[Extended Practice]Critical Evaluation

Aim of the animation:

Extended Practice is the module I appreciate the most in this year. I was excited to visualise the true story of my father. We are very close and his retirement from the police force in last January is the trigger to this animation. His passion to the job inspires me to animate his memory and to make him proud. Another main reason is the disrespectfulness to police officers among teenagers in Hong Kong, mainly due to political reasons. I wish to bring out the message that every occupation should be respected and appreciated especially who put themselves in danger for our health or safety.

What techniques did I use:

I mostly used Photoshop and After Effects for animating and editing. The animation is drawn digitally and coloured by both scanned in watercolours and watercolour brushes, with different angle and direction in every single frame. However, this is very time consuming and caused a lot of confusion when too many layers in a file. Nevertheless, I decided to repeat outline even when the characters are not moving. This repeating method gives more movements which I discovered in COP that it brings life to the characters. There is a huge difference between a still line and a line that is constantly moving which basically establishes the major aesthetic of the animation.

Additionally, I also experiment with 3D animation in After Effect. I learnt this from YouTube and I enjoy self-teaching a lot. I can learn a lot in a short time by watching various methods online but being selective is also a difficult task.

 

Time management:

I am exceptionally proud of the time managing skill during this module. The first timetable was done at late February that was the time when I found everything was not organised and I was too chill to work hard. Week plan works the best for me because it gives me flexibility rearrange ‘timetable within the timetable’ also it is less intimidating than shuffling a lot of work in a day. I am glad that I followed the timetable strictly because this pushes my limits and be ahead of the schedule. This is a skill I need to keep and improve in the future and I believe it will lead me to some good companies.

Target audience:

At first, I was just aiming at Hong Kong audience as I thought foreigner would find it difficult to understand the story. My perspective changes during all the crits and production. The animation already breaks the wall of language and everyone can enjoy it visually and aesthetically. Therefore, I will say it is open to all age groups in the world who is interested in 2D or intense content.

How does this animation develop your specialist practice?

I want to be specialised in 2D and this animation is a valuable practice to showcase my skills also experimenting. I show the ability to adopt different styles in work also to develop as well as working effectively and efficiently. The theme of the animation would be attractive to Hong Kong animation company and the aesthetic could help setting up my brand.

Group project

At the beginning of the module, I volunteered to work with Lauren and the group of Callum and Hayley because it is fun to work with others also I can gain more experience when collaborating. I designed characters for Lauren based on some real photos of her and her sister. It is a good practice on life drawing and practice real portion which is also useful to my own project. Although the final character designs were anime looking, I had a lot of valuable practices and we both agreed on the design. For Callum and Hayley group, I made props for them because I love crafting a lot also want to expand this skill. Hayley taught me a lot from sticking wood pieces together to measuring for laser cutting. I gained so much new knowledge in a short period of time and very pleased to have good communication with the two groups, definitely want to get involved in more group project in the future.

 

What have you learnt?

I have learnt so much during this module. From planning out the project to actually producing it, I have never thought about completing a 2 minutes animation by myself. It proves that I have stepped out of my comfort zone and challenged myself with a difficult goal and achieved it eventually. The sense of satisfaction is priceless. I learnt to organised my time and schedule additionally spending extra time to work with other groups so as to gain more experience . I challenged new approaches to the software, exploring them even further and achieve the mix media style I want. What is more, learn to rest. My wrist was so stiff due to long hour working without resting. Hopefully there is no long-term effect but this is when I noticed the importance of taking a balance between work and rest.  Animators’ hands are life! Finally, and the most rewarding, learning to appreciate myself. I always have high standard and seldom feel pleased about my own work. During the production, receiving all positive feedback increases my confidence and started accepting others’ compliment rather than hiding my work from others. Although I still feel a bit embarrassed when showing the animation but I definitely appreciated it more and be proud of it.

Improvement

I wish to do more research at the beginning on the texture and aesthetic that I want. My resources are limited geographically so I should have taken more reference photos in the Water Head Village. The voice recording of my father is not perfect because it was not recorded in a completely quiet space and I wish to do something to relax him. As I mentioned how repeating lines could give life to the character, I should not repeat the line when the gangster is shot down so as to follow the idea and contrasting the living and the dead characters. This is due to not enough animation tests which should have done more at the beginning.

[Extended Practice]Poster

I asked almost everyone about how they do their poster. Most of them are very simple with a big title and a tagline. I spent a long time thinking about the strap line because I want it to be a little bit playful and not just a boring description of the animation. Eventually I picked : Just a normal day at work, a bit of humour and playfulness and I hope my audience would feel curious by looking at the poster.

A rough idea, sketched on photoshop. This is the time when the officers are running to where the gangsters hid. Showing a lot of surroundinng buildings and it is 7 o clock in the morning so the colour scheme will be blue and yellow.

