Writing collaboration project

This project was meant to bring us animation students together with Creative writing students and make something in a group where everyone has (and sticks to) a specific job within the team. For example Producer.
The idea was that the writers came up with the story, and we had to make it into an animated animatic suitable for a professional pitching.

The brief was basicly to make a promotional peice for The National Union of Fairies, Sprites, Elves and Druids (NUFSED). The animated peiece would be used to raise awareness of the organisation. And the whole thing would have to be based around an already existing fairytale.
My group for example, picked the story about Goldielocks and the three bears.

I was given the job as the Storyboard artist. Initially i thought i would only have to illustrate whatever the producer/writers envisioned. But since there were no director of photography or director at all, i figured it was my job to lay out the scenes cinematography-wise...
I like setting up scenes and playing around with how the camera should tell the story. I´ve never had any specific lessons on the subject, but i really enjoy doing it. It is almost like you make the whole film right there on paper, and then you just have to follow through.









When the writers started to form the story, i immideately saw the scenes in my head.
And when the time came to get them on paper, i thought it would be better if i went above and beyond in terms of camerause. And with a very "cartoony" approach to the animating of the characters. This way, i figured we could tone it down to the bare minimum if we needed. Its always better to have too much, than too little.
So when i finished the first half of the story in storyboards, we had way too many shots and the expressions and movements of the characters were over the top.










So we cut it down, and Jacob (animation supervisor) and i, figured out how we could cut the whole thing down. Cutting it down would of course make it easier to make (deadline was slowly approaching) and easier to watch for the audience.

The whole team was great. I felt we all worked together very good and everyone did their best on each specific task. And the result was way better than expected. Especially Holly (designer) who powered out some amazing illustrations of Goldielocks in a matter of minutes. And when the hours started rolling, it only became better. And that of course goes for the whole group. Everyone was working hard non stop for those three days.
Our producer Craig always had a good attitude and mood. But he still managed to keep control of the whole "pipeline" of work.
The writers brought a good vibe and humor to the piece. Our given genre was "Dramatic narrative". The writers pretty much layed it down from the very beginning. With various adjustments along the way of course. But they really know their stuff and how to play around with it.
The only critisicm i have is directed at the fact that even though the genre was "Dramatic narrative"(which i imagined would be scary or serious), we ended up with a houmorous story about big gay bears. But i told the writers sraight away, but they explained how that genre could be "bent" either way. So trusted their decision, after all they know this waaay better than any of us.










The moral of the original story is of course "Dont venture unknowingly into the forest"... or something like that...
But we sort of wanted this old moral to be more adjusted to the modern, friendly society.
Therefore we had Goldielocks become friends with the "meterosexual" bears, instead of fearing and running away from them.

As the days went and we could see the end coming, we had to continiously cut down on the work. So even more shots were cut, and so was the story and dialogue/narration.
Short projects like these always seem to sort of get tensed at the end. Everyone is stressing to meet the deadline and sometimes it helps to push us, and sometimes things get forgotten and the whole project crumbles and fails. But its all good experience!







That is why i thought this was a good idea right from the start. We get experience of how it is to power out a pretty decent pitch animatic. And of course working in "jobs" made sense as it will mos likely be like that in the "real world".
I dont remember what i expected of the writers, but i definately liked them and the way they work. I migh not have seen exactly what they were typing, but we all had a good time and thought the whole thing was pretty funny. And the whole team was both impressed and satisied with the end result.
It made me want to actually animate it and finish the whole thing.

Experimental Animation

Pete and I teamed up for this one.

We decided to animate a skateboard going along the ground, doing flips and grinds like you would see in a skate video. Though we tried to make the tricks look somewhat realistic, we also wanted to take advantage of the fact that we could make it do anything. And that is why the skateboard is suddenly going along the wall and stuff like that.
I think we could have probably gone even further and done more "fantasy tricks", but once we had all the once we envisioned from listening to the soundtrack, we just left it at that. And we are happy with the variety of tricks.

