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Final Major Project Weeks 7 and 8 [Final Entry]

For this final weekly update I decided to combine weeks 7 and 8, as they were very similar in nature and nothing much eventful other than progress with animating the line-work went on in week 7. Having complete my animation, I can soundly say that using TVPaint was a good decision, its features allow for easy lip sync (which I definitely needed) and the easy import of correctly sized backgrounds, with a variety of brushes that (unlike flash) do not work based on vectors, meaning my drawings could be freer. I came across several issues when I animated, such at my use of the bodies of Tom and Judith as backgrounds at the start, so I had to trace them onto an animation layer in order to allow movement. This wasn’t much of a problem, however it’s something I’d avoid in the future if possible.Throughout Week 8 I was faced with timing issues. I expected to be finished by Monday with the amount of work that I had done in week 7, however, I finished the line-work on Tuesday, and finished colouring wednesday night, using Thursday and a brief part of Friday to edit in foley. I’m very happy with the result. The film looks as I want it too, despite the difficulties that I’ve had with it. Before I could continue in week 8 I had to create an additional background that I had forgotten to create with the rest (shown below).

The variety of shots proved challenging as it meant that a lot of the speech patterns couldn’t be copy pasted early on to make the process quicker, and colouring took considerably longer than expected. I also faced issues in post. There were several small mistakes that I found that i couldn’t fix in TVPaint because I have TVPaint at home and premiere (for editing) at college. However, I was able to get over this with some quick fixes in premiere. I wish I could have made more of my own sound effects, however, it’s very hard for me to get hold of a helicopter and a busy office environment. However, I’m glad I used my own voice for the characters and am happy with the other sounds in the piece. The animation is quite smooth for the most part too, despite a small hiccup at the start that I didn’t have time to draw an additional frame for. Even with this I feel that the animation has a good flow. I’ve had a brief few peer tests, all of which have been positive as well as helpful, as some have pointed out mistakes I would have otherwise missed. I avoided experimenting with smears in order to keep things simple, that and there weren’t really any fast enough movements to render a wide variety of animation techniques, however, if I had more time I might have paced things slightly differently and done so. Pacing was mostly fine, however even with my timings sheet something was off as there was a large gap that I edited out in the middle. This wasn’t a problem though, the animation is still about 2 minutes long. The characters look very clean in the final piece which is something I usually struggle with so I’m glad my gamble with style choice worked out, even if it probably meant more work for me.

The colours pop with the grey office background, which is something I was conscious of but I didn’t know if it would work, however I am glad that it did. When doing the lip sync work, I used phonetics to figure out which mouth movements the dinosaurs would make.

General ‘Ah’ sound’.

Used for W’s and ‘oh’s’ mostly, as well as occasional ‘R’ sounds.

Used for L and Th sounds.

Mostly used for T’s, J’s, N’s, and “Ee”’s.

Used for F’s and V’s.

Used for P’s, B’s, M’s, and a closed mouth.

Used for “oo” sounds.

By using these 7 core phonetic shapes I could create the speech patterns for Tom and Judith, the mass movement of their jaws and snouts allowed for a lot of movement in the characters, which helped bring them to life quite a lot in my eyes. I made the decision not to shade the dinosaurs like I had the background based pieces and their initial drawings as it would have extended the process for another day I estimate considering the volume of frames. I’m also happy with the colours for Robert and Matthias, who had only previously been coloured in crayon.

Matthias

Robert

Speaking of these two characters, I modified their scenes slightly from the script. Initially, Matthias was meant to roar in anger at his mistake, however I realised that it may suit to comedic effect if he rather stood there and looked into the camera, at this point I was also running out of animating time so was willing to make cuts where necessary. Roberts scene changed so that an electrical shortage surprised him instead of a falling can, as it made more sense. Whilst I wanted to go with the peer suggested “you spilled my pint” style for this scene (Which would also allow me to bring back Steve the dinosaur, that would have taken too long, and a random falling can made too little sense.

