Reflection On The Week (21): Starting Monday 17th February

Week Summary

Reflection on Practice - Writing the abstract this week has helped me to summarize my research. Some minor edits to it need to be done before the final hand-in next Wednesday. I think also next week, writing out a plan (bullet points etc) for my paper/conference presentation will help to start work towards those and have it clear and focused on what points need researched and presented. I also planned and advertised my Focus group this week for next Tuesday. Found two suitable video clips I can use which fit in with the questions I want to ask the group and will hopefully provide clear but interesting answers.

Advanced Production - Got the storyboards and animatic completely re-edited this week. Had regular team meetings this week as well to get feedback on the storyboard and animatic, also to look over designs and keep reviewing what everyone is working on currently. Designs for the characters and environment need to be finished at the start of next week. Also can start to begin on the 3D animatic, however I might wait till after my focus group/peer review on Tuesday to see what feedback I get for the 2D animatic in case there are any major changes.

Going Live - Looked over everything that is being worked on at the moment and realized that not very much had been done for one of the assets. Therefore I did some research and put together moodboards for this asset then created some concept art work. Will be showing my work to the rest of the class next week to gain feedback in order to move this asset forward into the modelling stage of production.

Monday 17th Feb
Programme Meeting followed by Going Live Team Meeting.

Done lots of new drawings for the storyboard for main film project - Relevant Blog Post Link here
Had the team have a look over them to get feedback, there's just one sequence left to re-draw to make more clear what is going on.
Had a quick team meeting to discuss what we're all working on and what needs to be done for next week, I'll be finishing the animatic this week and also try some colour concepts.

Done some more writing for the Abstract assignment.
Researched visuals which I will be able to use for the Focus Group assignment.

Recorded narration for Kirti's animatic in her research project.

Tuesday 18th Feb
Finished writing out the draft for the Abstract assignment.
Also sourced some visual references for the Focus Group assignment and put together the PowerPoint. I'm keeping the presentation very simple with just 2 video clips to compare to allow sufficient time to develop a good conversation about the subject and not have to many variables.

Wednesday 19th Feb
Abstract Group Crit in the morning. Worked in a team of 3 and read over each others Abstracts. There's a few sentence structures to sort out in my Abstract and a couple of re-wordings. It was interesting to read through others and look at the overall structure. I have tried to follow the structure that is given on the brief, which is to mention the field of study, address the problem, state the methods that will be used to address the problem and how will this benefit the field of study.
Had a quick meeting with Sharon to check over the 2 video clips and questions that I want to ask at my Focus Group, to make sure I had picked 2 clips that contrasted and could provide some answers and discussions to what I wanted to ask.
Booked Animation Seminar Space for next Tuesday from 12-2pm, to have time to set up my focus group for 1pm, with some spare time in case it over-runs.

Finished drawing all the storyboard panels for main film project. Then took the storyboard panels into After Effects to time out the animatic.

Thursday 20th Feb
Life Drawing in the morning. Link to Relevant Blog Post here

Talked over the garden layout for the environment with Sheng. I sketched out the layout of my house and garden to help with what you could normally find in a garden. We discussed that the owner could mainly be busy with chores on the left side of the garden, and the dog's action could mainly be in the right side of the garden. Some flower beds around the outside for the dog to dig holes in and a vegetable patch for the Owner. The neighbour's garden should be right next to this garden in order for the football sequence to make sense.

Editing the animatic together - sorting all the timings:

Also updated the storyboard on Shotbox.

Made an event page and put a post up on the Animators student Facebook page to invite people along to my Focus Group. Created an image for it and am using homemade cake as an incentive :D

Friday 21st Feb

Maya class dynamics in morning with Dylan Gauld - Introduction to 3D dynamics. For 'Tug of Biscuit', we may not be needing any fire or water fountains but it certainly got us thinking about what we can do with dynamics in Maya. Leaves in the garden is certainly what we will be looking into for our film.

Team meeting in the afternoon for Advanced Production:

With the realization that pumpkins don't grow in the ground... D'oh!...We discussed what other activities the owner could be doing each time the dog comes back to her. We looked up other veg/fruit that are harvested in Autumn, but then came to a discussion that she could just be raking leaves in the garden the whole time since it is a short time that passes anyway. Also when the Owner does her mad dash towards the Tug-of-War, she could maybe run through her pile of leaves? Plus after a Maya class in dynamics this morning and a Digital Tutors tutorial I have found on how to create 'wind-blown leaves simulation in Maya using nCloth', we all feel this could be an achievable aspect of our film to do. Counted through the animatic and there are about 5 shots which would need dynamics. However we will still have some pumpkins in a patch in the garden to add some interest to the look of the film, and add to the Autumn-feeling. Any fruits in the garden though will be covered with a net or similar to protect from birds, as then it might seem weird that the birds are hungry when there's fruit and seeds lying around the place. So I will be redrawing a few of the boards to change these things.

