At last, I have finished the most current version of the animatic! I submitted it this morning.
The animatic in full.
I was able to find an app to create some simple chiptune music (the music used in old videogames), which I used to add some background noise as well as to not make the aliens completely silent.
When I picture space having sound, I never think of it having a melody; I would see it more as slow, calm noises, in no particular order. That’s what I was trying to go for when making background music in the space scenes; calm, somewhat neutral, and a feeling of vastness. As for the aliens, I went for some simple beeps; it admittedly makes them seem more robotic than alien, so I may replace them if I change my mind later on, but I think it’s alright for now.
Now I’ll wait for Joe’s feedback. In the meantime, I’ll keep working on the 3D project and the book.
I managed to scan everything in at a good resolution, and cut the frames to be exactly 16:9 ratio through Photopea, an online software suggested by Joe. I found that directly importing screenshots into Photopea kept their resolution much better than copy-pasting them from a separate document, even if it took a little longer, so I went ahead with that, as I wanted the drawings to look as good as possible. Some frames were slightly smaller than 16:9, which meant I had to cut some of the corners out, but it was a pretty smooth (if slow) process overall.
Scans of two of the five pages of storyboards.
I chose iMovie as my video-editing software of choice, as it was the program I used throughout all of high school whenever there was a video to make; it’s not particularly advanced, but it has all the essentials, and i feel comfortable using it.
I lined up all the frames one after the other, and set specific times to each of them. I managed to keep it all at around 40 seconds, but I’ll admit the pace is faster than I’d like: I wanted my story to feel complete, with a proper introduction, dilemma, resolution and conclusion, so I had to speed up some aspects to make it all fit in less than a minute.
As I’m writing this, I’m still working on the sound for the animatic, though I’m nearly done with that too. I’ve been pacing around my house and its surroundings trying to find things to use for sound effects, and I’ve collected quite a few already. Some of the items I’ve used include a Tamagotchi, a tin robot, a rock smacking against a can, and a toy volcano.
The astronaut doesn’t talk, but I did record myself doing some noises for him (mostly grunts, gasps, and a 7-second yelling sequence that left me with a headache after 4 tries to get it right), to not make him a complete mute and add some general noise to the animatic.
The formative deadline’s in two days now, but I’m not worried at all. All I really need is to drop some sounds in and, as far as I’m concerned, I’m read to send it in. I’m proud of what I’ve done so far.
Happy new year! This past week and a half has been very productive for my project.
First, I remembered to color both of the character turnarounds for the characters I’m using:
The (now colored) turnaround sheet for the protagonist. The (now colored) turnaround sheet for the aliens.
I went through a few phases on what I wanted the astronaut’s colors to be, but eventually I settled on an orangey yellow with hints of orange (such as on his bowtie). What made me choose this was the lesson on character and environments, where we discussed color theory: yellow is used to convey innocence and life, while orange is upbeat and “nice” overall. The astronaut is not a very smart character, but I made him to be a nice person, so the colors reflected that nicely, and I decided to use them in his design. As for the white, I considered that most of the animation is set in space, which is often depicted as black or a very dark shade of blue. Therefore, a predominantly white character with splashes of yellow-orange would immediately be noticed on a screen with otherwise darker colors, and since he’s the main character, that’s exactly what I want.
I chose the aliens’ colors after the astronaut, so I based them off of him. Purple is yellow’s complementary color, so they would contrast nicely against the astronaut’s yellow-ish tones. And again, I used the lesson on color theory to solidify this choice: shades of pink and purple are often used for otherworldly and “magical” settings and characters. Aliens are, in the most literal sense of the world, otherworldly! Therefore, I gave one alien a pure purple tint, and a pinkish purple to the other, just to slightly distinguish between the two of them.
I also remembered to make a character sheet for the aliens; general details on their design, colors, and lack of facial expression.
After that was done, I went to make the official boards: in the end, I made 40 panels, two of which are panning shots (one horizontally and one vertically). Below you can see my original concept sketch for the horizontal panning shot.
I decided to draw the official boards in an 8cm by 4.5cm ratio; it’s a 16×9 ratio, which was recommended by Joe, and it was big enough to put in a good amount of detail while still being small enough to not have me take too long for every single panel.
