Victoria Dowling

Year 1 Year 2 CJAM MAF 2021 Summer Project Character Design E4 Sting MAF 2020 Nik Nak Sting Research

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2 minute Animation - Prom Queen

During the process of creating this film, the design and the idea changed quite a bit. It started out as an animation with a watercolour look and multiple characters, including the main character, a younger version of her and a cat. But whilst talking about it, it turned into a line art rotoscope with only the main character being in it. There is a short clip of another figure supporting her, but it is not as big of a part of the story line as the other characters were.

This project took me longer than I thought it would. I’ve never rotoscoped before and i assumed it would go quick and would be easy, but i quickly noticed that it was a long and sometimes draining process. I enjoyed it when there was a lot of movement, but sometimes there were multiple seconds at a time when the character didn’t move at all and it started to get a bit boring.

My schedule also didn’t go to plan which made me end up having to draw hundreds of frames a day to get it done in time even though i had an extension and it caused quite a lot of pain. But after a few days of working hard I managed to get the film that i wanted done.

The original plan, after changing it a few times, was to draw some hair onto the main character when I finished the overall drawings, which i started doing. After I drew a few frames with hair and played it back, i realised i liked it more without, so I went back and deleted what i had done.

Since I had already decided I wanted the song “Prom Queen”, originally by Beach Bunny but the cover was by Claire young, a YouTuber that i found whilst searching for a slower version of the song, I wasn’t worried about getting any extra sound effects since it would take away from the flow of the film in my opinion. Because of that the next step was editing.

I wanted to give the film a old film camera look. I dove into a deep search on how to create my own overlay in after effects and premiere pro. I tried both but especially in premiere pro I was required to get some add-ones to help me create that look. But since I basically had no funding for this. I had to find another way. Whilst searching I found out that quite a few people offer free overlays on YouTube and other sites, so I decided to take a look at those. I was having difficulties finding the look that i wanted but I did end up finding a grain effect that did add to the look i wanted. It still didn’t look the way i wanted it to, and i continued looking for another overlay that worked perfectly with the other one I found and helped me create the idea I had in mind.

After creating the look that I wanted, I only needed to add the name of the film and credits. I was struggling to come up with a name for my film and I asked around for ideas. Since the song is called Prom Queen, we thought of going with that since the story is based on the song. I tried to think of other ideas, but Prom Queen just seemed to be the right name. The Cover itself was as long as the animation and it seemed a bit weird that whilst the name and credits were showing it was completely silent. I decided to add some old projector sounds to it and that gave it a nice touch, but since i hadn’t added it during the song, because I thought it would take away from it, it sounded slightly strange. I added it to the song, but it was still very overpowering, so I mad it more quiet and it sounded like I imagined it.

The last step was to make sure everything was looking right. I watched the film a few times and decided to add a cross dissolve to the title and a fade to black at the end of the animation, that it doesn’t seem like it’s been cut off.

All together I’ve learnt that rotoscoping is not for me, even though I did occasionally enjoy it and my film ended up looking good in the end, and this project added more to my researching skill and my ability to edit in premiere pro. I wouldn’t change anything I did during this project, because i learnt so much more by doing something i didn’t even think of before this than I would’ve creating the film the way I originally planned,with a normal drawn look.

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Group Project - Last few weeks

Now that we are getting closer to the deadline, everyone is finishing their animations. We wanted to have the finished animations in at least a day before the deadline, that the editors have enough time to add them together and we have a few more hours to chase people up. Since we a lot of people haven’t been coming in we aren’t sure if everyone will be able to hand it in on time.

My animation started out a bit rocky. Since It was a bit of perspective, I needed a bit of help drawing the witch right. Luckily I chose an easy style and i was able to create a clip that resembled the show. After being able to draw the different perspectives it came to the actual animation.

I had a lot of turns and movement in a few clips which made it slightly hard to get the entire turn right. I continually asked people for their opinion and it helped me create a good animation. After I added the clips together i noticed a few continuity issues and a few mistakes that i didn’t notice when i was animating. I went bad and fixed them but also had to look at my animatic to make sure I wasn’t missing anything. To create the portal i needed some help and Matt helped me create it. I moved a few clips around and made it work better than in the animatic and ended up creating something i was proud of.

