Finished result and final thoughts

Here is a low quality version of the final Guinness Animation which we decided to call "The Catch".

HD Resolution - http://vimeo.com/38564523

Overall I think the animation turned out ok but it could have done with a lot done towards it. I thought the animation looks a bit choppy and the reason for this was because most of the shots were under animated. The final presentation looks quite amature and unprofessional also, but the film grain helps disguise this.

On the animated sequences that I did, in my opinion they turned out fine, although the fishing shot could have done with a few more drawings to express the weight on the rod.

The part that I hate most about the animation, is the end animated handwriting sequence; it looks messy and unprofessional, plus the hand writing style is hard to read.

In my oppinion, even though I have spent many hours on this project, I feel that my colaborative efforts have been fairly poor.

I spent so long animating the fishing scene I missed out on contributing to the other scenes, which I feel the others did alot between them than I did. In my defence I think I had the hardest scene to animate due to the length of it and the idea we wanted to express.

In the end though I think I did sort of make up the hours during the last scene and the editing process.

Colabrotive Editing

The next day after we had all the scenes cleaned up and exported, we needed to edit them all together.

While Chris did this process I sat next to him to suggest what to do. Infact I think I came up with the idea to apply the old film grain effect, the reason for this is because the animation looked too clean for the style we were going for, plus we had no colour so we had to add some sort of variation to it.

We also needed to find some background music for our animation,. So I had a look on newgrounds.com and picked a few. We then played these, while syncing it with the animation to see if they would suit it. In the end I found an Irish music style and that worked perfectly as the product we were working for was also Irish.

One last sequence to do!

We always had the idea of showing the final celebrations as a camera shot, and we wanted to show the competition slogan at the end.

I suggested that we show the slogan like how you would do when you sign a post card or write a caption on the back of a picture.

I offered to do the sequence where the handwriting would be animated. This took me all night and the basic process of doing it was writing each word separately on a graphics tablet while recording the screen. I then saved these as .png sequences and imported them into the final shot with Adobe After Effects.

Just doing this took me nearly all day and it wasn't till later that I realised this could have been done by a much simpler process using the scribble function in the software.

Helping out in the post process

The next step that was done was loading the scanned drawings into Toonboom to clean them up and see the animation come to life!

While most of the drawings didn't need much cleaning up as the inking process takes out the need to do this, there was one sequence which Craig did, where the lines were so thick they couldn't be inked, which meant we had to manually clean these images on the programme.

This part took quite alot of work and as Chris had done most of the other scenes, I offered to do this one so he could take a break.

Inking and Scanning : I felt like a robot...

The next day after I had finished all of my scenes they had to be inked so they could be captured clearly by the scanners. I had over 50 separate drawings to do, and this required going over all the lines all over again. Even though I asked Craig if he would help me it still took us most of the day to complete.

For the scanning process we made it easy on ourselves by getting into a rhythm because Craig unloaded the scanner, and I loaded the next drawing and pressed scan button.

Dog scene is finished

I finished the dog scene and it was quite straight forward, it was completed in 2 days with taking breaks in between.

The process was quite easy, since I created a template of the dog shape, and was able to move that into position under each new frame, then it was a simple task of tracing over the template, while tweaking certain feature like ears, fur, wrinkles and the eyes.

I was originally asked to only draw 6 frames, but i decided it would be best to draw 9 as i could achieve action i wanted the dog to do.

This is the final line test for scene 11.

Another scene to animate... Yeah!

After finally completing scene 5, I asked if their were any more scenes to animate, and out of the three left, I picked the close up side view of the dog pulling on one of our character's jacket.

The reason I picked this scene is because it seemed easy to animate and shouldn't be too stressful worrying about weight.

Here are the two key frames I was given to work with.

In the original key frames there was no foot included, so I suggested that I would add the feet to make the pulling action more believable and to read what part of the character the dog is pulling.

Finally the scene is finished!

Over the weekend I really got motivated to finishing my 4 second scene, and I think it hasn't turned out too bad considering i couldn't test it on a line tester as I were progressing through each drawing.

