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Final moving film w/ sound

A few examples of shots

First frame drawn by Emma Crampton-Thomas, rest roughed by me

Lined by me

Roughed and lined by me

Keyframes by Emma Crampton-Thomas

Lined by me

Scrapped shot, rough + lines by me

Proof of Concept

I’ve always found myself influenced by animation that discusses real topics and issues. Perfect Blue and Persepolis are two of my favourite examples of this, and although my film does not directly correlate to the conflict addressed in either film, I wanted to keep a sort of ‘dream-like’ state in the latter half of the animation that is similar to Perfect Blue.

Developments after the intial research assignment

My initial idea was going to be looking at my past experiences with emetophobia, and struggling with my social life due to agoraphobia, however, after this point I was finding it difficult to think of an actual storyline for this without making it autobiographical. I decided instead to focus on emetophobia regardless but base it on the struggles I had with food and eating instead, since this greatly impacted my late teens. For me, food was not a necessity, it would eventually become vomit and that scared me greatly. I wanted the film to personify food as vomit, and though I wasn’t aiming for a happy ending, the main character is eventually able to overcome this obstacle.

Logline: Finding herself unable to ‘let loose’, a young woman suffering  from emetophobia becomes increasingly wary of her surroundings, leading to feelings of isolation and a particular aversion to food.

Moodboard (slide 3) Sources

Backdrops

Kidblind, Matteo Berton, https://matteoberton.com/Kiblind

serena-doodles, https://serena-doodles.tumblr.com/post/140019629814/done

Summer, Bex Glendining, https://www.lgions.com/?lightbox=dataItem-jxnf1t9o

Temmie Chang, https://temmiechang.tumblr.com/post/165496197584/sketchbook-draw

Style Inspiration

Best Friend – Animation Short Film 2018 – GOBELINS, https://youtu.be/j01Hg4QJ6NE

Birdsong (CalArts Film 2022), https://youtu.be/b4_dq_e4KGs

CONTRETEMPS – Animation Short Film 2021 – GOBELINS, https://youtu.be/ot9DnkGP6Gg

ÉLÉGIE – (FX exercice – Bachelor of Arts in Character Animation and Animated Filmmaking), https://youtu.be/KbmBoQQF134

GLOW UP, https://youtu.be/XFhCt_UAArE

LOUISE – Animation Short Film 2021 – GOBELINS, https://youtu.be/7GjJef2QkQU

MAGNIFICA – Animation Short Film 2022 – GOBELINS, https://youtu.be/7YrKFtYLp1s

mitosis (a calarts 48hr film), https://youtu.be/FhPyDQC9vRE

PARFUM FRAISE | Animation Short Film 2017 – GOBELINS, https://youtu.be/Owl6crWLibQ

Brief concept art I created to have a feel for what my story would be about, but as I mentioned in the first slide, the idea felt too much like a live action film as opposed to an animation, so I scrapped it and ended up going for a more fantastical idea.

After receiving some feedback from tutors, I strayed away from my initial idea and leaned more into my second idea, where the main character struggles with food. Since I suffered from an extreme fear of vomiting, I wanted food to essentially be vomit in the eyes of the main character. Initially, I thought it was pretty humorous dedicating a canvas to vomit but it paid off in the end since the design stayed consistent in the final animation.

My first priority regarding character design was to ensure they would be animation-friendly. I figured that the third outfit design on the left would be the best option since it was plain, but suited the character. The second one would have also been a decent choice too however it didn’t take me long to figure out animating a skirt would be outside of my skillset.

In the end, I had two character, the Older Sister (left) and the Main Character (right). I wanted the Sister to have a prominent role in the film, however I ran into a problem where a segment of her head was cut-off (as shown in the proof of concept) which was so disappointing I left her character out for the climax and latter half of the film. Regardless, I’m fond of her design as it’s unique but simple, and she definitely feels like the older sister to the main character. If I could change her in any way, I would make her hair less detailed since that was a task to animate. 

