This year I applied to the Belfast enterprise program. I have been attending weekly sessions with mentors about starting an online business. One of the things I would like to run on the side is an art shop, so I have been having meetings with people who have successful Etsy shops for advice. The program gave me financial advice, and taught me how to deal with clients and how to dictate a contract. They also made me a business plan for the next to years to calculate my finances and costs.
Business Cards
I attended the Animation Dingle festival in County Kerry at the end of March. It is a big networking opportunity for animators across the country. There is events such as pitch and a pint where you go across tables and pitch yourself to these studios, tell them why they should give you a job. I set out to refine some business cards of my own for this event, I looked at what I had already done, I made the background lighter so the text would stand out, as my tutor advised in the feedback that this could be a problem, the text needs to be legible. I put a white outline on the cards. I printed them at home to see if they work, with the illustrations in the background and they did, so then I ordered a batch from a local print shop. I received good feedback from my cards at the festival, people liked looking at them, and looking into the different illustrations. I believe this is good and will be memorable, whoever I give the cards to will be more keen to keep them and my contact details.
Design Deck
I have two books, one is The art of Away with the Fairies with information and images from my film the other is a portfolio of other illustrations that I wanted to include. I purchased a notebook and pasted printed images into it. I cut out some artwork from my sketchbooks and pasted them in too. I made a collage for the front cover and put a still of Tommy and Biddy in front of in, then for the back cover I have the same collage but Tommy and Biddy have their backs turned.A reader will be able to tell the story of the film by looking at the pages on the right, which have a series of still shots from the film and storyboards. On the left I included extra illustrations of concept art and inspiration.
CV
Upon feedback from my old CV I gave it another pass. I decided to make myself a new one in Adobe Illustrator. I gave it a nice pink background and stylised the text . I included the same cartoon image of myself that I have in my business cards, my tutors told me that would be a good idea. I was also advised from feedback that my CV was too text heavy and that experience should be above education, so I cut out some of the text and re adjusted it.
Poster
I researched further into poster design and watched some tutorials
My tutor advised me not to have the text so close to the border and to also resreach further into the style of text I would like to use. I looked at celtic iconography from Newgrange, the tri spiral and triangles and incorporated them into my title.
I drew Tommy looking scared, and put the tree in the background, and behind it Tommy’s cottage. I decided I didn’t want to include Biddy in the poster as it would spoil the story, so I included the bird which sits on the fence, who is alluded to be Biddy. I put a tint on everything in the poster except the title, Tommy and the bird so they would be the focus, as they are the focus in the story.
Showreel – I updated my showreel to include scenes from my film –
Portfolio
I made an Art Station account and I am building my portfolio on it. I will have sections centered to different parts of the production pipeline, so if I wish to apply to a background design role, I can link my background design work.
Here is some pictures from my display, I am quite happy with how it turned out! Instead of painting my board I nail gunned wrapping paper onto it, which turned out just a nice. I wanted to do something extra then as well, so I ambitiously painted one of the backgrounds of my film onto it. I made a sculpture of the tree and mug to include. I hung my A2 poster on the board. The board then looked busy so I decided to not stick anything else onto it except for a QR code at the bottom. I’m not sure looking back if I should done a painting on the board, I felt like doing it as I wanted to do something to make me stand out as everyone was doing something extra, I feel it may be limited as people can’t see my artwork easily hung up on it, so I will need them to look at my design deck. I don’t believe it is a big problem and I am still very happy with how it turned out!
I am very happy and proud of myself with how my film turned out. I have spent a long amount of time working on it and it is amazing to see it come to completion. I managed to tackle every part of the production pipeline which could prove challenging at times because I was working in isolation by myself and if I had difficulties I had no one to bounce off of, except for my tutors who were very helpful and generous with their time. I appreciated being able to go inside the university every Tuesday getting the group sessions and one to one sessions and seeing everybody else’s work at the presentations. I am very pleased to have found some pretty brilliant voice actors for my characters it aids me in appreciating my film and the work I did. If I was to do it again, I would 100% want this to be a group project, I would be able to plan my schedule better, now I know how long the pipeline will take, I would leave more time for compositing and add effects and shading. It feels good to be done and I hope you enjoy my film.