We then discussed the dog design and reflecting on the process so far of designing the dog, realized maybe we were having trouble with it because the dog breed had never been decided. At the moment the dog design looks too much like a Bull dog. So we looked through some different dog breeds, such as Labradors, Collies and Terriers, discussed what elements we liked about each of them and what needed amended in the current design. Some of the areas that we discussed I circled on a sketch, the snout made slightly thinner, ears moved forward a bit and be half floppy, more defined shapes in the front leg to determine where joints will go, the body shape needs evened out so he is less broad-shouldered, and a slightly bigger tail so swishes can be easily seen:

We then all went over ideas for the colours of the characters, I thought some purple colours in the characters clothing would look nice and help make them stand out a bit more against the Autumn colours in the garden. We're going to try some colour variations with the dog's jumper, however myself and George wondered if the dog needs a jumper at all or could just have a collar.

I brought up the issue with how will we do the grass in 3D. Would it be just a textured plane, or will there be stands of grass. My concern with this is that we have characters moving on the grass, therefore strands would have to interact with the characters, which sounds like it will be more trouble than its worth. Some testing needs to be done for this.

George also brought up how might it will be possible to do the bird character's wide mouth when it eats the biscuit whole, so we went over a few possibilities. Again these possibilities will need some testing.


Had a think over everything that is being done at the moment for Going Live, then realized that nothing much has been sorted out for one of the assets, spoke to Kieran about it and different ways this asset could be designed, modelled and rigged. So I will be having a look over this at the weekend and creating some artwork and tests for it.

Weekend
Finished editing and redrawing some shots for 'Tug of Biscuit' animatic (Owner now raking leaves for whole film):

Also done some research and concept artwork for one of the assets in the Going Live project.

Reflection On The Week (19): Starting Monday 3rd February

Week Summary

Overall I think my research work took a bit of a stumble this week, but starting to work through the abstract assignment, similar to last semester, has helped to organize the overall focus and structure of my research. Also filling out the ethics forms for the focus group assignment helped me break down what exactly I wanted to find out from my research.

My main project is more on track now I think, and will keep the momentum up with this to finish off the pre-production stage: finalizing character and background designs and completing and re-editing together the animatic.

Produced some character concepts, which included colours and textures, for Going Live. I think my next task should be to start looking at animation references.

Monday 3rd Feb
Programme Meeting - our class needs to start thinking about raising some money for our Degree Show and London trip in August.
Had a team meeting and preparing for supervisor meeting tomorrow.

Tuesday 4th Feb
Supervisor meeting - Link to relevant Blog Post
Research Crisis - felt like I lost my research question and spent some time reviewing my research work and trying to phrase together a question title for the project.

Wednesday 5th Feb
Research module workshops all day. I think has helped me a little to organize my research.

Had a team meeting in the afternoon. I had a look over the Dog's character design with Sheng to make some suggestions and she edited them into the design. The Dog wasn't quite looking young enough, but by adding some curves to the head, mouth and feet, and shortening the body, it instantly looked a lot younger. We also adjusted the dogs jumper to look more like a jumper by removing the back leg sleeves. Then many different sized eyes we tried out. The whole team then had a discussion about what to do with the dog's eyebrows and mouth. Should the dog have teeth is a question that hasn't been decided yet...

To remind each of us what we should all be working on during the next week:

Lilly:

• Storyboard and 2D animatic update, 
• Do sketches of the current dog design posed (to help inform the design)

Sheng:

• Edit and finalize the human character design
• Dog expressions
• Bird designs and concepts

George:

• Colour concepts
• Background Design Concepts and 3D model tests

Kirti:

• Begin 3D modelling a character
• Working on the 2nd animatic for her own research project

Thursday 6th February

Everyone's work was submitted for the first Going Live Milestone.

Belbin workshop - learn about my roles within my team and what I am most suited to. I learned that I am a 'Completer/Finisher', i.e. a perfectionist who will get the job finished and polished, and searches out any errors; although I kind of knew this already about myself. Afterwards my group for the film project sat down and looked over all of our roles and discovered that we cover pretty much all of a production line, so we should have a good working group dynamic.

Friday 7th February

3D workshop in the morning with Jin about Rotoscoping in Nuke. 

