Week 13: Project Description

The title of my animatic is The Fly and is based on the William Blake poem of the same name. The narrative of the poem is themed around the significance of the existence in life, namely between humans and the common fly. In the poem, the protagonist encounters a fly, and upon first glance, dismisses it as insignificant. However, he eventually comes to the realization that the life of the fly is of the same worth as his.

My animatic follows a similar theme, but the narrative differs, and instead focuses on the relationship between two office workers – the protagonist, who is well dressed and the antagonist, who is poorly dressed. In the film, the protagonist mistakenly judges the antagonist to be of a lower social class than him, solely due to his attire. However, in a turn of events, it is revealed that the antagonist is the boss of the company, and offers the protagonist a job.

My inspiration for the narrative derives from the capitalist society and consumer culture of the 21^st century – where success is judged on image above other attributes, and the notion of that no matter how successful you are there will always be someone above you. I wanted to show that human beings are all the same regardless of this.

In regards to the visual style of my animatic, my main inspiration is the work of Don Hertzfeldt – who uses minimalism and rotoscoping to create an ‘eerie’ and bleak effect. I wanted to recreate this as it reflects the honest nature of the narrative. 

Week 12: Original Scans

Below are images of every single drawing I did that contributed towards the animation. Some of them didn't even make the final cut - enjoy!

 

Week 11: Changes made to the final product

As my animation is nearing its final stages, I thought I'd post about some of the changes I made during the production period.

Sound
Originally I wrote: "I am going to use just naturalistic sounds". At the time, this seemed like a great idea. However, after the majority of the production process was finished, it felt as if something was missing. The silence throughout the scenes didn't really add anything to the 'eerie' feel that I was attempting to create. In an attempt to resolve this, I decided to try out some background music, to see if it would change anything - and it did! I spent hours searching the Internet for some copyright free music and found various horror tracks that I were able to use. However, a lot of these were dramatic and over the top - and this didn't fit with the minimal theme of my animatic. Fortunately, I managed to find various tracks that were minimal, and when I decided on which to use, I turned the volume of it down so the audience can hear it, without it being too much of a distraction from the narrative.

Rotoscoping
There is a previous post about this, please refer to that.

Relativity
I initially discussed about using the themes from Relativity by Maurits Cornelius Escher in my animatic, and although I admire the piece, the use of metamorphosis art didn't fit well in regards to the overall style of my project. In the end, I decided to focus my inspirational values more on Don Hertzfeldt work - rather than complicating the imagery by using the work of Escher. This, again, helped me keep to the minimal stylistic production values I was hoping to achieve.

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These were the only dramatic changes made, and I feel that my project has kept the same values from what I envisioned in the planning stage.

Week 11: Technical Experimentation Episode 3

To add a sense of realism to my characters, I wanted them to blink (just as humans do). However, as I want to add an 'eerie' effect to my animatic, I decided to make their blinks more random and less constant than that of a human.

This episode of technical experimentation will show how I added the blink effect.

1. Before animating anything, the first thing I did was import the 'blink' and the 'character's eyes' into After Effects.

I then placed the blink over the character's eyes as this is where the blink will appear when the eyes are closed (see below).

2. The second step involves the timing of the blink. Naturally, when the character's eyes are open I want the blink to disappear, and the same vice versa.

To do this, I had to change the Opacity of the blink. As I wanted my character's eyes to be open at the start of the scene, I changed the opacity to 0% at 0 seconds (see below).

I made sure that the character's eye and eye lid were set to 100% at the same time (so they would be visible when the blink wasn't).

3. I then had to decide when I wanted the blink to appear. I wanted the character to blink a 1 seconds so I had to make the blink reappear then.

However, it is not as simple as simply placing a marker at 1 second and changing the opacity to 100%. If I did this, the opacity would slowly appear between 0 seconds and 1 seconds. I wanted the blink to appear immediately and not gradually.

To do this, I placed a marker at a split second before 1 second and made sure the opacity was at 0%. This ensures that the opacity of the blink doesn't change between 0 seconds and just before 1 second.

Then, at 1 seconds I place another marker and change the opacity to 100%. This ensured the blink appeared immediately between 1 seconds and a split second before. 

4. The fourth step included doing the exact same thing with the eye and eye lid but with the opposite values. 

For example, at 0 seconds I ensured the opacity of the eye and eye lid were at 100%, and at a split second before 1 second it was still at 100% and finally at 1 seconds, I made sure the opacity was at 0%. This made it so that when the blink appeared, the eye and eye lid disappeared, creating the desired blink effect.

5. The fifth and final step was the opening of the eye. I did exactly the same as before, but with opposite values.

I then repeated this wherever I wanted my character's to blink!

Week 10: Technical Experimentation: Episode 2

Technical Experimentation: Episode 2

In this episode of technical experimentation, I will show how I added a blur effect to a blank area on After Effects. 