In October I started reaching out to people in the music course to assist with the sound design and music. I filled out a form with one of the people I reached out to and gave ideas for the different sound elements my film will have, the kettle boiling, the wind, the rain, thunder etc. I was asked what I would like for the music, so I linked the soundtracks to Avatar the Last Airbender by Jeremy Zuckerman and The Secret of Kells by Bruno Coulais. I want it to sound Irish, but not the Americanised view of Irish music, It will have a modern twist, and hopefully the characters will have their own themes.
In February I had a meeting to discuss the music and sound design further. I was asked if it is possible to make my film longer to have a longer score, I unfortunately had to say no as I am working on finding ways to make my him the opposite, shorter. We agreed that we won’t be able to do a finished piece of music until the timing is all set out for the film when it’s done, but we have been working with sound bites, and testing out different traditional Irish Instruments. We discussed the possibility of renting a studio space to record the score.
I am sourcing my sound effects from the BBC archive.
Voice acting
The voice actors for my characters was another important thing. I was able to get in contact with Chris O’Dowd and Ardal O’Hanlon to voice Biddy and Tommy respectively. I’m still quite shocked that these actors I really admire are in it! I sent each of them the script and a copy of the animatic to voice their lines. I am missing three lines from Chris so my own voice is subbed in there, and I only got the recording from Ardal a few days ago so the lip sync for Tommy will be slightly off. I originally animated Tommy to my own voice as well, here is a link to a folder with scenes of my original lip syncing – https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1R2gPwPyUIPNFp-qMfqFxofNjx3ZdJwJi?usp=share_link
I am putting everything together in after effects, with Toon Boom harmony I have the option to render the write nodes as PNG4s, which I can then import as an PNG sequence into After effects, I struggled to figure out how to do this, as whenever Imported my animation it wasn’t showing with a transparent background.
This video on exporting by ZeBird brain was a great aid
and this video by Toniko Pantoja helped me with importing
I have learned a lot about the ranges the after effects software can go with this video
They explain a lot of tricks with shading and lighting that I hope to put in my film, I don’t believe I will have time to do so for this college assignment, but I will work on it for the end of year show. Toon Boom Harmony is adapt for compositing, but I was finding the node views intimidating which caused me to composite in after effects instead.
I have underestimated how long compositing will take, I thought that it will be quick enough to insert the backgrounds and move the camera around, but this is taking several days.
When I had my scenes put together in after effects I brought them all into Premiere Pro, this was just to add the sound as I find Premiere Pro is more adapt for that. I exported the film as a HEVC file with Adobe Media encoder and now i’m done!
There are two main locations in my film Away with the fairies,
1. The fairy tree
2. The cottage
To start designing the background of my film I went on location, which was quite easy since I live on a farm! I went for walks through the fields which helped me come up with the story, and then my dad to me out to his friend’s farm to do some work, and the work was! Chopping down fairy trees! Actually, hawthorn trees. His friends was taking down some of the hedgerow and invited us to come along to help, and then any of the wood we chop down we can collect for our own fireplaces. I spent a few days here and was able to take in the landscape. There was an actual ring fort there with a standing stone, it was a great sight. I got up close to the trees, I found out that the type of tree that makes a fairy tree is called a hawthorn tree, also known as a white thorn. I collected the leaves and berries and took them home to study, I took pictures of the landscape as well which you can see here.
For the cottage, I want it to be small and charming. I usually go on a camping holiday to sligo and we would visit a cottage called Dolly’s cottage there, it is a relic. I vividly remember the little red door, and bed which looked to be inside a cupboard. I wanted to base my cottage off this. I wouldn’t be able to visit the cottage in person but I emailed the owners and asked if they could send me pictures of the inside and outside of it. As seen here in pictures from my Miro Board.
The simplistic backgrounds of Steven Universe seem possible to recreate. I love the backgrounds to the unreleased Winnie the Pooh show Cartoon Saloon were making. I love their organic nature and defiance to perspective. I also love how the frame the characters.
I made a friendly feeling colour Palette for my backgrounds so they would look like they come from the same film.
Tommy’s cottage –
Outside the fairy tree –
The fallen tree –
Instead of drawing a new background for one shot I sneakily distorted it.
