atomicmooanamootion

[atomicmooanamootion]

Frozen Notes.

My attempt at figuring out Frozens plot, character archetypes and list of events. 

- Introduction of Sven and Kristoff. 

-Introduction to film through a song that provides foreshadowing. 

-Anna and Elsa are introduction, their relationship is shown as a strong, loving and innocent one. 

-Mother and Father are introduced after Anna is accidently hurt by Elsa’s magic. Guilt and fear consume Elsa.  

-Tension and distance only grows larger with the deathe of their parents.

-Coronation day, Elsa becomes Queen. 

-Possible foe introduced, Duke of Weselton. 

-Anna opens up about being lonely and excited for the ball through song. 

-Elsa is also open about her feelings of anxiety to through the same song. 

-Hanns is introduced. 

-The coronation concludes. 

-Anna doesn’t feel equal to Elsa. 

-It’s obvious Anna and Elsa miss each other’s company but the tension between them still causes a rift.  

-Hans and Anna’s relationship grows. They spend the night together. 

-Foreshadowing through another song. Seems Hanns could be another possible foe. 

-Extra tension after Elsa refuses to bless Annas and Hans engagement. Emotions boil over, the truth hurts and Elsa’s powers are revealed. She flees and the stories motive is set. 

-Anna sets off to find Elsa. 

-Elsa’s feelings are brought to the audience's attention through song. 

-Comical relief in the shape of the owner of the mountain shop.

-Anna meets Kristoff and Sven. Together they team up in order to stop winter and return Elsa. 

-Deliam: Wolves chase them and cause tension and excitement within the film. This results in this is the loss of a sledge. 

-Comic relief and character of conscience is introduced, Olaf. Always caring for Anna, created by Elsa.       

-Audience is shown how poorly the town is faring and how Hans is helping the townspeople. 

-Character growth between Kristof and Anna before Elsa's’ castle is found. 

-Elsa’s emotions take over her powers once she realises she still has obligations to the town. 

-Anna gets striked again and slowly her health deteriorates. 

-Dilemma: Snow golem throws them off a cliff. 

-Anna gets worse and is taken to the trolls for help where she is told that only an act of true love can mend her.

-Confrontation with guards of Weselton and then Hans, afterwhich she’s taken back as a prisoner. 

-Anna arrives at the castle and Hans is revealed to be a Shapeshifter and Anna is left alone, close to death. 

-Both Anna and Elsa are both in serious danger and the climax is set. 

-Kristoff sees the trouble in the town and runs back for Anna. 

-Olaf finds Anna very weak and tries to help by getting her to Kristoff. 

-Anna struggles to get to Kristoff and Elsa seems lost before being confronted by Hans again, informing her that Anna is dead, causing her to fall to the floor with grief and Hans goes to strike her down. 

-Anna chooses to sacrifice herself for Elsa by stepping in front of the blow, just as she does she turns to ice, smashing the sword and throwing Hans back. 

- Afterwhich Anna thaws herself by creating her own act of true love. 

-Summer is brought back and the town is saved, all foes aren’t dealt with and all relationships are fixed. 

[atomicmooanamootion]

Sketchbook Habits.

One of the first lesson was looking at how we could improve our sketchbooks and imaginative drawings with a few different tasks. The one above was memory recall. Trying to remember what we had seen in the past and drawing it with less time to show distinctive features. We also did this with bears, trying to draw one from memory then pictures and finally from a video. It was challenging but very successful at informing my imagination of what a bear could/should look like. This one I will do in the future as it worked well for me.   

The one above was a spider diagram exercise to help create possible imaginative links on a singular subject based on facts and things you already know. This one definitely works however I am not used to using it in relation to my own drawings.  

This one was definitely a lot of fun to do with the class and could help spark ideas for sure...however I don’t know how I could use it. Maybe if I started with my theme and let other people continue the thought? 

