ANI-105 -Animation and Sound Submission

ANI-105 -Animation and Sound

This is my final piece and I will try to upload the full group animation to this blog.

Group Work

We got into our groups and decided on the music. We all had the music and arranged to meet later to think about the music and how we felt about it. Basically we decided it was Japanese and journey-like. Therefore we decide to do a journey through life, divided into sections. We chose a domino as it was a simple character and easy to model and animate. The number of dots changed as the domino got older (more spots with age). We were all given a season to add to the feeling of time passing. We decided on a rough story arc. We could then develop our own brief storyline.

Working in a group has advantages and disadvantages. It is good to get ideas and enthusiasm from other people and develop ideas that you may well not have considered on your own. As a group we are creating a longer piece and it will be interesting to see the final product with different peoples versions of a theme that we have all developed.  When working in a group there is more compromises but it is more how professionals would work. 

These are the members of my group in order of their place in the animation

1. Nathan
2. Josh
3. Rob (me)
4. David
5. Jeremy
6. Kamil
7. Juwad
8. Ahmed
9. Elise

1

  How I made my Music Video

Software learning experience

For this project I used four pieces of software. First of all I created a short animatic for this I used 3Ds Max. It was the first time I had made an animatic in 3Dsa Max. I found it OK and was originally going to make my whole animation in 3Ds Max but realised at this point it would take too much time.

I decided to create my music animation in Adobe After-effects. I have used After Effects before but not for animation. I thought this would be suitable software as I was trying to achieve a cut-out effect.

I had to prepare all my set pieces in Photoshop. With some of my group members we decided the best way to do the cut out pieces would be to find pictures and use the filters on Photoshop. This would save time rather than draw them by hand and produce a similar effect much more easily.

This is a photo I used the cut out filter on Photoshop, this is the actual mountain I used in my animation.

 Now that I had all my bits ready for animating in After Effects. I imported all the sourced files and put it together. To create my animation I used the 3D option. From my images I created what looked like a set with a mountain in the background and clouds at different distances to produce a 3D effect. To create my balloon I made a pre-comp which I did all my animation onto.

I had a go at using the lights and cameras in After Effects, for example I changed the depth of field.

For my animation I put some sound effects in. The programme I used to edit the audio was called Premier Pro. I found that it was very good for this and to edit the audio was really good quick and easy.

I have learnt quite a lot from this mainly on the use of After Effects as I have never used it for animation or tried the 3D option and I have developed my skills in Photoshop.

Sketches and Storyboards previous  balloon

Here are some sketches and storyboards to help me visualise my project.

Sketches and Storyboards

In my animation I want it to go from day to night so this is an idea of the colour tones. Starting with the yellow tones and ending with the blue.

Here are some ideas of the balloon shape and texture. I was experimenting with textures in fabrics as can be seen in my previos post with the photographs of fabrics.

Above are some sketches and ideas for trees, these are inspired by Little Big Planet. There is image of a Little Big Planet Tree on a previous post.

These are a few different story boards and ideas. This top storyboard is a more final version, the ones below are rough and developmental work.

 

Here are a few domino designs. In the end as a group we decided to have a classic simlpe donimo design. another important thing we discussed in our group was if the domino should be black with white dots or the other way round.

Timing/ Beats per minute 

I used a programme to work out the beats per minute. We calculated  how many beats per frame were needed. As this had to be rounded, adjustments needed to be made at every 100 frames. The calculations suggested that an extra 7 frames were needed every 100.

To get a feel of the rhythm of the music I also created a square that changed size to the beat.

One Man Band, Pixar Short

I am having a look at one of Pixar's short films and looking at the animation in relation to the sound. I have chosen this piece because it is all about the music and I am interested to see how the music drives the piece.

In this piece there are two one man bands they are defined by different kinds of instruments and the sounds that they make. There is no dialogue in this piece all the story is told through the music and characterization.  As the two men try to get the attention of the little girl the tempo of the music changes. There are background sounds and the use of silence near the end of the short is very effective after the momentum created by the music.

The music was made as the animation was storyboarded so that the composers had a much greater input into the animation and characterisation.

History of Sound & Animation

Sound was not introduced into films until 1923.

The Fleischers started the Song Car-Tune in 1924 where a ball bounced along the words to be sung. This really was more like today's karaoke.

 'My Old Kentucky Home' released in 1926 was the first short animation to attempt at animated dialogue as a dog mouths some words.

Steamboat Willie (1928) by Disney was the first successful  synchronized sound and music cartoon featuring Mickey Mouse.

 In Disney's  first sound synchronised animation the scenes were timed to a tempo, animated and filmed. The sound was recorded after and then matched with the film. ( From Animation Art Editor Jerry Beek'.

In 1929 The Skeleton Dance was produced using a different technique. The sound was produced before the animation. In the Silly Symphonies the  classical music rhythms  were very  important in determining the movement of the characters and were more important than the story line.

By the early 1930's the Fleisher  Brothers introduced the character Betty Boop in animations that used  both music and dialogue.

In 1940 Disney produced Fantasia. This was a bold and very different type of sound with animation. There are brief live-action interludes, but the majority of the film is animated segments. These animations are unusual; as they have no sound effects or dialogue but are based entirely on animation to the classical music pieces.

I continued my research for this unit. I like the style of Little Big Planet.  I think that being a game the concept of having movement of the character between a foreground and a background a good idea that might make the animation of the music video easier. I like the way the background is blurred to give the appearance of distance.
 

 

In Little Big Planet when you single player the character remains in the centre of the screen. We are probably going to make our character stay roughly in the centre of the screen with the background moving.

I like the Little Big Planet style/ textures like of fabric to show grass and rocks. I might include something like this in my animation. I took some photographs of fabrics and have included two examples in my blog.

Here is an example of a storyboard from Iron Man.

For this project as well as a story board I want to include an animatic. I have done some research into this made have filmed some of the Star Wars 'The Phantom Menace' to show the relationship between the storyboard, animatic and scene in the final product.

Because it is a journey I decided that my character is going to in balloon, I like the style of an airship so this is probably the type of air balloon that I will choose.

Music Video

Introduction

For this Unit we are learning about animation and sound. We have been given a brief to produce a music video that we can do independently or in a group. In this unit we had a free range of the music, programme we used, colour use etc. 

 I had some ideas about music that I would like to use as it has an interesting beat. However I was working in a group and we made a joint decision on the music.

We met as a group and listened to the music we had chosen. We all agreed that the music sounded like a journey. Our storyline was based on character going through the journey of his life. We decided to take 20 second segments of this journey for each member of the group.

We decided to keep the animation simple and decided on a domino as it is a simple shape as this was a journey we decided to add different seasons of the year to the journey. To signify the domino getting older, as it journeys through life the number of 'spots' it has will be increased.

My part of the group work was the third section which took place in autumn. I therefore researched the autumn colour pallet and shapes of leaves.