Production DiaryADVANCED PRE-PRODUCTION - JOSHUA PAYNE – UP679661

Initial ideas

I initially came up with 3 basic ideas that I wanted to do for my Advanced Pre-production unit and my second terms major project. These ideas were two music videos and a subtle animation to a piece of film dialogue. My ideas all centred around already made narratives as I struggle most with stories and narratives, plus I wanted to work mainly on the 3D side more specifically the modelling aspect.

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Idea 1 – Music Video

‘Stay Alive’ – Jose Gonzalez

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Idea 2 – Animation to Film Dialogue

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Lord of the Rings – Sam’s Speech Babies

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Idea 3 – Music Video

‘I Can’t Make You Love Me’ – Bon Iver

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Selecting an Idea

With the ideas that I had created I had to present each of them to a room full of my peers and lecturers to gain essential feedback. I had to consider the follow aspects; which would be the most attainable and which would show off my skills best.

By trying to answer these questions and with the help of my feedback I was able to decide on one final idea.

I decided to choose the music video animation for the song ‘Stay Alive’ from the film ‘The Secret Life of Walter Mitty’. This was personally my favourite out of the three ideas. Now that I had my idea down I wanted to quickly get down as much initial research as I could so that I could cover as much ground as possible early on.

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Breakdown of Lyrics Before I started any decision making I

printed off the lyrics sheet for the song and pulled it apart, analysing the metaphors and trying to get a better understanding of what the song is actually about.

I came up with the idea for my music video from this initial research. I found that the song was about opening your eyes to the world and not being consumed by technology and other peoples dream. We should all try to achieve our own goals and dreams.

I always find it incredibly useful to analysis a piece of music to fully understand the true meaning. This definitely helped me to get an idea of what the story was going to be.

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Initial Concept Art I came up with this piece of concept art just

after finishing the breakdown of the lyrics. I believe through this initial art piece I was able to quickly capture the emotion of the song. As you can see its man stood on an edge looking out the sunset and the ocean. He’s throwing his arms into the air as a sign of relief and happiness.

He finally feels free and I want this to be final feeling that the audience get from watching my animation.

I decided to draw this because I wanted my audience to go on a journey through my work. I want them to be emotionally invested and perhaps by the end it can make them realise things about their own lives that they may not of ever thought about before.

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Initial Research This is a mood board

that I created before I even decided to use this as my final idea.

This was very useful and so I came back to it time and time again to get more inspiration and different concepts that I could incorporate within my work.

As you can see the three main topics within the images is: the world, technology and living full lives

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Main Inspiration

‘Lover of the Light’ -

Mumford and Sons ‘The Secret Life of Walter Mitty’

After going through my mood board I wanted to narrow my research into one or two main sources of inspiration that I could reference throughout production. I finally came up with using ‘The Secret Life of Walter Mitty’ and Mumford and Sons song ‘Lover of the Light’. Both of these inspirations have a similar theme that I found to be ‘Life. In ‘The Secret Life of Walter Mitty’ we see Ben Stiller (Left)

go from a boring, average joe to a worldly adventure at the end. All through the film Walter (Ben Stiller) has these daydreams of all the amazing adventures he wants to have but is too scared of leaving his comfortable life. This links in with the song I have chosen because they both start off living these boring yet comfortable lives and never do anything exciting or spontaneous, but then at the end we see that they’ve changed and they are finally happy going out and seeing the world.

In the song ‘Lover of the Light’ by Mumford and Sons it tells a story of a blind man going through his usually routine until he gets to the front door of his home. Just as he is about to leave he starts running. He runs throughout the entire film. Towards the end of the song it seems as if the blind man is about to run straight off the edge of a cliff until he just stops. He stops and takes in everything, he can feel the wind against his face and even though he cannot see, he isn’t worried or scared of the unknown he embraces everything and stands tall with a smile on his face. This again is the exact message that I want my audience to feel through my music video. I want them to be happy and live their lives.

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Starting initial development,

designing and script writing

After selecting my final idea for my project I began refining and working more on developing and furthering the research I had already done. I started looking at short films that I could use to structure my narrative better. I eventually stumbled upon a story called 'The fisherman and the businessman' It’s about a fisherman who loves the simple life, working to feed his family and then spending time with his family and friends. Whereas the businessman tells him about the opportunities he has and what he could achieve but no amount of flashy ideals and lifestyles could sway the fisherman and he chooses to stick with his simple, happy life. I really liked the premises of this story and thought it could work really well within my narrative, so I decided to mesh my idea, the music and the story all together to create a newer better story that I felt better described what it was that I exactly wanted to portray. I also started initial designs for some concept so that I could envision what the final film could look like. I decided that the entire film would be in 3D and that I wanted there to be quite a few detailed locations that I could model and show off my skills.