Overall, I’m happy with the piece. It’s almost exactly how I envisioned it, and it has come along greatly from the start, which I really started to realise when I was writing my evaluative statement. Watching the evolution of this project through this blog and my initial notes, which had the characters looking like sock puppets and a third scene that really pushed the boundaries of surreal, I’m happy with the final result. Whilst there are things I would improve given more time, I don’t have that time at the moment, and even so there were times I thought I wouldn’t finish. It takes the surreal humour that I wanted to capture from what was essentially my childhood and puts it front and centre. For this reason I feel that my end result is mostly successful in relation to my initial project proposal.

Research - Nick Park

Nick Park has always been an inspiration for me, and I feel that with this project his surreal brand of humour and use of animals in his work has never been more relevant to me. Park brings his characters to life with the charismatic medium of stop motion, using animals to represent people in works such as Creature Comforts and Chicken Run. This can also be seen with Gromit in Wallace and Gromit who, despite his lack of speech, is a relatable human-like character.

Creature Comforts Creature Comforts greatly inspires me as it infuses the persona of the animal with the thoughts of the British general public, creating a unique humorous show that seems to document the every day life of animals in the zoo, who sound exactly like people, with many visual gags throughout the show.

Chicken Run Chicken Run has been a focal point for me throughout this project. With this film Park essentially created the Great Escape with chickens, and yet the film is so different and full of life. His anecdotal use of animals in his work allows for a variety of puns, visual gags, and overall a unique story despite their (sometimes) basis in existing genres.

Park’s use of the visual medium he is presented with is clear in all of his work. Every possibility to make a joke is taken, as well as every possibility to make a character or scene look interesting. I always aim to bring this into my works based in comedy, and it’s the reason Dinosaurs in an Office is littered with puns, not in the script, but in the backgrounds. This allows them to become more interesting and helps to build the world around the characters presented. At it’s core, Park’s work is simply surreal fun for both the creator and the audience, which was essentially the basis for why I wanted to go for a humour founded in surreal humour.

Final Major Project Week 6

This week I started animating. However, before that I had to make several more backgrounds to add to last weeks pieces so that the animating could go as smoothly as possible, as well as a more detailed still image or Tom’s mohawk for a shot early in the animation.

These extra backgrounds allowed me to work on and complete the introduction up to the title card later in the week. This 20 second intro can be found HERE.

Prior to animating I had to do a lip sync test which I think went well, and also helped let me get to grips with TVPaint as well as how I’d have the dinosaurs mouths moves and at what points in speech. This short test can be found HERE.

I also created some foley as well as gathered some. I knew that I wouldn’t be able to get office sounds and found it difficult to create high quality pouring and ticking sounds so I sourced them online.

I have also decided this week that I will use models of Tom and Judith for their bodies created seperately for the most part and animate their heads for speech and occasionally their bodies when necessary so as to keep the animation more smooth and consistent.

I’m happy with what I have so far, and the way the next week is planned out, I should have the animation finished by the start of next week. Whilst I’d like to be adding more detail, it’s something that I’ll need to revisit once I am done with animating so that it doesn’t get in the way.

The intro for Dinosaurs in an Office.

Animation/lip sync test on TV Paint from earlier in the week (I would’ve posted this earlier but I had some issues with file types and conversions), I’m happy with the result and how the program works now, so I will move onto animating the piece.

Final Major Project Week 5

This week I made the decision that I would not be animating on Photoshop, but in fact will be animating in TV Paint - see post here on why. It will make the project and dialogue far easier to manage.

Most importantly though, I made my animatic this week, with full dialogue. I haven’t added any foley and have decided that it would take up a little too much of the time I have, so will leave that to the final animation. I’m happy with the animatic and am sure I’m headed in the right direction after feedback from my tutor and my peers saying they like what I’ve got and it carries comedic value. I’ve also got approval on the use of my own voice for both of the characters, as I agree with others in saying that using another would take something away from the piece. My animatic can be viewed HERE. To test out a different style that I might have used for my animation, I did some experiments in crayon, this allowed me to take a different look at the characters, but also let me give a colour scheme to Matthias and Robert without pens bleeding through my sketchbook. I like the tests a lot, but I feel that I’d have to use actual crayons for the full effect which would take far too much time, so I have decided against using the style.

