FMP Proposal For my final major project I am planning to continue on developing my animating skills that I was building on last semester to create a well polished final animation. Last semester was based on the technicalities, so the storylines where quite simple and random, so my main aim now is to develop on the narrative to give my animations more meaning and context. To help with the issue of the narrative I plan to go out and record a range of natural conversations, I can then use the dialogue from that to help me build the basis for a storyline. It will also help me push my animations further as I will be able to bring dialogue and lip syncing into them. I will try to record as many conversations as I can in a range of places and I will use Audition to edit through and pick out parts that could potentially work into a story. I will need to develop a theme so that if I was to create a small series, the animations would relate to each other but the theme would depend on the dialogue I collect. So hopefully that will develop as the dialogue builds up. If the recordings go successful I can then pick the best few and start to animate. Another way I would want to push my animations further is by potentially creating small sets with props to animate within, rather than creating the set in After Effects. As I found from last semester that although I learnt to create a room and put the characters in it, there was still a lot of roughness and it was very time consuming when it came to the editing. So by creating the set it would create a more polished final look and will minimise some of the computer work. I also need to start thinking more carefully about the camera positioning and how I can use that to emphasis and tell the story. Because at the moment I have stuck to the one head on shot, so I need to add a bit of variety and include a range of angles to flick between. I will be looking at other animations such as creature comforts and conversation pieces by Aardman for inspiration as they are animations based around the idea of using natural dialouge. Therefore I can look into how they have selected and pieced their conversations together, the themes they have used and how they have animated to them. I was thinking my final piece could either be a series of shorter animations i.e. 30 seconds to a minute, which would link together either through character, setting or theme. Or I could create one longer animation, such as 5 minutes, with a more in depth storyline. If I went with the series I would plan to create storyboards for a range of animations that could be included but just animate one or two to a higher quality to show how the final outcome would be if they were all to be done.
Time Plan
Week 1
Collect dialouge, Edit and Storyboard
Week 2
Collect dialouge, Edit and Storyboard
Week 3
Week 4
Create Characters and Set Continue collecting dialouge Animate story 1 first draft Edit story 1 Animate story 2 first draft
Week 5
Week 6
Week 7
Week 8
Week 9
Edit story 2 Re storyboard both animations Begin reanimating story 1 Continue reanimating story 1 Re-edit story 1 Redo any scenes required from story 1 to create the final piece If story 1 successful, Start re-animate and Editing story 2 Start thinking about title
Week 10
Redo any scenes required from story 2 and edit to create 2nd final piece
Week 11
Create final title and beginning screen
Week 12
Create series of posters
Week 13
Portfolio Finalising
Week 14
Portfolio Finalising
Carrying on from last semester I started thinking about other methods I could use to create my animations other than just clay. So I started looking into different computer software where I began learning 3ds Max. I used a range of YouTube tutorials to help me learn.
Learning 3d Studio Max
Creating characters from 3d objects The first lesson I began was to create a character using the 3d objects, such as a box. I then modified it using a range of techniques like extruding, sub dividing and manipulating its frame to start to configure a human form. I then attempted to use this technique and start building one of my characters from last semester. I got the very basic outline of the body but it was very basic and I struggled to give it more detail. This is a method I do feel I would be able to grasp but it would take a bit of time.
Creating characters from polygons I then started to learn to create the characters from 2d shapes such as a square. I found this method much more complex because you had to be careful how you moved every single point on the X, Y and Z axis. For example I was found when I veiwed it from a range of angles there were a lot of gaps where the shapes hadn’t lined up properly. I think this is much harder than the previous method.
Creating room Aside from just creating the characters I started thinking about the room and spaces they would be in. I started by creating a very basic room made up of a series of boxes that have been carefully placed together, making sure that when you looked at it from all angles there were no gaps. I then learnt to apply materials to the shapes to give them there details such as the flooring, walls and pictures.
Animating I then started learning some very basic techniques for animating. I created a little biped character to get a rough bone structure. I could then play around with moving the characters body and understanding the versatility of positions and movements. I then experimented with the key framing and time to understand how you can get them to do different things over different periods of time and how the software worked.
Although I was learning 3ds Max I found it was very complex therefore I didn’t think I would be able to learn it to high enough quality by the end of my FMP, so I decided to stick with using clay. Still going with the idea of natural dialouge I started researching into some other short animations to look at how they have used dialouge, themes, humour, the settings and the camera positings to create their final animation.
Creature Comforts
Started looking at creatute comforts to get some ideas of how they have approached the idea of taking natural dialouge and applied it to an animation. They have interveiwed people so the characters are talking directly to the audience which is very engaging .. They have used short clips for each character so they flick between quite regulaly to keep it interesting and each episode will be based around a main topic which each character will address there veiw on.
Text Analysing Animation They use a lot of small background ideas to add to the humour rather
than it being about the main character its self, they add pauses and some characters such as the race dog have a feature they have everytime such as he run off everytime just before he finishes his sentence to add humour to that character.
Animated conversations
Used general day to day situations and have recorded the whole thing and animated to that story. these are good because you get a whole sense of the story and see general day activities, good shots and mixing two situations to one story so you flik between the two keeping you more entertained.
