Acorns 5-Year Anniversary!

Can’t believe my student film Acorns is now 5 years old! I made this in about 9 months at the University of Wales, Newport with over 2235 drawings, 232 storyboards, many revisions and a small army of amazing colourists. 

Thanks to all my wonderful friends and family who contributed and supported me through this film. There’s still a few things I’d love to go back and make better, but I think I’m still happy with the film as is… although now I think it’s about time I made a new one! :)

—

Winner of the Royal Television Society Wales Centre 2012 Award for Student Animation.

“Well told and animated with just the sort of design and animation idiosyncrasies that tickle my fancy. Brilliant.”
Robin Shaw, Co-Director of ‘The Snowman and the Snowdog’ (2012) and 'We’re Going on a Bear Hunt’ (2016)

Order the DVD now on my Storenvy online shop for behind-the-scenes and extras:
http://amberdust.storenvy.com/collections/211119-all-products/products/4751698-acorns-dvd-2012

Upon a hill grows a grand Oak tree, which also happens to be home to a playful tree Spirit. Amber, a curious youngster, befriends this Spirit and throughout the seasons they form the strongest of friendships. Every day the Spirit gives Amber an acorn to plant, but the little girl is naive and threads them onto a necklace instead. One night, disaster strikes and Amber must realise the importance of caring for nature.

“Acorns” (2012) is a short 2D animated film by Animator and Director Gemma J. Roberts and her final year film at the University of Wales, Newport.

AWARDS AND SCREENINGS:
Klik! Amsterdam Animation Festival 2013
Blackrock Animation Film Festival 2013
ANIMA - Córdoba International Animation Festival 2013
The Inconnu Festival 2013
The Mecal Festival 2013
The Royal Television Society Wales Centre 2012 - Animation: “Acorns” by Gemma Roberts & Team
Festival Noche de Monos 2012
Banjaluka International Animated Film Festival 2012
Newport Animation & Games Graduation Show 2012 - Won “Best Animation” and “Best Overall Film”

Music by Ben Rusch: http://benrusch.com/

Visit the Production Blog at: http://www.littleacornfilm.blogspot.co.uk/
Find us on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/littleacornfilm

Copyright © Gemma J. Roberts 2012 and the University of Wales, Newport.

Acorns is now Online! DVD Pre-Order!

Guess what everyone? Acorns is finally online! Most of the festivals I've entered are over now so I thought it was about time I got it online! Hope you enjoy it :)

A year of very hard work, my sisters, lecturers, friends and a small army of colourists and my devoted 'scanner' made this film possible and I'm very pleased with what we were able to accomplish. A year and a half on, sure there are some things I would change but I think it's done well for what it is. :)

"Upon a hill grows a grand Oak tree, which also happens to be home to a playful tree Spirit. Amber, a curious youngster, befriends this Spirit and throughout the seasons they form the strongest of friendships. Every day the Spirit gives Amber an acorn to plant, but the little girl is naive and threads them onto a necklace instead. One night, disaster strikes and Amber must realise the importance of caring for nature."

Winner of the Royal Television Society Wales Centre 2012 Award for Student Animation.

“Well told and animated with just the sort of design and animation idiosyncrasies that tickle my fancy. Brilliant.”  

Robin Shaw, Co-Director of "The Snowman and the Snowdog" (2012)

Please watch/like/share/insert-social-networking-norm-here and most of all, hope you like it! I'd really appreciate any comments you might have so I can take note for my next film. :)

In other news, I also have a Pre-Order for the DVD on my Storenvy page! If you use the Early Bird code ACORNFILM2014 you can get 20% off at the checkout!

Acorns [DVD] Storenvy Pre-Order

I've worked very hard to get a professional product together with nice motion menus on the DVD and it will have a mini full-colour art booklet too so it's not to be missed!! I plan to have the DVDs ready to dispatch early this year! Also note that although the currency on Storenvy is in US Dollars, the DVD will ship from the UK!

Hope you enjoy it! :)
Love Gemma, Amber and the Tree Spirit x

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Happy Holidays everyone! :)

Hope you all had a great time, I'm looking forward to what 2014 will bring! Stay tuned for a special surprise this year! :)
Love from Gemma, Amber, the Tree Spirit x

Acorns Official Trailer

At last, here it is! I finally found some time this afternoon to edit a trailer for my graduation film, Acorns. It's a short 30 second mash-up that hopefully establishes the story enough to keep you interested! Enjoy!

It was difficult to edit to say the least as I needed to keep it very short but also cohesive. Other short film trailers just have an excerpt from the very beginning of the film, but I felt that didn't work here so I had to experiment with different shots and kept cutting lots out until it worked (which hopefully it does!). Expect the full film to make its' online debut sometime next year! :)

Comments and feedback welcome as always!

