Category: Major project

Post-Production

 

In post-production all the scenes are put together. I used After Effects by Adobe for this. In After effects I set the frame rate to 24 Fps which is the industry standard. I imported each of the animation Passes into After Effects. The animations passes include, line art pass, colour, colour pass, hair pass for Simon’s hair and a shadow pass.

If the local colour of  the characters didn’t feel right for any of the scenes they were in (Integration pass) I selected the local colour layer, duplicated it and then added a hue and saturation effect. I Selected colorise, which tinted everything with the same hue and searched for a hue that was close to the scene that the characters were in, and turned down the opacity.

For Simon’s hair I created a new solid layer. I then selected the rectangle tool and created a mask. I dragged it across the screen right at the point where the hair gradient will start, then I went to the mask settings and edited the feathering to create a soft edge.

I duplicated the hair layer by clicking ctrl + D and selected a matte to the hair colour.

Below is an example of one of the animation scenes before and after editing.

I tried to do a camera zooming in effect in After Effects. (see above)

For the scene above, I didn’t add shadows when I was animating in Harmony because I wasn’t sure of the lighting for this scene. Once I knew the direction of the lighting I was able to use a mask and animated the shadows on the character in After Effects.

Above shows added lighting to the animation in After Effects.

I added rim lighting to the characters in after effect by using the inner shadow.

 

Water Reflection

 

The videos and images below show how I achieved water reflecitons.

Stylistic Reflections

To add stylistic reflections I added a fractal noise effect to a solid layer. I then increased the contrast and went to the transform drop down box and set the uniform scaling to off. I set the scale width to 2400 and height to around 40, the complexity to 3.5 and animated the evolution  (time * 100 expression) Then I pre- composed the layer and turned it off.

The next step was to create an adjustment layer. I  repositioned the adjustment layer and added the displacement map effect on top and set it to the fractal noise effect.  I then adjusted the displace values and also added a camera lens blur effect and cross blur.  I set the blur radius to 3 and the radius x to 75.

At first nothing happened. Once I had to set the set source to effect mask then reflection effect worked.

Water Effect

To create the effect of ripples on the water, I made a new solid layer and added the fractal noise effect. Then I changed the fractal type to strings and the noise type to linear and edited the brightness and contrast until I was happy with how it looked. Next I animated the evolution of the texture. To do this I inverted the alpha of the texture, I disabled the uniform scaling and scaled up the width and the height. After that, I added the fast box blur and increased the blur effect.  Then I added a vector blur, and increased the amount of the blur radius. I then added the level effect and edited its values. I put this layer in a per -composition. After this, I  created a new solid, and put the the new layer below the per-comp layer.  Then I turned the per-comp layer blend mode to add, duplicated the comp layer and edited the effects so all the layers look slightly different.  This is how you achieve the ripple effect of water.

 

Lighting Composition

Below show scenes in how I composed the lighting.

I added a noise effect on top every scene.

Above you can see the shadow under the cat.  To achieve this, I created a new solid on top of the background then used the ellipse mask and opened the setting to change the points, turned the layer blend mood to multiply.

I can add nightlights by using layer styles.

To make the rim light, I made a pre- composition with all the animation passes in, went to the layer sales and added an inner shadow and edited the setting until I was happy with it. I then changed the blending mode to linear dodge.

The above images see Elizabeth under water. To achieve the underwater effects, I created new solid layer and added a 4- colour gradient and picked 4 different blues for the blue scenes and 4 different reds for the red scenes. I added the cc snow effect and edited until I was happy with how it looked. For the light rays I created a new solid and set the colour to white then add fractal noise and then edited the effect until I was happy.

Next, I animated the evolution and edited the revolutions to match the length of the animation. I pre composed this layer and added the corner pin and dragged the position marker for each corner pins. Then I changed the blend mode to soft light and lowered the opacity. After that, I added a mask using the elliptical mask.  I created the mask over the pre comp. Once I had the mask I went to the mask values and set the feather to about 150 and played around with the expansion values to soften off the edges. Lastly I added a new solid layer and added the fractal noise effect, changed blend mode to colour dodge and lowered the brightness and contrast values on the fractal noise down and turned down the opacity on the layer. Finally I animated the evolution .

