Design Stages!

Despite being a straight-forward narrative with a simplistic setup, an important aspect we're still working with is the designs - since the visual aesthetics are kept to a minimum for Flash (where it is to be animated), easy readability in both the scenes, perspectives, and most of all - characters - is important not only for the audience's attention span but also the humour, which is course an integral part of the movie.

Today, we met up at the usual time and place - 10am in B124. Since Tom and Phil were missing in action yesterday, we had to post-pone our plans, but nevertheless, we made headway! Our plan today was to record both sound effects and voice acting in the recording studio but unfortunately it was booked up today; Andy however brought it to our attention that we need to suss out our character's profiles before heading on and he was right. 

Zodac star signs, as he recommended, were a good starting point for drawing the personalities, behaviours, likes and dislikes etc forward. We decided the clumsy Australian be named Bruce (despite it never being mentioned throughout the story), and be an Aeris - a masculine, neurotic/task orientated, positive star sign. For the protagonist himself - the inferior, extroverted corner-dweller, we're still in the process of filling in his personality to the fullest.

We also decided to keep consistency in check. Originally, the film opened up in a 1900s silent-film era title screen - following with a monotone, scratched film. The design style was ditched since consistency ran awry with the presence of urinals and characters dressed in present-day clothing.

In the afternoon, we decided to work further on character designs. Phil and Kamil worked on digitising the designs in Illustrator, and I did turn-arounds for the character Bruce - although his clothing design were to be changed at that stage from a jacket to a white vest.

Speaking of designs, here are Kamil's works so far:

Side view of the urinals.

Behind view of the urinals - the wall is transparent.

Profile view of the urinals and the cubicle.

Semi-final design for the presenter.

Early sketches.

Various face designs - inspired from multiple CGi films.

Designs for the protagonist.

Tests for the proportion.

Cleaned up illustration for the scene - note the brick wall.

Early sketches of the protagonist.

Three urinal scene.

Tomorrow, we'll be doing some further sound designing. Sarah, our producer, may or may not be there depending on her games for Net Ball. The room will be booked out for Wednesday and Thuresday to do sound effects and voice recording, respectively.

Active Acting

As intended, today was for some reference in acting!

Met up with Kamil on the way to B124, but apparently it was being used - Sarah was on her as well, so instead we headed to the life drawing studio next door and waited for Tom. During that time, Kamil showed us the character designs he whipped up for the presenter - he essentially stuck to the sexual appearance that Tom was after, drawing from inspiration such as The Incredible's Elastigirl and Edith Mode. Sarah took the most liking to Elastigirl's design inspiration, whereas I felt that another design of his - a lady of Victorian-era civility - nailed the feel of her juxtaposition. That said, the choice is down to our director, who arrived shortly thereafter.

Our plan was to have Tom, along with Phil Farmer, act out some of the scenes which are now in the early storyboarding stages. Phil wasn't available however, as he is ill. Instead, Tom gave his friend Ben Oren a call and he popped on over to lend a hand. Ben was the original partner to Tom during his pitching act, so it certainly helped to retain the same essence that was presented.

I was a fool and forgot to charge up my video camera, so it only had about 12 minutes of power left! Even then, I managed to get all of the important shots in. We tried a variety of different acts, recreated, and filmed in different angles - some had to be changed and modified though. One in particular was the rule of "no touching"; at first, the antagonist would shake around the unfortunate protagonist next to him with his spare arm in a rather crass and flimsy manner. When acting it out however, we felt the action wasn't getting across the "no touching" rule in a clear enough context so we thought about other ideas.

I suggested the antagonist wipe his hands over the protagonist's face, or maybe crossing streams. The latter wouldn't translate well into the humour, and whilst wiping a hand on somebody's face could give shock and disgust, Sarah brought up the point that it would be too hard to animate. (And given my record for the 30 second narrative, I'm unwilling to task risks this time) Eventually, Tom decided that the antagonist give our poor hero's bum a cheeky squeeze. The idea is simple enough to shown through the film's simplistic visuals but punchy enough to warrant a surprise.

We took a couple of takes on this act, with the 3rd going forward on Ben's input of the protagonist letting out a gasp. The extra sound and bounce really added a lot more to it, and is easier to express in our early years as animators.

We finished up, and Sarah had to head off for her game in net ball. (Hope it went well for her.) Tom and the gang were hungry and felt inclined to head over to a McDonalds or Nando's. Me and Kamil headed back to our homes, though.

Urinal Studying Day

The title should give it away, but also we got the voice recording underway.

Today we were meeting up at 11am. Sarah Pollard and Tom showed us a reworking of the script, tweaked from the input of Phil and others yesterday. Sarah managed to book the sound recording studio and even get Al (second name here) to give us a run down of using the controls. The sound studio has been refurbished since last term, since the room beyond the computers was full of junk, mess and such.

