Animated Christmas Card - Penguins, penguins, and more penguins

Happy Christmas one and all!

Alison MacPherson - The Skating Penguin - 2nd Yr ECA Animation from ECA Animation on Vimeo.

(Note: unfortunately I did not notice when uploading that the sound volume is very low, so you will have to turn it up a wee bit to properly hear the music!)

And for or those why might be interested, here is a little bit of my research for this animation. 

Who couldn't love penguins eh?

I also wanted to have that Edinburgh touch to the animation so there is a little homage in the title and in one scene, that you may or may not notice, to the painting The Skating Minister (or The Reverend Robert Walker Skating on Duddingston Loch, if you so prefer) that is in the National Gallery. 

And if you are really keen and are still even reading this, here is my animatic for this 30 second animation. I felt timing was important in this one, so I put together this animatic very quickly before getting started on the animation (plus I like storyboarding and making animatics....)

Password: penguin

Animated Christmas Card Animatic from Ali on Vimeo.

Have a wonderful holiday everyone and thanks for visiting!

See Hear - Final Animation

For my final "See Hear" project animation I decided to return to animating with oil paint. I also wanted to include the deer as a more prominent aspect of the final animation. With some thinking and a bit of sketching, I planned out some new additions and then drew an animated pencil test of the deer. I then rotoscoped this pencil test when creating the animation in paint.




I certainly didn't want an unhappy ending with that gunshot sound effect, so I animated the stag reappearing after the gunshot. The stag is really meant to represent the general forest-like/natural surroundings, with him just forming from the flowing lines and disappearing again etc, but I don't think this idea comes across very strongly, mainly due to the shortness of the animation. With a bit more planning I could have developed and strengthen this idea further.
The concluding scene of the deer was animated as I went along, rather than creating a pencil test first. I had an idea of how I wanted the animation to be like and I wanted to just see how animating straight out with the paint would turn out. Not having a rotoscope or the sound clip gave me freedom with this end scene. It would be nice to have had some more music or sound ( I didn't really find anything really suitable that fitted), as it looses a bit of flow at the end there due to the sound suddenly ending. But I was pleased with the resulting animation. The freedom of just animating directly with the paint meant I could re-do things or change little bits as I went along, and just see where the flow of the animation would take the scene.

So here is my finished and final paint animation:


See Hear Animation from Ali on Vimeo.

Overall, this was good practice for working with paint. The final animation took a few days to finish. I found paint to be fairly time-consuming and a bit tedious, but I really like the end result. Paint animation seems to have a very lively quality to it. I think it will always be a time consuming technique, but maybe with more careful planning and organising, it could be a really good medium to use again.
Next time I will also be more careful with objects left roundabout the camera - there are some very annoying shadows popping in at the edges of the screen!! And that is entirely my fault for not noticing they were in the shot while animating...

See Hear - Week 5, Sand Animation

The next technique to try was sand animation; I liked the look of this technique from the examples we were shown on Monday. I researched Rebecca Manley a bit more after we were shown her work and I particularly liked this animation for a coffee advert:

 
Carte Noire - Steam from Rebecca Manley on Vimeo.

I love the golden background against the dark sand, resembling coffee of course, and creating a rich, warm atmosphere. Most of all I liked how the transitions between images were animated (the images forming from and dissolving back into steam from the coffee) - it is very fluid and lively, and worked very well with the sand medium I think.

For the next animation I wanted to do something different from what I had already done. So I decided to develop my original idea a bit and started to sketch a deer to add some character to the animation. I imagined my soundtrack taking place in a forest (a bubbling stream, floral or leaf-like shapes), which led to the deer idea, and a deer can also be drawn relatively simply/stylised. This idea may or may not be used in the final animation, but it was good to try something new and something a bit more complex that what I had done so far. I imagined the deer as more of an "idea" in the animation rather than a physical, realistic looking animal. As the camera follows this stream/river idea and down a waterfall, the deer could form form there and interact with the floral/leaf-like shape that floats up as part of the flute-part of the track:

Of course the gun shot then follows in the track, but I don't want to leave the animation on that note! So I am thinking that the deer figure could appear again after the gun shot - again this idea that the 'character' is less of an actual animal but more of a symbol for the environment, which is disrupted momentarly but then comes back...   just some new ideas floating about to add some more interest to the animation!

