Friday Crit - Mat and Michaela 30/4/21

• Centre Agamemnon and the mask in the scene!! (I didn't realise they weren't!), easy fix. 
• Try getting rid of the extra texts around the mask and the spear I think it did work, but the pause on the mask and Agamemnon might be a bit too long in comparison to the others. It's a nice break from all the rush but seems long compared to the other fast paced actions. 
• Change the font again. Bolder. No serifs.  During my research, I didn't come across anything about san-serif fonts - not remembering a media class I once took - San serifs are easier to read. I just thought it was very against the style. And the san serif font found on a Grecian urn has a LOT of spacing. (I will use this font in the press pack though for titles)

This is where I found the opportunity to add in the credits for the sound. They were both too long to have in the nice Greek font. 

• 

  The current new font is Kohinoor Deranagari, which still looks taller and older, but with the 'semi bold' and san serif, it's a lot more clear to the viewer, with a slight kerning just to keep them a little apart. 

• They think it looks weird that things can pass outside of the border so make it so things stop after the solid black lines I figured out that I could import an image as an import toon boom bitmap, and this would let me key frame an image and edit it inside harmony. Once I removed the middle, I was easily able to copy and past this layer in to every animation file so far so that they all had the same bits erased. 
• Maybe start thinking of it as an old timey screening of the archaeologists' work instead of an urn - add a vignette, or more of one. I didn't add this one as I had already had one on the background, and I felt like some things on still frames that are very close to the edges would have been lost inside a double vignette. 
• Audio is too quiet. I turned the volume up to max for this update, but it was still too quiet, even if it was an improvement. I realised by selecting an audio and pressing G you can alter the original base volume later on. 

• Good timing! Much better improvement Yessss.
• Better title shot, more time for the audience to ease in to the quick dialogue and speed up with the pace. Much more establishing 

https://youtu.be/95jNvY-OcjI

WWW

• Better timing, getting good understanding
•  I think the new animation added from the last week update has good action and timing
• Very proud of all the layers and erasing that the walls rising up took. 
• I seem to have chosen appropriate spots to transition between scenes, where I don't have to copy and paste as many frames and assets. 

EBI

• Audio is still quiet at this stage - my laptop must be really loud because its very clear even on half volume
• No sound effects or bg music yet
• I added a bit of a slow down on to the horse because I animated that really fast - but I think it could do with some manual retiming so that frames don't get really badly extended. 

Sound and poster

Sound List:  https://drive.google.com/file/d/1M9R3RaHB1N7AwATRNeIHw7q3W7PsqrMm/view?usp=sharing 

I spent some time looking deeper in to the sound effects and making some of my own such as the rolling wood of the trojan horse wheels. It took a little longer to find some background music, but I eventually chose a string instrument, like something played by a bard. String instruments were very popular in the Roman era, with hand held harps (lyre) as well as the lute, a medieval guitar often used by bards. I think it is quiet enough that it doesn't overpower the soft narration, whilst also being past paced enough to keep up with the narration speed. There were a few tests that just didn't match the pace as historical usually means slow and calm. 

I made the poster for the press pack on procreate, replicating my rigs on a new software. This turned out very dynamic, which I suppose doesn't set the mood of the animation itself. But with my style of animation and simple actions, there wasn't really anything exciting to incorporate. I considered having a spartan and a trojan fight, but decided that the documentary is based on mythistorical study. The battle between myth and history, Mythos and Lagos, and how they prove and disprove one another. So the best figures would be the man who proved Troy was real, Korfmann, vs the most recognisable face of the myth, Achilles.  Though this turned out very clean looking, I didn't replicated the same line texture and weight of the animation, but this turned  out for the best as it was an image I could expand fairly large in the press pack website without it blurring. 

