A quickie tester for an upcoming project
superbasic
Lost In Space
What really happened to Russia’s missing cosmonauts? An incredible tale of space hacking, espionage and death in the lonely reaches of space.
all-Scientists_Dribbble
all-Scientists_5
I have just learned at 1st hand why it’s important to keep your characters quite simple
(i.e. don’t use too many strokes!)
still. WVB is now done and ready for IK
This comedy song succinctly sums up the ‘morally ambiguous’ section of my (still not completed) film
It’s also very witty
MA Assessment - transparency
THE EAGLE HAS LANDED - CLARIFICATION REGARDING THIS PROJECT
When assessing this project, you might come across acronyms of the name of the project. It is not practical to use the fill title when working with digital files, so you might see these as abbreviations:
- EHL
- Eagle
- Moon
These should be self-explanatory. EHL is an acronym of “Eagle has landed”. “Moon” is what I called the project prior to writing the script, at the research and earlier development stage.
TRANSPARENCY
Most of the work on this project is mine, however there are collaborations, and these are credited in my paperwork and in my blog. The most notable collaborator is Martyn Eker, who drew out the line drawings of the characters.
Character Design
It is clear, from my earlier storyboard and animatic that I had worked the whole concept out, and knew who all the characters were supposed to be by myself. I did spend a considerable amount of time attempting to draw the characters myself, but did not have the skill to be able to do this consistently, with turnarounds for all the characters (who would later require animating).
I worked with Martyn of a period of 4 months, and managed his workload. His briefs were given over emails, through web-based collaborative task-management software, over Skype, and telephone. For each character I supplied a detailed brief, reference images, back story and direction. I then spent a lot of time in feedback sessions helping to get the look I was after, which was based on a 1950s or early 1960 animation style (which ties into the period covered in the narrative). There were some rejected concepts, and there was trial and error.
Many of the original Drawings are in my paper file (see characters). They arrive as line drawings, which I render as digital characters which can be set up, or ‘rigged’. This process is very time-consuming. Each character is rendered in all poses, with additional replacement animation parts (blinks, hand-shapes, different mouths etc). They all need to be broken apart into ‘puppet’ like forms, so they animation can work properly.
I feel strongly that although I needed some help with design (Martyn has done a great job), there is still a vast amount of work that needs to happen beyond sketches to turn these characters into the fully rendered colour characters you see in my animatic (and the full film, when it is completed)
Sound / Narration / VO
I made an original recording on which the later, high quality voice over is based. If the two VO versions are compared, you will find that they are basically the same. The words and timing is the same. The only difference is that my version was recorded on a mobile phone in an echoey room, and the proper one was recorded properly by people who’s voices sound great.
I have written separately about the narration process
I felt I had written a strong brief, so was confident that I could audition for talent via the Internet. All the requirements, references, script, storyboards and original VO were placed in a blog post. I received a dozen submissions. Three or four were good. One was great, and was also already recorded properly and could be used (I pulled in a favour, who is a sound recordist in film and TV). All I needed from this stage were some believable American voices for the end section. All of the British people I asked couldn’t really do American accents well. I then did a further search through Facebook, and got some real americans to record themselves and send it over email.
I used to own a recording studio, but closed this around the same time I began studying at University. It is a fact that digital technology has made everything cheaper and easier. Things that used to get made in large expensive facilities (such as production houses and recording studies) can now arguably be made on a laptop. The problem here is that with things like with audio production, a good room with good monitoring (speakers) is still a requirement if you want to be able to get a good mix-down.
The voiceover for my project was compiled on my laptop in Logic Studio as a multitrack recording. This meant all the right bits were arranged in the correct timings so it flowed like it should. I then took this to my former production partners studio where wee mixed it together. He was always the engineer, so has the technical know how and the ‘ears’ for fine details, so by working with him, the audio has that extra shine.
This audio was then available to me, still in separate tracks of audio (foley, astronaut 1, astronaut 2, Houston, main VO etc), so these can still be manipulated and edited further whilst in production.
Where I want to go / Post M.A.
In summary (bullets):
- Aim for work as a commercials director
- Would like to work for a production company
- work my way up
- will freelance to earn money if full time role not immediately available
The skills I have gained over the past 5 years whilst I have been in education (in addition to the 15 years I previously spent producing music), will be combined with my focused study of narratives in my the second part of my M.A.
I would like to use these skills to direct commercials, information films, guides and visual essays.
I believe that the skill-set for creating these type of works are analogous. Storytelling techniques and clarity of communication in both short films and commercials can deliver information rapidly and succinctly, and is well suited to the technological era.