Text Analysing but at the same time I Animation find them quite dull because there quite slow paced and the themes arent the most excitng.
Pixar short animations
thse ones didnt have dialouge but they wer to give me some ideas for short clips and things for my animations....
Text Analysing Animation
Love the short quick pace of it, ... and the build up to the puncline
Shaun the sheep
Used lots of quick camera angles ranging from one second shots to about six. I found the vast range of camera shots more interesting because it keeps the audience more active and engaged .......
Text Analysing Animation
I began going out trying to record as much natural dialouge as I could in a range of places such as pubs, work, coffee shops, super markets, house veiwing and friends houses. Over the week I collected about 16 hours worth of recordings. I then took the recording I had captured into Auditions where I started editing and trying to pick out as much as I could. (Recordings avaliable on request) I was finding this approach very challenging because I was finding myself waiting hours for one relatively good thing to be said, so it was very unreliable and I wasn’t getting much from it.
However with a few of the recordings I did get, I tried creating some very quick, rough storyboards hoping to trigger some ideas for a theme.
Story 1 This was about 2 policeman that were ranting about one of there training days, and taking the piss out of some of the procedures. As the storyline wasn’t the most interesting I was trying to think of others ways to improve it. I was thinking about how Creature Comforts uses a lot of background humour to make there stories more interesting so I tried using this method.
Story 2 This was from a house veiwing I went to so it was general chat. The storyline once again wasn’t that interesting but I was thinking about how you could play off what they say to give a comical effect. For example when she keeps going on about how big the bedroom is, have them really squashed in a tiny room. Or when she says about the nice veiw over to the neihbours kitchen have some grumpy old women making gestures out the window and so on.
Story 3 This was about one of the guys at work telling a funny story of an incident that happened to a friend. He did quite a bit of acting out and sounds to emphasis the story so I started thinking about gestures, expressions and the camera angles I could use to help tell the story.
I started to realise that so far my approach wasn’t the most successful because there was no consistency in any of the stories and I wasn’t getting much interesting dialouge. But story 3 did trigger me a new idea. I liked how it was based around someone telling a short humourous story, so I decided rather than collecting random dialouge, I could ask people more direct questions such as, what’s their most embarrasing moment? What’s their funniest drunken incident? and so on. With this I built up a small collection of more direct recordings. (Also avaliable on request) This lead to a new idea for my final piece. My piece could be a collection of 4 short humourous animations, where each one would be based on a different character telling their story. I could then use things such as the characters and setting to link them together.
Now I was starting to get a few stories together I started to think about my characters. I decided to create them out of pure clay because I found from last semester it worked better than creating an armature. I also liked the frompy, naive look of the clay because it added humour to the characters. I created them with a very simple human form such as the arms and legs so the audience could understand the gestures but it wasn’t in to great a detail that it would be a problem if they had quite clumpy moves.
As I was including dialouge to these animations I started thinking about how I was going to lip sync my characters. I decided it would be easier to swap the mouths over for each word rather than trying to manipulate the actual head to avoid causing distortion. So I started researching into the different mouth positions and expressions and from that I created a small range of lips and eyes.
Lip Sync Research
Facial Expressions I did a few test shots combining the different expressions to see how they worked together and sat on the character. The mouths worked really well but I think the eyes weren’t as successful because it was hard making them the same size as the original, so you could tell they had been change. I decided it might be better just to add a bit of clay on and off the original eyes when animating if I need to change the expression.
Lip Test I created a quick test video to check the mouths worked fluently after one another and that it looked realistic.
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I felt the lips worked well together as it created the impression of general mouth movement, so I now wanted to test it with some dialouge. I wanted to keep the animation simple so I could focus on the lip syncing and body gestures. So using some inspiration from Creature Comforts, I decided to have the character just sitting on a chair and talking directly to the camera. I created a small story board to help plan a few of the gestures.
*Begin sitting on a chair. *Lean over onto desk to show she is relaxed as she begins to tell her story.
*Brings them in as she acts out having her towel on and shake them like she is gripping the towel.
*Bring leg up getting comfortable as she starts to get into her story.
* *Shakes hand as she says,”oh no no no” as she remembers she has got a bit wrong.
*Move hands out for open window, using the gestures to act it out as she start remembering it.
*Expresses a confused face and starts to rub it as she is trying to think about the word she is trying to say.
*Shakes hands by her head as she says “shit” as she starts getting excited about her story.
*Lean forward and back and kick legs as she laughs at the end.
Setting
Lip Sync Test Click Image To Play
After running the test I found the lip syncing was starting to come together and the gestures worked well emphasising the story and adding to the humour. But I realised that some of the lips were placed back quite wonky or in a slightly different position which became noticable so I need to be more aware of that. Although I wasn’t focusing on lighting I am aware this and the camera shaking needs a lot of work.
As my animations are going to be based around a few characters telling stories I realised with them all being the same colour it could be quite confusing identifying one from another, so I decided to recreate them keeping to the same style but using a different colour for each character.
