fayas-maanimationblog

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Animation 1 - Styleframes

Its heavily inspired by the artyle of Kento IIDA and i feel like i have maintained a good level of emulation as well as authenticity in applying the style to my own designs

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Character Design - Animation 1

character design 2

This was initial rough draft that i had come up with for the main character, but this just felt off and came off as too standoutish in a story that did not need that. However, I liked the overall silhouette and decided to ideate on top of this and came to my final design.

this felt like a more cohesive design and merged quite well with the artstyle i chose for the environment.

Side by side of the two main characters, however the girl was later changed to

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Animation 1 - Character design

with the two films decided, it was time to proceed with some character designs!.

These spawned out of a session with tutor where he asked us to brainstorm character designs. This was a bit tough for me as i was not too sure who exactly my characters were gonna be other than their gender. I had a talk with my tutor about how i can make more interesting characters, bringing up the design of a short film (wormwood) i had seen some time ago that had standout character designs. I ended up dabbling with alot of ideas, making them dolls, sun and moon shaped, creating facial feature hierarchies based on how important they will be on screen.

finally i had a design

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Animatic Assignment

Final thoughts and decision

This assignment was one full of challenges and learnings. I was able to get a lot of my ideas out and see how much I could create when i put myself to it. I learnt alot about iteration, even when and especially when you know the idea is good because you never know if the next idea might be even better.

Even though I had initially planned to take up 1&4 as my animation projects, looking at the shrinking calendar i decided to go ahead with 1&2 as my projects.

Overall my experience with this assignment has been very positive and I know i will be practicing this in the future.

This feels like the first step to understanding how to make films better and after doing this assignment they don't seem like such an impossible task.

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Animatic Assignment

Final animatic 5

Like i was expecting this was far too much of a challenge to execute it well. In the end i was not able to do an audio pass properly because I put too much time into the other animatic and I figured if i am going to do an audio check I would rather do it well. So i will not be moving forward with this one either.

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Animatic Assignment

Final animatic 4

Animatic 4 has not gone through much changes other than the sequences at the end where a few shots has been added and others slowed down. there is more room for the meditative shots which i feel like is still not enough but this version feels like the best middle ground I can achieve for now. I really want to adapt this one and the first one as my two animation films.

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Animatic Assignment

Final Animatic 3

Animatic 3 has gone through some pretty significant changes. I was able to add a character motive which better explains the idea behind growth and decay as well as explaining his actions on screen. I also used some techniques that i saw in other shorts in order to cut down on the overall time. shots are placed on top of each other, the character moving freely through those frames cutting down on both animation and time.

However, the animatic is still pretty long since to make it into a full fledged film i will have to make it even longer to account for moments of stillness and so i don't think i will be adapting this into my final animation.

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Animatic Assignment

Final animatic 2

Aside from the opening shot, this might be the easiest animatic i have that I can continue with for final animation. I really love the opening shot and the overall tone of the film. my criticisms would be that maybe the rest of the sequences with just the heads moving back and forth might be a little repetitive to some? but that is part of the larger point i am trying to make with the film so it seems almost apt.

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Animatic Assignment

Final Animatic 1

Final animatic for places of mind. overall i am quite happy with this version. its the story that i had in mind and i was able to showcase it in a relatively short amount of time which i did not think was possible for myself. If i did want to change somethings it would be the framing selection when the character is in the bus, I have a feeling it will not look good on the final version but for now i am just going to commit to it.

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Animation shorts

These are some of the animated shorts that i watched that stuck with me and i will try to give the reasons why.

WORMWOOD - Gobelins student short film.

Every year the students at Gobelins give me an existential crisis. wormwood is a story that takes its time, its mood is contemplative and so are the characters themselves. this mood is reflected in their actions as well as the environment. This is something that I will need to really analyze and study so as to bring to my own work as this is the kind of moods I am envisioning for my own films.

WORLD OF TOMORROW - Don Hertzfeldt

It is my life's goal to be as comfortable with the medium of animation as Don Hertzfeldt is. He conveys his story and narrative through stick figures, without the use of any technique but rather through the most fundamental aspects of cinema, sight and sound. He explores complex themes through humor which makes his films easy to watch, the stick animations embody simplicity.

An Island - and maps and plans

Highlighting this short film just for the sunrise sequence alone, simply breathtaking.

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Look Back - thoughts

This was a movie that i especially connected with due to the subject matter. Life always seems to be the best inspiration to an artist but pursuing your artistic passions also mean locking yourself in your room away from everything else. this was a nice exploration of that.

However I wish this story could have been conveyed without the sci-fi esque twist in the middle, keeping it a more grounded story. but maybe that would have made it less interesting? I'm not so sure.

The artstyle is also a major plus point of the film as it feels like a manga that has been animated, the characters are detailed and the animation lifelike instead of the usual animation found in anime.

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Animatic Assignment

Animatic 1 - version 3

This is the third version of the first animatic, based on the feedback and corrections that i received.

Thoughts

overall, i can safely say that this is the best version of the animatic so far that combines both my vision and the feedback that i had received. the crux of the story remains the same and instead of it being conveyed through a complex idea of their youngers versions, a simple note attached to the place they were standing at is used. which is overall much simpler but more readable as a metaphor.

It also keeps the short from the boys POV which is something i wanted to do since this is as much a personal assignment as it is a professional one.

The length is longer than the initial 30 second brief but since the lengthier sequences are one of quiet contemplation and stillness I decided it would not be much of a problem, Our tutor had also let us know that the 30 second rule is not a strict rule but rather based on the amount of animation you will have to do, which definitely eased my mind.