I mostly based my background artwork based on images of my house, while also altering the colours so that it would fit the general artstyle. Unfortunately, a lot of the dining room scene is cut out due to the fact that the sister’s head was accidentally deleted, so I had to make-do by zooming in.

The second background would be the main character’s room, I kept it at an angle for a bit of uneasiness, while keeping the camera above the character to convey her feelings of idleness. Because I wanted to keep the backgrounds a bit detailed, I had to limit how many I wanted to make. I personally believe I would have benefited from one more, to add more dimension to the film’s world.

There are a few perspective changes within this segment of the storyboard, I wanted to make sure my film was visually interesting, while also making sure the camera angles made sense for the mood. The overhead shot in Scene 2 was done intentionally to make the main character feel little to the viewer, and the second shot creates the effect that the character is looking at herself in a mirror. The mood is also overall a little bit dark, to capture a more heavy emotion that is felt by the characters. In the end, the Main Character and Sister swap places since I wanted the Sister to be in-front a brightly lit hallway, reflecting her lack of conflict versus the Main Character’ (who is in the foreground of a darker backdrop).

The latter half of the storyboard has less tone variation since the setting switches to a whiter, neutral space. The atmosphere is not necessarily jovial, but a place where the main character finds some inner peace.

I created a very basic colour script for my film, I was a little bit unsure on the colours I picked, however, after creating the script, I figured out what colours looked best with each other and whether the colour transitions would not be too jarring. I noticed that my palette was mostly greens, blues, browns and purples so I tried to stick to that palette the whole way through

Animation Test

Proof Of Concept

Animatic

Production

I tried to keep my production process rather simple, with the flow being

Roughs > Tie Down> Clean Up > Colour

I also added some light shading, however, since I was running out of time, I skipped this for certain scenes and used Tone and Highlight nodes as a shortcut.

Compositing in PDF.

Final Film

statement of intent and critical appraisal in pdf!

Alternative link to the film

Proof of Concept

Animatic

Final Film

Film and Portrait Analysis

Visual Research

The visual style of this illustration book immediately caught my eye for it’s detailed watercolour work. I wanted to perhaps emulate this style in my final animation – however considerably less detailed and more simplified for the sake of time.

I also looked at some typographical art based of my chosen person’s book ‘No Longer Human’, which is an autobiographical book very relevant to Dazai Osamu’s life and was written before his suicide. The artworks shown above are varied, so I have to think about how ‘clean’ my final animation will be – or perhaps it can be a combination of wild and rushed, neat and clean.

Another piece of visual research that is crucial for this film is understanding what Dazai Osamu looks like – not just his facial features but the type of clothing he would wear, what kind of paper he would write on, and what his home looked like. I did some research into what structures would look like for a middle-upper class family in 1940’s Japan and made sure that the colours were as accurate as possible. Shown above is his actual home that has been preserved.

Storyboard

In regards to my animation, I want to explore with both traditional and digital means of animation. I plan on making the digital aspects look somewhat traditional, but using muted tones and a watercolour brush. For the traditional aspect, I want to use paper to imitate the movement of water (as the focal point of the animation is Osamu’s suicide via drowning).

Development and Illustrations

Final Films

Final Reflection

Prior to beginning my pre-production/research stage, I had to decide on who will be my ‘portrait’ for the project. After looking at a few options, I decided on Dazai Osamu, one of my favourite authors, and highlighting his iconic death, which was widespread news in Japan for its bizarre nature. I also wanted to draw inspiration from his bestselling novel, ‘No Longer Human’, which was written shortly before his death. In a nutshell – the main character in the novel attempts to drown himself in a failed suicide attempt, and Dazai himself also commits suicide in a similar way – albeit successfully. With all of this in mind, I needed to think about what research I would need to create a successful animation. When thinking of what style I wanted to go for for the animation and overall concept, I thought that a simple watercolour on paper would be the most effective. However, with the limited time we had, I did this digitally. I took inspiration from an artist on Behance (on the second slide) who painted a few illustrated pages for ‘No Longer Human’. I also wanted to include some quotes from the original Japanese text to be in the film, whilst remaining relevant. I took the quote “I made up my mind one day to give myself ten shots that night and throw myself into the river.” and applied that to the animation, with that being the key line that implicates Dazai’s future suicide. I looked at typographical Japanese art for a bit of inspiration – however, I opted for a more traditional writing style as this would have been more relevant for Dazai’s time period (19040’s). During the production stage, I used a digital ink pen so that the characters looked clear and accurate, I would have attempted Dazai’s writing style however it seems his handwriting was rather messy and difficult to pull off.

