FMP Evaluation

 

Research

During my research, I went to the Power Up exhibition in the Science Museum, showing off many consoles like PS1 and many of the older consoles such as arcade machines. Seeing them, gave me the idea for the arcade machine scene.  I created the Stone Age part of my animation from imagination and a little bit of research, as I didn’t want it to look like an actual Stone Age. I wanted it to have a more cartoony feel like my characters have. I struggled to find the appropriate research.

In my animation I wanted to include a scene, where the Neanderthal was painting on the wall of the cave they lived in, like the Cayeux cave paintings. However, I couldn’t seem to find any simple designs and a model cave that they used to live in. I also did not like any of the styles I found, as they were not what I wanted them to look like.  I looked on the internet and in the following  books:

Jayne Pilling. (1997) A Reader in Animation Studies. 1^st Sydney: John Libby & Company Pty Ltd.

Roger Sears. (1999) Cracking Animation. 2^nd United Kingdom: Thames & Hudson Ltd.

Kenneth Powell (2003) Games Design under a Lens. 1^st United Kingdom: Merrell Publishers Limited

Many of the Pink Panther episodes inspired the art style of my characters and how they  are created, as well as the simple way in which they are animated, i.e.the animated characters on top of the background and minimal detail. The choice of colour palette, e.g. mainly pastels, pinks and purples, is also due to the Pink Panther inspiration. Like the Pink Panther, my characters are also almost silent.

Planning and Time Management

I finished on time, because most of my animation was fairly simple to edit together, however, I could have added in more, if there had been more time. I used cut scenes to explain what is happening. Originally I was going to draw out every frame of my animation because of the limitations of my skills on Animate, having only learned it recently. 

For the most part, I stuck to my action plan, however towards the end, in order to stay on track, I ended up doing everything including sound, editing and creation of backgrounds in one day. In hindsight, I should have allowed more time for the sound and background creation. I also could have started learning Animate earlier on.

Developing and Modifying Work

Originally, I wanted the boy to get sucked into a computer because of a virus,  however, in the end, I decided that didn’t make sense.  Therefore I changed  it to him getting a time traveller watch instead. In total I experimented with three ideas: the original one was the virus, then the watch and finally the idea I favoured, was that it was all a dream, although I was a bit concerned that this idea was overused in animations. I chose a simple title, as it is catchy and clearly describes the story.

My ideas were not very varied, however, I feel they were all achievable for me to do. I spent many hours working on idea generation and I feel it was an adequate amount. When experimenting with colours, I created a mood board to see what colours were used by the animations, which had inspired me and which added a new depth to my animation.

My original plan had been for the boy to fall off the cliff and onto a lot of spikes, however, I did not have enough time to animate this and also felt it was not very appropriate, so instead he just falls off the cliff.

During the final processing of my animation, it dawned on me, that my animation was lacking a lot of diegetic sounds, so I created these by recording them on my phone. I used my imagination to record hand tapping on a key board when the character hits the keyboard in the arcade scene. In the same scene I created a sound for gunfire and was going to add a voice recording of the speech bubble, but had not enough time to do so.

For the music, I searched the Internet to find a piece of non-copyrighted music that I could use, as I was short for time. I would have composed my own music given the time. However, the music I picked did not sound right for the scene, as it was too fast, so I slowed it down in Premier Pro and cropped it to a part I liked, which sounded good with my animation. I wanted to find a sound for a door slamming and would have created my own, but did not want to slam a door in College. Also, the room I was recording the sounds in had too much echo, so I could not record proper footsteps. For the wind sound I used the free archive available on the BBC Sound Effects.

I chose the typeface for the cut scenes because I like it, although I believe some people might find it a bit hard to read.

Materials, Techniques and Processes

For the creation of my animation I used the following materials: Adobe, Illustrator, Photoshop, Animate, a bit of After Effects and Premier Pro (my favourite software because I enjoy editing).

I would have drawn out more of the frames, if I’d had more time.

Animate took me a while to learn and I would have liked to have been better at it.

In hindsight Adobe After Effects would probably have been a more suitable program for my animation, but as I find it difficult, I used Animate.

