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BA3a Collaborative Pre-Production Evaluation

This project has been one of the most enjoyment collaborative experiences to date, I have really enjoyed working with my teammates and together we have planned for a very excited animation endeavour. We work very well as a team, making each other laugh as well as pushing each individual’s practice without standing on their toes. Communication was great, we all felt like we could be honest with each other, so it was easy to voice ideas and concerns throughout the pre-production process. I found my role as Producer challenging at times because a lot of my focus was on the Personal Showcase project, however I still able to create a full deadline, making sure the team consented and knew exactly what we will need to do to achieve our goals in a timely manner.

At the beginning of the project, due to a lot of ideas being thrown around, I wrote up documents every time we had a meeting so that all our decisions and initial concepts were all in one place, ensuring that everyone in the team was one the same page. I found that these documents were also useful to look back on to check if there is anything we forgot about and to make sure we aren’t straying from our overall concept and inspirations. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to finish a full animatic with the working script, as it got closer to the deadline, it became more difficult to find time for a meeting. I also think that we should after the deadline and make sure that we know exactly what comes next and are ready to start production.

In terms of improvements to my individual work in this pre-production period, I think I could have benefited by going back to the initial surrealist and dream related sources to make sure I am creating something that resembles the same theme. For example, making the composition of the shots more dreamlike or looking more closely at dream theories and integrating those into my work. Overall, I am happy with what we as a group were able to achieve and I am looking forward to realising this project further in production and post-production.

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BA3a Personal Showcase Evaluation

The project has been one of the intense processes I have completed at university to date, but also a project that I conducted the most research and experimentation for with a focus on expanding my knowledge of a variety of industry used techniques. Whilst, initially being disappointed to have to opt for faux fur fabric instead of a more industry used process when constructing my final puppet and struggling to accept his shape. It was just too time-consuming to finish to a high standard in the time allotted for this project. Now, I am pretty pleased and fond of my puppet, he was definitely worth all the hard work as I think he is a great representation of my visual style and what I am cable of in terms of fabrication skills.

Even though I struggled to fabricate my puppet in the right order and felt faint a lot of the time I was in the 3D Workshop, I now have a much better understanding of mould making, casting and silicone which is exactly what I set out to achieve. In terms of the actual animation, I am happy with the movement I have been able to animate, I think I can see a clear improvement in this since the first year. Even though I wasn’t perfectly happy with the short film as a whole, I think I have a clear, well thought out narrative. I would have liked to have improved the sound design, as based the tutor feedback it needed some reworking, but I had to prioritise my Research Report which I had not spent enough time on due to my focus on this project.

In terms of fabrication techniques, I still would really like to explore hair punching into silicone using a casting special effects silicone instead of the moulding silicone I acquired from the 3D Workshop. I would like to build a large theatrical puppet for use as a practical effect, to try my hand at fabricating on a larger scale for a non-animated production. A fabrication material that I haven’t fully explored yet is latex; I think it would be an interesting comparison to make against my recent work in silicone. Lastly, I would like to practice airbrushing which is a widely used method of painting creature effects. Overall, I am proud of what I was able to achieve in this project and excited to explore industry used fabrication techniques further in the future.

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BA3a Personal Showcase - Experimentation Reel

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BA3a Collaborative Pre-Production Weekly Summary (Christmas Holidays)

Research Sources 

Primary research - videos, gifs and images of two different cats

Anatomy of cats

Sketch of the anatomy of my cat creature

Puppet inspiration eg. Nowness short film & Fizzgig fabrication tutorial

Run Baby Run short film and ‘making of’ video

Will McDaniel puppets & fabrication tutorials

Robert Kurtzman & his ‘Nagging Doubt’ puppet

Various puppet making & performing tutorials

Various puppet arms & controls tutorials

I was finally able to do a substantial amount of research towards the fabrication of my characters in my individual sequences that have helped me conceptualise them further and given me a variety of options for experimentation in the production phase of this collaborative endeavour.

Development

This week, without the Personal Showcase project hanging over me, I was able to do a variety of research and work towards this project. I was able to put together all of our collaborative work in a group document for submission as well as my own personal document that I feel full captures what we have achieved during the pre-production stage of this project.