Friday Crit- Michaela 23/4/21

• Speech starts before the logo and she felt like she had to go back and rewind to check she hadn't  missed anything
• The logo is too long for a film that is only 90 seconds long.
• 'Mythistory' information is unnecessary and too long. She can't read it and process the audio facts at the same time. Replace with a shot of a ruin or a dig to establish the shot (I think maybe Troy/Hisarlik because the big impact of the documentary is when Troy is proved to exist. ) 
  

• She liked the watercolour effects and possibly it could unveil the city?
• Everything comes on as its mentioned. Have things on before they're mentioned. Slide on, start talking, hat tip. Timeline, Priam drinks. Left to right. 
• Don't overlap actions, make sure they come on after the other. I think I could do this by changing where Schliemann pauses. 
• Fonts need work!
• Get rid of the swirls in the timelines because they distract from the numbers. 
• Clear font and not a Greek one. 
• Change the font colour from white to a colour that blends a little better. 

This is where Anatoli requested possibly changing 'voice talent' to 'narrated or narration by'

• Watch a few typography videos 
• Lots ended up being about how to make them move and come in to shot
• All very large fonts 
• All the same size characters
• A common one tends to be snaking on to the screen
• usually have a block shadow
• Possible constant panning shot slow? Not really possible with how I've structured the scenes in Harmony, unfortunately. My computer and brain couldn't handle that many layers in one file haha. I've noticed that rigging takes up a LOT of layers and node view space. 
• 
  Make the map a darker colour either land or sea. (Land would be easiest because the sea connects to the rest of the scenes in multiple places where as the land only connects once. I forgot to add this one but did create the asset and added it in to the final. 

• Learn from mistakes and try to organise production where you can do some bits in after effects and others in Harmony, because some of the easy after effects transitions weren't as smooth in Harmony or Premiere.  

https://youtu.be/IlM_Kx8YfVE

WWW

• I think the timing was definitely improved and a lot clearer
• I definitely had a lot of time with the new city scape beginning, so instead of holding it still, I had it rise from the ground, which I think was a nice effect. The font colour is very subtle but it blends in more whilst also staying visible among colour that are all very similar. 

EBI

• I designed the city of Troy at the start with inked colours, the same as the final logo, the flames and the treasure - but I couldn't animate all the parts separately with the colours as well. I think it still works and maybe the amount of colour I had was overbearing on the dark background either way. I can still use it in the press pack. 
• I don't like the shape of the timeline without the swirls. 

Animation Scenes 1-4b, Update

 https://youtu.be/B_RadG4m4Nk

WWW

•  I think the screen placements have been good so far with little interference with the rule of 3. 
• I think the colour coordination has been good with the theme of a Grecian urn - primary colours as well as black and white. 
• I like the borders and how it frames everything and enhances the subtle vignette. 

EBI

• I think maybe some timings could be better and maybe some audio timing for the future, as I've noticed I'm a little ahead of the animatic. 
• I hadn't noticed it right away, but I had downloaded QuickTime during all of the exporting for this progress compilation. Toon Boom seems to automatically choose quicktime over h264 and I hadn't realised. This caused colour fluctuations when compiling it all together in premiere, and I couldn't figure out the reason. I thought it was premiere pro. But luckily I realised for later.  

Assets 2

With the watercolour transitions for the smaller texts, I knew they had to be a lot quicker than the last two, so I made them come from the centre. I think this definitely worked well and they did their jobs efficiently. To improve them, it was hard finding a balance in the levels to use on the colour key. Some wouldn't remove enough background and there were large clumps of bg colour around the more transparent edges. Some got rid of the edges but started to make the writing fade too. I would have made them both slightly darker if I had kept them in to stop this. 

My original idea for the timeline was that it would be inside the frame so that it didn't get lost in all of the patterns. To do this, I made it two layers so that it would be more obvious to focus on but also wouldn't overlap my characters as much. The two line method made the shape look very uneven but adding AD made it look like too much information - so I added a small frame to really make it look like a timeline. The lines are also like those found around Grecian urns, which have words spelt out between them - which I will probably incorporate in the press pack too.

