Scripts Scripts Scripts

Today I got more feedback from my screipt idea, the problem was I had no clear resolution for the characters, I have the new emplyee, the old lady and the supervisor, the conflict is between the old lady and the Trainee- Sam, the trainees afraid of serving the old lady and  beause of all the the items he thinks she has.

INT.

Clothes Shop, Mid day

Opening shot:

Its Sam’s first day as a sales assistant and after two weeks training Sam is finally ready to behind Customer Service. Sam is being monitored by his supervisor on the opposite side of the till bank. Sam is really nervous as this is the first job he’s ever had.   

*description, a till bank, three tills with a counter a sign above , three rows of clothing rails either side a phone and few rails behind the counter. 

Cut to:

Mid shot: Sam has a large namebadge pinned to chest with his name in big capital letters; underneath his name it reads “TRAINEE”. Sam is stood tense and upright with a huge smile on his face. He takes a deep breath trying to calm his nerves, adjusts his badge.

Cut to:

Over the shoulder shot of Sam: in the distance we can see an OLD LADY struggling with a heavy bag. The shopping bag is really big, a little bigger than her, square and full of clothes.

 Cut to:

Close up: Sam looks out from behind the counter, his face lights up a little in excitement as his begins to imagine what his first customer would be like. He imagines greeting the customer with happy smile, then imagines the old lady empting the huge bag of clothes she’s carrying all over the counter to return to the shop.

The smile on Sam’s face swiftly drops.

Cut to:

Mid shot: (of Sam) Sam looks around for something to do quick so he doesn’t have to serve the OLD LADY, He turns left and calls out to his supervisor in the corner, waving his arms around to grab her attention. The Supervisor is busy marking the list of new liners (new clothes) on the opposite side of the till bank and looks at him very displeased.

He grabs a handful of returns from the clothes rail behind him (returns: clothes customers have returned) and points to the shop floor.

The supervisor shakes her head.

Cut to:

Mid shot: Sam panics he finds a “closed” sign underneath the counter and places it on his till. He turns away and picks up the phone.

Close up: again the OLD LADY appears from behind the bag; she notices the sign and gives him an evil glare

                OLD LADY

                “Hmph”

Cut to:

Mid close up: OLD LADY, as she drops her bag and reaches into its contents. She pulls out one of the items she’s returning; 4 big pairs of white wonder bra’s and throw’s it at Sam. The bras hit Sam on the head.

 Cut to:

Mid shot: Sam drops the phone whips the bra of his head. He glares back at the OLD LADY from behind the counter; this means war!.

Moment of silence as the tension builds,

We cut to a extreme close up of Sam and the OLD LADY’s eyes parallel.

Cut to:

Extreme close up: Sam has a slight twitch on his mouth; hes nervous. Sweat starts to fall from his head.

Cut to

Long shot: a ball of plastic wrap sweeps across the room.

Cut to

Extreme Close up: OLD LADY smiles, her face is full of confidence.

Cut to

 Mid shot: Sam reaches behind him without taking his eyes off the OLD LADY; he grabs a hand full of coat hangers from the returns rail and fires three shots.

The OLD LADY dives behind the bag and uses it as a barricade, the coat hangers fly over her head. She looks back at the hangers then growls at Sam.

Cut to:

Mid- Long shot: clothes & coat hangers fly past the room as the two continue to fight. Suddenly the clothes stop.

Cut to:

Close up: Sam freezes just before throwing another coat hanger, he’s completely out of breath.

Cut to:

Long shot: another breeze knocks the OLD LADYS empty bag over; the OLD LADY is out of ammo.

Cut to:

Mid shot: Sam smiles and does a leap in the air, victory!

                *loud western spitting noise*

 Sam turns to the OLD LADY

                          

       Sam

                     “What the hell….”

Cut to:

P.O.V Sam: OLD LADY has hold of her dentures; she grinds with a wicked smile, and takes one final big shot at Sam. The teeth hit the camera full pelt as a flash of stars explode from the centre of the screen.

CUT TO BLACK    

Summary

Reflection time, I'm going to use this post to reflect on the flaws and the areas I seriously need to improve upon. The major project is coming up now and I don't want to be making anymore big mistakes.


The 11 seconds club I don't feel has been a successful piece at all, the quality has turned out really bad due to problems importing and exsporting files, the animation has flaws exspecially in the pauses the character stops dead which is a big nono for animation. I needs alot more work in the timing to, I think im progressing alot but I need to concentrate more when working, renember, animation is concentration and this is something im lacking in alot.
I want to work more on this animated piece so I'm going to ask if i can re render the fil for the exspotees exabition, alot of people form the industry are coming and I want to make the best impression I can with my work.

