Talking Dog - Knights

Still a bit foggy about this project as yet . . . have some visual ideas in my head, but not sure if they will work.

I think two things are bothering me, for one, that the script is not my idea and therefore cannot develop in the way that I normally like to work, and the other thing is the humour angle, this is'nt really my area, so I don't think my project will protray comedy timing!

Anyway, so far just got a thumbnail storyboard drawn up. Whilst drawing it out I became aware of just how much repetitive behaviour there is in the story and the action.

Talking Dog

Haven't got any further yet, as the compositing project took over at the weekend.

But I have decided on the style. . . I am going to aim at a mostly monotone look for backgrounds, and just adding colour to the flags and banners, and stuff that I want to stand out.

I want it to seem quite serious so that when the little guys come out of the back of the armour it is more of a contrast. . .and I want them to be a sort of 'Elma Thud' type character, quite cute, small body and large heads.

I am going to start the pre-production with character and background designs, and a rough storyboard as usual. . . but then I am going to put together a sound track to work the animatic from. I normally leave the sound till the end and panic, so doing it much earlier will help deal with timing. In doing the editing project I used the rhythm and length of the music sound track to set the visuals to, it felt like the same process as doing lip synch. . . so I am going to use this method to start my animatic.

Just a theory at the moment but I am hopeing it will help sort my timing better.

Compositing Hell

As I didn't know After Effects or compositing at all I was really looking forward to doing this project. . .that was sarcasm.

Took 2 compositing books and an After Effects book out of the library, and armed with some on-line tutorials I attempted to do some compositing. The tracking is rubbish, if something passes in the foreground it throws out the tracking box and sends it off on a completely different course, and it felt too awkward to go back and try to re-position the sky on all the frames that were now of out position. I am afraid I lost patience and left the sky to 'track' where it wanted to.

I animated the two main logos on the building but didn't mask them when the posts move into the foreground, again I lost patience. I wasn't sure if we needed to change the logos on the front fence. . . all of them. I tried to do it by taking the first frame into Photoshop and plotting all the logos in place and then taking them into After Effects in the correct positions, so that I could try to animate all of them by scaling on each frame. But this didn't work, they just jumped about too much. . . so again I lost patience!!
Tried to stabilize the sequence, but the on-line tutorial footage was moving forward rather than a panning shot, so our footage moved out of frame too far to be able to zoom in.

Then I found out we didn't need to change the small fence logos, or stabilize the footage . . . so the time spent messing around with these things I could have improved the other things.

So overall, I don't think this project was very well handled, we could have done with having Georg go through it with us as the brief didn't really explain things fully. And to be honest, if this had been a work environment it would have been bad professional practice to just e-mail a brief to a compositor without having a meeting to make sure of what was required. I had hoped I was missing out on something that I could possibly get into, either me and compositing were never meant to be together, or the workshops have just been not enough.

The whole thing was annoying.

'Talking Dog'

Haven't got very far as yet as it is still going round in my head while I get a few other projects sorted, so I can then clear my head for this project over Easter.

A few mood bits anyway.

Mash Up

Really liked doing this project, it is amazing what can be done with different a sound track to visuals. It is good to know a bit more about Premiere as well.

After viewing all the clips and deciding which ones to choose (Bladerunner for the visuals and Singing in the Rain for the sound track), I started by listening to the sound track first a few times and watching the visuals as well, this gave me some idea of what clips might go with which sound.

I decided to just take out a few pieces in the sound track, there is some dialogue which I wanted to include but it was a bit too long so I edited some out in Audition. Also there is a section of 'tap' dancing which would have sounded a bit odd so that was edited out. I left the sound track in the same order for the rest of the trailor because as it is a musical there are a lot of cuts and changes in tempo already, so I didn't feel the need to re-cut the different songs and music. I decided that it would be best to time sections of music to compatible images. I used 'speed/duration' to lenghten and shorten clips to fit in with the length and tempo of the music, this seems to work.

In doing this project I realise that having a sound track to work visuals to makes a lot of sense, a lot like doing 'lip synch', the timing is already done and this almost works out the timing of the visuals for you!

So on 'Talking Dog' I am going to put together a sound track (it may not be that good, because sound doesn't seem to be my thing!), but this will give me a starting point for timing and length of the animtion.

Reflection

ARTWORK

Struggles with colour work, getting to know what works and what doesn't . . . this illustration is pastel and coloured pencil all smudged together, in more detail than the storyboard. I know this detail is not necessary for animation production artwork, this is just attempting some concept artwork.

I like using watercolour paint because it gives quite a smooth finish to colour, but I get too involved in detail as I lean too close to the work and don't stand back enough.

I spend too long painting objects in detail, as in the Character Animation Lip Sync project . . . I intended the background to be simple and it ended up being too busy. And I spent too much time painting and judging by the grade, not enough time animating.

The Storyboard artwork worked better, using mixed media to achieve the look I wanted and viewing lots of storyboards on various websites trying to get the right amount of shots to tell the viewer what is going on. Using pastel and coloured pencils for all the girl and fish drawings, scanning in and using Photoshop to create all the water on multiple layers. Fusing the two together by making sure the outlines of the scanned images were blended into the backgrounds.

Storyboard Project

A few shots from the storyboard project.

Well . . . I feel like I have been on quite an emotional journey with this project. At the beginning I thought this sounds like an interesting idea for a storyboard, but as time went on and an idea just didn't arrive in my head I had second thoughts and decided it was a horrible project.

I think it was the time scale of the other lip sync project that disturbed the flow of ideas in my brain. I got into the lip sync project (which I didn't think I would enjoy doing) and after I had finished that I found it difficult to transfer my thinking over to a different project.

I had hoped to have about 8-10 days to work on the storyboard but the days just started to pass by and nothing happened . . . I tried sketching and doodling, thumbnails and writing but just couldn't settle on an idea in my head. When eventually late on Sunday evening I just tried to draw up a few scenes that had been visualised in my head, and that was fortunately enough to kick start the whole story idea in my head. So Monday morning I was able to get on with forming key scenes and very quickly it then started to come together. . . much to my relief!

Now I think that it is my favourite project to date for the result I achieved. This is probably the first piece of colour work I have produced since starting my degree which I approve of. It is a lot nearer to the kind of imagery I have been trying to get to. Although it took a lot out of me, having little time to produce the finished piece actually meant I couldn't sit and think too hard about the drawings, and the individual scenes flowed as I did them without a break, so there is consistency. Some of the drawings could have been done better and I can only hope that it does read well as a storyboard.