I then made more little thumbnails of each frame involving the deer to give me a rough guideline. The coffee advert inspired me in particular when working with sand. I wanted the line of the stream to form the deer and I think sand worked perfectly for trying this:



I really enjoying working with sand as it was easy to re-do things and draw into it, plus I think it has a nice-looking result. This is another short experiment, but I may do more animating with sand. The only problem is it will be harder to work with colour, unless I add colour digitally perhaps. I am happy with the deer idea and I think it worked quite well with the soundtrack - the large ears of the deer particularly can be quick and 'fluttery' in their movement, which suits the flute sound I think.
The new deer idea may also be a good way to play around more with the animation in terms of colours, movement and metamorphosis...

See Hear - Week 4, Full Paint Animation and Stop Motion Tests

From last week, I made a full animation of my soundtrack using oil paints. Previously I thought oil paints would suit my soundtrack, so I decided to make a full animation-experiment using the Rostrums. I had never animated with paint before so this was a good challenge. Thinking ahead was vital when using the paint, so I relied on my dope sheets and I sketched little thumbnails for each frame to reference when working with the paint. This was very helpful, and should come in handy throughout the project:

This is my first full animation based on the soundtrack. I painted onto the acetate sheet, with coloured paper underneath:

 

I really liked using the oil paints, so this may be a technique to build one, possibly combining it with other mediums...


The next technique to try out was cut-outs and stop-motioney things! 
From our film show on Monday, the film I liked best was "Accumulonimbus". This was also the animation that I related to the most - thinking this sort of style would suit my soundtrack the best:


Accumulonimbus from andy kennedy on Vimeo.

While scouring Vimeo for more inspiration, I found this animation made by Aardman that I also really liked:


Gulp. The world's largest stop-motion animation shot on a Nokia N8. from Nokia HD on Vimeo.

I loved the huge-scale style of this animation and the use of the sand on the beach - it has a very lively atmosphere to it! Plus we will be looking at animating with sand in our next tutorial...

I tried a little stop motion test on the Take 5s. It's very short as I just wanted to see how the clay stop-motion would suit the soundtrack, and the blue lines/bubbly part lasts most of the soundtrack and is fairly repetitive, so instead I just animated a snippet of this part. I mainly wanted to see how the stop-motion suited the track. I used clay for this animation, rather than cut-outs, as I thought this suited my animation idea best. Here is the short animation with the soundtrack (annoyingly, I wasn't watching where the black-card was enough, as it shifts about a bit):



I also created a loop animation without the soundtrack - so the same animation but looped a few times so you can observe it a bit longer and get as idea of what this part of the animation would be like in terms of 'flow':



Overall, there are aspects I liked and disliked about this medium/technique. Stop-motion is not normally my medium of choice, so it was good to try it out, it was a bit more challenging for me than the other drawn techniques. Although, overall I feel that the oil paints suited my soundtrack better than the stop-motion (due to the interweaving, airy nature of the sound), this has been a useful experiment and there are some aspects of the stop motion that I liked. First of, the colours in this wee animation (the blue and almost-black/dark background) allow the animation to really stand out. It is more clear and striking than my oil paint animation, and although I would like a calm, moody atmosphere for this part of the soundtrack, I also think it works better if the animation is a bit more dynamic than what I have previously done. I really liked the clarity of line in the stop motion, it made the animation much more lively!

See Hear - Week 3, Charcoal and Paint

This week I have tried a few new techniques for my animation based on our tutorial on Monday. It was good to experiment with some different mediums. I started off with some experiments on the Take 5s:

First I tried to tackle the gunshot scene in charcoal. I really liked this effect; the charcoal was easy to animate with and it creates these dirty (almost gunpowder like) marks that suit the sound affect. The charcoal is also very dense and dark, again perfect for what I was going for in this scene (I will also note that the painted background turned out pink, but I was going for red!). Here is my short test with the charcoal:



I also tried a very similar gunshot scene in Flash, but I wasn't as pleased with the result. I don't think Flash will be the right style or tool for this particular animation.
Next I did some short animations with the oil paints. The oil paints were challenging, especially getting the timing right (the dope sheet was very handy), but I really think this medium suites the soundtrack.
First I animated a part of the descending pizzicato scale that starts of the soundtrack:



Then I animated the middle scene, with the light flute part:



I know they are very short, but they were just experiments to try out the medium! I was happy with both these tests, so I definitely want to continue working with the oil paint and make more complex, finished animations. As I already mentioned, I think the oil paint suits the soundtrack best because of the soundtrack's rich moody, flowing atmosphere.
I wanted the gunshot ending to be very contrasting to the rest of the animation, and I really liked the charcoal effect for the gunshot - although I don't know if it will work putting both these mediums together in one animation, it may be a bit too different and like a completely different scene, but I will try and see how it turns out. At the moment I am working on a more finished oil paint animation on the Rostums...

