Monday, 25 April 2016

25/04/2016 - Last Post

Week...........something
Last Post

It has been just over a month since my last post but it has been busy for me finishing up all my animations. I'll start with the claymation that I did research for in my last post.

Claymation

Below are links to my final video for the claymation, "What The Onion". I decided to post them on Vimeo after I realised that it's simply just better than YouTube.




This image above is an original frame from the claymation, you can see from the image below that I adjusted the overall look and feel of the scene. I wanted to create a more gritty scene, the original looks too clean and modern whereas the image below looks more like a livable environment for some weird fruit-clay creatures.


This image below shows the effect in Premiere Pro I have used to achieve this effect. It's called Luma Key. The  Link below is to a video I watched on Luma keys in Premiere Pro. This doesn't have much bearing on my animation but I was still interested in knowing how to properly use Luma Keys for future reference.



This is the last frame before the belnder kicks in, This scene was achived with a combination of the effect above ad the effect below which I will explain next to that image.


I nested all my frames from the start, up to the frame before the blender begins, this means that all those frames are effected by the Luma key as a whole. I am then able to double click on the nested sequence and it allows me to refine and edit the frames individually but still keeping the nested sequence together in the main work area.In this image below, I simply adjusted the brightness and contrast to achieve the desires effect.


The brightness and contrast changes.


This image below is a still from my blender video...I actually blended apply juice rather than blending an onion.


I added a "tint" effect to make the whole video red. The reason behind this was to add a more horror vibe to it so the viewer knows that something bad is happening.



This last scene was achieved by playing about with a lot of different effects in Premiere Pro. The red actually came from the blender video. I wanted the sound of the blender to be carried onto this scene so I simply duplicated it over and because it's on the video track below this whole scene....it can be slightly seen appearing in the background during this part, and of course, that is where the red comes from. I also added an effect to the audio of this duplicated blender video to fit with the change of scene. I felt the sound of the continuous blender didn't do anything for the animation so that's why I changed it.


These are the changes I made for this last scene.


This image below shows the audio change in the second blender video. I added a "Phaser" to achieve the sound I wanted.


First animation test



This was the very first animation I did for this module, it was just a test I did to get back into Photoshop. There are very few frames and it was more to help with the technical aspects.

It's worth noting that the music in these three animations (this one and the next two) were created by myself using http://www.beepbox.co/.

Further photoshop etching idea



This idea was the beginning of my etching theme. I wanted to replicate crayon etches but in Photoshop. I found that the easiest way of doing this was using the eraser as my brush and my brush as my eraser. Hopefully with that you can watch the animation and understand what I mean. I have also made this animation loop and added my own soundtrack.

Rabbit etching idea



For this animation I wanted to take the etching idea a little bit further...so I drew a rabbit. This animation uses the same technique as above but I feel that I perfected it for this animation. I managed to get a smoother line quality for the end result.

Peer Feedback:

Feedback that I got from Elliot Mcarthur (classmate) was about the overall quality of the line work for this animation, That was feedback given on an earlier version . He said that it wasn't really good enough and that feedback prompted me to develop a better technique for the etching in Photoshop.

This image below is what I had before the feedback. My process that generated this was to literally copy the frame and then erase that little bit of black to reveal the colour underneath and to also make the rabbit, I did this each frame. Copy frame, draw next little bit of rabbit and repeat. That's why the line quality is that great.



In response to this feedback I changed my method and each new frame I literally redrew the whole rabbit with just a little bit more of the line added in that the rabbit is made from. This is clearly visible when you watch both of them. The above version you can see the line just growing out but the one below you can see the whole rabbit being redrawn each frame.

Below is a link to the version of the animation that had the messy line work.
https://vimeo.com/164100653

...and of course the link for the newest version with the feedback taken on board can be found further up this page.

CatSnake



This animation is is a combination of Photoshop and newspaper cutouts. I originally animated CatSnake in Photoshop before acquiring newspaper cutouts for his eyes. I also got newspaper cutouts for the background.

This is perhaps one of the more experimental animations I have created, it has also been the one that has received the best feedback from classmates throughout the semester. People seem to have liked the obscure narrative but also the newspaper eyes.

Peer Feedback:

I got feedback from another classmate about perhaps animating CatSnakes mouth...this was something that I hadn't thought about and would only be done if I took it further but for this project, the aim was more about combining the cutout eyes with the Photoshop animation so I diplomatically dismissed the idea.

Rotoscope



This rotoscope animation was perhaps the most time consuming because I had to firstly do an initial pass of normal rotoscoping over every frame before going back over each frame with my new style of lots of horizontal lines to make up my frames.