Recent figures show that despite the huge uptake in Internet use (especially via mobile devices), television has not suffered. The bigger TV shows fully embrace social media (for example, in news media, social events, reality television). The combination of both these markets is massive.
In a world where there are vast choices of TV channels and Internet outlets (Twitter, Facebook, YouTube etc), there is a great need for quality content. The customer has never had so many choices, and they want great quality, which includes commercials.
This same theory also applies to the Internet. Life is finite. No one wants to see poor quality content, they want to be informed, entertained and excited. This requires strong creative ideas, good scriptwriting, strong design, inventiveness and good execution.
This is what I plan to do. Create great content, for the masses. This will happen via television and the Internet. I don’t think that this will happen immediately.
Malcolm Gladwell famously says that it takes 10,000 hours to become a master of anything. That’s 5 years, with 4 weeks off per year. The second part of my M.A. was 400 hours, and the greater part of things I undertook were new to me.
The creation of good motion graphics requires strong graphic design, illustration, animation and creative/writing skills, plus it helps to be good with audio.
n.b. I made music prior to returning to education. This is useful. I then did a graphic design undergraduate degree, which its obviously useful in motion graphics. I DID NOT study animation. This means that I have and continue to be self-taught. Animation takes up a lot of my time; there is simply a huge amount to learn. This is where the bulk of my time went in part 2 of my MA. Trail and error, testing, searching, failing.
I see myself spending some time, three or 4 years learning in the field. Learning by doing. This would ideally involve gaining full-time employment at a production company. If this is not immediately available, I will undertake any freelance work I can get (as a graphic designer, writer, motion designer etc) and work on personal projects to get further to this objective and build a stronger portfolio.
An assassinated president
More insights into JFK, the cuban missile crisis etc
Shot 6. WIP. Animatic
progress
Got some more characters in
It currently takes me about 7 + hours to get these all digitised and rendered off like this (for turnarounds)
so for the rest of the animatic, I will be using cut out sketches. No time left!
It was very difficult to plan my cold war video game scene. I tried multiple ways to move this forward. One way was to draw everything on 24 pieces of A3 paper and tape them all together.
The Sputnik Scene
The cold war game scene in the video shows a variety of significant events that happened in the cold war, the arms race and space race, and ties them all together into a fluid 18 second sequence (based on a video game).
One of these scenes will (for 1 and a half seconds) - show Sputnik in orbit around the earth.
This is a rendering of the earth, a test. In the scene, there will be a quick cut to a simplified animation of Sputnik in orbit.
n.b. It takes ages top create a scene like this, and in the film it only appears for a moment - just long enough for the eye to acknowledge it, then it moves onto Sputnik in Orbit.
Making It All Work 2
This video tracks the American character (Player) as he falls behind in the cold war race scenes.
In the final production, I will cut between the Russian and American cold war players. The purpose of these films is to build the environment, and get the motion in and functioning.
All the buildings (which are at the same z-plane as the characters), are linked to a null object which scrolls through the scene. This means that the buildings only exist on the timeline for the time they are visibly seen the the virtual camera.
This creates the illusion of a huge environment, which are players can run through. The characters mostly remain in place, unless they jump up a level or onto a platform. A virtual camera tracks their movements up and down levels, whilst the environment is scrubbed to create movement.
At this stage the characters are framed wide, but will need to be framed tighter in the final shots. This is easier to do once the action is all in place, and can be done by creating mutiple comps with differemnt virtual camera zooms and framing, then cutting between the action for a good cinematic effect.
The other advantage with this approach, is that once all the action is worked out, I will know exactly what needs to be designed, how long it will feature on screen, and will be able to judge how it looks based on the following criteria:
1. Is the action too fast?
2. Will it look ok at a smaller screen size (for example, on a web embed).
3. Can I get all the elements into the background that help tell the story
4. if not, work out a way to do this (by adding more time, creating space to get significant visual elements in)
5. What details can be cut - whilst pushing g the narrative elements to the fore?
and so on.
MY PHILOSOPHY ON WHAT I HAVE DONE ON THROUGHOUT PART 2 OF MY M.A.
It is essentially a process of doing, and trail and error - and I feel by doing this, I am intuitively learning how to do it. This is, ultimately, the only way to learn, Mistakes need to be made.
There are tutorials for many things on the Internet, and they are useful, but they only show how to copy a technique. There are no tutorials for projects like this. I also believe that there is far more to learn by doing. I always find you have to get things wrong many, many times before you can get them right.
I also find that to really learn something, you need to do it many times, repeat the process for it to sink in and become useful in future. The learning and doing has not been a rapid process here, but is the most important part of my MA. There isn’t much to show by getting things wrong, getting stuck, trying again, but it is vital for future success.