This is one of my favorite ways to link imagination with reality. For myself it tends to be little words or sentences I hear from people around me as I walk, but it’s good fun. I’d like to do this one more often.    

[atomicmooanamootion]

Character Design Weekly Summary

Week One:

This week we looked at how to design characters using character sheets and shape language.  It was a really fun work shop and l really enjoyed it. It's a little odd to see how different shapes speak to our subconscious, an example being that circles tend to make is feel that same thing is ate and innocent.

Week Two:

This week we made up a turn around sheet from the plasticine models of our characters. This was also a lot of fun but I had trouble with the material itself. The plasticine was too soft and couldn’t support the weight of the models body and started leaning back so I had to prop it up with a stick. The second lesson of the week we had a character designer from Blue Zoo, an animation company come in and talk to us about what he does and how clients can sometimes be a pain. He also showed us some of his personal projects, they were really good so far, I hop to see them in the future.  

In this lesson we also looked quickly at how exaggerating the pose of your character helps to convey emotions, gestures and the space that they are interacting with.

Week Three:

This session we took our characters and tried to draw them walking face on as well as side on. I actually found this very difficult and had to use a guide for all of them including my iteration, but in the end I liked my iteration a lot more than the first one I did, even with the three skeletons I sketched up for it. I think I found it tricky because I’m not used to using TV.Paint yet and I get frustrated at how messy my work turns out due to a lack of control of my line work. Hopefully this will improve over time.

Evaluation:

Through our project so far we have looked at shape theory and how to design a characters with the use of a model, turn around sheet and TV.Paint. All this helped with our walk cycles for our characters. Through the project I feel like I’ve excelled at actually making iterations of character sheets, actually designing the turn around and models to fit their archetypes by hand but whenever it comes to doing this work digitally I get stuck and feel frustrated by the quality of my work. I know this is because I’m not yet used to the programs we’ve been introduced to and because I’ve barely done any work digitally. Unfortunately I feel like this is only going to be fixed by practising and letting myself be at the stage I am instead of comparing myself to others abilities.

[atomicmooanamootion]

Dynamics exercise: Impact and Reaction.

All of the above is my research that I did for the dynamics activity. I chose Impact and reaction, using Great Gulls as my object for depicting what we’ve learnt through this project. I was going to use an exaggerated amount of stretch and squash like the animator Kéké does but decided to keep simple after some constructive criticism, which also helped me finalize my storyboard. 

[atomicmooanamootion]

Character Research Weekly Summaries

Week One:

This week was an introduction to what our research project would contain and that we should start thinking about what character we might want to research and also subjects that we're interested in. It was a little confusing at first but l just asked what sort of subjects that might be.

Week Two:

This week we learnt about character creation and how you can either build a character from the inside out or from the outside in, starting with their appearance first or their personality / backstory first. It was also suggested that taking aspects from real life Situations can help make Characters more believable. On top of this me also took a quick look at archetypes but not in very much detail.

Week Three:

This week we looked at archetypes in more detail and what they mean individually. I found it interesting to learn this and then find how easily applicable it is to see it in movie’s and other stories and how shape theory fits with are types so nicely. We also touched on problems with representation within stories so that they're not Stereotypical nor racist or ignorant.

Week Four:

This session we took a look at past students essays and at what sort of things they added to them and what kind of questions they put forward. They were simple statements that weren't overly complicated, which is something I tend to do. Hopefully I can avoid that this time around.

Week Five:

This time we looked at realism, surrealism and issues surrounding subjectivity, such as how other peoples realities can and are different to our own in wags that may seem surreal. It was very interesting and l liked the lecture. It was a subject that I could relate to and I'm sure others can to.

Week Six:

This last session was to help us prepare for writing our essay and how to do Harvard referencing. I'm a little nervous with the referencing just because I've not done them before. Hopefully it'll be aright.

