Animated Documentary: Audio Editing

Editing the audio was simple enough to do because it was just the matter of cutting some silent bits out and then getting rid of any pops or crackling noises in the audio. The hardest part was putting together the two stories because at first we where going to have it where Molly spoke first for a minute and then I spoke for the other minute so that both stories where separate to one another but after speaking with are tutor we wanted to do something different.

What we did was we decided to intertwine the stories together because they're both talking about loosing a father but in different ways, plus both stories are different enough to establish that they're both talking about different fathers so the audience won't get confused by whats going on in the stories hopefully.

I put my first edit of the audio onto the google drive that me and my partners share so that I could get some feedback on what I've done. After a while I got feedback off of Molly and she said that it was very good but it would sound better if the ending of both are stories where at the end because what I had done was ended Molly's story 3/4 of the way in and then ended with the end of my story.

I now have gone back and re edited the audio so that both endings where now at the end and now listening back to the audio it sound better and more emotional because it has a good build to it and finishes on a serious note.

Animation Documentary: Sound Booth Recording

With the audio Molly and I thought it would be a good idea to book out the sound booth at uni so that the quality are audio sounded professional and that the sound did not have any back ground noise in it. Recording the stories in the sound booth took about two hours to do because we had to keep going over what we wanted to say either because we stumbled on are words or that we had to shorted what we where saying because it was going over a minute each. I found it hard to speak out loud when I was telling my story because it a hard subject for me to talk about so I kept stuttering and messing up on what I was talking about, it was also hard for me not to choke up.

The timing was hard as well to keep to because we kept breaking inbetween sentences so that we had a second to think of what we wanted to say next but breaking means wasting time not saying anything, which is not a good thing but I can always cut them out when I edit the audio later on. We also had to cut bits out of what we wanted to say because we where taking too long top say it and it wasn't that relevant to the story anyways.

Animated Documentary: Character Designs

These are the character designs she has come up with after I gave her her feedback. I like what she has come up with and I also like the texture she has used to draw out the characters because it looks and feels like crayon, which represents the child like style we wanted to get across to the younger audience.

For the cat designs I love the father character because the shape of him represents how is moods are and it represents how the character will be portrayed in the animation. I also like the child kitten because to shows innocence within the story and I like how both mother and child cat are similar but the father cat is different because it portrays the narrative better.

The orangutang designs I like because style wise they are different from the cat but not too different it looks odd, and I also like the simplicity of it because this will help not to district the audience from the narrative. 

All in all I thing Molly has done a good job on designing the characters for are stories and that she has not gone to over the top on the childness style.    

Animated Documentary: Visual Research

Molly then came to me with some visual character research and asked me what I thought about it so that she knew what to draw that would be suitable for the stories narrative. The visual research where two mood boards, one of them filled with orangutang character designs and the other was filled with cat character designs.

 For the apes I told her that I liked the top two pictures because they are simplistic and not too childish for the narrative. I also like how they show family and emotion within the illustrations. So I told molly to design some orangutangs like that.  

    For the cat designs I liked that angular cat at the top right because the shape can represent fearness, but I also like the bottom left cat design because it is also simple, so I said to Molly to merge the two together and create a cat that shows these together that can represent her dad in her story.

Animated Documentary: Animation Visual Development

After making molly the art director, she proposed an idea of making the characters none human and maybe making the characters in to animals instead. She mentioned doing this because are audience is to the young so replacing the human characters to animal characters may lighten up the adult content of which we talk about to the young. At first I wasn't so sure about the idea because I thought that it was a bit disrespectful to the stories we are telling, but molly explained that the animals we would be represented by would also represent us. For instance for my story I would be represented by an orangutang because they're strong and ginger like my father and also I always used to climb things and jump around when I was younger so an orangutang is best fit for both me and my father. Where as Molly will be represented by Cats because they are very unpredictable and can go from being very calm to very aggressive in an instance, which best represents molly's story.

