Happy New Year - welcome to the year of the limbless sloth

Happy new years and all that jazz. It’s been a while but I’m back. Apologies for the complete lack of anything recently, the dissertation has more or less taken over my life as of late but the first draft of that is now done and my new year’s resolution is not to do anything else to it for at least a week. And during that week I shall endeavour to get you up to date with all things animationy in my life.

First off I would like to announce that I have decided to merge this blog with the new baby blog, ‘photo phodder’ since I spend most of my time on it referring to stuff that is on this one or repeating stuff I have already written here. Plus it will make this blog look really big and impressive. So over the next couple of days bits of it will appear on here, I will try to edit it down so I’m not talking about things twice but inevitably something will slip through so bare with me.

Right, on to the project, well things are charging forward at the rate of a sloth, which has had all of it’s limbs removed with a spoon, looking for a straw it doesn’t really want in a hypodermic needle stack – I am brimming over with confidence. Quite frankly I think I might be able to make the rate of progress on the robots project look positively lightning fast but no one ever got anywhere with sloth based metaphors so I will pretend all is well and dandy and attempt to come up with something constructive.

I’m pretty much there in terms of knowing how I’m going to animate everything and how I’m going to build the set (specific entries on this soon) but surprise, surprise I still don’t have a proper storey. I was hoping that refusing to look at it over Christmas would mean I would come back with some amazing idea, alas this is not so, if anything I hate the whole concept even more than when I started – hate is not too strong a word I might add. I think at this stage I need to be told to do the storey i’ve got and hope it is better than I think it is or a radical shiny new approach is required. And as I write this the radical new shiny approach is looking favourable.

Rather than focusing on what I don’t have lets look at what I do got. I have characters, a way to animate them and a set, all be it an un-built set but nevertheless a set. I have a look as it where. From animation I’ve done in the past I’ve discovered that my best ideas decide to surface whilst I’m animating, so I’m very tempted to go back to uni, build the set and just start animating, using my half-hearted excuse for an animatic as a starting point only. It’s 50/50 as to whether or not this would work of course, the animation can always be reshot once I know what I want to do. So I guess the only way to fond out is to do it.

Yes, it can be argued that I should have done this sort of thing last term but its to late for should ofs and could ofs and the conventional method of doing things is clearly not working for me. As for the poor little second years that are supposed to work for me and will require meticulously planned storyboards and the like to tell them what to do… well that’s simple, I wont provide them with any. I have decided that I’m not going to have anyone helping with the animation so all I need is someone for sound and maybe some comping and if I don’t have a story by the time I get round to doing that then keeping a second year in the loop will be the least of my worries.

Design Bible

Here is my design bible: an explanation coming soon!

New story line

Once again I’m afraid that the update on the dissertation progress and the character development that I did over the summer will have to be put on hold as surprise, surprise, I have changed the storyline for the final project again. All shall be explained shortly but first I would like to announce the arrival of my brand spanking new blog (one clearly wasn’t enough) “Photography Fodder” – it sounds better if you say it in a Cornish accent, dedicated to all things of a camera and light based nature. As of yet there is nothing on it but over the coming weeks I plan to post some stuff on it for your viewing pleasure.

So, the story line I am running with for this week is that the piper now survives and bludgeons the poor little creatures to death with a book; all would have been explained in my lovely animatic, but blogger wont let me load it. So I will have to describe it to you: (if anyone really wants to see it let me know) it contains elements from the original storyboard as well as new stuff which aims to build up the characters a bit.
I have tried to keep the different types of shots to a minimum, I think I will be able to get away with three or four, to speed up filming as much as possible, camera movement has also been limited; now there are only two shots requiring it, the truck-in on the poster shouldn’t be too much of a problem but the pan shot of the creatures may be a bit tricky, so I will have to do some tests to see if it will work.
I am hoping that this is pretty much the finished article in terms of the story, as this is the third version, obviously it still needs a bit of tarting-up to make it look pretty though. The main problem encountered with the story has been establishing the character’s roles and giving the audience something to empathies with. I have tried to solve this by showing the poster at the beginning, which will be advertising for someone to get rid of the creatures or something along those lines – the piper now has a purpose. The piper now has a proper sinister walk and nasty hand-rub thing going on, basically stolen off the child-catcher in Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang – we now know the piper is bad and wrong (this also sets up a nice twist when things go wrong for her). The piper is constantly referring to a manual – we know she isn’t very good at her job.
As you have hopefully noticed from the animatic everyone now has eyes, so they can see, it also makes the creatures a bit more cute and lovable. Which character the audience empathies with is still a problem, mainly because I am still not that sure which character I want them to like. I have also started to look at things like The Trapdoor for inspiration to inject the animation and character design with a bit more humor. This week I hope to go away and do a bit more concept art of the characters to give them that trap-dooresque kinda look because the current look of the characters isn’t really working.

new script

I know that I was, at some point, going to go through the development of the final project and a bit of a dissertation update but for the time being I think I need to go through the rather drastic changes that have taken place to the script of the final project.

So we had the original storey, which was basically the Pied Piper storey, both Derrick and Andy suggested that I put a twist in it to make it a bit less predictable. I tried to do this by just making the piper character a bumbling fool and keeping the same storey, except that everything that could go wrong would. Although a bit more entertaining this version of the storey was still way to predictable and in my opinion still too close to the original Pied Piper Storey. So I took it away again and twisted the hell out.

What I created is pretty much the storey I am now running with. The piper is still a bumbling fool but now the creatures get a hold of her flute, control her and then she dies of a heart attack – good wholesome family fun. It is a bit like my OSTN idea (dancing etc.) but at least it is my idea. There are still a couple of issues: I need to establish that the piper character is attempting to be the pied piper – probably by giving her some kind of book which she keeps referring too. I also need to develop the chain of events that lead to the piper throwing away the flute which leads to the creatures getting hold of it as it all happened a bit suddenly.

So my next job is to re-do the storyboard, most of which can hopefully be salvaged from the old one but we shall see. I am going to try and but a bit more emphasis on continuing action from shot to shot though – just to make it flow better.

A little bit more

Back again! Time to try and a bit of explanation to my earlier post, which was written in the midst of riding the cusp of the creative wave, as it where. I’m a bit more calmed down now, sort of.
Basically I’ve had a bit of a rethink of the script and come to the conclusion that it was a bit up itself so I’ve gone completely the other with it now and tried to poke a bit of fun and generally make it as silly and unserious as possible.
Originally both Andy and Derek had suggested that I look at different ways of playing out the story (eg: having Leurre seem harmless and then turning on the creatures) because it was too predictable but I got the feeling that neither where too hot on the main story. Derek suggested that I look at The Pied Piper of Hamlin by Jiri Barta, I think its safe to say that I am now a firm fan, I especially like The Club of the Laid Off, it very much appeals to my sense of humour and the clumpy looking animation is also quite amusing.





However, this did little to boost my confidence, until I woke up this morning with a rare can-do attitude to life and had a good old brain ‘shower’ session and now have something I shall try to mould into a script.

Bring on the sillyness!

Stop press! Oh dear god what has been going on in my head over the summer – churning out this pretentious crap. Getting Derek to look at my script yesterday is quite possibly the best thing I’ve done on this project and certainly saved it from going arse over tit.

I had completely lost my way and it is about time I get back to doing what I do best; complete and utter silliness. Which can only be achieved by an all out assault on common sense! So I’m going to tootle off now and cram this sorry story line with as much random stuff as my mind can muster!

Trim the Fat!

O.K. so my plan to keep up writing the blog over the summer to save me from having to do what I am about to do failed somewhat. However, I have just about got the bulk of the prep done for the film I have to do – concept art, reference material, motion studies, scratch track etc. all of which I will explain in later entries but today is dedicated to storyboards. I have also done some more research on my dissertation, although probably not enough, but I would like to think that I now have a better understanding of what I am going to be writing about at least. Also, a quick little note to just outline my general intentions for the ole blog this year. I am going to invest in a diary or post-it or something papery to jot down daily/weekly progress on things to: a: make the blog a bit more accurate, and b: if the workload starts to pile up, which it inevitably will, since I am making a film and writing what is essentially a book, then ole bloggy may take a backseat in my list of priorities. My little jottings should still provide something which is recording the progress of my work, and more vitally something to refer to when I have to write a years worth of blogs in a night – so don’t panic if it all goes quite on the blogging front. Also, my internet connection is about as reliable and fast as my animating so things could be a little sporadic.

Now, to get the proverbial ball rolling as it where. I was feeling quite good about my storyboard but a rather lukewarm reaction from people I have shown it to has lead me to have a bit of a re-think. Granted, these weren’t animation people but I still think it highlights an issue. I am hoping that its just a problem with clarity, as the same people seemed to like the script, of course if its an issue with the actual storey I can make the odd tweak but if the basic concept is flawed then I am more or less screwed.
Anyway, to try and sort the techy stuff I have read Don Bluth’s The Art of the Storyboard to try and iron out little problems and make the storey ‘flow’. The book had some very good pointers about layout, lighting etc. Stuff I had already tried to take into account but not necessarily executed in the right manner so it will probably be beneficial for me to redo quite a lot of it in the next week or so. To get that started, right here, right now, I am going to attempt to go through the entire thing and justify everything I have done, and chuck anything I can’t. “Trim The Fat!” as Mr. Bluth would say.

Here we go then:

The main characters are:
The mites: the ‘creatures’ I referred to in my last blog
Cheveu: the main mite
Leurre: The piper

For the entire film I want to shoot with a filter over the lens which creates a sort of looking through a key-hole type effect, inspired by an old bit of A-level work I found lying about. I also want to use a ridiculously small depth of field and perhaps a fish-eye effect to make everything really claustrophobic and disorientating – like the Quays. Oh yeah, the whole thing might also be in black and white.

Shot 1: I’m not quite sure why but at some point over the summer I decided it would be a good idea to include some sort of mechanical device in the animation and promptly set about studying the innards of a clock. I guess I just like all the cogs and stuff. Out of everything I have done I am most unsure about this and don’t really know if it is necessary or not. I can justify it in a roundabout kind of way, in that it is my interpretation of a theory of Wilhelm Fliess, who cropped up in my dissertation research, which based around the idea that the world is based on rhythms of numbers.
Taking further inspiration from the Dadaists Francis Picabia and Johannes Baader who produced artwork inspired by machines and the like I arrived at the conclusion that Fliess’ theory could be represented as a machine. And what machine deals with numbers? A clock. I have dubbed my clock The Entrelacer. The rhythm of the clock also syncs up nicely with the scratch track and could be used to dictate the beats of the animation.
So we start out with this shot of the The Entrelacer – if this is cut I may keep the ticking in the soundtrack, as a more subliminal thing – but I do like the look of the clock and how it is nicely divided up into sections. Anyway we then pan up through the clock to a shot of the street, Poussièr, where the story takes place. I am a bit worried that the street is not recognizable as a street but I quite like the idea of the characters moving through an abstract space.
I envisage animating the clock in 2-D, by hand, or dare I say it, on Maya (obviously some 2nd year lackey would deal with it if that where the case). In post this would then be comped onto the street which would be a stop-mo set, essentially creating one big picture that you could move a virtual camera over in after-effects or something.







Shot 2, 3 & 4: Along with the previous shot of Poussièr these shots create a montage which serves to set-up the scene – an idea used in lots of films but I particularly noticed it in Che: Part 2 where the same technique is used to establish a lot of the camp scenes. During these shots I thought I could mess about with the focus playing with areas of interest, just to art it up a notch. Another idea that came to me on a whim was to have the transition between these scenes work like a slide projector; with the image sliding off, black, then the new image sliding in. I’m not really sure what this would add to proceedings, it might not be worth the hassle to work out how to achieve something which may just confuse the audience. A fade in and out between each shot might work better. Shot 4 ends with the Mites emerging and a slow truck in. This might be a right pain to do in stop-mo so I may just use a sequence of different shots, which gradually get closer to the action. If properly executed this should achieve a similar effect.













Shot 5: Here we see more of the mites emerging. In this shot and all of the ones featuring the mites I want to use quite low camera angle, to show their perspective. Actually I think this shot doesn’t work that well and would be better shot from the right, looking left. Or it may work quite well if I got rid of this shot and replaced it with what you end up with after the truck-in on shot 4.

Shot 6: I really like this shot, which pans with one of the mites as he moves through all the other mites. He moves left to right to put the viewer at ease, the whole aim of this shot is to identify the mites as cute fluffy animals. I am slightly worried that this upsets the flow and therefore might work better as a montage, with the same character moving through the foreground in each to keep continuity.












Shot 7: My initial idea for this shot was to have the mites in the foreground Leurre to slowly come into view in the background. However, if I where to turn shot 6 into a montage I would use this as the final shot with the character that is followed throughout coming into the foreground. I’m not sure if I want to shift the focus from the foreground to the background as this may show Leurre too clearly and I want her to remain quite ambiguous at this stage.

Shot 8: This is a reaction shot of one of the mites to Leurre, showing her presence with a looming shadow. Originally I was going to shoot this over Leurre’s shoulder but that would show her perspective of events, which I don’t want to do at this stage. This shot is a bit bland though so I might have the reaction in shot 7 or start the reaction there and finish it off on this shot with maybe a bit more of a three-quarter view.












Shot 9: Another shot that I quite like, although to keep continuity it might benefit from being shot at a lower level.









Shot 10, 11, 12 & 13: The first time we see Leurre clearly is when the mites do, so it is fitting that it is from there POV. We then go back to the mites, recycling the angle from shot 5. By only using these two shots throughout the exchange I hope to build some tension, I would like to think that it works but I’m not quite sure why.
















Shot 14, 15, 15b & 16a: Again this repetition of shots continues except I change the shots of the mites to show Cheveu investigating Leurre. I think this all works o.k. but shot 14 and 15b would benefit from more of a three-quarter view, just to make them look a bit more interesting.

















Shot 16b & 17: I’m in two minds about these two shots: I can’t decide if I want to keep them as is or shoot everything into shot 17. I’m happier with the higher angle on 17 because we have now seen Leurre properly but in terms of shot economy it might be better to shoot it from the same angle as 9.

Shot 18: Now Leurre starts to get proper scary, to intensify the scene I want to include a light source behind – an idea stolen from A Clockwork Orange – and tilt the camera a tad, I know I went a bit overkill with this on the Robots project but I was watching Doubt the other night and quite liked how increasingly extreme tilts where used to build tension, so I’m going to nab that idea too.


Shot 19: I really want to exaggerate things on this shot – nice long shadows and a high angle to make Cheveu look really insignificant, the shadow of Leurre’s hand should be roughly where Cheveu is, as if its grabbing him. I’m not sure if I should include Leurre in shot.

Shot 20: Lower angle to show perspective of mites, definitely needs to be shot from right looking left or maybe a POV shot of mites in hiding showing Cheveu running from Leurre would be better, it also leads into shot 21 nicely.











Shot 21: Eye level shot to ease tension slightly, but maybe keep tilt (were not out of the woods yet) would be really good to get a shine off the flute. Would be better as a full body shot to lead into 22.

Shot 22: Nice set piece for Leurre’s dance, nice and simple in terms of camera stuff but an arse to animate.














Shot 23: Again, would benefit from being shot from right looking left or including Leurre, like in the alternative to 20 as this would flow better.

Shot 24: I want to shoot this from the mites perspective but I don’t want Leurre to seem to threatening, so I might keep the camera quite far away.














Shot 25: I want to show the weird little dance that the mites do in one go, and I figured the best way to do this would be an ariel shot, this also provides a clear cut between the different parts of the story because it is so different from the other shots I have used. I suppose the best way to do this would be to somehow get a rostrum on the stop-mo set and mount the camera on that.

Shot 26: Same as 24, might use a lower angle to make it look more dynamic, or get a full body shot. Leurre should exit left to maintain flow.











Shot 27: Leurre enters right, folloed by mites. Again, a lower camera angle might work.

Shot 28: Don’t really need this shot, so will cut it.


















Shot 29 & 30: I like these shots a lot; I want to fade into black at the end of 29 and fade out on 30 to provide a clear cut but its quite nice that the movement keeps the flow and provides an interesting comparison between the two sets. It would be a lot to animate in one go so a montage may be better, then again I am getting a bit montage happy.















Shot 31 & 32: Its very important that Leurre is on the right of the screen as this will increase the tension, a lower camera angle may also be beneficial. I will also mention that I want the fire to be the main or maybe even only source of color in the film. I’m not quite sure how to do this, I’m sure there is a way to do it in after-effects or something though. As for animating the fire I thought I could probably have a light behind the set, shining through the hole in the oven, then by altering the light intensity between frames I could make it look like it was flickering.









Shot 33: I was worried about crossing the line of action (or whatever its called) on this shot, so I got as close as I dared. However, I think I could actually get away with it and just shift the camera slightly to the right to get a nice profile shot of Leurre. This may bugger-up the next shot but we shall see.

Shot 34: Another shot I quite like, inspired by the teacher character from Pink Floyd’s The Wall. One problem, however, is that Leurre is on the left, when ideally I want her on the right, unfortunately I cant flip the shot due to continuity but I could exaggerate her leer so that she bends round from the right.








Shot 35: Nice simple shot; door to oven slams shut, fade to black.

Shot 36: I’m not sure if I want to include this shot or not – it does provide Leurre with a bit of a purpose but I think it might be a bit cheesy. If I where to use it I thing I would use a long shot from behind instead.