I put all the layers (backgrounds included ) in a pre-composition and added a shift channels effect. Then I made three copies of the pre-comp. In the first comp I leave the red channel on and turned off the green and blue.  In the second pre-comp I left the green channel on and turned of the red and blue channel.  Then on the last pre-comp I left the blue channel on and turned off the red and green. Lastly,  I set the first two comp blend modes to add and moved the positions in opposite directions to create a chromatic aberration.

Below, I added the spots to the ray by using a mask

 

Conclusion

As always, I find myself reflecting on the finished animation.  There are many parts to making an animation short, from storyboarding to character design, choosing an animation style and thinking about colour and symbolism.  For the most part I am happy with the final animation production.  I am always a little self critical.

The sections that I am most happy with are the underwater scenes. Especially the first underwater scene. I think it looks the best and showcases my abilities the best. I think the aspect that I enjoyed the  most was post-production.  I like putting the finished passes together and using After Effects.  I have learnt a lot of skills which I want to develop further.

However, looking back on things. there are somethings I would have done some things differently. For example, I should have given someone else the job of drawing the animated background for scene 4 from the beginning instead of giving it to myself and causing myself a lot of stress about having a lot to do with not enough time. If I had done this, then I would have had time to make the dream sequence using the puppet pins which I had to drop in the end.

Drawing characters and animating them is not easy.   I think I did a reasonable job at keeping the character on model throughout the animation, but it can always be better.  However, maybe any inconsistencies that I noticed are because I have been staring at these animations for so long that I notice any mistakes easier than other people only watching the animation once.

Working with other people also has its pros and cons.  It is great to have someone to share the load, bounce ideas off and to help contribute to the whole process.  But working with others does have challenges.  However, in the challenges, skills are learnt such as learning effective communication, conflict resolution and good team work.

Overall, this year has taught me a lot and I look forward to developing my animation skills further.

 

Concept character design

 

Art style test

Final character design

Animation tests

(didn’t animate the jellyfish)

 

Storyboards

Animatic

3D models

 

Keyframes

Animations

 

 

Concept art

 

Poster ideas/concepts

Poster art

art book cover art

Cartoon Network EOYS art

Final animation

I did the composition in After Effects (Abbi did the backgrounds, the cat animations and the jellyfish animations, got the backgrounds for scene 4 out scoured by Amy)

 

Backgrounds

Abbi and I decided to model the room in 3D to make drawing the background for the animation easier.

The colours being used here in the images of the model are not going to be the colours used in the full major project. I just added some colours so that the model would allow me to have a better idea of what the room would look like. I found that the screenshots of the room with colours made it easier to see what I was drawing.  In the animatic of the project, it was more difficult to draw as everything was grey.

I did the models for the base of the room itself (the walls and what’s on the walls) the bed and everything on the bed, the chairs, the different flowers and the flower vase. the carpet, picture frame, the ring bands and the mirror. Abbi did the models for the drawer and the wardrobe.

We don’t need to do a model of the underwater dream world as this can be done in After eEffects in post production once the animations are all completed.

 

Animation progress

The animations were drawn in Toon Boom Harmony with the ratio of 1920 x 1080 which is a common industry standard in 24fps,  using the brush tool.

Initially, when animating for this major project, I started of with doing a very rough animation to get the correct timing and movements.

Once I got the rough animation drawn and was happy with it, I started on cleaning it up. Firstly, I started with the face.  I tried my best to keep the character on model and once I got the face completed, I then went through the rest of the character and did the animations in different sections e.g. dress and hair, until the entire character was cleaned up.   I wanted the movement of the dress to be a different timing from her hair and the ribbon around Elizabeth’s neck. The dress and hair move very 4 frames and the ribbon moves every 3.

I went over these again and did another clean sketch just to tidy the animation up and bit more before I continued.

Once I was happy with the clean sketch animation I then did the line art.

When colouring I duplicated the line art layer and used the bucket tool and coloured each frame.

I added the colours in sections starting with the skin and finishing with the ribbon.

I drew the pupils in on a different layer.

