2 Characters and a setting/the narrative project

So I have finished the narrative project/ the two characters and a setting project! All in all I think the film turned out better than I thought. It's a little hard to tell because I myself am sick to death of the sight of it! I've been looking at it for so long. :S I'll put the link in here so you can see it before I start talking about it.

https://vimeo.com/126245275

Ok so to star off with I think I'll talk about the things I thought went well in the project. I think most of the stop motion went well. I think my strengths came from good planning into the stop motion so when it came to the actual film there was very little left to be figured out. In fact if it wasn't for the fact that he was too heavy to stand on one leg, everything would have gone exactly to plan and there would have been no compromises made during the filming. However he was too heavy and I had to quickly edit some of the script while filming because I had very little studio time. In the end though I think having to re edit the script was a blessing. It is at the moment a little longer than had been asked for and if it had included the parts of the script it was meant to before it would have been much to long. I also think that the parts I removed were unnecessary anyway and I think they might have confused the viewers a little. The whole thing seems less cluttered without it. So in terms of defining the plot I can't really complain about that haha.

Now to get into specifics. I'm really pleased with the opening shots of the film - 

I think it sets up the film really well. We see he's in his pyjamas and he's getting ready for going to bed but we're also seeing from the point of view of the thing that's in your closet or hiding under your bed. I think it's a good touch seeing as the shadow character doesn't appear that often in the actual film. It sets him up to be there and means I can build his character in other ways. It also means we get to see a bit of the setting and also our other character. We know he's checking for monsters through the rest of the context of the film. He's very young looking and he's wearing his pjs. Lastly I think it's a good move because you do wonder who's eyes you're seeing this out of and why, it adds enough suspense. 

So nextly I'm actually just going to mix this now and talk about good and bad. So the shadow character -

So to begin with I wanted this shadow to move entirely with the after effects puppet pin tool however like I mentioned in a post below that didn't work at all. So in the end I'm not to pleased with his appearance. I think he looks out of place wight the rest of the animation. A little to typical cartoon in comparison to the stop motion half of the film. The other problem was that he looked a lot better as a dark character against a lighter background but because of the way I had the set lit there are a lot of absolute blacks in there which meant that the shadow had to be lighter to see it. So he's really not what I wanted, he's not that bad! He's just not at all what I aimed for. I really wanted a fluid and shifty character. I maybe should have experimented with oil paint on glass to see what that got. Always learning though!

The other part that annoys me is the parts where there's just the shadow on black. It doesn't look like it's got any weight to it. It just looks flat and shitty. So thats annoying. 

Also it really bugs my mum that I didn't put the hinges on the door right but those are normal sized hinges on a tiny door. Putting them on properly was going to take a lot of effort and time that I could expend on it because I was a day into my 3 day filming slot and I hadn't even started. So that's just a compromise everyone's going to have to learn to live with.

This scene I am really happy with -

Like I said earlier this character is top heavy and does not stand by itself. I did not have to use a rig to create this scene and it only took me one take to do it in. I'm pretty sure it was jut dumb luck really but I'm still very proud of the way it turned out. 

There's not really any pictures left to post to explain things but I feel like my biggest achievement this film is the script and the visual storytelling. From the angles at the beginning to the symbolism of the window and the light. The way the shots are lined up I think looks good too. I'm really proud of the way the entire thing was written. Just not so proud of the way I executed it. I can't wait till the film I see in my head and the film I'm capable of making become at least close to each other, if not the same thing. 

Anyway I guess to break that down I'm pretty happy with the way I have written the story and storyboarded it but I've let myself down with the shadow character. 

All the problems of 2 characters and a setting

I just thought I'd make a post here where I catalogued all of the problems I had through out the two characters and a settings project and what I have done so far to solve them because honestly there have been so many and I don't want anyone to think my film is less than I wanted through my own choice. There's still some things I want to work on and that I'm unhappy with but I'll get to that once I've finished the film. Which will definitely be by the end of the week because of the final hand in on Friday.

Ok so the first problem I had was that my characters needed to inhabit the same space while not being anything similar in composition or style. Initially I thought that it would be as simple as one live action character and one photoshop drawn character. So that's what I did, however at this late stage in the game I still don't think they look quite right and It really didm't turn out that simple.

