Flip festival review

At my time at the flip festival I watched short films, had lectures and I had a scriptwriting class.

Scriptwriting class

I had the pleasure of going to the scriptwriting class which was £20 which i thought wasn't bad really, at first the lecturer who was one of the mc leod brothers, first we had watched some animations that had inspired him but also made me think, there was one animation i forget what it was called now but it was of a man trying to get a cockroach and then a bigger version of him would come and try to catch him making it look like its him he is catching all the time, why animation he had asked which was a good question the video could have been done as a normal video shot but why choose animation, i think its because you ( as long as you know what you are doing) are endless with possibilities with animation, you are only limited to imagination. We got help in coming up with ideas and was given newspapers and had to decide in groups what story we chose and come up with a animation to it, then we had to do an exercise where we would write down a random name, where they live, where they go on holiday and something unusual about them which helps to create personality in the characters, you dont have to stick to the exact things but it certainly create your imagination and create a spark, we created another character to and had to interlace them, so the outcome was very interesting in how to different characters that have no relation to each come become friends, enemies or brought together. We then watched some animation as to get us used to some techniques used in animation and what we could achieve, which is anything so long you have got an idea. At the end of the scriptwriting class we all had to make a one minute animation that may have got made into a animation by the brothers and shown at the festival, mine wasn't that good as my creative juices didn't want to flow that morning but alot of the others animation were really interesting. I felt that the class was good and i would go again, the only downside that i have is the fact that i would have like more on organizing my script since im pretty messy and could do with some pointers, apart from that i enjoyed it alot and i think that i have learned more than when i went which is a bonus :)

Seeing sound, hearing animation

We were watching all these different animation to try and get how sound can affect an animation for the better and worse, how sound affects mood and helps to tell the story.

If you want to watch any of the clips just click on the title of the short.

Card trick-morph

There isn't a lot of sound in this just the rambling sounds that are morph and his friends voice, even though it isn't actually speech you can tell the feelings from them just by the pitch of the sounds whether they are confused,happy or angry.

There not being much sound complements this short i think since i think it would just clutter the animation and you would miss the point of it, they have kept it simple and it worked.

The Animals save the planet-energy efficient penguin

Like in the morph animation there is hardly no sound, all you can hear is the penguin on the bike and when the polar bear chucks the fish into the penguins mouth, hardly no sound made this animation work better, i think dialogue would have ruined the whole comedy effect of the animation and the whole subtle way that the animation was played out in letting the audience figure out what was happening.

Pearce sisters

There was no dialogue but the sound, movement and emotion was good enough to portray the harsh environment that they are in.

I liked the animation because you can tell that the bigger sister looks after the little one and you can by the wqay the little sister acts, tugging on the bigger sister to ask if she can have him like a child does to a parent.

The sounds are great as well, you really feel that you are there, its better because they have created an atmosphere that reminds people of places even though it is alot harsher.

Adventures of Jeffery-bushcraft alphabet

The sound of this animation was close to comic effect so that even without looking at the screen you know that its not something serious, the upbeat nature of the sound go with the quirkiness of jeffrey who is trying to help you to survive in the wild.

The panel then moved to talk about the process and pipeline and that sound should be one of the first things that you consider when you think of an idea ( how hard to get sound, how will it fit etc)

Fetches sound add comic value, the panel were trying to get across how sound can be used when a character is off screen and on, the basic story line is that a man is trying to get his dog to fetch things he throws, he brings back a hang bag and a old woman starts to hit him with things that break and then the dog passes more stuff to hit him with, a chainsaw then gets passed and thats when you see end but you can still hear the animation, just before the chainsaw goes down and you hear the noises you hear a yelp from the man, it worked have worked if it wasn't for that yelp because you wouldn't have known if he was still alive or not.

So mess around with off screen sound as well as on screen.

Little dinosaur

We were then shown an animation that showed how unedited sound was used. the soundtrack for the animation was made by a conversion of the director and his son, the dad asks a question and the son gives an answer to it and the scene changes to correspond to what he has said, the sound doesn't sound rehearsed which gives the animation its charm especially when you see the boy thinking and the dinosaurs are waiting for him to give an answer before they can react. Also the way the bigger dinosaur was green as to distinguish him as different from all the others.