Animation
My film is going to be 2d animated so I have decided to use Toon Boom Harmony. My research showed that it is an industry standard software which will prepare me for the workplace and I have already used this software for a small project last year, so I shouldn’t have too hard of a learning curve to get started with.
Youtube is being a very handy tool in learning this software, there is many useful functions that I wouldn’t have known about without the aid of these guides.
I have thought about the advantages and disadvantages of rigged vs hand drawn animation. Rigged should be easier and faster, but then is limited, hand drawn allows for freedom and more exaggeration. I decided to go with handrawn because I love the expression you can achieve with a pencil, and that’s what I want to be working with throughout this long project more than a mouse.
What do I want for the animation style?
I have some inspirations to the animation style of my film. It will be my style, following my character designs of the characters, but how they are animated is a different question. I have to be realistic, I know I am not yet skilled or experienced enough to match the quality of a classic Disney film. I am also working on my own, doing the entire production process by myself so I will not have the time to do these constant revisions.
I watched this documentary on the making of Lilo and Stitch and you could see them pendantically point out a single frame where the eye of the character wobbles slightly.
When watching other animations with a lower budget, mostly tv shows, you can see them do tricks, like hold a character in one expression for multiple frames, or they go off model to give an extreme reaction.
I love when this is done in the cartoon network show, OK KO Lets be heroes, it adds more humour to the scene.
I also like how in Wolfwalkers by Cartoon Saloon, the wolves are drawn in sketchy lines compared to the clean line art of the towns people, I may try this with the Fairy in my film, to add more to his otherworldliness nature.
I refreshed myself on the 12 principles of animation from Richard William’s book.
Squash and stretch
Anticipation
Staging
Straight-ahead action and pose-to-pose
Follow through and overlapping action
Slow in and slow out
Arc
Secondary action
Timing
Exaggeration
Solid drawing
Appeal
I’m starting the animation of my film with a scene in the cottage, I hope to clean it up and composit it to give me a good understanding of how long the entire film will take to make.
The scene in the cottage has no dialogue either so I will not need to worry about the lip sync yet. See the link below for my work in progress lineart.
I have been feeling concerned about the length of the film, and I am seeking ways to make it shorter and cut some corners. This is one of the struggles of working alone, I have no one to bounce the ideas off of, I was afraid I was getting tunnel vision and nobody else would understand what is going on in the story. I’ve been bouncing the ideas off family members and friends, even customers at work, I decided to take to Twitter and ask if anyone with experience with screenwriting could give a few pointers! Two people reached out, both Emmy winning screenwriters. One was David Quantick and he gave the idea of allowing Biddy togo ahead with doing away with Tommy and then Tommy interjects asking, what are you going to do after this? I liked this idea, and wrote a new script rewriting the ending.
I have gotten more used to Toon Boom now and my speed is picking up. I finished the sequence in the cottage and my tutor advised that Tommy appeared to small when sitting on the chair at the end, the timing is good, but there are some issues with the shape and volume I was advised about. I will fix the issues with Tommys size, luckily the software will allow me to do so without redrawing him again, It is recommended that I move on to the next stage though, as I need to continue to making progress.
I have Chris’ voicing for Biddy now which is making animating the character a lot more exciting. It does suit him! I am using my own voice for animating Tommy’s dialogue temporarily.
I have been following the animators survival guide for tips on the interaction between the two characters, Williams goes into detail in his book on how to do a head turn, which I used for Biddy and helped inject more personality into his character, which you will see in my film.
I also followed tips on a walk cycle, as I decided to let biddy walk up to Tommy so the film won’t be as stationary, this will be seen at the end of my film.
Below is a screenshot of my Toon Boom harmony timeline. I start animating by thumbnailing out the scene, then in a new layer I clean up these thumbnails, which I then develop into keyframes and I draw the inbetweens. It takes a couple more passes to clean up. Then I check over my drawings to make sure there is no gaps so I will be able to use the fill bucket tool with ease when colouring.
Colouring
Colouring the animation was one of the nice parts of the project and I was happy that it didn’t take too long. My film has simple flat colours, I was able to make a colour palette of each of the characters in Toon Boom and import it into all my scenes. I was able to pick the colours out by importing a picture of the turnarounds and using the eyedropper tool.
