Finished Time-Based Narrative Film

Today we came together as a group to finish our animation by adding everyone's sections together to make the completed film.

Completing my section

I have completed my section of the circus film this weekend after a couple of tweaks to the motion -- most notably there were two 'shots' (the first of the boy running across screen, and the one where he runs past the large lady and the dog-faced boy) which I didn't think were working in 12.5 fps. Although I chose that timebase to emulate the look of traditional cut-out animations which had a 'jerky'/imperfect style, it seemed to me that these two shots were TOO jerky, and I smoothed them into 25fps. Now I am happy with it:

ComVis / TBN comparison

Considering my ComVis project is a Z-space character's POV interpretation of my time-based narrative project, I thought it would be interesting to see the two videos side-by-side so I put this together in premiere.

TBN Animation

In week 8 I have been finishing off my animation; I have added the final character where the gap was in my first export, and I have started fiddling around with the smoothing of the motion properties - paying more attention now to 'slow-in, slow-out' principals.

Animation First Export

With the exception of one section which is left out, and pending some smoothing of motion, I have done the bulk of my animation this week, which can be seen below:

I am very happy with how it is going -- I think that I have captured the feel of traditional 'cut out' animations such as Terry Gilliam's work for Monty Python very well. I aim to finish this over the weekend, and just be left with some polishing off, before putting everyone's together for our final film.

Continuity Continued

Myself and Aliyah sorted out the continuity between our sections, though it started me thinking about an aspect of the story which didn't make much sense -- the main character is supposed to hide in a box which gets taken onstage, where he then gets flung about and thrown into a different vanishing box. But given the pacing of the video at the end will be very fast, I'm not sure there's enough time to make it obvious that these are two different boxes and I think it would be confusing for an audience. 

So, I thought it would be better to change this to him running into an elephant whilst backstage which picks him up and takes him on stage -- he was going to encounter an elephant straight after getting on stage anyway, but bringing this forward into the end of my section and replacing the box idea I think clears up some confusion.

Continuity

Today I will need to talk to Ali about how our sections transition into one-another as there has been some confusion about where mine ends and hers begins, so we need to resolve this for the purposes of continuity of action in our overall piece.

Project Working

I have been working on my animation. As discussed, I have decided to sequence photoshopped images in Premiere to emulate traditional cut-out styles. I have imported each characters' layers and am manipulating the position, scale and rotation properties in the effect controls, frame-by-frame (using a 12.5fps timebase), as you can see here:

Choosing the Design for the Main Character

On Monday, Emily showed us an image from a vintage children's book she had with a boy who we have decided to base our character on.

We decided he would be best in a blue top so that he doesn't class with the red's of our circus staging, so after I removed him from the background and took out his bag, I isolated his top and changed the hue, so I have something like this:

Unfortunately, our disadvantage in using cut-outs of existing material is that there are limited 'poses' for our character. We don't have any close-ups or varied expressions which I would hope to use in my animation, so I have been playing with different ways of changing his expression.

The third image works the best for showing fear I think, but some more work required probably...

Sideshow Character Selection and Photoshop Work

This week I have been mainly photoshopping images for my characters. I have found plenty of characters from old circus posters, from google searching as well as heavily from the website www.circusmuseum.nl which I recently found whilst researching.

I have collated the following characters to be the main circus people in my section:

My first task was to cut them out from the backgrounds of the posters, and then I have set about dividing their key body parts into separate layers – for example all of the limbs on the man's 'growth' – so that I can animate them individually.

I have also been making more decisions on the style of the animation based on earlier research. I particularly liked the works of Terry Gilliam and Phil Mulloy in 2D 'cutout' animation, so I wanted to emulate this. I have decided that the best way to do this is to do the animation in Premiere by sequencing movements together. I will have control over position, rotation and scale in the effects panel, and will set about moving each of the characters and their respective body parts with these tools.

I decided this because the main thing I noticed about traditional 2D work is that there is always a certain 'jerkiness'/imperfection to the animation – it is not perfectly smoothe the way it would be if I just used After Effects' pin tool. There are subtle inconsistencies in spacing etc which add to the feel of this style, which I can best reproduce by using Premiere.