The Final Outcome

I chose an Animation, as I thought I would enjoy this project the most and am happy with my final project and feel it fulfilled the requirements of the brief. However, if I was to do another project,  I would definitely change what I created. I would have preferred making a short film, as I enjoy the editing and the filming process. To be honest, I underestimated how complicated the animation process would be and it did not help that I am a beginner at Animate.

However, this experience helped me to improve my animation skills and taught me that I need to spend more time thinking about a project and how to realise it. I also need to be realistic about my abilities and start planning and structuring the project earlier on, so I do not run out of time at the end. In future, I need to build more on my strengths.

Strengths and Weaknesses

The following worked well for my project:

I feel the choice of music is appropriate and fits the animation as do the sound effects. I like the story line and included the scene, where the man is mean to the boy, as children and young people can identify with this. Time travel is also a good subject in my opinion.

I feel I could have improved on the following:

The overall look could have been improved, i.e. I could have drawn out more scenes and created more sound effects and made a longer animation.

During the course of my studies and especially working on this project, I feel my animations have improved and become more sophisticated. My editing skills have also got better. I think I have got better at sound effects and finding suitable music and I now have a better idea of where to look for resources.

Conclusions

If I did this project again, I would do a film instead. However, if I was to do another animation, I would get better at After Effects first, so I could produce more complex animations.

This project taught me how to use Animate. I also got better at matching sound and music. I learned that good time management is very important, so one does not have to rush a lot of things at the end.

L.A Noire Evaluation

Overall I think that the trailer is pretty good as it has a soundtrack which adds an effect. A type of horror film feel. The dark mis-en-scene also add the horror effect to the trailer. However the whole idea was to have a noir film which is more of a contrasts

FMP Mood Boards

FMP Background

I like all of my backgrounds as they are all pretty simple but display what needs to be shown

FMP Research

Project Proposal First Draft

Project Proposal Draft 2

1980s Games Arcade

The 1980s was what some people call “The Golden Age of  Games” as many of the first games that start it all. The era saw the rapid spread of video arcades across North America, Europe, and Asia. The number of video game arcades in North America, for example, more than doubled between 1980 and 1982 from 4000 to 10,000 which is a pretty large amount due to the newness of games. The original Pac-Man was created in the year 1980 and was an instant favourite and has kept its fans still today. Donkey Kong was then created in 1981 were Mario (the famous character) was first seen. Leading to the creation of Mario Bros in1983. However a very famous game called Frogger was created in 1981. Like the first version of Crossy Road.

1980s Fashion

1980s clothing styles for men included acid washed jeans, jean jackets, parachute pants, high top shoes and T-shirts. Unless, of course you were in the preppie crowd. Then you wore Izod shirts, probably with the collar up, dress pants and penny loafer shoes. Accessories were big and gaudy. Necklaces were layered on and had large pendants and medallions. Earrings were long and dangly. Purses were huge or small – no reason not to take it to extremes in both directions. Hair for men and women was long, tall and wide. In short, blow dry it out, use a lot of hair spray to hold it and you were good to go.

Stone Age

The period began with the first stone tools, about 750,000 years ago. Some groups of people were still in the stone age into the 20th century. They also killed animals for food and clothing. They used animal skin for their shelters. The Stone Age is divided by archaeologists (people who study relics) into three sections: Paleolithic (“old stone”), Mesolithic (“middle stone”), and Neolithic (“new stone”). Pottery was invented during the Neolithic Stone Age. The next age was the Bronze Age were people found out how to smelt ores for metal.

2D Animation

Day And Night

A good example of 2D animation is The Flintstones Opening Theme which was the intro to the very famous cartoon, The Flintstones created in 1960 and has had 166 episodes which all focused on a Stone Age family and there many problems and everyday activities. The style of the Flintstones is very clear to understand what is happening due to the crispness of the actual characters and the backgrounds. The backgrounds are only 1 layer but give the feeling of depth and make the characters seem as they are actually there and not placed over the top. The outfits and props use I think it a mixture of both modern day times like cars shown in the trailer and also the Stone Age clothing being very simple and only one look (depending on the gender of the character).

Treatment/Blocking Sheet

The character is Me and the obstacle course is a really weirdly laid out the street. I’m running down it because I am being chased by a monster that will take my soul if it catches me. Overall I’m planning for the animation to last at least one minute.I hope for the animation to be as realistic as possible but I will need to learn how to use the Rig tool more as at the moment I don’t really know how to use it.