I’m suprised yet again about how long animation takes, at the start of the year when I planned out my pipeline, I looked at the months and thought, yeah I’ll do animation in January, finish in April and then composit in May. It hasn’t turned out that simple. In my session this week my tutor advised me to make A Gannt chart to plan out the rest of the project to all the fine details. I have started working on one, and have included all my main sequences in it.
I animated the tree in After effects. I uploaded pieces of the rig to my google drive folder dedicated to the major project, this then allowed me to download the rig on the computer.
I did a little extra animation of a couple cows in procreate with the animation assist feature on my Ipad.I used overlapping action in the left cows tail, as seen below.
I am quite pleased with how the animation turned out, it manages to tell the story, and the characters feel alive to me now. The style matches the story I wanted to tell.
I have studied character design over my previous years at University, it is a subject that I enjoy. I know the design of the characters will be very important to my film, as I will be working with them for the rest of the year. So now is the time to get it right.
As per my previous post, I have already started designing the characters, but I will go into more detail about my research here.
I started educating myself by looking through my art books and watching video tutorials.
These are some of the sources I’ve been viewing in the last few months.
Points I have learned
• Good character design is about clarity, of silhouette, palette and exaggeration
• For animation you need it to be easy to animate, too much detail can make it difficult
• silhouettes help them stand out
• It makes it easier if you can build you character from shapes,
• Shape theory – shapes can evoke an emotion with the audience. Round characters seem friendly not dangerous, square characters are sturdy, grumpy, triangular/sharp characters are dangerous, mean
• Turnarounds are created for view the characters from all angles, reference to help keep the character on model
• Colour can tell about the environment the character comes from, colour tells a storyboard
• Pose, different body types
show examples of what I believe to be good character design,
See below. Can you guess which character this is?
of course it’s Mickey Mouse! Silhouettes are important in making the character instantly recognisable.
Here is a test I did for my two characters. Upon getting feedback people have gotten confused as to who’s the fairy as Tommy appears so small, I will need to give Biddy some more defining features.
I started designing these characters by doodling and sketching, (which I had started before the pitch if you refer to my previous post) I came up with them and the story simultaneously, by drawing the characters I could visualise more of their personalities, the way they
interact with the world and what is going to happen to them.
I asked myself questions about the characters, below is a sample of a form I filled out for Tommy.
1. Name: Tommy
2. Age: 64
3. Sex: Male
4. Physical Appearance: Plum and round, bald, wrinkles on face. Wears a white shirt with braces, wellington boots, and a cap to keep his head warm.
5. Character’s childhood: Lived on farm with mother and father. Has no siblings, passed away in infancy. Parents played traditional Irish instruments and told stories, spread the legend of Irish
folklore. Hosted Ceilís in the cottage and neighbours all came over
6. Character’s education: Went to a small local school, which had a total of 20 students. Did
7. Romantic life: None. Has a crush on one of his neighbours. Too shy to do anything about it.
8. Hobbies: Taking care of the tree, telling stories, playing the fiddle.
9. Work: Farmer
10. What are they proud of:
11. What are they ashamed of: He is sad to be on his own, regretful at the fact that he never reached
out to anyone to find love or companionship.
12. State of health: Normal.
13. Goal in the script: To keep the tree safe and to go about his normal daly life, feed his cows, take
care of his dog and cat, relax.
14. Accent or dialect: Monaghan Irish accent
15. Articulation/slang: uses Hiberno english words
I originally started drawing Tommy to be like Jim Mc Sweeney from the original interview that inspired my short. He had more of a skinny frail build wearing a similar hat. I looked at old photos of farmers at the time. Many would dress nicely, wearing full suits. Some would wear knitted sweaters.
I looked in old family photos, pictures of my grandfather who I had always remembered as a child who’d wear a white shirt with braces and decided to model my old man, Tommy who I then named him after my grandfather.
I struggled to make it charming though, as I want Tommy to appear very likeable.
Below is my design for Tommy, drawn in photoshop.