I drew the boards with a very light pencil. After that, I inked all the boards, starting with the characters and ending with the backgrounds. I then erased the pencil, and colored everything in (again, starting with the characters and ending with the backgrounds). Below, you can see one of the 5 pages containing the final boards.
One of the pages with the storyboards. I’ve applied a few minor changes since taking this picture, like slightly changing one of the aliens’ colors.
I really enjoyed making the lineart: drawing with ink can be stressful, as it can’t be erased (which became more and more apparent to me with each tiny mistake I wished I could delete), but it was also therapeutic, in a way; like connect-a-dot puzzles. I was just going over lines I’d already done, so as long as I stayed focused, I couldn’t do much harm.
Coloring was a different story; as mentioned in the last entry, I’m not used to coloring all my drawings, and I think it shows in some cases here. I wanted to give the sky tints of blue and purple, but I believe it ended up looking messy in many instances, even after I practiced on a separate sheet of paper. In the future, I’ll look to experiment with other types of coloring, to make sure it looks less messy.
Tomorrow, I’ll try scanning in all of the drawings and editing them together. It should be easy enough; if it ends up being longer than 40 seconds, I’ll try cutting a few panels to save time, but I think it’ll be fine. As for the sound, I’ve already identified a few objects around the house to make some sound effects (I’m planning on using an old Tamagotchi for a beeping noise!).
The hand-in date is in a week, but I’m feeling confident. A few messy panels aside, I think I’m doing a good piece of work. All I can hope for is that everyone else thinks so too.
This week we learnt more about lighting and different colors, along with how to make more complex shapes and formations. For the lighting, I actually joined 2B’s lesson, as I had a few questions to ask, and just thought a direct lesson would be more interesting than pre-recorded videos.
We experimented creating shapes by trying to make a gecko, under my request (we would later come to regret that, as they’re very peculiar animals that are hard to get to look right). I think I got its side view well enough, by using a variety of reference images I picked up, but I messed up somewhat when duplicating it to form the other half of the body; I didn’t center it right, so it came out with a slight gap along its middle that I couldn’t get to look right after much tinkering and experimenting with the program. Next time, I’ll make sure to align everything properly before attempting something like this.
My gecko’s side view. I think it looks pretty cute, mouth aside! My gecko’s top view. Not centering it correctly led to it having a partial double-tail. Sorry for making you a freak of nature, gecko.
Anyway, that was a very useful exercise for my project; the tool we used for these sections will work great when I need to create clouds on the bottom of the surface. I’m still unclear on how to change the opacity of objects, as I asked both 3D tutors and neither could give me a direct response, but I’ll research it online until I find out how to do it adequately. It shouldn’t be too big a problem, overall.
The lesson on lighting was useful too; I’m thinking of just making my landscape a plain sunny day, but I could try challenging myself and create a sunset-like light, using the 3-point lighting we saw in the lesson for a more dramatic scene. I’ll see when I get around to it.
With all the other projects we have at the moment, I think I’ll put this project off for a little while, to focus on the animatic and book, but I’ll be back at it soon enough.
In the last Friday Workshop of 2020, we first looked at the class’ “homework”, a video showing everyone’s walk, with added sound. I drew my original drawing on my phone, so I went with something different: showing my walk’s path along a map of London that I bought in October, the day after moving in. I used a laser pointer to show my position in the map, and got sounds from past videos I took in London and a few sounds recorded in my home here in Italy (such as the leaves rustling).
Once that was done, we went on to talk about our books more. Jane and Stuart showed us a variety of examples of extravagant books we could base ourselves off of, and then proceeded to answer some questions from students.
When I first started considering what to do with my book, I thought of separating the book into 2 sections, my life inside and outside of animation and storytelling. However, after some thought, I considered that doing that wouldn’t really lend well into the project’s theme, “You Are Here”.
