[PRE-PRODUCTION] Animatic Complete

Above is the finished animatic for the animation I am producing; When Dreams Became Data, the run time is roughly 4 and a half minutes, however the timing is subject to change while producing the actual animation. There were many things I struggled with during the production of this animatic, timing being one thing and trying to visualize how I will animate Max on paper and translate it to digital. I changed the ending to this animatic from my storyboards, while I was discussing the storyboards with my lecturer Sarah Kennedy, we came to the conclusion that the film appears complete once the two finally hold hands, so I decided to end it there, and have an after credits scene where the young animator rushes out of the room, and leaves the two holding hands in their drawn positions. I personally like this ending more as it seems much nicer, plus it allows the audience to wonder what happens when he wakes up, and then we see.

All that is left now is to begin the production of the actual animation now, which I will start at the beginning of 2017, the animation should take me a few months to complete along side the other work I am required to do while studying on the Masters, however I want to make sure this animation is the best I have produced. I want to be able to showcase this animation at film festivals, I so far do not have any work in which I am proud of, so I am hoping this will be the first.

[PRE-PRODUCTION] Animatic Update #06

I have now began to animate Max and May more and more, the scenes I am working on revolve heavily on character animation, as Max is squashing and stretching, while breaking the laws of physics. During these scenes, Max stretches from one sheet of animation paper to the next and retrieves a flower, then because he made May laugh, he then melts into a puddle, these shots required me to do more character animation than I have previously done within this animatic to get across what was going on, as as previously stated, I haven't updated the text on the screen to help explain what is occurring on screen.

So far, the animatic is coming along nicely and at a good pace, the animatic should be complete in the next few days as we are coming up to the climax, I will have to try and animate Max running across the wall to reach the far wall, this will include him running through a whiteboard which I still need to research. Overall, the animatic is coming along nicely, I am very happy with how it looks so far, I don't feel like it is dragging in any scenes, however if I do see any scenes that feel unnecessarily long I will be sure to cut them out.

[PRE-PRODUCTION] Animatic Update #05

Today I have finished a few more seconds of footage for my animatic, I have now finally introduced May the Cat into the animatic and Max and May have finally met. This was difficult as I also had the scene where Max has to travel down the animation paper to reach some that allows him to see May, however, I feel like I did this well. Using a few character references I was able to do a quick run and jump image of Max going from one sheet of paper to the next, then using the camera to pan from one paper to the next. 

I feel I still need to work on how May the Cat moves around, as she is  more confined than Max is. However, I feel that the work I have produced so far is coming along well, I am particularly proud of the end shots in this where May and Max are somewhat interacting with one and other.

[PRE-PRODUCTION] Animatic Update #04

Today I started on the second scene in the animatic which introduces the young animator. As you may have noticed, I have not continued with the words in the top left corner, I will continue to input what is happening on the screen later as I feel the actual animatic takes precedence for the time being. For this scene, I completed the shots where Max and the young animator meet, as well as the young animator setting up his drawing tablet and drawing May the Cat.

I feel that I am about halfway through the animation process, and my animatic should come up to roughly around 4 mins to 4 and a half mins.

[PRE-PRODUCTION] Animatic Update #03

Today I wanted to get the first scene finished, the first scene is includes the beginning until the old animator passes away. Once I finished this scene I opened a new Flash file to continue with the other scenes. However, I am happy with how this scene turned out, I may alter the timing to when we travel through time, however I may change that once I have more time at the end.

The animation so far is coming along nicely, I will continue to animate the animatic more throughout December, I feel that at the pace I am animating I should get it finished before Christmas. Below is the third draft of the animatic:

[PRE-PRODUCTION] Animatic Update #02

Today I wanted to get some character animation done on Max the Cat as well as use some of the animation tests I did in for footage. As you can see, I used the animation test 06 in the footage during the scene where the animator is drawing Max for the first time, to finish the character off I also used the ending for the animation test 05. I have also added a more detailed drawing of the old animator as he sits down at the animation desk, this is to show what the character will actually look like in the scene, below is the animatic:

I will continue to produce the animatic and hopefully get it all complete before the beginning of January.