The next step was the sound. I’ve always struggled adding sound and with the lipsync it made it more difficult to make it fit perfectly. It didn’t help that i had a lot of shots that were changing and the witch falling towards the camera. I needed a bit of help editing the voice track, since I’ve never really used adobe audition, so i asked Oliver for help. He showed me the basics and i managed to fix the voice tracks to fit the lipsync. I had a few sounds from my animatic but a lot of them didn’t fit anymore. This is when another issue came up. I couldn’t access the website for the sound effects. After a while it started working again and I was able to add the sounds.

Once i finished all that i looked through it and one lipsync specifically bothered me. When we were recording the dialogue for the animations, I wanted to have the witch say “help me out here”, but after animating i realised it was too long for the clip, which made me have to cut it to “help me”. It sounded really cut off and i tried extending the “e” at the end but sadly it still doesn’t sound natural.

Since it’s the last few days, before the deadline, I’ll have to chase up a few people to make sure they hand everything in.

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Woodland creature - Pitch: Rubert Leapley

After finishing the shell, I moved on to the frog. It was a bit of a struggle getting the plasticine onto the foam, since it was very dusty. A soon as i got a bit on the foam it got a bit easier, but i wasn’t able to smooth it out as much as i wanted, because i kept denting it with my nails. To put the model together and into the scene I needed Stevens help and with a bit of wire it sat perfectly. The next step was adding the fingers and details. The fingers weren’t easy to sculpt but after a while I managed to get them on and looking like frog fingers.

For the background i decided to go with a simple design, green with vines. To give it a bit of pep, I added some leaves that i cut out from coloured paper. These small steps added a bit of depth to the model.

I had a story in mind for my character, but the longer i thought about it the more i disliked it. So i had to start from scratch. I wanted to go with a cute, whimsical story that everyone could enjoy. I’ve always liked the idea of having the snail frog be an outsider of its community. For me this would give it a good reason to go on adventure to find itself.

I tried thinking of what I’d like the snail frog to be like. I wanted him to be relatable to a lot of people, and made him shy, caring, brave but also a bit jumpy.

A big question is why does he have a shell?

I wanted my character to stand out from the others so i thought a shell would fulfil that goal. But since he’s mainly a frog i didn’t want to give him too many snail characteristics and decided to go with him being able to retract into the shell whenever he’s scared. This little fact would add to the storyline as well and gave me the idea of him being bullied because he would hide in his shell.

I wanted to add a few side characters to the story. Because Rubert was a loner in his community I wanted him to have a best friend that would understand the struggle, which is why i created the snake Sage. She was based on a rainbow boa, but to make her understand Rubert she was also an outsider of her community, because she had a colour mutation that caused her to stand out from the environment.

They met when they were younger. This flashback is a scene i wanted to include in the scene. Rubert had a hideout he went to after struggling with being pushed out of his community for being different. One day he went there and heard sobbing. It turns out Sage used it as well. Rubert was terrified of her at first because he was taught that snakes are frogs enemies. But when Sage looked up, he could see that she was struggling as much as he was. They ended up forming a strong bond that made them friends for life.

Other side characters include different species of frogs native to the rainforest. They all live in the same close knit community. This Community of theirs doesn’t have the classical family structure we know. They raise the children as a giant family and not the typical mother, father and child structure.

The last side characters are the guides that help Rubert throughout the story. One is a spider they run into whilst on their adventure. The others play a much bigger part in the story. These are the ants. They tell Rubert about another frog community that is made of snail frogs just like him. They show up on different parts of the story helping him find his way back to his real family.

Thanks to the ants he finds his way back to his family and finds out about a massive flood that happened when he was just a tadpole that washed him and a few other snail frogs away.

He finally found somewhere he belongs and is accepted. Sage is also not seen by them as a threat and is welcomed into the family.

Pic.1 Rubert Leapley. Pic.2 Sage Hiss. Pic.3 Rubert in front of his hideout before finding Sage.