Biddy is more of a mystery. He is a fairy, but not like Tinkerbell, or what you reading this might think a fairy is. My idea for his background is that there were many fairies around at the time of Tommy’s ancestors. They live in the tree, which also acts as a portal to Tír na nog the land where they live. In the time of the story, which is set around the 1960’s the fairies have moved back to Tir na nog as humans have taken over much of the land and prove too much of a danger. Biddy instead decided to stay, it is not known why. I imagine him as a mysterious figure, like what the fairies are, he has no real motivations, he is clever, witty, but also weird and strange because he’s an eccentric being. I gave him the name Biddy as it means fussy old woman, which suits him well, but it is also the name of a real woman who lived in
Ireland 100 years ago called Biddy Early, she was a healer, who many believed to be a witch/fairy.
What does a fairy look like?
Fairies are also known as Sidhe, the other folk, fae,puca, na daoine beaga , the good folk Tuatha de Dannan.
They come in all shapes and sizes.
I did a lot of sketching until I could find which form biddy would take.I have art books that showcase artwork and discuss the production of some shows and films I like, I could see that the artists on these crews used a wide range of mediums in designing their characters. I especially love the line up for the characters in Song of the Sea, this was illustrated by Tomm Moore in watercolour,
I then used watercolours in developing Biddy
Her’s another design tip I picked up! Good character designs can be recgonised from their palettes alone. Like in Mickey below.
I set out creating original colour palettes for my characters. I picked earthy tones for Biddy and researched into dyes that can be made from berries from a hawthorn tree. I tested out how it would look if Biddy had twigs and berries in his hair.
I’m designing his hair to be in the shape of the wind whisped tree, and his beard is in the shape of a leaf from a fairy tree. Hopefully this will help make his other worldly nature more apparent.
I made sure Biddy had pointy ears, there, that’s a fairy! I struggled with the side profiles for him and Tommy, I could’t figure out their foreheads, as you see in the line art below, I then was able to fix it when it came to colouring.
Storyboarding
A panel or series of panels on which a set of sketches is arranged depicting consecutively the important changes of scene and action in a series of shots.
After I had my idea for my story I began to thumbnail it out, to see if it works. I began doing this on post it notes and then after my first day back in college after the summer, I told my tutors my idea and was advised to make a rough animatic which I did. I roughly sketched out the short. The story ended up being three minutes long with two minutes and twenty seconds of animation.
I videoed myself acting out the scenes to use for reference.
I watched these youtube videos to learn more about the rules of storyboarding
I found these videos very helpful, the one by Proko that analysed the Jungle Book storyboards was very useful. He discusses continuity, that if the character is on the left side of the frame in one shot when it cuts back to them they should remain in the same position to not confuse the audience. Lines in their bodies can lead the audience’s eyes. It is important to create a focal point so the audience knows where to look.
This can also be made by creating negative shapes. The focal point can be in the same place in continuous shots making it easier to read. I realised I would have a challenge with drawing the tree, I was finding it difficult to illustrate he same tree from different angles, as the branches can twist and turn in so many ways, appearing thicker and thinner due to the perspective. I decided to make a physical sculpture of the tree, so I can move it around
and achieve the best storyboards. This is something that animation studios do, I am researching Pinocchio for my Dissertation module and in the book The art of Walt Disney by Arthur field, it is mentioned how the animators have sculptures of
the characters and set pieces to help them draw.
Miro allowed me to easily arrange and rearrange my storyboard panels. I originally had all my storyboards to a finished standard with rendering, but the file I had drawn them in disappeared, I will need to be more vigilant in the future and make sure to back up my work.
I then made these storyboards into an animatic, it works out as 2 minutes which is the maximum advised length of time my tutors gave me.
Preparation for my major project began in the summer. I attended a class back in June in the university where our tutors gave us information about final year. They encouraged us to start researching and coming up with ideas for our films and major project.
I began by keeping my mind open, looking for inspiration. I watched several films and tv shows over the summer so I could find out what I liked and what I didn’t like, what I wanted to do.
I watched films and tv series over the summer, both live action and animated to help me find out what direction I want to go.
