Semester 2 Assessment

Throughout this semester I have kept a weekly production diary entitled 'Reflection on the Week', which covers work from all modules. This was a useful way to keep track of the work I was producing for each module and to set goals for work that needed to be produced. They also include details such as choices I made when working on projects and challenges I encountered and how they were overcome. These 'Reflection on the Week' blog posts can be viewed HERE. All blog posts for Semester 2 (including notes from meetings and tutorial/workshop notes) can be viewed HERE.


Going Live
All relevant Going Live blog posts on this blog can be viewed HERE.
All my own blog posts on the Going Live group blog can be viewed HERE.

Reserach and Moodboards
Relevant blog post at: Going Live Research And Moodboards blog post

Character Designs

Relevant blog post at: Going Live Character Design blog post

3D Modeling
Relevant blog post at: Going Live 3D Modeling blog post

Rigging
Relevant blog post at: Going Live Rigging blog post

Animation
Relevant blog posts at: Going Live Animatic Work blog post and Going Live Character Animation blog post

Production Management
Relevant blog post at: Going Live Production blog post

Final Film and Presentation
Relevant blog post at: Going Live Final Film and Presentation blog post

Advanced Production
All relevant blog posts for Advanced Production module can be viewed HERE.

Storyboards and 2D Animatic
One of the first things our group worked on at the start of the Semester was the story and storyboard. This involved a couple of story meetings and lots of post-its:

I then took all of the post-its and put them together into a rough animatic:

The story was then divided up between the team to draw out the shots more clearly, which I then updated the animatic with:

The story then went through some more changes and development. It was then my job to draw up the new storyboard and animatic. This was the most up-to-date 2D animatic I created:

Research
One of the first parts of research was to create some moodboards:

3D style

2D style

Capturing my own reference footage was useful research and can be used as reference when it comes to animating. I set up the same scenario as the story and filmed my own dog taking a biscuit into the garden:

Put a bird feeder in the garden - reference for the bird character

Design work

The dog character took the most work to get right, and involved multiple group meetings to discuss and draw out variations before getting to the final character design:

Dog character sketching

Sketching Dog faces

Dog character sketching - decided on a Jack Russell Terrier breed

Colour variations

Colour variations with jumpers

Color variations for Owner and Dog - the Dog is held by the Owner in 2 shots, therefore the dog's jumper could not clash or merge with the Owner's jumper.

I quickly did an edit with Concept Art that Sheng had created to test whether these colours would work in the environment that Sheng had designed.

Trying out a variety of hairstyles for the Owner character

Through research, I decided that the Linnet bird would be the best suited for the film. It is on the Red List for Conservation Concern and has a pop of bright pink/red to help it stand out in the Autumn/Winter environment:

Sketches and digital painting of Linnet Birds in different poses

These are some watercolour studies I did to explore how the watercolour-style of our film will look:

Watercolour plants

Watercolour studies

Watercolours of props in the film

3D Animatic
This is the 3D animatic I created, using two rigs I downloaded (including the Malcolm character courtesy of AnimSchool.com - http://www.animschool.com/DownloadOffer.aspx ). The initial environment was modeled by Sheng. The temporary bird was created by Giorgos. I am responsible for the layout, camera and animation in the 3D animatic. The 3D animatic will continue to be used into the production, swapping in more finalised assets, and re-editing the timing if the film needs shortened:

Through working on the 3D animatic, I learned how to set-up and use an animation picker. This is something I found very useful to use and will most likely incorporate into my animation workflow:

Directing
As the Director for this project, my role has been to help make creative decisions, overseeing the creation of designs in Pre-Production and review the progress of assets being created in Production. In order to communicate efficiently, I produced documents such as the one below, detailing any adjustments that were needed:

I also worked with Kirti to help with the creation of a Shot List, as I realized that a Shot List would be very helpful with the creation of the 3D animatic and could be used throughout the production to keep track of the progress of each shot:

Working out how to divide the shots up for the Shot List

A page from the Shot List

Reflection On Practice

All relevant blog posts for Reflection On Practice Module can be viewed HERE.
The title of my research for this module was: 'How to create empathy for a cartoon dog - An investigation into the connection between an audience and animated dog characters.'
This relates back to my Programme Of Study and original goal for animating, which is to create believable and convincing character performances.

