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.

Week 6: Storyboard for Creative Animation

One of the tasks for my creative project was to create a storyboard. This allows me to plan the narrative of my project carefully, and to ensure that I have a complete, working story when it comes to creating my 90 second animation (I have attempted to follow the narrative of The Fly, but transform it into my own version). This also enabled me to plan the sound elements that will be featured in my animation. Below is said storyboard (Note: this is a brief outline of the narrative, as we were limited to three sides of A4):

Sheet 1

As you can see, the visual style of my animatic has drawn great inspiration from rotoscope artist Don Hertzfeldt. As I have mentioned, I am fascinated by his style of animation and the rotoscope effect in general. Admittedly, I am not the best artist, so the use of stick-figures (instead of highly detailed visuals) is beneficial for me. That said, I believe that a great animation does not need to be the most aesthetically pleasing - as long as it contains meaning and provokes thought it can be very inspirational.

Scene 1

In the first scene the protagonist is sitting in an office, staring blankly ahead of him (as does Hertzfeldt's characters in his popular short Rejected). The only sound heard is a slight breeze and/or muffling noise. This scene lasts for 10 seconds, and along with the sound, creates an 'eerie' to provoke the audience to keep watching.

Scene 2

This scene presents the secondary character - or antagonist - of the short film. He is shown to be a scruffy man, who smokes and is overweight. He is revealed not to care about his looks, but his smile portrays that he is happy. In his hand is a CV, which sets the scene of a job interview. The accompanying sound is the opening of the door followed by a silence, and just as in scene 1 lingers for ten seconds, to create an 'eerie' effect.

Scene 3

The third scene is a close up of the protagonist, who is shown to be dishevelled and at an unease due to his disgust at the man in front of him. The only sound in this scene is the slow and heavy breathing from the protagonist followed by the dialogue: 'He is a mess' (which the protagonist thinks, rather than says aloud). The dialogue will be slow and muffled, to add a psychedelic effect which signifies that the protagonist is losing his mind. Just like the previous two scenes, scene 3 is 10 seconds long.

Also: scene 3 is the first scene of which the narrative of The Fly is presented to the audience: 

In the poem, the protagonist encounters a fly who he dismisses as insignificant, whereas in my animatic, the well-dressed protagonist encounters a poorly-dressed man, who he also dismisses as insignificant.

Sheet 2

Scene 4

The face of the protagonist turns from anger to terror. His eyes and jaw widen, and the 'shaky' effect of  the rotoscope increases. There are two sounds in this scene: a loud muffling accompanied by a horrific scream. This scene lasts for 5 seconds and creates a brief effect of horror.

Scene 5

The camera pans back to the antagonist, who is shown to have the head of a fly. A vignette appears to portray that the transformation of the antagonist is in the mind of the protagonist and not in reality. The antagonist says: "Hello" and as before, this is spoken in a muffled tone to portray that the terror is in the mind of the protagonist. The scene lasts for 10 seconds, but due to the three-sheet limitation, a scene is not shown: the camera pans back to the protagonist and zooms in, to initiate a dream sequence.

Scene 6

Scene 6 is the start of the protagonist's dream sequence. As before, this is shown using a vignette effect. In this scene, the protagonist is surrounded by flies and is carrying a fly swat. He begins to attack the flies in an angry manner. The sounds in this scene are indecipherable to create a sense of fear and anxiety. This scene lasts for 20 seconds and the rotoscope effect increases to reinforce the anger shown by the protagonist.

Sheet 3

Scene 7 (and following scenes)

Due to the limitation of three sides of A4, I wasn't able to show the complete dream sequence. However, the basis of this sequence is to portray the protagonist being attacked by a larger human being. He transforms to the size of the fly and begins being attacked as he just was attacking the flies. However the flies rescue him. The sounds in these scenes are the same as scene 6: indecipherable to create fear and anxiety with the audience. These scenes last for around 20 to 25 seconds in total.

Also: the dream sequence scenes are an attempt to portray the theme of capitalism that I spoke of in my project planning. The protagonist was once bigger than the flies - representing the relationship between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. However, he is transformed to the size of a fly, to connote that there is always someone above you in the working world. The flies save him to portray that, despite being smaller and less human than him, there lives are as significant. This is the same transformation of mind that is shown in the The Fly.

Scene 8

This scene shows the end of the dream sequence as the protagonist slowly awakes from his dazed state. The rotoscope effect lessens and there is no sound, just silence. This is to provoke the audience to keep watching to see the outcome of story.

Scene 9

This scene shows the antagonist shaking hands with the protagonist. In a plot twist - the antagonist turns out to be the boss of the company and the protagonist is the interviewee. The reason that the protagonist mistaked the antagonist as someone who is of a lower class than him is due to his shallow mind state, which is a comment on a materialistic contemporary world. The sound in this scene is dialogue from the antagonist: "Congratulations, you have the job. You start next week... oh, and forget about wearing a suit, we're relaxed here".

The final scene is a close up of the protagonist. A fly lands on his shoulder, which the protagonist looks at, and smiles and winks.

Week 3 - First Animation: After Effects

In the practical workshop today, we had the task of creating our very first animation. This is what I had being waiting for since the course started; the chance to create. 

Our lecturer Paul sent us a .psd document which contained many different layers: a moon, a dark background, an alien, an eight ball, a wizard and a flame. It was our task to make a short animation using some or all of these layers.

To create the animation, we opened the .psd file in Adobe After Effects - a popular animating tool. In the previous workshop, Paul had shown us the basics of the programme and this was our time to show what we had learnt.

Below is the outcome...

As you can see, it literally connotes nothing and makes little sense. However, I am very happy with it. I thought it would be a very hard task to make images move in conjunction with each other, but After Effects makes the process simple.

This is my very first animation and is something I am proud of. At the end of this course I am going to compare my final assessed task with this, to see how much I have improved.