Live Brief 1: Character Design Challenge

For my first live brief I completed November's Character Design Challenge with the theme Spirited Away. This was my first time participating in the Character Design Challenge and I was eager to take part in this months challenge since it was based around one of my favourite Studio Ghibli films.

With the most recent Pokemon game (Sword & Shield) being released last month I wanted to incorporate this as it was a recent source of inspiration. As such, I drew Chihiro as a Galar (the region which the new games take place in) trainer as it meant I could incorporate a more sporty style to the character.

This was a really fun brief to take part in and I hope to take part in more of them in the future to further enhance my character designing skills.

Week 9 - Final Edits

This week I have been making the final edits for submission. Due to not being happy with the original version, I ended up redrawing and animating the villagers in the village scene. Our team also though this was for the best as the first version looker very rough.

However, due to time constraints I wasn't able to design and draw as many villagers this time around, however I feel that it is better to have improved designs and styles over quantity of characters.

I still found this task in the project very difficult as there were no character designs for me to base the villagers off, and the amount of detail required for such small characters made things complicated to scale correctly. However, I do think that this version is overall better.

Week 8 - Animating

This week I have been busy finishing off drawing and animating the rest of my allocated scenes. This was mostly character animation using adobe after effects, and involved using the stroke effect to create the look of different parts of the image painting itself in. I did also test out some background animation to make sure the effect would match the rest of the animation.  

I feel that the art for the boat and fists scene came out particularly well as by this point I was more experienced with the method of using the legacy brushes and then blending to create the water colour effect we wanted. I do however feel that this took a while for me to learn however due to our group not being able to meet up as frequently as we would have liked because of the holidays and other personal complications.

I also initially struggled figuring out how to create a clipping mask, which was necessary due to the water colour effect of the brushes, meaning they were somewhat transparent and required a backing. However, thanks to some help from Dotty I eventually had this technique memorised and was able to do it much quicker and more efficiently. 

Next week will be spent finalising pieces of the animation and compositing everything together ready for submission.

Week 7 - Fact Card

This week i've been working on creating my fact card for the animation. We decided that the creation of the fact cards would be done through after effects as it would allow us to create the pain/stain bleeding effect we were looking for. Tisa also found a useful tutorial online and created a cheat sheet for me and Petra so that everything we did would be using the same technique and hopefully match up.

I was assigned the fact card talking about Operation Searchlight and the Mukti Bahini. On the left is my completed fact card.

I also created a tester card to practice creating the bleeding effect and get used to working with after effects. I felt that this we a really interesting part of the animation to work on as i'm not used to using after effects even though it is incredibly useful so this gave me some more practice. Overall I think this was a successful week for creating the fact card, however I had been hoping to do more but because of the Easter weekend (where I went to visit my family so couldn't work) and recent illness I had to set more time aside for myself then I planned.

Week 6 - Animatic

I have now completed the storyboards and animatic and can begin production with the rest of my group. I created an MP4 file for the animatic as well as 2 PDF's for the storyboards (one with large images of the boards and one with smaller images but includes the notes) so that the team has a variety to work from for different needs and purposes.

After showing the finished product to the group they agreed that it was good and would work for what we needed, however some of the perspectives would be different from how they were shown in the animatic (which I knew from the start) as they were just to show what was happening and the timings. Tisa also decided that the speech scenes would be swapped around in the final version as it made more sense after seeing the animatic with the audio for them to be swapped, which we all agreed with.

Next week I will be starting production of my allocated scenes.

Week 5 - Storyboards

This week I have solely been working on constructing storyboards for the documentary brief. I decided to work using storyboard pro, as we have recently been taught how to use the software and I found it really useful and intuitive during this induction. However, this was my first time using it for a project so it did take some getting used to at first.

Once I had played around with it a little I began constructing scenes for the project, making sure to add notes and adjust the timings to match the script as I went along.

Here are some examples of the boards once exported as PDF's.

Next week I will be aiming to finish the boards and animatic so that I can began production properly.

Full Storyboards PDF

Week 4 - Script and Translation

This week our team worked on cutting down the interview (which was initially 45 minutes long) and selecting what we wanted to work with. Initially me, Petra and Tisa met up to go over the interview, which Tisa ha been able to cut down to around 25 minutes (the rest was either repeated information or not specific to what we were looking for). We went through the interview and managed to cut it down to about a minute and a half of information. With this I began brainstorming ideas for the story boards and how they should be structured.