I wanted the treasure to be in an uneven heap so that parts could stick out from behind the characters in the already quite busy scene, without drawing too much attention. This also meant they got their time to be noticed during the pan out when nothing else was moving. I like the ink effect on these and the mix of colours. As this come in first, it doesn't make too much sense by this scene. But colouring in the shield and the urns helped make the coloured in golden mask look less out of place. 

Final video

For my 502 video last year, I tried creating an avatar throughout to make it more interesting, but I think my visuals were still a little lacking and didn't contain much visible work. This year I wanted to combine the avatar idea and work by making a narrative of the year. I designed a mini me called Arrow, which is what some of my friends call me, as well as the start of my main username publicly. Anywhere that I couldn't particularly think of work to put in, I put in a (what I think is) funny skit. I did this all in a youtuber animatic style to make this easier for me, but it still took some time - which I do regret a little. But I am pleased with how this one looks compared to last year. I am glad I could carry over colour themes from my advertising in to the backgrounds and the props. 

I do need to improve on my animatics and I think this was a good exercise in that. 

Unfortunately I think that the 'quality over quantity' aspect of my talk might have backfired in the video itself 😂 But now I know that this much work might have been overbearing and not to do this next year - especially with the documentary deadline up and coming. 

To improve, I would make my soft skills/hard skills a little more clear. Talking about being a shoulder for other people is definitely my main skill, but outlining that would be good. 

https://youtu.be/_NVCLrkQ5uk

(Reference layer)

 https://youtu.be/I5dyQWGNFuk

Pro Talks (Missed out in earlier blog posts)

Bianca Ansema - Wednesday 24th February

• Bin your ego, be nice to peers, everything comes back to you and someone may not want to hire you. 
• Emotions make lasting impressions - positivity! (improve on being less pessimistic or saying "oh but you did that way better than I could"/ guilty complements )
• She doesn't have a particular art style - often having a way she animates, another way she sketches and another way she draws for fun (similar to me). Finding your voice doesn't equal finding an art style. Know your client, eg cartoony wouldn't work for marvel cinema, might work for Disney XD marvel shows. 
• She felt behind everyone else on an emotional level due to being restricted at home- which I felt deeply but not to the same extent. Getting away from problems can help / leaving home. 
• Commercial work doesn't mean you've lost your voice - their requirements can help add to your skills as a professional working deadlines - OR could help add something to your own style. you can learn from being told to do a new thing. It pays you so you have the time to freelance other stuff.
• Freelance means that you are your own company. Banking, financing, pricing yourself, staying on schedule, animation itself - all down to you.
• Be nice to work with, reliable, responsible, and produce good work. 
• She kept learning after uni from higher ups in the industry. 
• She kept herself very diverse : Worked in preschool, teen cartoons, live action)
• 5 years of switching between jobbs, she decided to settle on storyboarding and animatics - DECISIONS TAKE TIME

Paul Abadilla (Through Domestika, possibly) - Friday 26th February

• Art Director on PIXAR's Soul
• Soft lights, soul world vs hard lights real world. 
• At first, Joe Gardener was supposed to succeed with his life, so they designed the room to look more rich using fitted furniture on a high rise with Grammy awards - but they slowly realised the story arc wasn't right. 
• Contrasted lines, don't keep buildings all rising in the same direction. Have them slant the tiniest bit towards the horizon point. Add a curved tree to make the buildings look straight and more subtle. Add a perfectly straight streetlamp. 
• The soul world was designed to orient itself completely around the circular soul portal in the middle. This wasn't always shown visibly so what they did was have a light emit from the centre of the world so it is always subconsciously clear where the portal is. 
• IN the real world, gum is always on the floor, paint is layered and weathered. Shows time is always moving and life passes by around the characters and from past youthful thoughts and dreams to present day. 
• Lighting is used to make busy areas seem more quiet when the scene needs to be more serious. Sunsets/rises. 
• Don't burn out. He said ding so definitely helped him in college to get work done and get good grades, but it was a hard habit to break and it can ruin your work flow for a long time. This will lessen opportunities and people will think you're less reliable in the work place. 