I looked at many guides on the Internet, but they only showed how to add a blur to an object - I wanted to add a blur to a blank area (I was creating semi-transparent automatic doors, so I only drew the door frames and left the 'transparent' areas as blank).

I couldn't find any useful tips online, so I decided to take matters into my own hand and do a little experiment. After much trial and error, I finally found out how to do it:

1. Below, are a set of door frames with the antagonist behind them. As you can see, they don't look much like a set of doors as they're completely see-through!

2. I wanted to add a blur to these to make them look like a set of automatic doors in an office.

To do this, I clicked on Layer > New > Adjustment Layer.

I figured it would be an adjustment layer as this allowed me to create a layer on top of my current ones. Even better, it allowed me to modify the layer to a size and shape of my choice.

3. As you can see below, I modified the shape of the layer to fit half of the door. I did this because I want each half to move in the opposite direction, just as an automatic door does. If I put the layer over both sides, it would only be able to move in one direction.

4. I now want to add the blur to the layer. This part was easy. All I did was Right Click (on the layer) > Effect > Blur & Sharpen > Box Blur (Note: you can test any of the blurs, I just preferred the style of the Box Blur)

5. Once I did this, an effects column appeared on the left. Here, it is possible to modify the intensity of the blur. I played around with these settings for awhile until I found the amount I desired.

6. And finally, shown below is my final blur effect. As you can see, it looks like a pair of automatic doors!

Week 10: Technical Experimentation: Episode 1

It's that day - I have finally begun work on my final animation. I am very excited and cannot wait to have the completed product on my computer screen.

As part of my final project, I have decided to document my progress. This is to show you, the readers of this blog, how I went about creating my animatic. It will also allow me to reflect on my work once it is completed - the mistakes I may have made, what I did well and what I can improve in the future.

Technical Experimentation Episode 1:

As previously stated, I want the visual style of my project to mirror that of Don Hertzfeldt's Rejected. In order for me to do this, I have decided to utilise the 'stick-figure' drawing style that Hertzfeldt's makes use of.

1. The first part of the creation process consists of drawing. A lot of drawing. In order for me to animate my characters and scenery to maximum potential, I have to draw each part of the drawing on a separate sheet, then put them together on my computer.

For example, in order for a character's legs to move separately, I have to draw them separately, scan them into my computer and put each one on a different layer in Photoshop.

Here is a screenshot of the legs I drew for the protagonist of the animatic:

2. The next part of the creation process consists of removing the white space from around the object. This is to ensure that the object doesn't interfere with other objects in my animatic.

As shown above, I used the Magnetic Lasso Tool to cut around my object. This tool proved useful as it easily recognised the object on the screen, and cut around it almost perfectly. However, it didn't remove all the white space around the object. To counteract this, I used the Rubber Tool to delete any of the remaining space (shown below).

3. I then copied the cut object, and pasted it onto a transparent background (shown below).

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4. The next part of process was slightly more complicated.

In order for me to be able to animate the eyes and mouth of my character separately, I had to isolate them and put them into separate layers. 

To do this, I used the Magnetic Lasso Tool to cut the desired object, copy it, and paste it into a new layer. I then deleted the object in the old layer.

This allowed me to view each part of the character's face separately, whilst remaining on the same canvas. 

As an example, below is a screenshot which depicts all the different layers, with the character's right eye turned off.

5. I then copied each individual layer and put them onto a transparent background. I used the Mouse Tool to put the objects together to create my character (shown below).

I did this mainly for convenience. By doing this, I had each separate layer ready to animate all in one .psd file.

6. I then opened the the file in After Effects ready to animate! 

Shown below is each separate layer, which I can animate individually.

Week 9: Notoscoping

When creating an animation, the artist has to make many decisions in regards to the visual style, narrative and sound. When creating my animation, I wanted to utilise the technique of rotoscoping, as I believed it would fit perfectly with the visual style and narrative. Whilst I still believe this, I have decided not to use the rotoscope method to create my animatic.

After a brief talk with my seminar tutors, I came to the realisation that it would be more beneficial for me to utilise a more basic animatic technique - rotoscoping isn't easy, and I simply do not have the time or skills to do so. (If I continued to insist in using the rotoscope technique, I would have needed more time to learn the new skills required, and even more time to utilise these skills to create my animatic. This wouldn't feasible)

Whilst this is a shame, not all hope is lost. Adobe After Effects provides a fantastic set of tools that allow me to mirror the rotoscope effect. The most notable of which is the Wiggler effect, which I can use to make the objects and character's shake uncomfortably, much like they do in Don Hertzfeldt's Rejected Cartoons. Furthermore, I can make use of the blur and contrast effects, to enhance the eerie effect that I desire to create.

So what now? Roll on with the production! Although I am saddened about these turn of events, I still believe I can produce an effective and successful animation.