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Term 3
Final major project
Date:
Progress report
The story;
idea and narrative creation.
__ April 2021
Before developing the story and concept itself, I decided to start with narrative as a starting point. After that, according to the plan, it was necessary to invent the story itself and the characters. (Although sometimes it's easier for me to create a story based on the characters I have made.)
The first idea was about how different people are and how we learn from our loved ones and complement ourselves as individuals. As a reference, I decided to take my friends, which in their nature were very different, but they constantly adopted something from each other, learned, and thanks to this, they became better in music and as a person.
Creating a story was already more difficult to come up with, so I decided to start by trying to create characters based on the appearance of my friends and their personalities. Since I used human characters in previous projects, I decided to change the vector towards animals. So I had to transfer my friends to the animal's forms.
Nevertheless, the first sketch made clear to me that it was a mistake that I am choosing this theme since even with the characters on my hands, I could not come up with a story that would reveal the narrative in 1-minute animation.
I decided to change the subject.
The next inspiration for me was the current situation in my family, where my parents and brothers saw only bad things in specific things. But I liked them—for example, working at night, drawing until my hand hurts for 10 hours non-stop, having social media to publish my arts, etc.
Now I was working on an idea, which I quickly came up with the name "Positive and Negative".
As a "negative", the image of a wolf quickly came to mind (as an image of a dangerous predator), a spider (poisonous and obviously dangerous.
And, well, also many of them are pretty disgusting to look at, and many people are afraid of them), birds of prey. And also, ravens, which are usually in the folklore of many countries, are heralds of death and misfortune. So I settled with ravens as the representation of the "negative".
Since there is a "negative" in the form of a black raven, there must have been a "positive".
I started with contradictions. The first opposition to the crow was to be colour. White, as a symbol of cleanliness, order, something pure and innocent.But I chose the animal differently in this case.
At that time, looking through the possible variations of animals, I remembered one game in which the player played as a mouse. And I liked the concept of that character, so I still remember him through time. Mice nowadays kept as pets, and if you do not consider the fact that they are pests, then in essence,
they are pretty harmless and are prey for many predators.The white mouse became the personification of "positive".
And I made the first sketch of how the characters could look.
I also tried to convey the essence of the story and the characteristics of the characters in this sketch.
Date:
Progress report
The story;
developing Chosen idea
and narrative.
20 April 2021
I continued working on the second idea. Finally, the narrative was sound like that:
"The story is about how important it is in life to look at the world from an Optimistic point of view and a Negative one."
And I outlined the story itself on the characters like this:
"In the story, Mouse (an optimist) tries to show Raven (a pessimist) how much is positive in the world; however, Raven finds something negative for any Mouse argument. But when they get in a problematic situation and helps each other to get through that, both admit each other points and the fact that they must look at everything rationally."
However, the idea was nevertheless slightly changed in the process since the topic is quite extensive, and it wasn't easy to fully reveal it in one minute and convey the very essence of the narrative in such a short animation time.
I made the first storyboard for chacing my suspicions about could this narrative work out or not.
And I have done some more drawings of the environment and how it might look like. I thought that stylisation in "this cartoon" might look good in my project.
*1
"Each person looks at things differently, something that causes exceptionally positive emotions in one, while negative feelings in the other. And it is important to understand this and pay attention to this when communicating with each person."
So now I'm going to work with this particular narrative and redoing the storyboard.
For myself, I admitted this as a failure since it was pretty difficult to grasp the essence, even if I would expand the number of panels.
The topic is too vast and complex. Moreover, it turned out to be too hard for me since time is limited, as well as my abilities as an animator and storyboarder were still not high enough for that topic.
So the narrative changed.
I also made small concepts of what the environment would look like and tried to write down all the ideas that came to mind.
Some of which I will still use in the future, for example, the idea that the shape of the characters should be as simple and easy to grasp as possible, and it also makes it easier for me to create animation.
Also, during the research of images for inspiration, I found pictures I liked with the drawings of stars and phases of the moon. So initially, I wanted to make them part of the Raven concept. But later, I decided that the stars and the night will be what Raven likes, the time of day at which everyone usually sleeps.
Date:
Progress report
Characters design.
2 may 2021
Before diving into the storyboard again, I decided to develop character design first since it will already be possible to build on external characteristics for a more accurate representation of their communication and interactions with each other.
Since I had decided earlier that it would be good to stick to a simple style, I stay with that. As a result, I found an artist who depicts ravens in a relatively simple and impressive manner.
