Background finished

Here is an already cleaned-up and coloured background, ready for when I need it when the same angle of shot is repeated.

Planed next shots

I have planned what shot I could do next, and if they have a repeated background or rigs included in them.

This will help me to avoid procrastinating and just get moving with my work.

Animation Plan

Here is my animation plan for BSA127

Currently I have completed two shots. If I finish more shots than planed, this is positive as I will be doing myself a favour.

First shot finished

 I have finished my first shot

Paper scene

I have started to animate one of my scenes for 'The Morning Rush' 

I have started with scene 25, the 'paper on face' scene.

After animating the paper, I moved onto animating Silver, plus his reaction to the paper leaving his face. After animating this, I moved onto his horrified facial expression after the paper is gone.

This is where I started to struggle a lot. I am happy with how his expression changes into the horrified face, but I can't seem to get the stretch and fling of his hair right. With this problem arising, I found it hard to stay motivated and push past this complication. Here is the unfinished scene that stumped me and brought me to a halt in animating.

Now I have animated Silver completely and I must admit, it does look better than I thought it would have turned out. However, I still await advice from my tutor when I next have class in a few days.

Face/hair setup

I have set up Silver's facial expressions, ready for me to give his reactions to different events that occur in my animation.

I have also set up Silver's basic hair structure, ready for me to animate moving. Doing this now will help me to progress my animation process faster as I do not have to repeatedly recreate the same face and structure in every different scene. This set-up is only useful if I am not rotating the head.

This is the first set-up I created:

Now I have upgraded and added in more detail involving Silver's eyes and pupils. Now they are now a lot more visible than they were before, giving Silver a lot more readable expressions.

Walking cycle

Side walk cycle main poses - basics

I have decided to start by animating the basic shapes and form of Oliver Moore's side-view walk cycle. By drawing up the main poses first, I can evaluate whether the poses suit or match the movement I want to create. Here are the 4 main poses I created for Oliver's walk cycle. Now I can move onto the next stage of animation, a clean-up.

Colour scene

I decided to finally sort out the background colours for my animation 'The Morning Rush'

After researching some ideas and references into what modern interior designs look like, I came up with the following colours for this scene:

I attempted to have the interior colours suit the character Oliver more than Silver, due to the house being owned by Oliver, not Silver. The struggle for me was to figure out how much or little colour I must add into the background to make sure the character Oliver stands out from it. I will be upgrading my line work in ToonBoom, to give the characters more foreground to have them stand out from the background.

This is just a test, I will clean-up the colours when it comes time to animating this scene. With the backgrounds, I plan to create the background separately from the actual scene in a different ToonBoom file. This is so that I can use the library tool function to drag and drop my background in where the different scenes with the same angle/shot are present.

This is the same technique I am using with Oliver's dialogue. I have already drawn up his face and every mouth/eye shape he could possibly have, so that I do not have to keep on redrawing the same features over and over.

Dialogue set-up

I have set up Oliver's Dialogue, ready for me to lip-sync his mouth to speech. Doing this now will help me to progress my animation process faster. 

Video References

I have recorded myself as reference for my animation

I will not post any of the videos I recorded as I would not want the world to see them. However, when I now go to animate, I will have a reference or idea of the overall motion that I will have my characters perform.

Stop-motion trials

Today, Rebekka and I were trialing and practicing how to create different aspects of different characters.

We created a practice skeleton for our little boy Silver (which went pretty well), and also attempted a skeleton for the sheep (which did not go so well). Not only that, but Rebekka and I were also sizing up the setting and bed for Silver's bedroom, and reached the point of painting the white base coat for Silver's bedroom walls. This was a great start for us and I look forward to the work that we will complete in the near future.

Storyboard formats

Rebekka and I have printed out our storyboard so that we can take it downstairs into the Stop-motion area where we will be our sets will be located.

This is the format that I created first. This is a good format, due to Rebekka and I being able to see the added notes and dialogue that the character will be speaking.

Final animatic

I have added and cleaned-up my animatic for the last time

This is what I have created and will now render into ToonBoom Harmony files, ready for me to animate.

Film reviews

Oscar Sharp
Sharp created BAFTA nominated short film 'The Karman Line' in 2015. Sharp then collaborated with technologist Ross Goodwin and created the world's first artificially intelligent screenwriter.

Benjamin - The Computer Screenwriter

The artificial intelligence (AI) software was created to see if any form of AI software could write screenplays/create films. This software first created 'Sunspring' in 2016.

Later that year, the software named itself Benjamin. Benjamin then created a new screenplay, with the help of David Hasselhoff, called 'It's no game' in 2017. I think that the software was given help with the screenwriting, due to the film making sense.

Now, the creators of Benjamin wanted to have it be the director of the next screenplay it wrote, so they recorded a lot of footage of the actors speaking different dialogue, different classic film scenes from the 80s, and the basics of how to compose a music sheet for Benjamin to be able to create and choose the shots for the film. Benjamin then wrote and directed the film 'Zone Out' in 2018.

The creators of Benjamin are still upgrading and improving Benjamin's software, so we are likely to see a lot more films in future which are created and directed by Benjamin.

Sunspring (2016)

There was a lot of repeating dialogue like 'I don't know' and 'I do not understand'.

It's no game (2017)

This film made a lot more sense, with a story basis that I could follow and understand. The ending of the film didn't make much sense to me and seemed to consist of random quotes mashed together. I question if this film was made purely by the software Benjamin, but I can see that there are some links to the software's randomness.

Zone Out (2018)

There was no story-line that I could follow. As such, this was a lot more recognisable as a film made by Benjamin; it was like the first film 'Sunspring'. Such a strange film, but pretty cool how it was made by an artificial intelligence software.

Stop-motion trials

Today Rebekka and I were practising and trialing different ways to create our cute little boy Silver with clay. Our first try creating a head with clay went very well, but we still have a lot of practising and trialing to do.

Armour drawing

In drawing class, my tutor gave us the task of trying to draw a character in some sort of armour.

I decided to try and draw a Japanese Samurai. I played around with different lighting effects I could use and even had time to draw up some sort of background. I am very proud of the drawing I created. Here's what I drew and coloured.