Tai Chi Gayle UAL Unit 8 FMP: Reflective Journal

Experimentation: Week 1 - 3

Week 1

Initial response to the FMP Assignment brief:

My initial response to the assignment brief that we received on the 13th of February before the half term, was very ecstatic although at first I was quite unsure of what I could do to fit the theme of “London: Then & Now”. However, I ended up coming up with an idea for an animation for this theme.

The animation will be following a single character as they go through the history of London leading up to the present day looking up at a billboard containing a possible future London or mentioning something regarding the future of London. The character will hop, skip, bound, fall and traverse as they transition from era to era. I’m currently not completely sure of whether I want the character to go through the eras chronologically or whether the character goes through them at random but starts and ends in present day London.

I was thinking that the animation could start off with the character in their bedroom or possibly a museum and then when the character looks at something that peaks their interest and goes to touch it, they get sucked through the floor and drop in to one of the very early eras of London, possibly even before London was properly established as a City by the Romans. This would cause the character to become flustered and confused as they try to find their bearings as they walk around, lost and confused but also extremely fascinated, in these previous eras.

The character’s outfit could possibly change as they get transferred to each era and then end up back in the same outfit they had in the beginning. Also I think a good thing to do would be to make the character have a more uninterested look at the beginning but that gradually changes as the travel through London’s eras.

I recognise that this is an extremely ambitious idea and I’m prepared to cut down on certain aspects of the animation if necessary. But a good thing to do would be to have some other ideas for the FMP theme since this is currently the only idea I have for this theme and if I determine that it’s way too ambitious during the early portion of the experimentation & idea phase, I will have other ideas that I can use for the FMP. I also recognise that for me to get anywhere close to finishing this, I’m going to have to drastically improve my artistic skills and do a very large amount of research on the eras of London. I’ll also have to think of an art style to use that’s simple enough to get things done quickly while still being able to tell the story interestingly. My original thought for an art style reference was the old Disney’s 2D animation style for movies like Dumbo, Mulan, Pocahontas and Princess & the Frog etc. since they’re somewhat simple but also extremely satisfying to watch.

Weekly Overview & Idea Development:

The main thing we did this week was contextually analyse the semiotics of 4 different games that were either set in London or had levels that were based of off London. And overall I quite enjoyed doing so because as we were analysing the games, I was able to see and learn how the professional games industry uses semiotics to make it clear to the player that they're playing in a certain place and time, which can really serve to be useful for my FMP because I'll be needing to clearly convey what era my character will be going through as quickly as possible because, I'm planning for my animation to shift through the era of London quite rapidly and fluently so the visuals I'll be creating need to concise in getting the current era across to the audience.

When it comes to the main concept of my idea, the contextual analysis didn't particularly affect it as much as it made me realise that I need to be incredibly aware of the timing and efficient with my use of it within my animation because I don't want the eras to go by so fast that the audience isn't able to keep up but I also don't want the animation to fell like it's stagnating, which will interrupt the flow of the animation.

We also went on a trip to the Museum of London at the end of this week to conduct some primary research regarding the eras that London went through so we can further develop our understanding of the history of London and incorporate our knowledge of London in to our FMP's so our projects have greater contextual accuracy if we so wish. This trip definitely helped me learn more about the eras of London, which is absolutely integral for me to know and understand, because I'm planning for my animation to cover all the eras that London progressed through so I need to have at least a basic understanding of each era and their key events and looks so I can get the eras across to the audience.

The trip really enforced my current idea rather than make me rethink or change my idea because I was able to gain the knowledge that will be necessary for the main concept of my idea to actually work because a certain degree of contextual accuracy is going to be needed for my FMP to work as effectively as I want it to.

Week 2

Weekly Overview & Idea Development:

This week we were experimenting with things in regards to our idea and personally I worked on developing an art style for my FMP that's simple enough for me to animate quickly and efficiently with, while also being able to get the mood and feeling across of the animation with a level of visual accuracy in regards to the architecture and demographics of the eras. For the art style that I'm going to be using I made it so that the main character is extremely simple because the main focus is actually on the area around the character and so a simple character allows for the audience to " become" the character and experience the area through the character's eyes rather then being confused on whether to focus on the character or environment. But because the main character's design is going to be simple I made sure to practice my animating skills using the character's art style since fluidity, movement and feel are going to be crucial aspects for my character and the FMP as a whole.

Also, similarly to the last week, we went on another trip at the end of the week, but it was a tour around modern London rather than looking in to the past of London. The main use I had for this trip was to gather comparison photos of real life modern London to use in my contextual analysis in my blog, but as the trip went on I realised that the architectural and artistic sides of modern London would serve to be quite useful for my FMP. I also had a particular scene planned out in my head for my animation that I wanted to get some real life reference for, which I was able to get on this trip, so although I initially thought that this trip wouldn't particularly be of much use to me regarding my FMP, it turned out to be quite the opposite of what I assumed.