"Acorns" Skipping Shot Progression

For the past month I have been getting production on my film well under way. At the moment I have animated a quarter of the film and those shots are currently going through the various stages of clean-up/colour/compositing. Needless to say I will be very busy getting it all done!

As I haven't had the time to put together the line tests of my animation yet, (and also unsure exactly how much finished animation I should be putting up online) I decided to edit a special video to show the shot progression of a short scene. This is Amber and the Spirit skipping together in my montage sequence. The final example shows the shot as it will appear in the film.

It is also available here on Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBIsJdQC4Lk

The music is by Benjamin Rusch who I will be working with again in a month or two to re-record the final soundtrack.

I am extremely excited with how the film is turning out so far, it's just a case of getting it finished on time! At the moment I have a few animation students from other years helping me out, two clean-up and colouring artists, one colourist, and two in-betweeners. Hopefully I will get more assistance after Easter as first and second years have less work to do in order to help third years. It's more than most people get but this film's production is huge!!

Now that my dissertation is finished and handed-in (that took place on the 15th last week) I have turned my full attention onto the film and aim to have as much animation done as possible for our rough hand-in on the 23rd April.

That's all from me for now, I'll update occasionally with animation and promotional materials, but otherwise it's full steam ahead!

All the best,

Gemma

Spirit Pencil Test [S017]

Just exported a pencil test for shot 17 from my new animatic when the Spirit hesitates and turns to look back at Amber--the turning point of their first encounter!

I'm using blue Chromacolour pencils for this which I am colouring a warm orange/brown on the computer and applying colour washes to each frame and the background for the final shot. I'm working on this and one other shot for the film for my 'feasibility' study to hand in tomorrow. The aim is to show enough tests and examples of final shots to prove we have what it takes to see the project through to the end!

It didn't take too long to animate and there are some held frames. The tail was proving difficult, especially to give the sense of flow when the Spirit is running. I think this could do with a few fixes but I'm not sure yet if I'll have time to go back and change things!

Apart from animation I've just finished my new animatic with original sound from my composer, Ben Rusch. It took all week to draw and composit and edit the frames, but it's been so exciting to see it finally come together, I'll have it uploaded tomorrow!

In the meantime, I'm off to finish this hand-in work!

Amber Walk Cycle and Spirit Tail Tests

This afternoon I animated a new walk cycle for Amber, as I haven't animated her since her redesign a few weeks ago, so I figured she needed a new walk cycle test. She is now about 5-6 years younger and has different outfits for each season.

I drew her with some new blue Prismacolour pencils I got from Chromacolour recently. I really enjoy the loose feel of these pencils and although blue is usually for key animators to then be drawn afresh on new paper by clean-up artists using lead pencils, I will be colouring my lines an orange/brown colour, so the colour I use to animate will not effect the final look. So I may just draw everything in blue!

I decided to give her baggier and more oversized sleeves from what I drew in my model sheet, I think I prefer it this way and it gives some interesting options for character performance, so I may amend her 'Autumn' design later!

After this, I did some rough key frames of how the Spirit's tail might move (from side-to-side) to give a watery, lava-lamp style. I used a lava-lamp as reference to see how it could break apart and join up again. The first result is not working as well as I hoped, it appears like bubbles as opposed to watery droplets. The second is an improvement, so if I get good feedback on it then I will most likely take it further. Otherwise it's back to the drawing board!

Model Sheets - Seasons

For my Production Bible, I drew some more model sheets for the costume/colour changes for my characters over the seasons.

I've changed the colours for "Autumn" slightly and experimented with changing the Spirit's colour for each season. I think "Winter" and "Summer" came out well but I'll try out some extra colour schemes to see what works best between characters and against the background too.

Original uncoloured versions:

 I also coloured in a couple of my sketches as character pictures for my production bible. I particularly like giving Amber primary colours and having the Spirit as the only character who is green and therefore in sync with nature.

Model Sheet and Sketches

Here's a new model sheet for Amber and the Spirit of the Oak Tree. The designs are nearly final now, this needs a little work on maintaining proportions and perspective, but the line quality is pretty much there and I've done a coloured version too.

I've gone for bright primary colours that are toned down enough to almost be softer pastel colours. I've avoided pinks/purples for Amber, instead going for more neutral primary colours and a bit of lime green so she is more of a tomboy. The Spirit is a warm amber colour that fades where it will become more transparent. The ear leaves are a more faded green to try and avoid carrot comparisons! Not sure if that is successful yet!

And to finish off, more character sketches of Amber and the Spirit together, showing lots of emotion tests. I'll sort out an expressions sheet for them soon.