[PRE-PRODUCTION] Animatic Update #01

Today I began to create the animatic for my animation, after a few rocky starts I was able to produce this 25 second clip from my animatic, watch below:

I am hoping to stay faithful to the storyboard as much as possible, one thing I am adding which I never added before is notes in the animatic for reference. This will help me when I begin the animation process as well as help other people understand what is happening on screen. A second thing I have added is a quote at the beginning of my animation, I want the quote to get the people who watch the animation to think about what animation actually is, so I thought the best quote for this would be Walt Disney's:

"Animation offers a medium of story telling and visual entertainment which can bring pleasure and information to people of all ages everywhere in the world." - Walt Disney

This to me sums up animation perfectly. I will continue with the animatic very shortly, so far I have covered 4 panels from my storyboard and it has already equated to 25 seconds, I believe the animation will run approximately 4 to 5 minutes if this continues, I may have to speed it up in certain scenes. 

[PRE-PRODUCTION] Animatic Research - Vintage Pencil Tests

Vintage animatics are hard to come by, as storyboards were sufficient enough for animators back in the 1930s, however, one of the more popular things to create were animation/pencil tests. These tests were created to help show how characters would be animated and drawn, they vary from having backgrounds, to being full scenes to just being 10 second clips, however, because they are so uncommon I struggled to find examples, below I found one of Brad Bird's earlier Pencil Tests for an unfinished animation, The Spirit (1980).

The Spirit (1980) Pencil Test:

When studios did create animatics, they varied in quality. They were often animated very well however because of financial constraints they were often left intentionally simple, the skill came from getting the idea across with just camera moves, good editing and limited animation.

I have been creating animation tests myself, one of the more similar tests to these would be the fourth test I created. below are a few examples of where the animator has simply created animation tests to show how the characters will be animated on screen.

Piper (1974) Pencil Test:

Again, vintage animatics are somewhat rare and are hard to come across these days. However the process isn't too different to how it is these days, when I begin to create my animatic I will of course take more inspiration from how animatics are created in modern days rather than vintage, as there are more examples of contemporary animatics. However, looking at a variety of animation and pencil tests are very insightful into how the characters were animated before hand, a useful task indeed. As stated in an earlier post, I will begin the animatic process very shortly to show how the film will look.

Pinocchio (1940) Pencil Test

[PRE-PRODUCTION] Animatic Research - Modern Animatics

Animatics are the key thing in pre-production for animation, it is an animated storyoard which allows the creator to not only get the positions of the characters in the frame, but also time it correctly. You can also use it to time the video to the music, voice acting and SFX. Modern Animatics are very common, most if not all animated television shows will have an animatic for the episode, this helps the director pick and choose which scenes they want in the finished animation, and if it all times correctly.

Below are examples of animated television shows; Rick and Morty and Adventure Time's animatic, which have both been created using Harmony - Toon Boom Animation software:

Rick and Morty Animatic:

Adventure Time Animatic:

These two animatics are created very basically, they don't have much in terms of animation. These two animatics are considered draft animatics, nothing that is drawn is set in stone and some things may or may not be edited out. Compare that to a rough animatic, which is used to actually animate your animation. There are a few differences between the two, namely the fact that the animatic is much more animated in the rough than the draft, compare the quality of movment between the Rick and Morty animatic above and the Eddsworld animatic below:

Eddsworld Animatic:

As you can see, there is much more movement in the animatic for Eddsworld, an internet animated series rather than Rick and Morty, a television series. Another difference between the two is the animation software used to create them, like I stated above, most television shows' animatics are created using Harmony - Toon Boom Animation software, whereas most internet series are animated using Adobe Flash software.