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The fisherman and the businessmanThere was once a businessman who was sitting by the beach in a small Brazilian village.As he sat, he saw a Brazilian fisherman rowing a small boat towards the shore having caught quite few big fish.The businessman was impressed and asked the fisherman, “How long does it take you to catch so many fish?”The fisherman replied, “Oh, just a short while.”“Then why don’t you stay longer at sea and catch even more?” The businessman was astonished.“This is enough to feed my whole family,” the fisherman said.The businessman then asked, “So, what do you do for the rest of the day?”The fisherman replied, “Well, I usually wake up early in the morning, go out to sea and catch a few fish, then go back and play with my kids. In the afternoon, I take a nap with my wife, and evening comes, I join my buddies in the village for a drink — we play guitar, sing and dance throughout the night.”

The businessman offered a suggestion to the fisherman.“I am a PhD in business management. I could help you to become a more successful person. From now on, you should spend more time at sea and try to catch as many fish as possible. When you have saved enough money, you could buy a bigger boat and catch even more fish. Soon you will be able to afford to buy more boats, set up your own company, your own production plant for canned food and distribution network. By then, you will have moved out of this village and to Sao Paulo, where you can set up HQ to manage your other branches.”

The fisherman continues, “And after that?”The businessman laughs heartily, “After that, you can live like a king in your own house, and when the time is right, you can go public and float your shares in the Stock Exchange, and you will be rich.”The fisherman asks, “And after that?”The businessman says, “After that, you can finally retire, you can move to a house by the fishing village, wake up early in the morning, catch a few fish, then return home to play with kids, have a nice afternoon nap with your wife, and when evening comes, you can join your buddies for a drink, play the guitar, sing and dance throughout the night!”The fisherman was puzzled, “Isn’t that what I am doing now?”

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Continues on next page

As you can see from reading the short story and from what I have already mentioned, my idea/ story has a

very similar message and concept that drive the narrative. In the tale of ‘The fisherman and the business’ we

find the business trying to “open” the eyes of the fisherman by highlighting all of the money and success the

fisherman could have if he worked harder and spent less time with his family and friends. He mentions that

the fisherman should work hard now so that he can reap the rewards in his later life. At the very end of the

tale we find that the fisherman already has everything he wants and that it is to live a simple and happy life,

spending time with his family and friends. The last line in the story is “Isn’t that what I’m doing right now?”.

This line pushes the entire emotion and message of the story. Showing that we should be happy with what

we have and shouldn’t always be looking for the next big thing.

This message is very similar to what I want to convey within my animation. My message is that I want people

to follow their dreams and to make themselves happy, spend as much time as possible with their loved ones

and enjoy life. I want my audience to have a sense of motivation and to look on their own lives.

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Style Choices – Lines or not? Deciding whether or not to draw lines in my designs and concept art is a big decision for me and one that I

personally feel many people over look.

In the images (left and bottom right) I have drawn the same images twice but removed the lines in one. I feel this changes the entire idea and emotion behind the art. Lines can seem very constricting and can limit a drawing to its borders. As soon as you remove those lines the colours seem to wash together and the flow of the piece is a lot nicer.

For my animation I wanted there to be constant flow almost like water getting fasting and fasting, hence why I prefer the image without the lines. However for this particular animation I shall be using both ideas (with and without lines) because I want the lines to help the audience down a specific path but also for them to move gently along this path.

Drawings without lines rely a lot on other detail and shading to portray exactly what they want, similar to the images (below).

Drawing by Monika Zagrobelna

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Script W3

Before starting any storyboards or animatic I needed to sort out the narrative for my animation. I started by re-looking over “The fisherman and the business” short story and the lyrics for the song ‘Stay Alive’. After looking at both of these resources I jotted down the major points and created the major framework. Using ‘The basic film paradigm’ (bottom, left) as reference and help for structure, I was able to produce the major points for my project. ‘The basic film paradigm’ and the ‘Three act structure’ are both tools used in creating interesting narratives. Ever professional is aware of these tools and uses them religiously when producing new and exciting projects.

