uclanjm3rdyear-blog

[uclanjm3rdyear-blog]

Character animation for the first shot in my film, Roman and scarlet are in bed cuddling, enjoying each other’s company.

I animated this in animate cc using the parenting tool, i layered everything in a way that would give the illusion of them holding each other. 

[uclanjm3rdyear-blog]

Timelapse of character animation for one of the scenes in my film. In this scene, roman is sat with scarlet, scarlet is looking at her phone rudely and not paying attention to roman. I created this scene by using the parenting tool to connect individual body parts of the characters and using the connections to animated them with tweens.

(the parenting section in the layers window)

Music in the background is by me

[uclanjm3rdyear-blog]

Milestone 1

The first few weeks of this production have been very slow in my opinion. I haven’t really made a lot of progress with everything. The most important task I should complete right now is my report for the last semester, I unfortunately haven’t started this yet, but I have made notes to remember what I did last year. I need to get this out of the way to move onto other bits of work I need to do. Without this report I cannot start working on my film until its done, so what needs to be done is this task has to be a high priority of work from here on out. Due to some feedback from my tutors, the structure of my 3-minute film needs to be changed. I have been completing this task by drawing thumbnail sketches as well as writing some rough script notes, what really needs to be done here is the actual animatic, so I can get a rough idea of what my film is going to look like before I can start making it. After doing this, it now makes things more difficult as I now must figure out how to sync the visuals in my film with the music. This is going to be tough after I can speculate that I am going to have to add more tension in between my characters so that it makes them more relatable and the audience can root for the main character. Overall though, I think changing parts of my work is going okay. It is just unfortunate that I must recreate the entire story of my film. I think one thing I also need to improve in is how often I document my work. I need to blog so much more than I do right now, so I’m fixing this by adding a reminder to write in my blog every Friday whenever I can. I will also be making notes on Tumblr in the form of drafts so that it will be easier to remember everything I have done in that one week.

My time plan

Additional notes

This will be my rough time plan for the next few weeks, it is hard to tell what circumstances will arise in the future, therefore this is roughly the main tasks i will be focusing on for the next two weeks or so. 

[uclanjm3rdyear-blog]

Redoing the entire pacing of my film

After being given some feedback, I am now supposed to change the pace of my animatic and story in order for it to make better sense. One of the first changes I need to make is how roman falls in love with faith, and make sure to add some tension between him and scarlet in the flashbacks by showing their happy moments together before it all went wrong.

Below are some rough notes I made for a new alternate change of pace to the film. I can tell there's going to be more backgrounds to draw and so much to do but I'm willing to take that challenge.

Seeing a montage of moments from their relationship, we start off with roman and scarlet cuddling each other. Scarlet looks happiest in this moment as she holds onto Roman affectionately. The second montage is them eating lunch and laughing. Roman laughs for much longer than scarlet and she looks at him, cringing slightly. As soon as roman stops laughing and looks up she’s smiling at him nervously. The third montage is them sat at the park chilling, roman is pointing at random things he is easily impressed by. Scarlet looks at each of these things and doesn’t look pleased, she shoots a lazy smile at Roman to give him some approval. In the last part, the couple are walking down a street, Scarlet stops walking suddenly. Roman approaches her to ask what’s wrong, she puts her hand up, stares at him with a stern face, shaking her head and mouthing the words “im sorry, its over” before quickly walking away. We see roman try to stop her, however she is too far.

Now we see a series of moments where roman is fighting with the recent breakup. he struggles to get out of bed, at one point he tries texting Scarlet, the typing bubbles pop up then disappear. Not having this closure makes him a lot more depressed. He stops eating correctly and develops unnecessary amounts of facial hair. After suffering in this rut for too long, he decides to step outside for the first time in a while. While he is walking he sees other couples having fun with each other, one couple grabs roman’s attention while they’re holding hands bringing back memories. Roman stops walking, he is conveniently next to a pet shop. One presses its paws on the window and it stares at him, roman smiles a little bit before we move to the next scene. Roman enters his home and holds the door for his new dog, who excitedly runs in.

After all this grief and sadness, roman is at a park with his dog. He is looking around, eventually his dog tugs hard enough on his leash for him to escape and run away, dog runs out of his sight, but he chases anyway, faith picks up the dog and holds it out to him asking if its his. He receives the dog. Faith reaches over smiling and petting the dog. Roman smiles as he looks at faith, then dares to speak with her. Their chemistry is a bit awkward, but its funny enough for them to laugh at themselves. After a bit of talking, faith stares at roman and gives him her number.

