Environmental Storytelling - The backgrounds of Batman - The Animated Series (OUAN404)

The ambient street lighting and the striking silhouettes of the looming buildings that stretch out into the night are part of what make Batman - The Animated Series' GOTHAM CITY such an awesome environment, steeped in a sexy film noir atmosphere that hearkens back to the smokey detective films of the fifties.

I can't get enough of these backdrops. They're important and relevant to my study because they tell a story by making the world Batman occupies so tactile, adding another level of engagement between the audience and the events taking place on screen.

Take the above background, for instance. It engages the audience because it invokes an emotional reaction. The water is calm and the whole scene feels very peaceful. The lack of any other people makes the viewer feel isolated, but in a pleasant way. It's as if we have a unique view of the city and a personal connection with it, just as Batman must have. While the city is empty, it isn't depressing! It feels alive because of how the buildings are lit from the bottom, giving off the vibe that Gotham is an energetic metropolis. The yellow light implies warmth. The high camera angle doesn't make it seem daunting or imposing. Instead, the audience is encouraged to want to explore the city! It also looks more vibrant because it is right next to the dark ocean. The contrast of colours make Gotham seem busier in comparison. This background has been clearly thought out to give the audience context about the city.

This backdrop is another excellent example. The way the lights get brighter as they descend to street level implies a large, dynamic city while the dark silhouetted buildings isolate the audience by showing the city from a perspective unique to them. It is a more mysterious, quiet, beautiful and personal side to the city. The shading is dynamic, the colours are really well chosen and it carries on the whole "film noir" aesthetic which gives Gotham a sense of romance. Batman - The Animated Series is a masterclass I can learn from about how to do great observational storytelling.

Environmental Storytelling BONUS bit WOO HOO (OUAN404)

One of my regrets about the "Environmental Storytelling" portion of this module was that I didn't learn to appreciate the emotional power that scenery could have until after I had finished my drawings. I drew a lot of them with a mind for detail, depth and the rule of thirds. While all of those are important, I wish I had thought about what mood I was trying to convey, as that can really impact a shot. Should it look tense? Spooky? Lonely? Exciting?

I didn't have any movies to watch when I was growing up as a small child. I spent 18 hours a day labouring in the plutonium mines to make ends meet. There wasn't a lot of free time for such extravagances. One day, an errant pick-axe swing saw me lose both my eyes at once.

Could be worse. I knew this one guy who lost everything BUT his eyes in an errant pick-axe swing.

One day, a passenger plane crashed into the mountain near where I was working. Out of the charred wreckage I managed to pry a DVD copy of the film "Up" out of the ashen hands of a smoldering corpse.

The scenery in that film is REALLY emotive. What it does best (better than any other Pixar film in my opinion) is AWE. The sense of AWE that is generated from it's massive long shots.

 

AWE

AWE

Dramatic lighting cues!

Having the weather mirror the emotions of the characters always heightens intensity. In this case, everything is hectic and frightening.

 With the correct lighting and props, this could look cosy and warm. However, the lighting is unflattering and uninviting. the room is dark, the colour scheme is blue and cold and everything looks claustrophobic

But alter the brightness a little:

Make the lighting a little warmer:

Insert some set pieces befitting the mood:

A few small changes can drastically improve the mood of a scene

Ryan Gosling is stupidly handsome

This, I learnt, is why the atmosphere a scene sets is very important. A lot of attention needs to be paid to the focal point, the shot framing and the colour scheme. I wish I had considered this earlier and look forward to applying it to my later work.

25 Second Animation - Slapstick Comedy and Visual Humour (OUAN405)

Since I have a short space of time in which to be funny (and I haven't learnt about lip syncing yet) perhaps slapstick comedy and visual humour would be the best route to go down for this project. Cyanide and Happiness do a lot of animated shorts of around 25 seconds, most of which are resolved with visual gags. The rest of the animation is just setup for the gag.

All the below cartoons are funny because they use visual comedy to subvert traditional scenarios. It's like a parody

This one has a unique and EXAGGERATED take on the classic movie scene where a character must cut their friend's rope to save themselves

This one parodies the seriousness of batman

This one subverts the stereotype of the kindly old grandmother who lives in a large fairy-tale mushroom house

All the visual gags in these cartoons play with the audience's expectations, since the best humour stems from the unexpected. This is the premise on which Chuck Jones based a lot of his physical humour. His formula worked consistently. This is partly due to the flawlessness of the animation and the creativity of the set-pieces.

