PBC Foundation

Last project I have to mention is the PBC foundation project.

I really like this charity they're small, they're excited by what we're doing and I'm looking forward to the project. They're looking for something to describe to the children of the people effected by the condition what it is that the are going through. They were really pretty flexible with it all but we haven't managed to make many inroads into this project yet because those involved have been on annual leave which means we only managed to meet with them the first time a couple of weeks ago. 

Before we had gone, however, Abby, Amanda and I had agreed that we should prepare as much as possible before we met them to compensate for the lost time. We agreed between us to take a look at how many films we felt we could make from the information we were trying to convey and we decided on three. This was brilliant because they had also reconsidered the original number they had asked and were now sitting at about three logical films as well.

When we attended the first meeting they had asked us to bring along some examples of visualised versions of the symptoms of PBC. I created a few more literal versions to start off with and then moved into some more simplistic linear work. I couldn't help but feel like there was no need to create a metaphorical version of symptoms that have physical attributes, like fatigue because they are evident enough. But symptoms such as swelling and fluid in your stomach are not necessarily obvious.

They had previously told me they liked the information videos produced by the RSA which are a bit like hand drawn illustrations. While we felt collectively as a group that we wanted to do something a bit more we obviously took their initial stylistic preferences into account;

RSA LINK

These films bore me a bit but I think when they asked us to look at these they were more focused on the metaphorical element. But I knew if I was bored by these films then children definitely would be. This got me thinking about the type of films that keep children's attention. Bright colours and exagerated movement. While I am aware this is a not a young young audience. They will be somewhere between 8 and 12, I still think these elements are in play. Just more so joint with the a more complicated narrative. 

So the drawings I produced for them look like this:

In addition I showed them my showreel and they very much liked my digital elements especially one of my 10x20x15's with the moon and the astronaut. 

I was very pleased to hear that as that meant all the pieces were falling into place pretty simply. When I say that I mean the image I had build in my head of the kind of film I wanted to make here, that I thought would be successful were being approved. I didn't need to convince them that this was the right decision as they were easily happy with the things I was thinking.

Drawing on what I was saying before about the colours and the movements I was taking inspiration from things like the oreo advert and the american express adverts when thinking about this film. Because it all works in metaphors I would like it to move nicely from scene to scene because otherwise I am scared there will be a lack of movement within the piece and it could become very boring very quickly so I was looking at films of those styles as references. When I showed them at the meeting on thursday they were excited by the idea and liked the flow of them which was what I was hoping for. So for the moment I have a good direction to head in.

(American Express)

(Vampire wonderfilled oreo advert)

Which just meant that from here we needed the narrative. We have discussed and agreed on a deadline in which to retrieve finalised audio by and until then there will be some backing and frothing between us as we develop material around their developing audio. Our deadline is finalised because they have to take the films to their funding body and begin to get it finalised so that is an absolute so we are all concerned about sticking to this deadline. We will be sent some audio as soon as possible and we can begin on the films from there.

At the moment the only thing we know for sure about this project is that there will be three films. The themes of which will be;

• What is PBC
• How your guardian is going to feel it
• What you can do and where to get help

Link to my pinterest where I've been collecting ideas and influences for this project:

https://uk.pinterest.com/Abimation/pbc/

Christmas card 2015

Well this year like every year I decided to make a christmas card for this years advent calendar. To begin with I just felt like it. I like making them and this year so far I haven't actually gotten to do any animation itself because I've been to busy in meetings and planning films that the actual making process has alluded me. So I thought if I made one I would get the chance to animate something this year. It was then also pointed out to me that if I handed it in to this years advent competition it would meet the requirements set by this years externality project. So after that it was pretty much settled. Get the christmas card done and in on time for this competition.

It's becoming a bit of a pattern for me for my films to be driven quite heavily by style and this film was no exception. When it gets to this time of the year I love some vintage. I love a christmas card that looks like it's from the 60's or the 70's. I think it's a style that lends itself perfectly to the season. It uses soft colours and straight lines and it just shouts christmas to me. I love retro christmas cards. 

So one of the first things I did was put together a pinterest board full of pins of various vintage christmas cards;

CLICK HERE

I love the colours and textures of these cards which I wanted to mimic in this film. I love alternative framing and I've only every used them in one other film. I was inspired by this further as I sat and watched the films that thursday we were invited to the 4th years focus group. He used a lot of alternative frames and it made me realise just how badly I did want to use them.