The animations were all good using sounds in different ways to display different things and how by watching these have changed my view on sound in animation, sound is a very powerful tool, it can create worlds and scenes, and help us achieve what we are doing... trying to make something believable.

So if we see a beach but we dont hear any noises to make us recognize that it is a beach then you couldn't believe it as much because we all use a whole range of senses to make us believe what is around us is real and in animation we have to make that up as close and not so close to reality as we like depending on what you are trying to do, sound is just as important as everything else and you cant just leave it to the last minute.

Origami killer

One of the students work and the sound for this was brilliant added to the tension well and created a sense of urgency, the low bass lets you know that something bad is going to happen but you dont know what so it builds the suspense up.

Axis Animation

Axis is an international team of talented producers, directors, designers , artists and animators based in glasgow but does include a lot of freelance staff.

The studio creates CGI animation and visual fx for commercials,games,broadcast and film.

The first part of the interview was to get to know him and his role in the company which was good because he didn't go to creative university and instead got a degree through a YTS scheme. It was him and tree others that had set up the company.

Some of the interview i felt was unneeded like when he asked him how he came up with the name of the company which i felt was really irrelevant to the whole point of the interview i thought which was to give the people watching a better understanding how animation is evolving and what standards are set by the company. axis tends to focus on 3d animation using different software when needed not just confining and limiting to one.

We then watched some of what the company has produced, one of these were a trailer for killzone 2, axis dont make games but made the trailer for the game which was very striking as the animation was stupidly real and the scene had only had one constant camera without any scene cuts or changes.

Sound played a very important part to create the atmosphere at the start you hear the voices before the person appears then you see the eye of the person first which adds to the drama because you see the emotion in the there, it then zooms out to the face, the voice starts off calm and slow but continues to get faster and more louder as the face is shown.

Another trailer i watched was for rogue warrior which i think is very sound dependent because its the sound that creates the tension.

Axis mainly employs freelance staff so that they get a wide variety of talent for the project that they are working on, he made the fact that you need to get yourself out there to be known and that work experience is very important.

You never know everything is what i learnt from this and you are always on a learning curve.

Project 7-animating a 11 second audio

In this project we were given the choice between 8 audio clips and we had to come up with an idea and animate towards it. I chose the april (2) one which was only on the downloads.
I didn't start out with that one, it was only when i heard them all again i thought i would choose that one, it did seem that alot was going on in the audio and that it might be challenging but what is life without challenges!

Starting out,finding ideas

To start with is coming up with an idea, this was actually trickier than usual since i couldn't quite think, maybe thinkers block, i acted out the audio and i knew that someone or something was going to fall over.

It wasn't until I was making myself some tea and looked out the window that I finally got the epiphany and thought ah yes a bird falling out of a tree.

Character design

Now that I had an idea i thought now its time to come up with some character designs, for the story i had imagined someone trying to examine the bird and thats when the audio would kick in. I looked at some birds for inspiration I used some pictures to help, i knew i wanted to make it look cartoony giving it that more of a comedy feel as your not bound by much
then. I looked at other character designs the disney ones in particular because they are simple but believable they have simple lines, you know when you look at the character what it is without too much detail being present.

The more detail you put into the drawing the harder it is to be able to move them around.
Also the more detail in the background and characters the harder it will be to control in motion.
Characters like mickey mouse, bugs bunny,donald duck etc can be moved easier because of their simple design.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5R2wE8Sduhs

I used this website also to help with character designs.
http://www.zengrenade.com/html-site/cartoon-character-design.html

http://mail.live.com/default.aspx?wa=wsignin1.0
I looked at this guys sketchbook to help with what i should do and there is alot of stuff in there and this guy earns a living from it so he is good and knows what he is doing,I emailed him through the contact page as well to ask him what was the best way to go about it, i didn't think i would get an e-mail back from him but about a day later he did and he just said keep drawing basically, crit your work,fix your mistakes and you will be getting there.
I used a book also for this project that helped me alot drawing the parrot which is called cartoonimals, i based my parrot on the drawing inside the book and it helped alot with the design, the book said to make a turnaround sketch so you can see it from all angles, also make some poses.
This is also a website i used to help make the parrot.
http://www.dragoart.com/tuts/2649/1/1/how-to-draw-a-cartoon-parrot.htm

I was at first going to have two parrots one normal and one wearing some sort of doctors stuff but i was going through Preston Blairs cartoon animation book and found some very good drawings of owls, this made me think because the animation isn't really on for long if i made the characters different it would distinguish them better, as i think parrots are more cocky and owls are more wise type it would really go together i think this is where the appeal would come from this animation.