For the climax,  I wanted to introduce both live-action and traditional animation to the film. Since Dazai’s death was so well-known in Japan, I wanted to animate using newspaper in order for it to look somewhat like wild waves. I noticed initially that this wasn’t working very well since the newspaper was dry and not moving the way I wanted it to, so I wet the paper enough that I could shift it enough to move more fluidly. I used a top-down tripod so that I could film the stop motion on a black background, although unfortunately the ring light didn’t work in my favour and left a harsh light post-production which was difficult to key out. Regardless the scenes whip by fairly fast, as in-between those shots is live-action footage of a calm river bankside – which is the body of water Dazai died in. I also used these clips to juxtapose with the more erratic scenes of the paper. I used Stop Motion Studio to film the newspaper, and edited the footage directly into Premiere Pro; both of which I’ve used for previous projects so the post-production element of the project definitely took a lot less time than pre-production and production.

Reflecting back on my project overall; I would say that it was fairly successful. If I had a little bit more time, I would attempt to make some animation sequences slightly more fluid. Some of the hand animations in the beginning are rather clunky (although this was mostly done on purpose as attempting a more smooth animation would be difficult using digital watercolour brushes). I also felt that the paper animation was perhaps a bit too rough and didn’t emulate the motion of water enough, nonetheless, this tells me that prior testing is crucial if I’m working outside of my comfort zone, so if I consider doing more experimental animation in the future, I need to know that my idea works before trying to execute it. Otherwise, I would say that the overall outcome of my film turned out well and it was quite fun trying experimental animation (especially since my previous elective was Living Voices)! The earlier exercises such as the ‘loop-de-loop’ animation and group activities during class really helped to understand the core sense of the project; since we observed the little things about the people around us in the latter exercise, and used various tools and materials to create an animation in the former.

Moodboards

(text not clear) “I want one of the characters in my aniamtion to move in a slightly unnatural manner, similar to what’s shown here.

Much of the art is by Joe Taylor who uses mostly uneven shapes and dynamic poses.

I also like the dark purple lineart they’ve used. It makes the flat colouring more visually striking.

The lines and shapes are slightly less complex but there’s more detailing on the face/fur.

Less focused on the shape but varied colours of the lines have the same effect as above.”

“Cats have a distinct set of shapes but pose in more dynamic ways.

Cats also emote with their tails which can be used to my advantage, since cats can be ‘blank-faced’.

Most animals consist of simple shapes that could be made more unique in some way.

Interesting facial expressions while still remaining ‘cat-like’.

A good piece that shows the different silhouettes cars can have. How can I push beyond these?”

“Going for non-traditional colours (for an animal character).

Softer colours (perhaps for the younger voice).

Stronger colours for the adult’s voice.

More sharp, perhaps obnoxious colours?”

Character Designs

When conceptualising my younger voice’s character, I obviously had an animal in mind – particularly a cat. I thought about what features separates a kitten from an adult cat, rounder face, rounder body and bigger eyes, to name a few. I applied these to my character, adding small quirks like comically large eyes and a rather blank stare to match with the character’s straight-forward answers. The colours I wanted for this character were slightly softer ones in comparison to the older voices.

In contrast to my previous character, I wanted the adult cat to have slightly sharper features (as many adult cats do), with a sleeker body, and longer tail – which I plan to utilise for interesting movement in the final animation. The colours are still soft, however slightly more jarring in comparison to the kitten, especially with his added accessories which are purely just for fun.