Using the vanishing point again! It is so useful when drawing landscape. Following the lines already helps a lot with the perspective and ratio! Highly recommand!

Transferring this semi final draft to an A2 file and resketching everything.

Oscar gave me this advise of making the poster in A2 so as to make sure the best quality when printed also can be in high resolution in any size smaller than A2.I took his advise even tho the file will be rather large. This is what professional designers or typical thing to do in the creative industry so I need to be generous of the size of the file!

I also use CMYK so as to ensure better printing quality. The colour looks good and the water colour do not lose the texture when enlarged which I am very pleased! However not sure about the position of the title and the colour as well. The title was distracted from the building behind which meands it should be moved to somewhere else!

I call this my final poster! The title are not straight but slightly rotated to fit the gaps in between the buildings and to match the perspective of the illustration. I like the texture and the shapes as well which gives a lot of information about the aestheic of the animation, let people have a taste before watching. 

[Extended Practice]Trailer

I went on Vimeo to look at examples of short trailers. The styles I like are all very simple and show quick montage of the film. In our case, we only have relatively short animation so picking the most exciting bits is probably the best to do.

orfeu TRAILER_1 from nelson boles on Vimeo.
Short and dynamic. Showing a lot of actions to attract audience to keep following.

WIND - trailer from robert loebel on Vimeo.
 
"Nino&Felix" (short movie) Trailer from LaTestuggine on Vimeo.


Good use of music, syns with the shoots and brings a lot of rythem to the clip. Based on the research, I think a 20-30s trailer is more than enough. And It went quite well on the first attempt.

Reusing the school logo and credit from the finished animation. It saves a lot of time making this trailer and along with the effective sound I found on the youtube audio library. I like this trailer because I kept it simple but informative. Having both quite and exciting moment of the film and the music adds so much to it and Oscar said he felt pumped afterwards so I guess this is great!haha.

[Extened Practice]Final animation

After readjusting the sound levels, the final animation is done!!! I am very pleased with how it turns out eventually! I showed it to many people and they give a of positive feedbacks about the aesthetic and the concept of the animation which make me really happy and satisfied. Unfortunately there is no extra time left for any detail retouches and I was only able to revisit one scene which Mike said the patterns on the buildings were very odd. Nevertheless, this animation is done now. The whole project was valuable and very rewarding. I pushed my boundary and finish the whole project by myself which is unbelievable. It is festival quality and definitely submitting it to as many festivals as I can to let the world know I did this! Also can not wait to show my dad, he will be so proud!

[Extended Practice]4/5 Final Crit

Our final crit was held in classroom but I really hope we could watch our work at the theatre again. Nevertheless, we had set the 'standard' sound level so we can base our animation on that and adjust the right amount of sound afterwards. Everyone has great progress since last week and all the work are diverse in style and topic which makes our course so unique and free! At that time, I still have 2 more seconds to finish off the animation and also had most of the sound effects sorted. I think the level of sound effect is still a bit low but the humming music was on point. Annebeth suggested everyone to spend a day on sound and music since it is very important to a completely finished piece also Lauren pointed out a misspelling in the subtitle. 

What I need to do now is to correct the subtitle, render two completed animation with and without subtitle, finish off the sound, the press pack , evaluation and also a subtitle in Chinese as there are a few asian animation competition require Chinese subtitles. Let's crack on!

[Extended Practice]credit

Instead of working with a graphic designer, I want to create my own title because by then it can be 100% made my Wing. I looked for some fonts online and picked these three types because I love how they emphasise on lines and not constrained to any shapes.

This font is very 'The Great Gatsby' feel and do not match the style.

The final decision come to these two. They are very similar but one with tidier strokes and one is more causal in terms of the shapes.

I picked the one below at last because I think the lines will look good when repeating in three, the way they wiggle with be similar to the outline I used on the character.

 

Obviously I did not copy the font straight from the picture, I changed the directions of the strokes while following it and gradually become a unique font for my animation.

[Extended Practice]Music and sounds

There are a lot of website that do free background music. I searched youtube audio library the most because it is categorised perfectly when finding specific genre of music or sound effect as well as have a lot of choices. I also use the BBC sound library at school which I picked up some nice environmental sounds and gunshots. Although there are not much suitable but all the sounds are in super high quality that is amazing. 

I found this ambient sound from youtube library which is just a subtle humming sound but I think it is the perfect choice to go behind the speech and can be used to gradually intensified the scenario if increases the volume. I have to put this in my caption box under my animation tho.

Devastation and Revenge by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license :https://creativecommons.org/licenses/...

Source: http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-...