Peer Feedback:

I got feedback from several people (Elliot, Roberto Fontana and Shuvojit) regarding the frame rate of this animation, they recommended I added more. Instead of getting more frames to then rotoscope over I decided to experiment with longer horizontal lines to make up the figure.

This frame below is one of my original frames where I had rotoscoped over it with small horizontal lines.


This frame below is one of my added inbetweens to create a sort of blur effect but to also add more frames. The purple was my way of adding even more movement to the animation while also making it more interesting with colour. One of the things I wanted to do with this rotoscope was make it different from almost everything I had come across in my research. So I have been able to add extra movement with the inbetweens but also the purple patch has been redrawn each frame which adds further movement. There is also the fact that its a rotoscope so I would say there is three-way rotoscoping  going on here. colour, inbetween and keyframes.



 Summary

Overall for this module, I have been able to experiment with a variety of different animations as well as software. This has given me a better understanding of how to structure animations since I haven't necessarily been so focused on animating characters. I have been allowed to focus on my preferred interest of storytelling in general and I see animation as my preferred medium for expressing myself and my ideas.

This module has been my favourite, I liked doing animations in just a few weeks because it doesn't take too long to get to the end result and its always uplifting when you can see a final product. This constantly helped to motivate me for the next animation throughout my project. I also learnt a bunch of neat tricks in Premiere Pro and Photoshop for getting the most out of my work. This year has been a bit lost for me, I came into it not quite sure what I wanted to do (like every year in college and University so far actually) but I felt more lost this year because of the looming presence of 4th year. It felt like I had to specialize in something so I could make the most of my remaining time here. Based on other modules, I don't want to go into modelling for games...modelling for animations wouldn't be too bad but I can't handle all the technical aspects of modelling for a game engine (my dislike might just be coming from having to actually use Unreal for a module but I guess that artists in industry today have to use game engines themselves anyway). So this module has shown me that my interests definitely lie in animations, but not necessarily just 3D like I have become accustomed to doing. It has been relieving to step away from 3D and truly experiment with animation while having the freedom to look into the narrative side of things and also looking into things I like in general as influences. I really enjoyed researching for these animations as it was an excuse to find the animations that truly inspire me.

I was actually think today on my way to University (on the deadline day) that I don't really have any animations that are show reel material and I feel that some of the animations I have created this semester are some of the best I have made ever and if I had focused a whole semester on the rotoscoping or CatSnake then I could have produced a really good animation. I am pleased with my animations this semester as they stand, I have learnt a lot about experimental animation and animation in general in use with Photoshop and Premiere Pro. I feel I have truly been able to focus on the overall animation experience rather than just the animation of a character, which, in my opinion, is a more satisfying experience. 
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Thursday, 17 March 2016

17/03/2016 - Claymation

Week 10
Claymation

The below passage is copied from one of my previous blog entries and sums up my general narrative for my claymation.

"The lecturer mentioned I could do claymation as my next animation, this almost immediately gave me a general narrative idea which I want to get down on this blog post so its here for next week. The idea is that there are these oddly shaped monsters and the end consists of one of the monsters melting, thus, revealing an apple inside, this is when the other monsters begin to replicate what happened to the first so they can reveal their inner fruit, "I believe that inside every one of us is a fruit waiting to come out" will then come up on screen....then the last monster reveals a vegetable inside of him...which the fruits are not too happy about so they murder him. "he's not good enough for the food waste bin, dump him with the other trash". So that is my general narrative for next weeks animation. I'm thinking also that they throw him in a blender and we see the vegetable afterwards dragging its mangled body across the kitchen top."

Inspiration

Here I have accumulated a few animations to inspire my own experimental claymation. I plan on doing the actual claymation myself at the weekend and I should be editing it next week (week 11).

Fluxos - Diego Akel




In this claymation Diego Akel uses the motion of clay to create his piece. He pushes the clay around in interesting ways and makes shapes pop out of the cay to then have moving around the screen. This has made me think about the background for my own claymation. I believe I was just going to leave it as my kitchen top...but now I want to use odd items I can find to make a sort of surreal environment where it looks as if the clay creatures use our items for their own (different) purposes. This claymation has also opened up my eyes to the possibility of having the clay of my characters distorting throughout the claymation to show the unstable nature of the clay (and to foretell the narrative side of there being fruit inside my clay creatures).