Storyboard

My storyboard was essentially to help to lay-out where my keyframes would be and also where the scene changes would be located. I didn’t want to change the angles too much as I knew this would become difficult to handle in the production stage, so I used a facing-up angle for the kitten, and a facing-down angle for the adult cat to look more interesting and also highlight the size difference between the characters.

Background

I wanted to keep my background simple, yet interesting. I chose colours that matched my character’s colour palettes to avoid clashing. There is minimal shading minus the floor in order to make the image look more like a background, and there are some blank spaces – but I left them blank since I knew they wouldn’t be visible!

Mouth-sheet and X-sheets

The mouth shapes and x-sheets were incredibly helpful in mapping out my lip-sync animation. I simply scrubbed through the audio in Adobe After Effects and found out what ‘sound’ would go where for each frame.

Final Animation

Final Reflection

Beginning with pre-production, I had to think about which audio clip would be the best for me to animate. I chose the clip where two voices (an adult and a child) are having a conversation about where the child’s mother ‘found them’. It was a rather comedic audio clip and I thought that animating two different types of characters would help my animation come alive. I wanted to avoid animating humans as this was something that I had done before, and I decided to use cats instead. This is because cats have a rather sleek, unique shape and most times can be less complicated to animate in comparison to humans. Using inspiration from other artists; I found that purple, beige, and peach-toned colours would look the most polished and so I decided that that would look the best for my animation. Another thing that helped during pre-production is looking at basic shapes, and seeing what makes a distinct silhouette; cats consist of triangles and ovals usually, so I made sure that the characters were unique to each other but still resembled a without looking at defining features such as the whiskers. 

With the image of my characters in my mind, I made a rough storyboard to help me figure out when there would be a scene change or where I would need to sketch out my initial keyframes.I wanted there to ideally be a scene change whenever the older male spoke, and only made a separate shot for the younger male for dramatic or humorous effect (e.g. when he says “from the shop”.). I also needed to create a backdrop for the animation. Although I knew much of it might not be shown in post-production, I still wanted to put some thought into it. I looked at different colour schemes that would match the cats. From the character designs, I knew the background had to be fairly bright; however, not so distracting that it was impossible to focus on whoever was speaking. After making a few backgrounds, I ended up with the final one included in the animation, which was coloured flatly and had the setting of a cafe, as I thought this would fit the characters the most.

The production section of the project went fairly well, since I’ve used Toon Boom a few times. Most of my post-production work was done in Adobe After Effects which is luckily another software that I’m familiar with – though not much tweaking was needed! With that, most of my pre-production was done in either Photoshop or Clip Studio Paint, the latter for painting and the former for making small colour changes with adjustment layers. Overall production went fairly well – I could have been better with time as I ended up working into the holidays when ideally I should have finished within the five-week period given, however this is something for me to keep in mind for next time.

If I could restart this project, or if I had more time, I would consider shading in my characters in order to give them more depth so they don’t feel flat and pasted onto the background. I also wasted a little bit of time by creating a background that didn’t quite go with the characters – so I need to make sure to plan every step so that I make the most of the time given to me to make the film. There were a few challenges during the whole process, however, the biggest one for me personally was trying to do dynamic animations, as this is not quite my strong suit! Initially, I wanted the older character to move around much more but I realised that time and lack of experience would not be in my favour – so exploring different shapes and character movements would benefit me for future projects. Other than the minimal challenges I experienced during the project, I had a blast learning all of the pre-production material (particularly the x-sheets) as it truly helped me get through the animating process smoothly. Another advantage I had was already knowing how to use Toon Boom from previous projects, so working with the features within the programme with prior knowledge saved me a lot of time! Overall this project was useful in learning the core basics of character and lip sync animation, and the payoff was great. For my next project, I will try to experiment and broaden my horizons a bit – working outside of my comfort zone.

Looking back on the ‘Out of Your Head Project’ I would say that my partner and I worked successfully with each other, given that we were not able to collaborate face to face. We used various means of collaborating and sharing our ideas so we could conclude on an outcome that both of us would be happy with. To begin with, we selected our five random words from the pool provided (Light, Shadow, Illuminate, Fly, and Fall) and noted down what would be achievable for a 20-second animation.