When scripting out my narrative I used all of the tools and resources at my disposable (‘the basic film paradigm’, ‘three act structure’, my major points, the short story and the music) to create a rough script involving all of my characters. I was mainly focusing on just fleshing out my major points, refining my narrative and adding gradual detail, so that I could edit my work quickly and efficiently.

Deciding to outline the major points before creating the script definitelyhelped adding detail quickly and edit my work whenever I felt like a major aspect had to be changed.

Visual Research development,

assets and storyboarding

This was a busy week with me starting to finalise styles, colour palettes, locations and assets. I started designing and modelling some rough assets for my story that I knew would definitely be in the film no matter what changes I decide to make later on. I started modelling fishing boats to fit with my new story, a car and an office cubicle to start gathering up some locations and main assets.

Still not completely sure on how I wanted the story to flow I started sketching out the main plot points using the three act structure, adding obstacles, inciting incidents, plot twists and resolutions. I created what turned out to be a very basic storyboard of the timeline of the entire narrative. I kept it very basic so that I could change it very quickly if need be.

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Visual Research – Art Style“Another day at the office” (3D)

“Big Catch” (3D)

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“Anima” (3D)

“The Small Shoemaker” (3D)

“Wear the rose – Make them Giants” (2D/3D)

Forza 6 TV Commercial (3D)

In the previous two slides I have shown images of six animations that I have found to be appealing and insightful. Each animation has an aspect that I want to include within my film and it has helped me to shape and refine my art direction. The animations on the first slide (“Another day at the office”, “Anima” and “Big Catch”) all consist of styles and colour palettes that I wish to use within my own film. I really like the use of pale cool colours shown particularly in the images I have provided. I feel like they give off a neutral emotion that can help drive a narrative and build up to big conclusions and or resolutions at the end of any film.

I have chosen to use “Another day at the office” and “Big Catch” as my main two focuses for this project as they both consist of vital aspects that are included within my own film. In “Another day at the office” the main protagonist is an office worker who at the start of the video is bored working in an office cubicle, being pushed around by his boss and basically not loving life but by the end he is happy and his boss seems almost jealous of what his employee is doing. In the animation “Big Catch” we see a character fishing whilst a shark tries to sneak up and eat him. The colours used in this animation are very subtle and pale, which is exactly what colour palette I want to use for my music video. I also paid close attention to how the fishing was animated aspect was animated and how they went about setting up their shots to get the best composition.

In the second slide it shows more images but of three different animations (“Wear the Rose”, Forza 6 TV advert and “The SmallShoemaker”) , these are all animations that I am inspired by. They consist of an art style or combination of techniques that I find interesting and want to try and incorporate into my own animation.

The “Wear the Rose” rugby animation is made up of both 2D and 3D elements. The way in which they have create this animation makes it so appealing and eye-catching. They have made all of the environments and characters out of 3D and then put 2D textures on top to flatten them out and give off a style that shows both really well. From this I was inspired to try and create a few matte paintings for my locations, so that I could have that incorporation of 2D and 3D within my work.

The “Forza 6” TV Commercial has been heavily influential within my decision making. With its high quality finish and incredible level of detail it has given us the realistic yet cartoony and gaming feel that is required from a high quality game.

The “Small Shoemaker” is a cartoony animation, that has a simple and authentically pleasing design. I found great inspiration from this short because of its overall simplicity yet illusion of detail. From this animation I wanted to take the cartoony/ realistic look that it has and modify it so that I could fit within my own chosen style.

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Storyboard ResearchBefore creating my storyboards I wanted to do research into professional storyboarding and how the industry expects storyboards to look. I wanted to get an idea of the amount of work I had to do to get my work up to the standard they require.

The logo (left) is for the online site ‘Storyboards Inc.’ they are an online website that stores hundreds of different storyboards from lots of different artists from; Anthony Leonardi to Mark Bristol. They include storyboards from films like ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’, ‘Spiderman’ and ‘Rango’.

I used this website for lots of reference to help with all different aspects of storyboarding. It helped me mainly with the quality and standard of work. I wanted to make sure that what I produce as my final animatic was perfect and I could show it an industry as a piece of work I am proud of.

I thought if my storyboards were of a high standard then I wouldn’t have much to change when it came to putting it all together in ‘After Effects’ or ‘Premiere’ to create my animatics.

The image (bottom, right) is the banner for another website that I’ve used for storyboard referencing. The second website I used for research was ‘Ultimate Iron Giant’, the website consists of a lot of fan based merchandise and also storyboards fromthe film ‘Iron Giant’. The website provides a lot of reference and guides to creating good looking storyboards. The images (left) show two frames from the film ‘Iron Giant’ at different stages. The first one is keying out the movement of one character andas you can see this has been done in red to show animation. The second image is more detailed and has been done in final version, so that it will line up with how the final film will look.