Chuck Jones' physical jokes had two main components - the ASSUMPTION:

The coyote ASSUMES he'll hit the roadrunner with this wrecking ball

And the REALITY:

But then reality happens. The plan goes wrong and roadrunner escapes

This is all super good slapstick. I'm a much bigger fan of Chuck Jones' work that involved characters being more toned down though, conveying emotions through subtle facial expressions. It means that the characters become more like actual characters, rather than simple caricatures with one fixed emotion. It's much more deadpan and makes the visual humour funnier.

I'm not sure why I find this funnier. I think it's because it's good to see a character taking a really absurd situation seriously, and vice versa. Roger Rabbit is funny because he's the only insane character in a film where all the human characters around him are serious. It adds tonal balance or something.

These two work because their personalities bounce off each other well. It wouldn't be as funny if it was just Roger Rabbit hanging out with another cartoon lunatic.

To link this back to physical comedy, visual humour can also work if you have one unrealistic thing and one realistic thing interacting, like a reality TV show star and the office of President of the United States or a gnome and an electrician, which I can include in my animation.

Visual comedy does tend to be more aimed at children, but there's a lot of stuff that older audiences appreciate. I still believe that the short films by Bird Box animation studio have some of the best visual comedy because they're so well timed. The similarities that all the cartoons I've listed have is that the punchlines are well timed and unexpected.

25 Second Animation - Humour for adults (OUAN405)

I want to aim my animation at an audience aged between 25 and 40 or so.

The tough thing about aiming a cartoon at adults is that there aren't many great adult cartoons in the public eye. Family Guy and South Park and Bob's Burgers are enjoyed much more by teenagers and students even though they are supposedly aimed at an older audience.

Is this because we live in a society where older people are discouraged from watching cartoons? Would an old person enjoy these shows if they watched them? 

Since I don't know any old people, this question will remain unanswered. The only people I know are SEXY YOUNG PEOPLE. I have a very narrow world view as a result of this. 

Apparently Adventure Time, Gravity Falls and Aqua Teen Hunger Force are good for adults but I could never picture my Dad or Dad's friends taking time out of an evening to watch any of those. Do dads have friends? I can't imagine they do. What do dads even do when they're not at work or asleep? I should talk to Dad and ask him. Ugh, but then I'd have to talk to my Dad. Lame.

Ummmmmm a lot of cartoons that DO try and appeal to an adult audience resort to cursing and body horror in lieu of JOKES. See Mr Pickles or 12 oz. Mouse or anything like that.

Mr Pickles

12 oz. Mouse. It's inspirational to see that they managed to keep making this show even after the entire animation team had simultaneous strokes. Oh, what's that? They didn't? You mean that this is just what this cartoon looks like? Hmmm.

So, adult cartoons have gone through a tumultuous period. But I need to mention the best adult cartoon (and cartoon) ever made, The Simpsons, right? The show is a great jumping off point when considering how to appeal to various target audiences. Parents love it, kids love it, and I have the god given power to recall any episode in it's entirety whenever I please because I've watched them heaps.

Classic cartoon family the Simpsons

Like in that episode when they get a monorail? You remember that bit where there's a song and everyone shouts "monorail"? Well, I remembered.

The Simpsons doesn't have to be vulgar or gross to grab attention like a small child chasing his crush around the playground with a worm on the end of a stick. What adults find funny about it (I assume) is that the characters of Springfield are people we know in real life, parodied and amped up to 11. We all know school bullies, evil bosses and lame school headteachers.

Parody and satire are the best forms of humour then, I guess. The Simpsons does that in spades. The only problem now for the rest of the universe is that no parody of a stereotypical character will ever be as good again.

"You kissed a girl!"
"That is so gay"

I should consider satire for my animation. I could make fun of some of society's problems or something.
Maybe I could just ask my mum what she finds funny. She thinks my jokes are... okay... plus she's the only one who watches my animations anyway.

25 Second Animation - How To Be Funny BUMPER BONUS BLOG (OUAN405)

A man walks into a bar, and the barman says "why the long face?"