 

Final 3D Animation

 

My Final Animation is not the best as  I didn’t understand how the rig worked. Also, I found that the controls of Maya were hard to remember and I constantly kept using the wrong shortcut. However, I am semi-pleased with that fact that I was able to make my character ‘walk’ across the screen. I think the animation was good however it could be improved by the way it was overall animated. I feel I rushed to create it and it ended up looking not human-like and missed out some key things while animating. To improve this I could learn how to use Maya and create a proper animation using the correct tools.  I found the Rig tool like HumanIk hard to use.

Topology And 3D Pipeline

A topology is the study of geometrical properties and spatial relations unaffected by the continuous change of shape or size of figures.

Polygonal: Digital 3D Shapes made up of Faces, created using vertices

NURBS: Non-Uniform Rational Bee Splines

Vertex: Corners of a 3D Shape

Extrusion: Extending a shape to get a new shape

Sub-Division: Dividing a shape to gain more information about a shape

Valence: Number of edges on a shape

N-Gon: A shape with 5 points or more, making the shape uneven and hard to work with.

Cartesian: Maya’s Grid System.

Entertainment

One of the places you can use 3D modelling is in the entertainment field. There’s not a big film that comes out of Hollywood without extensive use of 3D modelling. It’s clearly useful in special effects, not only creating environments that never existed before and supernatural occurrences that unfold quite naturally, but it’s not uncommon to have shots, where things are added that you might not even realize, are artificial. 3D graphic artists using Computer Graphic Imaging (generally referred to as “CGI”) can remove things from scenes, too, like taking out palm trees from a scene that’s supposed to be happening in middle America.

Geology and Science

Geologists and scientists use 3D modelling to create models that simulate earthquakes and landforms, such as ocean trenches, that let them see the effects of stresses. Additionally, they can simulate motion, like flight patterns, including various factors that affect them.

 

3D Production Pipelines 
In 3D production a film goes through 4 stages of development which involves creating the storyline, pre-production which involves addressing challenges they may face, then production of the film then the last stage post-production which involves polishing the end product and taking out any final falls in the movie.

The Storyline 
The storyline is created then they discuss with the Pixar team their ideas for the movie. The real challenge behind this stage is to get the audience involved and make them see the potential that their movie idea has.

Text Treatment Stage
Then the next stage the text treatment stage is written which is a short document which summarizes the main idea of the story. Then many ideas which are the same will be developed in order this way they can find the ideas to be solid or just ideas with open possibilities.

Storyboards and drawing 
The storyboards for the movie are then made storyboards are like the blueprint for the movie which shows the dialogue and action which will be in the movie. Each storyboard artist at Pixar receives script pages or a beat outline of the story, basically a map of the characters and their emotional changes that need to be seen through actions. Using these guidelines the artists assign the sequences to draw them out and then pitch their work to the director.

Voice Talent begins recording
The first stage of the voice recording, the artists choose to do the various voices in the film are recorded and then are eventually are put into the animation, they will record the same script several times over and the best take which suits the character will be used in the animation.

Edit toil begins making reels 
A reel is a videotape which allows the cleaned up storyboard sequence to stand alone, alone without a pitch person to tell the story. A pitch can be successful because of the storyteller in strong. So reels are an essential stage because they show the understanding of the timing in the sequence. The editorial then uses the information to fix the length and other elements of each shot in a sequence.

The Art Department creates the look and feel 
Storyboards and their own creative brainstorming and development work, the art department creates inspirational art illustrating the world and the characters it also designs sets, props, visual looks for surfaces and colours and “ colour scripts” for lighting, which are impressionistic Patel illustrations that emphasize the light in scenes.

Models are sculpted and articulated 
Using the art department’s model packet a set of informational drawings- the characters sets and props are either sculpted by hand and then scanned in three-dimensionally or modelled in 3D directly in the computer. They are then given a skeleton which the animator will use to make the object or character move. Woody has 100 points in his face alone.

FInal Website Design

Designing

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Website Design

This is a quick sketch for the website that I will be creating. I think that I will stick to these designs as I think they are simple to make and look very nice to the eye if I pick a good colour scheme. The Top photo is a layout of a PC and the bottom is a phone and tablet.