1st Pass Storyboard W4Now that I had a full script and set of major points from the previous week, I was able to start roughly sketching out thumbnails for my music video. The first thing I wanted sketched out were my major points. For this task I didn’t focus on any composition I just wanted to play around with the ideas and visions I had in my had. I tried many different styles until I thought I better just stick to the basics for now and block out what I had written down.

Once I had something to refer back to I started thumb nailing out my first storyboard pass. For this I used a combination of my major points and script to know what to focus on and what to leave out for now. Storyboarding before starting an animatic is very useful and is always the first step in producing the final work. Story boarding gives you the ability to get your ideas down quickly and easily, it allows you to go back and edit any shot very quickly, saving you a lot of time.

The image in the bottom right is the ‘Three Act Structure’ is an essential tool that should be considered when creating any narrative. I used it to help with my story boarding as I found it be very useful when trying go at my work from a more cinematic perspective. I was able to split up my narrative into three main sections; Act One (Set Up) this is where I focused on setting the scene, giving the audience an understanding of what is happening and what they are expected to feel. As I am using music to drive my narrative I need to show the audience what genre of music it is within the initial shots, before the music even starts.

Act Two is where we find the first initial conflict between the protagonist and the “villain” of the story, in my case there is a conflict between David, the employee (Protagonist) and Stanley, the boss (Villain) as Stanley tells David to go and run some errands for him. This drives the story into full motion as we follow the journey of the protagonistand or hero, like the image shown below).

Act Three is the final act and it is where we find resolution to the initial crisis and we are either left with our questions answered or unanswered.

I used both tools the ‘Three Act Structure’ and ‘The Heroes' Journey’ as templates to create my storyboard and narrative around.

Retroactive Storyboarding

Retroactive storyboarding is where you take a film and draw out each of the shots for one scene. You then analysis how exactly they composed the shots and how they flow together. This helps to understand how professionals think about cinematography and composition, two very essential aspects to consider when creating an sort of film for any audience. It also shows to what level a normal storyboard should look like when working in the industry.

This exercise really opened my opens to how much of an impact each frame of an animation/ film should have, there should be no wasted frames. Each shot should have a specific purpose, this is something I seem to over look when in the process of pre-production.

For this exercise I chose “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” and “The Emperors New Groove” as two films that I would pull apart and analyse.

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“The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” W4

The first film that I chose to look at was “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty”. I chose to study this film because the song in which I’m creating my music video around was originally created for this film. The scene I focused more specifically on was an exaggerated fight scene in an elevator between Walter Mitty (Ben Stiller, Protagonist) and Ted Hendricks (Adam Scott, Villain). The scene starts off with very slow shots cutting to similar positioning's and compositions to show the steady pace of the scene. As the scene progresses we see the pace increase through the use of quick cuts, showing different camera angels of compositions to show dominance of characters and feeling of atmosphere.

The overall feeling of this scene is shown through the final editing of the shots, how they have been put together and the timing in which each shot is revealed. It has helped me a lot with my own storyboarding as I can see how the director (Ben Stiller) has thought about each shot, the editing, composition, timing and feeling. As my music video is almost an addition to the film I wanted there to be some continuity within both. I wanted people to look at my music video and get a sense of the film, so that there is a connection between the two.

“The Emperors New Groove”

The second film that I chose to look at was “The Emperors New Groove”. I chose this film because it was almost opposite of the first film I looked at (“The Secret Life of Walter Mitty). I wanted there to be a contrast so that I could use the first one as close reference to my own particular work and then the second film to help my understanding of cinematic composition and techniques. I wanted to see if I could make my film seem more cinematic and flow better when it came to doing my second storyboarding (adding detail and refining).

The scene from the film that I chose to analyse was when Kuzco (Protagonist, Lama) was being backed up against a cliff by jaguars and Pacha (Sidekick, Human) comes into save him but in turns gets them both into more trouble. This was a very interesting scene because it was fast paced throughout, with there being a lot of action cutting away to show location and atmosphere. The most interesting thing about this scene was the use of composition and camera angels. This scene in particular is almost a back and forth action reaction. We see the initial action from the jaguars which leads us to be shown a close-up of Kuzco so that we can see his reaction. This technique is repeated several times throughout the scene and throughout the entire film.