I will continue the Photoshop work on my characters until I am ready to start animating proper next week.

Storyboarding and Animatic

We have divided our piece of music into sections and have been collaborating on our storyboards.

Once our storyboard was agreed we each took our section and used photoshop to create images to make an animatic, which I have now put together in Premiere:

My section: roughly 1m02s - 1m22s

My section concentrated on the boys discovery of the 'sideshow performers' in the circus and running away, hiding and ending up accidentally on centre stage in front of the ringmaster. There was some confusion about the end of my section/beginning of Ali's section which we will reconcile today after our presentation to the class. 

Cut-Out style references

Initially, a few practitioners' work springs up as inspirations for this style. I will do more research of course, but off the top of my head:

Phill Mulloy -- 'Cowboys: Murder'

Terry Gilliam -- 'Monty Python's Flying Circus'

Yuri Norstein -- 'Hedgehog in the Fog'

Character Development

I have been thinking about our main character -- the child.

I think that there are two realistic options for a character who goes through this sequence of events; innocent and naive or cheeky and mischievous.

If the character were simply naive, his curiosity would be of a childlike innocence, his separation from his parents accidental -- and his ultimate disappearance truly tragic and sad.

If he were cheeky and mischievous, he would e deliberately 'escaping' from his parents, and all the bad things that happen to him would be a lot easier to swallow. It would fit nicer with the 'Achilles' story model of his fatal flaw, and better with the 'curiosity killed the cat' message.

There is also a history of darkly moral fables within the realm of the traditional faerie tale -- a genre I am particularly interested in, and would like to somehow conform to as we are dealing with a moral tale and a young character. In this context, his disappearance at the end of the story is just punishment for his breaking with the niceties of socially accepted and responsible behaviour for a child. It is the classic Hansel and Gretel tale retold.

Of course, in the time of Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, these were cautionary tales based around an understanding of a dangerous world, and designed to inform from a young age of the perils of wandering from your zone of safety.

This becomes different with new cultural implications. Danger is somewhat lessened, and almost forgotten by comparison. Children are taught of very specific dangers, and not taught to fear the world as a whole, so the moral shifts. Here, I think our story is more a warning that children will be punished if they disobey their parents. A subtle difference, but an important one when it comes to the use of the parents as supporting characters in this film. I believe this makes their part more important, and it occurs to me that it would be a nice touch to start and end the film with them. This makes it their punishment too, for not taking better care of their charge.

In order to make the child likeable, however, and not instantly turn the audience against him, I see him as a 'cheeky scamp' -- a 'Just William' kind of lovable rogue initially... who ultimately gets his comeuppance.

Group Storyboarding

Today we worked on our storyboarding as a group, with lots of post-it notes getting re-arranged all over the place!

Further Story Development // Initial Storyboard Ideas

Today at college we explained our idea to Mike. Feedback was generally positive, though he asked some probing questions about our understanding of the character and story - as had been the subject of the day's session.

We figured that our 'curiosity killed the cat' storyline fitted the 'Achilles' story-type from the basic seven, however the character needed more interpretation. We were prompted to consider the type of child he is - innocent? naughty? etc. which we'll be working on individually overnight to discuss tomorrow. If he is a mischievous child, maybe his disappearance is a comeuppance; if not, maybe it is darkly comic?

Once this is all considered, it will inform the way we animate.

We also started our storyboards, and so were thinking about the story step-by-step. At the beginning, we will establish the tent, then follow the child and his parents inside. We then see a couple of performers - a magician and a trapeze act. Then a reverse of the crowd in stands, where we see the boy at the end of a row, sneaking off. He pulls back a curtain and walk through backstage. Very roughly:

To be continued...

