Narrative Structure Fictional Animation – Final

Here is final version of the Ass and his Driver with sound:

This version is my final version of the Aesop Fable, The Ass and his Driver with sound and effects added:

The aim for this animation project is to develop a Fictional Animation that successfully shows the chosen Aesop’s Fable, clearly and effectively to the target audience. This is to make sure that the tale and the lesson that is within, is easy to identify and understand. The Animation will also utilize correct, effective and suitable sound effects for this animation, that do not offend the audience and are either my own or are Royalty Free in Nature.

As you can see I have successfully fixed the slight mistakes in the animation’s character’s motions when I extended the amount of frames in each sequence. Now that I have fixed that, the animation seems to run a lot more smoothly and is able to successfully present the chosen fable perfectly as well as the lesson based with in it successfully to the target audience. So just by fixing the slight animation mistakes I have successfully completed my first and second aim that I hoped to complete when I started this project and this is strengthened even more with the actual chosen animation style and environment that make the target audience focus on the characters and how they effect the story. The sound effects worked perfectly and effectively within this animation and do not offend the target audience, if anything they find the actual sound effects such as the Driver talking amusing. The rest of the sound effects have chosen quite well, most of them have actually been well thought out and work effectively with the animated story line helping bring it to life in the process and drawing in the target audience, without the offending of  anyone. All of these sounds are like I stated either royalty free or produced by myself.

This project came out a lot better than I thought and I am very happy with the final product for the fictional Narrative. It has shown the story that I had chosen for this part of the project effectively and doesn’t put the target audience off, it stays true to the original tale and the lesson buried within it is still their and easy to identify.

Narrative Structure Fictional Animation Prototype 7

Here is the Seventh version of the Ass and his Driver Animation:

This version of the Ass and His Driver has had a few corrections made to it, since the last version of this animation.

The aim for this animation project is to develop a Fictional Animation that successfully shows the chosen Aesop’s Fable, clearly and effectively to the target audience. This is to make sure that the tale and the lesson that is within, is easy to identify and understand. The Animation will also utilize correct, effective and suitable sound effects for this animation, that do not offend the audience and are either my own or are Royalty Free in Nature.

For example I have extended the length of this animation due to the font with all the information needing to be kept out for longer periods of time, so that it is made easier for the target audience to understand what the story is actually about. Even though the story is already been told through the motion of the characters, the writing makes both the tale and the lesson easier to identify for the target audience. The only down fall with this was that some of the motions of the characters now look slightly out of sync with the rest of the animation, so I will need to look into this for when I add the sound effects later on. The good thing about this is that I have ticked my first aim for this project, I have managed to produce a animation that successfully shows the Aesop Fable of The Ass and His Driver and both the tale and the lesson buried within are easy to identify and understand. This can also be seen by the effective combination of both my animated Ass/Donkey and his Owner/Driver who effectively interact with each other and the printed information based on the actual tale. Unfortunately the sound effects have yet to be included. My next post will probably contain, a fully working version of the animation with sounds and effects.

Narrative Structure Fictional Animation Prototype 5

Here is the fifth prototype of the Ass and the Driver:

This is next Prototype version of the Ass and his Driver and again I will now compare it against my aim/intentions that I stated at the beginning of the project:

The aim for this animation project is to develop a Fictional Animation that successfully shows the chosen Aesop’s Fable, clearly and effectively to the target audience. This is to make sure that the tale and the lesson that is within, is easy to identify and understand. The Animation will also utilize correct, effective and suitable sound effects for this animation, that do not offend the audience and are either my own or are Royalty Free in Nature.

As you can see this version of the Aesop Fable, The Ass and His Driver is displayed clearly to the target audience with the animation style I have produced although it does come across childish it still portrays the point of the story. Unfortunately the downfall with this prototype is that, while it does show the entire tale to the target audience like I wanted, it doesn’t give time for the target audience to read or understand the story because the font with the information isn’t around long enough to be read completely. But the motion of the characters does also help tell this tale, I will need to fix the font and make it last longer on the screen to give the target audience time to read the information and understand both the story and the lesson more effectively. In order to do this I will also need to expand the amount of time for each of the necessary motions of the characters, this will also increase the effectiveness and how clear the tale is actually displayed to the target audience. There are no sound effects yet for this animation but I have already looked into to some sound effects for this animation, see my other post further down.