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!

Character Sketches V

Last Monday I spoke to James about making my Spirit look like a Spirit. I had been looking at Spirits/Gods in Japanese games that morning (i.e. Kikwi in The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword and Amaterasu/Chibiterasu in Okami) which is in sync with some of the Japanese woodblock/watercolour influences earlier in my development. While he originally thought it should be more of a squirrel now, he agreed that the loose brush strokes and mist-like swirls implemented in Okami gave that impression of otherworldness that my Spirit needs and would be appropriate to contrast the Spirit's world with that of Amber's.

Later on, Matthew also agreed with the new direction for my character designs. He said that the Spirit should still be squirrel-like in movement in a quick and zippy sort of way so I should do some research on them at parks like Bute Park in Cardiff filming them and drawing etc. Basically my designs were all good to go with which I was very happy about as I had been stressing over them for a while

We also spoke about shortening my animatic and how I was going to go about going from a 5 minute film to about 3-4 minutes and how to convey a performance using dot eyes on Amber. He said he'd rather I spent more time focusing on good animation and less about worrying about clean-up: the rough, loose line I've been using for my sketches are fine. I thought back to watching 101 Dalmatians and The Jungle Book and how I loved seeing the construction lines popping up every now and then, so I think I will keep the rough style (which suits the natural, textured world of my film anyway) but experiment with how I colour it.

These are sketches I did of my new character direction that day:

I'm using Okami, guinea pigs, rabbits, foxes and squirrels for my main point of reference. Here's Amber interacting with him and more dot eyes:

The next day (Tuesday) I met with Leonie for feedback on my new designs. She also preferred my new sketches and enjoyed the lively poses and clear silhouettes. She said the dot eyes encouraged a triangular formula for 'cuteness' that is almost equilateral between eyes and the nose. On animal toys, the more squashed this triangle the cuter and the longer the triangle the more wise and 'knowing' it becomes. This is difficult to achieve on humans as they can start to look alien very quickly. On Amber's face this triangle is between her eyes and mouth with the nose in the middle, which is fine but I will have to keep her eyes small to avoid the 'lifeless' look that bigger eyes can encourage when highlights and glows are not compensating for the size of the eye (e.g. anime).

As long as her eyes are small and stay in line with the mouth/nose, it will focus her gaze and allow me to do the dot eyes, but I can always do very small eyes that show the pupil and the lids like Joanna Quinn's Charmin Bear. Leonie's favourite drawing that summed up my girl's character was this one from my previous post:

Simply because it shows her carefree and somewhat selfish attitude in one drawing. She pointed out others that demonstrated her personality and said that the shy/sad drawings are best saved for the ending where they will be more effective.

Finally, Leonie was much happier with the Spirit drawing which looked like a guinea pig with the fox-like tail that flows and breaks apart like water as it is enough to suggest it's spirit-ness. She liked the vagueness of the feet and angular eyes and the bottom-left most drawing of the first image in this post in which the Spirit looks angry and has the deer-like leaf antlers and the orb of light... however that may be too difficult to do against light backgrounds and it is perhaps too serious...

Finally I need to make it absolutely explicit what's going on in the beginning of my film, so that the montage in the middle can be made much shorter. I've uploaded my newest animatic, so I will post that up next.

And here's an image of my Spirit design references looking at lots of animal art and spiritual creatures!

Character Sketches IV

More Amber sketches focusing on the dot for eyes approach. Some of the drawings feel really succesful and most of them are proportioned correctly now so she looks about 5-6 years old. A few are still slipping into older proportions but that's something I can continue to hone.

So far I'm perferring this style of eye and proportions however it won't be possible to do some of the subtle eye movements that a larger eye with a pupil could do, but most of my action can be shown with a turn of the head or a body movement so I shall see how this applies to my next animatic.



I also have a sheet of new Spirit ideas, looking at waving motion and wave-like symbols to tie-in with the oak leaves. I did some rough keys of a swaying and morphing tail that swirls and breaks apart like water, this could help sell the mystical 'spirit-ness' of my creature. I'll be examining spirits from Japanese video games next to see how I can visually show this creature as something Spiritual, but not like a ghost and still having animal qualities. From my research so far, I have found Japanese folklore to be rich with animal spirits/Gods that are abstracted in some way, while Celtic mythology appears too dark and realistic for now.

Spirit of the Oak Tree Development

Here are some more sketches of my Spirit Design as my 'ghost-like' image is not serving the character well. I'm trying to break through it by applying animal characteristics and leaf/acorn insignia so that it is 'of' the tree... some of these are still looking a tad on the Pokémon side of things, but I'll be refining these in a later post.

