Saturday 28 February 2015

Propercorn - Revised Idea

After receiving feedback from our peers and tutor in the pitch, we decided to change our idea. We don't have time to change everything about it, but we can use a similar character design and the idea of carts transporting the popcorn and incorporate that into our new idea, involving a slightly more realistic outlook on how popcorn is made; starting in a corn field, being picked by the gnomes and thrown into the carts as they move on the tracks, to reach a furnace room and a flavouring room after that - we thought the flavouring room could be laid out differently for each flavour Propercorn provides, which gives them potential to take this idea further if they want to.

I like this idea a lot better, we both seem much more confident with this one! Ideally we want this to be a 30 second animation including the popcorn packaging at the end. We will develop on it further and see if we have time to finish everything in time for the YCN competition deadline.

Loop De Loop - My Final Idea for Gravity

My idea for this project involves the movement of the camera, which the character interacts with. It's basically a chance for me to practice creating a walk cycle in stop motion; It's something I have never tried before and am keen to gain experience in. My storyboard illustrates a shift in the camera angle, so that the 'floor' the character's on will tilt and seemingly create an imbalanced surface, which the character stumbles upon and falls down because gravity pulls him to the floor.



I found a video on how to create the character Morph, who has deeply inspired me for this animation. So much so, that since the creator of Morph uploaded this video, I will use this character design since it's a standard, simple model to make, so that I can focus on animating this project.



Here's my interpretation of Morph:













The plasticine is quite hard to smooth out, but I have got the basic shapes and a character who can stand up on it's own! It took me longer to make then I expected but I'm happy with the result and look forward to using him in my animation.

'Just A Mess' Documentary-Style Animation

This piece was made by a student at Concordia University; she took an audio recording of her grandmother talking about skunks, which turns out to be a fairly interesting story.

The way she portrayed this story through stop motion and the sets she used, such as the map, make up quite a creative response to the audio. The animation flows well and works with the audio, with minimalistic backgrounds allowing the audience to focus on the characters and story.

When I consider how to stage my documentary, if I have a narration describing what's happening then I should keep my backgrounds/sets as simple as possible so that the focus is on the actions that inform the story.


Just a Mess from Laura Stewart on Vimeo.


Friday 27 February 2015

Propercorn - The Pitch Boards

We had a session to show off our ideas so far to get feedback from our fellow classmates and tutor. To present the work and research, I created pitch boards, in a similar way to how I pitched my idea individually earlier in the year. I firstly made a boarder to go on each page, to present it nicely and show the viewers which brief we are undertaking.

The Boarder

The first board I put together was summarising all of the research we have undertaken so far, extracting pictures from our Pinterest account to summarise what inspired us in our final idea.
Pitch Board 1

The second board is to display Cara's character design, with variations in colour to gain feedback in what people think of the gnome and which design they think would work best with our idea.

Pitch Board 2

The target audience for the brief is 20-35 year olds, most of the people in my class are in their 20's so it was interesting to see what they think anonymously; There were some different opinions stated about features such as the storyboard (in Cara's sketchbook) but a lot of the comments unanimously stated about out work was that our idea seemed better for a younger audience - someone said that this could be better though since it would widen Propercorn's range. It's an interesting thought, but receiving these comments from our tutor as well has knocked our confidence with this idea; we started discussing alternative ideas straight after the session, which will hopefully be decided upon soon.

Thursday 26 February 2015

A Collaborating Opportunity

Since my whole class has split into groups to make a documentary for this module, there are several opportunities to help out my classmates with parts that will take a long time or they'd want help with.

A group of three have approached me to see if I would like to assist with animating parts of their documentary. They know that this is my preferred part of the process and would like an extra pair of hands in the production of their idea, using their design work.

Their idea involves looking through the history of how cakes and other desserts used to be made in the form of a narrative, with a few set characters in conversation. They have found appropriate facts to include in their piece to class it as a documentary, and they seem to be well organised and set up to make this animation, so I would be happy to help with parts of the production!

Once they start producing it and have figured out what parts of their story they want help with, I will see if I can fit it into my schedule to help them out and gain more work for my showreel.