Much like the previous week, everything that I did this week helped with making my idea more fleshed out and easier to visualise due to the knowledge that I gained throughout out the two weeks so far, rather than cause to me rethink or change my idea for the FMP.

Week 3

Weekly Overview & Idea Development:

This last week of experimentation was mainly focused on getting everything we've done in the previous weeks on to our blogs to a sufficient level of quality before we end up moving on to pre-production, which would end up adding to the pile of things that need to get blogged and we'd just end up falling behind if were unable to keep up properly. And by the end of this week I had almost everything on my blog up to date except for this reflective journal and some research that needed to get put up, which I've now completed on the weekend. Plus, I don't really ever want to be behind on my blog since it'll just make things more difficult when I could easily avoid all that that unnecessary difficulty if I stay on top of my blog.

Also during this week we made first drafts of our proposals for our project since we should have a general understanding of what we want to do for our project, as well as see what we would roughly have to do for our Pecha Kucha. In regards to my proposal, it was particularly easy for me to fill out the proposal for my project since I was fortunate enough to have a pretty vivid vision of my idea for my FMP from the day we received our assignment briefs.

Because this week was primarily focused on keeping everything up to date there were no particular developments or changes to my existing idea for the FMP other than me developing a clearer vision of what I want my FMP animation to look like in my head so I can get it down on paper with relative ease and clarity when making a story board and completing other actions regarding pre production, because I feel that as long as the planning and foundation is very clear and solid, it'll make the production of my animation much easier since the only thing I'd really have to do for production is put in the time to produce something amazing.

Pre-Production: Week 4 - 6

Week 4

Weekly Overview & Pecha Kucha

Throughout this week, we worked on making and finishing our Pecha Kucha presentations, which we had planned to present in the next week, however due to a worldwide pandemic this will likely have to get postponed but still during this week, I didn't come across many other difficulties regarding my Pecha Kucha so I ended up getting my slides for the Pecha Kucha done pretty swiftly. Once I had completed the slides I went and proceeded to make the script for my Pecha Kucha. When making my script, I surprised by how much information I could fit in to the 20 second intervals for each slide but when it came to rehearsing and practising I realised that I was just reading off the script extremely fast so once I slowed down the speed I read my script at, I ended up gaining a whole minute of extra time on to the full time limit but I was still 1 minute short by the end of the week, so I'll be planning to fully complete the script in the next week during our time in quarantine. I've also begun creating my script for my FMP and it is well on the way way to being complete so it should be complete in the next week, however, if not then It will definitely be completed by the 6th week.

Week 5

Weekly Planner

I have currently planned out this 2 week sprint of pre production out roughly. I feel that I should be able to keep on schedule with what I have set my self for this week and the next. But if I feel that I cannot stick to schedule I may make changes to the current plan and keep them in mind when planning the production weeks.

Also I feel like I've been progressing quite comfortably and steadily through the project and if I keep going at this pace as well as speed up my work rate, I feel that everything for my project should turn out as expected.

Weekly Overview & Idea Development:
Over the course of this 5th week, we were mainly adjusting to our new flow of working online due to the current pandemic, so my work flow has been quite all over the place and because of this I'll be starting my story boarding late in this week rather than when I aimed to so I may have to push certain things back on my plan slightly.

However, during the course of this week, while I was conducting some artistic research and working on my script, I have decided to change the way in which my animation will be done and presented. This change is: to still have the main character for certain scenes of the animation, such as the beginning up until the audience is transported in to Londinium, then we see the character a couple other times through out the middle portion of the animation and then finally at the end we see the character slowing down from their previous run in to a slow relaxed walk looking to the future. I feel that by having the character be separate to us and almost act like a tour guide could be very interesting to watch while also being quite fun and interactive in certain ways since the character will be solely seeing what is taking place through the camera as if it was their eyes, which should make that feeling of being flung through the eras, have that much more impact in comparison to my previous and initial idea.

Week 6

Script:

Weekly Overview:
By the end of the week I was able to complete the entirety of my script, meaning that in the next week I can move on to story boarding my animation according to the script. During my script-writing process, I felt like everything went smoothly once I had conducted the necessary research, I feel like it took me a little longer to start of the script since I was adapting to the formatting of everything while also trying to adapt certain things so it would be easy to read, understand and visualise, but once I had gotten more adept with the formatting I was able to breeze through the script-writing process. I felt that writing a script before doing anything else would be integral to the quality of my animation because it would give the idea I've had stirring up in my mind, a nice and organised way of presenting itself so I can storyboard with the least amount of confusion possible as well as bring the idea in to fruition although in the form of words, so it's still up to me to create something I'm proud of.