With my camera at the ready, me, Tom, Kamil and Phil cracked on with a necessary task towards the project - studying the mens lavatories. Actually it was more or less to take photos of them since trying to actually design the scene will be tricky without some reference shots. The first one we found and already a woman came past and questioned our motifs. Trying to explain our reasoning for investigation was tough because, well, we couldn't really give one. Even then, this is the University for the Creative Arts, so people should expect students to be undergoing inane antics like ours. With each lavatory we found, they were thankfully empty. I hustled with the shots to make sure no one would walk into 4 men standing around.

Reporting back to Sarah Pollard, Andy Joule came around and gave us some advice towards time management - mainly to organise what to do each week rather than specifically go into detail for each day. It's true, since our plan is to evaluate what we've done from the previous work and from there onwards, plan what to do.

We went on a lunch-break and at 2:00pm, met up at the sound recording studio to put the draft of the script into action. Doing so, we can get a better feel for the visual input and progressing narrative once the voices come into play. Ben Greenwood was there to provide some assistance in voice work - he's in fact a Director for another group but stealing him payed some good money! The sound technician arrived shortly and (re)taught us the basics of setting up the sound studio. He also showed us how to tweak the audio output until the levels were just right, and didn't question our animation subject.

Speaking of our animation, the beginning is going to have a woman of high-cultured, posh background to present the film's namesake and teach the audience. Initially, Sarah Pollard was going to be the voice behind this character (for obvious reasons) but after hearing Ben Greenwood's first few lines of delivery...we were settled. Ben has to be the voice! It's too spot on for anyone else - at least at this stage.

Tom voiced the awkward Australian man that invades the protagonist's personal space - and his friend voiced the protagonist himself.

Group 3 initial work on sound recording.

Due to Ben's performance we've decided to change the visual look of the presenter to a sexy broad, Jessica Rabbit type for now. 

Tomorrow, we're going to film some basic facial expressions as well as acting to help get the subtle gestures down in our animation. Also, the character designs will be further developed and Kamil will of sketched up some designs for the scene.

It has been 400 years!

Of course the last entry joked that I wouldn't finish it and how.

From this point onwards, aside from getting the blog's heart to be beating once more, it's also going public; this will be the first entry my animation group (more on this later) and course friends will be likely to read. (HELLO HI!)

To sum up last term for everyone else, I was assigned a project to produce a narrative with exactly 30 seconds of animation. My idea was to produce just a simple animation of a person waking up grumpily to find, from his kitchen window, the locale covered with snow. Animation-wise it was to include walking within spacial depth (towards and away the viewpoint) along with subtle body gestures - just some daily stuff. Though boring, the idea was to help me to practice the basics in movement and animating to perspective, the latter here being the most important aspect to me.

Naturally, though, setting a challenge is easy enough - the sheer complexity of trying to animate something in perspective movement, the amount of minute details you have to adjust, is damn overbearing. I put off trying to do the animation in fear of screwing up the designs and ending with a result I hated. Nearing the deadline, I had no option. But having no option was the only motivation that got me going in the end as I had to watch my animation result in the character wobbling and mutating in some grotesque fashion - and this was the result of clockwork hours, where drafts would be done over and over until the finished line. It was painfully obvious that I didn't know how to draw or animate properly, and that I should be sticking to bouncy exaggerated forms that I detest so much.

Despite the sleepless nights, it eventually dawned on me that I wasn't going to be reaching the 30 second mark by Monday (Library would be closed over the weekend, where DVD burning is possible) so I neglectfully sent my course leader an e-mail to go ahead and put me on referral, though he couldn't do that before assessment so that was a bummer. Despite that, I rushed through with what I produced onto DVD and I fell into complete dismay with myself, over my lack of confidence from before. The projects were due in for assessment around January 10th.

Well, come the dawn and referral doesn't mean I'm off the course. Several breakdowns and support from my sister, I handed in the work for my Digital Skills and essay (which I passed, I'm surprised), and took two weeks off whilst waiting for the next semester to begin at the 31st of January. During that time I practiced drawing and finished the rest of my 30-second narrative, due for February 11th. 

Anyway, so begins the new semester!

The next big three projects are Movement, Story and Structure - a continuation of Animation Principles where we are now put into groups consisting of a Director, Producer and a team of 3-4. Digital Skills 2 were this time we're learning 3D CGi software - mainly Autodesk's Softimage. Finally, Mediation and Meaning - lectures about animation given by a new staff member who is nice, and fairly well organised!