Loop De Loop - Inspiration for Gravity

Since I have the opportunity to create another short animation, I would like to try and make it using stop motion. This should give me a variety of work for my showreel and it's a good time for me to practice using media other than Photoshop.

My main inspiration for using stop motion are Aardman. Most of their films revolve around using this technique, all of which I enjoy. Recently the founder of Aardman, Peter Lord, created a kickstarter campaign to make another series involving their popular character, Morph.

These 3 episodes in particular have an interesting take on the shift in gravity, which have inspired some of my ideas for my loop de loop piece.












Monday 23 February 2015

A Response from Propercorn

After emailing Becky Akers of Propercorn on the 12th February, I have finally received a reply from her!


Her response is quite vague, though she explained why they kept their brief so vague and open. She states in the email that we should do what we think is best with the brief, which suggests they will be open to a creative response; this makes me glad to have chosen Propercorn because both me and Cara want the chance to be free and creative with our animation.

Despite the brief message, it's still feels good to get a response from them, concluding that they care about their product and their customers, which gives me confidence as we carry on with this brief, knowing that nice people are behind the product.

Saturday 21 February 2015

Qwertee - My First Design...

After being on the website for a total of 3 weeks, my first design has stopped voting.


It gained a total 414 votes within that time period, which I am impressed with, considering this was only my first design. 
I think one of the main reasons it was so popular is because I used a likeable character as the main focus; Stitch has been drawn and voted for various times before on this site, so I believed my shirt would gain at least a small audience due to the success of the film 'Lilo and Stitch'. 
Although I said this, it could also be the way I have drawn my lines to look like waves. This could have caught voters attention...

For my next design I would like to try something different; trying a variety of styles will be good practice for me to improve upon my drawing skills and see how different the results I get will be, to determine what works best on a T Shirt.

Collaborating on a Music Video...

After being briefed into our task of making a documentary, 2 of my classmates are going to interpret facts about fruit and vegetables and have asked me to help them model and animate the final product!

They are intending to make a stop motion piece which involves a pop/rock band made up of anthropomorphised fruits and veg's to portray facts through song lyrics. This seems to be a fun approach to making a documentary, with upbeat music that describes facts about foods in their lyrics; I think logically this should be aimed at children, since it is generally easier to learn information through songs, and with funky characters it could be more entertaining for them rather than anyone else.

So far I haven't had much part in the process, other than offering my opinions on their work so far and input into the names of the 5 characters.

We haven't got a schedule for modelling or animating yet but after all of the pre production work is finished and presented in our pitch on the 27th February, we will work out how much involvement I will have in the process and what exactly I will be doing.

Friday 20 February 2015

My Final Idea

In my documentary I have decided I would like to visually communicate the process of shipping food overseas to supermarkets in the UK, comparing it to local farmers markets and showing how the markets are so much better for our carbon footprint, our health and love of fresh food.

There are a lot of ways I could take this idea - there are so many different types of food that has a different process and packaging; but I thought narrowing it down to gathering meat from around the world would be best, because I believe this has the biggest impact on audiences due to the meat previously being living creatures, which a lot of people feel passionately about and inaccurately describe how it's made/shipped. 
I can include other foods in the backgrounds, such as fruit and veg, to show that it's not just meat that they store for lengthy periods of time.

I can show facts in various ways, such as being formed from clouds, paved on roads, stamped on stickers/boxes etc.

I wrote this script for my classmate Cara Lambert to put into a storyboard for me, with a couple of images to try and demonstrate what I mean:

"Title lasting 4 seconds - set in the sky with the title of the documentary written there, to then pan down to the first scene.


First scene set on a farm with an outdoor pen for sheep - crop fields, farmers building, tractor etc. (New Zealand flag next to building?)
A truck full of sheep the main focus on the screen - The farmer has just finished loading them onto the truck (animation of him shutting the door of the truck) for it to drive off to the bottom right corner.


Cuts to a side view of the truck driving, seeing the sheep poking their heads between the wooden cracks. Drives along for _ seconds (fact on side of truck) - *the camera could move slowly along the side of the truck as it goes out of the screen to the right, to show the carbon emissions coming out of the funnel (could form a percentage?)


As the truck drives through a factory door, the camera zooms/pans out to view the food factory. The camera cuts to inside the factory with a view of conveyer belts in a row, moving boxes with various different animals/fruits and veg’s in - each box has an animal sticker on it to show what it is (and a fact about it). The boxes reach the end of the conveyer belt, out of holes in the wall and onto carts.


Cuts to cart reaching a harbour (long shot to see the whole scene) where a cargo ship is ready to go (NZ flag here?) Cuts to a close up of the ship as the cart drives onto it with the lamb, drives back off it empty.


Starts zooming out to see a series of boats lined up at the harbour with different country flags on (the original one the food we followed has a UK flag) - the camera zooms out further until eventually you see a map of the world, with different arrows representing each boat going to a different country (different colours?) (infographic type thing)


Once the boat reaches the UK, the camera zooms back in until the boat is in full view - you can see a couple of people waiting at the harbour for the cargo. The camera cuts to give the impression it’s inside a truck - looking towards the back door where boxes are being loaded in, you see a man lifting a box onto the floor and then shutting the truck door.


As the scene goes black for 2 seconds, it then cuts again to a view of a warehouse where all supermarket food is stored (could have a supermarket name at the entrance - e.g. ‘Tesco’s warehouse’) to see the truck driving towards it from the bottom left corner - cuts to inside the room where a cargo truck is transporting a few boxes (with the lambs in). Once they are put down, a calendar or clock with fade in/out flicking through to show that time has passed (state how long it’s being stored for).

PI_22_2012_FP_Foto_1.jpg

Next scene shows a couple of hands grabbing a box, which he lifts - then cuts to a hand putting a packet of meat onto a supermarket aisle - the camera moves to the right slightly to show ‘British meat’.


Another hand appears, hovers over the imported meat, but ultimately picks up the British meat.


The camera cuts to a long shot of the entrance/exit of the supermarket (camera facing outside the shop) to see them walking out of the store; camera stays in the same position - as the customer walks off you can see a market in the distance.


Cuts to the marketplace, seeing stalls and healthy food sourced locally - kids happily picking out food and seeds ready to plant their own veg.

Ends on a shot like this one with the credits fading in/out with appropriate text (lasting approx 10 seconds at the most):"

bb0a950f76d71b0bcf6ec77859fd94ef.jpg


I altered it slightly after suggestions from Cara, to try and cut down my animation load slightly and make it flow better. Now I'm happier with the idea, I will find some facts to be contained in this animation and pass it on to be storyboarded!

To gather all of my inspiration into one place, whether it's images or videos, I decided creating a Pinterest account would be an easy way to fuel and reference from things that inspire me.

My Pinterest Page
So far it has proven to be useful to my investigation into this project, since instead of searching for every piece or searching through my blog or desktop folders for them the images are all displayed in one place.

Propercorn - The Final Idea

After deciding upon the Propercorn brief, Cara and I sat down together and discussed potential ideas that would suit the brief, narrowing them down into a mind map. Our favourite idea involves creating a series of characters and having them working in a mine as the carts with popcorn in drive through - a make believe process of how popcorn is made. 




Sunday 15 February 2015

Qwertee - Finishing My One Piece Mock Up

After finishing my design, I had to put it onto the mock up T shirt and layout how it will look on the website. I knew I wanted to put my design on the background image, so that viewers can see the picture up close, so after a few tries I came up with this alteration:

The final background image
I decided this compared to the other positions because feedback I had received suggested to make the image line up at the bottom, so that there isn't much white space underneath the ocean.

Based on feedback from my last design, which I put on a light blue shirt, overall people said they wouldn't want to wear that colour, despite liking the design. So for this design I firstly compared the black and white shirts, because they are the most generic coloured shirts that are more likely to be bought.









Out of the two, I prefer the black, since it makes my design stand out more, whereas on the white the white waves and parts of the boat blend into the background, which I don't believe gives my work justice.

