Original animation short
A few years ago, I went to the Northern Regional College to study Animation and Visual effects instead of staying on at school and completing A Levels. This gave me a really good foundation and skills for the course I am now doing.
As, I had a body of work, I decided I was going to redo and improve one of the two animation shorts I made at tech. I did one in first year and one in second year. After watching the both, I decided against reworking the one I made in first year. The only reason I decided against it was I preferred the one in I completed in second year. I felt I had learnt more skills in that one. so I chose that animation short and decided I would rework it.
The video below is the animation I did in first year.
Above is the animation I made in second year and the one I chose to rework. It was named Bittersweet Nightmare.
The story has two characters – Elizabeth and Simon. They were husband and wife. Simon has passed away. One night, Elizabeth dreams of Simon. In her dream the are back together again however, it isn’t long until he fades from view and disappears. Poor Elizabeth is plunged into a dystopian world where Simon is no more. She awakes to find that her dream was a nightmare and he is actually gone. It was sweet to dream of her true love, but as he has passed away it really was more of a nightmare.
In tech, we had to do a mind map to get all our ideas down for the story and animation. Above is my old map mind for my second year animation short project for tech.
As I now decided what my major project would be, I set about revamping the original animation short.
In tech we worked on the projects by ourselves. This time however I had a partner to share the workload with. Abbi Dalzell agreed to work on the major project with me. We set about dividing up the the jobs that need to be done. Abbi was to work on the backgrounds and an animal character. The original had no additional animal characters. They were newly added to the story so that Abbi could animate them. After some discussion, we decided that the additional animation character that Abbi would animate would be a cat, called Kitty Cat Edwards.
I created a Mira mind map board for Abbi and I to work on. We both put our ideas and work progress on the board.
See below to see our Miro board and ideas
Ideation
I am also using whimsical to put all my own ideas and work project onto.
Art style
Below are a few mood boards I put together on my Whimsical to get ideas of art styles for this major project. I looked at quite and extensive list.
I looked at lots of different artist, such as Hannah Magee, Karo the Kreator, Loish, Ethan Becker and Jackie Drujko. I decided to pick Loish, Ethan Becker and Jackie Droujko to look further into.
Loish is a digital artist originally from the Netherlands. She has a degree and masters in animation. Loish does character design work for clients all over the world and has worked for some major companies including Amazon, EA, Coca- Cola and Guerrilla Games. She has released a few art books – The Art of Loish, The Sketchbook of Loish and also the style of Loish. She also gives workshops and lectures and posts tutorials and behind the scene materials showcasing her art. She spends her free time making digital paintings and sketches and is currently based in Utrecht, the Netherlands.
Ethan Becker is also digital artist based in America. He is also an animation story director. Ethan has worked on Voltron: Legendary defender and DOTA series for Netflix, as well as having collaborated with Dreamworks and Warner Bros. He also is teaches animation pro classes at ProjectCity.TV as well as sharing his knowledge on the animation industry through YouTube videos.
Jackie Droujko graduated from Sheridan Animation. He is a professional character designer and filmmaker based in Vancouver currently working Disney TVA. Jackie is the creator of the short film Bang! Bang! and Mismatch. His passion lies in creating simple and appealing designs that communicate compelling stories. He also has worked for major networks such as Netflix (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory), Dreamworks (Cleopatra in Space) and Nickelodeon’s Monster High.
Ethan becker
I watched a lot of video tutorials from Ethan Becker on YouTube. I found his videos to be extremely helpful in informing my overall design for the major project.
Title cards
Above you can see some of my research on Title Cards. I explored ideas for title cards from different shows. I mainly looked at the title cards from adventure time.
Character sheets
Above is a mood board exploring Character Sheets. I looked into a lot of different shows to see they were done.
The main character sheets I looked into were The legend of Korra and Dungeon Meshi.