For this post I'll focus on the Movement, Story and Structure project, as it's (unsurprisingly) the biggest out of the three. As mentioned above, we've been put into groups but before this we've been tasked with presenting a pitch based on our idea for an animation. The idea has to revolve around the themes of either time, family, phobia or an infomercial (which arguably was mistaken for Public Service Announcement). Before then, we were given a week to come up with some ideas and frequently we were split into various different groups in order to encourage various opinions, feedbacks and inspiration from other students. Some ideas I heard were pretty good!

The pitches went on throughout Monday, and everyone had different methods of explaining their idea. Personally I wish I wasn't so stuttered. Luko's idea was pretty solid and he kept himself fairly smooth and controlled. After the pitches finished, we received our group listings the following day. Some of the choices were pretty surprising! I'm happy that Nikki and Luko get to realise their ideas. I'm in Group 3 - which to the side of the blog will show you who's role is what.

Thomas Jennings the Director - and his idea is, as the title pretty much sums it up - urinal etiquette. (Ur-EYE-nal) If you'd of seen his pitching, it come as no shock over his position as director. With the help of Ben Oren, he acted out most of his idea with some intriguing subtlety (which we hope to match in the animation). It was damn entertaining to watch, and no one could his trousers drop coming. My hunch is that Andy's past experience with being an actor helped him to better resonate towards Tom's idea but he certainly showed a lot of bravery regardless.

As Group 3, we first got together on Thursday before the lecture for Mediation & Meaning. It was just Sarah Pollard, Thomas Jennings and me at the time, but the producer sorted out a rough plan and schedule for next week, as well as discussing what we should focus on first. Tom recommended bringing some Haribo on the odd occasion for us and I whole-heartedly agreed. In the planning was some character designing, a script and what to do generally for the story.

I bet this post will be incomplete too!

I wouldn't put it past me to suddenly stop writing this entry and slam-dunk my mind into dreamland.

But anyway - I slipped a few more days again from the exertion of working. If I really wanted to be committed to my blog, then I wouldn't keep on letting these instances take place. Saying that, it's just one week to go until Friday 17th - the day I break up for the holiday. From the current position that I stand in with my work, I have to say, I don't feel too ecstatic about this.

This morning I was up at...well, there wasn't any awakening whatsoever since that requires falling asleep - something I ignored doing altogether. Throughout the night I had worked on my storyboards and designs, ideally to try and hit a good enough spot on where I want the story to go in context with the movements.

In case I haven't wrapped up the current plan for the 30" animation yet (probably not):
The animation, of course needing to be 30 seconds in length, also needs to demonstrate an amalgamation of previous exercises done before into the feature presentation. This includes a variety of techniques like the lip syncing, walking and squash/stretch.

Many a person studying in my course of course have both large ambitions and high expectations so a powerful story or cool scene paves the way for their plots. I went with various others - going the simpler route. In my animation, there is no particularly exciting backbone to the story, or over-arching character issues...

Nope - it's actually just me waking up to discover snow in the morning - basing it off the recently occurred weather event. The reason here is essentially down to my desire to use backgrounds, as well as having something logical and manageable for voice acting. I'm no professional, and I can't see any reason to prepare a potentially inciting piece of movie to only have it shattered by unbelievable voice acting. That's pretty cynical of me, but really - I'm in no shape for voice acting yet.

Since my ability to draw wasn't sufficient enough, I turned to How to Draw Anime & Game Characters, as well as Mamoru Hosoda's designs. I think I mentioned this before. I feel my drawings have improved vastly though, so I'm keen to continue practising from the book(s) over the Christmas holidays when I get the chance.

Inspiration!

Up at 12:15pm again today. I did get some good sleep so this is becoming inexcusable.

Because I just wasn't sure which direction to take my design for myself as a character, some obvious Anime Design 101 was essential. I love Mamoru Hosoda's design work so I punched a few of his films into Google image search to find various screenshots. I sketched/traced a number of screenshots involving Makoto from The Girl Who Leapt Through Time - as well as any other characters of the film that were included in various shots of her.

To try and understand that Hosoda magic of the designs, I copied various emotions of Makoto (and I believe it's a principle in design work to draw different emotions) and I was sort of beginning to pick it up. When it came to drawing the leading male characters, it struck me how dimensional the sides of the face are - it's not simply a case of "Well here is where the ear would be when the face wraps around...", there is some bizarre feeling of depth to the face.

Before moving onto some more of Hosoda's filmography, I whipped out Tadashi Ozawa's 'How to Draw Anime & Game Characters' Vol. 1. Whilst flicking through the earlier pages...I was shocked. The basic face structures, including eyes, nose and dimensions were pretty much line for line to Hosoda's  designs - granted, his designs are fairly generic in terms of anime but I had always thought there was more to it. Well, his mouth shapes and opal eyes are fairly distinctive; but the fundamental to drawing things in 3D lead to exactly the same results.

