Final Animatic, Tests and Part 2 Presentation

After Christmas and the New Year, the second part of our hand-in was not far ahead! The brief was to make a final animatic with better realisation of the final timing and look of the film as well as 30 seconds of animation tests and an example of a cleaned-up and coloured shot against a background to show what the finished film will look like and test its' feasibility and the time it takes you.

This is my result and what I handed-in and presented Monday morning.

For the past week, I have been constructing my animatic again from scratch, completely redrawing all of my shots and changing angles and adding pans to make it more dynamic and interesting. I added colour to it as well to give an idea of the final look and to better show the changes in seasons and clothes. I spread these drawings across several PSD's in Photoshop using a border to show where the margins of the 1980x1080 widescreen frame would be. It was difficult to export these though, the first I exported each layer as an individual PNG with a transparent background so that was separate layers for the character line and colour and another for the background and any foreground element. I used a script to do this automatically but there were issues with the time this took and I had to resave images for pans because the edges were cropped off. The next PSD's I imported directly into Premiere as individual layers which did not take as long so I continued this method but had to split my PSDs into smaller files as there were too many layers to import all at once.

The biggest change for this animatic is probably the ending, where the Spirit is 'reborn' from the planting of the acorn, rather than coming back to instruct Amber, so it is very much her own decision. I spoke to James Manning just before my animatic was edited together, going through my PSD drawings. I originally had a sequence where Amber kept her acorn necklace and planted them all with the first, but this distracted from the importance of her decision to plant the last acorn, so I changed the drawing before I exported them.

The colours I chose were selected from my watercolour studies earlier and from my pre-visualisation tests. I intend to collate them together into a comprehension colour guide and also a colour script by taking key story points and using watercolour to express it with vibrancy.

Most of all however, is that I now have a rough soundtrack for my film which is an original piece by my composer Benjamin Rusch. He has been excellent to work with and really pulled out all the stops to get a recording done for my deadline. We'll be working together in the coming months to finalise this sound and to make it as flexible for editing as possible. There are a couple of points that may change but otherwise I love the melody and it's definitely the right sound.

More of his work is available here: http://tv.benrusch.com

The presentation on Monday went really well, I was actually quite scared that I would be faced with changing everything after spending a solid week getting it together. Fortunately the feedback was very positive and I was happy to hear that my fellow students and tutors preferred my new version.

The main points to change was for the Spirit to become more angry when Amber breaks the tree and for the storm to roll in at this moment rather than later. There was also a discussion about my ending, some almost wanted the Spirit to die at the end rather than see it reborn, but speaking to my friends, they all prefer the idea of showing the oak leaves springing up from the ground and then ending the film on Amber's reaction, quite similar to the ending of Monsters, Inc. (2001), when Sulley reacts to seeing Boo again and we hear her voice but we don't actually see the reunion. If I end it like this, then it would mean taking out a few of the ending shots and the dance over the credits. While they are cute and nice to draw, it would shorten the film and reduce the workload for the same result and allow the audience to think a bit more which is always good!

In addition to the animatic, I compiled some of my earlier character tests (walk cycles and tail movement) and a test of the camera tracking through my background with rain over the top in After Effects. I also took two of my shots in the animatic and keyed them out. The first, shot 17, shows the Spirit hesitating after leaving Amber which is fully animated in blue Prismacolour pencils. Perhaps it needs some refining, but I may not have the time once I'm doing the rest of the workload. Then I scanned it and composited against a background in Photoshop, alpha channeled the background and colourised the lines a warm brown. I prepared each frame as a PSD and sent them in a zip file to my younger sister, Eleanor to colour. Her work is online here: http://edalie-chan.deviantart.com/

I asked her to use a brush with slightly soft edges so it wouldn't boil too much on the stills. It still does a little however, so it might be a better tactic to duplicate the colour layer to the next frame and edit it rather than repainting the whole frame. I also key framed a background pan for shot 36 where Amber runs up the hill in her Spring dress, this was challenging as it involves perspective in addition to a camera move, but it came out well.

I initially thought I would paint watercolour backgrounds, but the digital wash also produces the desired effects and is quicker so that is probably how I will continue my backgrounds.

After speaking to Matthew today, he encouraged me to begin production even if the animatic still needs changing. As an independent film, I don't need a solid animatic to secure the film for other people to work on, so the best thing for me is to start animating and see it evolve. So I will be posting again soon with animation tests as I finish them!

Also as a point of interest, I pasted the entirety of my blog into a word document to submit as my development and it filled 132 A4 pages with 15,596 words! That's more than my dissertation! If only I could use it...

Rough Animatic VI

This is the animatic I showed for my Production Bible presentation. This is the last rough version I'm doing, the next will be a digital rendering that is much clearer and will have shaded backgrounds and colour-coded seasons. Some story points will change and the character designs will be more finalised, and possibly with different music, but otherwise this is the main intent of my film.

Also, the working title is now "Acorns".