Creating The Set As I wanted the setting to be featured in all the animations I wanted to create a space that would be relevant for all stories. I thought about having the characters around a table as it’s quite a common place people can sit and chat, so I decided to go for a dining room setting. I could also then add little background stories to give a bit of variety to each animation. For creating the set I made one base for the floor and three stand alone walls. I wanted the walls to be detachable from the floor to give me more flexibility on the camera positioning and altering the set.
Final sets
As the lighting has caused a lot of issues through out my previous animations I decided to try another approach to try and improve the quality of them. This time I set up 5 bright battery powered lights, to avoid surges from the mains causing them to flicker. I also used white lights so I wasn’t left with the orangey tinge and I spread them across the whole set so it was all well lit.
Now I’ve got the main elements together, I wanted to start animating to test how it looks within the room. So I started going through my recordings to pick one out. As I was going through I realised I was getting more interesting material from the girls so I decided the theme will be based on a group of girls telling there embarrasing/funny incidents. Once I picked my first story I started by writing out the script and in Audition’s working out exactly how many frames each word, pause and sylable was to try and get the lip syncing as realistic as possible. I then set up three cameras to give me a variety of veiwpoints and I began animating.
One issue I came across when animating was one of the cameras I set up failed to work. And another cut out half way through leaving me with very limited angles. To try and get around this I used photoshop, (Record and Automate batch) to zoom in on both the sets of photo’s I did get but with zooming in, caused a loss of quality.It also made the camera movement more noticable. Once I had got my 4 sets of photo’s I imported them into Premiere to start editing. I found that rather than trying to play around with 1000’s of photos, it was easier to export each angle into a video file, then import it back in and play around with cutting and combining. I tried to think carefully about where I was cutting the scenes so it wasn’t in the middle of the words and became to noticable, but this is something I need to plan more carefully in the future.
Another issue I had, was as the lights were battery powered, the lights become gradually darker as the batteries run down. And when I changed the batteries over the brightness suddenly increased. So I was left with half really dark animation and half very bright. I tried to avoid this becoming to noticable by changing the camera angle as the brightness changed, I then in Premiere used the brightness effect to try and balance out the scenes.
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lighting talk about issue with that and show altering the brightness. Looking back at the animation I realised I had all the characters move at the same time at the beginning which looks very unnatural, and the objects and camera get knocked quite a bit so I need to be more aware of this.
I then started to animate a second story, this was also another rough test but I tried to think a bit more about the background characters, such as drinking, sitting on the chair backwards and dealing out some cards to try and create an impression of a more realistic scenario. I also tried another approach to tackle a few of the issues I had in the previous animation such as, • Set up three SLR cameras and made sure they were all fully charged. • Changed the batteries more regularly on the lights. • Took out a shutter cable. • And pinned down the table and blue tacted the objects not in use.
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Looking back at the animation I prefer how the angle of the scene changes more regularly because it is more visually interesting, but I need to start putting more consideration into the camera angles because at the moment i’m limiting myself to the same three. There are still a few movements of the objects such as the table and chairs but not as bad as before. The lighting is also still quite dark in some shots and as the angle changes the brightness is different so I need to be more careful with this but overall I think from the technical side it is a slight improvement from the previous animation.
After creating my first two animations I started to realise that just having it set in the room was becoming very restricting and they wasn’t as interesting as they could be. Although I was planning on doing four different stories I have decided instead to focus on the two I have been working on, and focus much more on the small details to create better end pieces.
Story 1
My new idea was to still have them round the table talking, (to link the series together), but then flick between scenes of them at where the story took place. That way I could bring the humour in from acting out the story and having more visuals of it rather than just relying on how they tell the story itself. So I then created some storyboards planning each second, to work out how I was going to show the story and the camera positionings I was going to use.
Story 2
Evaluation In Progress From the start of this project so far I have found it at times really challenging with the uncertainty of the dialouge I was collecting and where I was heading with it. But as the dialouge has built up and I have started exploring some test pieces, I have gained a clearer idea of what I plan to do and what I aim for my final piece/s to be. Originally planning on creating four animations, I have realised how big a task that would be and decided that I would rather focus on the two, (One if neccessary) that I have already been working on, to get them to a much higher quality finished piece, rather than creating 4 ok ones. But I do feel from the two I do, it will be clear enough to vision what a series could be like if more was to be created in the future. I started realising it is much better to storyboard and plan the scenes ahead, because you can break down the animating process and when it comes to re-editing you can just re-edit the neccessary scenes rather than having to do the whole thing. It also saves me a lot of time because before I was having to animate all four characters every frame, where as now I’ve planned my camera angles I can just focus on the characters in the scene. I have begun re-animating my first story which I plan to finish within the next couple of days allowing me up to two weeks to re-edit/ animate and perfect for a final piece. I have then given myself two weeks to create my second animation. I am aware this is quite a quick time frame for an animation but I am confident that I will be able to work hard enough to do it. But if animation one fails to go to plan I will reconsider doing a second one and focus just on getting that one perfect. I am then planning on creating an intro screen and a small series of posters to go with them. At the moment I do not have a final title for the animations but I will start thinking about that and will finalise it nearer when it comes to creating the intro screen.