#creative decision making

[joesanimationblog]

Creative Decision Making 5/5

Background Art

My film's location is heavily inspired by my time in Brighton. The Brighton summers are beautiful and scenic but when it's gloomy there is a type of grittiness that becomes visible. I remember the atmosphere in Brighton changing as the colours became illuminated by day and hidden in night and I want to include this as a communicative tool in my film.

The film starts with the fox minding his own business, I wanted to have a bright palette but with a slight overlay of blue which mutes everything.

As the tension builds and the phone call between the Frenchman and Glenda takes place, the night begins.

In the night the vibrancy is gone, the fox's colour hardly changes and so its bright palette stands out in the night and the threat of it being found by the Frenchmans becomes center stage.

The shopkeeper is introduced and hides the fox in this tense section but the fox goes into the bright safety of the shop. The costume protecting the fox and allowing him to blend in is mimicked by the day, as it seems like the threat of detection is gone and so the tone can relax. This creates an expectation of safety for the audience and so when the fox hunter sees the fox in the shop, the viewer is caught off guard. The fox runs to the dark store room with muted colours and limited light which again, builds tension and when the threat of the fox hunter is defeated, the floodlights in the store room come back on and the colours go back to safety.

Starting my background art I was conscious that I had a lot to communicate and a big task ahead of me as far as coming up with a set of pallets that are consistent enough to not seem like each location or time is vastly different and unconnected, but varied enough to allow these intentional colour and lighting choices to make the world feel more rich and alive.

The backgrounds below are the order in which they were produced in. I started with a classic blue and orange background for the night and then tried to make more versions with slightly different tones, The second from last version is daytime and the last is evening.

[joesanimationblog]

Creative Decision Making 4/5

I spent some time working on Animation tests while waiting for the sound designer, These were shots which I was pretty confiedent would make the final cut. Im still waiting for my sound designer to send me what they have been working on but as they have not replied to me this week I will try and get background art and some early animations done.

I really like these two clips, I think the colours, distorted perspective, movement and art style really help create the atmosphere I hoped for. I am realising that realistically if my sound designer doesn't get back to me soon I will have to contact another person or do it myself and this feels like I'm drowning a little bit.

[joesanimationblog]

Creative Decision Making 3/5

Tutorial feedback and changes.

The moment when the Fox hunter sees the fox in the shop and realises its a costume is really important and the class felt like it wasn't clear enough that the fox hunter is connecting the dots. This moment needs to be clear and so I need to make it a point that the shop keeper is oblivious at first, but after analysing the situation realises the dog is really the fox he is looking for in a costume.

To solve this problem I thought it would be funny to have the fox hunter have a photograph of a fox (the fox... our fox) in his wallet to help him identify foxes. This creates a really strong visual gag and gives the audience a lot more clarity over what is going on.

[joesanimationblog]

Creative Decision Making 2/5

Audio and Voices

While I was building my animatic and swapping out many of the sections I wrote down and recorded a lot of audio clips of potential lines and conversations which I could include in my project. I found the script writing workshops with Katy from the development project really useful and its a shame that I cannot include all of this as my phone which I used to make my notes and recording sadly broke before I could upload them.

I would improvise scenes to try and figure out what the goal of each character is and what is standing in their way. This really helped me grasp the purpose of the scenes I was writing. I had a habit of being too wordy and so spent a long time cutting down the Frenchman's audio, I wanted him to stand out as a character that spoke a lot so rather then including all his lines I opted to give everyone else a non human voice or no lines in any real language. I think this decision was a great stylistic choice as it helps define my films reality as more absurd and cartoonish. The Frenchman's theatrical tirades are at the narrative.

I decided to have the old lady glenda have a robotic voice as she is meant to be a cold and cruel woman and is more of a way to setup the Frenchman rather than her own character. She is the trigger of the narrative.

The fox has no voice and occasionally has musical flourishes to help communicate its thoughts, reactions and movements.

Hugh is quiet and only lets out sighs and confused hmms, I wanted to make him as passive as possible, he is trying to figure out whats going on and how to be helpful and it is through his silent character that the audience relates, they are a spectator but he is their way to relate to the story.

The Frenchman is a subversion of classic cartoon villains and hero's, he is a dramatic, theatrical and almost pantomime esc villain, his only traits are either evil, comedic or dramatic and so I felt it made sense to have him be the only voice, because he really sets the tone of the comedy. I have a friend who is French named Val who has agreed to record the sound and I am very excited as I think this is one of the most important aspects of the film.

[joesanimationblog]

Creative Decision Making 1/5

Creative Decision Making 1/5

As I already have my art style and a rough animatic, the main decisions for this project as I move forward are based around acting, performace things which will make my work more efficent or fix mistakes/clunkyness in my film. The animatic I produced for the development project is nowhere near where it needs to be for my projection to start. 