This will possibly be my last post until after this weekend, if so, Merry Christmas everyone! :)

Rough Animatic V5

Managed to edit my animatic down to 3:52 of full animation and a run time of 4:08 including the end credits by taking out some of the middle, a couple of the end shots and switching things around. I'm much happier with this version, I think perhaps I could cut it down further, but I'm worried about destroying the character, story and pace if I do. I will consult this new version with my tutors tomorrow.

Rough Animatic V4

I've edited my animatic down some more by removing drawings and replacing some others. I managed to take off 45 seconds, not bad but I still need to work on it!

I did some calculations for the amount of drawing work I would need to do for 4 minutes of animation.

4 minutes = 240 seconds @ 12fps = 2,880 frames

Over the course of four months (Jan-April)
720 frames per month
180 frames per week
36 frames per day (Mon-Fri) or 3 seconds per day

I find this reasonable as I was animating 40-60 frames per day for my last project which was just over  1,200 frames altogether, and I only had a month to do that in, so I'm fairly confident that I can do it, especially as some of my shots are long but without movement but I will still do my best to cut down the running time.

My friends gave me some feedback on how to cut it down quickly by having some actions happen in the same shot and taking some unnecessary ones out too, so I'm working on that now to get it as short as possible. I feel it's getting there though!

Another Rough Animatic

The past week and a half has all gone into redrawing my storyboard from scratch working from my new synopsis and shot list, which has been roughly edited into my third animatic, see below. It's much longer than what I had before (199 drawings instead of 174 and 5:10mins instead of 3:44mins), which will be a problem if I don't cut it down!

I showed it to James Manning yesterday for feedback and we agreed it was an improvement from the previous animatic. The structure makes a lot more sense with the acorns as a device. His main comments was to give the right moments more space, specifically drawing out the ending so that there is enough time for the emotions to play out. The middle montage segment also requires sharper editing so that we don't spend too much time on what's not as important.

James also noticed that the Spirit is not acting "Spirit-like" at the moment and performs so much like a squirrel that it might as well be a squirrel as a metaphor for the spirit instead of a spirit acting as nature. I will consider this as an option, but I did want to express a magical/mystical side to the story and Amber's imagination, so I will also see about making it more spirit-like in movement and design. This is not the final design for the Spirit anyway, but was a temporary solution for my storyboard.

We also spoke about introducing the Spirit into the story first instead of the girl like in my previous animatic as it was a more interesting perspective. I changed it this time around because I thought it would be better to show the ordinary and then the extra-ordinary, but then it might be seen as odd.

I will also need to look at films such as The Sword in the Stone (1963) for their squirrel scenes and begin pre-vis tests in soft, pastel colour like in my animatic.

After seeing James, myself and Jessica Leslau went to Leonie Sharrock's lecture for the MA animation students to show them our animatics. We caught the end of their lecture which was about composition in Cinderella and going from written scripts to visual storyboards. It was similar to a lecture I had in first year, but was more detailed and very interesting.

Jess showed her animatic first; Leonie wanted each of us to play them without preamble, so the MA's had no idea what our stories were about so they could judge them visually as outsiders. The students understood Jess' film about Babbit (http://arabbitcalledbabbit.blogspot.com/) pretty much immediately. There were some film language issues (crossing the line, continuity etc) but these were minor and can easily be addressed.

My film was not as instantly apparent as Babbit, the message (caring for nature, not abusing it) was confused, and I think this is largely because my Spirit reacts differently to Amber's selfishness... sometimes it is angry, other times forgiving and will switch between giving her acorns, having her take them away and reluctantly giving them to her. The Spirit is supposed to give them to her willingly to teach her and is exasperated with her abuse of nature. So that needs to be more obvious.

The characters came across well, the students agreed that Amber needs to be very selfish and greedy but still very young, so the audience sees her as a poor naive girl, rather than a mean one: "Aww bless her".

Finally, the tree needs to definitely be destroyed: completely burned and in pieces, rather than still standing and with leaves still on. I also need to redo my character designs still, playing with style and proportions of Amber to make her more interesting/likeable and the Spirit more spirit-like.

I've been compiling an image of character art and film stills that inspire me for Amber, particularly with younger girl characters that are more like Amber now that she will be 5-6 years old. I found it very difficult to find 5 year old female characters in the leading role of a film or series in Britain. There's Mei in My Neighbour Totoro, Ponyo, Aisling in The Secret of Kells, Boo in Monsters Inc., Bonnie in Toy Story 3 and Lilo in Lilo & Stitch, but these are all American, Japanese or Irish so it will be tricky to find a point of reference to make Amber feel more British. Here's the compilation, I'll be using it this week to redesign my style and characters. I'll make another one for my Spirit and for style/colour shortly.

Pecha Kucha Presentation / New Animatic

Last Monday (31st October) my year were asked to present 6 weeks of film development in the form of a Pecha-Kucha Presentation. This is a method of presentation where you show 20 slides for 20 seconds each (20x20) they progress automatically as the presenter talks over them and was created by architects to deter fellow architects from rambling on in their presentations.

