Meeting With Robert

Today I had a supervisory meeting with Robert Smith. I showed him all the stuff I had been doing, and he gave me some really good feedback. He liked what I had done, but felt that it was all too true to the story. He advised me that I should try to be more abstract, and push the boundaries out more. He thought that when Sheila describes a tall hat, the focus should be on a hat that grows and grows. Maybe if she was talking about a dead body it could be a coffin or a skeleton or a corpse falling out of a coffin. He advised me that I could use more texture, or a mixture of textures in the backgrounds, and that the characters could be cut outs of photographs rather than all animations. When Sheila describes the corpse with his leg up, the focus should be just a leg, not the whole corpse.

He wants me to do a storyboard (or two) of my first animation by next week. He feels that by concentrating on doing the storyboards rather than trying to animate, I will be more focused on the final product.

Thanks Rob for your ideas. I'll enjoy experimenting with them.

Adobe Illustrator Shapes

Top Hat Man

This week Robert and Niamh advised me to experiment with some minimalistic characters made in Adobe Illustrator from geometric shapes. I made one to represent all of the characters from my first short movie, the gypsy, the man with the top-hat, the corpse, Sheila and myself. After making the basic figures, I imported them into Photoshop to give them facial characteristics for lip syncing.
Here are some of the characters. I also made a kitchen for background.

Sheila

 

Me

 

gypsy

 

 

Corpse

 

I put some of the intro together using the above characters using Final Cut Pro.

FinalCut Pro X

Some Puppet Characters

I have been looking through lots and lots of animation shorts. Here are some of my favourites.



The animations are very simple and minimalistic but the story certainly jumps out at you. This goes to show that you don't have to be a super duper artist to get your point across. I have also been looking through some of my children's make-and-do books for inspiration. Here are some of the pages that I found useful.

Faces 1

Faces 2

Learning to draw

Face

Tired

 

Hand/Fist

 

 

 

 

While looking through many different styles of animation, I found that the one thing that they have in common. They tell stories through pictures, moving or otherwise. When I was in school I could draw as well as any of my peers, but since it has been a very long time since I went to school, and lack of practice, I felt that I should actually try to emulate some character drawing. I know that I really need to get on with my project, but I feel that learning to draw some facial emotions would give me a lot more confidence.Here are some of my drawings.










Cartoon artists generally give their characters three-fingered hands. I think this goes back to the first Disney cartoons, but here are a hand and a fist with the full collection of digits.

Villain/Sinister

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 This drawing above shows the eyes squeezed together in a sinister-looking grin. The teeth are also showing giving the character a menacing look. The shading around the face also contributes to the darkness being portrayed.

This character above portrays the look of either worried or anxious. Once again the eyes are close together but not looking out of place.

Some animation to look at

More Animation

Over the last week I have decided to get stuck into some animation coupled with a bit of lip syncing. I am not very good at drawing, so I hope to try to animate some of the interviewees using photoshop and a little bit of painting, to re-shape the mouth, to fit in with the different sounds for a lip-sync. 

Sheila photo

Sheila Animation

I took a still from my interview with my friend, and neighbour Sheila. This image below is the result of my manipulation. This was just the start. I have had to make many versions of the same picture with different mouth and eye positions. I want to make an example of the type of animation I have in my head.

I will match up the sound from the interview to my interview using Final Cut Pro X, then I plan to put some storyboards and mood boards together.

I am also looking at putting the two types of animation together in the same video. The only way I can make a judgement on that is to actually do it. The last animation I did was put together very quickly, but rather than getting quicker, I seem to be getting slower. Maybe I'm making too many judgements on my work together. I think I should just crack on, and then do the judging afterwards.

Here is my short piece of animation, see what you think.




http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxJ69Ff2zCY

experimentation

 since the final year project presentation, I have been looking at a few different types of video to get some influence on how these things are done. Here are a few of my favourites.

Creature comforts.

Give up your old sins.

A Scare At Bedtime.

Peppa Pig.

 

Here is some of my experimentation with animation using Final Cut Pro X.