Sea Project- colour test

I batch rendered the two horses I animated in maya so I got a picture for every frame instead of a movie file. This is so I can go into Photoshop and add paint effects such as longer manes and water splashes. Being able to use Maya in such a way allows me to be more expressive with the brush strokes in Photoshop and I can individually alter each image without worrying about the placement of the horses. There's also the fact that I've saved myself a lot of animating time due to the software's ability to put the in-between animation in for me. I can therefore put more time into the artistic side of the project instead of focusing most of it on the technical movements.

Below is the first frame- here I just experimented with colours. More horses will join the two in this one and now that I've already got the movement in Maya it's just a case of altering the movement of the heads so they don't all look the same in the final shot.

Ident Concepts

The purpose of an ident is to help the audience identify a brand or channel. For example the idents for E4 or channel 4 are there to remind you what channel you're watching.
My job is to create an ident for the university.

-It has to be between 6-10 seconds (average duration of an ident)
- No dialogue (As there's usually a narrator voicing over the ident about the upcoming programme)
- Usually is accompanied with sound or sound effects.

 I was originally inspired by the ending to an anime I was watching before I altered my thought process. Below is the original inspiration. (Anime: Zero no Tsukaima (The Familiar of Zero))

 

I liked it because it still incorporated my experimental style of cutouts and it had been set out like a stage production. Everything was simple and a style like this would be easy to reproduce into an animation. The only aspect that halted this idea was the fact that I felt I had to come up with a story that centred around two characters. However with 10 seconds as a maximum duration it's almost impossible to deliver a good storyline.

 

 

I've now ended up keeping even closer to the original silhouette style than I originally expected. It's monochromatic but I think shapes are better defined if one colour is used. It also has aspects of a story which revolves around a boy who's out fishing, hooks something but loses his rod. As he looks over the side of the boat he sees a shadow emerging from the waters depths revealing the university logo.

Inspirational picture that drove me away from a cutout theatre- simple shapes create a good impact.

 

 

Below are the concepts I've created so far. (Both done in Photoshop)

 

 

Long Shot- Establishing the setting. This will be the opening shot.

 

 

Boy looks over the boat to see the logo rising from the depths. The camera will tilt down and pan up from this shot so the logo looks as it should on the webpage.

 

It's a very simple design and shouldn't take too long to do. I plan to use either Flash or Toon Boom to create it because a) it's going to be 2D and b) I plan to create it in the same way I did the lip sync animation in Flash by splitting the body apart so I can create basic body movement. 

 

Animation background

Background 1: Lighting

This is the interior of the pirate ship for my first background. I wanted to work with digital for this one because in the past I've always had to work with paints for A-Level and my Diploma so I haven't had much chance to get a feel for the use of digital paint and seeing as the industry is evolving towards more digital creations I felt I should move in the same direction. It's also a much quicker and less time consuming way of creating backgrounds as I can still paint like I would if I was using watercolour but I have the freedom to remove sections that don't work in the colour palette.

It's not the final background quite yet. At the moment this would be considered more of a concept piece of artwork because the painting is too rough and the outlines aren't defined well enough. If I was to place a character in the scene, he would look out of place. For this I was just trying to work out lighting and where the light from the lantern would reach parts of the room. This is so I can go straight into the final, more accurate, background by following the colour scheme I've already come up with in the concept piece.

Pencil lines- The first rough layout.

Initial colours- The base colours before I work more colour in and rough indication of lighting. I'm going to darken the globe slightly as there's too much glow emanating around the edge.

Concept piece- Final colour palette. As you can see this background is too rough, compared to other backgrounds I've seen. Also I've noticed the chest looks like it's on the same plane as the wall which is giving the appearance that the chest is moulded into the wall.

When I look at this background there is much more definition. There may be no outlines but I can clearly differentiate between the pillars and the back walls. This is the style I need to aim for.

Cel Shading in Maya

As this is a complex sequence to have to animate with their being so many horses I thought I'd try looking for an alternative that makes creating 2D horses easier than just painting every frame individually. Fortunately with my interest in Japanese animation and keeping up with the latest animations to grace our world, I am already keeping track of a new film produced by Production I.G. called 009 re:cyborg. It's a 3D reboot of the old T.V. series Cyborg 009.  Although it's yet to be released on DVD I've looked at trailers and I've seen the process they went through to create a 2D animation which was originally built in 3D.