Using the animatic, I also created a spreadsheet that contains the timings for all of the sound within the animation, with an average of how many frames would be required for each section (even though it will most likely be less for all of them, it still displays how much space it will probably take on the timeline).

Finally, I created digital backgrounds for the necessary scenes, keeping the design simple enough so that they weren’t too time consuming as I have made that mistake before, but also making them still viable for the style of the project. I think some of them could use more work with detail and I would like to digitally paint them for the best effect, however I do not have the time.

I also did a digital design test for Tom to see how the dinosaurs would look in the digital format, and I’m quite happy with it. For this test I simply traced over a drawing on the model sheet as it was a quick aesthetic test. I’m happy with how he looks, but am still having difficulty with his hands (Which luckily don’t play a major role in Dinosaurs in an Office).

I also did a test with Tom within the environment to see if the two still fit together, and thankfully they do.

Overall I’m very happy with the progress this week, but I know it needs to pick up in the next two if I’m to finish animating in time, which I think at this pace I definitely will.

Dinosaurs in an Office animatic - converting the file to an MP4 to upload resulted in a substantial decrease in audio quality. However, I am otherwise happy with the animatic for the most part and how it displays the piece, as well as how I’ve timed everything. I will add foley in for the full animation as for the animatic it is just dialogue.

A Brief Look at Surrealism

I’ve come to the realisation that throughout this project, whilst I’ve been looking at surreal source material, I haven’t delved fully into the roots of surrealism itself, and what it means for something to be surreal, so I decided to do some further research on the subject. It’s said in Philosophy that ‘Surrealism is based on the belief in the superior reality’ (Klingsohr-Leory, C., Grosenick U., ‘Surrealism’. Taschen. 2004). Which, in the case of art, seems extremely untrue. I would argue that surrealism in art attempts to preserve reality through the goggles of madness and/or attempts to capture a break in reality. The differences can range from small to large in art. For example, Rene Magritte’s work usually anchors itself in reality, whereas the work of Salvador Dali creates a warped alternate reality with elements of our own thrown in. The surrealist movement itself was founded in 1924 by Andre Breton, who argued that the Enlightenment period had suppressed the irrationality of the unconscious mind. This is why much of the art from the movement is very dream-like and often doesn’t make sense. However, much like a dream, it is all attached to reality somehow, whether it be by theme or by visual connection. It effectively allows those who take advantage of it to exercise their imagination(s) beyond the boundaries of rationalism. This allows for the weird, wonderful, and nonsensical to thrive. It stretches the imagination and that’s why I love it - it goes beyond the norm which succeeds extremely well in regards to animation. This can be seen in ‘Dough for the Do-Do’, a Looney Tunes cartoon in which Porky visits ‘Wacklyland’, in this world Dali’s clocks are even featured and the whole environment contains a similar aesthetic throughout, exploring a strange and fun world through the medium of animation. Exploring something slightly out of place (like in a dream) and fun (like ‘Dough for the Do-do’) is what I aim to create with my piece, and is why I think surrealism and animation work so well together: they’re both out of place from reality, but still (usually) have a clear attachment to it.

The Persistence of Memory, Salvador Dali

The Son of Man, Rene Magritte

Dough for the Do-do, Looney Tunes

A Slight Change in Program

From feedback given to me from today I have concluded that the best way for me to animate will not be in photoshop, but in TVPaint or ToonBoom, most likely TVPaint. This is due to the nature of my piece and the amount of lip syncing I will have to do for the characters.

Final Major Project Week 4

Due to my delayed trip to Falmouth for my interview, this week was heavy on planning and research, more so planning due to a lack of access to resources for about 3 days. I’ve planned out that I should have started and finished my animatic in Week 5, using test audio for timings (which I may use in full if the quality is good enough). This means that by the end of the week I should be starting my animation process, as the animatic shouldn’t take up the whole week. I did some further research into artists that fit my theme and story - looking at the works of Lisa Hanawalt, production designer and producer of Bojack Horseman, and Jason Steele, an animator online. Both are inspirations in the design of my characters and stylistic choices for the animation due to their use of animals in most of their pieces, as well as a simple style. I’ve created a rough action plan that doesn’t defer from animating much after Week 5, but I’m happy with the pace at which the project is coming along. As long as I get the animatic finished in Week 5 I should be on track to finish the project in time. I also plan to further my research by delving further into the surreal and perhaps conducting some primary research on what people think makes an animation good/successful.