 The first issue I need to address is my rendering, this is an important foundation of the Harshali showed me the basics I could use in Maya and I was able to pick up alot from working with her in a short space of time. I will be spending the next few weeks of the project learning more of the basics of Maya. I learnt its really essential for me to have an idea and stick to it, plan the poses and the timing before I touch the computer. I know alot of other animators can move straight onto the poseing, but as an individual I feel as though I'd benefit alot more from planning and being clear about my idea.

I have to stay focused on my idea at all times and try not to overthink things causing more problems than nessesary.

WIP 11 sec club character profiles

Disaster today at this weeks feedback session. My scene I've build for the Time Machine idea doesn't quite get the idea across to the audience as clear as it should, I thought perhaps the giant clock spinning in reverse may give it away, but after I'd shown the idea to Penny for the first time she had no idea what was going on. I think the biggest problem might have been that the animation was too fast, so the audience doesn't quite get the chance to absorb whats going on in the scene. I was hoping the door opening would give the idea that the two characters were in a machine, and the large clock

So I've been researching a few ideas under the theme. And came up with with two character profiles to refine the idea:

The Inventor

Name: Mrs Crawley

Age: 25

Power centre: lower abdomen

A over ambitious apprentice scientist who’s always bursting with bright colourful ideas. She loves to tinker with gadgets, build new things and be creative as she can be. Problem is her ideas are usually associated with her unusal obsession for cute animals and stuffed toys.

Personality (strienghs/weaknesses)

Mrs Crawley is a very creative, over-sensitive person. Her mood can sometimes switch from overexcited and hyper to really upset and depressed, but never angry. Most of the time she’l be jumping aaround in excitement over a new invention or talking to herself. She genuinely takes everything to heart.

Ambitions

Mrs Crawley wants to graduate from being an intern, and have the opportunity to work with her supiroior Mary, building huge sophsipicated machinery.

Rythem

 rapid, continuous but can switch to super slow, and mellow

Animal

Dog

The Professor

Name: Mary Finningan

Age: 68

Powe senter: upper chest

Experienced and over qualified Professor, Mrs Finningan has been has seen it all. She is the head of the the high tech gadgets and new robots department for the company. Even though it is her job to teach the interns, she cares little for other people and has become quite self obsessed over the years, although she does enjoy the occasional gloat.

Personality

Posh snobby and very professional. She is also well groomed, she takes pride in her appearance making sure her hair is tied up in place and all suited up.

Ambitions

To be recognised by the world for her talents and awarded by other members of staff. She aims to remind everybody who the professionals are.

Rhythm

Slow, but very intimidating and big.

Animal

Siamese Cat

Mime Critical analysis

As most animations start we began with developing ideas for the brief. As a group we were looking for a different approach to the mime piece, we knew it had to be some sort of audition, so started thinking of the different kinds of auditions there are. One section of the brief had already been decided, the mimes had to perform in order to pass the audition, but the mimes also had to have personalities, quirks, traits, which show as part of the animation. I think this was the most challenging part of the brief, and I feel as though I it helped me develop the most in coming up with ideas quickly and effectively.

So as a group we had a think about the sort of auditions the mimes the mimes could be performing for. We need a reason for the mimes to be performing, something we could include personality with which would work together. Originally I was thinking of just a mime audition for mime of the year or mime factor, like a live reality show audition, but I’m really happy we when in almost the opposite direction. I think it was Harshali who first suggested the love interest, which for me give a different outlook on the situation of the mimes. We stuck to this idea and developed it further rather than developing more ideas as I think it was quite a solid idea and we could build up the scene and the characters from this situation. The idea became three guys competing for the love interest of a girl; a more traditional approach which I think we found was different to the other group’s ideas.

We had the first pitch, which I think the response was quite positive. I think the idea had quite a clear narrative and we were already able to formulate ideas for the personalities of the character. The challenge was incorporating a mime act into the narrative without being too obscure. Some of the other groups had two to three ideas for the mime act and I think if I’d spoken out a more we could have developed two ideas, however I also think that we would eventually have decided on the same idea.

Next stage, I began suggesting characters we could design, and decided on three characters with contrasting designs.  We decided a really big mime, then a really small mime and the final mime which was just right.