Assets

I really liked this effect and it worked really well as an overlay using the soft light filter. It was very easy to slow down and speed up in premiere to match the length needed. This is where I learnt that movies failed to export without a background in to premiere and turned the background black - this usually made the edges look black. To battle this in later videos, I exported with a colour similar to the paint colour but I think for the fire, I liked the discharge it made in the final shot. 

The way this test unveiled the logo ended up being the only one kept in, as it was fast, could be sped up and also helped move the scene along as well as unveiling. But the part revealing the words itself was very clunky and didn't work well with the colour key background removal. 

I did really like this second outcome better than the first, but I think it was too slow and didn't reveal as much as I'd have liked it to. 

WWW - Smooth. More aesthetically pleasing, More legible. 

EBI - A bit too slow. Doesn't reveal all that much. 

I designed the logo with some transparency so that it looks liked the colour ink is etched in, similar to on the urns. This is a style I try to carry through in a few other assets like the flames and the Priam's treasure to make the 2D digital look more hand made. 

Researching oppertunities

Manchester Animation Festival is an eighteen day event from July 1st - 18th, which celebrates dance, animation, and other forms of visual communication. The event usually takes over five hundred volunteers a year. 

Though due to covid, I'm not too certain I would be comfortable in such a busy event - I assume because of the worlds situation, it would be less busy and more open plan. Though it isn't a pure animation event, I think it would be interesting to see dance for motion, and I still have a strong interest in realism in 3D, so fine art will be interesting too. After my COP and researching motion capture and camera technologies, seeing film and narration and acting will be helpful too - as well as the communication skills that I desperately need. 

I found out about this through Manchester Metropolitan University and my friends being recommended to volunteer there. 

https://mif.co.uk/my-festival/volunteers/

Since joining Doctor Simpo's comic book contest, I've looked more in to Thought Bubble. I have always wanted a stand in Comicon to sell artwork, but I feel like Thought Bubble would be a lot easier to get in to, and will be around more like minded people with an interest in the art side rather than the comics and buying retail goods and cosplay. Volunteering is also available here, but with my current thoughts of a gap year, I won't be in Leeds during the festival. But it is something to think about for 2022, especially if the world is more open by then. 13th - 14th November 2021

Comic con was not available last year due to fear of crowds, and this year similarly, all Comicons in Manchester have been put on hold - though Birmingham is available on the same days as Thought Bubble. 

Animex, an animation festival for games and animations, will be held online in 2021 on the 2nd of June. It will be hosting master classes and exhibitions, as well as portfolio reviews. Currently there is one guest speaker from Sony. Though there won't be an opportunity to volunteer as its online - I think the exhibitions and masterclasses will be useful. 

Show Reel

 

https://youtu.be/9_OH7CwiV70

Making my show reel for level 5, I wanted to fill my video with a lot more than I managed last time. Last time i used full turnarounds, even if the character or model were mirrored on both sides - and I only ended up having five or so clips in the reel with three being Maya models. 

My plan for this one was to make the animated clips short and snappy, so that a few stills could show through. With my current business plan, I've pitched myself a few times as a want-to-be Art Director - so I think having a design in there would be useful. 

With the current thinking of our future and what job roles we want, so I wanted to have an information tile to show what job on each project that I did. I also think it was a good idea to show what software I used so people know my range. 

What would be better would be better integrated transitions, but my premiere pro and computer as a whole had a lot of trouble with the whole video, so I did what I could. But I'm happy with the interesting transition at the end to my card. 

I'm also glad I show more subtle music than last time. Last time the music had an action theme, but this music is subtle and therefore doesn't make any clip match more or less than any other.  

Blender illustration

After talking to @polygonrunway about their practice in 3d modelling, I realised that trying out 3D illustration might be a good way to create a regular posting system on my animation account, as well as figuring out new actions in Blender. 