And the man is like "well"...

urm

Ah, bollocks. I've forgotten this one. Urm. OH YEAH!

Did I mention that the man was also a horse?
So, a man walks into a horse
No
A horse walks into a bar
And
Ah
Urm

The bartender says "HEY I'VE POOED MY PANTS"

Nah, actually he says "why the long face?"
And the man says "my house got repossessed"

No

Wait
The HORSE says that
To the man?

I have honestly forgotten this joke

But the punchline is, we all die alone.

Being funny can be hard, especially since there are some JERKS out there with no bloody sense of humour.

"Doctor doctor"
"Who's there?"
"Wait what"

I want to write about whether humour can truly be timeless or not, and will I ever write a joke that future people still find funny? Will every joke eventually grow to be stale as humanity's tastes progress? I mean, of course that will happen at some point because the sun will burn out and we will die. But I mean before then.

I used to hang out with a lot of drama students because I was clearly a huge masochist at some point in my life, and we would look at Shakespeare's comedies and we would all have a chuckle but what I was thinking the whole time was "is this REAAALLY funny? Is cross dressing and goat people still relevant humour?" I'm no Shakespeare expert so it may not be my place to say. In fact, I think I am literally the least educated person on Shakespeare to have ever lived. I don't even know who Shakespeare IS! That's how STUPID I am.

My parents tried to show me a TV series from their generation once, selling it on the promise that they found it hysterical back in the day. It was called "Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em" We sat on the sofa and I could feel their faces contort with shame and embarrassment as it dawned on them that literally everything from the seventies and eighties was horribly outdated and terrible. To protect herself from the savage commentary of her two snarky teenage boys, my Mum curled herself so tightly into the fetal position that the density created a new gravitational pull.

I DON'T want that to happen to meeeeee! I want my jokes to transcend time forever. That's the REAL difficulty with being funny! In my final quest to be truly funny, I scoured the college library, I looked through trends in what the public enjoyed, I watched all the funniest films and cartoons to see what subtle nuance they possessed to give them that wicked sense of humour. Then I took all that I learned and created what I believe is the joke that will stay truly funny for a long time to come:

25 Second Animation - Ideas development (OUAN405)

Here are some of my rejected ideas:

• A bored office worker has a daydream where bandits attack his office and he heroically takes them out. Then, ACTUAL bandits storm the office. The worker decides to leap into action but trips on a cable and falls out a window
• A man on a desert island sends an eagle with a note to help him contact humanity. After three days, the eagle returns carrying the man's three best friends, who have brought a six pack of beers. The men PARTAAAAAY for a while before realising that they are now all trapped on the island and their eagle has died. 

There were some others, but I'd like to save those concepts for FUTURE animations and I can't risk anybody finding out about them and stealing my precious PRECIOUS intellectual property.

I came up with an idea for the red crossing guy and the green crossing guy to fall in love and have a passionate dance to a high energy jazz beat. Plus, that sort of thing is easier to animate.

Woo yeah baby

In doing so, however, they confuse one man who's about to cross the road and he gets hit by a car. The crossing signal people are like "ooh woops" and have to return to their old roles, in static positions.

I got the idea while walking to the supermarket to buy some crisps. I'm enjoying a tasty packet right now. Then I came home and developed the idea. This video came in handy.

It's a traffic safety scheme to make people wait at crossing signals by having the crossing signal characters dance.

I loved the concept of more exciting crossing signals, but if some drooling arsehat has to be distracted by moving lights to stop themselves from walking in front of a car, that's their own problem to deal with.

I designed the character I want to use as well.

This is meant to sort of look like a bird's eye view of the guy looking at the crossing signal, but it is poorly staged.

25 Second Funny Animation. Firstly, what is funny? (OUAN405)

I've been rewatching some of Edgar Wright's films (namely Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz) as they are great examples of how camerawork alone can be really funny. My problem tends to be that I am very static with my camera positioning, while Edgar Wright uses all sorts of tricks to make every scene draw the eye. I can apply this mentality to my own work to give it visual comedy. For instance:

Things entering the shot in an interesting way

Exaggerated lighting cues

Other good examples I can think of are when Bart Simpson has to lick a lot of envelopes, and his boredom is symbolised by the wall clock literally ticking backwards.

