For this assessment, I have decided to pick up where I left off with the last project I worked on for my first Industry Exercise, which is the "Deep Sea Encounter" project. But I had decided to choose roles of 2D Animator and Compositor for my primary and secondary roles. So the first stage to start off with is pre-production and a script.
Original illustration for a book cover/poster. Could do with some improvement, maybe with the creature's proportions. Always critical of my own work.
As I will be producing some 2D character animation for my project, it is always important to learn techniques that are relevant and practice using them. Life drawing is one great way of using body postures to determine how a character would use different poses to act out a scene, depending on their emotions.
Below are a selection of sketches ranging from 1 minute to 10 seconds, each one clearly of a human figure in different postures. Please excuse the crudity of the sketches but I have to practice on sketching in short periods of time more, not that detail really matters much with every one but on a personal note, it's really a slight weakness I would like to work on. Most are three key drawings that show the strongest of poses as the subject performs a particular action.
Three key sketches of a female figure putting on an item of clothing, a coat actually. The legs don't move much as the subject remained on the spot but changes in the upper body are more noticeable.
A character getting up out of a chair. Did not add a simple sketch of a chair in, even though it was quite crucial to do so but these are the three main poses of a subject sitting up straight, getting ready to get up off the char and then stands up straight.
Moved on to a live model who performed many poses for us to sketch. This one was four key sketches of her supposedly holding an axe and preparing for a big chop.
Attempted to draw the model in different shapes and figures.
A sketch that took 30 minutes or so to draw. Attempted to focus on lighting, tone and shadow for this sketch as well as depth and proportion to the model. The structure of the chair and the model are not entrirely accurate but the picture stays quite true to the angle of lighting and areas of shadow.
Below is a page worth of an original script for a scene that I have decided to choose for the animation sequence. One page normally equals one minute of film/animation, might make a few changes to it though. Will move on to producing sotryboards for this scene.
1.
"FACE TO FACE" SCENE
EXT. DEEP SEA - WIDE SHOT
A submersible pod travels through dark waters, its huge headlight illuminating the surrounding area.
CUT TO:
INT. SUBMERSIBLE POD
MID SHOT - ANDREW
Andrew Brantwood is sitting in his seat, reading a book on marine life with great interest. All of a sudden, something whooshes past outside the port window.
Andrew looks at the window and sees nothing. He shrugs and returns to his book. Something whooshes past the window again. Andrew looks up again.
CLOSE UP - ANDREW
Camera zooms in slightly as Andrew watches window off screen. He then slowly moves out of his seat and walks slowly over towards window.
CUT TO POV SHOT
Camera moves slowly towards port window, nothing is seen outside except an inky blackness.
MEDIUM CLOSE UP - ANDREW AT WINDOW
Andrew moves closer until he is right next to the glass. He attempts to look further out in all directions, waiting for something to happen.
REVERSE SHOT
Andrew continues to look out into the darkness but nothing of interest occurs. A sound is heard and Andrew turns around to see what it is.
REACTION SHOT
Andrew's book had fallen on the floor, due to him having left it on the edge of his seat.
CUT TO MEDIUM CLOSE UP - ANDREW
Andrew sighs and then turns to look back at the window. Camera pans to the right as we now see a strange creature staring right back at him.
CLOSE UP - ANDREW
Andrew looks and screams with fright.
CUT TO
MID SHOT - ANDREW & CREATURE AT WINDOW
Andrew turns round quickly and hides while the creature is also startled. We see it react to Andrew's scream and it swims away from the window.
MID SHOT
Andrew runs into shot and hides behind his seat as footsteps can be heard in the background. His father calls to him.
In this post are the original storyboards, based on the 1st draft of the script. Attempted to add some filmic language to the shots to make it more interesting, especially since the scene is where the little boy, Andrew, sees the deep sea creature for the first time. Since I have to produce 1 minute of animation and there are approximately 12 shots to be used. If that's the case, unless some shots can be removed, then I'm aiming to do around 5 seconds maximum for each shot.
Storyboard page 1. Trying to give the main character, the boy, a good introduction. Sitting inside the submersible pod, reading a book and a bright flash of light at the window catches his attention. So he goes over to investigate feeling a bit weary at what to expect.
Storyboard page 2. Attempted to use a few close ups in this sequence to share the character's emotions with the audience. Something happens that make the boy startle, in this case a book that wasn't properly balanced falls to the floor, breaking the silence. The boy finds out what it is and relaxes before turning his head back to face the window, where the strange sea creature is revealed. A close up of his reaction as he screams with fright.
Storyboard page 3, the short ending to the sequence where the character hides from the strange creature and just stays there wondering.
A series of crude thumbnail sketches I did for the shots that were to be used in the final version of the movie.
Once the final storyboards are finished, the next stage is producing the animation. Normally each second of time in a film consists of 24 frames so that would mean 24 separate images/drawings have to be produced for the animation, each frame with a slight change or different pose from the previous one. The methods, single animation and double animation, are commonly used.
Single animation ("on ones") is of course when 24 images have to be produced for all 24 frames in a second. Double animation ("on twos") is when the same image is shown in 2 frames, so only 12 images are used in a second, but these two techniques are often combined to keep the animation at a certain pace, depending on how the animator wants it to look. For other media, such as Saturday morning cartoons, "on threes" or "fours" are commonly used, meaning that fewer drawings/images are shown in a second, approximately 6 to 8 in that sense.
When the images are successfully produced and photographed/scanned and played in a continuous sequence, the objects/characters in the scene appear to move of their own accord, this is known as the persistence of vision.
Most of the animation I produced was by using an old fashioned light box which is a good piece of equipment for 2D animators who prefer to do hand drawn styles. The plastic translucent disc where the paper rests and the light behind enables the user to see through several layers of paper so to determine how much of a different position the character must be in the next frame.
My light box, with some of the images in development.
PENCIL TESTS
In traditional animation, pencil tests are of course one of the early stages of animation, it gives you a basic idea on how a certain scene looks when you have produced all the images for the sequence. After all the drawings are cleaned up, they are photographed or scanned into a computer and previewed to decide whether the animated scene needs any improvement or any changes.
First I had to produce the key drawings for the shot, the poses that the character or object would be in and then I had to produce breakdowns and in-betweens, which are of course the kind of transition from on key drawing to another. The quantity of breakdowns and in-betweens that you produce has an effect on the amount of time it takes to get to that particular key drawing, the more the amount the slower and smoother the animation will be. Less makes it crude and jumpy.
Below are a few images of key drawings, breakdowns and in-betweens for the jelly maid shot that you will see later on.
Key Drawing No.1
Key Drawing 02
Breakdown
In-between
In-between
In-between
Key Drawing No.3
Final pencil test of the jelly maid character.
Rough pencil test of the main character after going through the same progress.
CLEAN UP PROGRESS
Once I've done sketching and drawing the rough key drawings and in-betweens, I go through the process of clean up. Which means I had to actually clean up each image that going over them and creating smooth clean crisp lines for the scanner can pick up really rigid lines. Each image was scanned in black and white mode so I didn't have to go through the trouble of sorting out tones and shades in grayscale mode. Then I produced all the clean up progress in Microsoft Paint as I found it easier to do than in Photoshop, went over outlines in red and then got rid of all the black before changing the colour of the new outline. Then of course, all blank areas of the image were filled with the appropriate set of colours.
Almost near completion, some areas of black still need to be disposed of before colour of new clean outline can be changed to black.
COLOURING & TEXTURING
Once every image was cleaned and coloured, I moved on to shading/texturing and additional colouring in Photoshop. Each colour was shaded so that it would add to the effect, used the colour range mode assigned to a certain colour first so that a barrier would produced around said colour and the rest of the image would remain unaffected and I then set the brush mode to overlay so that the colour would change in tone instead of just applying white and black colours to the selected area. Also the white backgrounds were removed make the images easier to composite later on in post production.
As the boy character was reading a book in the original story, I had to add more effect to the book he's holding in the shot so I typed a title and a short paragraph of text that was supposed to be relevant to the plot, I just put "Life Beneath the Waves" and distorted the text so that it would fit better on the book, whatever angle and position it was in and I did this for each image in which the book was shown.
A screen shot of the boy's hair, as you can see, the shade and tone of the hair colour differs in particular areas to make it stand out more.
For the jelly maid, I selected a purplish like colour for its body, originally the colour was going a shade of blue but I decided to use a shade of purple to make the creature stand out more, and also as the creature is originally female, I wanted to give it a nice colour.