Another example of an animatic would be the Starbomb animated video animatic, which was also created using Adobe Flash software. This however, is heavily influenced by storyboards, and has actions and  directing notes on the screen. It also shows the rough animatic first, before showing an on model look at the characters, a somewhat unique look at an animatic. Below is the video:

Starbomb - SMASH Animatic:

Each type of animatic is useful, either for showing how it'd be animated, directions for animation or just for roughing out what you want on screen. I will try and incorporate a few of these animatic types, as all are useful for different reasons. I will begin the animatic as soon as I get a chance, and hopefully I can get a rough idea of how the video will look in the end.

[PRE-PRODUCTION] Storyboards

Throughout November and December I have been working on the storyboards for my animation, the storyboards overall were 20 pages long. I wanted to create my storyboards in full detail, unlike any other storyboard I have done previously. One of the things I have failed to input is the action and dialogue details, however I wanted to get the onscreen images done as a priority. Below is a link to my storyboard:

To view the storyboard click here

Now that I have completed these storyboards I am able to begin my animatic, I am hoping to get a rough complete by the beginning of January. Below you can see every page of the storyboard in image format.

 

 



[PRE-PRODUCTION] Final Script/Layout Test

Now that I have a finalized script, I wanted to jump right into a storyboard, however one of the things I struggle with when starting the pre-production is getting the layout of the animation correct. To help with this, I created a very rough layout test, similar to how Walt Disney created his storyboards in the 1920s. However, I didn't want to create my storyboards in this way, I wanted to use a more modern means to create my storyboards. Below is the layout script that I created after finalizing my script:

Now that I have created my layout test, I can see how some of the scenes will play out. This will make it easier when I create my storyboards and when I am setting the scene. I will begin to create my storyboard shortly, now that I have my final script and now that I have a rough layout test.

[PRE-PRODUCTION] Film Treatment

Film Title:

When Dreams Became Data

Logline:

An animator in the 1920s creates a new cartoon character known as Max the Cat who comes alive, after the animator dies we fast forward 95 years and a new animator enters the scene, he creates a new cartoon character known as May the Cat and the two cat's fall in love, however can the two meet when Max is constrained to paper and May is constrained to the computer?

Synopsis:

The year is 1920, and an old, retired animator picks up his pencil once again to produce a new cartoon character, Max the Cat. Max springs to life once completed and the two form a strong bond, years go by and inevitably, the old man dies, leaving Max alone in the room he was created. Move forward 95 years and the room is disturbed by a young animator, who produces a new cartoon character, May the Cat. The two cats notice each other and soon enough form a young love, however, can two cartoon characters stuck in their drawn medium ever meet? Can the two be together, or will their love end in tragedy?

Technical Information:

Certification: U

Genre: Romance, Fantasy

Animated medium: Traditionally hand-drawn, 2D digitally drawn

Aspect ratio: 16:9

Resolution: 1080 x 1920

Main Characters:

Max the Cat

May the Cat

The Young Animator

The Old Animator

Plot:

Act one: The year is 1920, and an old animator enters the animation room and sits down at his desk, he begins to draw onto some animation paper sitting on a light-box, once finished he is left with a cat character; Max the Cat. He puts the animation paper onto the wall and Max begins to move around, the old animator laughs at Max and exits the room, we fast forward through time until the old animator dies, leaving the room dark and quiet and Max waiting for him to return, but he never does.

Act two: The year is now 2016, and the room has not been touched since the animator passed away. the silence is disturbed by a young looking animator who enters the room and begins to set up his laptop, animation tablet and projector on the table where the light-box used to sit. Curiously, Max watches as the young animator begins to draw a character using the new technology. The young animator sets down his pen and exits the room, meanwhile, Max tries to see what the young animator has drawn, he sees a full coloured cat drawing; May the Cat. The two look at each other and Max begins to try and make May laugh, he fails the first time but using the principles of animation he makes her giggle. The two begin to fall in love, however they cannot be with each other as they are limited to the mediums they were drawn in.

The young animator enters the room again, closes the animation tab, sets up the projector and begins to watch a film. We fast forward to the end of the film and the young animator is fast asleep, once the credits finish rolling the animation tab re-opens and May is left projected onto the wall. Max notices and runs across the room to finally meet her, he offers her a hand and she accepts, and the two are left holding hands.