Below is the link for how they re-created the animation.

009 re:cyborg re-animation

I then used the process they used to flatten the maya horses I had done to make a 2D sequence.

 

I still need to make some adjustments such as the shadows and perhaps an outline to give a better suggestion of 2D. At the moment I can still see that the horses were once 3D.

Horse testing in Maya

 

 

 

How to Win the Grand National - How to Win the Grand National

Click below for full documentary

http://youtu.be/xOJyidY2dTQ

More reference footage

I recently watched 'How to win the Grand National' on Channel 4 over Easter and a section in the documentary caught my attention in relation to the horses I'm doing in 2D. I wanted film of horses galloping towards the camera but with enough detail to be able to work from as inspiration. Unfortunately without a gallop track and a smooth riding 4X4 to get good footage I'm out of options although I did get footage of my sister riding (which will be posted soon). But the video shown below shows the motion better. The added bonus is it's in slow motion and I want to emphasise the feeling people sometimes get when everything seems to happen so slowly and yet you are unable to prevent the events that unfold. It's been filmed via my mobile because the video size was too large to download.

 

 

Background inspirations

For the background project I have started looking at layouts and lighting as I start to decide what parts of the Pirate storyboard I want to turn into backgrounds.
Below are the three shot choices I have chosen for backgrounds:

Interior: I think I'll remodel this shot because objects are in the mid and far ground. There isn't anything in the foreground to show depth and much of it is on the same level. This is going to be the first of the painted backgrounds which is required to have a key light source such as a lantern or window and a secondary softer light. Because I have both a lantern and a window in this image, both will be emitting light, but as I envision this scene to be nighttime I could use the window as the softer light source.

 

Exterior: This is the second of the backgrounds but for this it only requires a lined layout sketch. I have to take into account and make reference to aspects such as foliage, buildings and landscape features. As this is set on a ship, references would be of cannons, a ship's wheel and the mast behind the character. It's a good scene to look at due to the perspective required for the mast. Like the first image I may remodel this shot to include a spar (the thick pole that supports the sails of a ship) in the foreground to give greater depth.

 

Exterior 2: The third and final background but for this it must either be monochromatic or use complementary colours or harmonious/analagous colours. This shot, like the second image, is employing perspective on the ship which will be an interesting challenge along with depicting the sea. I'm currently thinking of using just the colour blue for this background, considering it is set at night, however the town in the background won't look like it's burning if I paint the flames blue. So another option is using complementary colours such as blue and orange. This will mean I can still use the idea of depicting night effectively and show heat emanating from the town.

 

Inspirational starting points:

 

Atlantis: Chosen mainly for the old objects as it closely resembles that of a pirate ship. It helps me to understand colour schemes.

Beauty and the Beast: Light source from the torch which I can use to help me create light in my interior scene with the lantern. I can also see where the shadows fall in the room.

101 Dalmatians: Monochromatic inspiration and it helps with lighting but the inking over the top doesn't appeal to me because it looks too messy. I prefer styles that don't have an outline with the only way to distinguish between two objects is the highlights and shadows.

Peter Pan: Ship inspiration but not a lighting scheme I'm interested in because it's below deck and I want the captain's quarters to have a warmer feel to it.

Sword in the Stone: Kind of complementary as it employs a blue/purple with orange/yellow. For my third background the colours would be the other way round with blue being the dominant colour and having the audience's eye drawn to the orange glow in the background.

Sword in the Stone: This is the kind of light scheme I'm opting for. It's warm and has a welcoming feel to it with the secondary light source coming from the window on the right. It's also complementary using blue and orange to depict light and shadow. Very much what I'm looking for in both the first and third backgrounds.

 

Pocahontas: Exactly the inspiration I'm looking for, for the third background and uses the colours I want. The eye is drawn to the fire in the middle making it a focal point, similar to the fire burning in my background.

Peter Pan: Ship inspiration

Peter Pan: Sea inspiration and could be useful as I try to better understand how to do the third background. The sky is red in this one so perhaps I could use orange to reflect the destruction being caused in the town as it illuminates the sky.

Peter Pan: More ship inspiration and understand what colours I need to use for a ship at night.

The Princess and the Frog: Light source from the lantern and the colours emanating from it is what I'm looking for, for the first background.

