Animation 3 U1011473
Final Year Animation: The Book
For the final project for animation 3 the brief states that the animation must be 3 to 5 minutes long.
The Idea I have chosen to focus on for my animation is about different scene from several different books. Jules Vern’s 20,Thousands Leagues Under the Sea, Herman Melville’s Moby dick, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World and Isaac Asimov’s I,Robot.
The animation would start by showing a book on a table the camera would slowly get closer (zoom) to the book. The book’s cover opens and the pages begin to turn while the camera is still zooming in. Eventually it would settle on a page
The page will be a scene from 20, Thousands Leagues Under the Sea. The scene will be where the giant octopus attacks one of the crew on the submarine while it is raised at the ocean’s surface. Ones the octopus grabs the crewman with its tentacle it throws him over the pages as they being to turn again. They again settle on a page from the book I,Robot, the scene from the book where the Robot Robbie is playing a chasing game with a little girl. Both characters are running towards the camera and off page. In the background in the sky the crewman who was thrown by the octopus can be seen flying across the sky from left to right and this leads into another page turn sequence. This leads into a scene from Brave New world where the character Bernard Marx is boarding a ship to fly across the city. The ship takes off and begins flying across the sky right to left. The crewman hits the window of the airship and holds onto the window and this causes the ship to stall and head towards the ground and the pages begin to turn again and now this is leads into a scene from Moby dick with the whale rising up out of the ocean to swallow the ship and then fall towards captain Ahab on a small boat and swallow it as well. The scene fades to black as the whale opens its mouth to devour Captain Ahab small boat. In the dark Captain Ahab lights his pipe to reveal he and his crew are in the whale’s stomach along with the crewman from 20, thousand leagues under the sea and the airship from brave new world and Bernard Marx inside. The octopus from the beginning is also in the belly of the whale floating in the stomach fluids using one of its tentacles to rubbing its head to figure out how it ended up in the belly of the whale. The pages turn and the book closes to show that on the back of the book it says THE END. The book opens slightly again with the octopus tentacle reaching out pointing to the end Animation 3
Production Journal
3rd December
I have a started a rough drawing of the octopus, particularly the body shape using adobe flash. I have also been researching octopus movements under water on YouTube. Using this research I am able to lay down some key frames for the octopus sequence.
10th December
This week I have completed the drawing of the octopus and all the key frames for scene 1. I have also drawn the design for the submarine and using motion tweens added the drawing to the sequence of the octopus, to create a flowing scene. I compiled them in adobe after effects.
17th December
I have decided to work on the design of the girl character and the robot character. Designing and drawing the girl for the running sequence was simple due to a front view running scene. However the robot was more difficult due to the character that it was based on from the book irobot, had no mouth and head was shaped irregular this is causing my design to look more menacing, and scary rather than friendly like a house robot.
I have to figure out a way in to which to make the eyes to give the character more personality by the look. Handling the robots front movement will be quite difficult as its arms and legs aren’t that conventional to a normal anatomy to a human. This is because the arms and legs of a normal humans revolves around the slight curves and rotations were as the robots arms and legs are sharp and rigid, which means that as the movement goes forward with every frame the arms and legs have to look exactly like the previous frame to keep the consent flow of movement believable.
7th January
I have continued the design of the robot to get a more kind friendly look and completed the run cycle for the robot as best I could, what I mean by this is that the robots movements are slightly jumpy, however due to the fact that the character is a robot it adds to the effect that his movements are slightly jumpy. This is similar to the film terminator with the scene of the stop motion machine at the end of the film. I decided to add small amounts of brown tones to characters of the girl and the robot for their scene just to difrenciate between the different books for each scene. I also made a quick background design of a tree and some landscape.
14th January
I have tested the scenes and complied them in Adobe after effects.
21st January
Originally I was meant to have the submarine rising from the ocean scene completed however I was unable to successfully animate waves, until I researched other ways to get the same look of waves in the ocean that would still fit with the other scenes with the octopus and the submarine. I did this by drawing several layers of curved flat waves in Adobe Flash and then importing each wave shape into adobe after effects to go with octopus and the rising submarine.
28th January
I continued animating the rising submarine by animating the top hatch of the submarine opening and the one of the ship’s crew men stepping out. I then animated the octopus tentacles wrapping around and grapping and slinging the crew man off scene. This was done is adobe flash and imported into adobe after effects to complete the scene.