The use of long shots are to show location and background design giving the viewer a better understanding of perspective and where everything is in respects to each other. It is a very useful way of showing a lot of movement in few frames. As the film is an animation the dynamics are different to how they were in “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” but because of the way the shots are laid out and how they are put together makes it flow very naturally and makes for a very appealing and satisfying watch.

I want to impact that feeling into my own film, because my project is an animation it doesn't mean that it loses that realistic or emotion that you get from live action. I want my music video to have as big an impact as live action films such as the one I have already analysed.

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Character Design and Storyboard

refinement This week I tried to start the design process for my characters. Using my recently updated visual research I was able to get a better

understanding immediately on how I wanted all of my characters to look. I looked at a lot of references for character structure, model sheets and the images I collaborated together in my visual research. I decided to use the US Office character 'Jim Halpert' as a base character reference to help with the characters personality and putting that through in my designs. I also chose Mr Huph, Mr Incredibles boss from 'The Incredibles'. Both characters were good references and seemed to contrast each other very well.

This week also consisted off storyboard refinement. This meant that I was working on thumbnail shots of my entire story. Doing thumbnail shots are better for storyboarding as they are easier to change if necessary. I mainly worked on adding all of the shots and getting a better flowing story. Editing my script and major structure as I was going along. This is proving to be the most difficult aspect of the pre-production so far as I am struggling with getting each of the shots accurate in terms of perspective and cinematography.

Whilst continuing with story refinement and storyboarding I realised that the song came in too late in the story for it to be a good music video. So I've decided to change the order of the story a little. I will now start with David (main character) already in the car and the first thing he does is turn on the radio, this way the song starts right at the beginning. Once the song starts there will be a few establishing shots and then it will transition into a flashback where we will see the boss over working David and then going to get him to wash his car. Once that has been established it will cut back to real time and David driving past all of the fishing billboards and stores.

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Character Research - ‘The Blog of InkyDeals’

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For my character research I looked at a called ‘The Blog of InkyDeals’ which gave me information on the basic principles to great character design.

‘The Blog of InkyDeals’ was very detailed gave me a better understanding for how to produce good character designs and what I had to think about before, during and after. The main two areas that I focused on were “What is character design?” and the three basic principles of character design.

Character design creates lovable or memorable characters. This is a statement made by ‘the blog of inky deals’ telling us how iconic characters are and how vital the design of any character can be. Characters are wild, unpredictable and unrealistic, we quickly grow very attached to carton characters and most of the time form a bond that never truly disappears.

Wikipedia's definition of commercial character design is “is the process of creating a character and utilizing it to enhance or publicize a commercial entity through design”. Using characters for branding and or commercial value is better as people can quickly gain an emotional relationship with the character that will make your brand or film stick in the minds and hearts of viewers.

The image (bottom, right) shows three iconic characters all with very different designs but all immediately recognisable and lovable.These characters are Mickey Mouse (left), Dexter from Dexter's Laboratory (middle) and Cow from Cow and Chicken (left). Regardlessof how old a character is if the design is iconic then it will stay around for years and years to come.

The basic principles for character design are broken down into three main areas; function, style/ aesthetic and personality.

Function is the first of three principles. There is a theory in design that form must follow function. A characterwith a logical, clearly understandable form is more easily perceived and understood by the human brain. Using basic shapes such as circles and ovals for wireframes work best as they are versatile and visually straightforward.Simplicity is key to be able to draw characters at different angles quickly and easily. The image (top, right) shows the main characters from the popular animated film ‘Aladdin’ broken down into their basic and simple forms.

This is a very helpful principle to consider before starting out with character design as it gives you the stepping stones in which to develop your skills and designs. For me it really helped me to draw characters at different angels i.e. three quarters when doing character turnarounds and model sheets.

Style/ aesthetic is the second principle. The style and general aesthetics can make or break a character. Starting from basic shapes we can develop this to blend them together in a visually stimulating way. Contrastof shape, form and or proportion is a great way to balance shapes and make a character looking ethically pleasing. For example the image (middle, right) shows designs of the Wile E. Coyote each of his features havebeen designed together in a very specific way so that it is aesthetically the best it can look.

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Personality is made up of many different aspects but a large part of it comes from the characters physical traits and features. Depending on how you want your character to look like you can choose to exaggerate certain features. Remembering personality when creating character design is so important and remembering that personality best comes across by the design of the features.

All three of these principles are incredibly useful when beginning character designs especially if your not very confident. It helps start you out and gives you the basics on what to do and what not to do. I will concentrate on these things and make sure that they come across in my designs throughout this project.

