We had a meeting with Niall after Matt and Eoin completed the storyboards and this was his feedback. Notes in white are Anni’s, notes in grey are mine.

After Niall’s feedback we decided to work on an animatic while the backgrounds were being done. However the process was taking too long so we were forced to jump straight into animation. Which I knew wasn’t a great idea but we were beginning to fall too behind. I worked up a Shot list of the animation shots similar to what I’d done with the backgrounds and everyone was able to choose whatever shots they were keen on. No one else in the group seemed keen on doing the voices and I knew we couldn’t get anything done without it so I also recorded some lines in audacity and then pitched higher or lower for Lyra and Darkstar respectively.

 

I got stuck into Shot 02, since I had the background for the pan. I made the mistake of doing too much work on Zack’s hair before realising my mistake and blocking the rest of the scene. I had a look at a load of skating reference from YouTube.

The gif of my first pass is too big to be posted to the blog so there’s a link here.

My second half focused on Zack’s walk, which was moving way too fast.

Thankfully Niall offered me some feedback on my walk cycle and was extremely helpful with the lip syncing since it was an area I was particularly weak in.

He also offered me some great video examples to help with the lip syncing:

head_turn_example_graduates

expressions_grads_2

head_turn_example_graduateslayers

The basic take away was to do pose to pose animation and fake the movement with secondaries. Holy shit was this a god send, it spend up my work phenomenally.

I returned to Niall for more feedback and recommended adding another pose to the skate and tweaking the skid.

I worked on Zack’s torso first, making sure I got the walk down right. Then I did his lip sync on a separate layer and once I was happy with it I combined the two together and synced the head movements to the walk.

I was really happy with how this shot turned out. I had previously really struggled with the lip syncing and was surprised when I managed to get it to work. I got some advice from my co-workers who recommended I shorten Riley’s skid. I had always intended to add dust to it so when I got the chance I found some reference off and then went back later and added it.

However it’s only after posting this to the blog that I realise I must have messed up Riley’s eyes when I started playing with the timeline. Sadly, I’ve already submitted the video so I’ll just need to keep an eye out for those mistakes next time.

My next scene was shot 16 which featured our three main characters running at each other before a smash cut to title. I had a look at Richard William’s guide for running animations.

It was very similar to a walk but at some point during the cycle both legs were off the ground. I started with Darkstar since she would have the most basic run, the main issue with Darkstar was her cape, which I knew was going to be a nightmare to animate. I used Darkstar’s run to help guide me with Zack’s run.

I simply traced over the drawings then went back later changed the timing on the runs so it wasn’t identical. Riley’s run/skate was tricky, I wasn’t quite sure how to do it and since she was skating fast she technically wouldn’t be making much movement. I found reference online for hockey players on how to skate forward fast.

https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxTfcGBRxKGucfsKGGS4dTBnzusrmZREts

Darkstar’s run turned out okay but Riley’s skate was far too mechanical and needed to be completely redone. Zack’s was fine in terms of timing but his arm just did not look good. I decided to continued with Zack’s secondary actions, adding movement to his hair and coat. I found this video online for cloth that was super helpful with Zack’s coat as well as a cape guide.

The coat looked good but his hair was bouncing too much and his arm just looked dreadful. I spoke to some of my co-workers and filmed some reference. I had broken my own cardinal sin and tried to base the run purely off Richard William’s guide.

After studying the reference I finally realised that his arm should be moving in a 3D plane not 2D. It needed to swing forward as he ran, not simply bounce up and down. I toned down his hair flick too and finally got a result I was happy with.

Next was adding secondary movement to Darkstar. The cape was tricky, especially finding good reference. I tried some gifs I found online but just couldn’t work it the movement from the angles and the right timing.

Thankfully remembered the running segment from the Thor Love and Thunder trailer. Which cracked the issue since he was running from a side view.

Anni pointed out I may have changed the mass a bit too much with the flick so I turned it down in my next pass. I went back to the drawing board with Riley’s skate a completely redid it. I found some better reference of an old man skating about England and a guy playing street hockey, which better fitted both the movement and the character. The old man clip I used to give me an idea of how Riley’s weight should move as she pushed herself on skates and the street hockey clip was super useful for her arms and to give myself a better cycle reference.