See Hear - Week 2, Keyframes

Week 2 of the See Hear project - by the end of last week I had created my timeline strip from my first impressions of the music:

There was definitely improvements to be made on the timeline, so this week I started to develop the idea. First I needed to give more depth to my timeline idea as it felt a bit flat and straightforward. To try and add some depth to the descending scale part, instead of having the line just travelling downwards in the frame, I could have it travelling further away and coming back as if weaving around something. I think this would work better than the simple downwards motion and still give this essence of movement and travelling. The music is bubbly and fast, almost like water trickling, and from the start I was imagining deep blue tones - so I started to see a river forming as I listened to the music more and looked at my initial drawings. I also added a sudden drop in the 'river' to end the first part and make way for the middle part of the sound. For the airy flute middle part, I always imagined an object like a feather or leaf. My visuals were starting to resemble dandelions and this would also go well with when the middle part sort of disbands before the gunshot sound:

I started to imagine my sound taking place in a forest-like location; the river weaving around trees maybe, green, blue, living, bubbly, but maybe a bit dark and mysterious. When thinking of this I remembered 'Little April Shower' from Bambi. In the beginning, the raindrops fall on the leaves in time to the music notes (then the scary singing begins...). The music is also used to represent the thunderstorm with human voices for wind and symbols for lightning - there is no sound effects at all in this scene, only music. So this inspired me to maybe have a very lively, forest-like setting for my animation, or at least be influenced by this kind of setting:

Above is a sketch of my new idea taken from the timeline along with the kind of colour change I want to happen in the animation. I think colour will be an important key to support the soundtrack for my animation, although I am not sure how I am going to achieve colour yet (as in what medium to use). My thoughts on colour reminded me of colour scripts used for films, which help set the mood and atmosphere of a scene. Sometimes you can see the colours change dramatically in the script to support the changing mood of a scene. In my animation I would like to have the calm, moody colours for the first part of the soundtrack but then a dramatic change to violent, bright colours for the gunshot. Our timeline strips also reminded me a bit of colour scripts:

Once I was happy with the adjustments to my timeline idea, I sketched out the keyframes and put them together in an animatic using Take 5. It was surprisingly difficult getting the keyframes in time to the soundtrack!! The dope sheet was my initial reference for this, but it also took a lot of testing with the visuals and the sound until I was happy with one arrangement (unfortunately the video gets really dark in the middle, so apologies for that!):

The part I am having most difficulty with is the gunshot. I left it out of my animatic as I am still not sure what to do with it! My initial visions are very literal, but I am not entirely happy with this 'ending' to the piece. I do want it to be very sudden and contrasting, and bold and brash.
So I started to think about other examples of gunshot sound affects and their visuals and ideas for alternative ways I could present this sound in visuals. In my last post I mentioned the opening scene to "A Fistful of Dollars"; there were many gunshot sound affects in that opening title that were not being represented in the visuals by actual guns or bullets. The same is in the opening titles for "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" - I liked how the visuals and images just shatter or dissolve in time to the gunshot. It also shares the same action of horses galloping and the same colours of red, black and white. This has been my favourite use of the gun shot sound effect that I have seen:



Next I am going to experiment animating in different mediums (with the workshops to follow) and see what works best. I also would like to experiment more with the visuals for the ending gunshot...

Just to end on, I liked the style of this little animation to advertise BBC 4's program "The Sound of Cinema". It uses the music-wave idea to represent the movement of the sound and integrates it into visuals representing iconic films:

See Hear Project

Our first project of 2nd year is to make an animation based on a 15 second clip of soundtrack. To start off, we need to put our given sound-clip into some abstract visuals that showcase the music's elements. Abstract is pretty out of my comfort zone, so I need to challenge myself with this and experiment! Another challenge is that the soundtrack is taken from cartoons, which in turn makes me think of cartoons when I hear it. So I need to distance from that initial connection and pretend like the soundtrack piece is completely alien to my ears! First, some research done over the week:

Research and Inspirations:

Researching for this project has been a good excuse to look into the combination of sound/music and visuals in film generally. When starting to think about examples to help with this project, the most obvious reminder was Disney's Fantasia - where animation is set to classical music. The film-makers and animators were working in the same way as us; creating an animation set to an already composed piece of music, so they had to make the animation fit with and represent the music. I first thought of the Fantasia 2000 animation to Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue" - one of my favourite ones as the action, the colours and style match the music perfectly in a 1930s New York setting. I particularly love the start when the city is being drawn out by a simple line (on a blue background of course) that follows the clarinet solo, and when the clarinet plays an ascending scale it is combined with that line suddenly shooting into the air to form the first skyscraper (unfortunately I couldn't find the whole animation online!):