Im not going to be doing lip syncing until after the tests have been done and im happy with the movement since this is the first animation that i have done proper moving characters all hand drawn so its going to be quite a challenge hope it goes well.

I made loads of sketches in sketchbook for parrot and owl.
I used videos to help me with the movement of the parrot and owl as i didnt really know how they move.
I watched clips from aladdin with lago in because this was a cartoon parrot and the movement seemed really believable which is what i wanted.

Did try searching for more on there but nothing what i wanted just loads of parrots dancing and being funny.
I used a winnie the pooh video with owl in it which again movement was very believable.

I did watch sesame street video called night owl and day bird but it really wasn't what i was looking for like most of the ones i had watched.
A video that i found very useful is one called Toot, Whistle, Plunk And Boom made by disney in 1953, the movement of the owl was very good and realistic.

After this i used the dope-sheet to record the audio when the words where so that it would be easier to lip sync.

Im not going to concentrate on lip sync now though as i am more interested in the movement.

In the Spotlight

Next i thought that it was about time i got in the limelight and made videos of myself acting out the audio

Next i did some sketches of the parrot but i really wasn't getting the feel about everything would look, i thought that if i could see it i could do it, so then i got some cardboard cut out some wings and beak and the acted it out so that i could pause it and get a general idea to how it was going to look.

I had also took stills so that it could help me figure out where parts of the body were going to be during certain actions.

Now that i did some sketches and that and got a better idea to what it was going to look like i got some facial referencing images so that i could use them to perhaps display the emotion on the characters more also helping to exaggerate more.

Dopesheet and more planning

I now created a dope-sheet so that i could more understand what was happening and when it was going to happen so that i knew how many seconds i had to do certain actions. I used a program called audacity to help me with the voices because i could see it in waveform.

Now that i had the story, dope-sheet and that i knew that i didn't want to just have the same camera angle throughout the scene and researched different camera angles.

http://www.mediaknowall.com/camangles.html

A website that i thought helped alot in deciding camera angles was borgus.com which had film techniques of alfred hitchcock which really made me think what message i wanted to bring across to the audience, even though 11 seconds really isn't long but the camera angles are still vital. My camera angles shot for the animation go as follows:

1. Establishing shot -i knew i wanted a establishing shot that people could get a quick look at what was there before any action started, this shot was a long shot of owl and parrot in tree.

2. Long shot- this is a medium shot of the parrot and owl from a side view when the owl is trying to examine him, i used a medium shot because i wanted to include both subjects and so that is was close enough to see detail.

3. POV shot- through the point of view of the owl

4. Long shot-back to medium shot of both parrot and owl

5. POV shot- through the eyes of the parrot

6. POV shot-through the eyes of the owl, you see the parrot falling to the ground

7. Long shot-of parrot on the ground, i wanted it so you could see the whole body and the tree so it clearly looks like he has fallen, the shot looks like he is looking at the audience as well is what i thought was nice.

This was planning for my storyboard as well so that i could do small thumbnail sized pictures of them.

Testing

All the testing that i did was pose to pose so that i knew everything was going to be in the right place and that nothing was going to be bigger or smaller, the only test that i did straight ahead was the shot where the pov of the parrot falling i thought it would look better done straight ahead but it turned out the i did the last test pose to pose and it looked better because i had planned it out better.

Now that i had the storyboards, i wanted to see what it would look like against the audio so i created an animatic so that i could see if everything was falling into place, i knew that if i was using the dope-sheet correctly that it should be perfect and also to just give a general feel for the animation itself with the camera angles i had chosen.

