Year Overview: Year 3 Blog Content

This post contains links to all my work and is divided into the two categories of my Course Work, Independent Practice and Creative Futures: Pro Practitioner.

A quick warning about this post all the links work but for some reason when no mouse hovers the actual post, the Creative Futures: Pro Practitioner section looks like there are no links and when it does all the links light up and so does the text, just click the links  and it should take you to the desired post. I apologise about this I have gone of the link software several times and I don’t know what is causing this.

Independent Practice:

My Independent Practice process started with me deciding what I would do as my main project. I draw up some brainstorms to help me come up with ideas for my project as well as what I could possibly do within these projects during the process of making them.

Brainstorm 1,

Brainstorm 2

Once all my ideas for this project were presented clearly on a piece of paper, I began to decided which project I wanted to pursue for my final major project as long as it stay within the brief that we were given at the beginning of the year. The project I had chosen for my final major project was Bubble and Squeak, I created these two characters last year, but I wasn’t really happy with the way they had come out last year, so I decided to redesign them and create a new episode of Bubble and Squeak. Since I started a new project had had to come up with some new objectives and aims for said project:

Bubble and Squeak Aims and Targets

I started to then come up with several potential narratives for the animation, these scenarios where simple ideas that popped into my head during this creation process to find a suitable story for Bubble and Squeak to follow in this new animation:

Narrative Idea Inspiration,

Narrative 1,

Narrative 2,

Narrative 3,

Narrative 4,

Narrative 5,

Bubble and Squeak Narrative Ideas Development 1,

Bubble and Squeak Narrative Ideas Development 2,

Bubble and Squeak Narrative Ideas Development 3,

Bubble and Squeak Narrative Ideas Final Ideas 1,

Bubble and Squeak Narrative Ideas Final Ideas 2,

Bubble and Squeak Narrative Synopsis,

Once I found a suitable narrative I began to redesign the characters Bubble and Squeak putting them into various scenarios to see what sort of reactions that they would get involved in and how they would deal and react to them. This includes of course Bubble’s sudden change of species after I began to realise that him been a fish severely stunted the animation and it’s narrative:

Squeak Redesign Ideas,

Squeak Idea’s 2,

Bubbles Character Rethink,

Bubble Species experiment,

Bubbles Character Rethink, Crab vs Snail,

Bubble Redesign 2

Bubble and Squeak Sketches,

Bubble and Squeak Sketches 2,

Bubble and Squeak Animal Motion study,

Bubble and Squeak Sketches 3,

Bubble and Squeak Sketches 4,

Once I chosen the species Bubble would become I began to write up potential story boards to help make the narrative of the story that I had chosen and developed a lot easier to understand. These storyboards went through several different versions of the same story as well as different ones.

Storyboard 1, Storyboard 2, Storyboard 3, Storyboard 4, Storyboard 5,

I began to do tests in Adobe Flash to see if it was suitable for this project, I eventually found out that this was bad idea as it seemed to drain the life out of the story, the characters and the animation.

Flash Test 1,

Flash Test 2,

Flash test 3

I began to experiment with the line reader to create a stopmotion animations with hand made puppets of Bubble and Squeak the first few steps of my project were a little rough as I was still new to stopmotion animation.

Stopmotion Test 1,

Stopmotion Test 2: Bubbles,

Stopmotion Test 3: Colour,

Stopmotion Test 4: Colour 2,

Stopmotion Test 5: Squeak Asleep,

Stopmotion Test 6: Squeak Asleep 2

Once I grew confident enough to use the line reader I decided to use it and stopmotion to produce my final major project since I have never really used any other means of animating other than Flash so it might be a nice road to go down this year:

Bubble and Squeak Early Takes

This was one of my early takes at creating Bubble and Squeak via the line reader and stopmotion animation after my experiments, so their was still a lot of room for improvement, my later work see down below shows that I started to improve both in my understanding of the technology and the animation style.

Bubble and Squeak Opening,

Bubble and Squeak Climbing Prototype,

Bubble and Squeak Climbing Prototype 2,

Bubble and Squeak 3D Background Experiment,

Once I started to get the hang of this new type of animation I also began to compose more complicated scenes with my puppets as well as putting together my older animation clips to see how well the animation came together with some sound effects.

Bubble and Squeak Narrative Experiment,

Squeak Close up Experiment 1,

Bubble Close up Experiment,

Squeak Close up Experiment 2,

Bubble Close up Experiment 2,

Bubble and Squeak Climb Sink Part 1,

Bubble and Squeak Climb Sink Part 2,

Bubble’s Tap Attempt 1,

Leaky Tap Animation,

Bubble’s Solo Climb and Attempt V2,

Bubble and Squeak High Five,

Soaked,

Squeak Solo Climb and Fail,

Look at the Tap,

Soaked V2,

Squeak complains to Bubble,

Once I had done most of my scene I began to realise that I needed to also create my credit and opening sequence so I began to design design the Title Card and Credits in order for me to record this last sequence.