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Woodland creature project - sculpt

After i finalised my concept for this project, i started sculpting. The first step was shaping foam. I had to use it as a core since my sculpture had to be light, because it only had one point of contact to the ground, which is a small plant which the frog is hanging onto.

It was my first time working on foam and it was harder than i thought. There was limited tools which made it harder to work. I tried using a saw to cut the foam, but it was to small and i had to break the pieces apart. After doing that it was easier to shape but i kept having to go to Steven to talk about sculpting with foam. Luckily i managed to get the overall shape right and i was able to move on to armature.

That’s when i ran into another problem: i didn’t know how to attach the thin fingers onto the arm. I asked Oliver for help and he showed me how to do it and i was able to finish the armature and ended up bulking up the arms and legs a bit to keep the core light.

During the last session, i was able to finish sculpting and adding details to the shell. The next step will be covering the frog and working on detail.

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Group project - Script and animatic part 2

After talking to the group and mark, we all realised there were a few problems in the overall animation as mentioned in a previous post.

We wanted the changes two weeks later and sadly not many people showed up for the session or handed in a reworked animatic.

We wanted the animatic and script to have some dialogue and it was supposed to have sound the weeks before. Half of the group managed to get everything that was expected in but the other half either didn’t add dialogue or didn’t edit their animation at all which made looking for errors hard and we decided in the end that what we have, worked and we all should start with our animations. But due to time pressure with other projects, most put this project aside and are focusing on other things.

We wanted to send a script to a contact anca had but sadly they haven’t gotten back to us which makes us consider using one of the team members as a voice actor.

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2 minute film - Start of the animation

After i managed to get the perfect video of Sophie performing, i started on the animation. I planned 2 weeks for every 30 seconds but sadly that was a bit difficult to achieve.

I started out with the outline and a few important details such as the clothes. I wanted the character to have exaggerated movements, which will be added in later, so I can concentrate on getting the normal movements right.

Whilst animating i ran into a few problems. My biggest problem was that the head and underwear of my character kept changing sizes. I constantly had to go back and forth trying to fix it. I wasn’t able to get it to look perfect, but when i looked at what i had at that point i realised it worked and helped me notice that the imperfection adds to the meaning of the film, which is you’re imperfections are perfect, no matter what people say. Another problem was not being able to see the details of Sophie’s hands or feet due to bad camera quality. To fix this i had to “ freestyle” and draw what i thought would work best.

I’m hoping to get the basic animation done soon, since the details will take a while.

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2 Minute animation - Changes

After talking to mario about changes a few weeks ago, Sophie helped me film a new reference movie that i could use for reference. I wrote a short script with directions to use but i had to rewrite it after trying to film using it but the timing kept being off. Sophie suggested listening to the lyrics and timing the directions so i could tell her just on time. After doing this it worked out on the first try. Once I was able to, I edited the footage but realised that there were a few scenes i wanted to change slightly. One of them the timing was slightly off and i wanted to make it a bit longer, the other one i just wanted to pause a bit. Other than that the footage was exactly what i wanted and fit very well with the music. To make the small changes i will need help, since I don’t know a lot about editing.

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Group Project - Witch design

As mentioned in a previous post, I decided to do my animation in the American dragon style. For the preproduction i drew the witch, using “Rose”, the love interest in the first season as a reference. Whilst i was drawing it, i ran into a few problems. Rose only wears wide legged jeans, but since the which wears a short dress i needed to find a picture of female characters in the show that wear skirts as well. After a while i was able to find a reference that didnt only help me with the legs but also what the skirt would look like. The hat was also a difficult thing. No characters wear a similar hat so i tried a bunch of different ways but managed to sort it out.

The whisp was a bit easier. Since it’s a simple design and i wanted it to shape shift into a dragon i used the American dragon symbol as inspiration and the colour scheme that was given for it. At first i had a darker outline, but i wanted it seem like it glowed so i used a luminescence brush to create a glow.

In the end it turned out exactly how i wanted and i really enjoyed creating it. The next step is creating a character turnaround for the witch and drawing a few sketches of the dragon whisp.