One of the first methods of research was to carry out a focus group. During this focus group I asked the participants questions relating to two video clips. First was Walt Disney’s Pluto – Bone Bandit (1948); the second was Walt Disney’s Bolt (2008). They both showed a cartoon dog hungry and searching for food. An interesting aspect I analysed was the different responses between dog owners and non-dog owners and how this had an effect on their empathy towards a cartoon dog.

Making notes and highlighting important points on the transcript.

I then investigated different techniques to create empathy for a cartoon dog that I can use for the dog character in my own film project 'Tug of Biscuit'. Here are a few of these techniques below:

From the focus group, it was clear that both dog expressions and human expressions are needed to create a believable performance. This helped me to add a new shot into the Tug of Biscuit storyboard, showing the dog stop to look around suspiciously for the bird, before deciding to dig a whole to hide the biscuit:

Three Storyboard panels I drew for Tug of Biscuit, with the new shot added in the middle

Incorporating realistic dog behaviour is important, therefore collecting reference video footage and doing observational drawings from life are ways to capture subtle mannerisms and movement that can be incorporated into final animation:

Video reference footage

Observational drawings of my own dog

 Another technique to help with anthropomorphic characters is to draw a human's reaction to a similar situation, then draw the dog again but with the human expressions incorporated:

My own drawings showing a human’s reaction to their food being stolen by a bird.

My own drawings showing a dog’s reaction, merged with human expression, to their food being stolen by a bird.

All of these techniques and methods I can incorporate into my practice as an Animator, on a variety of projects.

Slides from the PowerPoint presentation for the Mock Conference

Life Drawing and Observational Drawing
Drawing and observing life is something I still value as an important skill in animation. I managed to find some time to attend some life drawing classes this semester. As there are two animals I will be animating in Tug of Biscuit, I went up to Camperdown Wildlife Park to do animal sketches. I've also using my own dog as a reference to draw from. Relevant blog posts at: Life Drawing and Observational Drawing.

Reflection On The Week: (Week 31): Starting Monday 12th May

The week started off with a Programme Meeting to discuss this Semester's assessment and have a look at previous years work. This film from a couple of years ago was of particular interest due to the hand-painted textures on 3D models - which is what we would like to do for the Tug of Biscuit film:

Also this week I've been creating some artwork for the Production Bible. Not very much concept art had been produced for the props and garden plants in the environment. I took some more detailed research and reference photos in the back garden to help with the designs, modeling and texturing:

These are some watercolour sketches and drawings I produced to explore how these might be translated and textured into our watercolour-styled environment:

Helped Giorgos out on Monday by having a look over the dog model. The tail needed to be slightly wider to appear a bit more furry, so that when it is animated there is more of a swoosh to it:

I thought the top of his head needed added to, because he didn't seem to have any forehead. I suggested to make it rounder as it it might help him look younger:

Had a look at the dog model progress again on Tuesday and it was definitely looking like a younger dog! Just needed a slightly wider nose and then it was complete. I did some eye tests with the finished model to check that the eyelids would look ok when stretched over the eye for blendshapes - all good!

This week I also re-edited part of the animatic which needed some timing/camera changes:

For shot 6, previously the dog's head had been moving around to fast to fit in him looking at the biscuit, the sky and the tree. To fix this, the dog now enters the frame already looking up into the sky, searching for the bird, before looking down at his biscuit and then over to the tree where the next scene will take place:

A shot was needed to break the previous shot up from the next one, as the dog was seen in one place and then suddenly in another. I therefore added a close-up shot of the bird on the garden who appears to watch the dog as he walks over to the tree:

The next shot is more zoomed out and follows the bird as it creeps over to the biscuit, as the dog is distracted digging a whole for the biscuit:

Once these changes had been made to the animatic, I updated the shot list to reflect the changes: