WIP Critique and Demo Reel

Well, I'm back from thanksgiving break, and while I was glad I got to be home I wasn't able to get a whole lot done while I was there. Though I tried to get at least a start on animating my final project. So I decided to do my opening sequence. I had actually imagined a leaf falling during the pan and resting against the wall on top of the character to be the inciting incident to get him up and moving. I dont have the leaf yet, but I do have the pan down. I'm also not entirely happy with all of his animation. I like his stand up from the wall, but I had a hard time making his walk cycle not look well dopey. It'll just take more finagling to get it right.

Now as for my demo reel, this was my first time trying to cut one together. I tried to keep it around a minute in length, but it went a little over. I'm overall happy with the transition of pieces, and I had more work than I thought I did to put in it. Now I'm just going to await critique and see what others think should change or be cut.

Calendar:

So far I'm actually on schedule, but I knew I wasn't going to get a whole lot done over the break, therefore I planned for it. So well see if I can stay that way.

Background work and Timeline

Over the weekend, I went and took a lot more pictures for my background, and started the process of trying to stitch them together. I was doing my best with no reference and just trying to visualize it as I was taking the pictures, but there's still inconsistencies. Also some of them came out of focus, because it was kinda muggy outside (at least that's my excuse). Next time I'm going to bring my tripod, and also some chalk and a tape measure. That way I can set up a line to keep consistent and do check marks along it to take the pictures at. Though here's what I've made so far.

So as far as the timeline goes, its currently 11/22, and I'm shooting for the project to be finished on 12/6. That's 14 days. Oh man. welp so I guess the schedule goes as thus:

11/22 - finish taking background photos

11/23-27 - Thanks giving break. Finish character design, and map out journey through the space.

11/28 - Have everything ready to start animating.

11/30 - Try to finish act 1.

12/3 - Finish Act 2.

12/5 - Finish Act 3 and button up project.

12/6 - Crit

12/7 - Revise

12/8 - Turn in project.

Full Color Scene and Storyboard

Elevator Line:

In a grungy urban setting, a graffiti character is inspired to climb his way up the wall from the darkness in which hes been sprayed and into the light.

Scenes:

I decided to mock up two different scens from what I'm envisioning for the project so far.

First we have the opening scene of the animation where the character first comes to life.

Second I mocked up the scene in where the character first starts his journey upward.

I'm still not entirely 100% on the aesthetic or the character design, but they're still works in progress.

Storyboard:

As far as my story board goes, I didn't have to change a whole lot, but the biggest thing was that I needed an inciting incident. I decided to use a leaf falling on the character as that, because I found that the space in which I envisioned starting the character had a lot of leaves already on the ground. I also like the idea of something natural kicking off this urban journey.

The spatial aspects of the story board are still not 100% as its relies heavily on the space thats already there. I've gone and taken many pictures of the area so far, but I need to do more. I also need to plan out his journey amongst it more throughly.

Story:

So far my story actually pretty closely follows the "three act structure".

Act 1: It opens with a showing the character sitting still in his place on the wall, and a few seconds later a leaf falls and lands on the character. This is the inciting incident for the character to get up and start moving. From there the character starts to walk melancholy like around his environment. A the end of Act 1 he sees a ray of light shining down and is inspired to climb towards it.

Act 2: The begging of this is where the character starts to climb upwards. Hes using the objects in the environemt around him and some of the graffiti already on the wall to hoist himself upwards. He starts to get closer and closer to the top, except he slips and falls. He is eventually caught by on an object before falling all the way down. Here the character lies still and the camera starts to pan away.

Act 3: The climax is as the camera pans away and another light ray slowly shines down upon his face illuminating it. This inspires the character again to pick himself up and start climbing upwards. His journey starts again, but its not any particularly easier. He finally makes his way to the top of the building and sits down to rest staring at the sky and being finally completely illuminated. The camera pans away towards the sky.

Travel Fellowship Proposal

As a digital media major, the focus of my work may appear to strictly be digital, but I believe that artists, even those in computer based fields, take inspiration from everywhere. Therefore my proposal for the travel fellowship doesn’t adhere solely to my major, but to all my interests and passions as an aspiring artist, designer, and photographer. Having never spent any considerable amount of time outside of the country, or even really out of the southern region, a fellowship to Europe would prove to me a wonderful opportunity to take inspiration from places that I might not otherwise get to experience.

France and Switzerland, one may seem to be a stereotypical destination for a euro-based trip, and the other a smaller more obscure place to travel. Except both will provide a wonderful learning opportunity. I plane to enjoy everything from museums, to architecture, to even castles, and to cultural events. France is one of the premier places in Europe to experience the arts, as it contains everything from museums such as historic Louvre to land marks like the Eiffel Tower and Arc de Tropmphe. With tons of things to visit and experience from the Notre Dame Cathedral, to the Palace of Versailles, to Chateau de Vincennes, to the Moulin Rouge, the artistic opportunities of France seem almost innumerable. France is also the birthplace of both animation and photography. The focus of my trip would be to visit mainly Paris, France, but if possible I’d like to venture out a little too to places, such as the beaches of Normandy. Overall, France would be a wonderful place to experience, enjoy, and learn from.

Switzerland on the other hand may seem to pale in comparisons to what France has to offer, except I have personal and artistic reasons for traveling there. Firstly, my father has significant interest in our family’s genealogy, and has been cataloging and researching our ancestors for years. He currently operates a website and database dedicated to our heritage called “The Furr Surname,” homepages.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~furr/. I’ve learned from my dad that the Furr family lines runs all the way to Heinrich Furrer who was the first Furr to immigrate from Switzerland to the United States. Beyond that, our research is sparse and full of holes that I would be grateful for the opportunity to help with, by actually traveling to my family’s homeland. As far as artistically, Switzerland would offer me the opportunity to visit the homeland of the International Typographic Style. With my interests in graphic design, I have a penchant for typography, and Switzerland would afford me the opportunity to visit some of the famous type foundrys. They were the creators of some of the most prolific and well recognized typefaces in use today, such as Helvetica. Along with foundrys, Switzerland has a beautiful landscape surround by mountains that would wonder to capture through photography. It contains everything from the wondrously large Alps mountain range with peaks such as the Matterhorn, to the Rhine Falls which is the largest waterfall in Europe, and the many lakes spotting the country. Switzerland would also be a beautiful place to appreciate and document.

To document and draw from this journey, MCA has provided me with the tools and experience to sketch out my inspirations and create from them. I plan to record my entire journey through the use of sketchbooks and photography. Both my sketchbook and my camera will never leave my side. I hope to fill up both my sketch book and many memory cards worth of photos that could provide me not only beautiful images to enjoy in their own right, but with resources for future web designs, animations, graphics, and anything else I would be inspired to create.

Budget:

Flight (round-trip): ~ $1632

Hotels: ~ $900

Rail Pass: ~$300

Food and other expenses: ~ $668

Time line:

June 1, 2012 – June 15^th, 2012: Leave Memphis Tn and arrive in Paris France.

June 15^th, 2012 – June 30^th, 2012: Leave Paris and arrive in Geneva.

June 30^th ,2012- July 30^th, 2012: Arrive back home in Alabama and sort and create from my resources.

More Inspiration.

Storyboard

So here's a basic storyboard for my final project. I'm still working on my character design, and a lot of how the action and story progresses depends on the background I'm shooting and using. So for now I just have the basic story arc in a simplified space.

Now as for the backgrounds, I've found where I'm going to photograph. Its the back side of the hightone and its kind of gritty, full of graffiti, and has lots of pipes, wires and other things my character can interact with. My plan is to shoot pictures closer up and stitch them together into something my character can move around in. I'm also planning to Photoshop them so they progress from darker down low to brighter up top.

Lastly, as for in my story board Im considering when the character goes into light, another color in his stencil appears. So using masks I'm going to highlight some of the features in his figure. proably using white. Similar to this:

http://lh3.ggpht.com/_9F9_RUESS2E/SsZmsQlvK2I/AAAAAAAABUg/Xms19Z8gQNo/banksy-graffiti-street-art-baloon-girl.jpg

Final Project Concept.

I was having trouble coming up with my idea for this project. Thought, I think I finally found something that I find interesting, and could actually carry out.

For my project I'm envisioning making a narrative with a a solid color graffiti stencil character, and using actual photographic backgrounds. He should look as if he is a decoration on a the environment and I want him to wander around on interacting with things in the background.

Plot:

As far as the narrative's plot goes, I'm think just a basic three act structure starting with:

1. the character on the ground level,which is rather kinda dark and grungy, wandering about looking kinda lethargic.

2. Eventually he gets inspired, by light rays shinning down, to climb upwards toward the light, and it follows his journey upward with maybe a few set backs.

3. The resolution is that finally after some work, he makes it to the top of a building to see the sky.

Technical:

I'm planning to go shoot my own backgrounds from somewhere in the city, hopefully going up a building. Then I'd like to basically stitch them together in photoshop to create my landscape, along with some editing to make them more dramatic.

Resources/Inspiration:

As far as technically in after effects, I was intrigued again by the guys at corridor digital, and their graphic violence piece. I like the aesthetic they created using some green screen and masking/coloring to make themselves appear on to the wall. Also how they appear to interact with their wall environment is interesting.

They also have a making of video that breaks down their effects. Although I'm not using live footage or greenscreen, I think I can still apply some of their techniques.

In After effects, I'm planning to create a rigged silhouette character, and using filters, layer styles, and masks to make him look as if he's part of the flat on the wall. And move him around the photographic environment I created.

I was also inspired by the silhouette character from the game limbo. Which is a side scrolling platform game, that has a kinda of dark and melancholy aesthetic.

Lastly, I'm toying with the idea of doing the piece to a song or at the least having background city sounds and sound effects. I was curious what everyone thinks about that.

Side Kicked Title Screen

For my tutorial, I wanted to re-do the text from the intro of my character animation. This is where the title side kicked fades in and then side kicks the kicked and it shatters. The original animation was simple, but thats because I did it rather quickly without researching it that much. This time I wanted to make it more epic and I got to use the pixel polly, cc force motion blur, and fast blur effects. I also added a screen shake with position and wiggler. Over all I think the effects is more awesome and dramatic. It might be a little over the top, and it might have taken everything I could form adding an a fire explosion, but over-all im happy.

The two tutorials I used to get a base for this were both from VideoCoPilot, and I had to listen to andrew kramer. Though they were good tutorials.

Particle Explosion

Camera Shake

In 3333DDD

So for this assignment, we just had to play around with the 3d-ish capabilities of after effects. Well I got a little ambitious, and I wanted to image what the first mario level would look like with the same textures just extruded out horizontally. Also I wanted to turn it into a first person perspective. Well I learned its kinda tricky to position everything accurately, but with practice I got better at it. I also learned its better to just place the rotation point and think about what degree you need to move it and enter that value, instead of trying to rotate it with just the mouse. Other than that I quite like it. Also I had seen this previously and used it as my inspiration: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBb9wFP7uZM

Mindterm_v4 Write-up & Sound Edit

Well I think I've finally perfected my piece, and I've got to say that I'm still damn proud of what I've made so far. Through it all its taught me a shit ton, such as set my sights realistically and to learn to work within the limits of what the program is good at. If I follow that I should end with a good piece, no matter what. I think I was a little ambition when I first envisioned this story, but I think I think I executed it pretty well. For this being my first story driven piece, I really pushed myself to make it about something that pertains to me, and I feel connected to this character now. As I struggle with the same problems, and my biggest fear is loneliness and abandonment.

I also think I did pretty well on character design despite my experience in illustration, as I'm not a very experienced illustrator.

Sound Edit:

- City Background Sounds

- Car sounds and stop

- Car Door

- Bag hit

- Sigh

- Walking

- Director boom and Yell

- Running Sound

- Hitting cardboard

- Sliding down a wall and sitting.

- Rain

- Mask Peel?

- Business door ring.

FInal Final Final Final Animation

Woo, after weeks of working on it, my character animation is finally finished. The biggest thing I learned through this entire process over anything, was the lesson I keep learning over and over is that I need to get better at time management. I've slowly gotten better over the years about it, but I spent many nights up late working in the Mac Labs. I would've liked to get more sleep, but animation came first. I also kept putting off working on an animation for my other class to work on this one, and now its coming back to bite me in the ass.

As far as technical prowesses goes, I have a much much better handle on how after effects. I also more than anything know the limits in After Effects in what I can do, as its not a straight animation program. And It takes a certain kind of masochist to do character based animations in it, by choice. I do like how readily able it incorporates with all the other adobe programs, but even then some things are a bit weird like shortcuts and renaming layers.

Overall I'm happy with what I've created, and have actually grown quite fond of my character. Who still doesn't have a name, but anywho. I'm proud of what I accomplished as I'm still new to animation in general, but I dont think it shows in my work.