Bird character research and drawings.
Completed all the relevant forms for the Focus Group assignment and sent them off.

Weekend
Went to Camperdown Wildlife Centre to boost my observational drawing, since I haven't been able to go to any life drawing classes so far this semester. Relevant Blog Post Link

Team Meeting - Tuesday 14th Jan 2014

Here are the notes I wrote down during our team meeting:

Production roles

Lilly = Director, Storyboard, Animatic, Script Writer, Character Animation, (Rigging)

Kirti = Production Manager, (Directing 2^nd version of film – Animatic), 3D Generalist – Modelling, Rendering, Compositing, Editing (incl. Sound & Soundtrack)

Sheng = Character Design, 2D artist – Backgrounds, Texturing, Lighting

George = Character Rigging, 3D Generalist, Post Production

Currently working on: Sheng – Character Designs, Kirti – Kitchen 3D model (for 3D Animatic), Lilly – Storyboarding, George – Rigging, ALL – discussing story beats.

The film needs a title? Only name I was using before was ‘Tug of Biscuit’.

List of to-do’s

Script

Storyboards

Animatics

Characters (Bird, Dog, Human) – Designed, Modelled, Textured, Rigged, Animated.

Backgrounds (Kitchen, Garden – Autumn/Winter) – Drawn, Coloured, Camera moves?

Lighting

Dynamics (Leaves)

Sound (temp. for animatics, final for final)

Soundtrack

Post Production – Semester 3 (Rendering, Compositing, Editing, Credits/Title Sequence)

Production Schedule

Animatic for the film to be final by middle of Semester Two – 14^th February?

Animatic for 2^nd version of the film to be finished by the end of Semester Two.

Aim to have a finished still and a few seconds of movie by the end of semester 2, to be used as reference for the rest of the film. It also locks down final look and rendering and compositing pipeline.

Look of the film: Concept artwork needs to be created, reference and inspirational photos and footage gathered. Thinking of retro style designs for the characters?...

Story Discussion

Young/new dog whose objective is to put biscuit into his kennel outside/save biscuit for later/eat biscuit.

Bird’s objective is hungry, wants food, therefore wants the dog’s biscuit because it’s Autumn/Winter and there is lack of food for birds.

Why would the dog not eat the biscuit straight away? – Dog behaviour, saving it for later?

Owner could throw the biscuit out into the garden, but the bird gets to it before the dog.

Dog gets distracted by a ball being kicked over the fence by the neighbours, by the time dog gets back to the biscuit, the bird got it instead.

Dog is busy digging a hole for biscuit so the bird snatches up the biscuit.

Dog tries to run after bird and runs into pile of leaves that owner has swept up.

Each time dog’s biscuit is taken, goes back to owner to ask (dog beg) for another. Owner is busy doing chores in the kitchen so throws out another biscuit to keep dog occupied. (Happens all in one day)

Or does each scenario happen across different days?

Last scenario, bird and dog have a ‘ninja fight’ over the biscuit (scenes changes, more stylistic/imaginative) Cut back to reality and what’s actually happening, dog and bird in tug of war with biscuit. Owner spots this happening from kitchen window and goes racing outside to stop the fight.

Owner now realizes what’s been happening, bird looks sad and hungry.

Owner puts a new bird feeder in the garden, as dog happily munches on biscuit.

Lip sync? Maybe a couple of words here and there by the owner if the story needs it.

1 – 2 mins long – simple short film.

Story Rough Script

Owner gives dog a biscuit, dog takes it out into the garden and is just about to eat it when suddenly the neighbour’s kids kick a ball over the fence. Dog focuses on ball and runs after it. Dog goes back to where the biscuit was with the ball in its mouth, but the biscuit is gone! Looks around and spots a bird on the fence eating it.

Dog goes back to owner to ask for another biscuit. Busy with chores in the kitchen, owner gives dog another biscuit to take into the garden. Dog decides to keep this one safe and dig a hole for it. However whilst digging, bird swoops in and snatches up the biscuit. Dog notices, goes running and barking after the bird and runs straight into a pile of leaves.

Dog begs owner for another biscuit, annoying owner who is busy in kitchen, she throws another biscuit out into the garden. Dog and bird spot the biscuit at the same time and both go racing for it. Ninja fight!

Owner washing dishes at kitchen window looks up and spots dog and bird in tug of war with the biscuit! Owner runs outside towards them and scares off bird, breaking up the fight. Bird looks sad and stomach rumbles back on the fence. Owner realises what’s been happening. Owner puts a new bird feeder in the garden; bird happily nibbles away and dog finally eats his biscuit.