Research: Lisa Hanawalt Jason Steele

Research - Jason Steele (FilmCow)

Jason Steele, also known as FilmCow, is an animator on YouTube, and creator of well known cartoons such as Llamas With Hats and Charlie the Unicorn as well as a massive library of other short surreal animations. The animations by Steele often involve the use of animals or inanimate objects, usually appearing innocent in nature but turning out to have a sinister twist. An example of this being Llamas With Hats: whilst seeming innocent, this series involves a sadistic murderous llama named Carl. It’s crazy, it’s darks, it’s surreal, and the humour is extremely dry. This combination allows for a library of strange yet funny pieces.

‘Llamas With Hats’

Much like the work of Shrigley, Steele’s work is usually drawn rather crudely, yet manages to pull it off because it fits the branding of humour and surrealism. Many of the pieces also feature (or are exclusively) a musical number that is either just plain strange [See the credits for ‘The Bearnicorn’] or, much like Llamas With Hats, have a dark twist [See ‘Ferrets’].

‘The Bearnicorn’

Steele’s brand of dry humour and, much like Lisa Hanawalt, lack of reliance on the source material, make for an interesting mix that I would like to create with ‘Dinosaurs in an Office’. Steele’s variety of styles and content is also inspiring to my wish to experiment with different media so that I can look at my characters in different ways. It’s usually the case that Steele voices most or all of his characters, something that I’ve considered for ‘Dinosaurs in an Office’.

Jason Steele Llamas With Hats The Bearnicorn Ferrets

Research - Lisa Hanawalt

Lisa Hanawalt is a cartoonist and illustrator who works as the production designer and producer for Bojack Horseman. Her use of human-like animal characters is what led me to look back at Bojack Horseman and further into her other work. Her stylised animal-based characters have a unique feel to them, as they are not just an adaptation of an animal, as can be seen in Disney’s Zootopia, but a full humanisation of the animals. Bojack and the other characters of Bojack Horseman have perfectly normal human bodies and a lack of features such as tails. The show doesn’t neglect their natures though, and never fails to make a pun out of them. An example of this being the use of horse racing, but it being run like a track and field event.

Most of Hanawalt’s other works keep this theme of humanised animals, placing them into perfectly normal lifestyles to us, only using the source material for possible character traits or to comedic effect. This creates many surreal works that have charm and a consistent style/feel to them.

‘Living Room’

Her use of vibrant colours and animals with human bodies is something that I definitely take inspiration from. This variety of colour adds to the surrealism as well as making something already strange fun and interesting to look at. I aim to do something similar with my designs. Hanawalt also uses a variety of media for her art and character designs leading to a mix of unique pieces with different feels. From this I can see that experimentation with different media can be key, and will experiment with some different media and programs myself.

Lisa Hanawalt

Final Major Project Week 3

Week 3 have been a week more heavy on storyboard work, design, and script modification that research. I intend on changing this for week 4, however, I’m very happy with the progress that I’ve made this week. My storyboards are complete and I have a definitive copy of my script now. After getting some feedback on the Thursday of this week and Friday of last week, I have added a few other characters to my lineup to give the film more life, and made note to play on the nature of the dinosaurs as well as what they’re doing. Whilst it’s not in the foreground, I cannot ignore the source material. To combat both of these, I’ve added in some transition shots between day 1 and day 2 which showcase a couple of other dinosaurs going about their day, much like the transition shots that can be found in The Office. For week 4 I plan on researching further the nature of surrealism itself to flesh out my research and help me understand the basics of why surrealism came about and what it truly is. I also plan to create (or start to create) an animatic by the end of week 4. However, due to the move of my Falmouth interview to the 16th, I may lose some work time. I also managed finished my environment designs this week, in time to start (and finish) storyboarding.

As well as finishing my environment design I also designed 3 more dinosaurs this week: Robert, Matthias, and Steve. A Dilophosaurus, Allosaurus, and T-Rex respectively.