Week 7

During this week, I began story boarding my animation according to my script. I didn't think it would be too difficult to get on with the storyboard, but it turned out even easier than I expected, which was quite a pleasant surprises, since it would mean that I should be able to get my story boarding done by the end of this week and can continue on to audio planning immediately next week. In the video below, I didn't capture the first 3 scenes of my story boarding process that I completed a day prior to my recordings of my story boarding process.

Recorded Storyboard Speed Process Day 1:

Recorded Storyboard Speed Process Day 2:

Recorded Storyboard Speed Process Day 3:

Weekly Overview:
Throughout the course of this week, I wasn't able to complete my story boarding although, I know it isn't a large hindrance since I only need to finish of the last section of story boarding at the beginning of next week and then I can move on to audio planning knowing that I've gotten all my other aspects of pre-production complete for my animation. When making my story boarding during these separate days, I didn't particularly run in to any problems and everything ran pretty smoothly and much faster then when I've done similar things in past projects, such as the previous game project I worked on, where I took far too long to produce, what I would consider, sketches for our animatic cutscenes. So this huge improvement in my pacing feels like a definite confident booster for me, since I now have a lot more faith in myself that I'll complete this animation project to the best of my ability since there will be much less wasted time due to my improvement in efficiency.

Also, during this whole pandemic and lock down, I feel like it's really worked in my favour, ignoring the lack of equipment for Foley. Because it's really allowed me to stream line my work as well as get much more done that I initially wouldn't have if things were kept the way they were before the lock down since I feel like I may have been tasked to complete multiple other things that might not relate directly to my FMP. And by not having a direct every day schedule, I feel like I'm able to work almost endlessly in a day, rather then doing work for a couple of hours and then not doing anything particularly productive towards my FMP for the rest of the day.

Week 8

I started this week immediately by completing the last scenes of my animation and I did so in the first day, so for the remainder of this week I'll be creating an audio planning sheet and should also be able to get on to animating my scenes for the FMP, after I create the animatic. However, I may leave some audio planning till I'm further into production because my animation is generally going to consist of many different sound effects, of which I'm not completely sure of what they'll consist of.

Recorded Storyboard Speed Process Day 4:

Entire Story Boarding Process:

FMP Animatic:

Mid way through the week I began and finished my animatic, with some technical help from a friend, who is much more adept at using adobe premiere. At first I created an extremely mediocre and underwhelming animatic and I was initially going to leave it like that. However, while looking for some music to put over my actual animation I played the animatic, I initially made, along side the songs I found to see if they would sync up well and I ended up noticing that my animatic could be so much better than what it currently was.

And so I went back in to Adobe Premiere to edit my animatic to go with the timing of the song I had found. While editing the duration of each scene I had story boarded I became aware that I would need to edit the audio to suit the mood and pace of my narrative after it's climax because the song it's self continued on with the fast paced and exciting mood.

This was when I went to my friend and asked for some assistance in regards to editing audio in Adobe premiere and he described and slightly demonstrated what I could do, how I could do it and what it would result in. So alongside learning the grasps of editing audio in Premiere, I immediately applied it to the track I was using for my animatic, however even after many attempts at creating a smooth shift from a high tempo section of the song into it's much more mellow starting tempo, I still wasn't satisfied.

This was when my friend had suggested that we could have the track shift into a different song that would fit the scenario and once I heard his suggestion I immediately knew what song I wanted and I got right to acquiring the track, implementing it into Premiere and editing the two tracks so that the first track would shift satisfyingly in to the second track. And finally, after this editing, I was satisfied with the outcome and presented it to my friend, who also responded very positively to the outcome.

With the audio editing done, I just had to finish off timing the last portion of my animatic to suit the last track and also decided to insert a place holder at the end for the credits so I could get the true length of audio that I would need when animating as well as make the ending as smooth as possible. Also, early in my process of creating the improve animatic I realised that I need to create one other shot on the story board after the main character's head was tilted down to show the character looking up at the camera with conviction in their eyes. By doing this I feel that it made the visuals much clearer and a lot more impactful when the track bumps up the intensity.

This whole experience with making the animatic will definitely serve to be useful to me in any future projects such as this since I was able to learn so much during the process of this animation as well as make an animatic that I feel really captures the feel of the animation that I wanted it to have. So overall I feel that it was a huge success and now I can get moving on to animating these shots.

Background Art Speed Process Day 1:

Background Art Speed Process Day 2:

Weekly Overview: