this scene the baby Orangutan is being comforted by him mother, so I had to make the mother come in from the right which meant that I had to do some kind of walk cycle fro the mother orangutan. What I did was, I went on to the internet and found some footages of orangutan waking around and figured out that all I needed to do was make the mothers arms come in and place them down and have the rest of her body swing in after the arms because that's how they walk around. With the baby orangutan I just created him in photoshop and put his limbs onto different layers so that I can use the puppet pin tool again in after effects.

For the background I again used the same background from scene four and five but I changed it by scaling it up so that it looks like it is a close in shot of the environment. What I like about this scene is the mother coming in because I feel like the movement does represent an orangutan walking in and it is quite smooth looking. Although I'm not liking the way that the baby orangutan is stationary at the beginning of the scene but if I could change it I don't really know how different I would make it to the original shot.

  

Animated Documentary: Scene 5

Scene five was one of the easiest scenes to do because there wasn't that much to animate. I created the character in photoshop and then using the lasso tool I cut out parts of the orangutan and placed them on separate layers. After that I imported them in to After Effects and added the turbulent displacement effect onto the the cut out parts of the orangutan and then keyframed there position and moved the parts out away from the body of the orangutan and then just made the parts fade away. This represented his emotions being scattered and not knowing what to do.

For the background I just used the same one from before but just placed a fast blur effect on to it so that the focus is more on the character, plus I think it adds a little something to the scene and I like the way it looks/make the animation feel. I'm not sure if you can tell or not but I also made the background fade darker towards the end of the scene just to add a bit more emphasis on the emotion of the scene.    

Animated Documentary: Scene 4

In this scene I drew out the baby orangutans ligaments on different layers in photoshop so that I could animate him in after effects because I though that animating him in after effects would be a better outcome than animating him in photoshop. However, I did animate the other orangutans in photoshop because there was not much movement with them. For the baby orangutan I animated him by using the puppet pin tool in after effects, this made the animation on him smoother but it did some ligament stretch a bit which is one down fall in using this tool. For the background I had to make the tree deform and look as though it is shacking because this represents the emotion of the scene and if the emotion gets worse so does the tree. So to do this I used the turbulent displacement and the rough edges effect in after effect and increased the amount of the effect towards the end of the scene because the baby orangutan sees the others crying and doesn't understand why.

I like how the baby orangutan climbs down the tree and I like how the tree moves in time with the scene i.e. it gets more distorted as the orangutan climbs down and sees others crying. However, I'm not too sure on the other orangutans because they seem to stationary, so I feel like I could of put some rough edges or turbulent displacement on them to make them seem more effective to the scene. I also had to slow down the animations on the background because they where running too fast for the scene and it just looked out of place. 

 

Animated Documentary: Scene 3

Scene three was one of the hardest scenes for me to think of how I was going to animate it because I mentioned fighting in the narrative, so I thought that I would have to animate something complicated like a fight scene or something. However, I came up with an idea to have the two orangutans will just push each other around instead, this way they look like they are fighting but its not complicated to animate. In this scene the two orangutans are play fighting but then suddenly the father orangutan falls asleep and the baby orangutan doesn't know what to do about this. I've also added in the backgrounds because Malachi had finished animating my backgrounds so I could drop them in, but I did have to make a couple of changes to the background just so that it fitted with my animation and so that it was fluid enough as well.

I feel like Ive done a good job of animating this scene and I like the first shot of this scene where the orangutans move to the left of the screen because it flows smoothly from scene two and it gives off the impression that the environment is larger and more interactive with the characters. I also like the part where the father orangutan falls backwards because it shows weight and force to the fall, which when I was animating that part I wasn't thinking too much about those attributes. The one thing I'm not to keen on is the part where the father orangutan falls asleep and the baby orangutan falls on top of him because there is a little glitch in the fall down and it's not supposed to be there and I think its something to do with when I was animating the scene in photoshop, however when I play it back in photoshop it plays fine so I don't know what to do about it. Overall I am pleased with the outcome of this scene but if I could do it again I would add another character to it because in the narrative I mention my mother coming in and taking me to bed, so I'd add this bit in to the scene.  

   

Evaluation

Throughout this module I’ve learnt a lot about working with other people and what I have to do to get a team working efficiently. I’ve also learnt how to read a brief so that I can create exactly what the client want out of me. The briefs that I wanted to do had to be in my focus of interest other wise I won’t find the brief enjoyable, so I wanted a brief that may had some 3D animation outcomes or something where I can work on my drawing abilities.