I carried on further with drawing some of the characters from Summer Wars - the leading male character in particular. When drawing him in various shots where his head is faced oblique to the left or right it surprised me how much difficulty I was having getting the distance of the ears to the eyes correct - as well as how far apart the eyes had to be from one another. After too many occasions of rubbing out and rectifying, I finally got it right.

My mistake? It's my old nemesis. I draw the back of the head too small.

Last year I toppled the issue by learning to draw the outline of the face much smaller to the initial circle but often still run into issues where I just cannot correctly 'hinge' the ears to the jawline. Often, the ears end up being too far back and the balance of the face is resultantly thrown off. I'd have to practically scratch in some extra skull with the pencil! Now I am getting a little bit better at maintaining a sense of balance to the head of the character.

John and Nikki wants our family - the Siresu-Mani-Jajopi family - to do something together before we break up for the Christmas. When John requested for some ideas on a date and what to do, I suggested that on Saturday we go ice skating or eat out. Sinoun jumped out to the idea of ice skating, loving that kind of activity. Eventually, Nikki came along and decided on plan of eating over at someone's place, and then playing pool down at one of the pubs (Forgot the name - I played there with Luko. William Cobbet?). Everyone decided it was the best, most suiting plan for the day. I agree.

Later shot to the Waitrose before it closed. I brought a pizza, and back home whipped it into the oven. Yannis and Georgia also were having pizza - but theirs was from Dominos. Unfortunetly, Georgia's was cold, they didn't have any dips and the side-dishes were also lukewarm. It's just as well I got mine from Waitrose of all the times. On the flip side, Georgia and Yannis did get a free drink.

Scooby spooked!

This isn't anyway to go back to a normal schedule! I don't have much to say!
Well, mainly because I spent most of today not doing anything mostly because, once again, I'm cowering over the challenge of the 30 second animation (among other things).

I got up at 12:15 or so which is bad but not so much as the 1:15pm (!!) waking hour made last week. 7am to 8am was my aim but it didn't happen and most of my blame could probably go to Sophie and everyone getting back late from Becky's party up in Guildford. Actually, my blame is mainly towards Yannis and Georgia sexing it up next door. It's TMI, and they will likely kill me for bringing this up in a public place like this, but I swear on some occasions I woke up in the middle of the night to it. They are no where near as noisy or 'showy' as Nat was though.

Got up and had some tea, my hair was a mess. At 1:00pm I got out my camera to take some reference photography of my room for the animation. I had done Graphics GCSE before, but I got an F for it - found too hard. To the point though: I'm certainly no experienced person to perspective drawing and architectural design despite doing it frequently before, so for this animation I'm somewhat cheating the system and using my photographs as a reference to digitally paint from and over. I would LOVE to design my own scenes but for now I want to play things nice and safe.

Took various photos from different angles, with various lighting conditions (such as my sink light) and I even included myself in some of the quirkier perspectives to get a good grasp on the proportional basis. The outside hall way was included into the photos as well. Of course, I'm doing this with the assumption that I'll be including backgrounds. Given however that I need to actually practice actual movements with perspective use, it's a no-brainer that some actual setting is needed for justification. The problem is that I'd like to take my pencil tests further and draw them into the computer. If I do that though, all sorts of other cool possibilities open up!

On Facebook, Nikki brought up that Taekwon-do was on at 6pm tonight. She of course wanted us to go, or else threatened to beat us up with her mastery of the self-defense arts! I wanted to go but I felt too bummed out and afraid (of the animation) to do anything. At some point before 6pm I heard Sophie bring up Taekwon-do, and I rushed out to ask her about it - I assumed she was going. Nope! One of the chaps next door in 96 was, and Sophie merely found the idea of practising Taekwon-do in casual clothing absurd. I do to, but I don't feel in the position to chip out money for the gi/uniform though.
Yannis, having done this kind of fighting style at young age, tempted Sophie to go. "No way man! *kung-fu stances/noises* - isn't my kind of thing! I'm contemporary! *ballet pose*" She disappeared upstairs.

Later on I felt hungry and felt it was time to eat. I wanted to get my other blog entries written up before then, but once again procrastination was making its rounds. Sophie had her friend Kalem up - the two along with Jamie and Yannis were up in the kitchen. Decided to have a sausage and onion casserole with potato dolphena-something. Me and Sophie took a while to eat our dinner as we were so engaged into talking. Of the things we discussed, I brought up Yannis and Georgia's pick 'n mixing at night. (keeping me up and all) Fearful that they might of not known this (and thus stir up bigger talks) I gulped a little - but Sophie was aware for what seemed as long as I had. In fact, she and Rob would be frequently bringing up their sexsation. We all know however that Yannis and Georgia seem to be believing that we are unaware of this - unless it's just that they do not want to bring it up.