So I planned to have this digital card styled very like a real card. A real card with a rough around the edges vintage 60's feel.

(still from the beginning of my chrsitmas card)

I made sure the whites are much creamier than real whites and all the colours are across the same pallet. It's a very limited colour pallet so I am using pretty much 5 colours. That blue never features again hahaha.

So Jared already knows much of the plot to this card because he helped me out with it when I was stuck. Initially I knew I wanted a shop display and characters packing up for christmas day, all of them going home for christmas. Mainly because I wanted a gingerbread house and gingerbread men in there. I was really feeling those this year. And it seems that they are in this year as well. As I've seen lots of them this year in shops and in adverts. 

So the plot for this film, thanks Jared for the help, goes that there is this tree in the window of the shop and at the end of the night when the lights are turned off and the shop is closed, the ornaments on the tree come to life and head home for christmas. The snowman and the reindeer both jump from the tree and head home. Following this the gingerbread man tries to dismount the tree and go home as well but finds he is tangled in the tree and can't release himself from it because of his lack of fingers. He becomes upset and eventually is helped down from the tree by the reindeer. Then he can finally go home for christmas.

Really this card to me feels a lot more like a moving illustration but it gave me a chance to stretch an animation muscle I never get to because I could digitally draw this one. Having said that it took me far longer than I thought to teach myself to affectively work in photoshop as I was having some issues. I was following the basics of a youtube tutorial I was sent on how to use photoshops timeline tools. But like is typical of everything mine did not look or work anything like the version in the tutorial and I had to pend a long time trying to figure out how to work the timeline in my version of photoshop. Which unfortunately compromised the end result of my card.

Initially I had much bigger plans for this card. I considered having it narrated a bit like the night before christmas but I didn't have the time once I'd figured out the photoshop timeline to record the audio before I could think about animating. Plus I had an idea of breaking the 4th wall with this narrative and in the end I didn't know how to continue the narrative and figuring it out would have taken more time to figure out. So I scrapped that element.

In addition from scene to scene I had intended to have the frames move as if a page was being turned but because of the way my time worked out I couldn't get Mikes help with that which meant that the labour was going to be to intensive for me to continue to consider it.

I mean all in all I think the film turned out fine and I'm still glad I made it I just think I haven't quite managed to figure out how much I can achieve in a certain length of time. 

In the end the only thing about it I would definitely change is there is a scene where the gingerbread man is looking down at his hands because he can't get off the tree. I don't think it's obvious enough and if I could remake the film I would cut in a longshot of him looking at his hands as well as his closeup.

Anyway here's the final film!

Finished Card

Gay Man's Health - Idea approval

So Not long ago we met with Gay Man's Health to discuss what they thought about our ideas and where we should go from that point.

I showed them my idea and they very much liked it. To begin with they had very few issues. They only wished for the character at the bar that had a stop sign next to him already to be removed from the film because they felt sorry for him and they didn't want the message to be if someone has HIV you shouldn't be sleeping with them because that's wrong. And I didn't realise you could look at it like that before so I agreed to remove his character because you know that's not the right vibe at all! Like I may have mentioned a thousand times before with this project Gay Man's Health are all about blatentness and one of the things included with this is an acknowledgement that if you have HIV your life is not over and as long as you are careful then no doors are closed to you. So from this point onwards I am going to be very careful to avoid singling out anyone who has HIV. Really what we are going for here is an awareness thing. Like it doesn't matter what your results are just that you know them in the first place. Gay man's health can help with things once you know what's going on but if you don't know that's when you're at risk. So I feel a little clearer on that issue now that the meeting has happened.

Slowly as the meeting progressed and we'd gone through the rest of the films we kept being drawn back to mine. Something about it wasn't right. The Alistairs began to realise that many of the same films covered similar subject matter and as they stood the films being made were overlapping each other. Which they decided were fine but in the end we decided that my film was better suited to a different more generic sexual health message rather than the current message "Get Tested' which was specifically looking at HIV. It was felt that the message I was sending was more generic and they they would have liked something more specific relating to HIV for the HIV film. After further discussion they had decided that they wanted a film that would remove the stigma surrounding HIV as people tend to only focus on the negative. While they didn't want to glorify HIV they also didn't want people who had been diagnosed with it to feel like there were huge sections of their life closed of to them. Once this decision was made it was simple enough for me to hand my initial message of "Get Tested" Over to Shannon who had yet to begin work on her final film which was the message "Go to A Clinic" Which was more of a generic sexual health message. They were pleased with this outcome because they very much liked my film and wanted to keep it if possible.