Basic Character Designs After looking at my research I started designing and sketching out very basic shapes

and silhouettes. The images (top, right) show my very first sketches after my research. As you can see there are four very basic body shapes that are made up of basic squares, circles, pears and triangles. This was a test to see what the shapes would look like and what type of silhouette they would give off. The first shows a very typical male, straight body to give off a feeling of someone being an average Joe. The second body shape gives a more muscular feel with the bigger top, the character seems heavy and would struggle to move around. The third body shapes gives off the feeling that the character is fat/ has a huge stomach. It can give the character a comedic effect, just by having that larger bottom silhouette it gives an idea of how the character would move and act in certain situations.

The image (bottom, right) gives a more varied selection of body types of silhouettes. It shows the distinction betweenfemale and male body types. The three on the left of the image are female body types as you can tell from the curves and the inward waists. The four designs on the left of the image are male body types, you can tell this because of the larger stature and the broader shoulders.

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Jim Halpert – The US

Office

Google images –

Stereotypical

office worker

Nick Hendricks – Horrible

Bosses

Name – David Henry

Age – 36

Hair colour - Brown

Height – 5ft 11 inches

Nationality – American

Race – Caucasian

Occupation – Employee at office company

Likes – Fishing

Dislikes – Being pushed around, not following dreams, working at the office 9-5

Dress Sense – White shirt, black trousers, black shoes and dark blue tie

Wife – No

Kids – No

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initial sketches for my David character (Protagonist). For these designs I just took my character profile and just started getting creative. I didn’t want to think about anything other than getting many ideas together.

Each design is completely different from the other. I wanted a huge variation in art style and technique and this is what I produced.

Once I had enough initial designs I wanted to critique each drawing to see if there were any bits that I could take from each design and bring forward into my final designs.

The positive comments are in green and the negative are in dark red.

Mr Huph – The Incredibles

Google images - Boss

Skinner - Ratatouille

Dave Harken –Horrible Bosses

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Age – 26

Hair colour - Black

Height – 4ft 10 inches

Nationality – American

Race – Caucasian

Occupation – Manager of office company

Likes – Money, Power

Dislikes – Everything

Dress Sense – Dark blue suit

Wife – Yes

Kids – Yes (1, daughter)

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initial sketches but for my secondary character Stanley (villain). This character is incredibly important as he helps drive the initial setting and motivation for the entire narrative.

The images that I gathered as reference/ research for this character really helped to show me ways in which I can portray emotion not necessarily through speech or facial expressions, it can be through actions or hand positioning's.

I also used my character profile sheet to create the five designs (left). These designs were my initial thoughts and ideas of how I would emulate the feelings and emotions that the character has towards the protagonist.

I felt like these designs were very useful as I was able to pick the best bits from each drawing to create a finalised design for the character.

Google Images – Fisherman

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character sketches and ideas. For this page I have designed five of my ideas for my final character which is the ‘Fisherman’.

As you can see all of the designs are completely different in both style and design choice. Each design has focused on a different attribute of a stereotypical fisherman. I have analysed each drawing with positive and negative comments so that I could deliberate easily what I could take from each design into my final design for the character.

The two drawings in the top left and my favourite and are the basis for my final design. I really like these designs as they are simple, appealing yet effective. I have combined them with the facial detail of the bottom right design.

2nd Pass Storyboard

The second pass version of my storyboard is where I started thumb nailing out the full narrative

for my music video. I took the major points from my first pass storyboard, refined the drawings

and adding the rest of the major shots, so that I had my first full run through of my film. Like the

first pass I didn’t want to add too much detail into each shot so that I could edit the frames

very easily as I knew that this pass wouldn’t be my final version.

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Asset Design, Model Sheets and

final storyboard refinement

For this week I started designing all of the major assets that would feature within my music video. The first design that I focused on was the design of the bosses car. To do this I looked at my initial visual development to see which car designs I had already chosen to use. I found out that an Audi R8 was chosen because of two reasons; firstly it was appealing and showed a lot of wealth and also it would be expensive enough to trade for a boat in the final scenes of the video.

I also wanted to finish the final version/ pass of my storyboard so that I could take each of my thumb nails, transfer them over to ‘Flash’ and turn it into my first pass animatic. The final storyboard had to consists of my final narrative and the necessary detail so that the viewer could understand exactly what was going on.