Act three: Morning comes and the young animator wakes up, he realizes he has over slept and rushes out of the door, leaving everything still running. Once the door shuts it is revealed that the two are still holding hands, while Max is on a piece of paper and May is still on the computer, but however projected next to Max the Cat. Both of them are smiling and the film comes to an end.

[PRE-PRODUCTION] Screen Writing - Scripting Conventions

Although I have finished the base of my story in the form of a script, I want to explain how I came to write my script and the research I did in order to create it. I learnt script writing while studying at Rotherham College of Arts and Technology, and now ironically enough, I teach script writing at Rotherham College of Arts and Technology.

While teaching how to write a script with my students, I ask them to create an example script and to include all of the following;

• Scene heading; A description of the location, time of the day and whether it's indoors or outdoors, usually in once sentence.
• Action; A description of any action or events that will appear on the screen.
• Characters first appearance; A description of the character that has first appeared on screen.
• Character; The characters name which always appears above the dialogue to show who is actually speaking.
• Dialogue; The lines of speech that the character is saying.
• Transition; Any form of editing instruction.
• Sub Header; A less detailed description of the location, time of day and whether it's indoors or outdoors, used when a longer heading is not needed.
• Parenthetical; A description of the action or attitude of the character.
• Extension; A description on how the voice will be heared by the audience.
• More & Continues; 'Mores' and 'continues' are used when the dialogue is spilling over to the next page, this is used to indicate the same character is speaking.
• Page Number; The page number which is located in the top right of the page.
• Intercut; Quick cuts between two scene locations.

Although every script does not need these, I think it's good to know what each of them are and what they do in the script.

Example of a script from 1928, Mickey Mouse - Steamboat Willie

Example of a script from 2010, Adventure Time - It Came from the Nightosphere

[PRE-PRODUCTION] Storyboard Research - Modern Storyboards

Story-boarding has come a long way since story-boarding of the 1920s to 30s, modern day story-boarders take roughly around 20 minutes just to do a single panel in a story-board with the average length of an 11 minute TV episode storyboard takes roughly six weeks. However, on more current projects, deadlines have dropped the time to create a storyboard and artists are being squeezed to create the same amount of work within five to four weeks.

A fully cleaned-up panel should be made up of the following things:

• A background of suggestion
• A full, on-model character acting/expressing story point
• Scene description, camera action and special effect direction.
• Initial rough timing for the shot

Before creating a storyboard, you must have a completed script to begin planning. You need to think about staging; to see where and how a shot is set up in relation to location choice and camera position, acting; to see how the character(s) will act in the shot in relation to the personality of the character, style of the show and dialogue delivery, and continuity; to maintain continued visual plot points in relation to the costumes, on model character proportions and to maintain point of interest to the characters.

Once you have finished the planning, you need to begin creating the image in the panel. The first thing that you should draw is the thumbnail; which is the initial skeletal composition, acting, staging and action. After you should create the rough drawing, which consists of reworking the initial ideas, background drawings and refined acting action. Finally, once the rough is complete you can start on the clean up, tightening all character acting and visual information.

Once you have a finished drawn panel, you need to put in the information and scene description, tis can consist of; camera information, dialogue, special effects, sound effects, description of action and any staging requests. 

"Storyboarding for animation is NOT just rapidly drawing a sketch. Even if a story artist is doing a pitch session and is quickly throwing up post-its, those sketches have to be taken down, reworked, and put into a blueprint like format so that the team working on the film can use them effectively."

Hulett, S. (2016). Storyboard Deadlines ... Storyboard Timelines. [online] Animationguildblog.blogspot.co.uk. Available at: http://animationguildblog.blogspot.co.uk/2016/03/storyboard-deadlines-storyboard.html [Accessed 10 Nov. 2016].

