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Grad Assist Time Sheet from Paola

This is the INCOMPLETE version of my 2nd Year university film. Blending modes and awful composition created a ghostly atmospheric version of my Documentary about…

First Composition of my 2 Minute Film ‘A Day in The Smoke’

A Day in the Smoke Reflective Report

I am incredibly grateful and lucky that I chose to animate on paper this year I as was able to continue working on my film from home. I turned a chair and a phone into a rostrum and had a lightbox so my home studio was pretty equipped! I wanted to animate My second-year film on paper to give it the organic and gritty feel that mirrors the atmosphere of London. Also, I think you learn a lot more from using paper as there are less shortcuts than digital, it just takes much more time! This means my skills as an animator will have improved by the time I enter into 3rd year. I wanted to really expand my character animation skills, so the film is entirely made up of character moments. The lack of dialogue adds to the documentary style I was going for and it also gave me a chance to communicate everything purely visually. There are still more character scenes I wanted to include, for example the last man who struggles to get on a packed tube and the busker playing in the street. Luckily, I can keep adding scenes throughout the summer to build my film up for when I can re-shoot and composite it in the future.

I think the lack of an animatic caused unnecessary stress. I have learnt that next year whatever style of film I do I will definitely have an animatic. I decided my film would be a series of unrelated shots that each individually told a short story. And of course, I used London as the setting and main character of the film. I started my production by venturing into London on research trips gathering ideas for character, locations and gags. I really enjoyed the pre-production process where I recorded my sound, met the busker Manuel Ramos who provided the brilliant soundtrack (which was recorded at Tottenham Court Road) and sketched all the characters I saw in London. Seeing small snippets of life across a city was my initial concept. I was recommended the book Will Eisner’s New York. The book is a graphic novel that has a series of unrelated comic strips looking and different aspects of life in New York city. In addition, the book Ronald Searle America also inspired the sketchy quality of my character designs and sketches. I wanted to improve my caricature skills as well and I believe I have during the creation of this film.

The final composition is very different to the outcome I expected. Due to having a laptop with a broken trackpad that doesn’t have a lot of space I wasn’t able to use photoshop or TvPaint to clean up and composite the characters into separate layers. Therefore, I had to improvise for this version of my film and use blending modes in After Effects. There’s still a lot of parts to fix which I will fix when it comes to re-shooting it. However, I believe the heart of my film is there despite the messy composition. Overall, I’m pleased with this version of my film, I think it is what kept me sane while being at home. It was good to have something to ground me in reality and focus on during this strange time.

#2 minute film

Internship Project

Internship Project Reflection

To be honest I didn’t leave myself enough time to work on the Internship Project as I was focusing on my film a lot during the lockdown. I reached out to one Freelance Character Designer based in California however he didn’t get back to me. As the chance of an Internship was less likely during the summer, I decided to reach out to chat to some freelancers and ask for any advice. I wondered whether reaching out through Instagram would be successful as I thought it would give a more personal, friendly approach to having a chat and asking questions. It worked in one case as I got chatting to a freelance Illustrator. Her advice was vague, and a little unrelated however it was interesting, nonetheless. In this case, Instagram seemed too friendly as a platform, perhaps it would have been better emailing for more professionality and informative answers. Additionally, as we were planning on having Joanna Quinn in for a talk, I thought about messaging her, as I admire her work a lot and thought it would be fitting to ask questions about her experience and for any animation tips. I researched more about her by watching her films, reached out, and managed to arrange a Skype call for Thursday 14th May which I am really looking forward to doing! Overall, I should have given more thought into the project, I definitely put it to the back of my mind since I was just focusing on the animation. However, despite doing it last minute (and the slight embarrassment of not being answered in one case!) I enjoyed reaching out to professionals and will have more confidence to do it more in the future.

#development project

Life drawing: 14&21/03/2020

Modeling Stephen

#lifedrawing

Life drawing:. 07/02/2020

#lifedrawing

Life Drawing: 31/02/2020

#lifedrawing

Life Drawings

Here are some life drawings I did during the lockdown of my inspiring views of the living room and my flat mates.

#lifedrawing

GRAD ASSIST SCENE

This was the only scene I worked on for Paola. It was going to be people morphing from the cocnrete to gather onto the bus.

Grad Assistance Reflection Report

Unfortunately, I began to work on the Grad assist project a week before the university closed. I remember at the time talking to Chris about the uni closing and I naively said that everything would be fine. The Grad Assist hire day was interesting; I enjoyed presenting and it was a change of pace to do something that felt quite professional. Despite it being a long day, I thought I learnt a lot about the 3rd years and I was very happy with getting Paola as my grad! I believe I was paired with a brilliant grad as we were communicating well and understood each other, however it took me a few weeks to start doing work for Paola as she was still working on pre-production. I started to animate the ‘Morphing Scene’ which took me around 2 hours, but I still wasn’t finished with the scene when I saved it. As I was unable to open the TvPaint files on my laptop I unfortunately couldn’t finish the scene. When lockdown occurred, I talked to Paola who said since the production of her film was unable to continue, I couldn’t do anything more for her. It’s a shame how the circumstances played out as I really enjoyed working on the scene that I had started! Overall, I’m just frustrated at myself for not doing more for her earlier on. I did learn from Paola, who chatted with me about background art and was telling me about her colour schemes and keeping a consistent design. In addition, she strongly advised me to make a realistic schedule for my 3rd hear film and finishing pre-production as soon as possible so I’m not working on my animatic way into the production. I thought that was good advise.

#development project

Example of composed scene wth fully shot animation. This was the first scene I animated back in early March.

#2 minute film

Here are some more of my sketches I did while animating!

#2 minute film

Rough character sketches that I made during the Production process.

#2 minute film

The two rough key frames walk cycles. These are 10 frames

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Cat rooftop scene. This is the rough animation version of the cat scene at the beginning of my film!

Here's another punk that I'm going to have boiling on the Camden Lock bridge shot. I'm in the process of finishing the other punks!

After this I've got only two more scenes to animate. Then I can get cracking on with the compositing. I'll be tight for time but I should have it completed by the 13th!

07/05/20

#2 minute film

This is the first shot of the film, I extended the Barrel man. However I don't like the timing so I'm going to add more frames to this shot if I have time!

07/05/20

#2 minute film

Collection of the boiling characters in the Escalator scene. I will move each character up the escalator when I composite my film.

07/05/20

#2 minute film

Walk cycle

The left foot on the first contact frame is wrong so I fixed it after I shot this. I'll have this guy walk past the Kiosk as Tottenham Court Road

07/05/20

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