We both decided that trying to fit a full-length story into the 20 seconds would be stressful and would make the outcome feel rushed and agreed on creating an animation based on our personal experiences; particularly our experiences during the year 2021. Initially, we debated as to whether we would pick the highlights of the year, or whether we would showcase all months to show the ups and downs for some variation. The latter was chosen over the former to push ourselves out of our comfort zone. ​

​To start the planning process after my partner and I decided on our idea, we created two separate Pinterest boards organised from January to December. We filled the folders with images that emulated our emotions during the twelve months. I picked images depending on their mood, the textures used, and colours. For example, March was a busy month for me, so my board was rather chaotic and unorganized, and had images that used a multitude of colours. 

From this, me and my partner compared and contrasted our boards to see how wildly different or similar they were. In many months there were stark differences, but a few were eerily similar. One pattern that we noticed was that both boards used floral imagery. We wanted to use this as a common denominator and include it frequently within our project. Our initial idea was to label each scene with the month’s name but decided to use birth flowers (e.g., Chrysanthemum for November) to represent each month, as a less explicit approach.

Our goal was for the emotions we felt during the year 2021 to be translated through the animation. For instance, April was a very positive month for me, so I illustrated a daisy in a colourful vase. My partner, however, appeared to have a rather bleak month, and so illustrated a desolate room for the vase to sit in for juxtapositioning.

From there, we storyboarded each month and used our boards for inspiration. We then combined our ideas to formulate a final scene for each month and highlighted who will create the assets for each scene.

My partner animated many of the backgrounds for the scenes whereas I animated many of the flowers. We transferred the files to see how well the assets fit next to each other and tweaked them until we thought it would be okay to start animating. Our common software was Adobe After Effects, but individually we used separate software to produce our assets and brought our work together in Premier Pro to begin the editing process. 

Compositing and editing the animation together was fairly easy thanks to my partner and I’s frequent communication with each other, we decided which transitions would look the best in-between each month, and what type of sound would fit the mood of the animation.

My partner produced the idea of using distorting the sounds of various instruments (primarily focusing on percussion) to create an eerie, somewhat musical arrangement. In-between a few of the scenes there are some high-pitched and low-pitched sounds used to indicate that the scene was over, and some sounds were used for adding texture to the animation (e.g., a ‘clunk’ when March halts to a stop, or the sound of tearing paper for October’s transition).​

​Overall, this project felt very successful, and the animation came out how we wanted it to even if some of our initial ideas weren’t achievable. My biggest struggle was trying to fit 12 scenes within a 20-second composition without making it feel rushed, however, though I worried about this during the editing process, the animation didn’t feel as rushed as I thought it would be when viewing the final edit. If anything, the snappy pace summarizes how quickly 2021 went by not only for me but my partner too. 

I am particularly pleased with how well our scenes meshed despite illustrating them individually, and the teamwork between us was able to produce results that we were both happy with.​

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The final project for Introduction to Animation required us to highlight an issue or topic that we feel passionately about – in our own creative way, within 30 seconds.​

​My mind immediately went to a topic I feel very strongly about – the beauty and sadness of sickness and disease. I took reference of various illnesses and wanted to convey them in both a beautiful and gruesome way. I used one of my favourite non—fictional books ‘The Sick Rose’ (Richard Barnett, 2014) as the framework of these diseases, and drew inspiration from the different illustrations. Many of the sicknesses pictured in the book are pre-modern, and it was fascinating to see how much cancer affected the body in the 1800’s compared to the post-modern era. I used my own sounds (other than the music) to create a sense of ‘place’ within my animation (e.g., the cigarette lighter and bells).​

​A major hurdle is that I struggled to make my characters look more ‘animated’. I intended for them to be mostly static to achieve an illusion of someone who is dead, however more suggestions of movement would be more effective.​However, working on a topic that I’m passionate about felt very rewarding, and using previous lessons in Introduction to Animation helped a lot with my making.​

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