I rewatched the Cartoon Saloon Irish Mythology trilogy, Secret of Kells, Song of the Sea and Wolfwalkers. Which I find so fascinating and it is full of stories that most people do not know about, I feel a duty to help these stories spread further. It would prove useful too if I ever want to get a job with cartoon saloon!
I looked at other student short films to give myself a realistic idea on what I can accomplish, made a playlist on youtube full of my favourites.
These two films are by Rachel Kim, I love the humour, and the style. Which gives me a good idea on what is possible for me to achieve in animation.
Whack Jobs and Define intervention are made by Irish animation students. I love the originality and absurdity of their stories.
I had to come up with a story, but what would it be? I thought of what I like, what inspires me, things I
find interesting. I want to come up with something original, heartfelt that I know people will enjoy. I want something that comes from me. My own life. So I thought about that. I live on a farm, in the countryside of Ireland, I want the setting to be there, but what will happen?
I looked up advice on storytelling and it was recommended to ask myself these questions
• who’s it about?
• What do they want?
• Why can’t they get it?
• Why doesn’t that work?
• How does it end?
I ran these questions in my head again and again. The film will be about someone who lives on a farm in
Ireland, but what happens, and how do I incorporate Irish Mythology into this?
I found the RTE archives website, full of old news stories from throughout the years, I searched up County Monaghan, where I’m from. A very strange story caught my attention, there was a sighting of a big cat on a farm here in the early 2000s, a black Puma, which went on rampages on the farms and killed sheep. I felt there was a story in this. The farmer in my short will come face to face with this Puma, and what if the Puma is a fairy, a shapeshifting fairy?
I listened to an interview with the Irish Seancahi Eddie Lenihan in which he was asked what does a fairy look like and he said that the person sitting right next to you could be a fairy and you wouldn’t even know it, but if the fairy took the image of an animal, they would be pure black, with no white hair, like the puma!
I sketched out ideas for the story, maybe this old person thinks they see a Puma attacking sheep on their farm and their neighbours think they’re crazy, maybe they think they are away with the fairies?
As I had my rough idea for a story I knew I wanted people to work with me on this idea. It will be a long year and it will be great to have a team. Then we can make a sort longer than a couple minutes and then it could be compelling. I am faced with a challenge though, I don’t know anyone in my year, as I’m skipping placement year it will mostly be new faces, and I had already skipped into second year and then the pandemic made it even harder to get to know people. I didn’t want this to be a deterrent so I reached out to people in the discord server for the animation course. I found a couple of people who were interested in doing a 2D short so we made a group chat, but then we decided we wanted to do different ideas and it broke off. I still will have time when college starts up again to find more people to work it, it
will be good to just be able to bounce the ideas off of someone.
I dived more into the rte archives, and found an interesting interview. It’s with a man called Jim McSweeney, from Co. Limerick. It starts with the old man carrying a ladder through a field, placing the ladder on a tree and climbing up. He grabs wires and ropes and tightens them inside the tree. Mike Murphy the interviewer joins him at the bottom of the tree and they talk. It is revealed that Jim thinks this tree is a fairy tree, one of his ancestors saw the fairies dancing around it one night, his family believes that the last of them would die if the tree was to fall, Jim is the last living member in his family. The interviewer then grabs a branch of the tree and shakes it and Jim freaks out to stop him, which is quite funny!
I found this interview very dramatic. There is so many things I could do with this story. If the tree does fall, what will happen? Will Jim die? What if a fairy pops out? I gave thought into how I can incorporate the Puma into this idea.
I continue researching, drawing and sketching coming up with ideas.
I wanted to get some feedback on my story in the first day back in class, so I did some preparation. I drew up a treatment like this, and briefly wrote out the story.
Treatment
Title: Away with the Fairies
Genre: Fantasy, drama, comedy
Duration: 3-4 minutes
Sypnosis: A farmer takes great care of a tree because he believes that if that tree falls he will die
Name: Caithlin mulligan
Date: 26/9/22
Plot
The story starts with Tommy hosting a little get together with his neighbours, Maggie and Michael.