So that was that settled. I will be making some minor adjustments to my film to make it suitable to any sexual health issues and Shannon would be making a more specific HIV film.

This is about as much work as I have done on they film at the moment. My nest steps will be to revise my storyboard and take a better look at the shots I am using to tell the story and make sure I have picked the most suitable angles before I move on to the animatic.

I have informed Alistair on our operation progress from this point so he knows what to be expecting the next time we meet him. I will be emailing him a revised storyboard before I continue onto the animatic because it is easier for him to check the story is working in its basic from while it is a storyboard even if I will probably be making several animatics anyway. So that's it for gay man's health just now because of several other commitments I've had since the last meeting.

Since then I've been very busy with what actually feels like nothing but I have actually not stopped. I am completely knackered!

Gay Man's Health - The Story

So the story for my Gay Man's Health film goes as follows -

• Men are in club
• Two of them are talking about hooking up
• One displays his tick alerting the other they are HIV negative
• The other displays a ? telling the other that he doesn't know what his HIV status is.
• The first looks concerned and displays some math that says a tick + a ? = (scribbles)
• The first one then looks upset and asks why a tick + a ? can't = <3 
• To which the first one flat out tells him it can't by using a stop sign
• We then pan to the next set of characters who are having the same conversation but things are going well for them.
• Both characters display their ticks and then a love heart appears over their head that says they are a ok to move forward.
• panning again we join a character moving through the space scanning the area for someone he's interested in. He moves past a character who already knows his HIV status is bad and ignores him
• And then another who has a "?" to display
• He then passes a character sitting at the bar looking rather distraught. We then stay with this character for some time.
• He is staring down at his phone expectantly - the phone displaying a loading style "..."
• He then displays a very distressed scribble telling us that he thinks his night is ruined and he should maybe just go home because
• but then an envelop appears on his screen telling him he has mail
• He opens the mail and his demeanour changes entirely he's happier now and much more confidant. 
• He signals to the bar man and then gestures off screen
• We then see the man from early resting up against the opposite side of the bar.
• A drink slides into screen with him and he accepts it gesturing a thank you to the first man
• The first man then flashes him his tick and the second man returns it
• They both then leave together after confirming a <3
• The slogan "you're sexual health status is important"
• "to both you and to others"
• "make sure you know what it is"
• "GMH" appears

(Storyboard)

Like I mentioned before this storyboard was born out of no where this was completely organic and I actually love so many things about it. I like that I didn't let myself think to hard about it to begin with because I feel like I captured the completely organic nature of flirting quite well. I really liked the style of the characters. They're basic level of design allows them to be very expressive. With the message of the film being very obvious as to state it at the end I feel like overly complicated characters aren't going to take a lot of unnecessary time to create and animate. They don't have to be that complicated so why make them that way?

In term of the camera shots I wanted to make this film quite stylised which is why I chose lintless characters (I think they're really soft and with the background I think it clashes less) and I picked that bright pink and purple gradient background. I love working with bold colours, it's very me. I think they grab your attention and as this film is most likely to be watched on phones and tablets then I want to make sure you can really see what is going on with the characters. So I took a screenshot of my concept art imbedded in this site to see how the characters were holding up on a device screen and here it is:

(screenshot from my phone)

Everything was entirely legible and I could see the legs and arms against the background very clearly. Which I was worried about. So that was great! I made the character blue because that's the colour that gay man's health are. So that's really it on character design just now. Sorry it's a bit all over the place haha. I was making decisions because of other influences and things so it made the narrative here a bit all over the place.

Ok so heading back to the story. I quite like it for a first storyboard. I think it got all the points down. I did spend a few days on it and it developed along the way so although it's a first storyboard it's a refined storyboard. I felt like once I had characters drawn that had expressions and real character to them, that they knew what they were doing and it was driving me. Where as before I really did have no idea what I was doing.