Although what Disney created was complex with narratives and characters etc - and what we are trying to do at the moment is create something more abstract to represent the sound - this was useful to look at again. As I said already, the film-makers were trying to do the same thing as us - harmoniously match animation to music! There is also a more abstract animation from the Fantasia 2000 set to Beethoven which plays around a lot with colour and shapes:

 

Another great example was the part in Pixar's "Ratatouille when Remy the rat is tasting food, and his 'feelings' I suppose, are being represented with animated shapes and colours or "fireworks". The animation matches the jazz music and both are meant to represent the food he is eating:




I was also reminded of film credits, particularly those from animated films of course. End or title credits often have good 'music and animation' sequences. I particularly like the jazzy title credit from Moster's Inc where the action is definitely tight with the animation (with things like doors slamming and the words forming etc). The music is very much in time with what the instruments are playing:



Ok, now trying to think away from Disney/Pixar but continuing on film credits and titles...
I particularly like the title sequence for "A Fistful of Dollars" with music by Ennio Morricone. Morricone is a good composer to listen too as well, not only for his awesome scores, but for his use of sound-effects as part of the music - so in the title for "A Fistful of Dollars" sounds like whistling and crack/snaps are part of the music, along with the gun-shots and horses galloping. The horses' galloping is pretty much in time with the music also. The visuals brilliantly match the music in time and with actions to coincide with the gunshots. The visuals match the mood and atmosphere created by the music too with the dark, bold colours:



The James Bond films have pretty good title sequences also, first off being "Dr. No". Again it uses some interesting sound affects to start off with the classic Bond gun sequence - sound affects that are completely unrelated to what is being shown (for example, what sounds like a xylophone/glockenspiel slide to represent the gun-barrel appearing into view). Then into a somewhat abstract colour and circle-shape display in time to the music for the first part of the title:



Probably my favourite of the Bond sequences however is that from "Casino Royale". I think it's a great animated sequence, which again matches the song well, and is full of animated patterns and symbols:



Something a bit different now; I was also reminded of the climatic scene from "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" where the aliens are trying to communicate with Earth via light and music. It's not as relevant to what we are doing, but I really like this scene with the combination of music notes and the lights of the space-ship -  I think this combination is very important to the scene, it wouldn't be as effective with either just the music or just the lights:




Sketches and Initial Ideas:

Once I had my clip of soundtrack, I first made notes of the characteristics of the sound. I found that the soundtrack was in three parts; the first part is a descending pizzicato scale which sounds hurried and bouncy, but cautious maybe. I imagined calm but with unsettlement. It reminded me of going down a staircase due to the descending scale, but this was to literal so I listened more and tried to think of other visuals that came to mind. It's bouncy pizzicato made it bubbly. Not exactly smooth, but wavy or bubbly. I immediately imagined blue tones, getting deeper and darker as the notes got lower. Here are some of my sketches done over the week:

These are my first sketches of the sound. On the right-hand page is a sketched sequence for how the action/movement might play out.

On the left-hand page you can see I was still thinking of this idea of stairs, but then changed to a more abstract, bubbly pattern (next page), with the green flare as the start of the music's middle-part...

With an ascending flute trill-thing, the second or middle part is a light, airy, more optimistic and more curious sound than the first part. Very quick, bright and sharp. You could say 'short but sweet', as it quickly turns to a two-note glockenspiel or xylophone, then a low flute note that is held and feels like it settles calmly. I immedietely imagined something like a feather flying up then floating calmly for a few seconds, with more vibrant colours like greens and yellows, but still harmonious with the blue:

The soundtrack ends with a gun-shot sound effect that cuts right through the calm, settled flute note. It is very brash, big and aggressive. As the gun-shot sound prevails it seems to get sharper and thinner, and sounds further away. I imagined the gun shot coming literally 'out-of-the-blue' and being completely contrasting to the previous atmosphere:

After my attempts to characterise each part of the music, and sketch out the possible action, I went to thinking how all 3 parts could connect to form the 'timeline strip' (to be created later on...)

We also did some work with dope sheets, which was very helpful for creating a plan for the timeline. I think dope sheets are definitely something I would like to use in future, especially for any work that is sound heavy, as a guideline and reference. It was good to combine both my own 'spontaneous' artwork drawn just from listening to the music and the dope sheets which pin point where all the sounds actually are in the track...