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Animatic Assignment

animatic 5 - eternal winter

animatic

Doing this animatic was quite a challenge, its different from anything else i have attempted before or could reference from. the first thing that stood out to me is that the sound design is going to be the most important part of making this work, even beyond just the visuals. A sentiment that was also my tutors feedback. This was definitely a first as i always consider myself a strictly visual storyteller first before other aspects of film so having to now think of sound as the most important thing was definitely a new learning.

The other feedback was ways in which i keep the visuals interesting. adding details in animation of how the character interacts with the surrounding, which combined with the sound will hopefully hint to the universe the winter we are watching is not actually real.

Last but not least, just like the third and fourth animatic this one was gonna be a long one as well. which was not ideal as the goal was to keep them at 30 seconds. For the next draft i will attempt to fix these problems.

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Animatic Assignment

Animatic 5 - Eternal winter

I think the very first thing that came to my mind when i thought of this prompt was game of thrones and the long night, and how it only lasted for an episode. this ruined my day.

After which i came back to think more on the prompt as i felt it calling for my attention, so i started trying to think deeper, to try and see beyond the blizzard which is when i came across an interesting tangent. winter is cold, cold is uncomfortable and cold also feels sort of numbing on the body. this tangent took to how we also talk about people being emotionless as them being cold and suddenly the story of my fifth and final animatic started taking shape.

I started thinking about how depression is often described as numbing, could this winter be the depression that a person carries with them? that makes them feel like its been winter forever, not being able to notice the sun outside and the warmth on their skin.

I had also seen this short film a while back which also gave me another idea.

What if the winter and the parts covered by snow is negative space? the snow and cold, that is depression, takes away the persons ability to see the space around them, only seeing what they want to see which often confirm their own depression and negativity. this was too interesting of a visual idea to not try exploring and so i set out to write a story for it.

The story

the story follows a young man living at home alone in what appears to be a crazy blizzard storm. realizing that he has run out of food to eat he sets to go out to buy groceries. he walks through empty spaces that appear to be covered in snow yet the sound coming from the environment seems to suggest a busy street with lots of people walking about and cars honking etc. On his way back from the grocery shop he hears the note of a piano and instantly stops on his track and looks around to see where it is coming from. he sees that it is coming a piano that looks a lot like one we see in his home and run towards it, his eyes flashing hope as he gets closer to it only to be disappointed when he sees the person behind the piano. it was not who he wanted to see, we see him take a moment and close his eyes to think back on a memory. the music the piano man was playing was the same music he used to practice with his deceased dad from when he was a kid. this gives him a reprieve and a sense of closure being able to hear that sound again and suddenly the environment around him becomes clear to the viewer. he sits next to the piano man to keep listening to his tunes.

Storyboard

The storyboard was a bit simple as i tried to keep the shots as simple as they could in order to not overcomplicate it for myself, my biggest worry was how it would look as an animation so i moved to animatic as fast as i could.

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Animatic Assignment

Animatic 4 - Dark and light

Animatic

Thoughts!

I think this animatic might be one of my favorites that I have made so far. Its dynamic with a lot of interesting shots and the actions are coming through quite nicely. However my biggest concern with this animatic is the length which right now is too short for the type of narrative that is being displayed on screen. I feel like the quickness of the actions and the cuts gives an impression of a small amount of time that the human is actually chasing gazelle which defeats the point a bit maybe?

this leads to my next problem where I am having to sacrifice the slow tender moments in the end in order to accommodate the action heavy chase sequence which reduces the impact of the overall film. This is something I will have to figure out in order to take this animatic forward.

Animatic 5 next!

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Animatic Assignment

Animatic 4 - dark and light

So for my fourth animatic I decided to use the hunting method to showcase the dark and light aspects of human being. their empathy as well as their capability for detached cruelty.

Story

The short starts with gazelle running away from a threat that seems to not let it rest, this threat reveals itself to be a human that is chasing the gazelle across the savannah finally tiring out the gazelle and dealing the killing blow. But the cruel act is immediately undercut by the empathy the human hunter shows the dying gazelle, highlighting the unfortunate relationship that they share and the good and bad of human beings.

Storyboard

the storyboard is largely where i figured out the sequences of the chase, the specifics of the scenarios.

An interesting idea I wanted to play around with was to slowly reveal the human that is chasing the animal, to try and follow the chase from the point of view of the animal rather than the man which i felt would add a nice horror element to it. figuring out the storyboard i landed on the sweet spot of doing it in 3 ways, the third one revealing the human chasing the animal.

i tried to choose some dynamic shots to convey the speed as well as the disorientation of the animal. However the ending is something i am not too happy with as i feel it is too simple but for now I would like to see this in an animatic form.

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Cinema and intentionality

I think the question of what is cinema is something we all think about, when do you call a piece of work cinema and when is it just a film? this was something that was in my mind as well and after watching this video of Denis Villeneuve break down scenes from what was one of my favorite films of this year (Traveled 8 hours to a different theatre just to catch it on IMAX) i think i have a better understanding of that difference.

Cinema exists in the subtext of what is being shown, the communication that is happening without being said out loud. The directors job is to bring in the subtext through the aspects of images and sound rather than just adapt what the text he is given is. It is visual poetry. The script that is written is understood and is elevated by the directors on thoughts and philosophy which he applies in the presentation of the film.

It is so evident in this scene where the decision to make paul look so small to the environment is to not just show the scale but also the meditative impact of the desert, how the framing is linked with his childhood and the place he grew up, his philosophy about returning man to its right scale in comparison of the environment are all the subtext that gets communicated in the choice of framing for this shot. It is never such a simple process and always intentional.

It is this level of intentionality that i think separates cinema from a film, and the kind of intentionality that i hope to achieve in my own work someday.