Kiran Soo

1st Year LSAD He/They Selected Discipline: Animation

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Mini-Me

Finishing

Glad to progress through and finish this very last project.

We removed the green screen with Photoshop, then we did the final video with Animate. I quite like how it came out

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Animation

28/04 - 29/04

Coming back from the Easter break we are back to the mini-me project where we left off our chosen illustrator and practicing their artstyle. I have chosen Lucy Fleming

We also needed to make a mini versions of ourselves or a family member or friend. Here I did myself

The phrase for the video was first thought to be a bit shorter but this morning I found out it needed to be 9 words minimum, so I basically extended it to “If I don’t get sleep, I need my caffeine”

I also did a quick sketch of how my mini-me will look like in Lucy Fleming’s artstyle

I used paper, black sugar paper and a cereal box for support. I coloured with watercolour pencils.

I quite like how it came to be

Yesterday I did the base of the background with water coloured pencils. Then this morning I used water and let it dry a bit so I can add in the details according to the artstyle

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Hey Derek Derek Presentation

It was really enjoyable to see the other groups to present their work and how a few of them did actual concept of merchandising their project like we did with the T-shirt

This journey was really fun, seeing each other’s work and getting to know each within the discipline.

For our presentation we explained quick through the characters, location, background and we make sure to detail the plot. All we left out is research since it wasn’t necessary for a limited time presentation

Here I want to express my love for Team 7’s poster for their project that they handed it out, so I got it trimmed and laminated at home and hung it on my bedroom wall

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Nursery Rhyme Group Project

Pitching

Today we are finalising the work and came up with answers since Monday. There was a question about how it can be marketed and so I did a T-shirt design. In fast fashion there is a lot of comedy shows and sitcoms such as Rick and Morty, and The Simpsons sold as clothing and so I thought something like this is suited for our animation project. We have also given a title. Whether you think it sounds good or bad it’s up to you.

I had an old T-shirt that used to have a Mortal Kombat print on it but it’s gone completely after several washes and i haven’t worn it since. I saw short videos on how you can T-shirt print at home with very cheap materials. All I needed was normal paper, cling film and baking paper to iron on

I actually quite like how it came out, but I should have trimmed the plastic properly

This method is low quality and it can peel off over time but it’s the cheapest and quick access to do this

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Nursery Rhyme Group Project

Master shot and props

I chose five scenes for the group to work on as master shots. I did one with Derek started his hallucination and shocked at Zac. Then I drawn the props that would be used in the animation

In my part there isn’t much to do now other than the pitch to work on

These are eye study for the five characters to help my other teammates with the master shots

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Nursery Rhyme Group Project

Full Animatic

Here is the complete rough animatic done on ToonSquid. I really enjoyed the process of this and seeing the results make me feel satisfied.

To tell the truth I am awfully quick as I’ve been told by others and I agree

I did laugh sometimes while making this, because of bad sketches or supposedly funny scenes

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Reflecting on nonsense: Sr Pelo

Our nursery rhyme has basically no origin or actual story behind and it’s just random nonsense. During this project I kept thinking of one of my favourite YouTube animators, Sr Pelo. His name is Mr Hair in Spanish because he has an afro 🤣

He’s a Mexican artist known for his own iconic screaming and weird yet funny sound effects, like table banging, gagging noises etc. He is also the creator of the indie animated series, Spooky Month, about two kids who are obsessed with Halloween and goes all around their town and do nonsense, though there is story included.