My next problem came when I tried to animate the shadow using the puppet pin tool on after effects, which typically gives this great warping appearance that worked perfectly on my text shadow earlier but it really didn't work as well on the real thing because I couldn't actually apply a mask to create the pins on a transparent image like the shadow mostly was. Following this I knew I had some options;

1. To draw him out frame by frame in photoshop and just attempt to get the same shifting effect I wanted.
2. Create a small mostly opaque background to stop the layer being transparent and try the pin tool again.
3. Or rearrange the scenes so that I could still use the pin tool.

I immediately avoided the last idea as I really didn't want to not have my characters on the screen at the same time as each other because that would entirely defeat the point of two characters and a setting. I didn't really want to try the second either because I was 100% sure that it would either not work or it would change the light balance at certain points of the film that would be difficult and time consuming to re adjust.

So I opted for mostly option one and a little bit of option two (as I had one scene where this would apply without trouble.) However the problem now seems that these two options don't merge together very well. I've watched it back 100 times now and I'm still not sure that I like the part where I use the pin tool as against the parts where I just hand draw it. It's a shame really because that was the original plan and due to it's mostly impractical nature, the only place I actually used it looks wrong now. So I'm going to show it to a few people and see what they think before I remove just to check I'm not being to harsh with my editing decisions. 

In addition to this I had one major problem with my stop motion animation. He was to heavy to stand on just one leg. Which meant I had to remove a part of the script where he kicked something and gave himself a fright and lead to him seeing his own shadow as a threat. I pretty much improvised on the spot for this one and I'm still hoping the entire film made sense in the end. But in actuality because it's inside this child's head I don't know how much logic you can apply to a child's imagination to make it make sense. Also I'm not sure it needs explained until the end. So that's how I got around that one.

My biggest concern at the moment is that the whole thing doesn't actually make any sense. I'm still worried about the big reveal not being pushed enough but that's another thing I'll ask some people tomorrow when I see them and hope I can fix all the problems by the end of the week. As that's all the time I have for this. 

I still don't have music as well. I'm really hoping I can get Andy's help or someone else's because it's a very small piece and not all of it needs music and really it need not be complicated as it just needs to change tension levels with the character. That's all I need and hopefully I can get someone to help me out...

All in all at this point I'm still a bit stressed.

Ferrofluid jewellery

https://vimeo.com/124956684

Check it out yo! I finished the film and honestly I'm pretty happy with it. Turned out good. Maybe runs a bit long in a few places but I'm actually very pleased with it. Go us for being awesome! I think it feels intelligent, it's not long enough that you get bored with it. The language isn't too complicated so it's understandable. Yup definitely pleased with it. I think the style is very sophisticated as well. I was a bit worried it might look childish if we were using black plasticine so the textured grey background adds a bit of sophistication. I also thing limiting the colour pallet means that you can concentrate on the actual content of the piece and not get distracted by bright colours and pretty pictures. 

The jewellery collaborative

Ok so as mentioned the last few weeks we've been doing a collaborative with jewellery. There' been me, Ana and Vas from jewellery working on it.

At the start of the project we sat down and thought about what kind of jewellery we could make. The aim of the project was to enhance our understanding of one of the pieces by the inclusion of the other. So without the film the jewellery would make less sense than it could and vis versa. So we immediately knew we wanted to create a piece of jewellery that animated itself. Meaning to say kinetic jewellery. Here's another link to my pinterest with all my ideas through out the project in them because there are a few pieces in there that we looked at to start out with:

https://www.pinterest.com/Abimation/jewellery-meets-animation/

So we thought about it for a while and were really intrigued by the idea of these necklaces that the image moves across when you turn your head. We liked the idea that it was propelled by something that you do all the time anyway. It was quite whimsical and we liked that. We however felt that because of their simplicity there wasn't anywhere for Ana and I to add anything to them through film.

Then Vas suggested we do something with ferrofluid which is something she'd used in a previous project. We instantly loved the idea and it went down really well with the staff. As things progressed the idea became how far we can push this magnetism connection and we decided it would be cool if the jewellery not only reacted to the wearers heart beat as stimulus but also other pieces of the same jewellery. So now we had several ideas to through around and the project developed in to an exploration of these ideas and themes. We knew we'd never be able to achieve all we wanted in the time we had so we decided to use that to our strength, our film now had purpose and that purpose was to fill in the gaps!