After being given her number, Faith is walking away with a smile on her face. Roman stares at her back until she turns to him, giving him a promising smile and waving, the screen fades to black with the text ‘introvert’.

[uclanjm3rdyear-blog]

Semester 1 Feedback

Recently, i received some feedback from my tutors Mario, Pete and Mark. And they gave me some interesting and insightful feedback to help improve all my work.

TV series

Mario told me that my TV series was really good! Which was good news because I felt that the idea wasn't strong enough. He told me that I had gotten a first for the entire idea and the overall outcome of the opening sequence was excellent. However, the only thing that brought me down was of course my blog, i will admit i haven't done enough on the documentation side of things, but it was encouraging to know that i have the ability for anything practical. Another good point that Mario brought up about my TV series is that I had kept everything simple and played to my strengths. He really loved my character designs and their roles in the TV series. My book and its layout were also quite good too! One unfortunate thing is the fact that I haven't really passed that module, and now it's too late to change that. However, I now have to write a 2000 word report to make up for that undocumented work.

3-minute film.

Firstly, the script and animatic need a lot of changes, especially in the pacing. One giant issue that was brought up was there isn't enough clarity in the entire idea, i know what the idea is clear in my mind but now it is not being portrayed properly the way it could be. In the script, it shows the passage of time but i haven't really communicated this well in my animatic and i will need to make changes as soon as i can. There needs to be drama and tension in the film, in the film the main character and his past lover break up, but we don't really know why. To fix this there needs to be some form of drama and tension, and we also need to see moments in the relationship where they were both happy. With all these dynamics in place, the whole film will be able to appeal to people better. Another issue that was brought up about my film is the fact that the moment where the main character meets the love of his was too forced and rushed. There is s scene where the guy grabs the girls arm and sort of forces her to fall in love with him. In this era where people are more sensitive, anything that’s got to do with physical contact especially forced, is not going to be a good look. I need to find a way to change this around, the characters could meet in some sort of accident, or another example could be having the two characters own dogs and they both run into each other somehow. Another thing I need to change I my script in conjunction with the changes of my animatic. I also need to create a clearer script breakdown, (apparently I didn’t even hand one in). Additional work I have to do is a few environment designs just to show the overall concept of the film and what its going to look like.

[uclanjm3rdyear-blog]

Testing out after effects composition (Shot 1)

So i have started to create shot 1! 

I have decided to compose all my shots with after effects, there's only one problem- I am still a novice. There's going to be so much to learn throughout this whole process. But for now, I am only going to learn some basics.

I started off by drawing all my assets in animate CC, exporting them as PNG sequences and bringing them into after effects.(shown below)

One thing I have to remember every time when exporting is make sure they're exported with double the size so that I don't lose quality when I need to scale them. The only problem with this again is slow render times when previewing the animation.

After bringing all the assets into after effects, I layered them together with 3D layers turned on. A few problems I ran into was testing out the depth of field with cameras, using depth of field means slower render times when previewing, and this makes the process a lot more difficult.

Notes

- Don't use depth of field with the camera is it slows down rendering speed

- Make sure the resolutions are double the size before export

- Make sure 3D layers is on and make sure all assets are in the right order 

Preview Animation 

https://imgur.com/9pzDC05

Edit: My Flatmate Megan just taught me how to use Nulls to move multiple objects together at the same time. This will come in handy in future 

[uclanjm3rdyear-blog]

The start of the final semester!

Disclaimer: This post might change in future as more changes are made to the film and characters in general.

It has come to my attention, that my blog isn't updated as often as it should be. Since the blog for this semester’s module counts as 50%, I will try my best to take it seriously.

A few updates on my projects in general:

I did some character design changes faith’s design. In the old design, she had white/silver hair, this made her look sort of old. i decided to change her color to a light brownish color. I still need to brainstorm some hairstyles she can have to make her look younger.

Scarlet has also undergone some changes. In the old design, she had red hair, however, i changed it to an aqua color. Now that I think about it while I'm typing this, I might change it back to red to represent her name a lot better. I think I will also need to add more details to her clothes. I want scarlet to look like a total bitch, i will need to research further to find out how exactly to portray someone as bitchy.