AbztraQt Sir Q - Rafael Teles

https://vimeo.com/69960562



This claymation was just mental, There were similar aspects to the one above where the background clay was moved around to create movement, the characters you can also see on the bottom image appear out of the clay and also disappear back into the clay sometimes as well. They also get eaten by some tinfoil bugs...which strangely works quite well. This has of course given me the aspect that I can have more than just the clay animating. This sort of approach overall though is different than the one I had in mind. I intend to shoot this like a live action film with cuts to help move the narrative along.


Hollerings: 3 Stories in Wood - Lara Gallagher

https://vimeo.com/69636188

Although this animation is a stop-motion (and not claymation), I have put it in here for the inspiring aspect of how the narrative is constructed. By that I mean that the narrative is split into three acts, and there is a frame with one of the wooden blocks above saying what the next act is called. This has made me want to divide my narrative into three acts of my own to add a more punchy element to them. I believe that this structure could give a clearer narrative in my short time span for the claymation itself.
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Tuesday, 8 March 2016

08/03/2016 - Animation 04 - Update

Animation 04 Update

Below is a link to my latest animation on YouTube, it still has some animation to be done.


Over the past week I have been rotoscoping my rotoscoping...that's the stuff with the horizontal lines over my original rotoscoping lines. I also had the idea of adding colour, so I added a purple colour that breaks the borders of the character lines. After doing this I decided on trying to do the in-betweens with the purple colour now and when the character jumps up into the air and becomes a smoke like creature I have it in mind to perhaps use purple again so the viewer associates the purple smoke creature as the character from the beginning.

Summary

I like the direction of this animation so far, the colour particularly has made the whole thing that extra bit better for me. It has been quite time consuming doing the extra rotoscoping but I think it has definitely been worth it. I believe that this animation will have taken about two weeks to complete but it's understandable considering the grueling aspect of rotoscoping, I hope to have this polished by the end of the second week though so I am not having to work on it in the last few weeks when I am polishing off my other animations.
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Monday, 29 February 2016

24/02/2016 - Animation 04 - Rotoscoping Line Work

Week 07
Rotoscoping Line Work

Here are my different tests for my line work, the top one here is my chosen style and the rest are my other tests I did to give me more of a choice to choose from.




The idea now is for me to rotoscope my existing frames again but with my chosen line work, then I will do inbetweens of these frames to build up my animation.
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24/02/2016 - Animation 04 - Rotoscoping

Week 07
Rotoscoping

 This weeks animation revolves around the technique of claymation. The beginning of this post will be focused around a few rotoscoped animation analyses to give me a bases of what people have done with it in the past.

 These two below both deploy a basic concept of rotoscoping, while I definitely appreciate the thought and hard work gone into such an animation, there is something lacking in terms of creativity for me. The hard work of rotoscoping can be easily seen in "A Scanner Darkly" where according to the director, Richard Linklater, filming took just 23 days whereas the rotoscoping took 18 months to complete.



Below is a screenshot from a rotoscope animation, the rest of the animation is actually in the traditional rotoscope animation style but this part at the beginning is more interesting. Here they have used a more abstract style for rotoscoping the man on a skateboard which only uses the video footage as a template of which to express themselves rather than a template of which to mimic the footage in drawing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IimLnyOeCtY

This rotoscope is a bit more creative, here the creator has used the original video footage as a foundation of which to draw over and that's exactly what they have done by adding several new elements which I can only speculate were not in the original footage. My intention for my rotoscope is a bit different though as I wont be drawing over my character but simply drawing over him with a different style of line work.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_E3uP1KOp_Y


 Animatic 01


Over the weekend I took pictures of my brother in a fight sequence, the idea here is to rotoscope in a low frame rate but then add inbetweens that are free hand and more abstract. So far I have done the basic rotoscoping. The intention also is to have a fight scene in the middle where the protagonist leaps into the air, turning into a smoke like character, and beating away foes before landing back on the ground in his human form. The whole middle part will be free hand. I am also going to experiment with how I do the inbetweens, it would be nice to add some colour and I feel this would be the most impactful way of doing it.
Above is my original rotoscope but I was not enthused by it at all. I appreciate the time required for rotoscoping and I acknowledge it as a storytelling method but visually, it just doesn't appeal to me that often. That is where the image below comes in, I tried using horizontal lines which I think gives a more interesting appeal and makes it look a bit less like a traditional rotoscope. I will experiment today with a couple more variations of how I can trace over the character.


Feedback

After a talk with the lecturer today, There has been a focus on the experimental side of things with the rotoscoping transitioning into hand drawn animation and back again. I am also going to need to get pictures of my "actor" jumping up so I can use it as reference for my protagonist jumping up and turning into a smoke character while fighting in the air.