I think to be honest a lot of this has a boy who turned yellow influence. Jared played it to an audience of prospectus students at an open day one day early this year and it's been playing in the back of my mind ever since. I love video games, especially the quirky ones. And I felt like the boy who turned yellow had a real video game vibe about it. Plus a quirky cuteness and I think that is featuring quite highly in the development of this film. The characters are styled part way between them and the work of Jotaka who's an illustrator I really love.

(Illustrations by Jotaka)

(The boy who turned yellow - Gavin C Robinson)

I dunno what to tell you guys I love playing up the nose on my characters!

I've derailed a little bit but pulling us back to looking at the story. I feel like the ticks and the stops and the hearts are like checkpoints you need to reach in order to go all the way, like when you used to play an old crash bandicoot game and you'd jump on a checkpoint box and some confetti would go off and things. I feel like it's got that kind of vibe. Or if it doesn't yet that's something I'd like to bring to it because I want it to still feel fun. I want people who are watching it to not feel turned off by the idea of checking their partner or their own sexual health status before they can get anywhere. I can imagine it's a bit of a mood ruiner but it's import and and if I can push the point that it doesn't have to ruin your night and that it can still be fun then I think the film would have all the elements then that I want it too. That's why I like this game element in this film. It's a bit fun and reminds you that that's what this is meant to be. 

The last thing I wanted to do with this film was guilt anyone or make anyone feel scared or isolated and I feel like my chosen narrative does that.

Helping Scott Out

I can't remember if I documented it here last year because of the time of year it took place. It was after my last hand in so I don't know if I mentioned it. But at the end of the year last year I helped a 4th year intermedia student who wanted to make a film about the seedier side of online dating if you're a gay man. The film sort of had this costume element and included a large Jim Henson style puppet. Scott needed to be behind the camera to work the puppet and as needed a filming crew and an editing team so I, along with Tyler from the year beneath worked on this project for him. It was fun and different and in the end we ended up with a film credit and a good film so I was dead pleased.

I get on really well with Scott and I love his company so when he told me he was getting to exhibit the works and had been commissioned to make two more se he had a set of films I was more than happy to help him in any way he needed. That meant that when he asked me to help him edit the first and create a montage of a few different types of sourced materials for the second I was more than willing.

These films are definitely more of an edit job but considering that is a skill I am looking to build up and learn into I am not at all complaining about the lack of animation and drawing involved. I feel like I myself am definitely a film maker rather than an artist who makes films and in that regards I am always excited by the filmic elements and excited to learn and pursue them in many ways. I pretty much live and breath film.

The first film is entirely an edit job so for me it will be an exercise in pacing. Something I think I definitely need to build on. I noticed I had quite a few issues with the pacing of this years Christmas card which I will move on to discussing shortly. In this way I will be focusing on taking that away from this film as there are very few creative decisions for me to make within this film.

The second film however is a film that centres more around drugs. The character in this film is narrating about their life and their decisions while a montage plays on screen. The montage will include lots of elements of this lifestyle. Your typical sex, drugs and rock and roll. So I will be sourcing or creating footage of parties, drugs and taking them and (thanks to scott for sourcing it) some gay porn. I will be making this montage. Which can either involve or not involve animation in some form. More so time lapses and time manipulation of footage than your traditional animation however there is a small element of it there. I'm looking forward to doing something where I can entirely focus on the filmic elements. Such as what kind of message you're being sent when you hear this narrative and knowing what images I should put against them. It should be a nice calming break from all the animation related things I'm doing this semester. To be able to turn it off and look at real people for a little while. (Not that I'm ever complaining about animation!)

So while I haven't began any direct work on these yet I helped film the beginning and end sections to the later film and I now have all the material to begin working on them. I feel I will do the bulk of the work in my holidays as I will be heading out with a camcorder to film some club scenes and things while I have the time over my holidays.

I have spoken quite extensively with Scott about the copyright concerns with some of the things we are working with as we are not able to film a lot of it ourselves and we have put procedures for me to follow in place for ensuring that we don't run into any trouble at any point during the film. We'll be blurring a lot of the footage we use and distorting it from the originals in order to make it look significantly different. In addition all the large crowd scenes will be careful shot so that you can't see anyones faces.

Scott has pretty much thought about everything and I'll be cracking on with this one as soon as the holiday has begun!