Evaluation:

Though out our lessons I've been applying what we've learnt each week to my chosen character to help with research and what sort of question I want to look at when talking about Kubo and how it relates to him. I feel that I'm good at doing online research and finding information that way and actually planning research and essay writing but I'm hot good at doing primary research for these sorts of things, like looking through books unfortunately, I find it difficult to keep my concentration for very long before getting distracted. I've been trying to improve this by taking regular breaks or changing up what I'm doing, say from writing to research or going for a short walk.

[atomicmooanamootion]

Dynamics Weekly Summary

Week One:

The first week doing the pendulum swings was a little difficult but after practising with our group it got easier to understand spacing and timing which helped with my confidence before we started 2D animating on the line testers.

Week Two:

This week we animated a ball bounce and a secondary action. It was really fun however I found  it was tricky to figure out where I should add extra frames to slow down the movement of the ball so I had do the secondary action later in the week, however once I figured out that the ball bounce guild was similar to the pendulum I found my confidence again. When I got around to it I actually enjoyed it, I was worried though that it wasn't very believable what I was trying to depict but later iterations helped.

Week Three:

This week we worked on stretch and squash and so far it's my favourite. As for as my progress I'd like to pick up my speed when drawing frames so I don't fall behind. I know it is important to understand the theory as well as being able to draw quick so I'm trying to remind myself that taking time to understand things is better.

Week Four:

As for the animating side I'm finding hand drawing our guides a little difficult mostly when they're over lapping, it tends to boggle mg brain; however colour coding and numbering each key frame helped. I also found the collision key frames guide difficult for this reason.  

Week Five

I also did my walk cycle this week. I found it challenging but the examples we were given were very helpful and helped me visualise each pose. The only thing that is obvious so far is that I suck at keeping proportions of limbs and head the same with each frame.

Week Six:

This week we did a jump animation that was helping us with anticipation and follow through. It was expectingly tricky but it was a nice transition from everything this we learnt, combing timing, spacing, weight and stretch and squash. Although I managed to get them all into a jump the length of the body kept changing and wasn't consistent. However I feel like I'm learning and getting more confident with applying knowledge.

Evaluation:

For my Dynamics project I learnt the basics, this included some of the 12 principles of animation and how to apply them to my own animations, a lit the stop motion, 2D animation, Dragon frame and TV. Paint. The principles we learnt are as follows; timing and spacing, stretch and squash, exaggeration, anticipation, follow through, casein and ease out, arcs and secondary actions.

I feel like I was good at applying the different principles to our tasks when we only had one to focusses on but more than two I found difficult to apply myself to, my mind gets a little boggled. Other then that I really enjoyed doing the stretch and squash exercise, it was a lot fun to try and think where the mass might move in relation to physics. I also feel confident using Dragon frame.

I think in the future I need to look at improving my consistency while animating so bits don't change shape and size throughout an animation exercise. As well as this l want to get better and feel more comfortable with TV. Paint. I quite often get frustrated with it because l have less control of the lines I'm drawing and they tend to be awfully scribble. Beyond these things I also need to get better at time management and properly plan out what I need to do.l feel for the most part things like consistent  animation and confidence on TV-paint will come with time and practice and patients with new programmes. As far as my time management I have been making calendars with different tasks on them each day so I know what has been done and needs doing and have also been making colour coded lists of things that are unfinished.

[atomicmooanamootion]

Character Walk Cycle 

I’ve been finding walk cycle quite difficult to do throughout the term, especially on Tvpaint. Making the frames and correcting mistakes is easy enough but I found actually drawing with the wacom tablet really tricky and would quite often get frustrated with the quality of my work. In the end I had to draw three layers including a walk cycle guide to help with the key poses. Hopefully I’ll get better at these with practice. I had to move the key poses to the center of the page as well so it kind of looks like my character is ice skating.

[atomicmooanamootion]

This here is my character maquette and the turnaround sheet. The only problem I had with the model was that the yellow  plasticine was much softer than the red which meant it started leaning back and funnily enough gave the model character, despite my desire for him to be stoic and silent.  