For the shadows and highlights I drew out the outline on each frame for where I wanted the shadows to be. Then I filled them in with the bucket tool.

In the image above you can see how I sorted out my layers while animating. I locked different layer as I worked so I wouldn’t accidentally draw something on the wrong layer.

I finished animating the first part of the underwater scene so I could see what the final project might look like and to get a better feel of how I’m going to do the post production. However I will most likely redo this when I have finished the animation and do the post production all together.

The videos above are examples of rough animations and the clean sketch.

 

I did rough animations of the ending scenes so that I could send them to Abbi so that she can start doing animations of the cat.

Animation test

I had an idea for animating the Elizabeth’s memories in the dream so, I did this animation test.

I drew two pictures then used puppet pins to give the illusion of movement between the two poses.

Unfortunately I didn’t have the time to complete this so it is not in the finished animation.

I experienced some issues due to lack of processing memory on my computer.  This meant for a few days, I wasn’t unable to do anything as I had no memory.  In clearing caches, some of my animation frames were accidentally deleted from my computer.  Thankfully, I was able to redownload the frames and replace the footage. The memory issues were also resolved and I was able to free up processing memory on my computer and was able to recommence working.

Throughout the editing for the animation I noticed that my characters were either floating or not interacting correctly with the bed.  I didn’t understand why this was happening. I tried my best to correct this with editing,  but the only character I could fix this way was for part of the ending scene. The first scene I tried to fix with editing but the characters were either still floating slightly or you could see the top of the mattress. Once I got to scene 3 I realised I couldn’t fix it with editing. It was at this point I realise that the background ratio was different from the animation ratio. Once I realised this, I was able to get the radio difference fixed which solved the floating problem completely.

For scene 4 there is a camera turn where I had to draw around 11 backgrounds however, I still  had 2 animations to finish as well and the memories to draw so I was starting to get worried that I wasn’t going to be able to get them finish so in the end I ended up get this backgrounds out sourced.

Art style

The art style of an animation basically means the visual aesthetics and techniques that are used to create the animation.

The original art style for the original animation short was an anime art style.  I wanted to explore a different style for the remake of the animation short.

After doing some research into different art styles for this major project, I decided to do some art style tests to help me to decide on which style I wanted to go with for the animation short.  In the end, I chose a style that was inspired by the art style used in Bee and the PuppyCat animation short that I watched.

 

Character designs

Elizabeth – originals

 

 

 

Simon – originals

Originally I  planned to just redraw the character designs in the new art style.  However, I  later change my mind as I thought this would be too lazy. I also realised that the clothing and hairstyle weren’t in the correct time period of the 1840’s so I made sure to do the proper research and redrew the character designs to reflect the time period and costumes.

Final character designs

 

Elizabeth – Final design

 

 

 

Simon – Final design

 

 

Above are the final character designs which are based on the 1840s.

I kept the ribbon from the old character design that was inspired by Maria Merryweather.  She is the main heroine in the film,  ‘The Secret of Moonacre.

Original storyboards

When coming up with the new story for this animation I did a very quick, rough storyboard sketch to get my ideas down on paper before they went out of my head.

 

Final storyboards

Above are the final storyboards.

Once the story was finalised, Abbi and I worked on our storyboards for the animation short.

Unfortunately, after some feedback in for the animatic,  we didn’t end up using the storyboards Abbi created.

I didn’t make new story boards for the ending of the short. Instead I edited the ending when creating the animatic.

Key Frames

I made these keyframes before I did the animatic to help me out with framing out some main scenes. They also helped me to get a rough idea of what colour I wanted to end up using.

First animatic

Below is my first animatic.

After getting some feedback I made any corrections that were needed and produced my final animatic.

Final animatic

This is the final animatic for the major project.   With this down I can start working on the main animation.

 

Colour scripts

 

Before I start on working on the main animations I created some colour script for the major project.  I chose reds to represent the drama and tension in the dream sequence.  Blues for under the underwater scene and then muted golden colours to represent dawn and Elizabeth waking up.

Test animations

In addition to working on the colour scripts, I also did a couple of animation tests. This allowed me to get an idea on how the animation process will be from start to finish.

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 .

Research mind map