Originally, I had the idea of creating a really young mime (about 10/12 years old) he’d be the youngest of the three to contrast with the other two characters, as a group, we wanted to play with this  too young for the girl and really short, contrasting with the much larger, older mime.  After researching the characters personality I came across a big problem with this character if we looked at this character from an acting perspective, we would ask the question why would he want to impress her? So with a few tweaks I redesigned him a little older, t suited the narrative a lot more effectively

In my animation I was trying to accomplish a fast beat and quick movements, like the traditional MGM cartoons of the 1960’s (in colour). I looked at Hanna Barbara, and the animation used for its stylised 1960’s animation (The Jetsons, The Flinstones, original retro cartoons) a process called “Limited animation” came from the same watching the Fred Quimby series of Tom and Jerry, we decided early on this was the style we wanted to aim for in our animation.

   

I really liked this idea, I thought we could possibly try if we had more time tried different approaches and been more creative with the brief.  The idea had a strong narrative (as I’ve said a few times) and with it, we could have perhaps added a little diversity. I noticed everybody used a male mime for the audition, I think I could of used perhaps, a female mime if we were trying to make our idea different. However I do think the idea works really well with the male characters and developing the personalities has created a nice a contrast rather than having just three individual characters.

The Team

I really enjoyed working as a team for this project, it was such an experience for me, I felt much more motivated in a group than working alone as I had the chance to bounce ideas and thoughts with other team members.

Harshali has industry experience and with working with her on a project even though it was university assignment, I felt like I actually gained experience working in the animation field. I was able to ask her about the program and learn so much in such a short time. We had the production assets (the scene, render set up) thanks to her abilities and I really hope I contributed to the team by visualising the assets and designs for the set.

I am grateful I’ve the chance to work as a group in a project and think I’m quite lucky to be paired up two individuals who already had experience in Maya.  

Strong points:

In my opinion I think the strongest point is how we have developed the characters. We have the trio, the three musketeers and the three comrades together as friends. We used the same rig and communicated with the character designs regularly which the result was three contrasting characters with a narrative happening in the scene. The narrative being the three mimes trying to compete to impress the girl and last mime being successful). The mimes also had personalities to contrast one another, Andrew the older, sweet, mime, Jake who contrasts as the younger, arrogant mime and Bob, tall, dark and handsome, the ideal mime. The highlight of this project for me was when the tutor Siobhan had a first look at our characters and said “oo, there like a family” (I’m sad I know) but for me it felt like the characters really came together.

The introduction scene and the scene with mine and Harshali’s mimes together for me work really well, I’m so glad we decided to these scenes even if we cannot use them in the end. I’ve learnt a lot about how difficult this can be, some of the issue that can go wrong: Key frames moving about the timeline, the time and process to re adjust the characters to interact for the sake of 2 seconds.  

As for my animated piece, I think some of the strong elements are the poses the character performs. I was looking to make the character do the same poses as a catwalk or runway model, along the lines of Baywatch (as the scene was a beach) so placing pauses in between poses to make the character appear to be striking a pose helped me a lot with the timing of the animation. I also tried a few of the poses in front of the mirror to see if they would work comfortably.

Watching the animation I think some elements of the fast, snappy timing came from the same watching the Fred Quimby series of Tom and Jerry have worked successfully, although the animation needs much more polishing, I think there is a fast beat to the overall tempo of the animation.

Weakness

There’s a lot of room for polishing in my animation, some of the poses are think are a little to exsaggerurated. There are still issues with the timing but I do think I’ve improved since the beginning of the course. Some the arcs, particular the arm arc when the mime is holding the piece of chocolate above his head, even though the animation is quite fast and he is meant to almost “whip it” out of his hand, the points I’ve key framed the wrist don’t make a natural movement

 My biggest weakness is some of technical errors and hiccups in the animation, areas such as the walk cycle at the beginning and “pops” in areas where the IK handle has been pulled too far. I really have become a lot tighter when in the polishing phase of the animation I make a lot of difference to the piece. I’ve started switching to FK in order to prevent some of the popping and it works really well for arm and leg arcs.

I struggled at the beginning of the project with getting to grips with Maya, but I’m really glad I’ve had the chance and the time in university to switch to Maya and work with such talented people in the field.  I feel I’ve learnt a lot about the in a short period of time.

Conclusion

I want to credit Harshali and congratulate her on her models featured in Dorothy of oz. I’ve feel like gained a lot of experience from her. I’ve feel as though improved so much even though I have a long way to go with my animation skills and is an experience I can take away with me and use in the industry.  