I wanted my film to introduce the character of the fox in a way that communicated its relaxed and indifferent demenour and attitude. I think that starting slow with the fox minding their own buisness would be a good way to introduce the fox and i like this idea, however with a run time of 3 minutes, slow pacing can make the narrative feel clunky and I want the action and the stakes to be raised enough to retain the audiences attention. The current animatic is only 1:35 and so the intro doesnt seem clunky, but if I complete the animatic and have the runtime match my intended length the narrative flow will be all wrong I need to make sure each character is introduced in a way that gives exposition but does not seem forced of convenient in a way that breaks the illusion of the characters being alive and free. As the relationship between the shop keeper and the fox is key to my animation I am working on a section in the middle where the shop keeper sees the fox hunter and the fox and makes the decision to help the fox, this characterises the shop keeper as a friendly ally to the fox and adds a level of tension which my film was in desperate need of. Initially this section was set at the home of the shop keeper but after speaking with Katy and my classmates the idea came about of having the section in the house take place in the shop and having the shop keeper live above his shop, this prevents the narrative jumping about to different locations andb introduces the location of the shop setting up the final act of the film where the fox hunter realises that the fox is in fancy dress.

This is the note I made at the time to explain my thinking.

I struggled to find out how to make the initial meeting between Hugh & the fox and alexanders initial meeting work within the time frame i had, I liked it but it didn't feel like it established Alex's motivations enough to really create any kind of doubt or tension.

I had the idea of having Hugh see the van as it goes past, seeing the graphic saying fox catcher or something he would then spot the fox and sense danger. Having him leave the shop he's working in to get the fox back into his house next door into safety and away from the fox catcher.

This is a big change this late on but I think it gives a lot of tension and stakes to the narrative and will really pull my story up a notch if i execute well.

The previous post for the developed project show where my animatic was, the video below is a revised animatic

[bobsmasters]

Creative Decision Making

Right from the start we all decided on a simplistic colour palette partly to keep things simple. The other reason was is to establish the setting because we wanted to create a scientific station. A place that clearly has funding and not a workplace that was cobbled together from junk.

Creating a homogeneous design was a challenge. Started off the project without much concept art made asset creation a touch more difficult. Having to design the shape and look of an asset on the spot to fit in with the level was a challenge and probably made the production time longer than it should have been otherwise. Function based design Everything within the scene is supposed to fulfill a function. from the wall panels to pipes to the tanks. Creating an asset with a function in mind gave me a better idea of what it should look like and it got me to thinking of how it would fit within the scene. 

I wanted to create an Open space design to create a wow factor when you transition into the area. Unfortunately i should have accounted for the fact that a larger space needs more assets to populate it. The different levels stemmed from this initial open design. The idea being to create more depth in the scene.

We came up with hexagonal and triangular based design to try something that would lead us away from creating a generic sci-fi style.

I wanted to implement some mechanics within the level to show that I had a more comprehensive understanding of materials and blueprints.

[writingonpoint-blog]

Turning Multiple Choice Into One Narrative Path

Turning Multiple Choice Into One Narrative Path

Humans are complex creatures who, while generally consistent, have days where emotions swing more in one direction or another. This goes both for the characters – even if they are elf, alien, etc – and for their writers. Most things in life are not black and white, and that means there’s lots of ways to react to any number of situations. One day, it might seem perfect for ABC to happen, and then,…

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[sharonjordan]

Right and wrong answer indicators

Earlier in the development process I discussed the work I did for practice 2 with the Nursery teacher at school and talked about different approaches to indicating whether an answer was right or wrong.

Current pedagogical thinking for early years education places an emphasis on the positive, encouraging the child and giving praise when they achieve rather than placing too much emphasis on wrong answers or things they didn't do as well with. This approach is evident in the methods teachers use to mark work - using a tick for correct answers, but not using a cross for wrong answers. Children still know that they did not get those answers correct because of the absence of a tick, but the force of negativity has less impact with the absence of a cross.

When designing the interface for the blast off app quiz, I wanted to use this same approach to indicate right or wrong answers, so adopted the use of a tick when the answer was correct and decided against using a cross for the wrong answer because of the negative connotations.

To reinforce this message, I added a green band around the correct answer and simultaneously showed the answer in green next to the sum. I chose the colour green because of the semiotic connotations - go, yes, good, right.

This approach worked well for correct answers, but there needed to be some form of indication when a wrong answer was selected. Following on from the use of green, I applied the same semiotic theory and used the colour red for a band around the wrong answer. I chose red because of its typical interpretations, meaning stop, no, bad, wrong.

To maintain the reinforcement of the positive, I decided to emphasis the correct answer at this point, adding a green circle around the correct option and the correct number in green next to the sum. The absence of the tick and the red ring around the selected answer provides distinct differentiation between right and wrong selections, and there is an additional delay before moving onto the next question when the wrong answer has been selected to allow time for the child to understand what has happened and read the correct answer.

This solution worked well (although most adults who saw my work questioned the lack of a cross!) and my son responded well to this. When he got an answer wrong, his typical reaction was:

"I didn't get a tick that time"

I have decided now to add a cross-bar to the circle to add further emphasis without the additional negativity of a full cross. The inspiration for this came from the inflight safety card on board a recent flight. These cards use icongraphy and a series of images with no words to convey important safety instructions that have to be clearly understood quickly by all nationalities. I noticed that the symbol they used for not doing something was a red circle with a line across, and I felt that this more clearly conveys 'not' or 'no' than a circle without the cross, but is still in line with current pedagogical thinking.