Circus Film Narrative

This lunchtime, we had a group meeting to discuss the narrative thrust of the film we will make. We discussed various ideas, but the one which we seemed to settle on works as follows:

A young boy is at the circus with his parents. Curiosity at the sights and sounds all around gets the better of him and he slips away from his parents to go exploring. He leaves the big top tent, and finds himself backstage. At first, it is a wondrous place, with beautiful animals and exciting props. However, it becomes scarier and more sinister the further in he gets - bumping into clowns, sideshow acts and a contortionist. Eventually, he trips and stumbles into a vanishing cabinet from where he doesn't return. We finish on his parents looking for him...

I think the story has a strong beginning, middle and end.

Beginning: Establishes circus and boy, and wonder of the circus.
Middle: Boy exploring - first excitement, then confusion, then fear.
End: The boy is lost for good.

It conforms to a simple yet effective 'curiosity killed the cat' story, which should not be too hard to tease out, and allows a lot of room for visual spectacle and innovative animation.

Potential Narrative Idea

I have been thinking about a possible narrative today, for our circus-based animation, and had an idea;

'The Real Illusionist' - A man is on stage performing magic tricks - but they all go wrong. As the disappointed crowd continues to watch, we pan outwards to the circus performers waiting to go on. They look bored, hanging around waiting for their time. But, we see that this is where the magic really happens - but here it all goes unnoticed. Somebody saving another's life; Animals dancing behind all their backs; A man accidentally catching a falling flower and presenting it to a woman, who smiles at him. As we return to the conjurer inside, we realise that magic isn't about cheap tricks, but the beautiful things that go on all around us every day.

I think this would make a sweet and touching short animation, and provide scope for rich sets and characters.

Pending discussion with group...

Group Work

Yesterday, Amber and Emily both pitched ideas revolving around a style of cut-out animation - which I am a big fan of. A strong inspiration of mine was the work of Terry Gilliam since I watched his animations for Monty Python when I was younger.

I was very keen to work on an animation with this style, and perhaps have the chance to take it further.

After a brief chat, we decided to mostly follow the theme of Amber's pitch - based around Philip Glass' score for 'The Illusionist' (a track called 'The Orange Tree') and set at a circus.

I think the circus setting has a lot of potential for visual interest - and a nice idea was to cut out pictures from old vintage circus advertising posters.

We discussed some narrative ideas but have not decided on anything solid, so I look forward to talking about this further with the group.

The Pitch and New Collaboration

We pitched our ideas to the group today. Mine was not chosen, but I am happy with how the day went. I feel I pitched confidently and that the main failing was just that the idea was just a bit too much all at once and I had let the idea get out of hand. I will still hold onto the style idea and perhaps have a chance to use it another time.

There were some very strong ideas presented to the group, and tighter pitches than my own - a number of which I would have been happy to collaborate on.

Raph showed us a slightly disturbing but highly interesting cartoon 'Malice in Wonderland' which would have been a lot of fun to try to emulate in terms of style, but I thought there was less scope for innovation.

I liked Kay's idea (and Pete's apparently copied derivative!) both telling the story of a character climbing down/up using a loop, and creating the backgrounds in varying individual styles along their journey.

And there were a couple of particularly noteworthy more experimental ones - Will's tortoise and hair interpretation as a race between a light-wave and sound-wave and James' ethereal sound-matching seascape for example. And I was very glad to be introduced to a brilliant film, 'Robots of Brixton', as well as  the monster illustrations of John Kenn (which I will definitely be remembering for futureinspiration!)

http://koikoikoi.com/2010/10/john-kenns-monsters-on-post-it/

However, my favourite ideas were from Amber and Emily, whose group I've now joined. More of this in a separate post.

Character

I have been thinking more about the design of my characters. My first thought was of Quentin Blake, because the track title 'Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites' seemed to take me back to my childhood reading the stories of Roald Dahl, which he narrated.

Within my chosen narrative, the sketcy style really works, but could even be pushed further. Compare:

In my own picture, I have really pushed the facial expression to an extreme and more 'unhinged' look. Also, I have deliberately gone over lines again and again. I think this adds a feeling of uncertainty and anxiousness to the image.

On top of this, I have drawn the character purely black and white, to contrast with the vividness of the background. Conceptually, this stands for the feeling of the world being hyper-real and the character feeling unreal.