Artist: http://incompetech.com/

I am just using the first part of the music before the humming sound stops and repeat it in Premiere. The atmosphere matches and the animation suddenly becomes lively and tense! It is amazing how much just a humming sound does to my animation. I always take it for granted but it is definitely one of the key element to comprehend the perfect story just like how Loic Burhardt, leading sound designer from Folimage said in the masterclass in MAF. I still remember the example he showed which the sound of rain is different at different location. I applied it in my animation too, where the scene showing the gangsters indoor and slowly zoomed out of the building. I used lowpass effect in Premiere to reduce the 'broadness' of the sound.

[Extended Practice]27/4Crit

We could see our work on big screen today! How exciting! It is also time to test the sound and bits and bobs before final crit. The atmosphere changes completely to just watching on little screen in classroom, seeing our work on theatre screen has an utterly impact that everyone suddenly become more serious to the project. Anyway, try not to sound arrogant here but I am on schedule compare with most of the class. It is due to I follow my table table tightly and determined to complete a scene before moving on to the others. I would not say proud of my time managing skills since it should be the fundamental skills to have as an animator or in any job. I believe that being organised and punctuate is the most important in this project because I hate panicing at last minute. However, I could finish the animation on time also mainly due to my simple approach in aesthetic and a story that is very straight forward unlike other peers who has come up with fantasy world or complicated storyline. The screening was great, I enjoy others' animation as much as well as reflecting on my own. The sound effects seem too quiet and it feels a bit plain without background music. Quite similar to Max's animation and I asked him a lot for advise who suggested to add some subtle music that could just go quietly at the background. 

Generally, I am very proud of what I produced so far and just need to fix a few things:add more sound effects, find appropriate background music, finish the rest of the animation and the press pack.

I should be able to complete the animation before deadline so leaving more time to finish off more blogs also hoping to help others' out if they needed.

[Extended Practice]Drawing explosion and smoke

I have never animated smoke or any special effects before... so this scene is very difficult! I started with rough sketching of the smoke. Considering the force of the explosion and wind and all those kind of stuffs are not easy at all. It did not look natural and almost too gentle to be an explosion.

It might sounds silly but I took a lot of reference from the battle scenes of One Piece and other manga. I read manga a lot and I immediately thought about the fight scenes in One Piece when trying fixing the smoke. There are a lot special effect drawing in every episode so I learnt how to draw smoke and using a lot of lines to show the flow of air and the sense of speed as well. Oda Eiichiro, the author of One Piece uses shading and leaving blank space to show different stage of an explosion.

It turns out totally different from the first attempt and it gains so much more volume and powerful. I am glad that the style of manga matches my animation and super pleased with this new technique! I focused a lot on the shading of the 'little clouds' diverged from the smoke and every clouds should flow to different direction due to the power of the wind which should also be random to be realistic.

After this scene....it comes the most challenging scene in the whole animation which is the spread out of the smoke. It is so difficult because the smoke is moving while changing shapes. I messed up so many time that was unable to do both motion at the same time. Therefore looked for reference online. Could not find something more useful than this following picture. Although it is a diagram of how to animate fire, it shows clearly how air flows hence how the special effect should look like. I adopted this tutorial and spent so much time on this scene, hoping to master the smoke...

Eventually, it took two  days to finish this scene and I know they are not the most perfect smoke in the world but I am still quite happy with the result. I like the volume of the 'calm' smoke and the reduce in size where it moves away from the bomb. However, it is quite stiff and did not look like gas but solid instead. It might due to the strong black line I used and too much continuous lines. It might be better if I give the brush more shatter in the customise section so that the line could be less intense. 

[Extended Practice]Change of storyboard...

There are some big changes to the storyboard while working along with it. I found that there are a few panels should be reconsidered because of the lack of information or do not link the scenes before and after well enough.
They are the scenes where the bad guy threaten Rambo by pulling the trigger of the grenade and originally it was followed by a transition of the grenade reflected in Rambo's eye and showing the fear. But obviously I did not give the characters any eyes or mouth so the storyboard is not working. I am glad that the scene followed it has finished already so it is easier to think of a way linking the scenes instead of changing the whole story completely.

Another scene was after the gangster shot, originally dad was looking at the sniper and show appreciation while Rambo ran next to him. The problem is that the most important bits were not included which is to show the grenade is detonated that why Rambo escape. Also dad's action did not have much meaning to the story therefore I steal some time from that part and turning it into a close up scene of the bad guy. Hopefully it gradually builds up the tension and showing that something big is coming that why people need to escape from that.



I think it is a reasonable correction because the storyline flows better and the more important shoots are put in which is essential in such short time. I tend to keep the background simple towards the ending of the story since the main focus it are the characters and audience would not be distracted by the detailed buildings and texture while some important plots are going on. However I should have thought about the storyboard more carefully at the beginning of the project so that the production could go much smoother and the contents would not contradict. To be honest, there have been a lot of minor changes during the production which I think it acceptable since it is difficult to foreseen all problems. I wish to improve the storyboarding skills so that my work can be more appealing and easier to understand and this animation is an extremely valuable experiment of new techniques and approaches.