Filmhouse Stings - Silly Wizard Finished Film

The Silly Wizard sting is now finished!!

When I emailed Silly Wizard to ask permission to use their music, they asked if I could send them the finished film and also mentioned it was the 25th anniversary of their last ever concert. So, the final film I am showing here has got a little bit added on to the end for Silly Wizard themselves about their anniversary ( the Filmhouse Sting version just ends at the record/vinyl screeching sound - the record/vinyl suggested to me by Claire and Neil, a great idea for ending the clip and music!):

Silly Wizard from Alison MacPherson on Vimeo.

This animation was a lot of fun to do, but also a lot of frames to draw and colour in therefor a bit frustrating at times! I choose to do the animation completely traditionally hand-drawn and each frame coloured with pencils. (To my surprise I found working with Flash on the Hidden Stories project much less frustrating and more enjoyable than working traditionally on this project, even though it was just about as time-consuming and repetitive really. In future it may be nice to try a mix of traditional and digital - drawing a sketched animation on the lightbox, then drawing over it in Flash, that way possibly getting less 'digital' and more fluid looking animation. This would take more time of course, but something to experiment with at some point anyway!). Overall however, I am glad I chose to create the animation in this traditional style; I think it suits the music and it was a good opportunity to use this very traditional style due to the shortness of the animation. This was also my first time using the Rostrum cameras, so that was good. There was quite a bit of trial and error when using the Rostrums and putting the film together, but that was also good - I have learned from it thankfully!

The animation has turned out pretty much how I had hoped. I really enjoyed trying to get the music and the animation working together, and I think that wasn't as difficult as it originally looked, it just took an initial idea of where the beat was in the music and some editing afterwards. 

I would have maybe liked more of the dancing wizard, but that would have meant much more work. But I think it still sort of works as the film is meant to be a 'sting', so short and snappy. I also would like to have added more frames to when my wizard character enters the film - he sort of flies on to the screen at the moment! 

Overall, I found this was another enjoyable project.

~

Also - some awesome news:

Birnam CD, producer of the "Live Again" album that I used in the animation and run by one of the band members of Silly Wizard, has mentioned my animation on their Facebook page, so check it out! > https://www.facebook.com/BirnamCD?hc_location=stream

Filmhouse Stings - Silly Wizard

My animation for the Filmhouse Stings is going to be about the folk/traditional music band 'Silly Wizard'. The band were Edinburgh-based and I had heard that one of their members attended ECA (although when I researched this, I found out this member only attended art college for a year!). As one of my favourite bands and a pretty influential Scottish traditional band, I thought I would do my animation about them. I realise that Silly Wizard are an older and less well known band for some, not everybody will know of them. But maybe my animation may get some people interested in the band - who knows! It may also  be an interesting fact enough that the band are called Silly Wizard in the first place. That is such a cool and unusual name, I thought that could be fun to work with in an animation!

Research and development:

I had decided early on to do my animation on Silly Wizard, as this was something I was personally interested in. But I also did some more research into ECA music connections and emailed a few people suggested to me by Claire and Jared. From these people I received a lot more interesting information about bands from ECA and bands who had performed in the Wee Red Bar. There were so many great stories - so it's a shame I won't really use them, but it was fascinating, and something to remember for another time!

Settled on Silly Wizard, one of the first things I did was get in touch with the band itself, via their website, to ask if I could use their music in the animation. I wasn't sure if this would be possible, but I  it would be worth a shot, and brilliantly they got back to me and I was indeed granted permission to use some of their music! I listened through many possible tunes, and settled on a fast reel that would be fun to animate too (the first tune in this set, and this can give you a taster of what Silly Wizard sound like if you do not know of them):



Here are some Silly Wizard-ness that inspired me:

I loved the bands fiddle-playing-kilted-wizard character, so I wanted to include this in the animation. I made a few sketches of this character first:

I choose a particular tune that is fast and fun, and started to plan my animation. I wanted the animation to match the music - so rather than having a narrative in this film, I wanted to make the short film a combination between visuals and music, which would be something fun to try and experiment with. I drew up a sort of storyboard idea very quickly:

After advice from Claire, I decided to leave out the musicians with their fiddles and accordions etc, and simply have the dancing wizard and the flowing-animated music bar idea. I think this was a good idea, as it is allowing me to focus on the dancing wizard and making that animation work well.