I started off my using my background of the mansion in My Inner Demon for 503 and mirroring it. I didn't realise this would make a cube until a bit later. I used a new mirroring feature to make the house and I didn't realise sometimes that extruding on the opposite time layered faces - so my mistakes accidentally made reshaping the building impossible without starting over. But I added a brick texture and it made the whole thing look less flat and cubic. 

It also gave me a chance to create a short clip for the end of the show reel, zooming in to the door. 

I liked experimenting with the floors the most, as I found that ctrl E allows you to extrude individual faces all at once, so you can then bevel them all and make a brick layer. 

What could be better is the house shape - make it taller and more twisted to be spooky. Make the ghosts animated with a little squash and stretch and have them float around the top. I could have made more of a stand for the entire sculpture so that it looked like a figure/ collectible/ better presented. Next time I will design the sculpt first fully, as I worked with half of my drawing (the background was only half of the building). 

This was my attempt at using the colours from the original background, and I think it looked good, but changing the background colour to black and adding any lighting made the mansion look instantly black - so I tried to run with it and make the house suit the lighting. 

This is where I realised the cubic look of the building made it appear very flat, and so decided to add the cobblestone bricks. Messing around with the emissions to create the glowing effects really added to how the sky makes the house darker. 

I decided to go with a three point lighting - which when you can't see the ground in the first camera makes it look very duller, but I think illuminating the floor on the higher angle shots really outlines the building. 

I really got to mess around with the use of cameras on this one, and realised that you didn't have to use a timeline to change the cameras like I did with the Rain rig. In scene settings, you can choose which camera you want everything to render from - so you can essentially export a whole scene or an image from multiple cameras. This is in the scene settings (icon with tree).

I also figured out how to as linework to your model, which I really wanted to learn from RWBY and seeing their animation process. Blender has a check box for it using the 'freestyle' check box under the icon with two photos overlapping. This didn't work out for my current project though as it outlined some of the more squarer polygons in the ghosts and also made the lighting effects look less impactful. 

Storyboards and animatic

1st -5th

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1mGDmweTpgwvjyeaNkAIIfhJ9NXkqkoMN/view?usp=sharing

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1cmqzCZcAbs0ax57baZaSwRoxpOEw-5Xo/view?usp=sharing

https://drive.google.com/file/d/16_cGreppETQVCyRiBO-uUnQKa1wcyU_P/view?usp=sharing

WWW

• Clear image
• Fits the 90 seconds and timed to the most recent voice over speed arranged with the voice actor. 
• Enough time for both logos

EBI

• Achilles statue could be confusing. He did die in the war to Paris shooting him in the heel (left according to urns). But I think having his statue as 'worship' could be confusing when a) the war is continuing below and b) he isn't a god but a son of a god. 
• However he is the known hero of the trojan war and possibly the most famous - and I think adding in a random god (even one weakly involved such as Apollo) would still go against the whole point in the video of proving the reality of the trojan war. I will probably keep Achilles and show him alive and then shot in the heel and turns in to a statue to show he was alive for a lot of the war. 
• I think the doors and the metal bars will end up covering the border in the background. I will test it in the animatics - but I may have to redesign the background and border as two separate items. 

https://youtu.be/V7Qklq0sPW8

https://youtu.be/SzOfXHVJs74

WWW

• It showed the character of the animation, I was worried it would be too flat looking
• It made me aware of how much time this animation will take, I don't think it will take too long once all of the assets are created. This animatic took two days so I'm hoping for most of the smaller ones that don't involve human characters to only tale a day. 
• This allowed the voice actor some ground to figure out their own timings and where there is room. 
• The words and actions are very well timed together if the final recording is the same speed. 
• Soldiers and walls can be copied and pasted. 

EBI

• Walls overlapping looks a little confusing - I didn't want them coloured but I think keeping them invisible until they have passed one another is a good option. Same with the doors - removing the line work behind it as it comes in to avoid fading everything out
• Work on watercolour animations for the words to come in and the fire background - so not everything is a fade
• Korfmann digging and lifting up the spear doesn't have a lot of time so maybe have the transition a little sooner or a little faster.