The technique was clear from the beginning: to animate the board one frame at a time, with someone holding the board in position, and then in post key that person out. This sounds way easier than it is. Keying is a complex tedious process. With most of the clips, we would have been better off reshooting them, but we already worked a lot on them.
Things like fingers on the board and shadows especially, is something you know to keep aware of whilst shooting, but it is, like i sais, easier said than done.
We both agree that the end result meets our expectations, but it would be fun to get it even better.
The timing of the animation and things to be aware of while shooting, are the key elements of this project. And we feel we could have done that better. But all in all we are happy with the experience of the animating as well as the post production we did.
It makes us laugh and we had fun!

11 second club animation - FINISHED!!

I finaly finished my animation!!
I made some last minute changes to the camera before submitting this to the 11 second club site.
But now i wont change it any further. I am exhausted from this project. But i am really happy with the result.

Here it is:

11 second club animation - keepin´at it!

Im nearly finished with animating the body of my character.
Here it is. I am very tired after a couple hours straight of animating!
But this thing is starting to look good. Just some finishing touches and then its on to facial animation!

11 second club animation - animating

I started animating the inbetweens of the keyframes i already had on my character. And i even changed the keyposes around too. Going back and forth tweaking and improving.
Now i have basicly half of the clip animated.
Just the body though...

Before i started animating properly, i animated the character doing a 360 flip on a skateboard just to get to know the controls n stuff.
I thought it looked good, but looking back at it now is funny because i realise that the more you keep at it, the better you become. And the more time you spend NOT animating, the more your skills will slip away.

And it had been a while not animating when i made this:






And here is half of my proper animation. I think it looks good now, but who knows in a while...

11 second club animation - preparation work

Listening to/ scrubbing through the soundfile we were given, i started writing down the different parts of the sentences. I got confused about just how to write the SOUND of each letter/pronounciation. Basicly because of the difference in norwegian and english language. I think in norwegian, but talk in english.
I just wrote the whole speech down the side accurate to each frame, and then put mouthshape names next to it.

And i need more dopesheets! i underestimated the length of the pauses and sighs etc.
But i think ill redo all the dopesheets anyway because i want the "sound-language" to be right.
The way its layed out now works, but only to make rough pose-to-pose blockouts.

With the hand drawn scetch-out of my 8 key poses, i slowly went trhough the dopesheet and added them to the frame that they would start. Or at least where the pose is most important.

And then, in maya i could just follow the dopesheet. Im starting to see the importance and practibility of the dopesheet. You wont really need to load the soundfile in maya. You can just follow the notes on the dopesheet. For now anyway. I guess things will complicate along the way...

So at the right frame i posed my character to the right key pose. And since it is so few keys given i set the motion curves to stepped tangents. That way he "clicks" from one pose to another, but still with the right timing.

11 second club animation - First stage

Our whole class is entering animations for this months 11 second club competition.

The sound file given this month is just a guy sobbing, saying "I am living in a cocoon of horror... yesterday i ate nine cans of aerosol whipped cream".

This tells us two distinct facts; that he doesnt like where he is living. And that he, in some way ate nine cans of whipped cream.
But the rest can be played with i guess.

I saw some good examples from my classmates of where he actually is and why he has eaten all that cream.
And i want to do something original too, but without losing focus of the character of course.

I wanted to use this project to explore my skills in 2d. I always go for the 3d version, which makes it more comfortable for me to do the same every time. But i wanted to break away from that pattern, just to see how well i can actually do it in 2d.
BUT, concidering that i have a lot of things to do nowadays, and knowing that 2d takes more time and concentration, im doing it again. And saving 2d exploring for next time.

I stated out by scetching out some poses. I didnt care to think about camera angle just yet. I figured out what im roughly gonna go for.
The feeling i want to display is mainly hopelessness. If that is a feeling:P He is obviously sad, but the way he talks to the camera is sort of "look at this. this is hopeless". Like someone straight out of a relationship, trying to adapt to his bachelor pad *cough*:)















I videotaped myself acting out what i wanted the character to do. I tried to focus on the main poses, but since i am a horrible actor it looks way too casual. But at least the poses are there.. sort of...




And here is the character i am using. He is a standard rig provided by our tutor. Most people are using him. I think that is good in a way because you forget about his appearnce and focus on the different ways he´s been animated.
So i made this character sheet trying to focus on depressing poses, since that is what i want him to do.