Despite deciding on going with the black shirt, I still feel that the small black flag on top of the ship blends into its background. I don't think this will matter too much since you can still see the pattern on the flag, but I want to give voters another option just incase.
This is why I put two shirts on my final mock up - despite it covering part of my background you can see how the design will look on both shirts - since I used another dark colour I believe the design looks just as good.

The final mock up
I have now submitted this image to Qwertee, to hopefully be published on their site within the next 2 days!

Saturday 14 February 2015

TSB Bank Advert

I have previously been deeply inspired by this piece of animation, and the series of advertisements to come after it:



I would like to create a smooth, informative animation with this type of camera panning, gradual development of buildings/civilisation and potentially style, depending which technique would best suit my final idea. It's smooth running animation would keep viewers interested and I could use this technique to describe how food is made, the history of how it was made, and suggest changes that need to be made to our eating habits or consumption of food; I could adapt any idea to portray it in this way.

For example I could use an idea along the lines of this animation below (presented to us during the briefing) of how farming started out peacefully and healthily for the animals, which then turned into cruelty as time has gone on, and hopefully encouraging the fact that free ranging animals are better.



This animation has more of a model/CG look, which gives it a softer, smoother and more appealing overall look in the layout. If I decide on the core subject my idea will be based on then I can decide what technique and style to use which will tie everything in together best.


Qwertee - Colouring My One Piece Design

The first few colours were simple enough to pick and assign to different waves; I decided to start with establishing the bold colours, keeping in mind that 6 is the maximum variety of colours Qwertee will accept.

Initial Colours

I had already used 5 colours in this first image, so for the rest of the picture I had to use halftones (light and dark for both colours I used for the waves). This allowed me to have a bigger variety without exceeding the limit, and it managed to let me develop different shades that look good together, therefore giving the impression that every wave is a part of one ocean.

Halftones













Once I had completed the half tones on the waves, I just had to finish off the ship and the monsters in the ocean. I used the light and dark shades of the red to get different tones while trying to keep to their original colours in the story. Despite the half tones being checkered, I think it works well, to add detail and texture to my image.


Now that the colouring is almost done, I will apply it to the t shirt on the mock up kit and see which best shows off my design.

Potential Ideas

After looking at a few documentaries to seek inspiration, I started to develop my own ideas. The ones that stand out to me are the ones I drew in the thumbnails; I think all of them have the potential to be good ideas, since I intend to go in-depth when thinking and talking about food - I want to accurately portray information to viewers; I think the ideas I have would generally be better aimed at adults, since they are the ones who buy, cook and throw food away. Despite this the recipes idea could potentially be aimed at children as well, to encourage them to want to cook and eat healthy food, as quality time with their parents, but I'll see how my development goes.

Mindmap
Thumbnails



Thursday 12 February 2015

Propercorn - Contract

In order for our collaboration to go smoothly, as part of the module we have to write up and sign an agreed contract with all the roles we want to take up, to avoid potential arguments later.


Since we know that we both have different areas of interest within the animation process, it was fairly straight forward assigning jobs to each person. I decided I wanted to work with Cara because she is organised and enjoys different tasks compared to myself. I thought we would benefit from each other by combining our strengths to create the best work possible, which makes me excited to get started on this project.

Propercorn

After taking my brief's to the session to show my collaborative partner and comparing the briefs we originally chose, we decided that none of them were sufficient for realising our creative abilities. Instead we reverted back to the briefs we picked for our individual practice earlier in the year to see what interested both of us, and found the Propercorn brief in common.

The brief for it is fairly open, with a wide range target audience and a vague creative challenge, which gives us the creative freedom to do what we wish despite not having an idea of what the judges want to see. This is a challenge both Cara and I are willing to accept though, since the brief has the potential for a fun/creative outcome.

On Propercorn's website, they state that anyone can contact them about anything, whether it would be feedback on the product or making some work for them. Once we read this, both Cara and I agreed that emailing their office with an initial idea would be good, since we can receive feedback from them. I composed this email and sent it to their main contact, Becky:


Hopefully I will receive a reply from her soon so that me and Cara can take on any advice given.