Narrative Structure Fictional Animation Prototype 3

Here is Prototype 3 animation for the Ass and his Driver:

This was mainly a test to see if the motions that I had develop for the characters in this animation, but I will still reflect what I have against my aims:

The aim for this animation project is to develop a Fictional Animation that successfully shows the chosen Aesop’s Fable, clearly and effectively to the target audience. This is to make sure that the tale and the lesson that is within, is easy to identify and understand. The Animation will also utilize correct, effective and suitable sound effects for this animation, that do not offend the audience and are either my own or are Royalty Free in Nature.

The first aim that I mentioned within my intentions is not possible to fulfill yet due to the fact that I have just stared the animation, so while the animation does introduce the name of the tale and the the two main characters that are related to it, this prototype doesn’t really tick my first box unfortunately because the target audience didn’t really understand what the animation was about about. The only positive of this was that the colours used were not only appealing to the eye and added a more mature feel to the story as well as it’s environment but also made the tales seem a lot more realistic. Due to this animation been a prototype, I have not yet finished putting the full tale into the animation or the lesson, so straightaway this tale fails against my original aims due to the story not been complete or even having the lesson within. This also fails the final aim for this animated project because no sound effects were involved with this prototype animation, the only successful aspect is that I didn’t offend any one with the sound effects, which is really good.

Narrative Structure Fictional Animation Animatic

Here is the fictional animation Animatic for the Ass and his Driver:

I converted my storyboard into an animatic and added sound to see how the story came out if I animated. Straight away I for fill the target aims I set myself at the beginning of the project which was to:

The aim for this animation project is to develop a Fictional Animation that successfully shows the chosen Aesop’s Fable, clearly and effectively to the target audience. This is to make sure that the tale and the lesson that is within, is easy to identify and understand. The Animation will also utilize correct, effective and suitable sound effects for this animation, that do not offend the audience and are either my own or are Royalty Free in Nature.

I have successfully shown the Aesop Fable of The Ass and His Driver in an animated form, even if it is an Animatic and the tale’s lesson and story are both easy to understand and with the help of the sound effects the tale is even more enjoyable. This can be seen with the crumbling sound effect when the Donkey tries to go over the edge of the clip to get down to his stall a lot quicker. Hopefully when I convert this into a proper animation the story and lesson with the help of the sound effects will be even easier to understand. While the animatic did convey what I wanted the target audience to see, it isn’t the best form of doing so because it wasn’t done in pen, only pencil so some of the detail were hard to make out, there for I didn’t show the story or it’s lesson effectively to them.

Narrative Structure Fictional Animation Sound List

I have created this post to show the music and sound effects that I will consider or will use in my Ass and His Driver Animation, all these sound are either my own or royalty free sounds:

Valley Winds:

Provided by Soundfxforfree

I knew this was the sound effect that I was looking for straight away once I heard it, since the characters are walking on top of a mountain, the wind would be incredibly strong according to physics. The only down fall for this is that I will need to edited the actual volume because if I leave this still playing as it is at this volume no one would be able to hear the other sound effects.

Provided by Audio Productions

I found this sound effect and while it is a sound effect I am looking for the actual type of wind that this sound effect is replicating isn’t the right one I am looking for the strength that the sound effect is displaying is wrong and it won’t help the animation at all so I will have to use the one I found above this one.

Walking:

Provided by copyrighy free sound-effect

I chose this sound effect because the mountain Terran is often gravely and coated with rumble so the main characters walking on it would generate a gravel been stood on like sound.

Provided by copyrighy free sound-effect

Too quite even if I turn it up, so I will be not using this sound effect.

Donkey:

I have already gather the hoof sounds for this animation with the factual animation on Alexander the Great, All I need is Donkey Noises now to complete this realism of the animation.

Provided by Free Sound Effects

Perfect for both when the donkey becomes surprised during his fall and when he is fighting against his driver, the only down fall is that it is quite long so it will need to be shorten and carefully placed in the actual animation.

Provided by n Beats Sound Effects

Same sound effect just a bit quieter which wouldn’t work unfortunately due to the fact that a surprised yell is need not a muffled quite one.

Talking:

I have already gathered the talking sound effects from the previous animation.

Fabric:

Provided by SFX Planet

This was used to show the driver grabbing the clothing on the donkey to prevent him from falling, I must be careful with this in the final version or it may just sound weird.

Crumbling:

Provided by copyrighy free sound-effect

Provided by  copyrighy free sound-effect

Music:

No Music in this animation the wind makes up for it in this Aesop Fable.

