MSc Animation & VFX 2019/20

[marytirchinli]

[marytirchinli]

[marytirchinli]

MUSIC

The music for me was a very significant point. At the begging of the year I wanted to do a music animation video clip but in the second semester I was advised to do an animation. The truth is that my original plan for this animation was to add natural sounds that will help the storyline of the video. Accidentally I tried the song Cantara from dead can dance and the match was perfect. I did the effort and I was advised by 2 lawyers in the matter of rights, latter on I conducted an official form with the help of my advisors and send it to almost 10 different companies to get a written license to use the song. Until now, I had no reply, so I will follow my original plan and add sounds from Zapsplat, a free download site.

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EDITING 

When my assets where finally done, I proceeded doing the edit in Premier After effects. In this program I had the chance to experiment and add some extra effects between the scenes and smoother the scene changes.

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Scene Transitions / Camera movements

The time to add some interesting transitions, camera movements and scene changes has come! Unfortunately in my case, I had to illustrate the camera movement on my own, what I learned from that is that basically if the camera moves on the left, the object need to be designed going out of the shot from the right. In the case of transitions in-between the shots, I chose to design weird anchors and unusual perspective coming out of the frame in different ways.

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VIDEO FOOTAGES

These are the number of video footages I had to film myself, to take as references and follow the correct movement to complete the acting of the main character. Just for the main character and only for it, I had to design 114 different sketches.

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Acting /Movement of the secondary characters

When it comes to animals I followed the same procedure as I did for illustrating the main character to complete the acting. The problem with the animals is that I had to find video references from the internet in order to study the movement that will follow and the best resolution video for it was from National Geographic.

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The acting of the main character

My references and feedback for the designing of the main character was from my face. Procedure: 1. Video footage real-time 2.crop and edit in photoshop 3. Design on top, onion skin tequnik.

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At this point, I had the opportunity to work and think from the point of view of a director. In my research on the field I came across some difficulties and meanings i haven't deal with before, such as camera movement, scene transition, frames, shots, special effects and timing. 

 Some really good references I found to help me are in the following links:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wrgoKNSfi5M&fbclid=IwAR2wAlhsv_9gjD5ma8PC9AaHzkL8JnoD09DSNAc2dQF99JjfgvD3NiAMsMA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=co1ej2F2P5w&fbclid=IwAR1xUgdRiJHMcm4mHkzkXgw6J3cR_E6HoFC-D6_gf7qYDTWl_E02Jwucvy8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDqjIdI4bF4&t=689s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npMreLeVD6o&fbclid=IwAR32jz4x0_9_sODkO5tBfjnlPF8IrCpnMJaRVq89epP2vzif2cSDzdwc54w

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_bBUhhKmpA&fbclid=IwAR2Mb_KJkJ4VzDnnrr2TDfTCyS-hdBRxzYvA2QJcin1YtHUdDowbqTxK5Sc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bej4c3agmlo&fbclid=IwAR36JOZiQwt_Id1G3p7avqkgJf2IUBZ0DNmGr_9IAlgvfkV9H9UqSPRCWKI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HEoUhlesN9E&fbclid=IwAR1Nd6hdB0_mAeek-E2ZklXtEZqICrJOHJwwaGD9dwq7ZrY5lCO4SzJNWb8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CQJkeLfono&fbclid=IwAR002T0USFDqbZPRKTEsOdrhqaXT0-73UaLC1rGDDPITHWE_5iwUHljg5ig

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The loss of color/the benefits of bnw

When I realized that the time was very less to animate it was impossible to simplify my color, especially to give it a different form from that I had in mind. So my solution is to “play” with my video with minimalism, especially when I did my research in psychology back in my BA thesis in Graphic Design, I realized that the loss of color maybe not a bad thing. From psychologically point of you, colors shows preference and since my thesis has to do with emotions, keeping it black and white keeps it in a more neutral state. Although I still had to define the transitions and the mood changes in some points of the plot, so I choose to create a negative film when the main character enters the panic attack and add color to specific spots in the video whenever is necessary to help the scenario and the plot.

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After the notes I got from semester 2, I have been told that in any case and irregardless which way I will animate, I have to simplify my characters. Especially when I chose to proceed by doing frame by frame animation hand drawing I realized that is impossible to keep the illustrations as they were.

Changing the main character:

Simplify the lines, remove the spots from her face, simplify the shapes of the brunches in her hair, bolder stroke line, more characteristic line sketching style, eliminate the acting in her face and closer shots.

Changing the crow/raven:

Simplify the lines, bolder stroke line, characteristic line sketch style, eliminate the acting in the upper part of its mouth.

Changing the snake:

Simplify the lines, closer shot frame, remove of the stones, remove of the dagger, remove of the shapes in the bottom, loss of colour and adding lines as shades.

Changing the pig:

Simplify the lines, make it smaller (scale) in order to fit in the frame shot and simplify the hand so I will have smoother and easier movement. Apart from that the character of the pig has the fewer changes.

Changing the swans:

First of all I made it one swan, I simplify the character and Bolden the stroke line as well as I gave a more round shape in the hole swan in order to fit in the frame shot.

[marytirchinli]

My first attemp to animate.

In order to animate i had to do some testing to see how i am going to proceed. My first attempt was on Adobe after effects, i masked out my characters and thy to give them move by using the puppet tool. Unfortunately the results were not good, because when i pin one spot and try to move it, the illustration started to deforming because is a 2D design and it did not turn as an object or a body with 3rd dim mention. 

The second option to animate and create movement was to do the classical 2D hand drawing animation frame by frame. In order to do that i saw some tutorials about the onion skin in photoshop and how to use the timeline. I based my strength in my talents and i started sketching and illustrating fast.

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Testing with sound

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Testing scene no sound

Before I started animating, I wanted to experiment a little bit more with the final scene of the panic attack, since i got inspired from the last scene of the movie “requiem for a dream” in which the shots are playing in fast forward, I put an effort to play a bit more with my scene. At the same time it helped me realize the possibilities that i had to play with after effects and video transitions.

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The bee: emotion of fear

After a lot of thought, I had to recreate the bee since I had difficulties to fit it in the shot.

Changes:

round shape (smaller)

wings movement 

smaller eye

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Storyboard (continue)

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Character of fear: The bee

This is the typical result of my character design, after colouring it and sketching it over the top, my last character for my animation is finally done!