I then sketched up the storyboards again, a bit more polished, on photoshop. These I brought into Adobe Premier and made an animatic. This was to help me with the timing of the animation with the music particularly - I want the beats of the music to match my wizard-characters movement, so in the final it looks indeed like he is dancing to the music!



To help me further with timing the wizards movement to the music, Claire printed me some dope sheets. I had never worked with a dope sheet before, so this was good and something new. They were a great help with giving me a basic idea of where the beat would be and the characters action - how many frames were needed for each piece of action eg, his dancing, when the character's feet land on the ground. I didn't use the dope sheet strictly, and was more flexible with my drawn frames, but the original plan I laid with the sheet gave me something to work by and base my animating on.


Starting the animation:

The animation I started with was the Silly Wizard title, where I drew on the one sheet and captured the motion with the Rostrum camera. I was hoping with this to have an effect like the title "Silly Wizard" was being written and revealed as the music starts playing. This was a fun experiment, my first time using the Rostrum, and I am pretty pleased with the turnout.

Next I started to animating the dancing wizard - this was going to be a challenge! I consulted William's again in 'The Animators Survival Kit', as well as Muybridge's book on 'The Human Figure in Motion'. I wanted my character to be dancing a bit like a Highland dancer, with lots of bouncing around and movement. So I also watched some videos of Highland dancers to get an idea of the movement, eg:


I drew up what looks like a complicated drawing of how the movement should pan out (I shall mention this is the same character drawn over and over as he moves across the scene, not an army of dancers as some people thought!). I really wanted to get the kilt right also, and have it flowing along with the dancing. The wizard is also dancing on top of a music bar. I wanted the overall animation here to be very lively and flowing, like the music, but still in time with the beat!

I started the animation with a sketch, traced form my original plan, with more frames and detail added. This allowed me to play around with the movement and test it with the music, before inking the final frames.



I would like my finished animation to have a traditional, hand-drawn feel to it - to match the traditional, acoustic music. So I also plan on, time permitting, colouring in the frames with coloured pencils. My original inspiration for this came from the beautiful hand-drawn animation in the animated version of "The Snowman" (and most recently "The Snowman and the Snowdog", or the Irn Bru advert of course which is particularly Scottish and not to mention completely awesome). Of course my animation will not be to this detail or as amazing looking, but that was the style in mind when I decided to create and colour my animation traditionally rather than digitally...

Hidden Stories: Finished Film Reflection

Now that the animation is at last complete I have time to write a bit about it!
So - here I have written about my work process and my thoughts, as well as what I think was successful about the film, what was not so, and what I have learned from this project overall. (I've also added some screen-caps from the final film - just so you know what I am referring too in the text. For a synopsis of the story, just in case you have forgotten, check back to my post with the animatic!)


The most challenging scenes first...

Once the storyboard and animatic were done and it was time to start animating, I was advised to tackle some of the more challenging and experimental scenes first. This was definitely a good idea as it gave me plenty of time at the start to experiment and get those scenes right, rather than rushing them at the end when I was eager to finish. They were also some of the most fun scenes to animate...

The first scene I tackled was the "war" scene - the dreamy, peaceful flashback that is interrupted destructively by the war literally marching over the hill. For this I tried something new to me; a mix of Adobe Photoshop and Flash animation together. I wanted to create a fiery glow that would look menacing and very bold against the greyscale scene, so for this I used tools available in Photoshop (and not in Flash) to create an orange/red hue, as well as plumes of smoke. I then brought this into Flash and animated on top of these scenes with a shadow of artillery and aircraft.
This created a look I had been hoping for luckily, so I feel this was a successful scene, and I gained from practicing more with Photoshop animation and combining the programs.

The next most challenging scene was the horse's walk cycle. I looked at Muybridge's photographs and a useful illustration from a book about horses:

I watched lots of videos of horses walking - slow motion videos were especially helpful! This then gave me more of an idea of the actual motion and the animal itself.

I wanted to express the breed of horse too; the horse in my story is a heavy farm horse. When the hooves hit the ground the animation needed to emphasis the weight of the horse and he should not move too quickly or swiftly. I am pleased with the horse walking scene, but I don't think you can really get a strong idea of the weight and character of the horse from this animation unfortunately. The scene was just too short, and looking back, I wish I had made this scene longer. Saying that however, this is probably the scene with the most frames in it and took a long time to complete!

The Flashback Scene:

When I decided to use Flash, I knew that the animation would be in colour and I wanted the flashback to be in black and white. The main reason - this would clearly define the present and the past/memory. Another reason is because this would give the memory an 'old/in the past' feel to it, like an old B&W war film or the photographs you would associate with WWII (such as those in the image below, again from a book on horses).