The reason I entered in these kinds of briefs was so that I could improve my drawing skills and work on my Maya abilities so that I can become a better animator in general. This is why I chose to do briefs like ’11 Second Club’, ‘Do It In Ten’ and ‘Onform Sketches’ because these give me opportunities to work on my abilities in 3D and drawing. I did the competition Onform Sketches because I felt like my drawing skills were quite poor compered to my other skills, so I wanted to build on that by drawing on a shape once every week and improve my drawing skills and my imagination, which is what Onform Sketches allowed me to do.

For the second part of this module, which was the collaboration practice, I decided to work on the ‘Dazed and Confused’ D&AD competition because the brief focused more on film and animation which is my field of interest and which I thought I could get the most/best work out of.

The ‘Onform Sketches’ brief is a weekly challenge where we a given a shape and we have to create something with that shape, if your shape is good enough it will get posted on to the Onform Sketches website. For this I produced ten different creations using the shapes, which meant one shape a week foe ten weeks. I found this challenge entertaining but quite hard because each shape is different from the rest and there can be sometimes where the shape is to hard from me to come up with any ideas to draw in to it. Other times the shape gives me ideas instantly and I can draw that idea on with no problem at all. However, once I’ve created my idea on the shape I then had to post it online for the judge to look at and if its good enough she will repost it on her website. Unfortunately some of my where not good enough to make it on to her website but that just made me want to do another idea for the shape and see if I can do a better job. I feel like this challenge has improved my drawing skills and helped my imagination to be more creative than before.

For the ‘Do It In Ten’ brief I had the theme chilly so I decided to go comedic with my animation and have someone looking in the fridge for 2 hour and not deciding what they want to have to eat and then freezing over. I did this because it is a common first world problem for students not having any food in to eat but can’t decide what to do, I relates to a large number of people even me. However my time management on this brief was the worst I’ve had because I was also on a cruise for most of the month, then Christmas and then new years, so throughout the month I only really worked on this animation for about seven days that’s it. This meant that my animation isn’t as good as I would of liked it to be and I wish I could of changed a few things about it like giving the animation a better background and the person in the animation better movements. I do like the character design though for my animation and it did come second in the monthly competition so all in all I’m happy with it.

The ’11 Second Club’ competition is the brief where I feel like I had the most enjoyment from it because I could animate in 3D with a pre rigged model they provided. I feel like this competition taught my a lot about animating in 3D because I realised that it’s easier to animate the characters movements first and then do the lip sinking afterwards because then you get a better performance from the character. I learnt this the hard way and animated one of my characters the wrong way and started with the lip sinking and not the movements. I feel like this is one of the better animations I’ve produced in a while but I’d still like to change thing about it like giving the characters different textures and improving the movements on the characters so that they don’t seem stationary.

Finally the collaborative competition, this for me was the hardest because working with others makes me feel like I have to take charge of every thing so that I can keep a track on what’s going on and see if my partners are working according to plan. I found the whole experience stressful because I was in charge of one stop motion animation and post-production so I had to wait for my team mates to finish their work so that they could hand it over to me. I was also in charge of putting together all of the animations we had to do, which were 4 and then a BTS video as well. I feel like this brief has given me more confidence in being a director and speaking out my opinions to other people. If I could change anything I would change the way I edited the videos because I feel like I now know a lot more about after effects the software I worked in, this is because I feel like the videos could have been edited differently by not having the same effects in all of the videos and make them unique by having a unique asset in each video and then bring them all together in the final video so that they work as a whole piece as well.          

  

Project Report

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My Collaborative Contribution

Throughout the collaborative brief I feel like I've gained more confidence in becoming a director and telling people what to do and how to do it. I've also learnt that a team needs to communicate more and not just once a week because I feel like with are animations we could of done a better job. However I did like the turn out of are animations and that we show are message off using different styles of animation and techniques. I can safely say that this experience has helped me imagine what the real world industry will be like and how I will cope with in it.

Individual Practice

My experience through out the individual practice was interesting, most of the briefs I liked doing especially the 11 second club competition because it let me animate in 3D which is my preferred media. However the the Do It In Ten competition was my least favourite because I feel like I could of produced a better quality animation and if I could do it again I would give myself better time management. With the Onform Sketches I feel like it had helped me gain better drawing abilities and ideas when it comes to character design, plus it's given me more confidence in my own work and getting it out there in the real world.    