 The little purple faces were just something I tried to play with seeing as my maquette doesn't have a defined face for ease.

[atomicmooanamootion]

Realism Vs. Surrealism

Throughout film and animation there’s been different layers of realism and surrealism to help convey a desired effect. Whether that’s to create a historical event, an emotion, an experience or story. 

1) Real in how being drunk might feel on a night out but surreal in animation style.

2) Trying to depict a 2D painted background that looks realistic by the way the camera seems to move through the frames. This was achieved with a multiplane camera.

3) An animation reciting a historical event in a documentary like fashion. It’s made to look realistic and believable.   

4) Very surreal, lacks anatomy and is made with rubber hose animation. Is made to be fun and playful.

5) Mixing surreal and realism together. This was achieved by rotoscoping in Gulliver and traditionally animating the natives. However I feel Gulliver has fallen into the uncanny valley.   

6) Creating super realism through the appearance and movement of animatronics, however this also falls into the uncanny valley for me to.  

^v Multiplane Cameras v^ 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kN-eCBAOw60

Kubo and the Two Strings tries to go for a close realisme but stays away from the level of animatronics or super realism that would land it in the uncanny valley. The backgrounds works well for realistic purposes since it has a made set that cameras can move in and out off. 

[atomicmooanamootion]

Character Research and Character Design sheets.

[atomicmooanamootion]

Shape Theory and Character Sheets

Shape theory is the idea that certain shapes subconsciously make us feel differentLy. For example a circle makes us feel things like comfort, affection, empathy and safety. Whereas a square might make us feel protected, safe, maybe intimidated or nervous but put them together and you have a loving, strong, protective figure. Generally speaking primary shapes follow the archetypes below, however this insist a strict rule. 

Circle: (Friendly, Happy, Comforting, Soft.etc.) Hero, Ally, Herold.

Square: (Strong, protective, Leader, Intimidating, ect.) Mentor, Shapeshifter, Threshold guardian. 

Triangle: (Sharp, Dangerous, Smart, Clever, Sneaky. etc.) Shadow, Shapeshifter, Trickster. 

After considering how shapes can represent character we went away and produced our own character designs. I based mine very hearty on shape because I find it tricky to create a character from the top of my head.  

Shape theory: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLQJiEpCLQE&feature=youtu.be 

[atomicmooanamootion]

Uncanny Valley

The image above shows the uncanny valley. The term ‘uncanny valley’ refers to a feeling of uneasiness, discomfort and even fear of an object or creation that is very human like but something is just slightly off, this is usually to do with the mouth or eyes for most animated characters trying to look super realistic because of how humans communicate through eye contact. 

Another reason can be because of the way something moves, or because in our minds we know it shouldn’t be doing something but yet it seem to be. For example manikins moving. An example below is the Boston Dynamics robots:

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PaTWufUqqU)

In relation to Kubo and other animations creators are aware of the uncanny valley and to avoid putting the audience off tend to stay away from trying to making their characters look photo realistic since this is usually the issue. Instead they try to make them appealing.  An easy way of doing this is to give a character baby proportions. Big eyes, big heads and a small body, it tends to grab ahold of human parental instincts.

[atomicmooanamootion]

Character Vs. Characterisation

Characterisation: Everything observed, such as qualities.

Character: moral or true character, the way someone behaviours under pressure.  

Relating this to the culture of Kubo and how it's portrayed through him without being stereotypical is a little tricky, not because it is stereotypical but because it's hand to know the cultural traitors of someone from Japan without meeting anyone from Japan myself. This would make it biased. I Can go off general observations such as people enjoying raw fish, but this isn't contained within Japan alone, so does it really work?

[atomicmooanamootion]

Questioning your Character and Queer Coding

Questioning your character allows you, the creator to figure out how they would react to different situations, how they might answer to questions about their background, what there favorite food is and so on. It helps fill out a character and stops them from being too random and unrelatable as well as not a copy of yourself. 