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Group project - Session 4

During this session we looked at everyone’s animatic which Robbie kindly edited for us. There were a few continuity errors, direction mistakes and unclear animatics. A few were also over the time limit which was supposed to be 20 seconds. They will have to be cut down a bit but those that can’t be shortened to 20 seconds, have already been cleared with Mark. Since there were a few mistakes, we decided to redo all of our animatics until the next week. Each animatic should be the right time and clear so that it can be presentable when edited together. Those that had objects in their animatic needed to put them away before exiting through the portal. Another thing we have to do is rewrite our scripts adding any voice effects we want in our animation to send off to voice artists.

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Woodland creature project - frog concept

I decided to go with the frog snail idea and made a few sketches. This helped me realise what I wanted my frog snail to look like.

I want it to have a goofy, clueless looking frog. It’s going to have two different sized pupils and a big mouth. The snail shell is going to be half the size of the frog to keep the snail look and the opening will be in the middle of the frogs back.

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Production schedule

When I started making my production schedule I was struggling quite a lot. I had problems splitting the projects into different tasks and deciding when I would do them. I gave myself two weeks to get some work done which helped me figuring out what tasks I need to do to finish my projects. For marks project it was pretty easy since the preproduction was finished and it’s only a 20 second animation. For the 2 minute project I decide two have a strict schedule giving myself two weeks for every 30 seconds and letting myself have a few weeks free after my planned hand in in case I don’t manage to stick to the schedule. I’m not quite sure when I should plan in the tasks for model making so I’ve left it blank until I know how it will keep going in class. Since I have the placement with Jon from kilogram I added that on there as well, but I’m still waiting for task, because I’m only starting on the 14th February. My production schedule only has my planned deadlines on it but each week I split up the task into smaller parts and add them onto the days, making it realistic, so that I don’t beat myself up if I don’t manage to achieve my goals.

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2 minute animation - changes (part 2)

After filming Sophie performing for the first time, editing the footage and adding the music, mario pointed out that some of the scenes didn’t work as well with the music. We decided I should have the film based on the lyrics. Most of the footage fit but a few were not right. On top of that the footage was almost 2 min 30 sec long so we had to shorten it quite a bit.

In the song it says “blue eyed blondie perfect body”. At this point the girl turns into the perfect version of herself and later turns back into her normal self. When it says “Quick curl barbie”, she turns back into her perfect self, just with a prom dress and crown. After that the song says “never cut out for prom queen” at which point she turns into the morphed version of herself. She reaches out for a picture of a boy outside of the mirror during the line “do you think he will like me?”. The last change to the lyrics is that she looks at herself during the line “you should lower your beauty standards” until the tambourine starts.

Since the first recording was very choppy and there are a few changes to the film, we will have to film it in one go with the changes. Before I start that I will have to write a list of directions to give to Sophie whilst filming.

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Group project - Style

I wanted to go with one of my favourite childhood shows for this: “American dragon”.

Since it’s based on a teenage boy I choose to use his love interest “rose” as a reference.

Rose has big eyes and her pupils are her eye colour. For the witch they’d be green like in the master design. The style from American dragon is simple and usually doesn’t have any shading or highlights, and a black outline, except for the hair which is a slightly darker shade of the hair colour. The face is simple, a small nose, rounded face and plump pink lips.

Her body is slightly curvy and she has a synched waist. She wears jeans which created a problem since the witch character is wearing a dress. Because of this I had a look at other female characters and most of them wear trousers as well, but I managed to find one picture with girls wearing skirts and decided to use those as a reference. The skirts are a-line, don’t have the natural movement and move more like one solid object.

My next step is creating a character sheet in the “American dragon” style.

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Group project - script and storyboard

The script was one of the easiest parts for me. I had a clear idea of what I wanted in the scene and the words flowed onto the page. I wanted her to loose some things whilst falling, because it seemed a bit bland. At first I wanted her to loose 3 items and I wanted her to “swim” in the air towards the item, but since we only have 20 seconds I had to cut a few things.

I wanted to have the whisp as an orb, but after the meeting i changed it to a dragon since my chosen style is the series “American dragon”. I changed it in my storyboard and it fit well.

