FINAL PIECE

FREAKS OF NATURE

SCENES 10-14

Scene 10

The only zoomed out shot of the world mentioned in my Pitch Bible. I think the representation of pollution is good. To make the scene more alive I could add more movement into the sky and layer individual buildings to move slightly as the camera moves down. The animation of the nuclear explosion could be improved by using squash and stretch. As I only improvised the animation of this I believe there's room to improve. I do however like the animation of the reflection of the explosion on. the windows of the building and how the sky changes colour as it adds drama to the scene.

Scenes 11-14

These scenes feature the robot's final moments where it escapes. Scene 11 has simple character movement with a plain background, but into all the scenes I have incorporated my hand drawn elements, some of which move. I have also added arcs into the sparks that fly from the robots back which animated well. The timing on the scene could have held for a little longer before cutting to the next however. Scene 12 is rotoscoped and shows dramatic movement. This worked well with the rippling wall and the character movement was smooth. Scenes 13 and 14 are linked as it has a shot of the robot escaping followed by the ending logo in the form of a sliding door. The movement was difficult to animate on the character as I mapped out the body of my character with colour coding but was relatively smooth.

Study Task 1

ROTOSCOPE FOOTAGE

Using my reference footage, I could do my character animation over it. For my antagonist, who is human this was relatively simple but time consuming. I could translate the movements accurately and the end result had good timing. The robot animation was more challenging as it is much slimmer and does not have a human like body. Therefore I had to map out individual parts of the body individually by colour coding them. In the end the movement I got across was good but it took a very long time.

To incorporate backgrounds I couldn't just use TV Paint as I wanted to add in hand drawn elements in using After effects. Therefore I will use the Keylight feature on both programs to incorporate green screens behind the character. This will allow me to drop my character into any background.

RESEARCH & REFERENCE

AESTHETIC REFERENCE

The world I want to create for my animation involves creating large scale buildings much like Bladerunner, but close up it is more bleak and colourless. These photos represent it well by being slightly derelict with dusty fans and pipes everywhere. I will incorporate this into my final animation.

ROTOSCOPE REFERENCE VIDEOS

In correlation with my storyboard, I have framed up some videos to use as reference for my animation so I am aware of the space I have on the screen. As I intend to rotoscope some scenes, I can use these and animate over them in TV Paint. This will work effectively because it will transfer the movement nicely. A challenge of this with my protagonist is that its legs don't have the same angles as a persons. By using it more as a reference than for rotoscoping at times will be done.

These videos represent elements of production pipeline within animation and are also stunning works. In the videos you can see the accuracy of camera movement in the animatics. The second video in particular was striking to me because colour is a big motif in the film. I hope to adopt this by using signature colours in my animation.

YouTube. (2019). LOVE DEATH + ROBOTS | Inside the Animation: Zima Blue | Netflix. [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMcZ7_MeAjA [Accessed 8 May 2019].

YouTube. (2019). LOVE DEATH + ROBOTS | Inside the Animation: The Witness | Netflix. [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IqhXDb69wl4 [Accessed 8 May 2019].

The use of colour in the animated Spiderman film is also impressive. Some of the cityscape backdrops are also inspirational for the world I am creating.

HAND DRAWN ELEMENTS

As I wanted to keep the aesthetic of my film partly hand drawn, I scanned in some hand drawn structures which I could edit over scenes I make in TV paint using After Effects. The result of this is that the framing looks much less flat and gives my backgrounds substance. This was inspired by the photos I took of industrial machines and links to the technological world I touched on in the Pitch Bible.

SCENES 1-9

SCENE 1

With a number of programs, I managed to make an effective blend of mediums for my title sequence and first shot of my antagonist. The hand drawn background animated in After Effects features moving parts and camera panning. by layering all these elements up and anchoring them in place, I created my intended industrial aesthetic which I feel sets up for a good film. The rotoscoped character movement fits in nicely. One unintended feature of the scene was the graininess of the background as a result of combining scanned in pictures with photoshop. However I opted to keep it in because I liked the look of it.

Scene 2

This scene features the same blend of mediums layered on one another. In the same way as the first scene, it looks effective. However the background was drawn on Photoshop rather than by hand, giving it less texture but still working somewhat considering the continuity of the film. Continuity proved to be a potential issue when using a number of programs but I think it still allows audiences to enjoy the film without the changing look being too much of a problem.

Scene 3-4

The rotoscoped character movement looks extremely effective, achieved by drawing my character over each frame. By rotoscoping, I managed to get timing and human-like movements perfect. One issue with the movement which was unintended is the presence of red outlines from my pre production process of drawing it all in red. This proved difficult to change entirely back to black outlines when I had finished animating it in TV Paint.

As the camera zooms out and reveals the protagonist, it looks somewhat blurry especially around the wires. However, the scene sets up for good anticipation and has it's desired effect so did not bother me too much.

Scene 5

A simple animation done on TV Paint sets up for more anticipation as my protagonist essentially is turned on. As not much animation was needed for this scene, it was relatively simple. The background differs from my film's previous backgrounds because it is flat colour rather than being hand drawn. However as the focused close-up of the character this was not too much of a problem.

Scene 6

Going back to the blend of mediums, you see the robot waking up and turning around. This scene works well with sly camera movement. The rotoscoped character movement surprisingly worked effectively for the robots movement. I was initially skeptical about whether its legs would be a problem as the structure is different to a human leg. It was difficult to rotoscope as I had to improvise somewhat but it ended up working well,

Scene 7

Another simple animation shows the human brain feeding intelligence to the robot. Despite it's simplicity, I applied an arc to the movement of the blue dots simply for aesthetic reasons and following the 12 principles of animation.

Scene 8

Made in TV Paint, I animated the simple character movement with a background resembling a circuit board descending onto it. Looking more 2D than the other scenes, it stands out somewhat as different to the other scenes, but represents the character going into a kind of trance where the aesthetic will be different.

Scene 9

The shot of all the engineer characters - I was experimenting with the properties of After Effects, looking at camera movement, applying coloured lights and movement into an animation. It looks different to the general aesthetic of the film because it was the first scene I made. However, as previously stated the protagonist is meant to have entered a trance at this point, so works quite well, as long as the audience is aware of this fact. This should be made more obvious in future scenes as it leaves the room the characters are in and shows more content in terms of background.

UPDATED STORYBOARD

This is a more precise idea of the scenes which will go in my film. In each one is a rough idea of camera positions and maps out which programs will have to be used for each one. Doing this has created a more linear way of making my films to keep it organised. Now I have the choice to create my film either scene by scene, or to do each task for every program I need to use. The benefits of this plan are high because I am much more able to manage my workload. However I will consider drawing storyboards in the correct scale and involve more accurate camera movement.