However, after speaking with Dotty it was decided that it would be better to create an animated trailer rather than a short documentary as there was too much information to get through with the time we had. Agreeing with this, me and Tisa went through our cut down version again to reselect the content we wanted to include and discuss how we would structure it now.

We managed to decided on the trailer being around a minute and a half still but with less speech involved so we can have pauses of information and 'fact cards'. Below is the finished script and audio with some suggested visuals included, ready for me to begin storyboarding.

The next couple of weeks I will spend creating a story board and animatic so we can then begin production.

Week 3 - Research

This week I mostly spent collecting research on the Bangladesh Liberation War and the Freedom Fighters. I mainly used Wikipedia and the Bangladesh Genocide Archive for my core points of research as I found them to have a lot of information that seemed to match up with other websites and could be trusted. Here are some of the sides I created for our preproduction presentation with some of the core pieces of information.

 I hope to soon begin work on the storyboards, however this cannot be done until Tisa has completed her translation of the interview so our group can meet and begin selecting which parts we want to use and how we want to structure it.

However, knowing this takes time Tisa has structured this into the schedule and so far, we are on schedule with everything.

Next week we are due to have a team meeting to discuss ideas further and begin working on a scrip with what Tisa has translated so far.

Week 2 - Pitch Perfect

For our second week of this project, we focused on securing our roles within the group, deciding on the type and style of the documentary and preparing for our pitch perfect presentation. I also spent some time researching the liberation war itself to get a better understanding of what it was and how it started.

Overall, we felt that our presentation was well received and people were interested in how our documentary would turn out. The most important feedback we received was that our topic was too broad and we needed to focus in on something more specific. Our team agreed that we would focus specifically on the freedom fighters and the interview we were hoping to get.

We decided that our documentary would be participatory and we would focus on 2D animation, hoping to create something inspired by traditional Bangladesh paintings from around the time, potentially something with a watercolour effect.

Next week I will be focusing on doing more research into the liberation war and freedom fighters to try and narrow down what areas we want to include.

Week 1 - Documentary Breif

For this brief, I decided that wanted to challenge myself more and focus on a part of preproduction that I was less comfortable doing. With this, I made a team with Tisa and Petra who were also hoping to do something different for this project. It was decided that I would focus on storyboards (rather then my usual character design), Tisa would focus on backgrounds and Petra character design.

As for the topic of our documentary, we found it very difficult to pin point exactly what we wanted to do. We had ideas such as looking into Leeds Art University (but it felt too easy), the Yorkshire Ripper (something that had been done in the past) and haunted places in Leeds (but other groups had similar ideas). We also hadn't selected a director at this point as we had all been directors in our previous projects and wanted a break from it. In the end we decided that whoever put forward the best idea for the documentary would act as director. 

In the end we settled on the Bangladesh Freedom Fighters, something we all felt would be interesting to research, and Tisa said she could get us an interview with someone who was a Freedom Fighter. Because this topic had been Tisa's idea, she was made director.

Next we will be finalising our role within the group and preparing for our presentation at the end of the week.

Compeition Submission

Here is the video we will be submitting to the D&AD competition. As you can see, there are still some parts that require finishing and credits that needed to be added, however these will be done at a later date so that we can all begin work on our new projects.

Overall I'm happy with how this has turned out, and feel that me and my team have created a strong piece that fits the brief. I'm also pleased with how much we managed to get done under the time constraints so not much more has to be finished for final submission.

I also believe that the scene I completed turned out well, and i'm proud of the animation in these scene. I feel that they are smooth and work well with the style I have created.

All in all, I believe that this was a successful project and I thoroughly enjoyed working with my team on it.

Week 8

I have now completed all of my allocated scenes for the competition brief and complied them together into a single video (as they were consecutive scenes).

Due to time constraints I did have to edit parts of the valentines day scene as to simplify the animation and have it finished on time.

Overall I feel that the birthday scene on a whole turned out how I wanted it, and the animation within it is smooth. I feel that the transition was also successful and shows a good example of squash and stretch.

If I was to redo this I would allocate more time to the valentines day scene, as I didn't anticipate how difficult this scene would be or how long it would take. However, on a whole I am satisfied with the animation I have created.

Week 7

This week I finished the main animation of the birthday scene. There are a few more things within it that need completing, such as the confetti on the floor and layering objects in front of the characters, however due to backgrounds still not being quite complete this will have to be done later.

I feel that the animation has turned out nicely and I especially like the animation of the child blowing out the candles. If there was more time, I would have liked to added more advanced animation to the mother and father, but due to time constraints this has been kept limited.

