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Resubmission

This is just a link to a few pieces of work I would like to resubmit as part of my pitch and preproduction. The rest of my hand in work as part of my FMP is below this post.

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My 3rd year FMP “The Litter Mermaid” is a comedy drama film about the large amount of plastic we have in our ocean and the danger it is causing to sea life. In my film, an innocent fun loving mermaid Marnie is a dear friend to all the sea creatures. However, when plastic pollution becomes a serious threat to her friends lives, she must work up the courage to confront a human woman Madeline to stop throwing trash from her yacht before the situation gets much worse.  

I have been wanting to make a film about this situation for a while now after being shocked by the overwhelming amount of gruesome images of sea creatures trapped in our plastic. While they have started raising the issue now  like on green peace and planet earth 2, there is no where near enough awareness from people for it as there should be. Thats why my film is about having the courage to speak out against this environmental problem, as in general not enough people notice or care about doing anything about it.

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500 word reflection

The production of my grad film was a freeing and thrilling experience for me, for in many ways this was my most ambitious project yet. Production started right after finishing my dissertation in January and I was able to develop a comfortable routine for myself to have a bit animated each day. This was even before Ozzie came back to guide us through our process, in that time we had people like Emma and Steve who gave us useful feedback on our films. However, due to the world crisis my healthy routine soon changed and by no longer having the equipment of the university, production of my film got considerably slower in the last two months.

Before production began, there were still some things that had to be reworked in the animatic. In both my sessions with Steve and Robert they offered some useful changes that would benefit the plot of the film. For example, my mermaid character Marnie now looks hopelessly for Skip among all the trash to better illustrate that he's a victim of the ocean pollution in the story. By developing a strong relationship between Marnie and Skip I feel the audience better understand how the tragic demise of Marnie’s friend drives her to angrily confront the problem in the films climax scene.

For the animation process of the film I looked at various references for the cartoony style I was going for, while animating my scenes. For my mermaid I had already studied Disney Animator Glen Keane’s style of animating Ariel the Little Mermaid during pre-production and just had to remember to give my mermaid a smooth and flowing movement when she swims across the shot. However, there were moments when I overthought her shapes and she came out a bit rigid, forcing me to have to redo some frames to make the movement smoother. Skip’s animation was quite simple on the other hand and I was able to draw most of his line art straightaway, as I mostly based his movement off a propeller after watching videos of mudskippers swimming. Since my characters go through a lot of emotions, particularly Marnie when reacting to things, I mostly looked at my two inspirations of Zig and Sharko and Tom and Jerry, both very slapstick references. This added a bit of exaggerated humour in contrast to the serious crisis these characters are in.

This was further supported by the voice over I got from my actors I imported into the project while animating.

I’m generally happy with the parts I have animated even if most of the scenes are rough still, as I was still able to produce almost half of my film. It was important to me to complete the opening scene, which shows the friendly relationship between the two central characters, so that I could at least make a teaser for my film for people to get an idea of it, while still in the making. My grad assist was also able to finish the background characters on time which added a breath of life to the scenes background before my characters are introduced.

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Editing process

When editing scene 1 I added a panning shot for when Marnie leaves the scene to show how she’s swimming to the next shot. It took a few hours to make this pan feel natural as she swims off screen. I used “easy easy” effect in after effects to make it smoother, but I still had to play around with the speed to make it feel like a natural movement. In the end I got a nice sliding movement as her tail swishes off the screen.

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Sub-Headers

Website

Portfolio

Showreel

Postcard & Businesscard 

Festival Pack

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Here is the link to my website.

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Web design - About me section

The about me section is always the part I do not like writing about so I just kept it simple and did not over do it when selling myself to the world. I thought about putting a bit of work experience on this page but I thought this was a bit redundant if I was including a pdf file of my cv for people to see by clicking on the button. Instead I added some animation skills below, so that employers know what my capabilities are.

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Editing process 

Putting all my scenes together was tricky at times as I had to keep it synced to the sound effects I added as well as the music from my composer. One scene was particularly tricky and it is when the seagull flies into Marnie and pokes her eye, in which I added some voice of her wincing in pain. This bit of sound carries on into the next scene when she reappears with a now black eye from her encounter with the seagull. In order to keep this sound and keep it synced to the music, I put a short blackout that fades into the next scene, to illustrate to the viewer that the seagull temporarily blinded her in that moment. I might make some changes to this at a future date, as I think the transition could have been done better. 

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Last minute backgrounds

While editing my scenes together I made some new backgrounds for a couple that had empty ones or remnants of my animatic. This was a pretty simple process, altho I still believe the ocean floor one at the top needed some reflections to better indicate that its the surface up above, but I needed more time to figure out how it would look in my style. The last two backgrounds needed some extra animation of ripples for the yacht in the middle of the ocean, but again this did not take very long to do.