Queer Coding is a term given to a character that has camp, effeminate, or gay stereotypes without conforming the characters sexuality. Usually it’s given to a lot of vilnius male Disney characters for example, giving them softer, posher sounding voices and body language that is stereotypically more feminine.  

[atomicmooanamootion]

Archetypes.

Character archetypes are how we catalog different types of creatures in a story as theorised by Joseph Campbell’s ‘The Hero with a Thousand Faces’. Below are the separate archetypes. 

(http://mythologyteacher.com/documents/TheHeroJourney.pdf)

As far as the character Kubo goes he is definitely the hero in this story. He is both the main figure in the story and the one with a strong motive to survive and at first to get back to his mother, then it changes to defeat his grandfather and right at the end it’s left open to the audience and they can assume he goes on to live with his renewed grandfather (who loses his memory and is made mortal.).

[atomicmooanamootion]

Character Consideration.

This is me noting down ideas about Kubo and the character Six in relation to culture, movement, style and how they're visually interesting.

Kubo: 

Culture: Japanese, clothing, festivals, folklore, cultural beliefs, storytelling. 

Movement: Stop motion, it flows and is believable. The face expressions are superb and there is very little interruption. The clothing is made and animated fantastically but moves a little differently to the faces which I feel gives it a tasteful style. Little details like hair falling around the face and singular specs of sand being animated makes me really appreciate the animators attention for detail.

Style: Stop motion animation gives the film a distinct style to begin with as well as the limitations already presented by stop motion processes and capabilities. Japanese influences in clothing and textiles. Things like the scarab design on Kubos back. 

Visuals: Kubo is a young child, his hair is tied and styled in a typical Oden fashion common in east Asia. He has aspects of mystery such as his eye patch. He wears clothes that are too big for him, possibly second hand commoner clothes. 

Six:

Culture:  Set in East Asia environment wise. Despite being a western game themes of Eastern Asia follow through the game and it has similar style to the bathhouse in Spirited away. Six sticks out in comparison. With her yellow raincoat, hidden face and lack of shoes its difficult to assume much about her cultural background. I think this is where Western styles of the developers meets the Eastern Asia inspiration. 

Movement: 3D CG animation, has believable movement. Good examples of this are when Six jumps from objects, it demonstrates her young age with a stumble and the force of her hitting the floor. Her proportions are a bit gangly like she still has growing to do yet we can tell she’s almost unnaturally strong due to actions she can perform compared to her porcelain body. Theres also moments where she’s crouched over in pain, this coupled with the audio makes for believable pain and creates a strong feeling of empathy and affection for the audience. 

Style:  Simple but effective. Gloomy, eerie colour palette compared to Sixs’ bright yellow raincoat pulls the players attention to her. Sharp with shapes and angles, hints at shape theory and Sixs’ arcatype. Very dream like, surreal and heavily catered from a child's point of view. This is sometimes expressed by warped furniture and other much larger characters. 

Visuals: Gloomy and mysterious, her face is hidden by the massive pointed hood and long bangs. She’s very pale, almost sickly and bruised and it seems as though she is only wearing a yellow raincoat and nothing else which is perfect for creating empathy, curiosity and shock, especially as the game progresses. 

(http://www.little-nightmares.com/en/#characters/six)

[atomicmooanamootion]

You can’t have a story without characters.

This was the idea that stories can’t exist without a character, wether that’s a physical person, an object such as a lamp or giving characteristics to an environment by describing it. 

On top of learning about that theory today we also discussed ways to improve our research and how to not write biasedly by thinking up questions that we might be tempted to guess rather than research.

                            Kubo.

1. How were the clothes manipulated for animating?

“Each puppet requires a complicated custom body, handmade clothing, and a rig that can hold the tens of thousands of 3D printed faces the animators swap in and out. (A quick sequence at the end of Laika's ParaNorman shows a sped-up version of the complete puppet-fabrication process.)”