I thought on it for a while but finally warmed up to the idea and allowed molly to start designing characters for the animation, Malachi also liked the idea to because Molly and Malachi was having some difficulty coming up with a style to draw Molly and I in. Molly also mentioned that she was going to design the characters in a naive style and not a cartoony style because that might be too insulting to our stories.

Below are some of Molly's concept designs for are animal characters:      

Animated Documentary: Research

The Little Boy and the Beast from Uwe Heidschötter on Vimeo.

In a little crit that we had with are tutor the other day we where going through different animations that can be similar to what we are wanting to to for are animation, and in that crit are tutor mentions this video about a boy telling us his story about his parents divorce.

In the animation the parents are portrayed as monsters because of there behaviour after the divorce and how they act round the child. This story relates to Molly's story because her mother used to get into bed with molly just like the beast did in the animation, also it shows a different way in portraying parents in an animation because it shows them as beasts at the beginning and as the months go by the parent changes back to a person, which shows the mental state of the parent. I feel like this could help us think about how we could portray are parents in our animation, not in a monster way but how the parents act around the child and the emotions they give off.    

Animated Documentary: Research

This video is another that are tutors showed us in the briefing and shows a different style of interviewing someone about there loved ones. I chose to look at this again because it is a documentary about a guy being interviewed about his grandfather, which relates to my family themed documentary brief.

https://vimeo.com/21703827

This inspires me because it is about a guy talking to us about his grandfather about who he was, what he did and them finding out how his grandfather passed away. So this story is similar to mine because it's about someone passing and you hear what the guy thought about his grandfather and what he did with him before he passed. This will also help me with my structure of my story and what I can do to make it more powerful because in this story the guy didn't mention that his grandfather had passed till the end, which will have a big affect on the story because he started off light about him. Visually the animation is also inspiring because it's simple animation which just outline animation on textured backgrounds, which compliment the story.

Animated Documentary: Research

Whilst we where getting briefed of this module we where shown different animations about different documentaries just to show us how we can approach this module. This video below was one of the animations we got shown and I found it quite interesting because it tells a story about their firsts which are very memorable.  

https://vimeo.com/70122505

The one thing that inspired me was the second story because the characters in it where every minimalist like an outline of the person, but the backgrounds where very detailed and relatable to the story. This has given me some inspiration on the kind of style we are wanting to do where are characters are very minimalist but the backgrounds help tell the story by having quite a bit of detail in them. I also liked how with each story in the animation the style changed so that it would represent the animation better, for instance the first animation is colourful and happy so the animation matches that story, where as the third animation was quite dark and brutal so the animation was done in black and white with picture cut outs and rotoscoped like animation which adds a distorted look in the animation. This is inspirational because in are documentary animation are stories are similar but very different at the same time so we'd like the animation to differ between the two.  

Animated Documentary: Research

This is a 'Draw My Life' video where a YouTuber called Markiplier has drawn out his life and showing us his journey and struggles he had to go through within his life. I find this video inspirational because style wise its simplistic and sometimes cartoony but when it gets to the serious part the art style doesn't disrespect the story which is what I'm wanting in are animation. I know this isn't an animation but it's still affective in how it portrays the story, with are animation we where thinking of this kind of style but having a background that also represents the person we're talking about.

The story in this video is also inspirational because he talks about cancer and how that affected him in his life, which is very similar to my story so it is very relatable. This also shows me how I can structure my story and how I can portray it to the public in a way where I won't start to get emotional and make it hard from me to talk about my struggles. I feel like Markiplires story is powerful because of the structure of it because he talks about his childhood then moves on about his family and friends, then moves on to the hard part where his father gets cancer and then passing away, he moves on to tell us how he coped but then he got stuck in a rut and ended up loosing a lot, and ended up in hospital. From this point he decided to change his life around and start doing what he wanted to do and not what he thought he had to do.  