Tuesday 10 February 2015

Qwertee - One Piece

After seeing my first design become a success, it's time to finish my second. I have decided to use another of my fine liner drawings from my moleskine because the style is interesting and enjoyable to make.




The ship in the illustration is from the popular anime series One Piece, which is the centre of this design. I think creating a rounded off boarder with the waves gives the design a finished look which will be suitable for a t shirt, whereas if I had left the waves cut off around the edges it would leave a clear box which doesn't look as appealing.

More Inspiration

In this module we have the opportunity to use any technique we want, whether it's one or a mixture, or working on several projects at once, it seems to be a good time to practice something I haven't done before/in a while.

This is why I would like to be a part of at least one stop motion film; it's a technique I have always been interested in and I would like to see if it's a potential technique to carry on with in the future. I've had some experience with it before on my previous art course at college, but I'm interested in applying those skills and developing on them further.

I found a series of animations in various styles that describe food (or a style of documentary) in different ways:

Nice style of animation, it could be used in a motion graphic - style informative documentary talking about various foods, locations or pretty much anything.



Creating a recipe, could do it for those in Leeds who collect "waste" food as an intro to what they do?



Creating a recipe out of ordinary, mundane objects could represent the "wasting of food" idea further, suggesting you can use anything to create food so we shouldn't be wasteful...



Nice style and explains the product well. Using a hybrid of a number of techniques could be interesting to experiment with, since it would give me the chance to explore all of them at once and compare them to a better extent, since using them for the same tasks could show me the powers and limitations of each software/technique.



Documentary using stop motion, nice concept of conducting interviews then putting their personality into an animal. I could do something similar to this as a documentary of how certain foods are made or what processes are used.



All of these ideas sound interesting to me, so I will have to narrow it down and work out the pros and cons for each (and see what everyone else in the class is doing!)


Pinterest for Propercorn

Once we decided to complete the Propercorn brief, we thought it would be a good idea to have a place where we can place and share our research/ideas with each other; Pinterest has been good so far, since you can 'pin' images to one place.

So far it has mostly been Cara finding images relating to the packaging of the brand we are trying to sell, which I believe is a good starting place - to find out what has previously been done, so we can either relate our work to their brand or find inspiration for a new style to use.

Mine and Cara's Pinterest board

Friday 6 February 2015

Inspiration

Straight after our briefing, we were shown several videos relating to the subject of the task, food. These are the ones that have inspired me the most:

The first describes how food can unite us as a society or family; the one thing everybody has in common is that they need to eat, so this is a nice piece of animation.



This is a good info graphic piece - the animation relates well to the narration to demonstrate the scale of the facts, which should stick easier in peoples minds.



It's good to have humour involved in telling facts; though this isn't quite factual, the video below is a good piece of animation and an example of a way to get information across to the audience.



We learnt that there are a lot more interpretations of what a documentary can be then I initially thought, so I need to consider what angle I want to look at documentation at; for example I could be informative with a sense of humour or musical number, or I could go with a serious toned piece to give shocking facts.

In order to narrow this down, I will look at more documentaries and gain further inspiration into what type of documentary I want to portray to an audience.

What to Take into Consideration

In choosing what to base my documentary on, I have to consider many factors, including:

What information do I want my audience to take away from my documentary?
Should I leave them with a rhetorical question to think about?
Is there anything I want to change in the way people see food/consumption (or water)?
Who is my target audience?

While researching into a potential subject can be difficult, breaking down the main basic points of consideration will help me decide if any idea of mine is good or not.

I decided my first step should be to create a mind map of all random associations and subjects that could relate to the theme, which I can then develop on to see if it's a suitable idea.

[Mind Map]

Applied Animation

Today I received my newest brief: 'Food for thought'. We have the option to work in groups, individually or co-operate with my classmates, using their strongest skills to assist and make up your work.

It will be a documentary piece, lasting between 1-2 minutes using any medium you wish, with the main focus being on applying everything I have learnt so far into a bigger project.

It sounds interesting; I have never made a documentary before, nor have I watched that many, but if I can think of a strong idea this project has the potential for me to do well. After the session I started generating ideas onto a mind map, allowing me to see more clearly how subjects relate to each other:



I will take a few ideas that stand out to me and develop on them further.