The week was also spent contacting music composers, looking for someone to create the soundtrack for our animation. We have successfully done this and found a composer to collaborate with who we have met up with and have been exchanging emails with. Early versions of the music are promising and we are excited to hear the final piece.

I have also been facing some personal issues which has meant that my work speed has slowed and I required the help of my team to revaluate the work load in order to spread things out more. As director, I recognise that I should have informed my team about these issues earlier then I did and know for the future to be more honest with my team.

Week 6

This week I completed the animation for the box transition from valentines day to a birthday. I spent some time researching how to best create the effect we were looking for with the confetti while still sticking to the style we were working with. Eventually I decided the best way to do this was to create custom brushes and individual layers to create an overlapping effect. This also helped with offsetting the speed of the confetti so it didn't all fall at the same rate.

I feel that the finished product is effective and looks aesthetically pleasing.

I also began testing the transition to the birthday scene, trying to figure out the timings and the positioning. However because the background for this scene is not yet complete I wasn't able to create the finished transition style and can only test certain elements. 

Next I will be continuing to animate this scene and hopefully starting animation on other scenes.

Week 5

This week I began testing out some of the animation transitions. Here is an example of this work showing part of the valentines day transition. We decided to use actual gift wrap from John Lewis for these transitions, with both the box and the background being gift wrap we purchased.

I think the animation of the box went really well and has some good squash and stretch, as well as the timings working well.

However, when testing the confetti that we want to have explode out of the box I found this a lot more difficult then expected. The confetti ended up looking unnatural as it all fell at the same time, but creating individual pieces of confetti will take far too much time to animate with the time we have. I plan to do more research into this to find a better solution.

I also created the final planned character board which shows side views of each character. Initially I wanted to create a full turnaround for each but due to time constraints we decided it would be best to just have side views.

Week 4

This week I continued with the character boards and completed the main board for the father as well as the guide board and heights board.

For the father board I chose a green based colour scheme to contrast well with the other characters colour bases as well as giving him brown hair and a slightly deeper skin tone. However, I have had comments suggesting that perhaps he looks a little too young so I plan on playing with the design a bit to improve this.

The guide board and height board are mainly for use of my group to help them understand the structure of the character and how to draw them as well as their heights in relation to each other. I feel like this will be very useful for my group and will speed up the process of them learning how to draw each character.

Next I will be creating basic turnaround boards for the characters and starting to test animations

Week 3

This week I completed the first two character designs which are the child and the mother. I chose to give each character their own base colour scheme that they stick with throughout the animation. The child has a blue and white scheme while the mum has a yellow and orange scheme. This makes them easily identifiable and gives them all a unique look.

I have also created a basic outline of their structure for my group so it is easier for them to draw these characters. However, to improve this I plan to create a board with all these outlines as well as instructions and tips to go with them.

Next I will be continuing with these boards snd hoping to have the main ones finished by next week.

Week 2

This week I focused on designing the characters for our short animation. We decided on having a family with two parents and a young child. We chose this to help it better relate with our target audience (adults in mid 20s to mid 30s) meaning the child would be fairly young as the parents are still young adults.

I wanted to keep the designs fairly simplistic while still being interesting and individual as we have limited time to create this animation. For this, the characters are built using simple shapes and have basic but appealing features. To improve these designs I want to figure out a way to give them their own individuality and presence within the animation while still having a cohesive look.

Next I plan to finalise these designs and being creating character boards for each of them.

Week 1

For the first week our group focused on selecting a brief, selecting individual roles, coming up with ideas and understanding the brand of our selected brief.

For selecting a brief, we knew we wanted something fairly open, fun and potentially more artistically oriented. After looking through all the potential briefs we decided that the John Lewis and Partners brief best suited this and held the most interest for us. For the roles of the group, I was selected as the groups director and character designer, as I wanted to to try having a more leading role and I have a specific interest in character design. Ava decided to work on storyboards and scripting while Rhys is focusing on backgrounds and other smaller tasks.

To better understand our brief, we decided to visit a local John Lewis department store in the hopes that we could be inspired by their products, clientele, ethos and store branding. We quickly understood that John Lewis focuses on a high end feel, with high quality merchandise and expensive looking interior. We particularly gravitated towards their gifting section as not only was this highlighted in the brief, but we loved the look and variety of the wrapping paper and gift bags. We felt that this could be a really interesting aspect to incorporate into our project.

Finally we had a meeting to discuss initial ideas for the project, with us all agreeing that we really wanted to incorporate time and the seasons to fit in with the idea with 'giving though out the year' as well as the idea of experiences and memories.