 

 

 

 

 

Narrative Structure Fictional Animation Story Board

Here is the storyboard for the Ass and his Driver:

A majority of the tale is already been written by Aesop, so all I had to do was convert the tale into a suitable form for the target audience that the animation aims for in this project. I think this storyboard manages to convert the tale of this fable quite well since it displays the key moments within it effectively and when necessary. For example the moment with the Donkey looking at the stall at the base of the mountains, I have shown the donkey peer down at the base before making his foolish decision. I think the only down fall of this Storyboard is that the drawings are a bit hard to make out as well as the notes but I can still make them out and not all of them are a mess others have been able to work out what they show and say.

If anything the sounds for this animation would be hoofs walking on a hard surface, most likely the donkey traveling across the mountain to make it feel more like a actual member of this species. I am all so considering using a gravel like sounds for when the merchant/driver is walking across the mountain as well because they often have a lot of rubble and debris in the way on the roads. This would help the audience pinpoint the characters apart from each other, as well as me effectively utilizing sounds for the animation correctly, that don’t insult anyone (Unless you are a donkey) .

Narrative Structure Fictional Animation Final Idea

Here are the final design ideas for the Ass and his Driver:

These are my project aims:

The aim for this animation project is to develop a Fictional Animation that successfully shows the chosen Aesop’s Fable, clearly and effectively to the target audience. This is to make sure that the tale and the lesson that is within, is easy to identify and understand. The Animation will also utilize correct, effective and suitable sound effects for this animation, that do not offend the audience and are either my own or are Royalty Free in Nature.

I have chosen two for my final design in the image above either, the top middle design with the tick by his head or the bottom left design. I chose the top middle as one of my final designs due to the fact that while his head is badly sized he looks well traveled but at the same time he looks experienced and quite wealthy. Which in most media indicates that they are a quite successful merchant, which will not only help indicate that the Ass is indeed owned by a merchant but is also helps the narrative explain why they are traveling where they are. I personally prefer the bottom left design because it screams not only merchant but it also looks very appealing to the eye and several other agree with me that I have asked.

The Ass’s design was chosen because it gives the narrative not only a sense of mystery with the materials underneath the tarp on the Donkey’s back but also helps make you realize effectively and immediately that they are a pair of traveling merchants and the target audience can realize this automatically.

Narrative Structure Fictional Animation Development Ideas

Here are the development ideas for my Ass and His Driver Animation:

 

The aims of this project are:

The aim for this animation project is to develop a Fictional Animation that successfully shows the chosen Aesop’s Fable, clearly and effectively to the target audience. This is to make sure that the tale and the lesson that is within, is easy to identify and understand. The Animation will also utilize correct, effective and suitable sound effects for this animation, that do not offend the audience and are either my own or are Royalty Free in Nature.

As you can see I have evolved my designs since my last post. I will start with my developed environment designs but after I while I realized I had focused entirely on the city in the distance or close by aspect of the designs, so I decided that I will go back to my design ideas and from there use one of the empty mountain range designs for my environment in this fictional animation. The reason why is that I believe the lonely and bland designs that I came up for the animation previously made the narrative stronger and gave the donkey a reason why he wanted to get the journey over quickly because the environment was unnerving.

I then started to develop the designs of the Ass by adding things to his designs such as reins on his head and cargo and equipment to his back to make it seem more realistic even if the narrative for this animation is fictional some form of realism is still required. My first few designs for the donkey involved this sort of design:

Inspired and Compared to this:

Belongs to Peta Jones

As you can see I have actually taken the idea of a stereotypical Donkey wearing a rug or mat on it’s body as a form of saddle. Even though this is a rather basic idea I think it still helps bring the idea to life and several others agreed with me, this image also gave me the idea to add other things to the donkey designs such as crates, bags and timber. Most of my ideas have actually come out quite well with this concept, such as:

 

Most of these designs seemed to work the only one that didn’t was the one with tonnes of crates. When I looked at it it seemed that the perspective was wrong and that it didn’t suit the actual image I was trying to create, so I started to use sheets or blankets to cover the products the donkey was carrying and this idea seemed to work a lot better than it’s predecessor. it made the idea of a traveling merchant much more believable therefore the story was much more effective at capturing the target audience’s attention in the process.The only down fall was my donkey’s head was going back and forth it seemed to come out OK in one design but awful in another. Hopefully the final design will not have this problem because I think I have found were the problem is coming from. It is the actual chin of the donkey.

I think most of the development ideas for the merchant/driver were influenced by several animated products without me realizing until my brother pointed it out:

 

Jak is owned by Naughty Dog and Sony

Natsu is owned by Funimation and his creator Hiro Mashima.