Title and Credits Cards Design,

Opening and Credits Animations,

Eventually I posted up my combine all my clips and sound affects to produce my first final version of Bubble and Squeak:

Bubble and Squeak V1,

Although after watching the completed video I realised their was still corrections to be made.

Bubble and Squeak Final Blog,

Bubble and Squeak Final Youtube,

During the process of creating Bubble and Squeak I also researched several different animation technologies, visited sites of exhibits from Hull City of Culture and done several sketches to help improve my overall art skills. As well as Develop my image in the art industry with creating my own business cards.

Animation Technology Research 1,

Animation Technology Research 2,

Animation Technology Research 3,

Animation Technology Research 4,

Google Web Designer 1,

Google Web Designer 2,

Independent Practice: Adobe Photoshop Practice 1: Line Work Notes,

Logo Ideas 1,

Logo Ideas 2,

Logo Ideas 3,

Logo Ideas 4,

Business Card Idea 1,

Business Card Idea 2,

Independent Practice: Lines of Thought Workshop,

Hull City of Culture: Opening Exhibits 1,

Hull City of Culture: Opening Exhibits 2,

Hull City of Culture: Opening Exhibits 3,

Hull City of Culture: The Propeller,

Hull City of Culture: Poppies Waving and Weeping Window

Independent Practice: Drawing Practice,

Independent Practice: Drawing Practice 2,

Independent Practice: Random Sketches 1,

Independent Practice: Random Sketches 2,

Independent Practice: Random Sketches 3,

Independent Practice: Random Sketches 4,

Independent Practice: Random Sketches 5,

Independent Practice: Random Sketches 6,

Independent Practice: Random Sketches 7,

Independent Practice Human Anatomy Research and Practise,

Independent Practice: Human Anatomy,

Creative Futures: Pro Practitioner

My Creative Futures: Pro Practitioner project started with me trying to decide what I could do for a potential client project and who I could find as a client for said project or in another way a client who would provide me with a project for the third year course.

Client Project: Ideas,

Client Project: Women of the World or WOW!,

Now that I had decided what project I doing for a client of my choosing was, I was going to have to understand more about the women of Hull that were famous and I decided that 10 women would be a good number to help keep the length of the animation decent and interesting.

Women of the World or WOW! Women of Hull Research 1,

Women of the World or WOW! Women of Hull Research 2,

Women of the World or WOW! Women of Hull Research 3,

Women of the World or WOW! Women of Hull Research 4,

Women of the World or WOW! Women of Hull Research 5,

Once the women were chosen I began to draw up story boards of idea for potential narratives for this project. The ideas that I first created for these storyboard were only basic and I would later come back to design or develop new ones later on, some of the later on storyboards are after I started to do all animation redesigns for the women. These redesigns of these animations toke place after story board 3.

Women of the World or WOW! Women of Hull: Storyboard 1,

Women of the World or WOW! Women of Hull: Storyboard 2,

Women of the World or WOW! Storyboard 3,

Women of the World or WOW! Storyboard 4,

Women of the World or WOW! Storyboard 5,

WOW Storyboard 6,

The links below are my different ideas for the new animations, as well as some of the inspirations for them included:

Women of the World or WOW! Design Ideas 1,

Women of the World or WOW! Design Ideas 2,

Women of the World or WOW!: Phone Research,

Women of the World Maureen Lipman/Phone Sketches,

Hull City of Culture: Opening Exhibits 2,

From here I began to animate my project:

WOW Animation V1,

Women of the World or WOW! Animation Prototype 5,

Women of the World or WOW! Animation Prototype 11,

Women of the World or WOW! Animation Prototype 17,

Women of the World or WOW! Animation Prototype 24,

Women of the World or WOW! Animation Prototype 30,

Women of the World or WOW! Animation Prototype 35,

Women of the World or WOW! Animation Prototype 41,

WOW Animation Changes,

WOW Animation Changes 2,

Once my main animation was finished I began to look for a potential client who would be willing to show my work to the public:

WOW potential clients for my project,

WOW potential clients for my project: Maritime Museum,

WOW potential clients for my project: Kadromah94,

WOW potential clients for my project: Kadromah94 part 2,

Independent Practice – Final Major Project: Bubble and Squeak: Bubble and Squeak Close up 3

This next post was another attempt at close up with Bubble, this time with a lot more time looking at the object of interest off screen:

Not much difference between this and the original scene only that it is longer and that it has Bubble opening his mouth more, this is again done to build up suspense and make the target audience wonder what is going through this snails head.