I have started the first shot for my film! This is the intro scene where we see roman staring out to sea. I put the shot together in animate cc, but i think i will have to draw each individual prop and asset so i can do some compositing in after effects. But generally, this is the kind of style i would like to keep throughout my film.

More updates coming soon! 

[uclanjm3rdyear-blog]

3 Minute film script

This is the script for my 3-minute film. It may change due to any circumstances along the development of my film.

Characters: 

- Roman

- Scarlet

- Faith

[uclanjm3rdyear-blog]

3 mins film concept art

Below is some concept art I drew for my 3 minute film. The ideas i have for style right now can either simple and greyscale like the first image or coloured and detailed in the second image. I want the music video to be as immersive as possible and truly capture the emotions in the song, so maybe making the film look as detailed as possible might be the right way to go here. However, i think that having a simple style may result in the animation being smoother and i think It can allow for some abstract elements to be introduced as well.

[uclanjm3rdyear-blog]

Changing my Practical project

After getting into my 3-minute film so far, I have started to lose interest in it. Also, after counting all the characters I would have to draw and design in the film, there would be too many. The task of animating all the characters would far too difficult and take much longer. Another big reason i changed my film is that the story is quite long, after writing the script, the entire film was going to reach a length of more than 4 minutes, which isn’t the correct length for this project.

My new film - Introvert ft. Harvey (Music Video)

After changing my film, i have decided that my new one will be a music video for one of my songs from an upcoming album i will be releasing soon. The name of my album is called catharsis and has a story that is described in each song. In a nutshell, the story of the whole album is about a shy, introverted boy that finds love for the first time. However, throughout the journey in this relationship, problems arise. The story ends with the couple broken up, and the introverted boy learns to accept himself and learns from all his mistakes in the relationship before he moves on to form healthier relationships. The only song from the album i will be focusing on is called introvert, the prolouge in the album where the boy meets the girl for the very first time. I think this film will be better to create than my old project, since i will only need to animate and develop two characters. I think i will be more enthusiastic about it since music is something i am very enthusiastic about.

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A timelapse for the Hometown environment i wrote about in the last post.

Software : Animate CC

Recorded using OBS

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A time-lapse video showing the process of how i created the main character for my 3 minute film.

Software : Animate CC

Recorded using OBS 

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Character/Environment Design

This is the main character that will feature in my 3-minute film. It is meant to represent my younger self. In the film, I intend to show the progression of my life by having the character age as time passes. I made sure that the design was simple to allow me to easily animate the character. I am still trying to figure out how I am going to rig the character as well, I want to reach an endpoint where I am able to pull out the character at any time and use it in any shots. The character was created in animate CC, it was drawn by taking basic shapes and moulding them into small building blocks that make up the whole character. I feel like i could improve the character in so many ways. I could add a mouth, change the clothes so that they are more releveent to the location the film is taking place (Zambia). I could have achieved this by making the clothes dusty because zambia is known to be quite a hot dry place. There will be a timelapse video showing the process in how i drew the character.

This is a test of what the backgrounds might look like when i create them. It is what my hometown in Zambia looked like, however this picture isn't accurate to what the real thing looks like. I’m trying to apply simplicity and a little bit of detail to every object just so it will be easier to animate. I repeated the same technique when i was drawing my own characters where i took basic shapes and moulded them into different shapes. There will be a timelapse video showing the eact process i went through in order to draw this picture.

[uclanjm3rdyear-blog]

TV Series Sypnosis

At the moment, theres no name for this TV series, but i will summarise it as follows: 

My TV series in a nutshell, will be an educational, animated series introducing people to music production and all the different plugins that are used to create music. The main focus in this TV series will be FL studio. FL studio is a digital audio workstation created by a company in Belgium called image line. In the series, characters take the forms of plugins with arms and legs. These characters will walk around the screen, demonstrating what they are able to do in FL studio as well as a narrator describing them in general. Each character will have distinct personalities depending on what their function is. For example, a distortion plugin will have a flamboyant personality, being very quick to anger and will often conflict with other plugins in the show. The show’s world will reside in FL studio personified as a house, here all the plugins live. Overall, the main objective in this TV series is to make music production entertaining as well as educating people on the basics.

I have chosen to do this as a TV series because music production is something I am quite knowledgeable in and it is something I am very passionate about. The project will be quite manageable for me and I am hoping to see it through to the end of my degree.