2. What are the clothes made up of?

“With the costume department providing the VFX team with fabric swatches to scan, and the fabrication department building physical character models for the effects team to manipulate, then copy into a digital environment.” Some of the main characters like Kubo and his mother have actual fabric that’s sometimes stabilized with piano wire for support.   

(www.theverge.com/2016/8/18/12500814/laika-studios-behind-the-scenes-kubo-and-the-two-strings-video)

3. What era was Kubo set in?

I couldn’t find the era from any Laika interviews but I searched the Edo period in Japan and found very similar descriptions of hairstyles to those that Kubo and his mother wear, with this I can theorise that the film was set between 17th and 19th century, also known as the Edo Period.

^^^ Accurate for Kubos’ mother. As a princess of the moon she would be considered a moon maiden, very beautiful and kind and so her very long hair represents Japanese social class structures.

(https://www.opendemocracy.net/arts-hair/article_766.jsp)

(https://edoflourishing.blogspot.co.uk/2015/04/hairstyle.html)

I feel like the traditional Edo hair style has been mixed with western hairstyles and a want to somewhat cover Kubos eye has led to his final design. 

4. How did Lakia achieve such fluidity in the faces of the characters?

“When there are 66,000 faces made for a movie, sometimes with 24 different faces used once for one second of a scene, that’s a lot of physical stuff that needs to be created on site. They’ve evolved that printing process from film to film going from plastic 3D printing to powder printing to, on Kubo, being the first people ever to use a color plaster 3D printer. Kubo also has the first ever fully 3D printed stop motion character ever. The flying snake meets electric eel-looking character named Moon Beast was given a unique look not just by its printing but shooting it under different lights to create colors the three color printer was unable to achieve.”  

 “All of those characters are then fitted with those numerous faces, each of broken down into different eyebrow and mouth sections. All combinations considered, there are roughly 48 million possible expressions on a character like Kubo alone. 

(https://io9.gizmodo.com/kubo-and-the-two-strings-mixes-stop-motion-and-technolo-1782837158) 

                            Six 

1. Where did Six come from? 

It’s uncertain to say with confidence where Six actual comes from. The whole game is very vague about everything including its themes of surrealism and nightmares so it’s applicable to a wider audience. This makes it harder to figure out where she’s from. As far as knowing about her culture and where she came from I can only assume from the Eastern Asian designs over the games environments.    

“One thing that we wanted to do, is to not be too specific,” says narrative designer Dave Mervik. “My nightmares will be different from yours. What we’ve done is try to go as far back as you can, and find the root of this stuff. A fear of being alone, or not trusting that things are as they seem. They’re the things that more specific fears or phobias spring from.””

(https://www.theverge.com/2017/4/28/15468396/little-nightmares-horror-game-ps4-xbox-one-pc) 

We’re also informed that Six belongs everywhere...It’s possible to think that rather than her environment and other characters being the nightmare it might in fact be Six herself that is the nightmare...it’s the theories and speculation like this that litter the internet and make reliable sources difficult. 

(www.little-nightmares.com/)  

2. What is Six’s motive? 

Despite completing the game myself and watching many other people play through it her motives are still unclear. With the lack of dialog and a linear gameplay it makes it difficult to realise what’s actually going on. You can only assume her want is to escape but at the end you realise she can’t because she’s trapped on the Maw (which is a massive submerged boat) so we’re left wondering if her motive is to kill The Lady, (the creature that runs and powers the Maw), to take The Ladies place or to escape...these possible motives also change her archetypes, sometimes from Hero to shapeshifter to shadow. 

(www.little-nightmares.com/)  

I think from this point on I’m going to choose Kubo as my character, unlike Six there's easily accessible information that’s not full of theories and unanswered questions, evident by the difference of answers below.