40 frames down, 42 to go.

40 frames down, 42 to go. This is roughly half of the animation for the sea project.

I've taken what I learnt about cel shading and the animation I created from that of the horses and moved it into the production stage of the project. But it's gone a step further and instead of leaving it at a rendered Maya stage, the frames have been taken across to Photoshop for more detailed artwork to be placed on top. It gives the horses a more textured quality and ties in better with our group's watercolour style with the strokes giving the horses a 'watery' effect.

I did originally want to paint over every frame but I know from past experiences that doing so would make the horses and the waves seem like they were flickering. It wouldn't look attractive and it wouldn't be easy to watch so I've reduced the number of frames by animating on 2's. The movement is still fluid but the flickering won't be as erratic.

 

Horses before Photoshop details added.

 

 

 

 

After Photoshop.

 

 

 

First half of the animation.

 

Ident Animatic

Below are the thumbnail sketches of the animatic. Most of the left page was actually taken out of the final animatic because it didn't fit into the 10 second block. However after putting everything together the ident wouldn't have needed the shots I had planned anyway. What I wanted to preserve more than anything was the timing, the most important pauses being when he's trying to hold on to the rod as he pulls back and the moment after he's lost his rod before he notices the dark shadow rising out of the water.

Pencil thumbnails- Frames 2-6 were taken out for the final animatic.

Final animatic (Or first draft of the animatic)

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