Responsive: Even More Onform Sketches

Following on from the other onform sketches I'be done, I've also done four other ones which in no coincidence I've all done in the theme of animals. Some of the shapes that we got given were hard to do and I could not think of an idea for them but for these four shapes the ideas just came straight to my head.

The first shape was in the shape of a big nose, so I thought I'm not drawing a nose on this shape because its way too obvious to do. So the second idea I had was a turtle with a really big shell, but for some reason I decided to make the turtle sad and I don't know why. I had to look up turtles on the internet because I didn't really know how to draw a turtle and if the shape would work but I made it work. This drawing was a simple sketch with no shading because I thought it works just as an outline drawing.

The second shape was a bit more difficult to think of an idea to do but from out of the blue I thought of swans and that this shape looks a bit like a swans beak. After seeing this it was easy enough to draw because swans are black and white which are the only colours we can use, so it was just the mater of drawing a swans face.

For the third shape I went with drawing a little chick because that was the only thing I could think of and it would look kind of cute because the shape is quite big so it will make the chick look chubby. The only thing I don't like about this sketch are the feet on the chick because I couldn't get them right and they were looking weird every time I redrew them, so I just went with stick feet which also kind of look like robin feet.    

Finally the fourth shape looked like an iron and so that was my first idea but I went to look on the onform sketches webpage to look for more inspiration and found that someone has already drawn out an iron for the shape. So I went back to photoshop and started sketching random stuff, until I made the top part of the shape sharp. This gave me the idea of doing a rhino for this shape, I also added a bit of shading the the sketch to make the rhino more appealing and I just reshaped the shape just a little so that it would look more like a rhino.

All in all I'm happy with the outcome of my sketches and I probably would not change them if I had a chance to redraw them. If I did have to redraw them I would just make improvements to them like changing the patten on the turtles shell, and adding more detail to the chicks character.

Animated Documentary: More Scenes

The next scene that I did was the part where the father orangutang is playing with the child orangutang but then the father gets tired and falls to sleep. With this I made the father orangutang pick up the child and throw him up in the air and catch him again. I animated this scene in Photoshop and its about 5-6 seconds long, this took longer than the last scene because there was more to animate and I tried to have the orangutang turn 45 degrees at the beginning to add a bit of something to the scene.

I've only done half of this scene so far because I'm not to sure on what I'm going to do at the part where I mention my father falls asleep. I've got different ideas about how I'm going to execute that part of the animation but for now I'm just going to leave it.

I've not finished this scene yet because I still need to add in the fingers and the last part of the scene, however I feel like it needs to be tweaked in After Effects when all the animation part is done. I like all the movements in the animation, yes the movements they gutter a bit but thats in the style of the animation. However, I'm not to keen on the faces I gave them but I'm not to sure why but it might be the fact that I've been staring at it too long, I don't know but I'll ask for someones opinion soon about it.    

Animated Documentary: Animating My Scenes

We have now started the animation process for this module so Molly and I have to animate are own parts of the story and then we give that to Malachi and he has to then place the animated backgrounds to are animations. I started off by animating the first scene of my story and introduce my characters, this was all animated in Photoshop and then taken to After Effects to add a bit of distortion and rough edges to the animation.

In the animation you see the father orangutang playing with the child orangutang whilst the you hear the narrator taking you through what is happening. This first scene lasts for seven seconds but it didn't take me that long to do because in the second half of the scene I just talk about his looks so I didn't know how to animate to that so I had a shot of the father orangutang and then just added some facial expressions. However, I might go back and add more movement to the second half of the first scene because I still feel like there isn't enough movement going on.

I also did an animation test seeing wether it would look nicer with more distortion around the orangutangs or not. I did this because this is going to one of the ways we show emotion through are animation so the bigger the distortion the more powerful the emotion will be. I showed my tutors this and they said that they liked the one with more distortion but they didn't like it on the background so I'l keep that in mind for the rest of the scenes that I need to animate.

 

    

Responsive: Collaborative Brief - Dazed Finished Videos and Submitting

These are our five final videos for the Dazed brief that Malachi, Olivia and I have made. We've hopefully have shown how individuality can portray independence and have captured the spirit of Dazed magazine. Entering are animations to the D&AD website was easy to do and it only cost me £20 but the others will pay me their share later on.