This is the pilot of the series

His other animations are the most nonsensical purely for comedy. He does a series of Mickey Mouse parodies, or he called it Mokey’s Show and it’s basically Mickey and his friends doing random stuff

This is one of my favourite episodes

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Nursery Rhyme Group Project

Second minute of the animatic

Basically I plan to get a minute done for each day so the last minute of the animatic should be done by tomorrow or Thursday

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Nursery Rhyme Group Project

Today I was working on a rough animatic to figure out the timing for the three minute animation while Gabriel and Loryn worked on backgrounds, Ella finding audio and Amy doing more research. Amy has given notes on camera angles which helped me with the animatic

Here’s the first minute of the animatic done today (with ToonSquid)

I showed it to my group and they were enthused by it

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Script and Storyboard

29 - 30/03

Ella has done a rough script for our animation and Gabriel had tidy it up to make it less stiff and make it more sense of what's going on in the story. On the first two days we did our own script, before we changed the location. I have posted my part on my first post of the nursery rhyme group project. I really hate it, because I struggle to write good dialogue and to come up with interesting actions of the characters, which is basically my first weakness.

Here is Gabriel's script. He sent all this in our group chat and we have given our reaction. Honestly though I really like it and quite impressed with it

Ella finished her rough storyboard during the weekend and I love it

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Nursery Rhyme group project

After getting feedback from the first idea we had, we were told that it was more an event happening than a story. We changed the location from a pub to a themed festival, cutleries. It’s strange that it would be a big event for something of the littlest everyday thing, but the funny thing is there things like this that happen in real life, like setting up a gathering for garlic bread enthusiasts or anything like that.

Another member has the script. So basically what is happening, the opening scene is camera entering the inside of a car of five friends, main character Derek (The Dog), Krystall (The Cow), Zac (with electric guitar) (The Cat), Sebastian (The Spoon, and a femboy) and Felicity (The Fork). They‘re chatting while on the way to the festival. Entering the festival and having a seat at a table bench outside, with food trucks, a stage and attractions. A stranger came up to Derek giving him a drink and unhesitatingly takes it. The booze is spiked. The next scene is the spiked drink starts taking affect and morphs into a dog and everything goes from a muted colour palette to vibrant and saturated. Everyone in the festival turning into cutleries. Zac turns into a black cat with an electric fiddle/violin, Krystall turns into a cow and jumps over the moon, Sebastian and Felicity turns into a spoon and fork and making out (metal clanking noises). Derek is running around on fours trying to escape. A security guard warning him no pets allowed. Everything is nonsense. He blacks out. Then waking up with people, including his friends around him

We have a script kind of done. It’s actually really difficult to make it more story like, even coming up with dialogue as our genre is comedy. It’s basically reflecting on young adults in the real world when it comes to night outs, big events and such.

This is our wall so far. Storyboard is still in the works

Here are the rest of the characters

What I think with this friendship, is that they “adopted” The Dog(Derek), although he seems shaggy looking and unfriendly, he’s the opposite, which is why the type of breed of the dog he turns into in his hallucination is a golden retriever. I just finished Felicity last

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Finished Character Reference: Dog of Hey Diddle Diddle

Colours is what I have a hard time choosing when it comes to character design, even my own characters, because I have to find what best that contrasts and maybe blends in really well, so sometimes it kind of looks generic to me, but for here I’d say it’s ok

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Animation Week 3

In the next three weeks we’re working on something new. We were asked to randomly pick a nursery rhyme, a genre, and a time period. I came up to choose for my team first and we got ‘Hey, Diddle Diddle’, Comedy and Internet Age (1990 - Present)

We first researched the nursery rhyme and the context behind it, though we found out there isn’t an actual origin or story behind it, it’s just unusual characters doing things they are not able to do in real life.

For comedy it was quite a struggle to come up with ideas because it’s actually one of the hardest genre of film to write, but since we are also given the time period, I actually thought of early 2000s Disney/Nickelodeon shows like iCarly, and then another teammate suggested something like Friends and Modern Family.