So I started thinking of another concept to do. And after a while, I realized that it’s hard to explain where I am now without first explaining where I once was, and how I got here. So now, I’m planning of dividing my book into “What Got Me Here?” and “Where Am I Now?”. The former would cover things like my cultural background, people who inspired me as a kid, the hobbies and pastimes I had growing up that influenced me to take on drawing as a career, my school and hometown, etc.. The latter, on the other hand, would cover my current life: my goals, my work, who and what inspires me nowadays, my new locations and university now that I’m essentially living in the UK… there’s a lot to cover in both areas, so I’m thinking of splitting the pages 50/50, 6 pages for each.
For its physical structure, since we have to be creative with it, I decided to get inspired by some works from Judy Barrass and Helen Malone, specifically their works on folding up papers like accordions (photos below). By doing that, there are two distinct sides to work on, and I think that could be a perfect way to show the two sides of my work, both literally and metaphorically: one side isn’t complete without the other, I can’t have my present without my past. I want my work to reflect that.
As for the animation aspect, I got really inspired by Feeling My Way, a short film we watched for Stuart’s class that incorporated 2D animation into a recording. I think I’m going to do something similar; draw and write the general concepts on paper, film me flipping through the pages, and then add some animation onto the recording to enhance the messages and viewing experience.
Feeling My Way.
I’m pretty optimistic so far. It’s a lot of work, both traditional and digital, but I genuinely like my idea, and if I manage to properly create it it’ll be something I know I’ll be proud of for a long time. So I’ll do my best with it. I’ll keep updating my blog as I work on it more.
I’ve been actively taking part in each and every Friday Workshop, taking notes and being a part of the conversation, but I realized just yesterday that I hadn’t updated my blog on these lessons for a good while. Because of this, I’ll make a big post detailing everything that’s happened in the month-or-so since my last Friday workshop update. I hope that’s good enough.
I’ll start by mentioning that, under Jane’s advice, I started keeping a document with most of the artists mentioned during the workshops (link below). Each session gets us talking about so many different artists and works spanning throughout decades of history that remembering them all by heart is nearly impossible- and really inconvenient at that. I’ve also been helped by my coursemate Despina, from group 2B, to keep it as up-to-date and accurate as possible, constantly sharing it with our other coursemates during the lessons, and I appreciate her help with it.
After the group presentations on chosen artists, we looked at People, including ourselves, and thinking of how our work is influenced by (and influences) ourselves and our experiences, the people around us, our interactions with the world we live in.
This was a bit of a challenging question for me; I was never exactly popular at school, I’ve never particularly enjoyed going out for drinks or clubs, and I’ve never really had more than a few close friends at a time. And while the friends I’ve had have certainly influenced me, I also need to admit that I have been most of all influenced by people and experiences online; my beliefs were largely formed from information found on the internet as opposed to what I heard from people around me. My passions (such as drawing and animation) were strengthened more from being able to freely research them online than from talking about them to anyone in real life (mostly because I never had a lot of friends who shared my interest for the medium). Even my accent, which often makes people think I’m American, was subconsciously built up from years of watching YouTube videos. I plan to include the people I love most in my book, as they have certainly influenced me (my mom’s empathy and kindness, my dad’s determination, all the life lessons my grandparents have given me), but I’ll inevitably also have to include all the online friends that have given me their friendship and support through the years.
Afterwards, we were tasked to find a museum exhibit around the world that interested us. I chose the exhibit of Leonardo Da Vinci’s machines, in Venice: essentially, it’s a large room filled with physical recreations of Da Vinci’s concept drawings of hypothetical inventions, like large wings to make men fly, and a spinning machine that would’ve essentially functioned as a helicopter. I got to visit it in person years ago, as I live a half-hour train ride away from Venice, and it always fascinated me: Da Vinci’s actual ideas wouldn’t actually work, as the engineering and physics behind them were simply incorrect, but the imagination behind each and every one of his works is incredible, especially considering it was over 500 years ago, and some of his concepts would later on become reality through machines like airplanes and helicopters. I believe imagination to be one of mankind’s most important qualities, and Da Vinci let it shine through in his work.
