Lifting Tower Project - Final Cut

As of the 20th of November, Stacy and I have finished the final animation for the project. During the visit by Jimmy on the 17th of November we presented our animation. Within the time-frame from my prior blog post until Friday the 17th, Stacy and I had been perfecting the smoothness of the movement of our animation, adding slight and succinct key-frames in order to make the shapes more lively and not flat. Also, in order for the animation to be more immersive we opted for utilizing the window of the building into the composition, prompting it to be the entrance of the initial Christmas tree ornaments that promulgate out of the window. Another slight alteration of our initial storyboard is the disappearance of the concluding snowflake; it now fades away into smoke instead of receding back into the window. I believe that for aesthetically abstract projects like these better solutions can be devised mid-production as ideas can always appear during the testing out of different tools within software - we were playing with the animated effects in After Effects. Overall, I'm really happy with the product and even more-so because Jimmy liked it as well, saying that it had a really easy smoothness to it.

Lifting Tower Project - Mock-Ups of Ideas and Initial Animating

In order to thoroughly visualize the ideas that we presented to Jimmy we were given a task to create mock-ups of how they would look on the actual lifting tower. Since our ideas are quite abstract and don't have any complicated layouts, we decided that the only thing worth testing out are the colors and their interaction with the wall along with our drawing styles. This would give Jimmy the perspective of seeing whether our color palette works and whether our designs are too detailed or not.
We were instructed to remove or replace every instance where a brown color would be used and instead either fill it with another color or just leave it blank since the color would not be projected well.

UPDATE: We have started animating with AE. As of now, we have finished the overlaying animation and are focusing on the finesse of the movement, utilizing the window into the animation, and improving the smooth flow of motion.

Statement of Intent

Ever since I went into Leeds Arts University and got interested in 2D animation, I have wanted to create my own narrative. With these past years of practicing different styles of animation, learning how to operate software programs, and developing my technique, I believe this is the firm moment where I can culminate my university degree with a substantial piece. Of course, I still adore stop-motion in all its illustrious sublime, however, I have made several such elongated stories, some of which I will revisit with their respective sequels once I graduate. With my thorough research into COP where I have thrown myself into the realm of avant-garde and experimental styles of animation within the Yugoslavian era, I have become infatuated by the versatile conventions of simplicity that, in the end, add more of an aesthetic variety as well as a pleasant journey than does complex details which I have been helplessly spending time trying to perfect. Instead, the exaggerated form of characters can outweigh what’s within them in a variation of “thinking outside the box”. Thinking over the summer, I had been developing several ideas for a narrative within my mind and by sharing them with my friends, I was able to get constructive criticism of both a positive and negative nature. Based on their reactions, I picked one concept of an idea that I then developed into a rough treatment, which upon this statement of intent (and the consequential presentation) I shall start elaborating into a detailed script and story that would hopefully persuade me into using a new visual style with the digital brush set I received from one of my peers and in doing so practicing said technique. Alongside this, I will be collaborating on this project with several Macedonian illustrators, most presumably on backgrounds, so that I may validate my self-dictated case study of working collaboratively through a cyber space, hence for now my artistic future might revolve around me working internationally from back home, where I will return upon graduation. My story is based on one post-mortem testament desire that I relayed to several friends as a joke, which I gradually developed into a plot. Four best friends form a pact to always share their secrets and never break the code of friendship, in a sworn oath fashion. One of them dies, and within his testament it is written that he desires his skull to be detached from his carcass and transformed into an ash tray with two rubies implanted in his eye holes preceding his cremation. This ash tray would symbolically circle around his friends one week per person and with every lit cigarette, the spirit of the character will awaken as we will start viewing the story from his eyes as he catches every single one of his friends sharing a cigarette during their primordial sins that they have kept a secret from him. In the climax, all of his friends will light a cigarette together and awaken the grim reaper assembling from his skull as he confronts every single one of his friends for their dishonesty prior to decapitating them for breaking the seal. In the end, an old man with an appearance similar to the initially dead friend would be trying to interest an old lady in buying one of three skull-shaped ash trays within this mysterious antique shop. 