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Here is a link to a pdf of my portfolio, as well as a link to my portfolio on my website: https://maxgwstudio.weebly.com/portfolio.html

For this pdf version of my portfolio I mainly included the same pieces I had on my portfolio on my website as well as in the same order. The only two extra page I added was the title and closing card. For the title I used the extra business card design that I did not use as I thought the design still really reflects me and my work and the character is already featured in my section of the 2 min film in my portfolio, so that matches well. For the closing/thank you card I chose one of my illustrations featured in my portfolio of my character flying into the distance. While the design is different to the title card, It helps to illustrate a variety of design and styles in my portfolio. 

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Portfolio design

For my portfolio I first made it on my website I created on weebly. I originally thought of just having a gallery of all my work and would only include my illustrations and personal work, as everything on my films had its own section. But after showing my website in its early stages to Harriet and James, they suggested that I showed art from my final year films at uni, as it is still some of my strongest work. As a result I decided to instead have a slideshow of my films at the top of the page so it would be easier for people to scroll through them. I made a slideshow for each of my 3 films and added a title at the top so they know which film they are scrolling through. The only thing, and this was mentioned at the crit is that its not always clear theres more before one scrolls down, as someone will only see one image from the slideshow when they open the page. For the rest of my work (illustrations, etc) I did keep the gallery, as I think it looks more artistic and aesthetically pleasing for my “Everyday Objects” for example.

Over time, however, I decided that I did not like the composition of the 3 slideshows one after the other and instead showed the art of my 2nd and 1st year films in a gallery, but kept my grad and primary film as a slideshow at the top. I might make it into one slideshow in the future but for now I like the arrangement I created.

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When we met with the music course I was not sure what kind of music I wanted for my film but after listening to Biju’s music who’s examples included a mix of underwater sounds I was quite excited about having him as my music composer. 

I gave him some references that included Finding Nemo, The Little Mermaid, Zig & Sharko and Spongebob tracks for inspiration for the films score. As well as that Biju was inspired by the dark aspect of of my film for the music. With this information I wanted some smooth fantasy music that would gradually change to a more intense and traumatising tune. 

This 1st draft Biju sent me was already very promising. He clearly was inspired by the references I gave him from The Little Mermaid and Finding Nemo for the opening. The transitions between peaceful and intense music was well executed. This also includes the sudden sound of Taylor Swift music playing when we meet Madeline that i suggested. This adds a nice bit of humour before the crisis continues to escalate.

There are still some things that need revising. Some parts sound a bit too depressing in the moment. For example the scene where the dolphin pukes all over Marnie can be dramatic but with a more humorous tone, as after all my film is a comedy/drama.

I would also like to resubmit this animatic as part of my preproduction.

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Here is my festival pack with all the necessary information for my grad film The Litter Mermaid. I have put N/A for any areas not applicable. 

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Animation process - Dolphin encounter

This scene takes place right after Marnies encounter with the seagull which has left her with a black eye, which can be seen in the scene. I mostly followed my animatic and the “push and pull” exercise that we did with Vincent in 2nd year served me well. The only thing I had to figure out was Marnie’s reaction to seeing the dolphin for the first time after finding it beneath some trash. She had to be surprised to see it, as it was not who she thought(i.e. her friend Skip). I ended up opting for her initially getting scared by it, thinking it was a shark by first seeing its sharp fin. It then pulls up and reveals its dopey expression, which I think works well and adds a bit of humour. I might add a bit more anticipation before revealing that its a dolphin. 

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Business and postcard design 

Link to my cards to download:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1drTnkGpCcaEp1usY-eM9pQhocl0Zh6jv?usp=sharing

After my crit I made some changes to my business and post cards. For my business I simply moved the designs closer away from the edge as both the design on the front and logo at the back were too close to the cutting line.

For my postcard I ended up choosing another image as people responded better to the close up of the turtle as it was more graphic than the other more simplistic shots I chose from my film. I was originally thinking of using this as one of the designs but at the time I thought it was too gross and intense for a postcard.

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Here is my new showreel for this year that I have made changes to. I have included new clips from my grad film and live project as well as my grad assist work. It was tricky for me to get the contact page right. Originally I had a clever idea of having the contact page in the gun hole when my hunter character shoots at the end. This did not work because it was too small to see. I then decided to have the contact info show up when it blacks out. At first it faded in, but it looked too static, so I changed it to a smooth moving credit scene, which I think works well. This also let me add an end credit scene of one of my characters.

In general I’m quite happy with how it flows but after having my crit it came to my attention that I should maybe take out some of the weaker clips like my shapes project and replace it with more scenes from my grad film.

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Postcard Design

For my postcard, I chose 3 images from my film ‘The Litter Mermaid’. At the moment the 1st one appeals to me the most as it was an original concept art for my film that I drew when the mermaid reveals to the woman that she’s undergone a mutation. I also feel like the picture speaks for itself, as you can see theres quite a bit of rubbish in the water from behind her, which explains why she’s so mad at the woman who she’s directly facing. Now that this is actually a shot featured in my film, I feel that it has resonated well throughout production.