Over all I feel like are brief went well and I'm pleased with the out come of are animations, and I feel like are time management was alright but if we had to do it again I'd like to plan out are time management and meet up more than once a week. Working with others has made me realise that not everyone works that same way and and you have to work as a team to manage to work load. I also feel like my team management skills have improved because I feel a lot more comfortable expressing my ideas to the team and how I feel about other people work and how to communicate my opinions. I found that as a team we weren't the strongest because are communication as a team was a bit weak, and I feel like are styles could of been intertwined more in the animations. However, if we had to do this again I'd like to improve on are communication skills and try and work on coming up with a style that works between the three of us.  

Responsive: Collaborative brife - Dazed Post Production

As well as putting together Malachi's and Olivia's animations I also had to pace effects and tweak the videos a bit in After Effects so that the videos will be able to work together. For this to work I framed them up the same way and I added a mask to all the videos so that it draws your attention to the animation that happening on screen. I also added the effect on the Dazed logo on the end of all the videos as well so that they match up and that you know that they are all part of the same group. The picture below shows you how all the animations look like at the end of the video, this shot is from the stop motion animation I did but all videos end in the same kind of way.

There where a couple of problems throughout the brief from the other group members because I said to them that I wanted all their work in to me by the 10th of March so that I could get all the post production done in time for the deadline which was on the 16th of March. However, they decided to give me some of their work on the 10th but not all their work because they hadn't finished it which for me was quite annoying because that meant that I had to wait for that to finish their work so I could put everything together. But once I got everything I sorted it all out quite fast so I was able to submit it earlier then I expected on the 14th. 

Along with the for videos we also had to produce a behind the scenes video of how we created the videos and just talk through the process of making the animation. For this I just did a time laps recording of me animating the stop motion animation, which shows how I worked and what I was doing. The others also did videos of themselves drawing out frames for their animation and then they gave me the footage and then I had to put them all together in After Effects and subtitle what they where doing. Seen as though they didn't do time lapses of them drawing I had to speed up their videos in After Effects to create a time laps look because we only had 30 seconds for thus video which isn't that much time to talk through what we did, that's why I subtitled everything we where doing.

Responsive: Collaboration Brief - Animating Groups Work

I was given the task of animating Malachi's and Olivia's characters once they've done producing them. Well what I would actually call it editing and adding effects to what they have done rather than animating, I did all this in After Effects because it's more of a post production software and I know how to use it because I've got 4 years experience in it. 

For Malachi's work he produced 22 different drawings in black and white of the same girl but her appearance changes in each drawing. What I did with this was that I imported them into After Effects and made them into an image sequence so that the video would flick through them all with speed but I also elongated the time on some images so that you'd be able to see some of the drawings Malachi had created and what the girl looked like throughout the animation. 

I also made the background black just so the that there is more attention to the character and I also made a radial wave effect that fades in/out in characters, plus this radial wave flows with the beat of the music that Malachi created as well.  

With Olivia's work she animated 10 scenes that are between 1-5 seconds long in photoshop so all I had to do was export all of her photoshop files and then import them into After Effects. After I did that I then added a mask to the composition and feathered it out so that it creates a frame effect and it also adds attention to the character, plus it also created a different feel to the animation because it makes it look darker than what it actually is. (the gif has changed the colours in this)

Dazed gave us two different logos to use in are animations however we only used one of them because it fitted are animations a lot better than the other on did. I added the logo to the end of each video but I slightly changed the inside of the logo a bit by adding a fractal noise to it and animating the fractal noise so that it moves inside the logo.

 

Responsive: Collaborative Brief - Development

In the video that I get the make I decided to do a stop motion animation using newspaper cut outs of peoples faces and make an animation out of that, where a face is created out of different faces and the appearance keeps changing with in the animation. I did a couple of tests and videos to mess about with different facial expressions and facial features, just so that my team mates can see what I'm doing and get a feel of it and also to give me some feed back for the final piece.

Doing this stop motion animation was time consuming because I had to buy a load of newspapers to begin with and then sit through them and find peoples faces that I thought would be good for the animation. I tried to get peoples faces on a side portrait view because that is what the other two are doing in there animations but it's hard to find people in magazines that are looking side on, so I just went with front on profile view. I started with cutting out people faces in the newspapers and then when I thought I had a decent amount of faces I then cut into the faces and separated the facial features so that I could combine them together in my animation but mixing them up at the same time.