[PRE-PRODUCTION] Concept Art - Cintiq and Room

Similar to what I did before with the Light-box, I wanted to see how the Cintiq that the Young Animator will use will light up the room in the animation. Once we jump into the future, the Young Animator will disregard the old light-box and replace it with a more modern drawing tablet. I wanted it to be a Cintiq rather than a Bamboo or an Intuos as Cintiq's have a screen, which allows people to draw straight onto it, this is the closest thing to a digital light-box in my personal opinion.

I wanted to re-create the animation software I will be animating in aswell, that being Adobe Flash CS4. Below you can see a comparison of the light where May the Cat is, compared to the lonely musky wall where Max the Cat sits. I personally like this, as it shows that traditional animation methods are overshadowed by the new, more modern digital animation styles. I will continue to experiment with the backgrounds and the objects, I will try and draw a few more walls in the room to get a real feel for where the animation will take place.

[PRE-PRODUCTION] Scripts Development - Draft 7 and 8

Script Draft 7     -     Script Draft 8

Drafts 7 and 8 are clean ups of the script draft 6, the story remains the same however the wording is much different, I wanted to create a script with much more detail than previously. I wanted to add more descriptive words to express how the room looks, what the characters look like and the mood of the film at that moment in  time. The main differences between scripts 6, 7 and 8 is that 7 has much more detail than 6 and by draft 8 I had decided on the name of the female cat; May the Cat. Because of this I changed alot of the wording altering the script, below you can see for yourselves how much the script has changes:

[PRE-PRODUCTION] Storyboard Research - 1920s Disney

As I am producing a character which is intended to represent the 1920s era of animation, I want to research 1920 to 1930s pre-production for animation, to do this I will be looking at storyboards from around this time. Above are the original storyboards from Steamboat Willie, the first appearance of Mickey Mouse, one thing I noticed about these are the fact that they're a hybrid of a script and a storyboard. Although Micky Mouse debuted in Steamboat Willie, he originally starred in the short Plane Crazy, however with the limitations of sound at the time it wasn't released until much later. The storyboard for Plane Crazy was slightly different than the storyboard for Steamboat Willie, as it was only a series of sketched with numbers and crosses as directions, below is a quote from Digitalmediafx when discussing the original storyboard:

"Most experts concur that the use of storyboards was invented at the Disney studio. Although at Disney storyboards didn't come into general use until 1933, the Plane Crazy story sketches of 1928 are a clearly a precursor to the full-fledged storyboards that would become a staple of the cinematic process. These sketches were typical of the format in which stories would thereafter be presented at Disney. Once the panels were drawn, Disney marked his directions for animation. Checks, double checks, numbers, lined numbers, circled numbers, numbers in different colors--all of these marks held significant meaning as to how the film would be animated. An 'X' or 'Cut' was written to note a deletion, long and close shots were noted by the hand of Disney as well." 

This gives us a much better insight into how and why storyboards were drawn this way, however it wasn't until much later that we saw a more modern looking scripts with clear direction, however it is interesting to see that even with the limitations at the time, they were still able to produce storyboards. This wasn't the first time where Disney created scripts like this, infact, he used this method or his previous animations, including Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, although these storyboards go back further than Plane Crazy. As you can see with the storyboards on the right, the direction was slightly more chaotic and less detailed, much more white can be seen on this and less detail on the backgrounds, although this gives us a better chance to focus more on the characters.

[PRE-PRODUCTION] Script Development - Draft 3 - 6

After the presentation I had on the 28/10/2016, I had received feedback and opinions on how I should end my animation, I attempted to write up each scenario that I was given and wrote them all up, below are links to each one of those scripts:

Script Draft 3   -   Script Draft 4   -   Script Draft 5   -   Script Draft 6

I have been happy with the beginning of the story so far, I like the thought of it opening with the creation of Max the Cat and shows his entire life which is traditional animation. As we progress further into the story it shows the creation of the female cat and her entire life which is digital animation, I feel like it's a good mix, I have started each script with this opening, however each ending is different and inspired by the suggestions and comments made by my lecturers and course mates.

