Final Film - Presenting our Plan

Our course leader says that the concept sounds fine, but length is something to consider. This means tightening up my storyboard a little and seeing how it all comes together in the animatic. How can I frame things and convey information in a way that requires fewer cuts?

I will revisit the storyboard and trim things. There are certainly areas where it seems a little fluffy. I'm also getting Kate more involved in the storyboarding process as the shot framing will inform how she designs the stop motion sets. Besides, it's good to get a second pair of eyes on things so I don't go MENTAL.

We've been looking at a few practitioners to discern the art style. We love the handmade look of these cardboard things, with the small details.

'Off Track' by Charlotte Ager (above)

I enjoy these designs but feel we should incorporate more colour to show the contrast between the two cafés, such as in Jay Stelling's work.

This makes good use of the stop-motion medium, and is vibrant. We will build the sets quite large so we can seperate the walls, shoot from inside it and have enough detail on close ups.

Final Film - Storyboarding and Lenses

I began storyboarding with incredibly rough frames. These allowed me to experiment with camera angles without committing to detailed drawings. This year I'm trying to be more creative with cinematography rather than going for the first solution that pops into my head, as the first idea is often something I've just copied from somewhere else subliminally.

Beginning incredibly roughly is quite freeing and it feels good when you try sketching a new angle and the entire shot falls into place in a way that it hasn't before.

These are some of my early scrawls to get an idea of shot framing and pace.

These are some more refined boards. I'm pleased with the pacing and cinematography. 

I've included plenty of dramatic low angles here to add drama and dynamism, to distort the faces of characters in the throes of passion. I've been inspired by Orson Welles' theatrical shooting style.

Welles in Falstaff: Chimes at Midnight (1965)

Touch of Evil (1958)

Final Film - Scriptwriting and Collaboration

My film will be aimed at a festival-going audience. I'm purposefully keeping it dialogue-free, partially to target a broader, international audience. Secondly, with only 3 minutes to tell this story, any dialogue would have to be extremely well written and integrated so as to not waste time. For now, I'll leave the storytelling to physical action and editing.

I'm collaborating with a stop motion-doing classmate. The sets will be 3D and the animation will be composited over. This will offer a unique feel. To research, I watched 'Bloeistraat 11' and 'Who Framed Roger Rabbit?'.

I've rewritten the script a couple of times. The most significant change I've made has been to remove a heavy-handed metaphor about the future of the children, as it was pointed out to me that my execution of it was rather played out.

Who Framed Roger Rabbit

Bloeistraat 11

Live Brief 2 - Hostelworld ANIMATIC

We've consolidated our story for Hostelworld. It's about a man who has a dull routine, until he is catapulted into the exciting and diverse world of hostels.

The tricky part is cramming it all into 30 seconds, allowing ample time to show the Hostelworld logo. Also, as they're looking for a campaign, we'll produce one thirty second spot suitable for YouTube and television advertising, and three square gifs for online distribution.

Simon's art style is resonant with people my age and funny.

Simon's art - @sim0gram

I feel like there's a trend of such wonky animation that's gained popularity. It's in the voxi adverts and pretty much every adult swim cartoon.

These adverts carry a lot of appeal and seem to hold up in a market dominated by very snappy, weird, short form media. The low production value makes these practically meme-able, which is part of their success I imagine. We want to convey a similar tone.

Live Brief 2 - Hostelworld

I'll produce a Hostelworld ad campaign for this year's YCN brief. I'm working alongside an illustration student who'll provide the style and a lot of the art, and I'll animate and composite.

The ad campaign must be targeted at students. We're going to tap into their progressive mindset, teaching them that by sharing stories from all over the world, you become wiser and our collective outlook becomes more colourful.

We looked at a few of the current hostelworld adverts featuring gorgeous naked arses and jumping into the sun.

These ads sell freedom and the beauty of the planet (not to mention all those hot arses) but such ads are generic. promoting unrealistic beautiful people. These ads are everywhere, with cars and phones selling sexy dreamy freedom. Its the stuff of parody, and people switch off.

We want to sell the ethos of a hostel. Crazy stories, diversity and world changing ideas debated between virtual strangers, while keeping with Hostelworld's brand of limitless potential and exploration.

Our base idea is to show different hostel dorms from a backpacker's perspective, populated by an assortment of strange people. This could include a 300 year old man, a tiger, a roman legionnaire, etc. The art will be tongue in cheek but the message will be one of shared stories.

Simon works in cutout and weird ink pens, which'll encourage us to be inventive with how we animate.

Some Simon Turner Illustrations @sim0gram

Final Film - Concept Generation

The journey to my final film's conception has been a rocky one. I've been through many ideas. First, I would've worked with Carla on a music video about two people finding their new homeland in an endless desert.

