Storyboards and Animatics

Yesterday we practised making animatics. 

It was interesting to learn some more advanced steps we can take. Even though it only involves simple movement of an image or change of scale, it can really make to whole thing much more dynamic.
This will be interesting to play around with; to make an animatic in a similar way to what development is like for big productions.

At the moment I'm focusing on my storyboard. Currently I've made one page (6 images) which I'll continue. Then I can start trying out an animatic with the images I've made.

Character Design

I've spent quite a while drawing her at different angles.

I'm pretty pleased with it. I wanted her lower body to be a little wider than average; large thighs and bum. I've realised afterwards that her body shape sort of reminds me of Courtney - the sister in Paranorman. Only less extreme.

How I want her head to look

Here I was just experimenting with different expressions. 

My thoughts were:
confusion at having lost the sock, frustration at the inability of finding the sock and utter delight for if she ever found it again.
From the eyes of my previous image I chose the center face but brought the lids down and toned down the cartoon-y exaggeration of the eyelashes.

Some Initial Designs

Here I'm having a play with shape and trying out different things for the main character of my story.

Collage Character

I've made my main character from bits and pieces!

She is looking mildly exasperated from realising she has lost a sock.

Illustrative Development

Today the class had a skype conversation with Kim from Mew Lab.

It was another interesting conversation about how she develops artistically for her animations. It's great to hear another perspective; I like how honest she was that she draws inspiration for other animator's works. I feel I can relate to that as when I'm thinking of a particular idea, a specific style - I would have seen before - tends to pop into my head, to visualise it.

I've looked through her 'making of blogs' on The Water Bearer and The Key and I find it amazing how she gets communities and particularly children involved in these projects.
I wish I'd been involved in animating at that age! They are so lucky.

The progression is brilliantly thorough, particularly in character design. This is something I want to gain more confidence in.

In class we looked at development for The Incredibles and then practised making characters and environments through collage. Taking textures and images from the internet and making them into what image we wanted.
The first exercise wasn't great for me; I'd nipped to the loo and had to ask what we were doing and therefore had less time. Oops.

The description was:
A selfish blinkered creature with no regard to hygiene. Hadsott is the kind of man who would remind you that humans have evolved more than they think. He regards sunlight as a poison and relishes in the fact he can stand taller than anyone else.

I used: spider's legs, mossy rock, gnarled wood and a quail egg.


Next was better. We were to create an environment. It's a long description so the key elements I took from it were:

• Devastatingly beautiful landscape. 
• Mankind has removed need for fuel. 
• Once horrendous past is reminded through structures.
• Birds play in air. 
• Vegetation reclaims rightful place. 
• Life has lost it's once glorious colour.

Here I wanted it to feel familiar with a slightly surreal quality to it. I quite like the result.

Mood Boards

I've made two mood boards for my core idea.

As a reminder of the written treatments:

1) Determined to find something that is inexplicably lost.

2) Searching. Inexplicable. Relatable.

My first mood board was quite difficult for me. I believe it's quite hard to create an atmosphere and 'feel' for a story that is humorous. It's much easier - I  think - to create a mood board for a serious topic.

However here is the first one:

I wanted to show elements of searching for something and fortunately I was able to find some extreme images of people in comical poses (head in bin/washing machine/under bed); depicting this notion.

In order to show emotion of frustration and confusion I chose strong expressions that again were quite extreme and emitted humour.

My idea of the environment and colour scheme is bright, clean, ordered and neutral. I have the idea that there's a contrast of tidiness to chaos in finding the 'Odd Sock'. 

I imagine neutral pastel colours with a splash of bright colours for the main items of clothing i.e. sock.

The second mood board had to portray the core idea in a total antithesis of my original one.

I found this one somewhat easier - although turning my idea upside-down initially was quite hard.

Obvious opposites: bright, light-hearted, modern flat = dark, serious, grand house.

I thought about what could be lost that was much more serious and where the audience could still be empathetic. I thought a woman losing her baby on a foggy night.

The main image here is of the empty cot to represent the missing baby.The desperation and confusion is evident through the images of women and their body language and expression. It is dark at night with fog to show a sense of entrapment and further lack of clarity.

The colour palate lacks saturation and is quite dark except for a pale beige.

Mood Board for General Idea of 'Quest'

From leaving the mood board class yesterday...