The first pass wasn’t quite right, her legs were doing this weird warping effect. So i scrapped if and started again. Focusing this time on legs first to make sure I had a good base.

This new pass was a huuuuuuuge improvement although it still had a little bit of an mechanical edge to it I was happy enough with it to continue since time was getting of the essence.

The next stage was to create a birth card background from my characters charge at each other over. I found a tutorial online for After Effects that I followed.

I’d be lying if I said I thought the end result was perfect but it was good enough to get the idea across. I made a copy that I could share with the rest of the time for their scenes, although I don’t think anyone had the time to ever use it. Probably not a bad thing either since without the characters being coloured it’s kinda hard to see what’s going on.

Next I made a super quick title card to cut to so my animation didn’t just end in black. I was actually pleased with how the title card turned out, it wasn’t anything amazing but it was simple and got the job done.

For clarity I’ve included a version without the birthing card.

All in all the animations in this scene aren’t that bad. I was happy with Zack’s run and I thought Darkstar’s run turned out pretty good, the cape cycle was also pretty good for a first try. I wasn’t too keen on Riley’s skate though, it still felt too still and a little awkward but since it was only on screen for a few seconds I wasn’t going to worry. Scene however by itself is not great. The staging is painfully dull and really could have done with either an improvement at the animatic stage or I should have redone it myself before I started animating, although I was concerned by how playing around with the staging this late into the game without testing how it’d look next to the other shots would have worked. Zack’s run could be a nice portfolio piece though and I think some kind of soundtrack building to a conclusion would have helped the scene.

Eoin was kind enough to put together a final edit of all the shots.

We had a few scenes missing and some were unfinished. Truthfully we didn’t really stick the landing with this one which I kinda figured would be the case. I think an animatic would have really helped us spot some of the issues before we started animating and looking at it now in it now in it’s entirety I should have sped up Riley’s skate sequence. All in all the final product was mostly just okay.

 

So for this project the main objective was to teach us how to work creatively as a team by simulating working on a production for a client. I was part of the 2D team and our client was Niall. The brief we were given was to create our own show for Cartoon Network following the theme of either “Stay safe online” or “Don’t Judge a book by it’s cover” and animate a short 30-40 scene that showcased the main theme and points of the show.

I’ve a load of experience of this process and the pipeline from my undergraduate and working in the industry so it wasn’t too hard to know what path to take. We started by coming together as a group and throwing up as many ideas as possible up on a whiteboard. We briefly dabbled with ideas about “Don’t judge a book by it’s cover” like a man biting a dog or a rabbit eating a fox but we quickly started to congregate around the “Stay safe online” theme.

Photo by Anni.

We took the idea to Niall how seemed pretty happy with what we had done so far. He had some really good pointers to pay attention to and had questions to help us refine the idea further.

With Nialls feedback we returned to the whiteboard and refined the idea further while focusing on tone, world and hook.

We came round to the idea of kids fighting computer viruses inside a computer and from there we started to build an action comedy about a trio of kids getting trapped in the digital world and adventuring across a digital landscape fighting a rogue AI and an evil kid. Our three kids (aged 6 to 12) filled the tropes of the leader, the muscle and brains.

With the general idea under our belt we split up to concept some designs and write up the script.

Early in the brainstorm we had discussed becoming their avatars when they entered the digital world and gaining super powers. Gabe drew a sketch of a kid in a horse costume on a post-it and we all agreed the idea was adorable so I decided to work it up further, I quickly realised it was gonna have design limitations and started exploring other options. I had a look at some shows that were already on Cartoon Network and tried to replicate their styles in my own designs. One thing I knew Cartoon Network did was design their characters with simple shapes so that kids could draw them. I had a look at Adventure Time, Craig of the Creek, Steven Universe and OK KO!.