Secondly, it was going to be a story of a grandfather taking his grandson up a hill and telling him outrageous lies about how the world came to be.

Finally, I realised that I'd be graduating in the same year that Brexit would be enacted. The international upheaval of our generation that's cracked the conscience of the county in two and empowered the most exclusionary, villainous fascists would surely be an apt theme for my final film.

'Gloop Cafe' is about crowd mentality and how young men get lost in it. I want to make something political that doesn't beat the audience over the head with my own rhetoric, so there are themes about immigration, masculinity, jealousy and exclusion that underline the main plot about a couple whose relationship begins to fracture when a bizarre new menu item is added at their favourite local eatery.

It's so hard not to write something that's been done before. I do it subconsciously sometimes. I've drawn inspiration from Marcus Armitage, Chris Shepherd and Matúš Vizár as their loose art styles are incredibly appealing. I want to keep humour in the film.

Chris Shepherd's 'The Broken Jaw'

Matúš Vizár's 'Pandy'

Compositing

I'm really disappointed that we never fully coloured this film. I've learned either to minimise the amount of animation so colouring is easier (which I don't want to do) or to choose a style that requires minimal colour (which I'd much rather do).

Compositing in After Effects was really enjoyable. I'm happy with my abilities to compose a shot and it's exciting to see everything compiled. We added a white layer underneath our colouring because our chosen brush had quite low opacity, but that led to little obvious white spots on the drawings. This kinda works with the "hand drawn" look we're going for but on the whole is a little distracting.

The hardest shot to composite involved the camera moving from outside a building to inside, which I'd never tried before! Glad I did. I 'm pleased with the results and am keen to try and push the limitations of 2D animation, possibly by combining it with 3D influences in 3rd year.

It needs work, but I'm pleased with this film. I'd like to colour a couple more of my shots in my spare time, for my showreel.

SOUND

I enjoy recording foley sounds! I took a big box of rocks, polystyrene and sticks to uni and used them to recreate gunshots, explosions, creaking wood

My miscellaneous box of noisemakers

I want to look more into how to create exciting foley sounds and building up an engaging soundscape. I was a little inspired by listening to Francis Lee, director of "God's Own Country". He said that he recorded different types of birdsong that can be heard over each of the characters to best compliment their characteristics. I like the attention to detail used and the way sound can subliminally influence the audience.

Final Crit

The main thing that arose form our final crit was that we needed to make it more factual. Hence, I decided to re-introduce narration to the project. Only a little, as I don't want to crowd the whole film and bog it down. I want to make it quite snappy. I'm pleased that the animation is finished but colouring remains a bastard task.

I've been causing problems with my group. I didn't offer constructive criticism early on in the project when we were animating, out of fear that we wouldn't have time to finish or that I would upset someone. This has resurfaced now when, late into production, I've changed an element of one of my teammates' animation to make it fit in with the style of the rest of the film.

The teammate was understandable annoyed at me and I feel terrible for not mentioning that I didn't like the animation earlier. The fact that this project is janky and uncoordinated is entirely my fault. I wish I was more assertive.

Colouring is Hell

It didn't occur to me when I decided to colour with a watercolour-looking brush that it would take so long. Getting that hand drawn, artisanal feel takes time, maaaan. Ordinarily, I'd colour with the fill tool but getting the texture right in this film means hand painting every frame, which is a nightmare. It means I don't think we'll be able to finish the film with colour by the deadline.

I suggested holding each drawing for 3 frames (we're currently working on twos) or possibly making the colouring simpler by only using a couple of colours on each character to reduce the pressure of colouring, but my team decided that we shouldn't compromise.

I like the look of the colours! I'm keeping it loosy goosy. 

I drew inspiration from Marcus Armitage's videos to arrive at the boiling line, handmade aesthetic.

My Dad (Marcus Armitage)

The Laughing Policeman (Marcus Armitage)

Over Dinner (Marcus Armitage)

I've taken on the line art for my teammate's shots as well, so that we can at least have the animation submitted. I feel most comfortable when animating.

New shots I've taken on

Finishing my LINE ART!

I finished my line art this week and will get colouring very soon.

I'm becoming a much faster 2D animator. I learned only recently that I don't need to draw roughs for every single frame. In fact it looks better if I just rough the keyframes and then dive straight into the line art to make inbetweens. The hardest part of animation has been sticking to the character sheets and not returning to my default art style. This has caused a few concerns about continuity.

Eloise's drawings:

My drawings:

In some instances I need to thin the line art. I can do this on TVpaint quite painlessly, but I have learnt that we must communicate better, and be more open and honest.