Animated Documentary: Time Table/Production Plan

For this module I decided to create a timetable so the I can keep track on what we need to be doing each week and so that I can keep the others in track of what needs doing and for when it needs to be done by. Being the director I thought this would be a good idea to do because it will help us all in are time management so that no one falls behind. I feel like I've given us a fair amount of time between pre production, animating and post production and I've also discussed holidays and important dates like crits and presentations.     

Animated Documentary: Developed Idea

After speaking to are tutor and telling him about are idea of me speaking out about how it was hard from me growing up without a father, and he told us that it might get too hard from me to do and that it might be better if we where to get other peoples stories in are documentary. Luckily, but not, Molly my co-worker on the brief also does not see her father any more but for different reasons, so we where now thinking that if I speak about my father for 1 minute and then Molly speaks about her father for the other minute there will be a nice comparison of stories about fathers but the stories will be different in ways which Molly's father is still alive and mine is not.

We where thinking after we've spoken about are fathers we where then going to figure out what kind of art style we where going to do because in are team we've all got different art styles, for instance Malachi is more a 2D digital animator, Molly is a 2D traditional animator and I'm more of a 3D and compositing animator. Are plan is to draw out Molly and me but draw us out really simplistically and focus of are main characteristics so that we're more iconic. For example for Molly's character will have multicoloured hair, a noise ring and stretched ears, where as my character will have wavy hair and some stubble. The animation style will be 2D digital/traditional animation and in a style like the 'Draw my life' videos but the backgrounds will show sentimental things about are fathers i.e. pictures, pieces of clothing and objects that remind us of are fathers.

Applied Animation: Animated Documentary

The first module of 2016 is in Applied Animation where we got a new brief called 'Animated Documentary' where we have to group up and produce a documentary on one of the four themes which are: Environment, Mental Health, Family, and Sport.

To begin this brief off we had to write are names on a piece of paper and fold them up and then place them on the theme that we wanted to do. So I wrote my name and placed it onto the family theme, after every one had done that the tutors went round the class and asked every one to say why they chose that theme and what rough idea they had for the theme. I knew I wanted to do something about family and I knew I wanted it to be emotional and deep because in the last couple of briefs I always did something with comedy and so I wanted a change. Whilst the tutors where asking other people what they wanted to do it gave me time to think about what I could do and I came up with the idea to doing a documentary about my own experience about loosing a father when I was young and how that effected me when I was growing up.

When everyone finished saying what they wanted to do the tutors helped us get into groups of 2/3, they did this by pairing up people how had similar ideas/concepts and how wanted to do different roles in the animation process. I got paired up with Molly and Malachi because they both wanted to something about family and something emotional which is similar to my idea. I feel like we've got a good partnership because I've known Malachi for 3 years now and Molly I've known for two years and we're good friends.

Our idea is to do an interview with Molly and I about are childhood and the issues we've had with are fathers because there similar in which we don't see them any more but different because of why we don't see them any more. We want to aim this towards a younger audience to raise awareness and to say how we coped with the difficult situations which could help other people feel better and understand about there situations more.

In the animation industry people have different roles in the process so we have done the same thing in are team. My roles in the module are director, scriptwriter, post producer and animator.      

Responsive: Do It In Ten

This is my first responsive brief that I entered in the composition 'Do It In Ten' where you have to create a ten second animation based on the theme that they provide you with ever month. For this months theme it was chilly (but not the food chilly), so I decided to create an animation about a guy how can't decide what he wants from the fridge and it takes him two hours, but after the two hours are up he's frosted over and can't move but you can see that he is still unsure on what he wants from out of the fridge.

I thought I'd do this because it has some comedy factor to it and can be relatable to some people when they can't decide what they want from the fridge. I think that if I could do this animation again I'd change how I edited it together so that it would look smoother and maybe change the background because it looks to bland. However, it did only have four days to complete this animation because I went on a cruise in December to visit family over christmas and then had christmas so it only left me with a couple of days to finish the monthly brief (but this isn't an excuse I've just got bad time management skills).