When we took the idea to Niall he seemed pleased with what we were doing and didn’t have too many changes beyond getting us to figure out the exact tone of the show. This lead to another brainstorm where we refined our ideas further and explored more of the world’s mechanics and characters. For the animation we felt it would be best to have a short scene almost like a teaser that showcased the main characters, scenario and theme of the show. This consisted of our two older main characters, gamer boy and sporty girl entering a new digital hub looking for gamer boys little sister and finding her in a confrontation with the bad kid and a fight between the three ensues. Simple and punchy. We continued concepting the characters. I envisioned each main character designed around the basic design shape principles. Such as triangle for the gamer boy, representing speed. Square for the sporty girl to represent strength and circle for the little sister to represent youth and innocence.

I was struggling a good bit with the earlier character designs so started focusing on the sporty girl more since I had a clearer idea of where I wanted to take her design. I started looking at female roller derby, Steven Universe and Scott Pilgrim for inspiration. I know I wanted her to be thickly set and look like she could shoulder a door open. Nothing peeves me more than when I see a female action hero that’s a stick. We need more buff female heroes.

Matt had also done some really sweet designs and we all agreed to try and steer the style a little into his.

Above designs by Matt.

I steered into a lot of the shape designs from Steven Universe, thick set women with long flowing hair. They all a slight 80’s action hero vibe to them so I started steering closer to the sporty girl vibe. I really liked 6 but continued with another few designs before moving onto the villain since I felt more comfortable with that design. (I’m awful at designing females).

Villains were easier for me, sharper shapes and harsher proportions. At this stage I was quite sure if the villain would look more like someone in a suit or be a completely in-humanly shaped avatar. My references came from a collection of Teen Titans, Samurai Jack, Shaolin Showdown, and Digimon.

With the initial concepts done we decided to start specialising roles. Anni wrote up a role list based on what people were interested in and what we’d previously been doing. I think with more experience I was somehow chosen as the creative director but in terms of practically I worked on character designs, backgrounds and animation. We decided after seeing a combo of Matt, Toms and my own designs that Matt should design Zack (gamer boy) and Riley (sporty girl), while Tom designed the little sister (Lyra) and I took the villain Darkstar. We all agreed 1 was the strongest design so I continued to work that design further.

I was already sure of the body shape but didn’t quite have an idea yet of how to do her helmet. Eventually we settled on 8. From there I made an “expression sheet” and worked out a turnaround.

With our character designs done the next stage for me was backgrounds, I’d worked in the industry as a background artist so I knew what I was doing here, and external jungle shots are the easiest backgrounds. Matt and Eoin had worked on storyboards so we took the scenes they did and used them as the bases for the layouts of our backgrounds. The backgrounds were split between myself and Shane. I made a google sheet for us to keep track of the BGs, who was  assigned what, timestamps/reference shots, if they were reused and if they had animation in them. I also created a colour code to tell us which backgrounds need to be started, in progress, pending review, layout approved and final lines. I based the structure on a background tracker I’d used while at Studio Meala. Link to sheet.

Shane and me had a discord call and we discussed what background style we wanted to go with. We had found a show called Craig of the Creek that had lots of forest shots that we liked. I also looked at Bgs from the Jungle Book and the Hey Arnold! movie of all places, plus real life ref to give me an idea of what type of foliage we’d need.

With the shots split up between us I got stuck in. I gave Shane a film guard I’d used from an Adult Swim show I worked on so we made sure to keep everything with the correct frame. I also took the more technical shots like the background pan, since I’d had more experience. I suggested early into the production that we wouldn’t do colour for anything unless we felt we had additional time at the end, since colour was so time consuming and wasn’t marked.

Worms eye view BG was pretty difficult to work out, especially since I need the top of the canopy to match up the tree trunks. Trees only grow where there’s light so no tree could be under the shade of the other. I worked out the canopy by taking a suggestion from Kirstie, start with the shadows and work backwards. It was a huge help and I was really happy with how it turned out, although we ultimately ended up cutting that shot after feedback from Niall concerning the staging. I was pleased with the backgrounds I made and felt I was able to put my own spin on the designs with the details. We had a few BGs that were animated but I was going to handle that at the animating stage.