The first thing I did as a film maker was make a script. I wrote down what needed to be explained and what needed a visual interpretation to make the jewellery make sense. I wrote it out and then cut it down to a reasonable length. Then once I was happy with terminology and flow I storyboarded it out. When it came to animating admittedly I change several scenes and added things into the gaps but that always happens.

I then handed the script over to a friend and recorded him speaking it through. Once this was done there was just animating and live footage to be shot and edited.

I just finished that yesterday. Although I'm still wrestling in my head whether I'm happy with the backgrounds. I think I am, I think it adds a sophisticated edge. But with the deadline being the first day back I have no way to confirm these things with my team and I really just have to trust myself on this one...  I think I'll watch it again and make sure I'm definitely happy then submit it. Ana doesn't know anything about editing anyway and I think Vas will just be delighted about it.

So all in all thats the end of the jewellery project!

A gif for you

So here's the most complicated part of the film I've done. I initially planned to do all the shadow character's parts by creating one picture and manipulating it by using the puppet pin tool in after effects. Unfortunately after effects can't create a mask for the pin tool on a transparent object. Which means it was a no go for my shadow character. I did consider creating a slightly transparent background to the entire character but with the dark composition of the film it meant there became inconsistencies in the light quality.

So instead I decided to hand draw the majority and apply effects to the rest. I have yet to find an effect I can use to warp the other images as of yet, however I did animate this scene a few weeks ago.

I have to admit it doesn't look like I thought it would but it's looking a lot better than it was when I started animating it. It looked like crap to start off with. But I made this gif for my tumblr so I thought I would put it up here too and explain.

The only thing that annoys me about this whole scene is that the young boys left hand was meant to stay on the floor but it kept bouncing back up (which was really annoying because I had blue taced it down) But I didn't notice it until now that it had come of the floor in the final shot and now it's all I see when I look at the shot. Grrr....

the rest of the last semester

Hey guys,

So it's the holidays and I'm finally de-stressed enough to start the process of updating you on what I've been doing since the last time I posted.

Erm so I finished filming in a couple of days and I've finished the second character animation is also done. There's some tweaking to be done with the shadow character and I haven't quite figure out how to fix the issues I'm having quite yet. He's not looking anything like I planned. I wanted him to shift and warp and look like smoke however the puppet pin tool can't make a mask over a transparent image and that means I couldn't manipulate the shadow character the way I wanted to. This meant that I had to animate the shadow character in photoshop. It was a lot more complicated, then in the end the shadow still doesn't move like I wanted it to. So all in all that was a failure. No I either have to come up with a new way to warp the shadow or I need to abandon that idea completely. So there's that... Not so great progress made...

Next is the jewellery collab. Here's a link to the pinterest I created for my thoughts on it:

https://www.pinterest.com/Abimation/jewellery-meets-animation/

The brief for this project was to work with jewellery to create a piece of jewellery and a film that enhance your knowledge of one by the inclusion of the other. So after some thought our group decided on a brilliant concept that Vas previously had some experience with: Ferrofluid.

Ferrofluid is a black magnetic fluid that when a magnet is applied to it creates spikes and dips. You can also physically move the liquid with the magnet's force. Its really cool stuff. So originally our plan was to just create a piece of jewellery that incorporated it's movements and make an advert for it.   Like a cheeky one, a type of obscure perfume advert thing. But once we got thinking about the actual fluid we thought about how cool it would be to create two pieces of jewellery that could respond to each other and from here we got thinking about electromagnetic pulses and how we could connect them to the heart beat monitors that would read the beat of the wearers heart and have the ferro fluid respond to it.

So this was the idea. the completely unobtainable goal for this project. With this in mind we re-evaluated out cinematic goals with the outlook of helping people to understand what we were trying to do. So in the end we'd be left with a several prototypes of the jewellery and a film that explains what we wanted to do but didn't have the time to do.

So that brings us to where we are now.

I am mostly finished both films. and they should be finished not to long from now as the final dead line is only two weeks from now.