Gay man's health - Resolving the problem

Ok so every film we're asked to make has an issue to work around. For this animation the obvious one is that I need to entice people to see get a HIV test but in addition I had to do that convincingly without sound. The last troublesome element to this project was that Alistair had asked for these to be  short 45 to 60 seconds long each and I really didn't want to make that all text so you would understand because that would leave me very little room to do anything I wanted to do. I really didn't just want to animate text because to me it seems flat and while it can be quirky and fun in places it's not really what I want to make and I don't think I could make them an animation they were happy with if I made it like that. So I had to take some time to think about how to create a narrative that didn't need text or audio in order to be understood. The difficulty with this is many other information videos such as these come with narratives over the top so I had very little reference material to draw on.

For a while I considered making it a bit like one of those weird add campaigns where you aren't entirely sure what it is that's being advertised until right at the end. Michael pointed me in the direction of an amazing music video that had the style I was going for in mind and while I considered it I began to feel that while I wanted to animate something like this at some stage it was entirely wrong for an information campaign. When really a video like that would be all about making you guess what it was for and the novelty in it being that it's clever at the end, I really don't think that it's correct when you want to encourage people to use a service. Maybe if you want them to buy a product but informing them on a service it doesn't really make for a good choice. So I quite quickly decided not to follow this route any further. Bellow is the music video Michael sent me.

(Music video - When I was Done Dying - Dan Deacon)

So once I had completely abandoned any idea I had in my head I could really get thinking about what it was this project needed to be effective. By this stage in the process I had no ideas left in my head that could sway my decision. The only thing I had left knocking around in my head was the colour pallet Laura had drawn up as a rough guide. Because we had all decided to keep things cohesive we would agree to a set of colours. Primarily blue because of the gay mans health symbol but then also other colours of the same tone as the gay mans health blue. So this was the only thing I had running through my mind at this stage of the process. And if I'm honest I think this blankness really helped me.

(Colour pallet Laura put together)

It meant that I took a step back and thought about how else we communicate information when we don't use words. So I started looking at symbolism and visual linguistics. I mean you automatically know what the little green man on the traffic lights means when you see him. So I was thinking about your typical symbolism when it struck me that this is all it needs to be. It's a campaign about safe sexual health and going to a clinic to find these things out. So I thought why does it need to be any more complicated than black and white? Ticks and crosses or ticks and stop signs or something that says yes and something that says no. So I started looking at making my characters speech visual. So you could see and interoperate their conversations without having to hear them. Working on this principle I began to design some characters. I have to admit I didn't do an awful lot of character development just yet. But at the moment I'm happy with my second character idea. Ok so below is the first idea I had that I drew up just to try out something different but he ended up looking to clean cut and sweet for this type of animation. Really I needed a character who had more edge to him. Rougher and who comes across as having more questionable morals who we would believe could make either decision regarding the types of characters he chooses to engage with but would hope would make a good decision.

(Initial character design)

All in all he felt to soft and trustworthy but that wasn't what I was going for. The thing about gay man's health is that they don't discriminate about who you have sex with and under what circumstances you have sex just as long as you're safe while you do it, or if you're not, that you get the right help afterwards. And I wanted that non-discriminatory feel to come across. I feel like this character gives off to much of a goody-two shoes vibe that was just not right for this film. Having said that I love his style so that was something I kept with me.

Ok I haven't finalised the character design yet but there's something I like about the designs I used when I was storyboarding the film. I decided to just jump straight in with the storyboard eventually. I just thought that if I didn't get something down I wouldn't ever start. I was stuck trying to come up with the right idea, or indeed any, before I started. Then I thought you know what if I don't put pen to paper and start the create process I never will. So I started and the character design just came. I might tweak them but as a concept the characters are simple and none derogatory. They are actually barely recognisable as a gender but none the less I think they are sweet and they get the point across. They aren't discriminatory and therefor they do their job in the film. They are men and they aren't stereotypical or judgemental. I like that about them.

So beneath is a concept art that describes the feel of the film that I made after I storyboarded it. It shows the concept of these speech bubbles with yes and no in them that I mentioned before as the way I would be communicating the ideas without words or speech. Which I will go more into in the next post where I cover the story, It's sort of difficult to explain the character and the story separately because they go in tandem.