I liked the animatic, it gave me an idea about what the final animation would look like, one thing that was worrying me was that i might have put too many camera angles in for a small space of time, but i didn't think it was so bad that i had to cut down, i would just go with it and hope for the best plus for some reason some of the shots play too long on the blog one so some things dont really match up,im sure you will get the idea of whats going on though.

I started creating tests after the animatic apart from shot 1 which was just one picture for the establishing shot.

Shot 2

I thought this test was good and i liked the way that the parrot seemed to chuck his arms down at the end of the scene,it was what i was looking for.

Shot 3

I liked the test from this and worked better than i had thought only thing wrong with it was that the spacing was a bit off, it all seemed too smooth for me and i wanted it to hold on a bit on the raise on the occasionally to give it a bit more attitude instead of just rushing through which what felt like was happening.

Shot 4

I liked the pointing action of the parrot,im hoping though when i get onto the lip sync that i can do more with the face though.

Shot 5

This test gave me an idea with what i want it to do but just didn't look right,i wanted it so it looked like the parrot was falling from the parrots P.O.V but it didn't work,i think i will need to change the spacing so that the owl leaves the stage before and need to change the branch so that it doesn't just turn, so that it looks like its leaving the page to.

Shot 6

I did something wrong on the test it jumped a little bit half way which was unintentional but actually worked quite well i think because the jump happens just as the parrot seems to be hitting the ground giving more of an impact,which adds to the exaggeration to the fall

Shot 7

This shot i liked to,i think it runs well,the arm waves at the start for the right amount of time before the head shakes when the parrot says no thank you i dont need your help,and i like the subtle way he is picking himself up.

Finalizing

I have got to the finalizing stages now, i outlined all the work and rubbed out most of the blue lines but the coloring isn't going as well since there must be gaps in the drawing because photoshop keeps going over them so im going to be leaving the coloring for now as i dont really have much time. I am just going to either try and figure it out or might just do it the old fashioned way then i might even get a better look to the whole thing. I will base the colors of the characters on the reference images that i have.

Thanks for reading hope that wasn't too much of a mouthful and please leave comments about the animation so that it can help me improve, everyones input is greatly helped.

Project Five-20 second animation

I decided on an idea and i started planning it but i felt that it would take too many drawings and that it would go over the 20 seconds by quite a bit so i will save that idea for another time.

The idea that i went with is a lot simpler than the first idea i was going to do since i wasn't there for the fourth week so i had 1 week to do 2 weeks worth of work.

References: This is the reference image i used to help me make the sitting dinosaur, i should have put the nostrils on but i didn't want it looking too similar.

This you tube video i used to help me with the yawn, i yawned alot myself when doing this project (not through boredom

though purely research)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMnekeLTUrw&feature=fvw

Heres my first test:

This was to test what the yawn would look like, the yawn looks good I think,what I would change about it though is not hold the frame on the way up and change a couple of frames on the way down so that the mouth goes back up for a split second.

Unfortunately I haven't made a final ink animation as yet but watch this space, i do like this animation, the things that i would change about the animation is that some frames need to be held a bit longer because it seems that the actions rushes too much from one action to the other. I might play about with holding the pencil on the page too when it comes on the page just before it begins to draw. I hope you like it, any comments welcome.

Project Four-Anticipation

Anticipation is sometimes a pause before a big action or the slowing of a movement so that the viewers can be prepared for a fast action such as like the anticipation in road runner, like when road runner is about to sprint off, road runner hangs in the air for second or two so that the viewers know that he is just about to sprint off because if he just sprinted off then it would be too quick and people would be wondering what happened. The video is below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJJW7EF5aVk

Also for referencing i used a video of me jumping:

I did a stickman jumping from one side to the other, below are the tests.

I didn't really like this test because it doesn't really look like a jump, you can tell its a jump but the start it seems to glide and there not much anticipation it in. The spacing needs to be worked on because that it flows too much, there is no ease in or ease out.

This test does look better than the first since ive held some of the frames a bit longer like when the stickman bends his knees to jump and when he reaches the ground after the jump he slowly gets up not like on the first test where he shoots up.