The only criticism i would give to it though is the bend of the rod doesn't look right and seems to make the rod change size through the animation, I would also comment that the part where the rod is pulled back towards the water doesn't seem like there is enough weight on the character as he seems to pivot back to a straight position.

Here is the final line test for scene five.

Three weeks later... still animating!

Its three weeks later and I'm still animating the same scene, while the others have already done two or three of their own scenes each. 

I do feel kind of guilty and frustrated that I haven't been able to contribute to some other scenes, however the scene I have been doing is close to 4 seconds long. 

I think the reason it is taking a long time is because I had a lot of frames to draw, plus I had to get the right balance between the bend of the rod and the pose of the character to make the weight that he is pulling believable. 

Time to start animating!

Today I started drawing the in-between frames for the scene I have chosen to do.

I would say its took me around 5-6 hours so far, and I have done around 13 drawings.

I feel this scene takes much longer to complete as the character really needs to look like he is struggling, and the weight balance between the rod bending and the characters pose needs to look convincing.

Breaking Down key frames

On Thursday 23rd Febuary we finally started to get to work on actually animating. Each of us chose a scene that we wanted to do and started breaking down key frames so the in-betweens could be added in afterwards.

I chose the scene where the main character gets a bite, and he starts to struggle to reel the fish in.

The key frames took me around 4 hours to complete, partly because it was the first time drawing the characters and I had to get the scale right.

Character gets a bite on his fishing rod

Anticipation of leaning forward ready to pull back

Halfway stage of pulling the fishing rod back

Exaggeration of the fishing rod bending and the character pose pulling back

Fishing rod pulls forward and character tries to fight against it

The Animatic

Here is the revised animatic for our chosen story. 

Hopefully the idea we are trying to communicate can be read clearly.

I spent a few hours on this animatic collaborating with the team the order scenes should be played out, in order to get the continuity right and making sure the narrative can be read clearly.

Getting the sounds...

Today we spent 4 hours in a professional sound recording room to get various sounds for the animatic, which would eventually also be used for the animation. We had to bring in a range of props such as fishing reel, bottled water, empty drinks can, etc.

I would say my role would be more directing than actually recording my self, although I did bring in my own prop. 

I also took photographs while inside the sound recording room.

Later on we started adding the sounds to the animatic.

Character Designs

We all decided to do some quick character designs for the extra's that will be in the animation. We had the idea  to create a fun looking character that is simple to draw and has a square head looking, Lego shaped head. 

Here is my version of the designs.

A second Storyboard

Over the weekend I didn't manage to create some character designs, however I have made another storyboard to illustrate the new idea for the Guinness Brief.

This took me around 3 hours to complete.

The Idea is that the character is on a quiet fishing trip, he accidentally knocks his can into the water. Then all of a sudden he gets a bite on his line. He tries to pull on his rod to catch the fish, but then starts to struggle. Over time his mates join in the fighting struggle to reel the fish in. Finally the tension breaks loose and they fall over. A few moments later they start to celebrate they have caught an extremely giant fish! 

Change of Plan!

After a group decision we decided to change the idea all together as it didn't fit the brief what Guinness were asking for.

I spoke to Simon today and he showed me a storyboard of the new idea about a fisherman.

Over the weekend I'm going to create some fisherman character designs, and possibly create my own storyboard for the new idea.

Planning Stage

We finally came up with a draft idea for the Guinness brief, but we all had our own interpretation on how the story would be presented, so we each drew a basic story board.

This is my draft storyboard which took me approximately 2 hours.

The next day we all showed each other our version of storyboards and we all had basically the same perspective of the idea.

The Guinness Brief

Here is a screenshot of part of the presentation we did to present to our other peers what briefs we were interested to work on. 

This is the Guinness Brief compacted down to provide only the relevant information.

Introduction

As part of my second year in Animation, I have chosen to do a Collaboration Module.

I'm current working with Simon Legeckis, Craig Booth and Chris Benn. The brief we have chosen to complete is the Guinness Brief. Together we have decided to create an animation for this brief about an uplifting story that makes people smile out of an ordinary moment with friends.