Lifting Tower Project - Synthesis of Storyboards

Based on the individual ideas Stacy and I had annotated, we merged them together to form coherent storyboards that we are to use for the idea pitch on the 24th of October. We made three storyboard ideas that fused what I had to present and what Stacy had. For example, one of the ideas features my idea of ornaments spinning radially to form a wreath and Stacy's concept of radial Christmas items like the Christmas pudding and the snowflake. I feel this added variety to the overall idea considering I had not even though about a snowflake and did not know (until now) what a Christmas pudding is. Alongside this, in order to conceptualize the spirit of Christmas that we want to capture, we created color palettes with the dominant colors that we are to use for the animations. Everything is amenable for the time being up until we start animation, so the color palette as well as details of the ideas might change. Once Jimmy supplies us with constructive criticism and decides upon which one we are to do (or which two), we will create an accurate and detailed storyboard so that we do not drift astray when we are to animate - to establish consistency.

Lifting Tower Project - Individual Generation of Ideas

In accordance to the suggested sequence of dates versus development, I have devised on a timetable in order to tackle the project without losing time for other inbound briefs as well. I have teamed up with Stacy Straub considering that most of the illustrators did not express an interest in what seems to be an optional task for them. Stacy and I sat down together and decided on the gameplan, the first step being the individual generation of ideas that we will then discuss once laid down on paper and pick the best one(s) that we are to make a storyboard of and pitch. My ideas revolve around a simple progression of visual narrativeless manifestations. Keeping it simple, they will revolve around simple vividly colored graphics. Once Stacy and I meet up, we might mix and match the ideas we have and create and fortify a bigger idea, since mine are only concepts in thumbnails. I constructed the simple ideas using the key visual tropes that I saw recurring on the lst year's lifting tower projection, and wanted mine to reflect the spirit of Christmas into the hearts of every single passer by.

Loop De Loop: Love is Love - Evaluation / Reflection / Finalization of Animation

Overall, I am extremely happy with my animation, although it pointed me towards the realization that I need more dynamics in my future animations - they lack 3D POVs. As I relied on the straight-ahead technique I gained ideas as I animated, effectively challenging my creative skills. I added the razor scene instead of razors coming out of the heart as in my sketchbooks, omitted the dogs (because of their irrelevance), added the flags at the end, and while compositing, added the black waves on the first and last third of the shot (for aesthetics). I am happy that I can draw simply but still create a full space within an animation. Although I submitted the animation for LoopDeLoop, they asked for me to enable the download video option which Vimeo has now monetized for use - might pay 5 pounds just for a monthly subscription for the screening. This animation wasn't as quick as I thought it would be, and although it did not alter my schedule with other briefs it made me kick-up my hours work per day routine. This small little project was a great warm up for my final animation which might look at different ways of using the same brush tools.

Love is Love - https://vimeo.com/238801869

Loop De Loop: Love is Love - Initial Production and Mind Map

Love is Love is quite a ubiquitous theme, so I dedicated this loop to the love I have towards my best friend, Alexander. Considering this is a small brief, I discarded unnecessary pre-production conventions such as storyboards and instead only devised a mind map that narrowed down my decision. Initially I was thinking of the rule of "the golden 3" where I visually represent three concepts I love, then I jotted down what I love and for a sake of simplicity I chose the love of friendship as a focus. I wrote down memories and moments we've had that fortify our relationship and then crossed the ones I deemed unnecessary and created a small treatment with the remainder. Due to my COP research into Yugoslavian avant-garde animation, I wished to experiment with digital pastel brushes to shift the aesthetic and experiment. I spent a day drawing different simple characters in Photoshop based on my iterations of 5 simple-shaped characters in my sketchbook. Spontaneously, as I was animating I was relying on a straight-ahead technique to make things more creative considering this is that kind of a challenge.

Multiverse: Greene's 9 Types - Electric Press Kit and Final Reflection

We have compiled our electric press kit for which we used the EPK of "The Maker" as reference. Considering we have not won any awards for this animation, we omitted that page, however, we mimicked accurate layout in design as well as giving people both our contacts and personal short descriptions. Our press kit might serve us properly in the future should we submit our animation to some festival, which as I have mentioned before we have been considering. Nonetheless, I cannot help but be critical of my own work for it deteriorates in quality when rushed - I do not work well under pressure. Although the DVD case design is immaculate from my point of view, the proportions of the spine were not accurate which resulted in our print having a cut-off - something to fix when using the pack for submission to a festival. Time management, although quite in tact during pre-production, slowly dissolved during the stages of production due to an overwhelming submission schedule with other modules, which had a negative influence on this one. Nonetheless, such mistakes must be made to fortify and improve my practice. Luckily next year we will not be overwhelmed with a maelstrom of modules but instead we will thoroughly focus on one such project, successfully increasing in quality