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Artist Inspiration W6

‘Sylvie Minois’ is an artist that worked on the short animated series “Tooned”. She created concept art and model sheets for characters and assets. I focused all of my artist research on her as she has a very professional and appealing way of structuring and laying out her model sheets. The images on this page are taken from her website and they show some of the work that she produced for “Tooned”.

As you see all of the work is consistent and flows nicely. Her work is very clear and any good modeller or 3D artist could take these sheets and model anything that is displayed on them.

I took a lot from looking at her work. I was able to layout my work better and create a consistent style that is specific to me and my work. The images on the far right show examples of some of the model sheets that she has created, these were the most useful as I am a 3D modeller so I was able to look at these see how easily I could model the assets and translate that into my designs. I feel without the use of colour the artists or modellers that would look at this work are able to focus more on the construction and detail that is to be put into all of these assets instead of being distracted by the colour, that will come later on when all of the assets have been created and finalised.

Google Images – Audi R8 (above, left)

Bosses and their cars (above, below)

Google Images – Audi TTAudi Car Keys

Google Images – Flashy speed boat

Arma 2 – Boat Model

Google Images – Simple boats

Google Images – Old Fishing Boat

Final Pass Storyboard

My final storyboard is where I added the rest of my detail, my transitions between scenes and all the shots that I would be using for my animatic. I created each storyboard in Photoshop so that I could edit them quickly and also transfer them over the flash easily.

The entire storyboarding process was relatively straightforward and easy as I had a lot of reference material to work from be it my own work or work of professionals that I found online and used as stepping stones or as a guide to help put me on the right path. Once I had the first storyboard down it was just the process of editing and refining each of the shots, adding more shots to help explain narrative and taking away shots that didn’t have a purpose or that didn’t aid to the narrative.

Using the retroactive storyboarding exercise really helped to show me the importance of each shot and how I should be very selective of what shots and compositions I use even before I start my animatics.

I hope to start my first animatic next week, it shouldn’t take long it will just be working out the timings with the music that I have edited.

W6

First Pass Animatic

I started work on my animatic this week. Taking all of my storyboard thumbnails and taking them over to flash to work out timings and refine the story to see which shots needed taking out and if I needed to add more shots. I initially imported the sound into flash and started adding the images to work out the animation beats. I decided to use flash instead of Photoshop because Flash allows me to edit work quickly along with the sound.

As the song is 4 and a half minutes long I decided to try and edit the music myself in Audacity. I have a good understanding of how music is created and put together so I thought I would be able to manage this task. However I forgot to realise that I needed to cut the song down to 1 and a half minutes meaning I had to get rid of 3 minutes. This proved very difficult but I came up with an idea to use fades to create tension and dramatic effect. This seemed to work as a basis for my initial animatic.

W7

Second Pass Animatic

This week again I was working on my animatic but this was my second pass so I took my initial animatic and tried adding shading, detail and refining the shots, so that each shot was useful and made the audience feel something.

This idea of making each shot useful and give the audience something to feel stems from week four when I did my retroactive storyboarding, because my first pass consisted of only the thumbnails from my final storyboard I didn’t want to edit anything or add any detail. I just wanted my first full run through of my narrative. Whereas my second pass needed a lot doing to it to bring it up to the standard that I wanted. I had to start considering perspective, changing my shots so that they were more pleasing to look at, were more dynamic and had a better feeling of cinematography.

I decided to focus on shot framing and working more with the music so that when I had major cuts they cut within the beats of the sound. To do this I laid out the beats onto two separate layers on flash and then worked each frame/ shot to those indications, this helped with the animation beats and combining the two beats together so that the entire film flowed better and had a nicer rhythm.

W8

Location Designs

For this week I decided to focus on locations, settings and designs so that I could get a even

better understanding of how everything was going to look and how my characters would

react and interact with the environments. Instead of creating the designs for each of my

environments I decided that it would be more beneficial and better time management to just

do research around the locations that I want to use within my music video.

The following view slides show research for four of my main settings that my characters will

interact with throughout the music video. The main four locations I am using are; inside an

office cubicle, outside the office building, city landscape and fishing docks.

I decided to focus on these because my characters are mainly based within the city and as

the main protagonist goes on his journey however he does see a lot he doesn’t interact with any of it, until near the end of the film when he gets to the fishing village and ends up at the

fishing docks

W9

Office Location -

Inside W4

“Another day at the office” (3D)

Office cubicle reference Office cubicle reference

“Gas in the office” (3D)

Office Location -

Outside W4

“Another day at the office” (3D)

Board of trade - Chicago

Building

models

(above)

Empire state building (left) & Life Insurance building (right) – New York

Mandarin Oriental – Tokyo, Japan

Cityscapes of New York

Cityscape of Sydney

Cityscape of Chicago, Illinois

Cityscape of Frankfurt

W9

This is another page of

designs and ideas for the

cityscape location within

my music video.