For the actual animation itself I used my Samsung NX30 camera to film with, my desk at home to animate on and used my tripod with my iphone sellotaped to it with the torch on as my lighting for the animation, so it was a very low budgeted production. The stop motion animation didn't really take that long to film because my time limit was 15 seconds and I was shooting at 12fps so I only had to take 180 shots which in the animation industry isn't that much.  

Responsive: DAZED Brief and Are Ideas

DAZED is a media brand magazine which features art, culture, fashion and photography. It's an agenda-setting publishing power house and the most inspiring way to reach the world's most influential audience through its curated network of premium digital channels and iconic print titles, dazed, AnOther and Another Man. Dazed Media also encompasses a pioneering creative studio, award winning video production, exclusive events and an industry leading talent network.

For the brief DAZED we had to come up with four videos which captures the independent spirit of DAZED but the four videos can only be fifteen seconds long and they can be used in social media websites such as Instagram, vine, etc. Also the four videos had to include their logo in the last part of each video, plus each video has to be able to work alone from the four videos but also fit in with the four. We also have to make a thirty second video show the behind the scenes of are four videos and how we made them.

Are idea for this brief came to us in a team meeting whilst we were brain storming and we figured out that a key thing about being independent was individuality. So are four videos are going to be animations, which are going to show a person having individuality by making their appearance change through out time. Each of us in the group have their own individual style so we are putting that to good use and making each of us create one of the fifteen second videos, and then because there are only three of us we will make the fourth video a compilation of all of are videos into one video.

Responsive: Collaboration Practise- Deciding a Brief

For the collaboration part of this module we have to work with other people across the courses with Illustration and Graphic Design, and also work on a live brief in the real industry through D&AD or YCN. Are tutors told us to go away and look at al the briefs on their website and pick one or two that we'd like to do and then product a board with shows are best work that represents us so we can show off to the rest the courses.

We had a massive lecture which projected everyones work so that we could see what people could do and who we'd like to work with. Some peoples work I liked but no one really grabbed my attention and plus most people said on their boards that they'd only like to work with Illustrators and graphic Designers, which for me being an animator wasn't that good. However none of this really mattered because after the lecture had finished we all went into the cafe area and there where tables spread out with all the briefs on them so that we could go to the table that had are brief we liked and see other people who also chose the same brief as we did. This helped me pick a partner easier because there where less people to choose from. The brief that I chose was called 'DAZDE' and it was about making videos which showed independence, so I wanted partners that new a lot of film and cinematography. At the table where the brief was there were four Animators and only two Illustrators so we divided are selves into two teams of three with two Animators and One Illustrator to each team, this meant that I was working with Malachi, who I was already working with in a different module, and Olivia the Illustrator. I was happy with the team because I already knew how Malachi works and Olivia is a good character designer so we knew what role she would be having.

Within the team we had different role to do, Malachi and Olivia where the character designers and animators while I was the person doing the post production, but I also did a bit of animating myself because I wanted to a bit of stop motion animation using newspaper cut outs, but I'll tell you more about are ideas later on.

           

Responsive: 11 Second Club - Final Animtion

After rendering my animated characters out in Maya I then imported the image sequence into after effects and started editing the animation in there.

The first thing I did was sorting out the different shots I had in the animation like the over the shoulder shot and the side on view shot. Then I added in a background so that it looks like the characters are standing in a room or at least on the ground, and I did this just by using the gradient ramp effect.
I then placed in some text in to the animation and make them look 3D by angling them slightly to the side, so that the text looks like it is facing the other character. I also duplicated the text and then placed the duplicated text on the floor so that it looks like it has a shadow, this also makes it look 3D.

After adding the text I then placed in images of the different meat the is said through out the animation, for example when one of the characters says "pork" an image of a pig comes up on screen. I feel like the hardest part of editing the animation was putting in the shadows because using the 3D tool in after effects is difficult us use for me because I couldn't get the right angle I wanted for ages.

With the animation now done, I uploaded the animation to the 11 Second Club website, however there website isn't as clear as it seems because when I uploaded it, it said that "if your entry plays properly, you're all set. You can update your entry by visiting the link any time before the competition ends" however when you click on the link it'll just take you back to where you submitted your animation in the first place. So the website didn't really give you any confirmation that your animation has been accepted.


On the second of Feb, after the competition had ended, I went on the site and looked at all 300+ peoples animations so that I could figure out if my animation had been accepted.

After a while of looking at the animations I got worried that mine didn't get put up, but I got down to like the last twenty animations and mine was up there and it made me so happy!



This is what my animation looks like on the 11 Second Club website.