Wednesday 4 February 2015

Loop De Loop - Animating Faces

So I finally got round to animating my final piece for 'Faces'! I decided to use the template from my previous tests since it has been a reliable reference; I also wanted to prioritise getting the animating right rather than designing a face, since that is my area of practice.

Despite having a limited time on it, the timing of the animation looks good, and I edited the splat so that the drips follow on from each other properly which works a lot better then my previous test. The colour scheme I have gone with works well together - I used a similar part of the colour palette on Photoshop to select them; the face has a more natural skin tone, while the splat is orange to represent make up being thrown on her face.


Overall I think I have developed a good concept into a looping animation which relates well to the theme I originally planned to submit to; unfortunately I only just ran out of time, though I am still happy that I have an animated piece of work.

Loop De Loop - Gravity

This month's theme for Loop De Loop sounds interesting - gravity seems to have an obvious link with a few principles of animation, such as squash and stretch; there are a lot of potentially fun ideas I could develop involving weight in objects and characters.

The rules for Loop De Loop are the same for every theme:


The deadline for this task is 11:30pm 22nd March, I will improve my time management over the course of the next 2 months to enter this competition!


Studio Brief 2 - Collaboration

Now that we have analysed a brief and put together pitch boards individually, we have the opportunity to collaborate with anyone from the animation, illustration or graphic design classes.

For this task me and a fellow classmate from my animation class decided we wanted to work together. I have known them for a while now and we have discussed what we would do if we had the chance to collaborate. Since she prefers to generate ideas and designs and I prefer the practical animating side of the process, we thought it wise to join up; especially since this is my first time collaborating on a full project with anyone, I feel comfortable working with someone I trust and I'm confident that we will both put our best efforts into this project.

The first session will involve analysing 3 briefs of your choice, just the same as the individual practice; by the end of the session we should have chosen a brief and written a contract as an agreement of roles within the project, to avoid conflict later. Me and my partner agreed we'd choose different briefs, so we have more to analyse and discuss. Here are the 3 I have chosen:

Vice

[breif here]

This looks to be an interesting brief; with the theme of 'Rule Britannia' I believe there is a lot of potential to either go with a traditionally British themed piece of work or put our own spin on the theme. It is the only brief on D&AD that bluntly mentions you can use animation, which appeals to me as an animator. The brief is very specific with it's target audience and what Vice wants included in the ident, which should make it easier to break down and research appropriately.

WPP

[breif here]

This brief is giving entries the chance to have their work exposed to the world in their new campaign. It wants to have a wide target audience and use technology to inspire and help girls to have an education, which sounds like a very good cause. It will give us the chance to create a variety of products to complete a campaign such as posters, logos and even animation, which could be a good opportunity for both of us to extent our practice and try different things.

Syfy

[breif here]

The main reason I picked this brief over the others from the YCN competition was because it seems to have the most creative freedom in terms of characters and advertising. I wanted to compare the detail into the creative challenge with the briefs from D&AD, which I think will give me a better understanding about what contents a good brief has. I thought it could be a good opportunity to explore character design and animation in a different style then what I'm used to.

I will take these briefs into the lesson tomorrow and discuss these and the briefs my collaborative partner chooses to hopefully come to a decision that will make us both happy.

Sunday 1 February 2015

Qwertee - The Final Mock Up

After trying two different coloured backgrounds, I decided to submit this mock up t-shirt design for Qwertee:


I am glad I chose the lighter shaded background, because despite it blending in with one of the colours, it still makes the whole image look brighter and looks more like the rest of the ocean compared to the darker colour.

I this this design works well on a T-shirt, compared to another form such as a poster, because of the quirky style and lack of text making it fan art rather than an advert.

After 15 hours of being published on the website and available for voting, it has received 77 votes so far! This proves that Stitch is a popular character and the unusual waves composed together in this way make it an interesting image that at least 77 people want on a T-shirt!

I will overlook how well this image does over the next few days before starting on my next image; I want to use this style again but with a different character or TV show as the main focus as I believe this layout has worked really well.