Her crows, for the most part, like everything she paints, repels from the stain, on which she makes only tiny marks to separate the boundaries between the wings and individual feathers on the bodies of birds. Also, despite the rather colourful colours of her arts, the crows themselves always look rather gloomy.
Raven
*2
After the ink experiments, I started drawing the crow using the action line.
I tried to put it in different poses, playing a little with its wing position and drawing most of the standard emotions that in the Raven will be shown mostly by expressing its eyes and behaviour in the frame.
Also, I got near separated figures, a realistically drawn raven. Just to make sure that my drawings still look like I'm drawing a raven.
I tried using a similar shape for the eyes and tried to paint from the stain, using a brush and ink, to understand in practice how she does it.
But before that, I broke the crow's figure into its simplest forms. But I tried to adhere to the character of the "negative" given to the character so that most of the shapes are triangles, pentagons, squares, and only the eyes are the only figure in its body, which is a semicircle and give a little softness and at the same time gloom and fatigue expression.
Realistic Raven
Separated shapes
Shadow figures
For the Mouse, I used slightly different references. First of all, it would be logical to remember Mickey Mouse when talking about mice in animation. However, looking at my first sketches of a mouse, I remembered another animated series after this.
Line of Action drawings and different poses
"Redwall" - TV series came up on television in 1999 and went on until 2002 and based on the "Redwall" novels by Brian Jacques. Mice in this series play an important role, in particular, in each of the three seasons, the main character is a mouse.
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Mice
*3
I also looked at the design of mice from the game "Ghost of a Tale" as another inspiration. And specifically on the drawn versions of them, since the game is made entirely in 3D, there were elements drawn in 2D, often in the dialogue menu or small screensavers.
In the research process, I compared two art styles of my references to ensure that everything looked harmonious, and it was absolutely not. So I initially drew the Mouse in a simplified style but still trying to adhere to how mice were shown in this animated series.
*4
For the Mouse, I decided to use approximately the same method as with the Raven.
Unless in his case, I used a lot of spherical shapes, and only for his limbs, I used rhombuses and rectangles, but even with them, I tried to round off the corners so that the only sharp object in his appearance was a triangular tail.
Separated shapes
Realistic mice
Line of Action drawings and different poses
Shadow figure
Date:
Progress report
Storyboard time!
10 may 2021
The next step was to create another storyboard based on a reworked narrative, I tried to make the first version of it with 12 panels, but later I realized that I needed more than this.
But when I finished it, based on the comments of Olly and my group, I was sure that the storyboard needs improvements. So I wrote down all their advice, suggestions, ideas and also looked at my references, searching for new ideas and positions for the frame.
Date:
Progress report
Storyboard time again!
4 June 2021
I have done some more work on the storyboard and try to rework it properly at this time.
(as soon you would be home, rewrite here points which you done, or even make photo of them and stik it here)
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Click to zoom it
Date:
Progress report
animatic:
backgrounds
8 june 2021
After the storyboard was finally approved, I started developing backgrounds for the future animatic. And I did not make a final decision since my reflections on where to lead my project and in what narrative to turn my initial difficult version of the story, and the difficulties with the correct choice of frames in the storyboard.
As a result, I start creating backgrounds only now. And because while drawing, I begin to get very carried away with adding details, these drawings took quite a long time, from which it is unlikely that a full-fledged animation can be done, especially in 2 weeks. So it was decided that I'd finish my project as an animatic because I won't be able to complete animation in such a short time.
And the only problem with this is that I could not understand what exactly I wanted from my project and thought it over for too long.
I took each background (except for those that were shown on page 3 of the storyboard). I finished drawings or already edited the existing ones. After that, I could already start creating the animatic, as soon as all the backgrounds were ready, to collect everything on hand into a ready-made picture.
Date:
Progress report
animatic
20 April 2021
In the final, I combined everything, also following the advice of Virgo and Ollie, changing a few frames and adding new ones, so in the end, I had 28 panels in the storyboard.
In general, next time, it will be necessary to take an idea easier, like the one that I took in the second term, because the work would have been more accessible if I didn’t get stuck at the moment of developing an idea.
There is no sound animation here since I can't just do anything to storyboard the final animation along with sound.
bibliograhfy 1
Bibliography
SeithCG (2018) Ghost of a Tale [Video Game]. SeithCG. Available at: https://store.steampowered.com/app/417290/Ghost_of_a_Tale/
(Downloaded: October 23, 2019).
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theGorgonist, (2013) Crow Fall [Tumblr] Available at: https://thegorgonist.tumblr.com/post/67614842798/crow-fall-and-crow-consternation-finally-finished?is_related_post=1
(Accessed: 10.05.2021)
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