I wanted to practice by making one for my first thoughts of when I was told the module would be based on the word 'Quest'. Very typical and perhaps cliche elements came to mind initially, but I still wanted to visualise everything I considered.

I thought of mazes and labyrinths. Fantastical castles, knighthood and dragons. Deserts, mountains and treasure. 

The similarities I found within them all is that there's an idea of searching for something and/or achieving a goal. I wanted to simplify and normalise a 'quest' to be something that everyone can experience in day-to-day life.

Written Treatments

I've actually made three...

I wanted to write about my idea in a few different ways.

1) a sentence summarising the core of my idea.

2) key words that come to mind to describe it.

3) three words that I think convey the idea sufficiently.

1 Sentence

Determined to find something that is inexplicably lost.

Key Words

Lost. Frustrating. Inexplicable. Perplexing. Familiar. Humorous. Relatable. Searching. Frantic

3 Words

Searching. Inexplicable. Relatable.

Introduction to Written Treatments and Mood Boards

Today Emma Landolt spoke with us from 'Drive'; where her job is to create mood boards for clients as a way of communicating her ideas. It's also the tool of communicating with her co-workers - to make sure they're all thinking along the same lines.

It was really interesting; she was very clear and pleasant to listen to. I didn't realise there was such a vital role for mood boards within the creative industry.

We also looked into written treatments. We were given animated clips to watch and had to instinctively come up with what we thought would have been the original written treatment for the piece.

Most of us wrote with too much detail. We had to learn to simplify what we saw into the purest, core idea.
I found this useful and I began thinking about my own projects and what words I would use. We simplified it to the point of 3 words only - and this is the aim for our R&D projects.

We also practised mood boards. We were shown a written treatment and had to quickly put together a mood board. This, unfortunately, I didn't enjoy very much. The internet on my computer - for whatever reason - was infuriatingly slow. To the point where we were given 10-15 minutes and I only produced 5 images (maddening!). By the end of it though I felt better - and my internet seemed to pick up a little more speed to find more images and I was relatively happy with it.

I hope when I look for images for me R&D project I will be able to find what I want - this has never been a strong skill of mine. I get rather frustrated when I can't find something that I have in mind.

Here are the mood boards I made as practise in class:

Idea

I've had a bit of a think 

and I've got an idea - the age old Quest of finding The Odd Sock. Where do they go?
I read a book about a place where missing things go and this place had all of the odd socks, that vanish from every household.

Anyway I was thinking of this simple thing but perhaps exaggerating it with the animation.
For example, when looking through all of the laundry for this one sock it could suddenly become like wading through a sea of clothes. I thought about the extreme viewpoint from within the washing machine - looking out at the annoyed/puzzled face of the Explorer.

Possibilities for the ending could be that she never finds the sock and gives in to buy a new pair (could stop there or..) then she loses one from the new pair; nice cyclical narrative.

But I've also thought about - don't know if it's just me - how we don't actually throw away the socks with missing brothers and sisters. We keep them, with the hopes of eventually finding the lost ones.

So therefore:
There's the possibility of a scene where either a couple months have clearly passed (probably shown through some imagery in the background, maybe seasonal weather) or it's way further ahead and she's all old and suddenly discovers the missing sock. She's joyous and runs to the drawer where she kept the other and - after rifling through the various single socks she's kept over the years - she pulls all of the other socks out one by one with a sense of growing hysteria 'til it's empty. She doesn't find it. And she cracks.

Well that's a few thoughts down about this idea. I need to start thinking about what style and atmosphere I want to portray this story and colour schemes, to start making my mood boards.

I also realise I started to say 'she' without intending to. I guess in my head I assume guys really don't care much about wearing odd socks. Like this guy.

I'm venturing on a 'Quest'...

Yesterday I had my first class in Research Development.

The structure of the module was explained and we were given our brief. The aim is to develop work towards a story/animation. The one word that is our guidance into creating a story idea is 'quest'.                                

quest

noun\ˈkwest\

: a journey made in search of something

: a long and difficult effort to find or do something

-Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary

My initial thoughts were of someone having to struggle and make a huge effort to do something mundane - forcing oneself to get out of bed and do an everyday task. 

I will need to give it some more thought and begin to think about mood boards and colour schemes.