Strengths

I’m glad I made a maquette for the cat creature and a plasticine test for the mouth, I am sure it will help me fabricate a lot easier than if I just had my sketches. With all this additional research, I feel I have a lot better of an idea of what I want to experiment with in production before constructing the final puppets. 

Area for Development

I think my storyboard may need improvement in terms of the composition, it could be pushed further to make it resemble something more dreamlike, especially in the teeth sequence. Also, we have a brilliant and professional working script but it will definitely need to be cut down as it is too long to be paired with animation at the moment. If I was able to do this process again, I would try and distribute my workload better so as to do more of the initial research earlier on then when I actually conducted the research. 

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BA3a Collaborative Pre-Production - Dream Sequence Rough Animatic #3

This rough animatic is quite quick, I think it could do with slowing down and additional frames. It was a test I completed fairly quickly myself because I had the blog and Research Report to catch up on. I think like I said before, it would definitely benefit from audio behind it so I can more accurately time it. I think as a group we would also benefit from putting all of our timed sequences together and making the hard decision of cutting any sequences to make the animation less lengthy, really evaluating when we want to achieve and portray to our audience. I still think it would be really cool if we were able to put something in each animation as a kind of, ‘spot the snail’ from adventure time because it may bring all of our work together even though they are such different animation types. 

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BA3a Collaborative Pre-Production - Dream Sequence Rough Animatic #2

This is the roughly timed animatic I was able to do, I think the time is alright but it’s always difficult for me to tell without the narration or sound design paired with it. I think the part where the toes fall off in the hands definitely needs lengthening and I think it would do well to have a few more frames there too, for example, the hand coming in, touching the feet, lifting it and then the toes falling off into the palm. I was a good test even though I didn’t get a chance to link it up with our rough narration, this is something to do straight away when starting production to see if I was right about the narration being too long. 

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BA3a Collaborative Pre-Production - Dream Sequence Rough Animatic #1

This is my rough animatic for dream #1, I think this is the most well-timed sequence out of the three I have done but I still think it needs slowing down like the others. I think it would also benefit from more frames between the gas mask coming in to be put on the baby and then on the baby, for example figuring out how I will transition from the baby in the mother's arms to in the stomach. I could possibly zoom right into the gas mask of the baby and then as I put out the background has changed, i think it’s something to work out with Chantelle, whose animation comes after this one.

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BA3a Collaborative Pre-Production - Individual Document  

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A Level work with writing on body:

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BA3a Pre Production Collaborative Project: Puppet Research (Arms & controls)

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Silly-Puppets-Control-Accessory-Large/dp/B00XK08G58/ref=sr_1_1_sspa/259-0080558-3080279?ie=UTF8&qid=1544787024&sr=8-1-spons&keywords=puppets+with+arm+rods&psc=1

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BA3a Pre Production Collaborative Project: Puppet Research (Making and performing workshops)

https://picturetopuppet.co.uk/mechanisms-extras/

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BA3a Collaborative Pre-Production - Mouth maquette/experimentation

I did this quick experiment with plasticine and these acrylic teeth that I’ve used in a few of my projects (always come in handy!) just to see how I feel about plasticine, having only worked with it once. I’m not that keen on it, it's very messy and doesn’t retain the teeth very well but that may just mean I need to make the gums larger. I think I could potentially work with this medium but I would like to do more experimentation in the production phase, maybe looking into doing something with a real person seeing as it transitions to Maisie’s real live action footage. The good thing about this test though, my boyfriend who had the dream I am creating said this is exactly how he pictured it, with ‘gums like clay’, so it’s definitely something to keep in mind.

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Dream #2 Research and Inspirations

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I thought I would look at the skeletal and muscle structure of a cat (focusing on the front legs and paws) as my cat creature’s paws will need to fall off in one of my animated sequences. I want to be able to show the bone and muscle inside the paw when the toes fall off for accuracy, however, I really don’t to have to look at dead cats so I hoping that this and my own images/ footage of real living cats will be enough. It's also really interesting looking at how a cat is able to extend and retract their claws, it would fun to try and integrate this particular detail into my puppet. 

Using my research into a cat’s anatomy, I sketched out my own interpretation of what the skeleton would look like in my cat creature.

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Robert Kurtzman

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BA3a Collaborative Pre-Production Primary research - Cat paws (Dream #2)