WIP mime reference secondary animation

Today I've been adding touches to the animation, I had to animate the quiff as it is quite a big part of the character design, and an essential element of secondary animation.

 I used my reference I collected from the green screen studio, (fortunately for me my hairs been growing really fast lately) and blocked out the shapes of the hair at point where Jake flips his hair back. I've adjusted the timing a little adding a full second to the flip in comparison to the reference and used a bit of exaggeration to emphasise the flip a little more. I wanted to have that old cartoony feel to it, referencing alot of the Tom and Jerry shorts of the MGM studios,  including "Salt Water Tabby". This is the style of animation the group is aiming for,       

I been referring back to my reference whilst adjusting the timing, I still think the timing doesn't feel quite right for the character and i think I've worked out why.
Quick recap, going back to the beginning when we designed the characters during the planning stage, we decided on three characters with contrasting designs. We wanted a really big mime, then a really small mime and the final character which was just right, I have the smallest mime. What I didn't realise was the difference in timing between actions by small and tall people, I'm quite tall (6ft) and Id been using myself as reference for the mimes actions such as the jump and moving across the wall. But the character is much smaller in size (I think he would be around 5ft 5?), he arms and legs are a bit shorter, so I thought I needed smaller person to do the action for me.
 Lucky for me I had Rachael who was just the right size for job, we did a reference shot of the mime actions in the glass windows of the labs.





I watched the playback of the two together and I could see a slight difference in the of the moves, for example when she's moving along the wall, her actions are little more snappy and faster. Her jumping is alot faster and has a "spring" to it, something I could add to the mime performance to make the actions more believable and less floaty.  Rachael's poses were also a little different to mine because of the physical build

WIP Clean up playblast mime

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODhfP9Nt7xI

Clean Up list

00:03: adjust the motion of the right hand – too slow/ add an arc

00:04: Jake pops into walk cycle, need a few key frames and slow down the walk slightly

00:16: right hand flips out needs closer

00:15: flips a little to fast

00:19-00:20 : left hand moves down too fast

00:20 – 00:27: shoulders are too rigid, they need more dimension in the movement, some micro anticipation

00:28:Jake's left hand/arm moves too far back, it needs bringing forward

00:02: push isn’t clear, it needs less time more impact and it looks to floaty for the character

00:40: arm vector moves around too much, it needs holding in one place.

00:39-00:41: body pops out when looking to the right, i needs a pause in between the looking over shoulder.

00:50-00:53: poses are a little obscure, need retouching to be more believable, although it does work with the timing. Right hand pose is unnatural, needs to be put into right pose.

WIP 11 seconds club

I've been working on the block sequience of the 11 seconds club dialog, I had a mix up with ideas and tried a few different poses for different actions the characters Mrs Crawley and the profession could perform.

 Outline:The Mrs Crawley is trying to invent the time machine and it seems to be working this time, so she begins really excited on high tension. She goes from happy to sad when she relises shes failed again, but this time the Professor gives up and leaves the time machine.

I wanted to make mrs Crawley looks alot smaller than the professor, so I kept her the body posture quite close together and i''ve planned to keep her timing a little snappy and  in high tension to reflect personality. I think her character will be easy to empathise as we all been in this kind of situation where you try your hardest but still don't succeed. The professor's personality is much more confident, she is a powerful character so her gestures are alot more relaxed, stood upstraight and open.

I used the reference of Rachael & Rachael's performance to plan out the staging of the animation, I think I went a little overbaord with the idea so I have to make sure the concept (the time machine) is clear to the audience but doesnt overpower the animation. To do this i picked out ideas from old classics such as "Back to the future" and "H.G wells The Time machine",  we also have the Tardis, Stargate and more recently the hot tub time machine (thanks to Rachaels post). after generating ideas I made a few sketches and i came up with these final designs for the staging of the characters and the enviroment:

The light grey shaded shapes are the two characters
Darker shades are clocks
Square blocks in the background are machinery, buttons,

Final idea:

Two characters are stood side by side with a large clock in the middle Other blocks of machinery can be seen side by side.

   

Here I'm using the clock almost as a character for the time machine. I think positioning the characters like this shows most clearly to the audience the three most important elements of the animation, Mrs Crawley (right) The Professor (left) and the clock, (middle). The clock takes up the most area so it should be static and become part of the background during the performance of the two characters.