They’re telling stories around the fireplace. Tommy tells them about his fairy tree and how one of his ancestors saw real fairies dancing around it one night. He finishes by saying that he will die if that tree falls, or he thinks so. He ends up saying goodbye to the neighbours and looks on to the fairy tree at the top of the hill and then his empty house, lonely. The next morning Tommy treks up the hill to the fairy tree, he has a little fence and gate around it. He inspects the tree and he wires and poles he propped against it. He does a few chores and the day goes by. He’s in bed again and is woken up by a storm. Scared for the tree he rushes outside and sees it bowing rapidly in the wind. Tommy tries his best to keep the tree up but it
falls. He is exhausted and stressed. Fiddle music starts to play. Tommy believes this is it the fairies are coming for him. A creature comes out of the ground, from under the tree, it’s angry, it’s a fairy! Tommy closes his eyes, freaked out, this is it, all the effort and now he’s going to die. The fairy creature pays no attention to him, it is just annoyed and cursing at the tree. It was his home and it’s now destroyed. Tommy just watches the fairy creature jump around, he sorta rolls his eyes and tries to speak to it. He asks the fairy if he’s gonna do away with him. The fairy says no, it’s just sad it’s home is destroyed. Tommy then thinks, and then says you can move in with me. The fairy agrees.
Credits,Images of how they get along, maybe they chop up the tree for firewood, drink tea, have apple tart.
I received feedback from my tutors, it fortunately was mostly positive and they liked my story idea. They helped me work out the story, and advised that 3-4 minutes may be too long if I am working on this by myself. One suggested that I need to do something more to prove that the tree was really precious to the old man, that he would be very scared if it fell, that I should let a child kick a ball against it and have the old man get scared, I felt this may be unecessary as it is already shown that the old man built a fence around the tree and has poles propping it up. I was advised to thumbnail out the story beats and make a rough animatic so I could time out the story, to give a clear idea of how long it will be.
I was also advised to make a rough plan for the year, to keep in check the progress I will be making. I hope to have my concept art and rough storyboards done before the pitch presentations on the 10/10/2022, the week after I will do my character turnarounds, storyboards and start my backgrounds before my pre-production presentation on 7/11/22. Then I will be animating and working on the backgrounds until February. Then in march I will be colouring, Easter will be spent working on fixes, then Editing. Hello, this
is future me looking back, I was being way too ambitious, and all of this took much much more time!!
I have been studying the animation production pipeline to assist with my planning.
One of my tutors recommended that I look into the film Ferngully as it has similar themes to my film idea concerning nature and fairies.
I thumbnailed out the storybeats of my film and made it into a very rough animatic. The films ended up being 3 minutes long with 2 minutes 20 seconds of animation.
Pitch presentation feedback 10/10/2022
After my pitch presentation I received some very helpful feedback.
I was advised to cut the story down, there could be some things taken out that are not needed such as Tommy going about his day. I was suggested to start the short with Tommy taking care of the tree and put the narration over it, which would save on time.
I was also given advice on Biddy’s design, which I am struggling with. I was advised to look more into how druids looked back then and maybe give him a cape, which sounds like a good idea!
What I will do now is design the characters.
At the pitch my tutors also recommended to look into work by Brian Froud, who created these illustrations below. They should give good inspiration into designing my fairy character as this artist has a special way of incorporating nature into the design.
I started working on this project in October of last year(2021) Animation Dingle, a festival in County Kerry were hosting a competition for students to pitch and create stings for t heir festival. I was quite excited about this, i’ve been attending the festival for he past five years and couldn’t miss an opportunity to participate in it and my friends were entering the competition as well.
The festival required you to pitch a concept for a sting to be between 20-60 seconds, to include storyboards, an animatic, character designs, which would be due for October 29th.
I went brainstorming and came up with a little story about some kid eating chips on the dingle pier and a big monster rises, scary, but then the monster is An Phiast the festival’s mascot and all he wants is a few chips. I felt this would be short and sweet and something within my abilities of making.
I researched how to make a short animation and looked up a production pipeline to aid me in putting a schedule in place –
The boy character is called George… based off Teddy boy George Harrison!
The animatic required me to include sounds, I downloaded some files from a BBC archive of Beavers and Seagulls and topped them in which actually created an atmosphere- https://youtu.be/4ugBLGfXMG4
My sting was selected by the festival who sent the following email.
I was quite excited and drew a poster(I needed to get familiar with photoshop)..