Independent Practice – Final Major Project: Bubble and Squeak: Bubble and Squeak Close up 2

This next post is the corrected version of the Close up experiment for Squeak:

What this means is that I have found a way to make Squeak look more life like than the previous attempt. I have again included eye motions such as blinking and closing his eyes when he is thinking. This way done not only to lengthen this scene but to also add a bit more depth and character development to Squeak in the process, what I mean is that this single scene helps show that out of the pair Bubble and Squeak, Squeak is the thinker out of the two and is the ones that come up with the plans and ideas that the two often end up using. Another added to the features to help bring Squeaks to life is his whiskers, which while on most of my puppets of him do have them, they are made as part of the puppets and are not movable. Which is what helped make this puppet a lot more realistic than before due to the fact that the whiskers were made out of string and stuck to the head piece of Squeak allowing me to manipulate them and move them any way I desired. This not only allowed me to add more movement to my animation but it also allowed me to utilize the mouse videos I found earlier on in the academic year to make the movement of the whiskers more realistic.

This video was used to help me recreate the mouse movement and twitching of the nose of Squeak. I found it a great help and made it a lot easier for me to picture how a mouse interacts successfully with not only it’s environment but also how it acts in general. So all in all I admit that using this video as a inspiration and guide line helped me make this secondary close up experiment for Squeak a success.

Independent Practice – Final Major Project: Bubble and Squeak: Bubble and Squeak Close up experiments 2

This post is Bubble’s Close up Experiment, I hope to at least apply the corrects I made in the previous close up experiment with Squeak:

This shot was a bit more successful than the Squeak’s close up in the fact that I managed to avoid falling into the same pit hole with the eyes and managed to breath some life into Bubbles, the only hard part with this is that snail do not have eyes like humans do in fact their eyes do allow them to blink hence why in the animation Bubble doesn’t blink. This why the mouth was added to Bubble since snail do have mouths it also helps add more emotion to the character.

Independent Practice – Final Major Project: Bubble and Squeak: Bubble and Squeak Close up experiments 1

This post is to show one of my early prototypes from Bubble and Squeak:

This prototype was originally going to be used for the original ending of the credits and as Squeak’s examining the tap before having his master plan but it didn’t quite work out unfortunately. The faults with this prototype is that the credits are rather bland with the motion and are hard to read due to their sizes and and the thickness of the pen that was used to draw them up. When I came up with the new opening title card, it gave birth to the new A4 sized Credits Cards which I now use as my end credits feature at the end of the animation and it works a lot better than the previous version recorded here. The close up with just Squeak at the beginning for the credits shot was a failure their was no motion or emotion within the characters during that shot and it is one of more disappointing features within my recording so far. What I could do to improve this scene is maybe make a new head piece with different expressions that I can sway occasionally with to show the characters now has a wide range of different emotions, alternatively i could use the original head piece to make eyes that are proportioned correctly to the ones of puppet but they have different appearances to show the character displaying various emotions and make him more relatable to the target audience. The next clip within this animation shows that I have taken the corrections that I decide to make, in to consideration and  have gone with the second option and made a large set of different eyes. While this did work when I animated this and it does make Squeak look a lot more animal like, there is still something missing, I am going to have to look deeper into this maybe move his tail around a lot more often to see if that adds to the animation.

Independent Practice – Final Major Project: Bubble and Squeak: Bubble and Squeak Pelt Test

This video was to test and make sure that I got the falling motions of a food pelt correct. As seen below:

This clip also came to be when a second year games student by he name of Laura came into the animation studio and saw me using the Line Reader to create bubble and squeak in a stop motion setting and asked me to show her how it worked. So I got the pellet I had created previous and showed her how to use the equipment.

Independent Practice – Final Major Project: Bubble and Squeak: Bubble and Squeak Leaky Tap

Bubble and Squeak have solved the Leaking tap Problem Clip:

Now that the two characters have reached the tap how are they going to turn it off. This animation explores how the two characters interact with the tap prop as well as how they solve this problem that has been annoying them. The two characters have a long period to think about how they are going to solve this problem, this was not only done to create a moment of suspense for when the character final solve their problem but to also draw in the target audience and to let them come up with their own ideas and solutions. The best part about this animation is the Squeak thinking about the problem but also the tap animation when he turns it. The scene works incredibly well and highlights their achievement. The only down fall is the end of the animation where the two characters go to high five each other and the essentially smack each other in the face, so I need to fix that. I suggest adding a close up shot for both Bubble and Squeak think as well as their high five.