Evaluation 503

During this project I have learnt a lot about what it takes to work as part of a group and the benefits as well as struggles that come with it. I defiantly enjoyed working as part of a group, as it meant that I was able to focus more on parts of the project that I liked and could spend more time on perfecting certain aspects. I also enjoyed having someone act as a director, as it meant that someone was keeping check on my progress and pointing out errors or things that could be corrected. This was useful as it helped me notice things that I may not have noticed myself and find new ways to improve. I felt our director did an excellent job of handling the project as a whole and keeping communications up, as well as making sure assets were organised. However, there were times where they could have been more assertive and given the team more guidance.

I feel that as the leading character designer on this project I created some strong and interesting characters that worked well for our animation. When creating the characters, I wanted to make sure it was something everyone was happy with and could draw fairly easily. In the meetings for the character design, I felt that our group communicated well and I made sure to take notes on what people liked and what they felt could be improved. I believe the colours and textures I selected for the characters worked well with the style we were working with while still standing out against the background. This experience defiantly helped me improve my ability as a character designer and learn about the kind of role a character designer plays within a group.

However, I feel that there were times where I took on more work than I could handle on my own. For example, we decided that to try and keep the style consistent I would draw all of the initial sketch layers since I designed the characters. This meant that I was very stretched for time and did a lot more animation then some of the other members of my team. I do however feel that this did indeed keep things more consistent but I now understand that it would have been better for me to assert myself and insist on spreading out the workload more.

When it came to communication within the group, I believe that overall it was fairly strong. Although there were times where our communication could have been better, for example there were many times where a certain member of our group wouldn’t show up to peer review sessions so we would have to do our best to relay the information given. This improved later on into the project and as such communications improved.

Overall, I feel like this was a successful group project and we have a finished animation that we are all happy with as a whole. Next time I am in a group for a project, I would like to try taking more of a leading role, but I have also learned from this experience that it’s better to play to people’s strengths and to share the workload equally.

Study Task 3 - Animation On A Physical Set Process

The Apple 2018 Christmas advert Share Your Gifts shares similar aspects the our group project as it shows examples of animation on top of a physical set. While this advert uses 3D animation and our groups uses 2D, the process is still relatively similar.

 The Making of Share Your Gift video shows the set for the advert being build and how they used 3D animation to create characters that could interact with the world. With the set, after building everything they filmed different scenes without the characters. This required careful planning as they had to have a strong understanding of how the characters will move in the frames and what they will interact with. This could be seen as a limitation of this type of animation as it can become difficult reshooting shots if the set is no longer standing or has been moved around.

However, a strength of this type of animation is that you can give the backgrounds a realistic and human built feel to them that can be difficult to accomplish with a digital set. It could also be argued that once the background scenes have been shot, there is a set lighting origin point so its easier to keep track of rather then having to remember where it would be in a digital set.

Animation Studied - Sharing Your Gift (2018) by Apple

Study Task 3 - 2D Animation Aesthetic

2D Animation offers an extensive range of aesthetics and styles that can be applied in various unique ways. In animations such as Afternoon Class this varied use of 2D animation can be seen at different points of the short film.

At the beginning of the animation, it uses a very artsy and lineless style that creates an interesting effect, The use of colour palettes is also creative and works well with this style to help highlight aspects of the shot such as the protagonist, who has a brighter colour scheme than the rest of the characters in shot. These types of aesthetics work well with the 2D animation medium and would not create the same effect with other mediums such as 3D.

The style then changes later in the short to a more intense colour palette with a line based style with limited colouring. This blend of styles is best used in 2D animation as it keeps costs down as well as allows the animator to stick with minimal amounts of software, instead of having the use multiple different software.

However, due to the use of perspective in different shots, using only 2D animation can have its limitations as it can become difficult to understand how things look from different perspectives in a 2D format. This is where using other mediums such as 3D animation would be beneficial.

Animation Studied - Afternoon Class (2014) by Osro

Week 11

This week I completed the remaining scenes that needed to be coloured meaning my work on the group animation is pretty much finished.

Some of these final scenes were more difficult to colour/add texture to as some of the lined layers were somewhat messy and in some scenes had lines missing. This meant that I had to be extra careful as well as having to add lines in myself.

Overall I think the colouring/texturing has gone well and will look nice in the final animation.

For the remaining time we have on this module I will be finishing my part of the digital production journal, writing the evaluation and getting everything ready for submission