Draft 3 ends with Max meeting with the female cat inside the computer, I thought this would have been a good idea from the get go, however upon further thinking I thought perhaps it wouldn't get the symbolism, that being; Traditional animation shouldn't be disregarded as a medium because it is old, it should be treat equally as any other medium, in this instance, digital animation. I wanted to make sure they stayed in their mediums, however I thought it'd still be a good idea to experiment.

In draft 4 I wanted it to be a sort of ironic story, where Max, the traditional character becomes digital, whereas the female cat, becomes printed onto paper. This story-line to me felt like it was completely missing the point of the symbolism I wanted to create. 

However in draft 5, I attempted to bring the female cat into Max's world by having her printed off, this could have worked well, as it keeps them both in their intended formats but they can still meet each other. The problem with this story-line is that it still takes the female cat out of her medium, I wanted to keep them true to how they were created, which in turn makes it fairly impossible for them to meet, unless they left their medium. However, I was given a suggestion by one of my course mates during the presentation which lead me to draft 6.

In draft 6, the female cat remains in her digital format, however she is projected onto the wall next to Max. This would mean I can keep them both in their formats, and although they don't actually physically see each other, they can interact with each other like they are together. I personally thought this was the perfect way for the both to meet.

Overall I am happy with draft 6 of my script, however I will continue to develop onto my idea. Now that I have the outline to the story I am wanting to create, I can start storyboarding how I want to story to be laid out.

[PRE-PRODUCTION] Story Development - Drafts 1 & 2

As you may be aware from the previous posts, I have a rough idea of the story I want to create. However, the story I am creating now is different from the story I wanted to create in early September, I originally wanted to main character (The Monkey) to leap out of the animation paper and interact with the "real" world, below is the script I produced for that story:

Script Draft 1

As you can see, the story was finished and could have worked well, however I felt that this would disregard the symbolism I wanted, which was that the character works well on paper, and doesn't need to enter the new world, plus it would have been very difficult to get the character off the paper considering I am drawing this character entirely traditionally, the only way it would work is if I drew the character in Adobe Flash once he jumps out of the paper, which would again disregard the who reason behind my idea. So I wanted to confine the character to paper and have him interact with the "paper world" he is in, below is the script I produced for that story:

Script Draft 2

I felt that this was along the right path that I was wanting, however these two scripts made the character seem incredibly mischievous and I don't know if the audience would like this. Plus I didn't think the story was strong enough, there wasn't enough interaction between the traditional method and the digital method, so I have been thinking of different ideas I could use to incorporate both mediums.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I have an idea which could incorporate both mediums, and this would also allow me to use both an Old Animator and a Young animator, this story would involve the Old Animator dying of old age, and a new, younger animator takes over, using the digital method, and rather than the traditional character be mischievous, he could just be curious. I will think more about this idea in the future, but for now I think I have a fairly solid idea for a story which involves 4 characters, the cat character I will call Max, The Old Animator, The Young Animator and the digital character, possibly a love interest for Max the Cat, we shall see.

[PRE-PRODUCTION] Concept Art - Light-box and Room

I'm trying to do a few art tests along side the light-box animation tests, one of the objects that I know i'll be drawing and will feature in the majority of the practice animation is a light-box. One of the things I thought would be difficult was to get the light box to look like there was a light at the back of paper. 

I wanted to try and see how the light-box would light up the room. So to test this, I attempted to illustrate how the room would look from the perspective of someone sat in front of the light-box, so this would include; The light-box itself, the desk, anything on the desk and the back wall covered in various drawings, this is how the concept art turned out:

Personally I think that the room could work with the light-box being the light source, as it could symbolize that this is where life is created. As you can see from the earlier room design, I wanted to make sure that the room has no windows, this is because I wanted the light-box to be the only light source, or maybe there could be a lamp on the desk, regardless, I want all the light source to come from the area where the light-box is. The drawings on the wall are just placeholders for various drawings I will put on the wall, the drawings up there currently are various scans I have scanned from 2011 - 2016. The drawings that will be on the wall will be of various characters that the main character can interact with. So far I am pleased with the designs and I feel like if I can keep the art style up it should be a very aesthetically appealing animation.