PLAN

ROUGH STORYBOARD

Networking: Who, what, when, where and how?

PENGUIN BOOKS MOODBOARD

Reference

editing & sound

Due to my James' clarity of the order of the scenes in succession to our storyboard and animatic, piecing the scenes together was simple as our finalised scenes were clearly numbered. I was however tasked with layering sound over the visuals. As the film was slightly longer than expected, the song I produced for the film didn't quite fit the duration of the film. The simple solution to this was elongating the track somewhat and having it start partway through the film. This worked well because I could add other sounds before the song begun. The small details of sound which I proceeded to add gave more emphasis to what was happening in the film and helped it to be more immersive. For example, elements like footsteps and breathing made the film much more believable. Despite the fish being in space, I also subtly layered underwater audio to give space more atmosphere which I believe worked effectively. Although there was no speech in the film, I wanted to add panicked noises to the character. I first achieved this by adding radio chatter to the scene with the astronaut. I also added a startled noise to the CEO character to express his surprise. Overall the atmosphere created with the sound worked well alongside the visuals.

Study Task 5

Evaluation

The Fish Food project has taught me about a number of technical and management techniques. Through trial and error I believe that working in a group has developed my existing skills and showed me areas to improve in future projects.

In terms of the general management of the project. It greatly assisted to assign roles to the team members. Co producing with Rhys meant that we had to assure that the many different aspects of creating the film were done in a way that made sense chronologically. I feel that especially at the beginning of the production timeline, the group was certain of the roles we had to play because we created a detailed Gantt chart. Time management was also an area we could have largely improved on however. As the project progressed the organisation slipped somewhat as we didn't maintain a tight schedule to work on. This made me realise the importance of recognising the roles of every individual in the team. Another area which had strong and weak elements in the duration of the project was communication. During a slight altercation due to difficulty of blending digital and stop-motion mediums presented problems for the group because the schedule we had maintained had slightly backfired on us. We were however able to resolve this problem but being able to communicate the issues we were having to find a solution could have been done more smoothly. Overall James and Rhys were effective team members who were resourceful enough to find solutions to the issues which were inevitably going to present themselves to us.

Unfortunately much of the practical work I undertook was not present in the finalised film, only as reference to be animated in 2D. As I was keen on undertaking a stop motion project, I was tasked at creating and animating a puppet on green screen which would then have 2D elements animated over and under it. This proved more difficult than expected as we were not working with flat green on the background and key lighting on After Effects was not working successfully. As I had never used a physical green screens this was a major learning curb for me, making me realise the technicality that must go into blending two different animation techniques. As these are techniques that I wish to develop in the future, I must learn more about green screening and layering 3D onto 2D. 

As stop motion is an area I have interest in, I would like to further my knowledge of analysing movement for animation. For example it was interesting animating a Fish puppet because contrary to animating humans and knowing the way they move, a fish is entirely different. Therefore I believe it to be important to constantly observe movement, as it is a key element to making  animations believable. Furthermore, taking videos and having as much reference footage as possible is important. I feel that during the process of animating the fish, the more time I had spent considering the movement of different fish would have shown in the final animation.

With the pre-production process areas I would like to improve on in the future are the ways I present my work. Firstly, I tend to do conceptual drawings, turnarounds etc. with pen and paper as I see hand drawn as a strength. However I want to translate my confidence by hand to the digital medium because it is a way to present work more clearly and aesthetically. I was able to demonstrate this in the animatic I made. Although it translated from the storyboard well, I also want to improve on the continuity of my animations, drawing the scenes together with a consistent colour palette and smoother animations. Despite my intentions to further my skills on the digital medium, The hand drawn will always be my preferred medium, so an activity I will ensure that I do is sketching every day. I believe it to be important because it will maintain a confidence to draw quickly with minimal mistakes. 

Overall, the process of making a group project has taught me valuable lessons about the communication required to run a smooth project, and technical issues encountered within the project are all areas I believe I can improve on in future productions.

Study Task 4

Study Task 3

Research

Stop Motion Animation

Stop Motion is a medium which very much involves hands on work and goes somewhat away from the digital element of animation. In terms of it's sustainability compared to computer programs, it involves creating tangible objects (whether they be characters or sets). For a production budget, this needs to be taken into consideration due to the materials which would be required to create a puppet or set. In comparison to the Adobe suite, it is potentially more cost effective because Adobe is expensive. However, the sustainability of stop motion comes down to how ambitious the project is. Furthermore, it is not uncommon for digital and physical mediums to be combined in a production. This can greatly lower the cost of materials. For example, if an animator made a puppet, animated it and gave it a digital background, this would involve using minimal materials which could range from cheap fabric to more expensive items like silicone. Therefore stop motion is a technique which can range from simplistic movie making to very ambitious projects.

The Aesthetics of stop motion is a key element to why it is so popular. Where some who use this medium would want to make it as realistic as possible, others appreciate the authenticity of physical objects being animated. For example in Wes Anderson's Fantastic Mr Fox, the aesthetics of the characters and sets look and feel hand made. Anderson said that he wanted his audiences to embrace the medium of stop motion rather than make it look realistic. This is because there is a certain charm to the miniature puppets and sets which people take great interest in. Compared to programs like TV Paint, the digital medium can be at risk of looking flat on the screen, where a fleshed out puppet on a set feels more authentic for an audience.

Study Task 2

Talk this Way

Learning the process of lip sync for animation went relatively successfully. by creating different mouth shapes for sounds on different layers I was able to match up the mouth shapes with the audio file I used. It is important to note that it is a time consuming task, which would need to be considered when putting it to practice in production. I also believe that the animation can be more believable if the mouth shapes move more subtly. However the wide mouth shapes my character makes works relatively well, it reminds me of the speech in Aardman productions.

Green Screen

Green Screen
scene by scene notes

Scene 1
With this scene the group established that it would be more efficient to animate the fish's movement through space on after effects. Having the fish out of frame for most of this scene meant it couldn't be used but by keeping it's entire body in shot in the future means the bulk of movement can be done digitally. Some frames were also too jolted and could have used more in between frames. Holding frames for some worked to an extent.

Scene 2
The above shot of the fish helped me establish more how the fish would move and how elements of it's structure would relate to others. For example, the top fin always stays opposite sides to the tail. By essentially making rules for the way it moved made it easier to animate.

Scene 3
The behind shot of the fish followed these rules but is not as smooth as the initial shot. A challenge of stop motion (especially where the puppet has 2 rigs) was that the puppet would often not stay static when untouched, making animating difficult. Having to move the rig at times made it complicated to move without distorting the overall animation. To avoid this in the future I should make puppets lighter and smaller.

Scene 4
Side view of the fish swimming. Smoother than the last scene. I thought the arcs the fish made in this scene were effective.

Scene 5
As a close up shot of the puppet's face, I wanted to capture some expression on its face by moving the eyes and mouth. This gave there fish a startled expression which works well with the storyboard.

Scene 6
Underneath swimming shot. By following the rules of i's movement this was simple to animate. I optimised the lighting for this scene to catch on the silver of its scales.

Scene 7
This scene involved multiple rig changes which made the animation jolted at times. However the movement pairs up with the background relatively well