At the moment I'm experimenting with a small 'floaty' design, or a four-legged creature. Looking at other Spirit designs, especially tree spirits, artists/photographers tend to look for faces in tree trunks or branches that appears to take human form. This is something I'd like to avoid, like Grandmother Willow in Pocahontas (1995), for example (see below). It's much too obvious and I think a physical embodiment of the tree's spirit will be best for interaction between the characters.

On the other hand, this illustration for the Totoro Forest Project by Scott Campbell has such life and personality in this wonderfully simple design. I like the size of the creature, it looks like it could actually be a part of the forest, however I need something more 'travel size' for my film to be more easily concealed and less cumbersome.

Tree Spirit with Bike by Scott Campbell

I like the smaller creatures surrounding him too, but they are far too much like Totoro's friends in My Neighbour Totoro, so I will have to look elsewhere.

I'm having difficulty picking one of my sketches to push forward with as I need something that is cute enough to relate to, simple enough to animate and unique enough to stand on its' own as a design... I like having it as an squirrel or owl to relate to the tree so I'll develop that next.

To end, I've done another take of my character designs, this time to include one of my favourite versions of the Spirit, however it's still too 'ghost-like' and boring, and the colours are not unlike a carrot! So it's by no means final!

Storyboards [Rough]

Last week we were set the task of drawing a finished storyboard for our individual films for presentation today. I presented my traditional storyboards on sheets of A1 card, comprised of 141 drawings. I started with some digital thumbnails on the computer however. Unsure of what format to use, I started digitally to get it down quickly, with the intention of returning to it to tighten up for my animatic.

After getting this far, I wasn't sure where to go in my story, so I returned to my script to plan what needed to happen in words first. This helped me to structure my thoughts. Then I began sketching ideas for interactions between Amber and the Spirit of the Oak (see previous post for sketches).

Once I had regained confidence with story direction, I sketched out the entire film on post-it notes and stuck them on paper. I kept each frame incredibly rough to save time (this version would not be presented) and some drawings were probably so abstract they could only be understood by myself anyway, but that's the purpose of doing it this way.

Working on post-it notes allowed me to freely rearrange scenes and swap drawings around. I didn't have to do this very much, but it did help when I needed to. There were 119 drawings in all.

Although it was a lot of work, it really helped me to think visually about my film and to tackle elements of my story that weren't quite clicking yet. A week didn't seem like a long time to do this, but the deadline helped me get my thoughts down quickly.

I showed my first thoughts to friends and made notes. At this point, the climx of the film wasn't quite right, here Amber takes an acorn from the tree to give to her friend, the Spirit, but it is misunderstood and the Spirit sees it as harming the tree and gets angry. Because of this, Amber falls from the tree and it is struck by lightning. It all got a little confused and the motives don't read well, so I changed it for my next boards; taking Amber nailing planks of wood to the tree in order to climb it as the part where she harms the tree instead.

The following version of the storyboard was drawn in coloured pencils and stuck on A1 card so that I didn't have to do further processes of printing and so I could show a physical version to the group for feedback. Backgrounds/characters/seasons are appropriately colour coded to aid clarity.

I received very useful feedback from these today from my lecturer, James Manning and fellow students. Some were confused when the Spirit changes size, so instead of trying to make that work, I'm going to remove that aspect entirely as it doesn't add anything and is not important later on. James told me that the climax of the film is still not the drama and conflict I need to make it work. He said there needs to be some sort of barrier between girl and Spirit to create the worst possible thing that could happen to them, so that the ending means something when hope is restored.

In addition, Amber will not plant a second acorn, but instead will see the acorn that the Spirit plants in the beginning, sprout into a tiny sapling. I also hint that the Spirit then becomes the squirrel, but I will take out that suggestion too so that the emphasis is on the acorn/rebirth of the Oak Tree.

Along with other tweaks to shot sizes/angles and simplifying/cutting down action, there is a lot to do for next week, when I aim to have a revised storyboard and possibly an animatic. We are doing a walk cycle exercise next week too, so I will need to prepare final concepts/model sheets for Amber.

Character Sketches II

I've been furthering my character concepts and story events this week. I tackled some drawings with coloured pencil to get a storybook feel to the characters inspired by looking at the works of Oliver Jeffers and Kristiana Parn and my classmate, Jessica Leslau.

I feel I'm getting to grips with my character design here and becoming more comfortable with drawing Amber like this.

The only thing left in question is the look of the tree Spirit itself. I am still toying with the idea of an animal form, but while the animals were fun to draw, they are not quite working as my spirit design.

At the moment I am settling on a ghost-like teardrop form, though this is subject to change.

And to finish, some life drawing sketches of trees and squirrels... (guest starring my sisters)