Independent Practice – Final Major Project: Bubble and Squeak: Bubble and Squeak Title Card

This Post is to show one of the ideas I have had for the title card for Bubble and Squeak recently:

I had the idea when I was working on one of the latest scenes, thinking what I could do for the Title sequence that would not only make the animation seem fresh but also give it it’s own unique feel and atmosphere to it. The conclusion was that why not I try to make the actual title of the animation feel unique as well so I made the actual animation more animal like by modifying and giving the title an animal like appearance, so the B’s in the title are actually snail shells and the S’s are actual mice like in appearance to link it to the animation and also give a clue about the animation as well. Update: I have now included this style into credits as well and have decided to use this style officially with the white background. The main reason for this is that the background blend effectively with the colour scheme I have used for the animation, most of this colour scheme is neutral colours of greys and pale yellows as it matches with the natural colouration of snails and mice. The only exception to this is the blues and reds used for both colour water and the mouths of the characters. The font was chosen to be used for the main animation due to it fitting with the theme quite well as a selective few of the characters within the words effectively become my animations characters or at least some form of them if I effectively tweak the design enough as shown with the e’s and o’s. It also helps keeps the animation eye catching as it follows to continue the theme of the animation and also help the target audience identify which name belongs to which characters.

As You can see I have transfered the same style of font that I used for the Title card over to the credits the only down side with this is that the style is that it is completely hand written using a simple mouse/graphics tablet and the brush tool in to draw up the letters, which takes a while to do and is very tiring even if it does on word and can be copied and pasted. I decided to do this when I saw that the font that I had done as a experiment for the Title card worked really well. The results with the credits is also quite exceptional, it gives the same feel and effect as the Title card used in the opening. The first ending credits card work out quite well as a majority of my letters used in this card were copied from the original title card to keep the design the same. The only except to that rule were letters that were not involved in the actual Title Card such as O which was a new development that I did specifically for the credits. Other letters that I did for this due to the same reason can easily be seen by looking or comparing with the original title card. The card design is easy to read and again like the title card keeps with the design style of the animation and reminds of the characters as well.

Like the previous title card most of the letters and in this case words are used to not only keep with continuity but also to make sure that the style is eye catching and not an eye sore as well as been is to understand. Another new letter was introduced during this process of creating this next Credits card which was the R letter in caps, as the rest of letters needed have already been created previously. Of course these letters had to be resized as well to fit better on the document but that wasn’t really a big problem. Like I stated above some of the content has been reused from the previous credits card, the reused content been my name as it makes sense to just replicate the previous design document and then remove any content which isn’t necessary and replace the remove content with new content. This not only helps create a slight link between the two credits slides but also creates a sense of continuity between them and hopefully the next slides as well.

This next slides of the credits again uses content from the previous slides, the most common in the slide that has been reused is that of  the actual characters names from the title card and the by from the previous credits slides. From here I decided that to highlight the royalty free music and sound effects by doing the names of providers in different style than the other font. Unfortunately this didn’t work and became and eye sore regrettably so I have fixed this problem by producing another credits card which can be seen below.

Which uses the my original font style but doesn’t mention the artists who made the sounds it just states that the sounds and music were royalty free.

Creative Futures: Pro Practitioner, Client Project: Women of the World or WOW! Animation Prototype 41

Here is another prototype version of the Women of the World/Women of Hull Animation:

I corrected the animation so now their are Chimney’s that are smogging up a city which my target audience said connected to Norma a lot better than the previous animation and I made a better animation of a sailing boat that went across the whole screen to show Plain Sailing better.

I created the latest version of Famous women of Hull by utilising the brush tool to draw odd angles such as the sails on the boat, the line tool for the straight lines in the scene such as the phone in Maureen Lipman’s scene. I also used the eraser tool to remove mistakes and the paint bucket to fill in were more colour was desired.

Creative Futures: Pro Practitioner, Client Project: Women of the World or WOW! Animation Prototype 35

Here is another prototype version of the Women of the World/Women of Hull Animation:

This animation is now now reaches it’s own credits and the animation are all complete. Debra now finishes her performance and poses for the audience. The walking animation is now much longer and does a bit more helping draw in the target audience a lot more effectively. The phone now sits on a table while it rings. Norma Waterson’s animation is based on Dirty Old Town and shows a town that was once clean get dirtier and dirtier. (My Tutor Janis did point out that maybe I should just show chimney’s smog up the blue sky) to save not only time but also make the situation much more believable. Tracey Thorn’s animation shows a sail blowing in the wind but this doesn’t portray the connect to her or her song Plain Sailing very well so I will need to go back to this later on.