It works out at about 6 and a half minutes for the entire presentation. Mine factored in my animatic as well, so it was 3:40 for the animatic and the other 3 minutes worth of slides.

For more info check out the website here: http://www.pecha-kucha.org/what

I was a little surprised how fast each slide went past in my presentation, I had more to say but 20 seconds is a lot shorter than it sounds when you're talking, so I had to move on and skip a few points.

This is the animatic I prepared and showed at the end of my presentation. I was fairly happy with it the day before, but seeing it on the bigger projection screen drew attention to parts that were too 'cutesy' such as reaction close-ups or dramatic like the storm or the particular Michael Giacchino score I picked for the middle which was just too much.

My feedback for the animatic itself was very critical, which it of course needed to be:

• The girl's proportions are perhaps too old for the story, and if so she needs to start younger in the beginning 
• It plays out too much like am epic scene from a feature film rather than a concise short
• The Spirit design is just too generic and ghost-like (Casper) my lecturers were expecting something more free-flowing and ethereal
• Mise-en-scene is lacking and I could be more experimental with exploring the space and changing angles/composition
• Ultimately it's too cute and saccharine like this

I was disappointed there were no or little positive comments, but I plan to take the criticisms on board and bounce back in my next animatic, but still consider that it is opinion and I need to do what I think is best for my film.

The week following my presentation, I took a step back from work and just thought about my idea and wrote down my thoughts and feedback and booked tutorials with my lecturers and spoke with my family and friends about where to go next. I wrote down my current story like this:

Spirit is lonely. Spirit meets girl. They form a friendship over the years and seasons while Spirit waits for planted acorn to grow. They part ways at the end of a day and a storm rolls in. Girl worries in her room then heads out into storm to find Spirit. Spirit tries to warn her to go back inside, but a branch on the tree snaps sending the girl falling and lightning strikes the tree. Next morning, the girl wakes up to devastation, she despairs when she can't find the Spirit. Suddenly a squirrel appears to show her the new sapling that is growing and Amber is able to move on from the loss of her friend.

Essentially nothing really happens in this version, there is no conflict between characters and the squirrel confuses the audience as to whether it is the Spirit in a new form and how can she move on to a new friend so quickly anyway?

I took out the squirrel and wrote this:

Girl is lonely. Spirit befriends girl. Girl revisits Spirit every day throughout seasons to spend time with her friend. She grows older as time goes past. One day a storm appears overhead and the girl has to go home. Spirit is left alone. Lightning hits the tree overnight. Girl comes back and is shocked at devastation. Unable to find her friend, she despairs, but a tiny sapling she discovers is enough to give her a new hope.

Although simpler, it's still lacking crucial turning points and is just "this happens, and then this". I discussed this with my friends and fellow animators and they noticed that I wasn't showing Amber's faults in my story. I've written her as a selfish and sometimes arrogant girl, but this never comes across and there is no clear character arc.

Jessica Leslau suggested that I look at character diamonds such as the one below. It's important to put down your character's strengths and flaws to make them more believable and relatable. I'll be posting my own version for Amber and the Spirit soon and definitely incorporating their flaws into my story itself.

For more info on character diamonds, see here: http://melissaleavitt.blogspot.com/2007/06/character-diamonds-are-writers-best.html

My film was also criticised for looking too American. I didn't know where this impression was coming from until my friends pointed out Amber's dungarees. Although I wore them as a child, many American 90's family films show children wearing dungarees and could easily give that impression, and there is nothing in my film that is specifically British, so I'm changing Amber's design using reference from my family photos and aim to have a shot in her bedroom in the film to show more British influences in a SUBTLE way of course.

Kirsten Dunst in Jumanji (1995) wears typical denim dungarees and pigtails, which is too
much of a 'perfect American girl' image for my film.

At the moment, I'm reading some of my childhood books that I brought back from home, such as the Winnie the Pooh collection by A.A. Milne, The Tale of Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter, and the Percy The Park Keeper books by Nick Butterworth among others. By reading these, I hope to bring back a more traditional British feel and more suggestive than literal storytelling to my film.

Winnie the Pooh and Rabbit illustrated by E. H. Shephard

Squirrel Nutkin illustrated by Beatrix Potter

Next I'll be posting my new story synopsis as well as feedback from tutorials with my lecturers, James Manning, Matthew Gravelle and Leonie Sharrock.

Rough Animatic I

I've put the storyboards from the previous post into an animatic using Premiere Pro CS4 with music from Pixar's "UP" (2009) by Michael Giacchino, which can be viewed below...




I'm happy that the running time is not quite as long as I thought it might be. Still, I have a lot of changes to make as I outlined in the previous post and hopefully I can get the length down to just over 3 minutes as well. I think it's reading fairly clearly, but I will be working on making it even better for my next rough cut animatic.