Plan
My plan for the rest of this project is to leave myself around 3 weeks before submission to tidy up all my animations and compile them together into a mini showreel. This means I will be doing a couple more new animations after this one.


Claymation

The lecturer mentioned I could do claymation as my next animation, this almost immediately gave me a general narrative idea which I want to get down on this blog post so its here for next week. The idea is that there are these oddly shaped monsters and the end consists of one of the monsters melting, thus, revealing an apple inside, this is when the other monsters begin to replicate what happened to the first so they can reveal their inner fruit, "I believe that inside every one of us is a fruit waiting to come out" will then come up on screen....then the last monster reveals a vegetable inside of him...which the fruits are not too happy about so they murder him. "he's not good enough for the food waste bin, dump him with the other trash". So that is my general narrative for next weeks animation. I'm thinking also that they throw him in a blender and we see the vegetable afterwards dragging its mangled body across the kitchen top.
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Wednesday, 24 February 2016

24/02/2016 - Animation 03 - Animatics

Week 07
Animation 03

Animatic

Today I have finally completed my animatics for my third animation, It was started on Monday, so not that bad in terms of time. The title of the animation is "Catsnake". The idea here is to combine 2D animation in Photoshop with newspaper cutouts. I'll explain this below the animatics when it has some context.

First Animatic

https://youtu.be/azFMQlXiQ10

 This is my first animatic, The premise here is of a cat watching a snake miraculously jump up and sprout wings before flying off into the distance...the camera then pans out and its revealed that the cat is a catsnake. The second animatic below is with colour.

Second Animatic

https://youtu.be/nXIr42hVAN8

 Here I have added colour but also some extra frames from the snake to make it a bit smoother. My idea with the newspaper cutouts is to use eyes from news papers as the eyes of the catsnake and to possibly create a collage of images to create a background for this animation. I'm hoping that by adding the newspaper eyes I will be creating a disorientating effect for the viewer.
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Tuesday, 16 February 2016

16/02/2016 - Refined Project Outcome

Week 06

Refined Project Outcome


Before yesterday (when I talked to the lecturer) my project was aiming more towards experimenting with animation before finally making a proper animation with a narrative, but now it has changed. Instead, I am going to get an animation done each week with a different style/technique and all of these compiled will be my final piece.

My next idea for this weeks animation is combining stop motion with Photoshop, the example I have in my head is a cat...whose eyes are cut-out pieces of paper that I have photographed and put into Photoshop. I could even try using eyes cut-out of magazines. It would also have a mouth and maybe a nose all from the same style of cut-outs....this idea doesn't seem overly taxing though so if I prepare properly then I can get a couple of these done this week to really push my idea.
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Thursday, 11 February 2016

11/02/2016 - Animation Test 02

Week 05
Animation Test 02

Today I created a couple of animations based on the idea of a digital crayon etching. Shown below by my lovely crayon skills.

The process here was to colour a piece of paper entirely in crayons (lots of different colours) and then go over the whole thing with black,after that you scratch away a design to reveal all the colours underneath. This principle is what I have decided to further with digital software.

Creating these animations was a little different than most animations, instead of drawing with a brush to create my line work, I had to erase from the black layer to produce the line work. The evolution i my process can be clearly seen between my first and second rabbit tests but this will be easier to understand with the context of the animations themselves.


First Test - Animation Test

This first test was me experimenting with the technique to get the process right. On one layer I went crazy with different colours and on the layer above I made a simple layer of black. I copied the layer then made a small line, copied that new layer and drew the next part of the line, that's why the line quality is a bit sub-standard, but, this is something I address in my second rabbit test. this technique meant that I was using the eraser to rub away the black to create my actual line. so eraser = brush.

Rabbit Test 01

Here I wanted to give some sort of narrative to my animation at least...with a rabbit. I used the same original two layers from the above animation and just used the same technique of copying the last layer and just adding the next part of the line. I of course drew my rabbit properly first to have a outline to follow as a guide. AS you can see though, the line work is of a poor quality but that is all sorted out in the next one thanks to my problem solving.


Rabbit Test 02

This is the more refined version. Instead of doing my original technique of drawing a little bit of the line each time, I had the idea of originally drawing the rabbit with good line work and then I would use the brush tool (which acts as my eraser in a way) to then make a new frame and rub out a bit of the line each time. This sorted out my poor line work. So I was working backwards to create my animation.