Peter Pan: Ideas for exterior and ship inspiration. It's not really the colour scheme I'm looking for, for my second background. The colours are too bright and in my second background the character is looking up at a giant wave that is about to destroy the ship so I want to make the colours darker to depict anxiety and fear.

These final two are from Treasure Planet concepts. Chosen for their monochromatic colour scheme and I was interested in how highlights are shown to draw the eye in. From both of these I can see the artist has used white to single out light sources and possible heat sources. More of his work can be found here: Treasure Planet concepts by Michael Spooner

 

 

 

Horse in Motion

One of the hardest tasks for this project is creating the horses charging towards the camera. Not only is there going to be numerous horses that each have to be animated but there's also the challenge of overcoming the fore-shortening of the legs which will be made even harder being more than one animal.

I started by looking at the gallop cycle from a side-on view so the obvious research point was Eadweard Muybridge and his studies of horses in motion.

The most difficult part in animating this cycle is the extension of the leg in frames 5-9. As the hoof moves forward towards the camera, it will increase in size making it look out of proportion to the rest of the body and the leg will look seemingly shorter than the other. The other problem solver is the head moving back and forth as it's almost doing exactly the same as the legs.

I attempted to search through Youtube for further research and looked at animations and live action movements of horses. They wasn't much on there with real horses coming towards the camera but I did find animations which gave me some idea of how it should look.





Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron is one of the big influences, mainly because I know there are sequences of horses coming towards the camera.






I took Muybridge's studies of horses in motion and made a gallop cycle in Maya. Right now I'm concentrating only on the legs to understand the fore-shortening.

It would be easy if I was working in 3D because all that's required is placing the camera in the correct place and making the horses move believably. As it's 2D our group is working in, the edges of the paper are my camera and I have to create everything inside that frame myself. 

So once it was 3D I quickly sketched out the key leg poses from the Maya reference to create a 2D cycle. There is still a lot of tweaking that needs to be done to get a fluid movement such as adding more frames but the first attempt doesn't look too bad.

Experimental Animation

Finally complete (well, most of it). Unfortunately I didn't realise how time consuming cutting up shapes for every frame was hence the reason why there are numerous black sections in the video. The whole idea was to 'experiment' and see what I could make with certain media and although it isn't all done, I'm still happy with it but I now see how much more I would have needed to complete it. I've come through this knowing I did challenge myself but I didn't succeed this time. There are also various flaws in the animation- some sequences appear jittery because I didn't line the shapes up correctly after each frame.

Some inspiration:



This is where most of my inspiration for the cut-out idea came from. I think what draws me to this style of work is the fairytales and monochromatic colour scheme. There's depth to the images and the movements remind me of ballerinas with such grace and beauty.



Seeing as Harry Potter is an amazing piece of literature and series of films I put the little section of animation shown in 'The Deathly Hallows: Part 1.' It's more shadow puppet style than cut out but I'm interested in the defined forms of the people and the skeletal structures which define a human's shape. I also love the way fabric has been replicated in the ragged clothing of 'Death.'



It's not cut-out but it was still a big influence in defining shapes. Saw this video a couple of years ago and was mesmerised at how the forms she created morphed into other figures so effortlessly. I loved the way she manipulated the sand to create a story and this idea of forming a story from one image to another was the inspiration here.



Another sand story and again the defining shapes is what draws me to this style of singling out the shadows and leaving a blank space around the figures.

Walk Cycle

New motion studies assignment: The walk cycle.

I spent a lot of time after putting in most of the movement, thinking about the way joints move in the body. For example the hips and shoulders don't move at the same time: the hips would move first then the shoulders follow behind. I used the Dope sheet in Maya to offset keys relating to the different parts of the body in order to make certain areas move earlier than others. It's amazing how just moving a few keys around makes the movement so much more believable. I can see a few things I would need to correct in order for the movement to look much more fluid.

- The elbows look too stiff, more movement needed.
-The back could do with more flex

 

Horse artwork

Our group has opted to use colour to block out everything but the characters. So for example with the horses everything that's in shadow is coloured blue leaving a white shape. I think in doing this, the form is more defined and can be easily be seen from a greater distance. Having more white space as a background would make the forms look messy.

 

 

Below is some inspiration. All it took was an evening flicking through google images.