Animated Reality Project

For the final project for the semester we were briefed to create a documentary-styled animation taking inspiration from reality, such as a real life location. My coursemate Kieran and I created what I consider my most polished piece yet- a 3 and a half minute digital 2D animation created from the idea of the childhood hold and memories in which they hold.

(My annotated brief sheet)

After the brief we sat down and discussed what we would base our documentary on. We wrote out a few ideas before we settled on our original theme: 'lies parents tell you when you are a child'. We both thought that this would be an interesting topic, and in order to get more truthful or open interviewees we decided to only interview friends and those that were comfortable with sharing their childhood memories, rather than attempting to interview strangers. Later we found out that this was a good idea, as we were able to get permission to use our recorded footage a lot easier than other groups who interviewed strangers did.

Whilst listening to some of Kieran's unedited footage I drew as I listened in order to see what a rough storyboard could possibly look like, and also to try and personally improve a problem that cropped up in my previous project- narration and storytelling. Though it was pretty much unused, I still find it interesting what went on to paper as I listened.

After putting the footage together we then had to cut it down and make it usable. I had collected several 3-5 minute short interviews, whilst Kieran had a couple less but each being around 20-30 minutes. (By some miracle he cut it down to only a few.) The selection of which interviews we should use was our first problem working together- deciding which direction to take the film. While we wanted to stick to the original theme of the childhood lies, in order to do so we could not really use much of my recorded footage as those who I had asked that question were not as interesting in their answers as Kieren's. In order to use both of our work we had to compromise, and slightly changed the theme to only childhood memories, even though we used footage of the previous theme, as it still fit. After deciding this and both having goes editing the sound footage with the free sound-editing software Audacity, we eventually came to an agreement on the final soundtrack.

(Character concepts from Kieren's sketchbook)

Next we had to consider art style- in order to make it easier for both of us we combined Kieran's Aardman-esque style with large cartoon eyes and simple faces/bodies, with my more rounded faces and smaller eyes. We had to consider timing- in order to create a 2D film (which itself was a compromise- I refused to do stop motion and he didn't want to do CGI, plus it allows me to learn a new method of animation) it would be quicker to draw a simple-shaped character than a more detailed one. Eventually we got a style that worked for both of us and then we got to work on creating the characters that would be interviewed.

 

(My concepts for Hamish and Hannah)

Before we next met up I created the characters on the left in order to establish the body proportions and faces that we could possibly be working with. I decided to experiment with odd colour schemes, mainly because I was unsure of what the actual people looked like besides a few details that they had said in their interview. However these unnatural colours may not have fit the mood that we were going for- the blues and pinks of the skin/hair colour made it feel too cartoony and would have undermined the melancholy but nostalgic theme we wanted to convey, while having realistic colour schemes with a cartoony character would feel both childish and mature rather than too childish. These characters were changed slightly as the process went on but I still find it interesting where they originated from.

(Finalised storyboard used before we went into production)

Over the course of four days we storyboarded the film together, which was at times tiring yet overall a really useful experience- in the animation industry it would be uncommon to storyboard a film by yourself, so working together on this is good practice. __

From this, we then split the workload, which involved backgrounds and animation, gathering any extra sound effects, and putting the animation together in post-production. The animation and backgrounds were all created digitally through Photoshop and Firealpaca. For several of the backgrounds which I had problems visualising the proportions of objects or angles of rooms, I used Maya to create a mock-set which allowed me to see what the room and camera would look like, which made it easier to create more realistic looking settings.

(Maya mock-up and final background)

The majority of animation was created in Adobe Photoshop, a piece of software that I hadn't used at all before for illustration or design, never mind animation. However, I quickly got used to how the timeline and setup works with the use of the animdessin2 extension, which allowed for the creation of animation to be easier. To create each animated piece I used what I had learnt from the Walk Cycle projects- first creating main rough keyframes (often a simple skeleton showing the poses) then neater keys with the detail of the character on another layer, then the in-between frames between the gaps of the keyframes. After these have been tidied, and eyes animated, I added the flat colours of the character on another layer underneath the line art. Then, with the settings I had created earlier, I pasted them on the bottom background layer. If the shot had a particular angle which could be difficult to draw (for example the one above), I used the backgrounds as a reference, similarly as I did with Maya. It helped me keep things in proportion, especially when the camera and background seems quite distorted.

For one shot, which contained moving grass, I used Adobe AfterEffects for the first time, and experimented with distortion effects in order to make the grass move more realistically as it swayed in the wind, but would also would save time as I would not have to animate every frame. I feel like in the future I will use AfterEffects more than Premier as it is a more versatile tool with a lot more things to work with, such as thr parallax which creates the sense of 3D in a 2D environment, as well as having the ability to actually create a 3D space using either 3D or 2D assets.

Overall, whilst the quality between our work varies due to multiple factors such as experience with animation itself as well as the software used, I am proud of what I have produced in the last couple weeks, mainly due to the ambitious nature of it- to create a (quite long) emotional piece that evokes a nostalgic feeling from the use of documentary. While I believe the quality of animation varies from well produced to feeling incomplete, I was still getting used to the way the programme works and to add backgrounds to the character animation. Over the break and coming semester I hope to continue to improve this in time for the final hand in. However, despite the setbacks, I found this a positive experience, learning to work together with someone who may have creative differences to you and coming to a suitable compromise and collaborating to create something that has a lot of potential.