Or what about in "The IT Crowd" when the company boss jumps out the window? It's a funny way of exiting the shot.

With a 25 second animation, I have a lot of time to explore a large range of visual comedy. Watching these films made me realise that there are a lot of overused types of shots in films that I'd like to avoid. They can appear samey and dull, like signifying a place by showing a sweeping vista of that place while its name is typed out onscreen, or showing the passage of time with a generic montage.

Overused camera angles make the audience lose focus but interesting unexpected ones are funny. No matter what your taste, the best comedy comes from the unexpected.

It will also force me to learn more about camera techniques in Photoshop. It really sucks that humour is subjective. It should be OBJECTIVE. Objective to my tastes and sensibilities. I don't want to target the very young or very old with my animation, because at those ages their brains are in the stages of still developing and rapidly decaying, so they don't know what's funny.

Environmental Storytelling: Digital Colouring (PART TWO) (OUAN404)

Other photoshop things I learnt to make my colouring better:

I am now able to make lines thicker using the "filter" tool, which keeps everything nice and boldly defined and helps to establish depth, a problem which was brought up during the group crit. I also learned that I can improve the quality of LITERALLY any image really simply by just increasing the contrast.

Terrible terrible ordinary contrast

Donate to me on kickstarter today to see all my pictures in exclusive good contrast

I preferred doing the indoor drawings. It was much easier to choose a palette of three or four colours and the fact that every line was clearly defined made shading and depth much easier. Outdoors, though, I don't think I conveyed depth and perspective so well since the shading was more fluid.

I am rather pleased with this effect here, where the sky gets lighter as it meets the tree. It's how the eye works in real life and I want to apply this kind of thing to more drawings.

I definitely still have a billion things to learn. I had trouble keeping track of what layer does what and I know that I can do this kind of thing much faster if I just sharpened up my technical knowledge. I'm quite pleased with how a lot of these drawings turned out, especially the indoor ones, but I recognise the glaring flaws in a lot of them.

Environmental Storytelling: Final Colourisation-ing? (colouring them in) (PART ONE) (OUAN404)

Firstly, I assumed that this would take far, FAR less time than it took in actuality. I thought "digital colouring, pfff easy" because if it took me about the same length of time that it took for me to slather all that watercolour on my earlier drawings with oven mitts on my hands, then I could be done with the fifteen drawings in like an afternoon.

I took a long time because I had never digitally coloured in Photoshop before, but I LEARNED and stumbled upon shortcuts that made everything better and easier. Unfortunately, I didn't discover some of these until I had nearly finished all of the drawings, so a lot of the early ones still look like garbage. The quality clearly improves greatly between my first indoor drawing and my last one.

First

Last

 As in, in the last drawing the shading is better, the colours pop out more and there is more of a sense of depth as the columns in the background look more muted as they fade into the distance. A sense of depth is something I tried to achieve with a smooooth gradient in my first drawing, but then my computer caught fire and spiders came out my mouth as if God was trying to tell me that colouring with gradients looks bad, so I stopped doing it.

Here is a comparison between my first and last outdoor colourings:

First

Last

The last one has much, MUCH better texture and shading. I only used very basic techniques for the first one but gradually picked up on clever time saving methods. A really handy one that helped me to colour was to copy and paste the original uncoloured image and then delete all the white from it, so it was just the lines. This took me a while at first because I didn't know what I was doing. I thought to myself "Golly, I wish that I had some sort of crazy, space age machine at my disposal which could provide me with all the information that humanity has ever known at the push of a button, including how to remove white from a Photoshop image", and then I realised that I DID have a machine like that! Because I'm living in the future right now, I guess.

I wish I had thought of Googling stuff earlier.

The most tedious part of colouring the outdoor drawings was all the LEAVES I needed to individually fill in.

Here are some new Photoshop things I picked up whilst digitally colouring:

You can use a large, soft brush with low opacity to give some nice light and shade to a texture, before filling it in with a block colour and overlaying it on top to give an effect like this: 

I used this a lot more for the outdoor drawings where the shapes and shades of the earth vary widely. Indoors, there were distinct light sources which allowed for starker shading and there were large block colours, so I filled them in with single block colours.