We also had to think of a target audience and so we all agree with suitable for adults, or at least over 15, so shows like Family Guy or South Park

This is the nursery rhyme lyrics:

‘Hey, diddle, diddle, the cat and the fiddle

The cow jumped over the moon

The dog laughed to see such sport/fun

And the dish/fork ran away with the spoon’

There are slight different verses of the nursery depending on how people prefer, but for one of our characters, it’s a fork

So the location we came up with is a pub. All the characters are humans and the main character is the dog (is actually human but took a drug). The main character goes to the restroom to consume a pill from his pocket and has started to take effect. He looks in the mirror and see himself morph into a dog. He walks out and seeing the scene of the pub change with vibrant colours. The guitar friend turns into the cat. The blonde friend turns into the cow, and a couple turns into the fork and spoon. The dog collapses and wakes up seeing people gathering and has now turned back

Here is my brainstorm and quick script. Tomorrow we’re deciding on how the final script will go

We divided the five characters to one of each of us by random. I did a quick sketch of the dog and the others did sketches of their characters

We have assigned to our roles. By the start of the mid-production possibly I’ll try to get all five character sheets in flat colour

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Lucy Fleming (Illustrator)

Today was continuing trying out different art styles from our books and I was debating with myself whether I’d choose Horrible Histories or A Bear Called Blue.

For Horrible Histories, line work enthuse me the most but the graphic novel is in monochrome. I did have some familiarities with the series when I was younger.

In the end I chose A Bear Called Blue so I can try to keep out of my comfort zone, but it may enter my comfort zone now.

These are more studies from today

I continued with the art style I chosen at home with watercolour pencils. I believe how the illustrations is created is with the flats underneath watered, then scribbled/outlined with the pencils for lighting and shading.

I searched more about the artist, and I had a feeling the illustrations are digitally drawn with Procreate, because I noticed that with the white colour, such as the white flowers would be difficult to appear visible on a green grass with coloured pencils. I also know that such brushed can be created for digital art programs to appear like a traditional art medium like painting and pencil sketching

Here are her other illustrations

Here’s her own website

Illustration | Lucy Fleming Illustrations

Illustrations by Lucy Fleming. View Portfolio, Books, Blog, Brush Sets and more.

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Day Out, part 2

In the afternoon we were back in the college to observe the art styles of our selected books and try to replicate it with similar materials they may have used and then redraw our drawings with those art styles. This what I was able to get done today. I was really exhausted since I was walking a lot as I was doing small errands and dropping by home while on break before I came back to the studio. The purpose of this is that if we were to work in an animation production, multiple animators would have to work on an exact same art style for a show, film or video game

These are the pages I chose from the books

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Day Out

This morning we walked to the People’s Park to draw some scenes with various materials that we have just to see how we draw them. Really sunny outside so I thought lighting was really good, especially the people walking around looking around me and the other students

At 12:30 we arrived to the city library and a woman who works there showed us around where different genres are placed.

We were tasked to find illustrated books in the children’s section that we like and that is different from our usual art style. For myself I felt like I tried way too hard with the books I selected that are way different than my own art style, especially the painted illustrations. The one that is the closest but not similar to my art style is the Horrible Histories book. I did try to find books that has illustrations of the outside world since we were doing observational drawings in the park

‘So You Think You’ve Got it Bad’ about Ancient Greek interests me the most because I have read a few texts in it, even though it’s not the aim of the selection, but Greek Mythology is one of my recent interests

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Pixilation

In morning we started shooting for our pixilation video in the park nearby the college.

On my way to the college in the morning I bought an actual ready to eat whole chicken from Dunnes Stores. Gabriel was disgusted to hold the chicken with his bare hands but dealt with it 🤣🤣🤣

We have done the first take within an hour and have gotten feedback, so what we could add on is what is going on, and have a smoother animation to make it as a pixilation. This is the first take.

After coffee break we went back to the park to replace some scenes and add more. We left the scenes with Gabriel surprised and choking because we all liked it. By the time we were doing the retake the chicken is already cold and the juices have turned into mushy jelly and so it was more difficult to handle in terms of the texture 😂, then we got the park’s basketball.

Here’s my final edit of the video. I edited this on CapCut on my iPad as we were allowed to work on any program

I really enjoyed today’s work and have such good laughs while making this, even while editing the video individually

Here’s the recreation of the storyboard Lorena did