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.

Responsive: Another Onform Sketch

 For the new Onform Sketch I had a few ideas go through my head like maybe drawing a skull on top of the shape, or drawing the shape into a nose however when I look on the website to look at other peoples sketches I saw that most of my initial ideas had been taken.

After looking back at the shape I realised that the shape kind of looks like the shape of the aliens head off of the film 'Alien'. So I decided to go with that idea and draw the shape into the aliens head, I started to do the outline of the aliens head but it didn't look quite right. Thinking about this problem made me think about doing the drawing with just using the colour white, using this colour I also dropped the opacity of the brush just so that I could add shadows to the drawing.

This took me a long time to do because I had to figure out the positioning of the mouth and how far back the mouth will open, whilst adding detail to the mouth. I also tweaked the shape a bit so that I could make the mouth the right size and so it looks like the alien from'Alien'.  

Animated Documentary: Slight Problems

Unfortunately in are team there has been some difficulties involving work and team/time management, this is because Molly has been going through some hard stuff which her self or with her family I'm not to sure, and Malachi isn't giving me any background designs to work from.

With Molly having her own problems to deal with she had also stopped talking to me for a week so that she could sort her own stuff out, this made me worry and it delayed the project a bit because I couldn't talk to her. She is talking to me now but is not coming into college so all are communication has been through messaging each other over the internet, to me this is fine as long as the work gets done. I hope she gets better and starts we seeing her at college any time soon.

Where as for Malachi, he has been coming to college but however hasn't been doing much of this project when he's here. This may be because we are working on another project together and he's working on that I don't know, but I'd like to see more of his work on this project sooner rather than later. Saying this I'm having words with him soon and hopefully we can work things out.    

Animated Documentary: sorting scenes to animate out

Before we could start animating I had to assign everyone scenes to which they could animate to, so what I did was to just tweak the animatic a bit so that I could add indicators to certain scenes for different people to animate.

So doing this I added little coloured squares to different scenes and assigned people a colour so that if a scene had a certain colour a certain person would animate that scene. For example Molly has a green coloured square so whenever a green square comes up in the animatic she has to animate that scene.

Also in the animatic I changed some scenes around and cut some scenes out so that the animation would run through fluidly and not all over the place, I also did this because I felt like there where going to be too much to animate and too much things on the screen at once so the audience won't know what's going on.

I did change the audio in this animatic to because the new audio now didn't match up with the visuals so I changed it round. This also helped arranging the scenes around because the audio was now a better indication of how are animation was going to flow.