This way I could show a variety of designs and types of dinosaurs that work in the office, as well as experiment with their natures. Despite the creation of 3, only 2 made it into the script. I decided to drop Steve as I could not visualise how a scene with him would play out (It was initially scripted that he’d have trouble picking up a phone and pull it out of its socket by accident), or how I could justify him having short arms but the other dinosaurs having perfectly normal ones. I’m pleased with the use of the Dilophosaurus though, and Robert is now one of my favourite designs for the project. The script is also far more succinct now and the camera angle changes that I’ve made are ones that, after seeing the storyboard, I am happy with. Overall I think it’s been a productive week, however I need to do more contextual research, and will work on that in Week 4.

Final Major Project Week 2

I’ll be upfront, this week has not been great for keeping to schedule and I’ve had difficulties due to a mix of factors. Guaranteed I’ve Finished my first draft of the script and my character designs, plus starting environment design. However, the rescheduling of my interview for Falmouth university has thrown me off slightly, as well as the unanticipated day-long group feedback session at the end of the week which, whilst useful, took up it’s own day.

I started the week by settling on the idea of Dinosaurs in an Office. I believe it captures the balance between surrealism and real life that I’m aiming to create. After that I wrote the script which I am happy with, however due to the time that it may take and the extremely surreal nature of scene 3, I have now cut it down to 2 scenes. After this, I proceeded to make a mood board so that I had a reference when it came to came to character and environment designs.

After this, I started to work towards designing the characters and the rules of the world that they inhabit. I started sketching velociraptors in my sketchbook so that I could get a grasp of what the design should at least be referencing. I decided that the dinosaurs would have human bodies, much like the characters in Bojack Horseman do. I also established that humans do exist in said world and that the 2 main characters, Tom and Judith, work for a firm called Insurex. After this was all established I decided to work on designing the raptors that work at the office. I started with a page of test drawings of possible designs that I could use for their heads. After this I moved to the bodies, opting not to give them tails to both add to their connection to real people as well as ease up the animation load on myself. Once this was all established, I designed Tom and Judith on model sheets.

Due to the snow I was working from home for most of this period, the snow also resulted in the cancellation of an interview that I was due to have on the 2nd of March in Falmouth. Reorganising this and cancelling things around it caused a few issues on the day and I opted not to continue my work for the day. The next day at college I got some feedback on what I had so far. I received many helpful recommendations for research that I intend on looking further into in the third week, I also got some feedback on my script that reassured my decision to remove scene 3. From this feedback I may also change the script slightly so that some of the transitions shots show other dinosaurs doing activities around the office. My environment design is close to completion, and I should be able to start story boarding soon. Whilst I had planned to start storyboarding on the weekend, the design process took longer than anticipated, as did the feedback session, taking away most of a day. However, I’m happy with what I have produced this week. Whilst I’m not on time with the schedule I believe I can catch up and perhaps learn from this to schedule my second action plan better for the remaining weeks of the project. It may be off to a bumpy start but the project is in motion now, and I like the direction it’s headed in.

Final Major Project Week 1

The start of the Final Major Project was considerably more bumpy for me than I would have liked. I spent most of the week juggling research with modifications to my project proposal in order to make it more coherent and explain my idea of looking at Surreal Humour in animation and it’s shift with the rise of the internet. I modified it based on the feedback I received and am glad that I changed it now as it better communicates what I’m trying to work towards, focusing more on my planned honing of surreal humour’s role in animated internet culture.

Aside from this I used the week to further my research and idea development. I created a mind-map in my sketchbook to start bringing ideas/genres together and came up with several possible outcomes, namely a Time Travel piece revolving around a character I made a few years ago, Time Travelling Tim, and Dinosaurs in an Office, something that I feel would capture the essence of what I’m working towards.

I started both some primary and secondary research, looking at the works of David Shrigley online and in his book, ‘Red Book’. I also looked at some other animated pieces on Vimeo, namely ‘Small People with Hats’ and ‘Life and Stuff’. I had originally planned to watch Monty Python’s ‘The Holy Grail’, however due to several planning issues I didn’t get around to this. However, I still plan on watching it and writing about it as it would make a good study for the use of surreal humour and was recommended to me because of this.

On the weekend, I visited the Tate Modern, opting to leave out the Saatchi gallery as I felt that the Tate Modern had enough relevant work relating to surreal visuals and I didn’t want to delve too far into modern art and lose focus on the theme of surreal humour. I found quite a few interesting pieces regarding unique visuals and environments that look like they could be normal in a different world but are very unusual to us.

Christian Schad - Agosta, The Pigeon-Chested Man, and Rasha, the Black Dove 1929

Maria Helena Viera da Silva -The Tiled Room 1935

Salvador Dali - Metamorphosis of Narcissus 1937

Pieces such as the ones above capture my attention because they have a sense of order to them. Despite their obscurity their foundation is overall based in reality and therefore accessible by the viewer, which is something I need to keep in mind with animation. Especially since I will most likely use dialogue - effectively, the art from the tate has shown me the fine line between obscurity and surrealism, as some of the pieces are either incomprehensible to me or just plain ridiculous in nature. From this research I have been able to narrow down my ideas and am starting to have a clearer image of where I’m going with this project. However, my research has been set back slightly by the need to modify my Project Proposal slightly and it was recommended that I schedule myself at a slower pace, which, considering difficulties that keep arising, was not a bad decision. Whilst this is probably one of the more simple areas of the FMP, it’s proving difficult justifying a theme/idea succinctly.

Research - Life and Stuff, Kumareshan Satkunarasa

This is a piece of research from earlier in the course that wasn’t on the blog, however I find it more relevant now in my Final Major Project more than anything as I have detailed below the main paragraph.

Life and stuff is a rather cynical and horrible look at life and the elements involved in it. It presents a life to you in roughly 5 minutes in perhaps the most reality-shattering way. It details the world as almost trivial and fleeting, detailing everything, even boring things like work and small talk. It has a very personal feel to it because every character has something unique about them, whether it’s the girlfriend who likes Elmo or the main character who travels off to a foreign land just to be at peace. The animation style also grounds it in reality as it has an almost collage-like feel to it. They’re all real images, whether they’re warped or spliced together or not. This seems to further add to the sadness of the animation because it makes it real. It always was but the visuals make it real for the viewer, everything speeds by so quickly that by the end you might be left wondering about life because this story was presented so well. It’s cynical tone is something that might be deep inside all of us anyways, as we all unfortunately the fate of the living is to die. This is why relating to an audience for the success of a piece. [END]

The piece’s use of real images and collage lends itself well to the subject matter - everything is real and therefore a degree more personal to the viewer. I like the use of real images in animation, not quite to this scale usually, however when used scarcely, for example in SpongeBob Squarepants, it can have a humorous effect and keeps the viewer interested: it changes things and takes them out of the medium they’re used to in what is usually a rather forced/unexpected and sometimes disturbing way. Much like I plan on doing (to much less extent), Satkunarasa also uses a mix of media, including small segments of 3D animation, 2D animation, and stop-motion animation, taking full advantage of the storytelling possibilities and making an already surreal piece even more like a fever dream.

LIFE AND STUFF

Research - Small People With Hats, Sarina Nihei

‘Small People With Hats’ is an animated piece by Sarina Nihei that revolves around a few recurring characters, but namely the small people with hats in the film itself. It manages to prove, much like in poetry, that not everything has to be explained to the audience. Nihei uses a gorgeous traditional hand-drawn animation technique, seemingly using fine liner (or some other sort of pen) and what could either be paint or marker. This combined with a simple drawing style and constant mix of colour and colourless, plus a boil, creates a world that is very much alive in the eyes of the viewer and the mind of the creator. The piece follows a core set of events, but they’re clearly disjointed in their sense of randomness. It’s unclear who or what the small people with hats are, who the people controlling them are, or what relation the mother(?) and child have to this scenario, nor why one of the small people from the start of the film was carrying a bomb. I believe this kind of surrealism drives a lot of animations. Whilst we aren’t told too much about this world that Nihei has created, it’s clear that she has spent a lot of time considering how this world works, what’s normal to the people of this world and what isn’t, whether it’s normal to us or not.

SMALL PEOPLE WITH HATS

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