So to colour the scenes in black and white was again a new experiment! I looked briefly to B&W films, and in particular at the new Disney short 'Paperman'  - for the tonal contrasts and shades particularly.

When looking at Paperman, I was also inspired by the line used in the character's designs. The character's outlines are often broken and spaced which make the character look much more alive and moving. I tried to incorporate this style of line in my animation as well, particularly as I was using Flash and this would maybe help give the animation more of a 'natural' hand-drawn flow rather than a digital look. Although I do not think it is very obvious in my finished animation, I did try to incorporate this more sketch-like style when drawing the frames, or at least it was in my mind when I was drawing them!

My animation process and bringing the film together:

So, all the animation was made in Flash..

1. I started with a quick sketch in Flash to get the movement I wanted, then on a new layer drew neater frames over the top (deleting the underlying sketch later). This took a little more time but the sketch could be drawn up very quickly and was very helpful! 
2. Once all the outlines were done I coloured in all the scenes then added the backgrounds which I painted in Photoshop and brought into Flash. 
3. When the animation was finally done, I pulled all the scenes together into 4 "acts" which I made into Flash movies. These 4 Acts I brought into Adobe Premiere Pro and put them together with sound, music and credits (and some effects added, such as camera panning) and made it into the final, finished film. Using Premiere Pro to this extent was something new to me. It allowed me to put into practice the information I had learned from the technical tutorials we had. There was quite a bit of trial and error till I got the film working and got a good quality movie file in the appropriate format! But it was a great learning process and I now understand Premiere Pro much better.

Adding the music and sounds was fun also, as I could play around with where and which sound effects to put in and what music would suit which scenes. I had originally wanted to add sound affects such as foot prints and horse hooves, but I didn't think this really worked without a larger range of sound effects as well, it just sounded a bit odd. With more time (if I had thought about sound effects earlier on in the project!) I could have made my own sound effects that may have been more suitable. 

So instead I just used music as the overall sound in the film (from Kevin MacLeod's website, incompetech.com), and had 'war' sounds for the war scenes which worked well as it interrupted the music and stood out as the only sort of sound effect in the film. 

Early on in the project I decided to have radio broadcasts from WWII in the background to help set the scene. So I have some brief radio clips at the very start, which I think worked well also. The website 'Internet Archive' was suggested to me for this; so I listened to quite a few Churchill speeches and broadcasts then tried out various ones with the animation till I found two that suited the film best.

So - what went well and not so well? And what would I change or add to the animation? 

• Overall I am pleased with the look of the animation. The style was realistic enough for my liking but not too difficult to draw up quickly. I'm glad I choose to use Adobe Flash, as it meant I could colour the scenes and make the flashback B&W and put in backgrounds easily and relatively quickly (I think using Flash overall was slightly quicker than doing the animation traditionally hand-drawn). It was also good to experiment and practice a bit more with Flash - as I have not used it for a few years. With more time I would have liked to have gone back and put more frames into some of the scenes to make the movement flow better, and to extend the animation overall and have less pauses on still frames. Flash can look a little less smooth and natural to traditional animation I think, but I think it is just a matter of how much time you put in and how many frames you draw. 
• I am most happy with the animation of the horse; the horse was interesting and fun to animate. I am probably least happy with my human character's animation due to his facial appearance being not particularly constant and quite variable throughout the film. I found it difficult to maintain a constant facial appearance. The flashback was the first part of the film I animated, and I think you can see that the human character's appearance is quite changeable unfortunately. The closest animation to my original idea and sketches for the PoW is the opening scene. While animating I drew up more sketches of this character (image below) to help me achieve a more constant appearance while animating, and this helped, but I should have drawn more sketches like this before animating and spent time earlier on getting a stronger understanding of how my character should look. Saying that, I also wished I had done a little more work on their clothing. Other than the German uniform, I did little research into clothing of the time- and it would have just been nice to have given the child and the soldier's flashback-self a more detailed, historically correct attire.