Next, we looked at Cultural Identity, and the celebrations and traditions we each have in our family and culture. My family has a few unspoken traditions, like getting pizzas on Sunday dinner, but our main celebration is Christmas day, which is pretty standard: wake up, exchange gifts with the others, wait for the grandparents and uncles to arrive (I don’t have any cousins), and have a big lunch (usually rice and meat) and Panettoni and Pandori with custard. The elderlies will usually be drunk by the early evening, at which point the uncles drive them home, and me, my sister and my parents relax for the rest of the day. It’s a tradition we mostly keep alive for my grandparents, as they’ve done it all their lives, and not doing it would break their hearts. It’s not always perfect, and we don’t always get along, but it’s usually a happy day for everyone, and I look forward to it. As for country-wide celebrations, Italy has Carnevale: a week or so of celebrations, from a Thursday to a Tuesday (with the most important day being the Sunday), consisting of huge plays and masquerades, where people (usually kids) get to dress up in costumes, have fun outside and eat traditional Carnevale food, like galani and frittelle. It happens in February, so we got to do it in 2020, but it’ll surely be cancelled in 2021, which is a sad but necessary sacrifice. I’ve always enjoyed going out and seeing people having fun, even in the cold, so this year I’ll just look back on the good memories I have of the past years. It’s a fun and creative festivity that can be enjoyed by anyone, even if just in spirit.
After that, we looked at Places; we got to make a 15-second video of what we consider our “Here” to be (link below). When tasked of making the video, I was still in England (as I’m writing this, I’m back in Italy for Christmas break), so I based the video on my newfound life in London: my apartment, the university, the river and buildings… it’s all very different to my life in Italy, but it was surprisingly easy to get used to (in part thanks to the fact I’m living with my sister). It’s like a home away from home, and I know how lucky I am to be there, despite the current… unfortunate circumstances.
We also made a little map of a walk we took, and I made mine in London, showing me walking across the river through two bridges. I made it on my phone, as my sketchbook has hundreds of pages full of drawings I still need to scan into a computer, and I didn’t want to tempt Murphy’s Law by bringing it into the rainy outdoors. During the walk, I noted how strangely normal everything felt: people chatting and walking along, gentle drizzle making streetlamps reflect on the floor, cars going on the street… nothing exciting, but considering how everything has been this past year, I found a bit of plain normality to be welcome and appreciated.
The notes I wrote down while on the walk.
Then, we got to see 3 animated videos which all tackle the idea of Places in different ways; these were my quick thoughts on each of them.
Overall, while they all gave me very different vibes, they were all impressive and unique, and picking a favorite is hard. I loved how Marfa got people’s different experiences, their stories and their ways of telling their stories, and collaged it into a single piece. I loved how Feeling My Way gave the creator’s thoughts visual form, creating a chaotic but introspective and visually stunning short film. And I loved how Ferment showed a city’s worth of people living their lives, all within a single second frozen in time. I’m considering doing something akin to Feeling My Way for my book; taking a video of my book, and then animating things digitally on top of it. It’ll be very challenging, but it could look amazing if done right.
Then, we talked about Storytelling. Alongside drawing, storytelling and writing stories is my passion, so this was very exciting for me: the reason I want to become an animator in the first place is to one day be able to tell stories about the characters I create, as well as other stories about other characters (which is also why I’m considering of taking a Master’s in creative writing). We were tasked with creating a short story, 10 to 50 words long, and I wrote this:
“Had the aliens known beforehand how freaked out the humans would get at their arrival, they would’ve brought a cake or something. And had they known of the way the humans in charge think of aliens, they probably just wouldn’t have come at all.”
It was fun to try and cram a story in such little words. I considered that the best course of action would be to have a more indirect course of action with it: instead of it having a beginning, middle and end, I made it so it tells you what you need to know, and then leaves you imagining the rest, in a non-linear manner.
And finally (until next Friday), we discussed Sound. Ever since we discussed this in class, I’ve started a little side project: every day, I write down on a document all the songs that get stuck in my head during that day (it happens a lot). I plan on dedicating a page of the book to music, and bring attention to these songs, which I could maybe fit into an illustration, or simply list off. It’s already a sizeable list after less than 2 weeks of me working on it, so I think it’ll have a good presence in my final book.
What I’m thinking of doing is getting 6 pieces of blank paper, sticking them together on the sides, and then folding up the pages so that it stayed closed like a regular book. This way, there’d be two ways to close it, and two ways to read it: the front pages, and the back pages (I drew a quick image below to show what I mean).