ISSUU Publication - https://issuu.com/vvoinovski/docs/electric_press_pack_multiverse

Applied Animation - Week 16

Finally, the last semi-week representing and annotating our conclusion on this journey of animation that now feels as if it has ran for about a year. Basically, these days were soul post-production (although the final days from the previous week were as well) which diverted a bit from the original Gantt chart, proving to both of us that our time management skills and capability of juggling around modules has to be improved upon. Nevertheless, from Monday up until today, having all the scenes finished beforehand, me and Luke spent our time assembling the scenes together to export the final resolution of the animation. In accordance to that, due to the some of the changes and diversions from the final animatic that we had to acclaim had to be accounted for with a change of narration, as well. In particular, the Holographic Multiverse and the Quantum Multiverse's old narration that we had recorded did not fit the changes, thus, we booked the recording studio on the 16th of May (Tuesday) so that we may make up for these meticulous changes. Other than that, we split the design of the DVD case with me taking care of the back and the spine whereas Luke did the front design. Finally, once we had our respective designs done we merged them and created the title and logo for the documentary's name - Multiverse: Greene's 9 Types - simple, yet coherent. By using all the conventional assets for DVD Case covers that we referenced, I believe that we quite accurately mimicked the appearance of an actual DVD film, something I'm quite proud of. Then again, this is to be classified as an actual documentary film, giving me a more professional feel and pride of our own film. In terms of the animation, we spent this week collating the sound effects which due to a lack of time (me having to work outside of college) did so remotely: I gave Luke all the sound effects I downloaded in accordance to using our final animation as reference whereas he placed them in their respective queues. Finally, we got together and modified some of the sounds, added fade-ins and fade-outs, sped them up or slowed them down to match their visual cues, etc. Now I feel more thankful than ever for suggesting and following through the extended lingering of the beginning and end of every scene, for it allowed us with a bigger flexibility of editing to match the animatic and its reference. Because of this we could mend the length of every scene to fit the natural feel and flow of the narrative so we can weed out any possibility of it going too fast. Conclusively, we did the Press Pack in such a way that it comes across as simple yet legible - simple cover pertaining all the necessary information, contacts, short synopsis that does not give away the details, short individual bio, and stills from the animation itself. Luke and I have also been considering submitting our animation to some festival since we think that it could meet the standards of several small-scale animation festivals, and in the end even if it does not get accepted we will break the ice surrounding our reluctance to participate in such events. Furthermore, it will be good practice I believe to be constantly persistent in our endeavors, for as PPP has taught us so.

Applied Animation - Week 15

The busiest of all weeks had been this 15th one where ALL of our scenes were created and exported as separate TIFF sequences. As I had mentioned before, this week would consist of compensating for the lack of proper time management in production. Considering that now we have nothing other than Applied Animation left we will not have to divide our attention and capability to manage a workload as we did these previous two semi-productive weeks (in terms of Applied, though). In a nutshell, every single day me and Luca were gathering together (except for Sunday) to discuss, exchange necessary assets for scenes, animate backgrounds and foreground assets, give each other feedback and criticism, as well as export and exchange transparent TIFF sequences of pieces of animation. Now, delving into detail, there were several scenes that only I alone needed to collate, some that only Luca needed to, and several that we both had to create. Initially, we got one thing out of the way: the effects used for the black background behind all the universes, nebulas, and branes, which is created by CC Star Burst with consistent proportions that we decided on. The only variation is the speed and the size (opacity) of the stars, whereas every other value remained the same. We first thought of using our newfound After Effects plugin system Trapcode's Particular to animate this, however, found that CC Star Burst is effective as well along with it consuming less time per scene. Before we collated the cosmic assets, with Luca having the universe and galaxy animated through Trapcode, I created the looping animation of the Brane and the Calabi Yau space through a different method. In order for there to be a fluctuation of styles, I drew the Brane and Calabi Yau space in Photoshop layers, which I then proceeded to alter and modify through Form, Particular, Light Burst CC, and other such effects so that it may symbiotically align with the plasma-like look of the rest of Luca's assets while at the same time differentiating itself from them. Once this was taken care of, we started animating. For the Brane multiverse I used Luca's Zap character rig and animated universe in accordance with my looping Brane animation to fuse and create a smooth keyframe animation that captured the enormity of space. Another scene that I did was the Simulated multiverse which featured several of my minions all computing and formulating universes through a projector, For this scene, I used Luke's universe render, which got me to think about the cross-platforming that we have been doing throughout these final steps of the project. In other words, I had not realized the equal division of work we have been assigning each other during this longitudinal endeavor - something that got me to thoroughly understand the parameters behind collaborative practices. I believe if all of this work was not to be submitted for a college module I would not realize the division between the workflow that we've been subconsciously managing, which is something that alludes to my open-mindedness in collaboration - a skill I've been accumulating throughout these college years. However, in an attempt to be self-perceptive, I believe that at times I've been way too radical in assuming a leadership role, which is something that I will acutely fix and mend for from this day on for it will assist me in working in collaborative groups in the future, despite overall this one being the most successful I've ever participated in. Conclusively, in accordance to all the pictures of every separate scene I've done being posted within this blog post, I believe that despite the last minute rearranging of time management, this week has been the most productive and compensating (for the past ones not being as substantial because of other modules' necessity to be placed at a priority) which has hailed the most important lesson within the nature of the collaborative practice: time management is key for a flexible and functional schedule. No one can accustom theirs to yours, which is why you need set some common denominators in order to get the work done - a thought for the future. Nevertheless, I adore the amount of work that can be done within a mutual agreement and necessity (such as a deadline) through the power of extrinsic motivation!