This script is the second version, so it has a few differences to the finalised storyboard.

I struggled a bit with the perspective since I had her falling towards the camera and also hanging on the root which meant having to shrink the overall image and getting the size of everything right.

This is my finalised storyboard with all of my changes.

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Group project - session 3

This session was quite short. We only had to go over the almost finalised character design, but since we already had a clear concept it was a quick task and the character designers managed to get the final character sheet with the colour value in by 4pm.

Another topic we had to go through was which style everyone wanted to use, to see if we had any overlapping styles, and what the whisp in everyone’s segment is going to turn into. At first we were okay with the whisp staying in its orb shape for some animations but after we noticed that half of the group wanted an orb we decided to make it transform in each part.

At the end of the session I had to bring up that we had a few people who were not handing in their work and it was going to cause problems for the entire group. Even though I was trying to get them to hand it in on time by messaging and checking up on people it still didn’t work. This isn’t the first time we’ve encountered this problem and sadly it was the same people as the weeks before. Hopefully we won’t have this issue for the final hand in on 7th February.

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Woodland creature project - initial concept

I had three ideas for this project: a cow pixie, a raccoon farmer and a mix between a snail and a frog.

I started out with a bit of research on each animal, which helped me decide which animal I wanted to go with.

At first I thought of a cow pixie. For this I knew I wanted a highland cow, even though it isn’t a woodland creature, thought the pixie is part of the woods. The highland cow has long, wide horns, wavy, woolly and mostly reddish brown coats. Because of their thick undercoats they handle low temperatures well and have a life expectancy of 20 years. Female highland cows are typically 90-106 cm tall.

As cute as I thought the idea of a highland cow pixie would be, I thought it was slightly off topic and it just didn’t think it was the right choice for me.

My second idea was a raccoon who is a farmer. I wanted it to have a farmer hat and small Jean dungarees. Raccoons are nocturnal animals that are native to North America. They are very adaptable which is why they are found in mixed forests, mountain ranges, coastal marshes and also urban area. They are omnivorous that mostly eat invertebrates and plants. Raccoons have specific social behaviour patterns, such as sharing common areas and cleaning their food before eating.

Even though i really liked this idea, especially since raccoons are my favourite animal, an animal that like to eat plants and is a farmer seems like an overplayed concept and I wanted to try something different.

My last idea was a frog with a snail house. At first I wasn’t sure if I wanted a frog or a toad, but while I was doing my research I found the red-eyed tree frog. It interested me right away, because even though they are brightly coloured they are not venomous. They are nocturnal carnivores, mostly eating crickets, flies and moths. They are native to Central America and northern South America in rainforests. One of their interesting qualities it that they use colouration, a tactic that uses bright colours to shock a predator and give the prey a head start.

Red-eyed tree frogs are quite small (1.5-2.75cm) which is why they are the perfect size to combine with a snail shell. For the shell I wanted to go with a simple garden snail shell design to contrast the colourful frog.

I decided to go with this idea because it gives me creative freedom with the poses and facial expressions since tree frogs have very expressive faces.

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2 minute animation - Changes

After going through my animatic with mario, we decided it would be a nice twist to try making this project into a dance-like animation and in a similar style to Ryan Woodwards “Thinking about you”. At first i was a bit scared of attempting that style, because I’ve never tried it.

I started out with a few animation tests, some of which turned out well and others not as good. I realised that due to the style change I’d have to change a few o the scenes as well, which i worked on and they ended up fitting the film better.

I also realised I needed someone who could do the real life performance to base my animation off of. I straight away knew to ask Sophie to do it, since she has some experience in dancing, theatre and performance. Since neither of us are a choreographer we tried coming up with the moves whilst we were filming the different scenes. For some input we asked Anca to help and as a team we managed to get the result that i wanted. As this is a quite emotional piece i let Sophie have some creative freedom by giving her key scenes that i want to have in the movie. She was able to get into the characters shoes and gave an amazing performance which almost brought Anca and me to tears.

This makes me all the more excited to create the finished product.