• I am happy with the transition scene into the flashback/memory, although like I said earlier, I wish I had made the horse's walk a little longer. Overall, the flashback is my favourite part, as it was the most fun to create and experiment with. Again, with more time, I would love to add a bit more detail to the war scene!
• If I had more time again I would also liked to have added some one-tonal shading to some of the scenes - not all of them, possibly the flashback, or the scenes where the soldier is sitting under the tree. This would have added some extra form to the character in these certain scenes, and just a bit more interest and variety to the animation. 
• I also rushed the backgrounds in the last scene a bit, so I would have liked to have developed them and made them a bit nicer and more of a finished location. (The location is a street, as the soldier leaves the PoW camp, and in the background in the green area is the camp he has just left - but I don't think that is obvious!) This was one of the things I left till quite late, which I now realise was a mistake. I think I should have created the backgrounds closer to the beginning, so I could create exactly the locations I wanted, and then I would have more of a sense of place for putting my characters into the locations as well. 

What have I learned from this project?

• Timing! I have learnt much about timing myself and how long things take to make. We had to think about many more things on this project other than the animation also, eg - a decent narrative, storyboards, sound, music, backgrounds, putting everything together - and it all needs a sufficient amount of time. I was quite organised and set myself deadlines but really had no idea of how long things would actually take to do and of course it always took much longer than I expected. Meeting the original deadline would have been a bit of a struggle! I now have a better idea of timing and how long everything takes to do. It's easy to fall into the trap of thinking you have loads of time ahead of you then it quickly passes by!! So hopefully I will know better for next time, how long I should dedicate to each aspect of the film.
• Like I have mentioned already, I learnt much more about the Adobe programs Flash and Premiere Pro (and Photoshop animation, which I had not really tried before).
• I learnt a lot about storyboarding also thanks to the handy post-it-notes and advice! I found the post-it-notes brilliant for the storyboarding, and I could stick them on my wall and change them about. I also scrapped a lot in the storyboarding stage and changed the ending of the story about 3 or 4 times!

Overall I have definitely learnt a huge amount over the course of this project, that I will then apply to future projects, whether my animation was successful or not. Of course it was not without stress and frustration, but in general I found it a lot of fun and enjoyed every stage of creating the film from the initial story research to the pre-production. There are loads of things I would love to add to it and improve on (especially now after the Mark Andrews lecture and his tips on visual storytelling - I am now eager to experiment with this new knowledge and apply it to my work!!), but overall I am quite happy with the result, and am satisfied with what I have learnt from this project. It was worth the time and effort definitely! 

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I also just realised that, strangely, I never actually posted an image of the toy horse the film is based on. So here it is! It was really great to make a film about an actual object - it made making the film that little bit more interesting I think, and now I have become quite attached to this toy... 

~

Here is my finished animation - I think it is probably ok to let you all see it now! The password to watch the video is "clash":

https://vimeo.com/64105838

Hidden Stories: Development

Development sketches for the Hidden Stories animation:

I sketched a lot while developing the story and the storyboards. This helped me to get an idea of what the scenes may look like in the film and identified what the challenges would be. 

I wanted the end of the story to be about 'letting go', and I went though various different endings:

 At the very beginning I wanted to show my PoW character as an older man living in Edinburgh still, and he gives the toy to his grandchild. But this would not have worked for various reasons - one of which being that that would involve too much confusing time travel in the final film. In the image below you can see some of my discarded storyboards, and another idea I had where the PoW had left the camp and was sitting in Princes Street Gardens (although this again left a lot of unanswered questions and wouldn't have been particularly historically accurate). So the ending I  finally decided on is the PoW being taken from the camp either to be transported to another place or back to Germany, and that is when he sees the child and gives her the horse. I have really enjoyed playing around with the story however, and trying out different paths the story could go down.

The image below is a very early storyboard; as you can see, some aspects have stayed the same and are in my final storyboards, but some aspects have defiantly changed. Using the post-it-notes for storyboarding really allowed me to play around with the story and scenes more.

Character design sketches:

Inspirations and Research:

Again going back to the early stages of development; I briefly researched into things like what WW2 German soldiers looked like (their uniforms), and some of their experiences in British PoW camps. I was also inspired by my parents story of a real life person who was one of our old neighbors, who had been a German PoW in Scotland and decided to stay here.

Above: German soldier with a dog

Below: German PoWs, working in Britain

I also thought of a book I have back home called "War Boy" by the illustrator Michael Foreman.  Searching for examples of "War Boy", I came across another book of his called "War Game" - and it looks like this book has been made into an animation as well.  I have always liked Foreman's work, and if I had the time I would have liked to have maybe made my animation in a similar style and with a hint of watercolors like his illustrations.

Lastly, I probably can't get away without mentioning "War Horse" as well (the original book also illustrated by Foreman!). Although it has not influenced me directly, after working on my story a bit I could see there was a slight resemblance... 

Anyway - it's now time for some intensive animating!