Applied Animation - Week 14

This week consisted of adding small detail adjustments to any character animation I had as well as beginning the assembling of every individual scene. Prior to the Final Crit, me and Luke had constructed a small Power Point presentation where we collated our separate character animations to present to the class along with the 3D simulated style of our backgrounds. Alongside the conclusion of PPP, we did not manage to work as planned on Applied Animation, straying away from the original Gantt chart quite a bit for which we shall make amends as the days progress and the workload slowly evaporates.

UPDATE - 09/05/2017 - FINAL CRIT - We did not take into account the requirement of this stage: collage some final scenes so that the general look of the animation can be absorbed and critique. We had completely gotten sidetracked by the previous presentations conducted by other modules that we failed to comprehend the style of the crit, thus, did not assemble any example scenes over the animatic, although that would have been quite helpful in getting thorough feedback. We got quite substantial constructive criticism on our respective character animation as well as our backgrounds. Initially, I believed that the detailed semi-realistic plasma-like style of our backgrounds would not blend well with our 2D cartoon characters (another reason why we should have assembled some scenes), however, the majority of our peers advocated against it stating that the synthesis of the two styles adds to the both comic and unconventional effect and aesthetic of the animation (something that we later on proved once we started adding the scenes together). In terms of my character, I neglected to mention the stillness of its animation hence I was planning to add all the squash-and-stretch along with the overlapping action through After Effects, thus, was pointed to the minions lack of exaggeration. Furthermore, I took into account the feedback regarding my character's fast motion and his name: he needs not be as fast and it would have been quite more convenient to give him a name for the name "minion" carries a dangerous copyright infringement patent by Universal Pictures - a thought when doing professional work in the future. Once the Final Crit concluded, me and Luca sat down together and devised which scene needs to be collated separately during the following week in After Effects so that the following week will solely consist of us assembling all the scenes together (most of the scenes must be done so together). Nonetheless, from this stage on the train started rolling based on the feedback we got, and so I did the portal scene (without a background so that we may create a template of this together) as well as the initial rotation of the globe. All of these scenes remained as executable After Effects files so that up until we get a mutual agreement for every scene they are not to be exported as TIFF sequences. I started learning Particle World and Particle Effects in order to animate small details, in this case the portal opening along with using CC Spherize for the Earth spinning - made with a world map traced and cartoon-style contoured. As I mentioned previously, time management slipped from our hands a bit, however, it is nothing that we cannot compensate for and learn from, such is the reason we are in college!

Applied Animation - Week 13

With the necessary prioritization of concluding modules, this week for me did not revolve much around this module. Henceforth, no animation was involved due to temporary pressing matters. However, I did design several still assets that I am to use and animate within After Effects once me and Luca get together to start assembling and laying out the individual scenes. Furthermore, what needs to be done is the division of all the scenes that we are to do separately in our non-collective sessions (ergo, while working at home) as well as all the scenes that we MUST collate together. In terms of backgrounds, I have been experimenting with Particle World CC in After Effects to see the possibilities in recreating nebulas, alongside the Star Burst effect that will serve gracefully as the general background blend. Nevertheless, I believe that at this point I have not done as much as work as I imagined to over Easter, effectively teaching me a thing or two about poor time management. I am in no position to place the blame on the condensed submission schedule of all the parallel schedules; I was to plan this ahead of time in order to avoid such rushed situations. Nonetheless, judging by the completion of character animation as well as the swift method of animating abstract cosmic elements through After Effects, our animation will be completed in time.

Responsive: Evaluation

This module has been an interesting endeavor for me from several aspects including time management, style development, and improvement of practice. Although it was quite confusing as to how the module functioned, after the initial weeks I managed to understand its requirements and set goal so that I may respond in the most effective way. Furthermore, it thoroughly provided me with a flexible choice of both medium of art and requirements that best reflected my technique of practice. The most didactic part of this module for me was the Collaborative Practice brief that indirectly stressed out the importance of compromise and sacrifice of one’s own practice for the sake of the final piece. Additionally, the brief purged me into escaping my idee fixe of working within the parameters of my own study without expanding my horizons through experimentation. What I’m mostly thankful for was the professional demeanor of it that gave me insight into how working with collaborators would be in the near future, making me engage and learn more about 3D through the guise of envisioning the final outcome.

The module was coherently divided in three comprehensible parts, although I believe that the Project Report should have been made live much earlier as it did not provide us with enough information in relation to time remaining to resolve the entirety of the module. Furthermore, in terms of annotating our work, it was never clearly stated nor was it emphasized that we are required to present our works through individual text-including art boards hence much of my peers suffered a state of confusion and compulsion during the final days preceding the deadline. Considering the universal deadlines provided by both DNAD and YCN, I believe that the brief Collaborative Practice should have been administered an earlier beginning to provide us with more time to facilitate our works. Personally, I had a minor inconvenience with time management due to this since it was completely oblivious to the myriad of work we needed to produce for other modules at the time. Moreover, I believe that the module’s brief is not properly synchronized on both an interdisciplinary and structural level. In terms of interdisciplinary, the module in itself contains a predisposition that benefits Illustrators and Graphic Designers more than it does us animators from one simple viewpoint: their practice wholeheartedly emphasizes the expression through annotated art boards. However, in comparison to the latter level, this is minor. During the initial team-constructing session where everyone’s work was cascaded so that other respected creative practitioners may jot down the names of those whose work they admired there were several problems. We were told to leave out our names as the faculty had informed us that they would be projected during the screening. Unfortunately, they were not assembled on time by the course leaders and no amends were made to compensate for this nonprofessional conduct, leaving those that did follow the rules’ names to be omitted, diminishing the purpose of the event. Personally trying to amend this, during the presentation I vocalized a suggestion for people to shout out their names when their work appears, which was not supported or further encouraged by the tutors present; to amend for their mistakes they could have persuaded students to do this without feeling reluctant as they normally would.

On another side, the Project Report, Boards, and Developmental Blog overlap in some aspects, deterring us to engage wholeheartedly since every single one of us were repeating themselves during some part of our documentation – this needs to be reconstructed. I believe it is quite ironic and hypocritical to propagate professionality when there was a presentation that included two deadline dates for the Pitcha Pitcha slide hand-in on the actual presentation, for which I have physical evidence (I always take pictures of lectures), which naturally caused confusion in students which was voiced, only to be cast aside by one of the tutors as our fault. Finally, the module needs to set a bare minimum or a reference rubric for the Individual Practice in order to give students a rough conceptualization of the work they are supposed to do throughout the Brief in order to more effectively self-assign time management cues that will, at the end, benefit their practice more firmly. I witnessed several students being enshrined in perplexity over the quantitative weight of their individual practice which should also account for quality’s weigh on the scale.

Overall, the concept of this entire module is engaging, enticing, and stimulating for animators, graphic designers, and illustrators alike for I’ve witnessed many gaining pride about what they have created under said concept, however, it needs to be solidified and restructured in various aspects, ergo to be more professional and less chaotic in execution.

Responsive: Project Report

In order to collate my work in a professional manner the third and final studio brief asked for a textual annotation of all the learning processes I've gone through with the presentation of my final pieces. Furthermore, we were introduced to the online publisher ISSUU which served as a wonderful vesicle of presentation. Nonetheless, initially I was rather confused as to what was supposed to be within such a project report along with which topics I should brush upon. However, upon careful reading of the rubric as well as some tutor feedback and advice, I was aware of how this conclusive art piece is to function. In my project report I wanted to belabor the didactic benefits of the academic journey as well as the mistakes made to be taken into consideration for future projects. Overall, it served as a fantastic conclusion-like assignment that tied in together the highlights of my project so that I may use it to introduce others to my polished pieces instead of the developmental work throughout.

ISSUU Link - Project Report: https://issuu.com/vvoinovski/docs/vlad_report_final

Applied Animation 2 - Week 12

Utilizing squash-and-stretch by changing proportion

This week, as expected, has consisted of finishing up character animation to be ready for composition once we collate our work together. I have been mainly animating the portal scene where my minion jumps through a portal and then proceeds to come back. Thinking tactically, in order to eliminate any possible problems in foresight, I've devised how the execution of this scene will work: the portal will be a separate asset with a 50% feather mask so when the minion dives his body gets gently cut off. Meaning, for this raw animation file I need nothing more than just a simple movement with the portal being added later to the final cut. Alongside this, I've been finishing up animating small instances of the remaining pieces of character animation that I've started but had not yet finished - I completed the 9 universe types explosion scene. In this instance, as well, I started thinking tactically and replicated the same minion movements on the other side in order to spare time and connote the minions' hive mind personality and lack thereof. From this perspective, I decided that the entirety of all squash-and-stretch factors will be separately animated through a Mesh Warp modifier within After Effects due to its versatility and simple interface.

Applied Animation 2 - Week 11

Solely an update of the same process of character animation during this week, as well. The holidays have taught me an important lesson which is time management under underlying circumstances, where I have attained a routinely habit of animating in the morning - the only window of opportunity before the hustle and bustle of my day away from my computer starts. During this week I got an additional headway with my character, managing to start and nearly complete the animation for the minion's pouring in the vat and computer tapping, which are both animations that would be duplicated when laid out in After Effects. I have found that the shakiness of the linework adds to the character's appeal, for I was rather worried when I started animating him that he might suffer of inconsistency. Even more so, it offered a more exaggerated flow of motion for the minion, which I am rather proud of. Furthermore, in the wake of pragmatism and practicality, I recycled some already drawn movements in the animation in order to speed up the process and eliminate redundant additional tasks.

Applied Animation 2 - Week 10

As Easter ensues and all the holidays clutch down my obligations with frivolous festivities, I have managed to follow my Gantt chart schedule and get on with my work, respectfully considering the synthesis me and Luca are to partake in once we come back for our final semi-semester. I have been progressing with my character animation one step at a time, thoroughly considering how I am to do each and every scene and if it is possible to recycle some of my already-created designs and to-be-done movements, much like Disney have throughout the ages with their 2D princesses. For now, I have only animated the minion's movement for when he is electrocuted by Zap and the loop of his jetpack escape from the Quilted multiverse. I believe that the animation for my minion getting electrocuted is one of the fewest which will require a tedious yet deliberate frame-by-frame so that it may contemplate the rapid shift of the course of events. Since the animation is going to be 24 frames per second such a quick transition would add to the sudden comical effect of smooth movement. As for the jetpack, I needed not animate it frame by frame much like many other situations with my character where I can loop frames or reuse and alter some through duik (for example when he is to wave before getting electrocuted) in order to preserve the effect of the line boil.

Applied Animation 2 - Week 9

This week has been quite a pensive one as we had spent time deciding on who is to do what during Easter break as well as the medium for all of the assets within our animation. We spent our time catching up with other modules as well, leaving this week as a break for considering any possible mistake that might occur in the future during our departure. Upon several meetings before the holidays, me and Luca decided that we are to do every individual respective character animation in Photoshop so that we may then assemble and layout them together once putting together the final piece on After Effects. Furthermore, for the space backgrounds we decided that we are to experiment with several online tutorials that show how one is to make cosmic animations through the CC and Generate tools in After Effects instead of animating the nebulas, universes, and branes 2D style. Furthermore, as the concluding move of our week, we contacted HOCgaming for a possible voice-over, to which he replied and agreed. If we are to have trouble with the voices we shall request his services during the post-production stage of our animation seeing as collaboration might give our animation a more broad perspective and consideration of the animation industry.

Applied Animation 2 - Week 8

Recording Zap's voice

This week has mainly revolved around the assembling of the animatic with gathering and creating all of the necessary assets for it. Firstly, me and Luke rearranged bits of the content-driven narrative so that we discard the unnecessary parts and add in the character interactions. Once we had done that, we booked the recording studio for two days per 2 hours, 4 in total, seeing as we were unable to record everything during the first take due to performing voice tests. In the meantime, we simultaneously finished off the remaining animatic panels we needed to do so that we may have them ready in time for the final assembling of the animatic. Furthermore, as I had self-assigned myself to create the background ambient music, I had started working on it on Tuesday and kept adding to it and refining it everyday. By using my guitar with a digital direct connection through an interface, I messed around with all sorts of VST effects and filtered the organic sound so that it may exert a sci-fi cosmic vibe of ambience. Working in Mixcraft I found is a lot more effective for ambience pieces than in Ableton, partially due to the already pre-built VSTs that filter a grand proportion of the natural sound, making it seem as if it is almost purely synthesized. Seeing as both of us stuck to the schedule of the Gantt chart, we had everything ready for Friday where we spliced together the animatic. We ran into several conundrums while we were compiling it, one being that the totality of the narration was FAR too long - approximately 5 minutes. Thus, we removed all the unnecessary bits that added nothing to the flow of the animation and purely existed as cosmetics, which indirectly also complicated the flow of the narrative due to their verbal complexity - a mistake on my end. To narrow down the length even further we sped up the voicetrack - from 100 to 111 percent - which coincidentally gave it an even more alien-ish touch-up. We found that the soundtrack I produced fitted the animatic perfectly, and even more so had a moment where it synchronized with the movement - something that I can envision to happen in the actual animation. We interchanged in the making of the animatic so that we may simultaneously focus on other projects as well - I did the initial arranging, Luke did the shortening down, I did the sychronization and sound arrangement, and Luke the final touch-ups and effects, in that order. We are quite proud of the animatic although I believe that it is far from perfect, which is a perfect opportunity to raise questions from fellow peers and absorb their feedback on how we can modify the animatic or reflect a change in the final animation itself.

Animatic frames from the remaining panels

Responsive: Collaborative Practice - Meeting The Deadline

The collaborative project is finished. We have successfully met the deadline of the YCN Orchard Pig brief. For the final boards, having our graphic designer Alex's skill in layout, we assembled the boards in a way that it reflects the website of Orchard Pig. Considering that all the designs called for this final synthesis of the application, we wanted it to be just an extension of their already well-designed website instead of something revolutionary. Every asset that I had made for the application was altered in some way so that it may fit the layout perfectly. For example, when we took a look at the size of the boards I realized that some of the graphics for the buttons I made were far too detailed to be identified on-screen when shrunk to their respective size, which is why we removed the pig beneath the question mark for the "Info" button. The only asset that remained unchanged was the maps for the application which remained as simple as they were made. Unfortunately, Tom ran into several problems during the texturing process of the cider tap, which left us using the sketches instead. Although I am aware of the potential and limitations of the 3D medium, I believe that Tom could have found a way around the 3D model where the boards lack a bit of contextual consistency. Overall, I had a fun time doing this project since it gave me thorough insight into commercial work of product design, as well as an interdisciplinary practice of collaboration. Another thing I learned was that people tend to have whole different working schedules that interfere with my personal one, so compromising is one of the most important skills a collaborator can acquire. I need to boost morale in a project next time for at times all of us were stagnating a bit with our work, since without morale no intrinsic motivation can form which is one of the most important driving forces of artists.

Applied Animation 2 - Week 7

This week consisted of planning out in foresight what we are to do over the Easter, as well as designing the animatic. Coming to that we first briefly looked over the Gantt chart to roughly deduce what needs to be done before Easter, during, and after, where we booked the recording studio for the 21st of March to do the draft version of the narration. Once deciding on the layout of the animatic, we divided the panels each of us are to do based on the storyboard - it has 6x6 panels, making each of us make the animatic frames for 18 panels in total. Every movement that needs to be emphasized shall be annotated with arrows when we will compile the final piece, which would be next week where most of our time shall be devoted to Applied Animation - Responsive modules finish up. With half of the frames already done for the animatic, we've produced work faster than expected which might give us more time to focus on the cosmetics of the animatic so that it is much more understandable and easy to follow. I feel that during our presentation we did not delve much into the story as the storyboards were presented but not covered properly with context.