Thursday 29 November 2012

Monday 26 November 2012

Animatic Review and Edits

I've been working on the animatic ready for tomorrow's hand-in. I've continually worked on it and refined it making it smooth and easy to follow. I'm using the narration in the style of Thomas the Tank Engine, in that the narrator also does the character voices too. I've been working alongside Kylie Burrell, who has been working on various parts of the animatic with me.

First Review
 No narration/sound effects:


Second Review:
I narrated this myself, just get a feel of the pacing and timing. However I still felt the piece was too quick.




Third Review:
With narration from myself and Sound Effects.

 

 Fourth Review:
Now with the final Narrator (Thomas Coleman - http://www.tc.genozo.com/) and Sound Effects.


I'm going to add more bits of narration in, along with some fast-paced music during the  fight scene part. However I am currently pleased with the progress the animatic has made.

Sound Effects from freesound.org

Saturday 24 November 2012

BAF 2012 and WIP

I had a week away from uni, working at the 19th Bradford Animation Festival as one of the BAFettes there. This was my second year of volunteering. So it was great to see everyone from last year and meet some new people.

The festival itself is fantastic. There's always something going on, whether it be a talk, screening, premier of a film or even meet-and-greets with people from the industry. It's always lively, so we were always on our toes!

I was lucky enough to meet Christine Phelan from the game company Valve and have a little chat with her about University and showreels.  I was also very lucky and met Vivien Halas, daughter of John Halas of Halas and Batchelor as she collected the Lifetime Achievement Award for Halas and Batchelor. Along with this, I saw various screenings including Aardman Animator Will Beecher on animating The Pirate Captain in The Pirates! An Adventure with Scientists! I saw a variety of other screenings too, which was great and made me feel completly inspired for this year. (It wasn't all screenings, I spent a lot of my time opening doors, running around the museum collecting people, checking tickets and setting up workshops!)

Anyway, back to work:

I changed the story again whilst I was away, based on the critique from the Pitch, the week previous. I re-wrote the script and re-designed the storyboards.
Although these are very rough, it was just get an idea of the story. I was very unsure of the ending, but decided with Kylie that once the tooth monster is destroyed, it becomes tiny toothfairies which fly off out of the cricus. The story now consists mostly of the circus instead, and promotes the medical side in a very mild, silly mannor. The idea of it being that the circus are performing, Mark steals some sweets from an audience member who happens to be a toothfairy. Outraged the toothfairy makes one of Mark's teeth fall out which then turns into a giant green tooth monster which over-runs the Circus. Tilly and the gang have to use their knowledge of teeth to destroy the monster. I finished the animatic when I got back, with help from Kylie. With a review from Helen, I needed to add the narration & character dialouge for it to run much more smoothly. The whole thing was also much too fast, so I needed to slow it down, especially for the audience I was promoting it for.

This is the first draft:




I'm currently working on the re-draft. I narrated it myself, however I have issued a narrator to do the voiceover for me along with the character voices. This should be done over the weekend and I can edit it into the final animatic along with sound effects.


Monday 5 November 2012

Tilly Waving Test

Working on a few tests on how to animate my piece. I've decided to use Flash, using the bone tool. I've done a few online tutorials, but I'm still getting the hang of it. The amazing puppet-style effect it produces is something I really wanted in my pieces, plus I can import texture layers in from Photoshop to layers in Flash.





Storyboards, Pitch Bible and Critique.

The name has been changed and is now called 'The Secret Circus'. I changed the name after feeling that although I like the idea of using 'Underground' to illustrate secrets and mystery, I decided as it's for younger children to use Secret.
Storyboards are pretty much complete. There's a bit of editing to do, adding more scenes etc to make it flow. However I feel these are almost finished.





My Pitch Bible is also something I have been working on recently. I've had a lot of useful crit on it and took this into account. The character pages changed from having simple pictures of the characters, to ones I created of them with more life. I added personal information about each character and their friendships. Although some characters have stronger friendship bonds than others, they all remain good friends in the series. I've also decided to use Photoshop paint texture and scanned texture to give more depth to the characters. Here are the character pages, line-up and synopsis which went into my pitch bible;








I also emailed two close friends, one is a mother to two small children, the other has a young Brother and Sister. I emailed my characters and asked for feedback from the children. This is what I got;

Tilly -
Rhys: good imagination, thinks she's a good girl as she's helpful to her friends. Think she looks bigger and older than 5!
Paige: likes her invests in balloons and hula hooping, but doesn't like her outfit and would rather see her in a polka dot dress with tutu skirt!
Ramone -
Rhys: very talented.
Paige: again likes his interests as very similar to her own (cookery and music). Very clever for juggling 17 balls and he looks perfect.
Mark -
Rhys: says he doesn't like that he seems greedy about cakes and sweets, but does like how he messes with his hair to make it perfect and shiny.
Paige: likes him doing his hair, but doesn't like his meanness to Daniel over butterflies.
Martina -
Rhys: Rhys himself doesn't like dancing to favourite music so this instantly means he dislikes martina.
Paige: loves martina as she said she's just like me dancing to my favourite music and climbing trees.
Daniel -
Rhys: loves his waistcoat and thinks he should make waistcoat for the rest of the circus. Thinks his fear of butterflies is very silly and it should be bees. Oh he also thinks he should fire mark for being mean to him.
Paige: thinks he's very clever for making such wonderful clothing, but butterflies are harmless and he shouldn't be scared of them.
Lionel -
Rhys: likes that he is a dentist and dr and looks after the health and well being of his friends, and reminds him of nanny because he likes a cuppa and a good book.
Paige: as she also enjoys reading thinks this is a good thing. Likes his medical input to the circus, makes him kind.
They would like to see what adventures Tilly has with her circus friends, and have mentioned a circus skills school, and scary Halloween performance and a show on the beach.



Jasmine liked Tilly. She said her name was pretty and she liked her hair and liked the picture of her hula hooping.

They both liked Ramone. They said he was really cute, but Jasmine wanted to know why he hadn't got 2 whiskers on both sides of his face.

They said Mark has 'funny hair', but more in a good way, than a bad way. They liked the picture of him with the cake, and Jonathan wants a t-shirt with a 'J' on it, like Mark's with the 'M'.

They liked Martina too. Jon said she looked like Mark, so I had to explain they were twins. Jasmine said her bobble was pretty. Jon said girls don't skateboard, so I explained to him that they can.

Jon thought Daniel was cute, and Jasmine especially liked his waistcoat.

They both thought Lionel was really cute, and liked his mane. Jasmine said the picture of him with the tea was cute. I also like him because he likes tea and books like me! :D