As the jelly maid possesses bioluminescence (the ability to produce light by organic systems or origins, sometimes similar to "cold light") the tips of its "dreadlocks" (the tentacles from its head that are to imitate hair) are supposed to develop light so I had to use lens flares, but I achieved that later on in After Effects instead of Photoshop as I would have more control over then since the jelly maid was going to move in the scene.
Also as the creature is composed of mesoglea (a translucent gelatinous like substance that makes up the bodies of certain life forms such as jellyfish) it had to be see through so I simply lowered the opacity of the creature's body or used the eraser set to a low level.
BREAK DOWN TEST
Below is a YouTube video showing a sequence of how I went from one stage to the next in the process of producing a animation shot of the jelly maid swimming away off camera.
BACKGROUND/ ELEMENT DESIGNS
Image of final background design, without additional lighting effects.
Texture image file of a brushed metal surface I had produced before in Photoshop. Achieved the look using a combination of gradient colours, directional blurred noise specks and lighting effects.
Same background with lighting effects added.
Applying shading and texturing to chair image.
Background without additional lighting.
Background with altered lighting.
Once all the images that were to be used in the final movie were completed, I set about compositing them into sequences using After Effects.
AFTER EFFECTS
This is where the magic happens, now that the images are done, I could start importing them into After effects and setting them up in different sequences ready for compositing together. I had to use several compositions to avoid getting mixed up with everything and also made it easier to apply certain effects nodes to each sequence if necessary.
As I mentioned earlier, the jelly maid has bioluminescence so light is supposed to be emanating from the tips of its "dreadlocks" so I used a solid where I assigned lens flares and applied a curves node to alter the lighting a little bit. Then for the images where the jelly maid changes position, I key framed each lens flare to a certain point where the tips of the dreadlocks would be so that the lights moved with them.
Shot of the jelly maid with lighting and lens flare effects added and set to 3D mode.
There were other effects that I had to add to the scenes, for example there were some specks of microorganisms that were to pass the submersible pod. To achieve that, I used an advance particle system that would also work with 3D cameras and altered the controls in the systems to make the particles look more like little white spheres and then added a slight glow effect to make them more interesting.
Also as the pod was in an underwater environment, there of course had to be bubbles, so I applied what was called a "foam" effect to another separate solid. The purpose of this effect was to generate CGI bubbles that could be rendered in any size, shape and texture. Then I set key frames to the producer node of that effect so that the bubbles would appear in certain places such as from the back of the pod where the propellers would be.
Finished shot of the jelly maid creature swimming away quickly from window, with the effects mentioned.
Each shot/scene had to be pre-rendered out individually for editing later on, which of course took great quantities of bytes, depending on the size and quality of the scene.
AFTER EFFECTS - 3D PERSPECTIVE
To give the scenes a 3D feel, I converted all images into 3D layers and set up them up in a composition. Each layer had a 3D mode that could be activated from the small button that was located in the modes panel, then I had to alter the position, scale and orientation and if necessary, set key frames for certain images to make it all fit and look good in the shot. This process actually helped a lot as it would have been more difficult to create certain camera angles and movement that could not done with images alone.
Also lighting effects could be added to 3D scenes that could enhance the mood and setting of the enviroment more so I produced a couple of point and spot lights to all scenes, trying to keep the continuity perfect as possible. Shadows are optional and could be produced if the mode is enabled but I decided not to, as it would have taken more time to render. By the way, I was unable to render all AE scenes in a render farm, so had to go through the painful process of rendering each shot out.
Shot of the boy looking at the window off screen with lighting and effects added.
Screen shot of the "jelly maid at window" scene, shown in a custom 3D view. The camera has been selected so you could see where it is pointing in the shot and all the images are set to 3D mode and positioned..
Another 3D shot with images set up and a particle system added to the scene.
MAYA - SUBMERSIBLE POD
Although most of the animation was done with hand drawn styles, there were some scenes required that would be impossible to produce in traditional animation alone, due to time management so I used a OBJ object file of a small submersible pod that I had produced earlier for another project, imported it into Autodesk Maya and assigned a toon shader to the object to make it look more 2-D, including the use of only one or two colours instead of shading and assigned a black toon outline. Then I simply produced and set up a few camera movements for a few shots, set the Render settings to a suitable format and the number of frames to be done and then sent it as a Maya job into a render farm so I didn't have to go through the time consuming hassle of rendering each frame out myself, with a render farm you can render more than one frame at a time.
Screen shot of pod in different angles including front, side and camera perspective.
Screen shot of the pod in Toon shading, without lighting.