Rabbit Test 03

This one is even more refined!...the only different though is the ball in the bottom right corner is moving for the whole animation. My intention for this piece is that the ball creates the shapes, so it is clear that the rabbit has emerged from the ball and in my next iteration I am going to animate the rabbit twitching his nose and ears a little bit before transforming into a wave or something similar.

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Tuesday, 9 February 2016

09/02/2016 - Animation Tests 01

Week 05
Animation Test Tests 01

During the weekend, I created a couple of quick animations in Photoshop and managed to export it and compile it into Photoshop so I could position the two separate line animations in the same space and export it out as a video, the link for that is below.


I like this animation as a starting point for a possibly bigger animation. I could add more frames to make it smoother. I have just had a thought though, perhaps I could do a digital version of those drawings with crayons we all did as children, this is when you cover a piece of paper in loads of different colours of crayons and then you would cover the whole thing with black, so that you can then scratch lines across the black to reveal the multi coloured background. This is something I want to try using a combination of Photoshop and Premiere Pro and I would create an animation out of it.

My general idea for the animation I have created so far is to create a bunch of new layers where there are different shapes and sizes of lines dancing around the screen.
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Thursday, 4 February 2016

04/02/2016 - Visual Research

Week 04

Visual Research


For the last two weeks I have been watching a bunch of animations that use various techniques to achieve their style. That's why there was a lack of blog posts last week, I aim to do this one today and then try and do a test animation trying out a new technique, and I will aim to blog it as well. 


'Papillon d'amour' - Nicolas Provost (2003)


 This experimental film is created from the film Roshomon, Akira Kurisawa. Nicolas Provost has used the mirroring technique to create this film. This involve mirroring one side of the screen to generate this 'trippy' experience. This is definitely a technique I could play with where I would probably need to combine Photoshop with premier pro to achieve this with better results.


'Coda' - Alan Holly (2013)

I like this scene from 'Coda' because of the way that these pieces of a flower seem to appear out of nowhere to form the flower. This is a technique I have seen quite a lot over the past two weeks (but just done through different methods). I quite like the idea of having moving shapes that dance around the screen and ultimately come together to form something. This technique is another one that I would like to do a test animation with in the coming weeks.


'Feral' - Daniel Sousa (2012)

This screenshot from 'Feral' is kind of similar to the ones above in the sense that these different parts of the buildings are growing out of nowhere to form the building themselves. This technique again, is something that I want to experiment with to create my own scenes.

 'My Happy End' - Milen Vitanov (2007)

This animation is a combination of paper drawn, stop motion and 3D animation. This is an inspiring animation for my project in the sense of its technique, I like the way there is hand drawn paper cutout stop motion in use here. It is something I would like to also play about with in a test animation.

'The Land Eaters' - Brandon Ray & Lisa Ray (2009)

This animation is made using hand drawn cutouts and painted backgrounds. The cut outs where filmed on a green piece of card (a makeshift green screen) and the handle and green screen were removed later in After Effects and this is where the painted landscapes were put in. I don't think I would go through the work of doing a similar process but it has sparked an idea of having a somewhat cutout animation test where I could have a big piece of paper with a painting on it and I would put it on the top layer in Photoshop but erase shapes out of it so you can see behind it in certain areas. This is where there would be some sort of animation happening.

'Marcel, King of Tervuren' - Tom Schroeder (2012)

The screenshot above is just a few seconds before the screenshot below, There is a dance of lines around the screen and they come together to form the cockerel. This is the sort of animation I love and is something I want to experiment with myself in this project.


Here is another scene where there is a fight between to cockerels and a lot of it is made up of dancing marks fighting each other, I also like the way that the scene changes red when the fighting begins and this is something I want to remember for my own project, colour is emotion.

'Marilyn Myller' - Mike Please (2013)

Amazingly, this animation was created using Styrofoam models using stop motion. Of course I probably don't have the time, or patience, to do something like this myself but it does inspire me to maybe try doing a stop motion animation where I paint over in Photoshop that the stop-motion character maybe interacts with.
'Oedipus' - Paul Driessen (2011)

This animation is in here because I love the drawing style of it, You can see below how the characters are drawn when they are moving, Its quite a bizarre animation to watch as everything is moving constantly, I like the irregularities between each frame and again, this is a technique I would like to play around with.

You might think that most of the animations shown here are not experimental, well you might be correct but the term experimental means the combination of two kinds of art to make a new piece of art.

Summary

My summary for today is that I am aiming to create short animations in the next couple of weeks based on the interesting discoveries I have made in this blog post. I have also come to the conclusion that I will need to maybe do some animation in Premiere Pro, this would allow me to use the interpolation in Premiere Pro for some of my animations.
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