Madeleine Sayers Animation

final year animation student at edinburgh college of art

[madeleinesayers]

A showreel !

[madeleinesayers]

I’m really happy with the final visual look of my films, I think the colour pallets work well to capture the atmosphere of the time they are set at, while the block coloured characters stand out and make it clear that they are only passing through this concrete space.

I think that through my choice to animate the films chronologically, there is a slight shift in the animation quality after the morning section, as I was able to take what I had learned and refine the technique and style. In the future I might try out different production schedules, or refine the animation process before production starts and work to style guides.

[madeleinesayers]

In an unexpected turn of fate, all of the animation is done and edited together for hand in. unfortunately the sound and music for the evening and night sections will not be complete for hand in, I should have a rough version from Theo available for the evening but the night, which was only finished yesterday, will have to make due for a short while with the scratch track assembled with very little patience, to add some more context to the characters actions. What I really want for the Night’s sound is to become more and more ambient and abstract as the practically empty, static shots progress. Then snapping back to realism as the girl character goes about her business, breaking up the emptiness. 

[madeleinesayers]

the most significant change to my film from the animatics was the cutting out the scene above, where the attendant comes out from behind his desk for the first time, takes a blanket and puts on the sleeping girl. In the edit I have gone with at the moment it cuts from the attendant walking up to the machine beeping, then immediately showing the machine open and the girl with the blanket, as footsteps echo in the distance. Eliding the action completely and continuing the ambiguity in the passage of time which I have tried to create in this film. 

While I do like that this means the attendant, the supposed ‘main character’ of the film, has his first appearance not behind his desk, outside of the laundromat completely, in the very last shot of the film, I do think that the action may be a little too disjointed. I don’t think that the original shot is necessary, and is a little over kill in humanising the always aloof recurring character, but perhaps a little more action, such as the attendant starting to stand up after he looks up, would service the film better.

[madeleinesayers]

After some experimentation I decided that i didn't want the poster to favour any of the different parts, but still reference them in some way. So I went back to the original pencil drawings, one of the first ones I made, and played around with it. I like the posters subtlety, I positioned the spins roughly at the time of day that the film their colour represents is set at. 

One reservation of mine is it could draw comparisons to the scene in Baby Driver, which also has primary colours spinning in all the machines, but I’m hoping that most people wont have as encyclopaedic a knowledge of laundromats in film as I have at this point. Although I am looking forward to talking to people a lot about My Beautiful Laundrette in the near future.

For the design I took inspiration from John Cassavetes: a pioneer of cinema and insisting that colour films have black and white posters, and of course, Jim Jarmusch.

I chose the font acumin pro condensed for its impactful and industrial feel, and have used it for the poster, credits and any other branding needed for my film

[madeleinesayers]

password: cooldrinkofwater

Breakdown of my animation process showing roughs, key frames, full animation and colour.

The whole process is done in photoshop, utilising video groups and animating frame by frame. I like this feature as it allows me to colour code everything and keep track of the frames i designed to boil, ensuring that the characters are never static against the rigid background. 

[madeleinesayers]

sunrise test, password ‘sunrise’

in the home stretch now, just a few little details and two more shots left to animate. the end of the night time film concludes with the sunrise slowly changing the colour pallet before revealing the attendant outside on break. Above is a test of the colour changing effect, done in photoshop. unfortunately the colour change has come out a bit jittery. This may just be due to this render, so I’ll try play around with it a little more. otherwise I might have to look into using after effects to achieve the gradual change I want

[madeleinesayers]

One of the things I’d spent much deliberation over, long after everything else was planned, was what to put on the tv in the evening film. While the actual screen is only seen from a distance, the sound it triggers is key to the flow of the film. In the end I chose to animate without much plan, just going straight ahead with the idea of melodrama guiding me. After animating in entirely long, static shots it was a nice change of pace and a lot of fun to play around with shifting camera angles and movement. I’m happy with the initial contrast it presents,that then shifts as it ends on only a simple wiping away of tears. With this I think it mirrors the films seemingly underwhelming pacings and quiet affection for inconsequential things that I’ve tried to create. 

I may be too deep into this, but I think / hope this scene will play differently on rewatches compared to first viewings. The plan was to play it for (quiet) laughs, and hopefully the snappy editing and whatever sound Theo comes up will achieve this. But on reflection I hope a sense of warmth for the shared experience comes across. In my original plans I had every single character engrossed in their own unique activities before turning to the tv, but felt that this could be interpreted negatively, showing  tv as the destruction of the individual rather than bringing people together. So while a few people are dotted about reading, knitting or playing with their gameboys, most of them are just sat absentmindedly staring into space, like a lot of people would be in waiting rooms, public transport, or even laundromats I guess.

[madeleinesayers]

Some quick poster mockups, not really sure about this yet but figured I should start thinking about it. I don’t think I’ll put any characters on the poster as I don’t want any to be favoured over the other. 

[madeleinesayers]

Small sample of the morning with sound, really happy with how it is coming together. It is a work in progress but I think the subtlety of it really adds to the realism of the film and makes the characters feel much more grounded in their environment.

[madeleinesayers]

Pencil animations and background extras process. Drawn out rough to get the angles and movements right, to make sure that they fitted in with the characters movements without drawing more frames than necessary.

[madeleinesayers]

To hopefully speed up the production process, and make things easier for my sound designer, I have decided to work on the Evening and Night sections simultaneously. So far I have prepared all of the backgrounds and put together a rough cut of the timings with extremely rough character animation so that I can edit as I go and see exactly what needs to be done. Sound will be much less realistic during the evening and night times so I thought I was important to give Theo something to work with as soon as possible.

[madeleinesayers]

Moving on at last to the evening! I approached the production of this segment differently to the last as I knew drawing all these characters from multiple different angles would be an ordeal in itself and best to get done with all at once. They still need to be made to boil but thankfully I will have the assistance of Katherine and Abi to speed up the process. To heighten the move from the real the the surreal in the transition from morning to evening, I made all the machines spin in sync with each other. 

[madeleinesayers]

With all the character animation done for the morning part, I finally got to replace the guides with some proper pencil animation! not done that since the introductory project year 1 aha. I’m really happy with how it turned out and feel like it integrates the loose characters into the background nicely.

[madeleinesayers]

Finalising the animation style.......

[madeleinesayers]

Morning film colour study

I’m quite happy with how this one is going, it doesn't quite capture the early morning haze I’m trying to portray just yet so I’ll continue to rework it and try out different ways of lighting.

[madeleinesayers]

Night film colour study

I’m very happy with this rough mock up. The neon / lighting elements were only done very roughly as a test, but already I think the impression that the laundromat is a beacon in the night is coming across quite nicely, although I might try to push the contrast even more.