As you can see they are

all just very generalised

cityscapes so that the

audience don’t relate

too much to a specific

location in the real world.

I wanted the location to

be quite general and for

the audience to just

enjoy the scenery

without thinking too

much about it.

I really like the very basic

cityscape design that I

have produced (middle,

right). I prefer this to the

other designs because

the simplicity of it is more

appealing and it looks a

lot clean to the other

ideas. It really fits within

my idea of it being

generalised.

Fishing dock model Fishing boat docks

Fishing boat docks

Fishing pier

Fishing dockFishing dock house

Final Animatic

For my final animatic I had to change a lot and add a lot more detail to get it up to industry standard. From going back to all my initial research on animatics and storyboards I found that most of them used a grey background colour so that when it came to lighting it would be easier to show. This was then the first thing that I changed and this made it considerably easier to create specific lighting and highlight certain objects that I wanted the viewer to focus on i.e. in the initial scenes we see David (protagonist) sitting as he desk in the office cubicle and to show the amount of work that he is being swamped with I made the paper white so that it would be highlighted when it came into shot.

Another thing that I changed was which software I was using. I originally was using ‘flash animation’ but I found it more difficult to make it flow with the music and there was one feature of ‘flash’ that made everything a lot more difficult. When I wanted to playback and view the animation with the sound I always had to play it from the beginning even if I just wanted to view a small section, flash wouldn’t understand and wouldn’t play the music just the frames, because of this reason I deicide to export all of my images and create my final animation in ‘Premiere Pro’. Using ‘Premiere’ made it considerably easier to edit the music with the images and create effects such as fades for both the visually and audio aspects.

W10

Sound W11

The sound and or music of my animation is one of the most important aspects of my entire project if not the most important aspect as it is the structure and narrative for the music video.

I have had a lot of trouble with the song through-out this entire pre-production 12 weeks, this is because of a number of things, mainly because the song I am using is four a half minutes long and the narrative that I have created with my animatic is less than one and a half minutes, meaning I have had to edit the song a lot of times to create a piece of music that fits with the animation beat that I have created.

To edit the song I have used audacity as it is an easy piece of software to use and it can edit audio very well. I changed my mind on the audio several times throughout this process and still now haven’t got a fully finished product. I know what I want from the audio but because what I want is a lot more complex the software I’ve been using cannot create what I want.

For the song I want it to start off as an instrumental so that the audience can focus on the animation yet still enjoy the music in the background. Once the character has hit the major plot twist in the music video the actually lyrics come into the film and the music and animation both drive the film together. I want there to be a very clear point in which the audience know that the feeling and emotion behind the story and the character have changed.

Music and sound are such huge aspects of all animation that it is very important to chose the right piece so that it aids to the film instead of throwing the audience/ viewer out of the rhythm that has already been established up until that point.

I’m glad I have decided to use instrumental as well as the actual song itself so that the audience have time to focus on both things separately and then together towards the end.

Final Look

Coming into the final week of pre-production I had to make sure that I had covered all

aspects. I went through all my work and compared it to professional work that I could find

online to see if there was anything that I could improve. I found out that the one thing that I

need to focus on before starting production is finding a perfect style that will fit within my

chosen genre and fit with the music that my narrative is based around.

Throughout this pre-production I had the thought of doing a cartoony/ realistic animation,

aiming more towards the realistic side, but after looking at a lot of work online and talking to

lecturers and professionals I was made aware that creating realism within animation is

incredibly difficult as the closer to realism you try to get the more people will critique your work

as they will pick up on anything that is slightly wrong or out of place. So because of that reason

I deicide to change my style to become more stylised heading more down the route of cartoony so that it is still appealing and still relating to the real world.

W12

W12Final Further Research

Looking at animations such as ‘The Reward’,

‘Pigeons’ and ‘Brain Divided’ gave me a better

understanding of what style I wanted my animation to

look like. All of these animations have a style that

combines cartoon and

realism to create a really

stylised aesthetic. This Would be a lot better for my animation

to use these as reference guides as it

would make my music more appealing, easier on the eyes and it would more

importantly stop people from looking

for mistakes in terms of realism and

making everything exactly how it looks

in the real world.