.. but then realised this may be a bigger project than I thought, so I sought out the help of James Cunningham(which I really appreciate his help) to do some animation. He animated the first shot and I drew the key poses for it. It would be 2d animation, there were many softwares to choose from, I looked through the pros and cons of them and messaged my tutors for advice. I was recommended to use After Effects and Toon Boom harmony, I picked Toon Boom as I felt I wanted to draw out frame by frame animation instead of rigging it which I would use After Effects for.
I watched hours of videos, I found this series on youtube helpful –
I followed the animator’s survival kit by Richard Williams when it came to the animation. I animated on 2’s , with 24 frames per second. I followed the same guidelines he had in place for doing a simple walk cycle, the same thing applies to everything. You keyframe, draw the main extreme poses, test those out and then draw the in-betweens, like this –
I made recorded some weird noises for the monster burping and did the rough animation-
It was difficult figuring out how to draw the burp, it’s something that’s very exaggerated in animation compared to real life. I looked up some cartoons as reference and this clip(1:50) from Scooby Doo was helpful, it’s how the lines are wobbly –
I looked up several poses of people eating something from a container to help get the exact proportions.
I drew and coloured some simple backgrounds as-well.
I cleaned up the animation and luckily could colour most of it with the paint bucket tool.
I edited it all together in premiere pro, I also recorded an original guitar jingle too that I included.
I am happy with how the sting turned out, it was very satisfying watching the characters come to life when I drew each frame. It is not perfect though, as upon each rewatch I notice a new mistake, but that’s ok, this was a great learning experience, I actually got to make an animation! It was fun seeing a snippet show up in the awards show where they called out the name of the short ‘Chips’ ‘Ulster University’, I didn’t win best sting but it was all still very exciting.
The animators survival kit, this was my guide for these assignments. I’m sure every animator knows this book by Richard Williams. The following image is the guide I used. People don’t actually walk like this in real life, you wouldn’t really notice though. Exaggerating the movements makes the animation look a lot more natural than if you were just to draw the person walking normally.
This one walk is 24 frames long, 1 second. I started mine out with the first pose, the contact pose, and pose 15. These are the key poses. Drawing 7 is the passing pose which is another key. The lowest point in the walk is at drawing 4, another key and the highest point is at drawing 10, the final key. The animation could almost work if you left it like this, but I still did some more in-betweens to make it smooth. I drew out my animation traditionally, on animation paper.
I drew the first half of the animation and then shot it on a line tester to see how it looked. It already loops fine as you have your two contact poses there, and when you go to draw the next part you just copy the same drawings again, except the left and right arms and legs are swapped.
It’s funny to look at in the video as his arms look like they’re spinning around his body !
When I finished the animation I showed it to my tutor and received feedback, I was recommended to fix the arms as they appear too small at the end of the swing, I also had to fix the head as its shape changed a bit too much. I decided to bring my animation into toom boom, and followed the advice. Redrawing the animation digitally.
Run Cycle
I used this example from Richard Williams to help with my Run Cycle.
It’s similar to the walk cycle in terms of timing, i started with the contact poses again. I keyed it out the same way I did the walk cycle. One difference between the walk and run cycles in that the passing pose is the lowest point in the cycle. The character in the run cycle is my own character. This is the first one i’ve tried to do digitally. It’s quite rough I believe and I do want to go back to it, like his face isn’t really on model and it doesn’t have much character.
Body Mechanics – Weight lift
I returned to the Pink Panther character for my weight lift animation. I recorded a video first to use as a reference.
I then did thumbnail drawings from the video. I had to make sure to include anticipation before he picked up the ball, this is where his arms rise in that M shape, and that pose is held for multiple frames. and to include the struggle with carrying it.
Once the thumbnails were good enough I drew them again onto animation paper. These would become the keyframes. It took some time to complete this animation! I didn’t have a line tester to shoot it so I had to take all the pictures on my phone, that itself took some time to do. The background around the paper, like the desk could be seen and it distracted from the animation. My tutor told me this, so I brought the video into premiere pro and cropped it. I was also given feedback on how the panthers position was changing on the page, I brought it into toon boom and fixed it there by moving the individual frames.