Yes some of my designs are inspired by these characters mainly their clothing because they scream either traveler or explorer. I believe that they could help with the narrative of the story in this way by helping the audience realize that the merchant/driver does a lot of traveling in general. When I looked back, most of my designs utilized a scarf or robe styled in someway after Natsu’s scarf whether it been the white scarf or the pattern. I think they helped highlight the characters traveling purpose. Most of the designs looked rugged which was good because it showed that not only was the character well traveled but he was experienced which made the story a lot more believable to the target audience. The downside was that a majority of the designs looked ridiculous because of the awfully proportioned head, that all my characters had, I will need to look into this further, by practicing this more.

Narrative Structure Fictional Animation Design Ideas

Here are the design idea’s for my fictional animation based on the Aesop Fable, The Ass and his Driver:

 

The aims for this project are:

The aim for this animation project is to develop a Fictional Animation that successfully shows the chosen Aesop’s Fable, clearly and effectively to the target audience. This is to make sure that the tale and the lesson that is within, is easy to identify and understand. The Animation will also utilize correct, effective and suitable sound effects for this animation, that do not offend the audience and are either my own or are Royalty Free in Nature.

As you can see my first few designs are for the actual environments within this story. Since the story is said to be set on a mountain range, I thought that it would be most suitable for the actual environment as you can see in these few images:

 

These images show that often in the story the scene is often set or focuses solely on the mountain range or a cliff and nothing actually below the actual mountain or what is nearby. So I thought it might be a bit interesting to actually show that there is a town or village nearby that the merchant is actually trying to get to. So that my actual animated story stood out compared to the original one written by Aesop or any of the other adaptations.

 

As you can see I tried both ideas with these designs believing that it might be interesting to see how either added to the actual story. For example the actual empty environment just involving mountain ranges had a interesting effect, they made the actual area feel lifeless and in turn this gave the feel to the scene. That is the reason why the Ass wanted to get to his Driver’s stall quickly because it feels unnerving to be in such as bland but quiet environment. This helped tick my first aim straightaway because it helped effectively show why the Ass wanted to get away from where he was and helps move the story along, while the scenes that had cities or towns in them both felt right and wrong compared to the empty mountain ranges in the other concept art pieces. For example the one with an actual side of the village and Donkey and his master on the top of the mountain, while this felt warm and inviting with the village, the segregation of the Donkey and his master made it feel like they were unimportant to the actual story.

Next I went to work on the donkey, unfortunately I discovered that I could not draw horses or Donkeys for this project, So I found various guides and images for help in this.

 

I used these images to help me create my Donkey and my Horse for both of My Narrative Projects:

As you can see the lesson helped greatly and now I can draw the a Donkey without it looking awfully animated and looks somewhat realistic in appearance. The largest image is in fact me trying to replicate the actual drawing. As you can see I did a lot better than before but I did this image by looking at the guide above, so I felt like I was cheating in someway. So I decided to memories the shape of a Horse/Donkey and most of these sketches are indeed done from my head. Most of the actual drawings done from my memory are very impressive in appearance since they have a successful shape but there are tones of negatives. I hope to fix these either in my development or in the near future such as the head of my donkey and the movement of the legs. The little movement they have in the concept sketches are extremely stiff, some of the drawings were so bad in my opinion such as the bottom to second left image that I started to add carrots to the mouths of the donkeys so that I could make sure they resembled some form of Donkey. In the future if I do carry these designs onto development I will work on not only the head of the donkey to me personally they look a bit bare in appearance (Due to me trying to get use to their shape and appearance.) but also working on the actual donkey motion in the animation. So I will need to add something to them maybe the Donkey Carrying his owners products or equipment to make the narrative stronger in this animation, since the tale states that they are trying to get to the driver’s stall this will also help keep the project focused on my aims since I stated I needed to make this animation to be shown effectively to the target audience.

The next section of sketches was me trying to come up with an appearance for the driver even if he is very briefly shown in the tale he is still important to it:

 

As you can see I used images of ancient Greek merchants to help influence my design:

These designs were inspired by the images above as well as my own knowledge of this era. Most of my designs involved a checkered or expensive silk garb since merchants were known to be quite wealthy during this period due to them exploring what was known of the globe at the time and selling things taken from one country to another. Although most of the designs started to modernize ever so slightly such as the bottom one on the final concept copy. I did this subconsciously and I didn’t notice until one of my family members pointed it out and the design seemed to stick ever since, so I decided to develop this idea further since it was an interesting concept. I knew when I started this project that I couldn’t miss the merchant/driver even if he isn’t seen until the Ass tries jumping, so I needed to at least put some thought into the actual character. If I hadn’t I would have failed the aims I set my self since I need to display the tale effectively to the target audience.