For the final animation i have took some frames out so that it doesn't look like the stickman is gliding, also i have redrawn some of the frames at the start that the stickman is more closer together when he goes to jump which looks better. I have also played about with the spacing a lot more and held the frames at the start to show anticipation before the jump but not so much that it wouldn't look realistic. Theres not much that i would change about this final piece except that i would want to make it more real from the fact that when he jumps the angles wrong on the way down, when you jump like that the angles more straight but i did that for more of an cartoony effect.

Project Three-Bouncing Ball

For this project we had to animate a bouncing ball. Which the sound of it sounds easy but oh no nothings never that easy.
I did some research into the bouncing ball using media such as The animators survival kit by the richard williams which was very helpful because the hardest thing i found for this task was the spacing,I used an arc of what the ball was going to go to help me know where the ball was going to go. I made a squashy ball,a bowling ball and i made a perspective view of the squashy ball. I tried not to make the ball bigger as i didn't want to make it obvious that it is a bowling ball or any type of ball more rather relying on the timing and spacing to come across that it is heavier.

I didn't want to make any story to it as i felt that it would have made me concentrate more on the story than what i was actually doing and that is learning about timing about spacing.

The tests that i have made looked good i think, I need to play about with the spacing and the final perspective view the ball at the end goes off the page.
The first test looks ok (from what you can tell from the video since the lighting wasn't that good),I should have put a smaller bounce on the bowling ball but i think people get the idea.

The second test doesn't look that good I think the spacing needs work as the bounce coming down should have been faster. I like the hang time on the bounce i think it works well as there is more frames at the top of the bounce.

The final test looks as i wanted it to apart from the part at the end that i dont like because the ball goes off the page and the squash looks bad i think because i held the frame for too long its too noticeable also I should have held the frames more on the up to show more hangtime.>

Project Two-Exaggeration

This is the second project-exaggeration.
For this project I am going to animate 4 different facial expressions.
I did more planning for this project and in the classroom we were told to draw people and exaggerate peoples features and expressions, not too much that it didn't look real because its got to look believable.

I made a lot of ideas but in the end I choose to do a simple cartoony character as I didn't want to get bogged down in the details of a proper human face as i wanted to concentrate more on the task of exaggeration. For referencing in the task i drew leshika in different expressions.
I then decided to go a bit simpler than that though so i could concentrate on what determines a happy face,sad face etc, so i made just a shape of a head and drew different expression,taking note of what made the face look happy,shocked or sad etc. I liked the more cartoony look of expressions as they be more exaggerated than human faces with still being believable.

The references that I used for this animation was that I got an image off a website called cartoonsmart.com which i found really useful because of the fact that the facial expressions are believable and its good to show how if you move something on the face just a bit it can be a big difference to the whole face for example like on the image sad and sadder, all that the artist has done is make the pupils bigger,some lines on the mouth and the eyebrows a bit closer but it does work.


For the final idea the facial expressions i decided to go with is:
1-Normal
2-Sad
3-Shocked
4-Happy
Then the animation goes back to normal so that it can loop.
I did like the end result of the animation even though it didn't loop because in the start of the animation when the normal expression goes into the sad I moved the face down to show the sadness more but then didn't realize to bring it back up again. I should have made the spacing a lot different too as most of it looks the same, it was only afterwards I clicked that I should have made it go faster from sad to shocked and a bit slower from shocked to smile.
Problems and solutions:

I need to spend more time planning so that i dont have to keep stopping to figure out what im going to do next.

Take more breaks-I should take more breaks as i found out that I get more tired im making more mistakes and then realizing afterwards thus taking more time to correct.

Project One- Flipbook

This was the first of the projects that I was given. The task to create a flipbook illustrating a short animation. This project was a lot harder than i thought just because the amount of work that it actually entailed, i didn't really think about how long it would take to draw 100 drawings and that to have spare time to sort out the problems. The final result didn't turn out too bad but I should have done more research into what I was doing. Another problem that I had was that i didn't do any tests and that shows in the final result,the action hides most of it i think but the background does look bad because as the animation goes on it gets bigger which wouldn't have been such a problem if i had just done keyframes, but being a noob i just didn't know. Overall though i think its looks good for a first attempt, the narrative is clear and it doesn't run too much past on what the timing was like either.
Enjoy (hopefully).