I’m considering making one side focus on my life outside of animation and drawing; things like my family, my background, etc.; and having the other side focus on the animation/drawing part of my life, what has influenced me, how I’m developing my skills, how I started VS how I am now, and more. I could do some things on paper, as the basis, and then film it, and add digital animation to the video, incorporating it into the book’s context.
I’m both excited and nervous about working on this. It’s a big project, and I’m scared of either being over-ambitious and chewing off more than I can chew in terms of work, or not doing enough and creating a mediocre project because of it. I need to remember to push myself, while still knowing my limits. Jane said that we’ll discuss the creation of the book on Friday, so I’m hoping to get a clearer idea of what we can and can’t do then.
I’ve been having a lot of fun with the workshops: I’m not used to thinking about myself so much, or in such a deep way, and thinking of how things like my cultural background impact my work is really new to me. All I can hope is that the course will continue being so engaging in the coming months and years. Until then, I’ll keep doing my best.
Along with the Rotation and Introduction to Animation classes, I’ve been constantly working on my Topsy Turvy animatic. I’ve found so far that the process is a lot more complex than I thought it would be, but most of it happens to be my fault: my original plan of the animatic would have lasted much longer than the 40 seconds we’re supposed to make, and I only realized that after making a substantial amount of work. I reworked the story slightly, to cut some time off of it, meaning that some work I’ve made will not be seen in the final product, but I don’t regret making any of it: it still shows my thought process and experimentation, and it was interesting and fun to make.
Anyway, I still have a lot of relevant work. First, I made character sheets: 2 for a single character (one of which I will no longer be using) and one for 2 characters, as they are physically identical aliens.
The character turnaround for the protagonist in his spacesuit; in the final animatic, this is how he’ll look. A basic character sheet for the protagonist in his spacesuit. Includes some examples of facial expressions and poses, as well as details that would be good to know before animating him. A character turn-around for the protagonist without his spacesuit. In my original plan for the story, there would be a section inside his spaceship, where he would be in a simple jumpsuit. I decided to cut that part of the plot, so this won’t be seen in the final product.A general layout of the character’s spaceship. In the final animatic, the ship will only be seen from the outside, so none of this will be shown, but I think it’s still an interesting piece of world-building. A character turn-around for the aliens, the Scyphozoayans (inspired by Scyphozoa, the scientific classification for jellyfish). I wanted to make a design that could be as strange and creepy as it could be kind and friendly. A simple, versatile design I’m quite proud of.The development I went through to come up with the aliens’ design; I went through a handful of different designs and concepts before landing on the final version. Also, on the top of the page, you can see some notes I wrote down while fleshing out the general story.
Once those were all done, I made a quick layout of thumbnails with a few words underneath them, to pin down the story and have a physical copy of how I want the story to flow and look. I consider it a pre-storyboard of sorts; I’m making my storyboards at the moment, and I’m heavily basing myself off of these.
My final storyboards will essentially be these, but with more and better drawings. So far, I think things have been going fairly well for me; I have a good, concrete idea for the story that I actually enjoy.
My biggest concerns, at the moment, are the sound and color aspects of it all. The colors will be a challenge just for the fact that I’m not used to coloring my paper drawings, but I have a good idea of what I want to use color-wise, so I hope it won’t be too hard to translate my thoughts onto paper. The audio, however, I’m more worried about: I have little experience with music, so I won’t be able to compose any particular music beyond some very simple stuff. And obviously, there’s the problem that space doesn’t have sound in real life, so I’ll have to experiment and try out various things to make convincing sound effects that don’t feel too out-of-place.
I’m choosing to be optimistic for now: I’m working really hard to make sure I make a product I can be proud of, and I won’t let myself create anything less. It’s been a really illuminating experience so far; I feel like I understand professional work more than I did before starting, and it’s really exciting.
Today’s Sunday, which means I’ve officially completed the first week of the 3D Production part of the 4-pathway rotation. For this rotation, we have the final goal of making a 3D location, and show it in a 6-to-12 seconds video, with at least 2 separate objects being animated.