Floriography
I wanted to have some symbolism in my animation short so I looked into floriography. Floriography is the language of flowers. It is using flowers and floral arrangements to express emotions and sentiments. Different flowers and colours of flowers represent different feelings. I researched the flowers that would match the emotions that I wanted to convey in my animation short. I decided to use White Lilies as they are often used as funeral flowers and also represent purity, innocence and sympathy. You often see a lily on a sympathy card. They also represent a rejuvenation of the soul and are linked to the natural balance of life and death. Chrysanthemums are similar. They are used particularly in mourning in Asia, China, Korea and Japan where white chrysanthemums symbolise grief. Finally I chose gladioli. They are flowers that represent mourning for someone who displayed strength dn character in life. All of these flowers fit in with the story line of loss and grief within the animation short.
Storyboard
A storyboard is a visual representation, a plan, that shows the sequence of a narrative or scene by breaking it down into panels. The panels outline the shots, the action and the dialogue. It is a useful tool to get the flow and help visualise the final animation. Above are some examples of storyboards that I researched.
Animatic
An animatic is an animated storyboard. It takes your original story board and takes develops it further. It is a series of images or sketches that are put together usually with a sound track. This gives a sense of what the finished product will be like.
Below is the research I did into animatics.
I watched Ethan Becker video tutorial on animatics before I started mine.
I did watch a lot of different animatic by different artist to see how each of them compose their animatics to better help me when it came to doing mine.
These animatics are almost animated at time and are very advanced. I could do a simple animatic for my major project but I am a very visual person. I want to do an animatic more like the ones in this videos above. That way I can get a better idea of how the final animation will look and how to better animate character movements and have better timing for each movement too.
19th century Fashion
- The time period this animation short is set in is the 19th century in the 1840s.
- The 1840s marked the ending years of the Romantic Era
- Gothic Revival emerged where demure understated style was in fashion
- Great emphasis on modesty
- Silhouette=long bodice and tight narrow sleeves
- Skirt full skimming the floor and was dome shaped
- Featured a V-shape effect emphasised the long small was it and narrow sloped shoulders
The main inspiration for the clothing and time period is the Secret of Moonacre (Loosely based on the 1946 novel The Little White Horse by Elizabeth Goudge.
- The little whit horse is set in 1842
- Recently orphaned teenage girl who is sent to the manor of her cousin and guardian in the West Country of England
Environment
I looked a little into backgrounds by researching National trust places – their stately homes. However, Abbi was assigned environments so for further information please look at Abbi’s research.
Bee and PuppyCat
The main art style visual inspiration for this animation project is Bee and PuppyCat. This was created & written by Natasha Allegri (original series produced by Frederator studios).
Bee is an unemployed women in her early 20s. She encounters a mysterious creature named PuppyCat and together they go on a series of temporary jobs. These bizarre jobs take the duo across a strange world in outer space.
Colour scripts
I did some research on how to use colour for my major project. Colours and how they work together also adds to the overall theme, mood and message of the animation. I wanted to use colours that would reflect the sombreness of the story and the emotions of loss.
I did some research on how to make keyframes and how to make colour script so a can effectively use colour for this major project.
I collected screenshots of different shows and movies to make a colour script moodboard.
There was 3 main settings I wanted to look at. Blues for underwater, reds for the ending part of the underwater scene and and sun set scene.
Memory ideas
I looked into various shows and movies to see how they illustrated dreams and memories. I drew inspiration from Demon Slyer, My Little Pony and Coraline.
Animation ideas
I plan to do this easy animation for the memories. This animation is done with puppet pins.
Animations shorts
These are a couple of my favourite animation shorts. I plan on studying them to better help me in how I want to got about animation my major project and how I want the project to look in the end.
Animation Tutorials
These are a couple of different tutorials I will watch though out the process of making this project. Tutorials are really useful for teaching and inspiring and learning new techniques.
Post production
I found this animation tutorial on post production which I found very useful and informative. I plan to use what I learned in this video to complete the major project animation short .