To get an idea for an environment, we were tasked of thinking up 5 “What If…?” sentences, and choosing our favorite one to base a location off of. I ended up doing 7 sentences, as the first 5 didn’t feel quite right, but eventually landed on “What if gravity was optional?”. This led me to think of an environment above the clouds, with people being able to fly at will, and floating houses being held still by long chains attached to the ground.
Once we thought of a concept, we were supposed to make a moodboard to capture our desired feel for the concept, and then make 6 thumbnail sketches of what we’d like it to look like, to then pick one to make a larger, more detailed version of it.
My moodboard; I want to depict houses staying afloat as much as humans being able to fly. I think it’s a very exciting concept for a parallel world.
For my thumbnails, I mainly tried thinking of different camera angles to view the houses from, and eventually settled on a top-side view (the top-right drawing on the right page).
Then, we were tasked to get used to our 3D creation program Blender, by creating a simple robot through basic Blender functions. I wished to make mine look like a more vintage idea of a robot, with tubes for limbs and mechanical clamps for hands. This was my first time actually creating a 3D design, and it was certainly challenging, but very fun, and I’m rather proud of its design. I hope I keep improving moving forward.
Next lesson, we’ll learn how to advance our designs onto Blender and further develop them.
I’m really excited for this rotation, as I’m very inexperienced with 3D animation, and I’m sure I’ll learn a lot from this. I’ve been enjoying it so far, which is great, and I hope it keeps on being interesting.
For the final Game Arts lesson, we were tasked with creating four color variants of our design, and choosing one of them to be out final design. I used a technique shown off by Ryan Smith at the beginning of class, which was creating the shadows and lighting in a grayscale, and then coloring over it on separate layers.
The grayscale version I used to identify the various shadows and lighting. I then colored over it on separate layers.
I admit that I don’t often color my drawings, so this was very new to me, and being taught a new method of coloring more accurately was great; I hope to continue using this new skill, both for uni and personal work.
I picked the color schemes based on various points of my research, as well as what I believed looked aesthetically interesting. Most depictions of Gluttony in media are fairly humanoid, so I gave some of my designs human-colored skins, but I found a couple of instances where the character would be depicted with more typically monstrous colors.
That is why I chose the fourth color variant as my final design: the skin tone looks like an old, dirty human skin, almost like a corpse, with dark rotten teeth and tentacles. I believe it strikes a good balance between a humanoid and monstrous depiction of the sin.
I really enjoyed this rotation: I love creating character designs, and we didn’t have a lot of limits as to what we could do, so it was a good chance for me to try something new, and I think I took it (this design’s very different to what I usually make in my spare time!). However, I don’t know if this really gave me a good idea of what the actual course would be like; I’m still uncertain on what we’d actually be doing at Game Arts for 2 years.
Still, if it’s anything like this, I could see myself taking it in the future.
I booked a room for Saturday the 28th to be able to work on my design with university equipment; here, I completed the four refinements.
For the fourth and final refinement, I tried making a frightening, monstrous version of the design. And while I think I achieved in that, I also don’t believe it carries across the sin of Gluttony as well as the first or third refinement. I have a similar issue with the second design: while there are some design elements that work (the pig nose, for example, as pigs are notorious for being able to eat most anything), it feels too vague in what it’s trying to achieve.
In the end, I managed to do lineart for two of the refinements; I’m still indecisive on which one to pick, as I think they both have their pros and cons. The first design feels more primal and sinful, a violent and powerful representation of the sin, with a more complex design to show for it; the second design, on the other hand, is a lot simpler and less menacing, but admittedly carries across the message of Gluttony much more directly than the first design. This could be because I based it more on my research of other depictions of Gluttony in media, as seen in this moodboard I collected of pre-existing Gluttony designs:
I’ll pick one by tomorrow, as that’s when we’ll have to start coloring our chosen designs.
I’m really happy with this pathway so far: it’s making me think about my design choices much more than what I usually do, and it’s making for a very developed design. However, this only feels like a facet of Game Design; I expected to learn more about actual gaming setpieces, instead of character design, and this leaves me unsure of what the Game Arts pathway would actually be like. I suppose I’ll just keep moving forward and seeing where it takes me.