4th February
I able to take out equipment from the MPS equipment store, which was a Nikon D5000 DSLR camera, a tripod and Photon Beard 200 lighting kit and then I used the small green room in the back of the class to start stop motion book opening sequence. I was able to get the look of the book cover opening and pages turning using small amounts of play dough to prop up the pages and cover for each photo taken. I used dragon frame stop motion software to capture the images and to compile them into a sequence so they are ready to be imported in to adobe after effects. Due to test takes to get the book opening sequence looking right which took several hours I was unable to fully complete the page turning scene I will have to return to complete this and to capture the book closing sequence.
11th February
Due to the green room not being free I was unable to complete my stop motion of the book sequence. So I decided finish off all scenes for the octopus and the submarine scenes and started on the hover craft design.
18th February
I animated the hover craft taking off and the movement of fire for the engine part of the ship. I did this is adobe flash by drawing separate components such as the engine, air ship and the fire, and then imported them into adobe after effects and layered them together so that they complete the scene of the ship taking off and flying through the air.
25th February
In adobe flash I did the key frames for the whale (Moby dick) rising out of the water and splashing back down. While in the air the whale opens its mouth and closes slightly. I decided to use the waves from the previous scene of the octopus and submarine for this scene. I also drew out a rough design for the small wooden boat that captain Ahab will be standing on.
4th March
This week I decided to separate the individual parts for the octopus for the ship crew man scene to help rectify a problem in adobe after effects that was to have the sailor on the same layer after being grabbed my the octopus rather than being separate. I also animated the man flying through the air after being thrown so this scene can be added to the others to create a linking element for the story scenes.
11th March
This week I continued doing the stop motion sequence in the green room of the book pages turning. I was able to get the page turning completed but still need to do the book closing section.
18th March
After speaking to Will my lecturer and showing him my work he agreed rather than trying to complete each scene I should compile them as they are so I can get an idea of how the animation would look and run. So I decided to edit the book opening sequence in adobe after effect and connect the first sequence of the octopus and the submarine. I decided to set the layer of the first scene to multiply which allowed it to blend into the pages of the book sequence and using the masking tool and playing around with the rotation scale and position attributes I was able to make it look as though the scene was turning will the page.
25th March
I continued editing in adobe after effects the all the scenes by using the same method from last week.
1st April
This week I was able to finish the book closing scene for the stop motion section of the animation.
8th April
Continuing to edit scenes in adobe after effects.
15th April
Continuing to edit scenes in adobe after effects. Thank to the Time Remapping option for layers I was able to extend and stop sequences to help the flow of the animation.
22nd April
This week I decided to animate the scene of the captain Ahab looking up of the whale and his expression changes from anger to fear. I did this adobe flash by using motion tweens for the eyebrows and eyes of the captain and drawing frame by frame the mouth animations. I also coloured this in by using adobe flash. I showed my animation to the class, the feedback showed that I should animate the octopus more with its eye movement and consider what sound effects I will be using for the animation.
29th April
Compiled all the scenes in adobe after effects and took out audio equipment from MPS equipment stores to record some sounds such as page turning and some voice sounds from the captain. Unfortunately the audio picked up background noise too much so it was unusable for the animation. I have decided to source sound effect from sounddog,com and soundtrack pro.
6th May
Continuing to edit in adobe after effect and cleaned up the mistakes with the play doe that was accidentally left on a page of the book when I captured the images for the stop motion sequence. I used the clone tool in after effects to cover it up. After that I exported film to final cut pro to add sounds for the animation. I also decided to add credits that were incorporated into the animation itself by having them disappear as the book cover opens over the top of them and the same for the end credits as the book closes it reveals them. I decided to put a black fade in and out for the beginning and end of the animation and then exported it as the same size compositions settings which was 1280 by 720 in apple pro res.
Evaluation
I am happy with the final outcome for the animation however I feel due to some small issues it feels like it could have been better. One issue was that due to time constraints I was not able to do the final scene as I planned to and instead resorted to ending the animations story sooner by having the last page on Captain Ahabs face rather than ending with a shot of the character in the stomach of the whale after it ate them. I also feel the page turning sequences could have been longer as they seem to flow by very quickly and with the camera zoomed in on the opened page it may not be too clear as to what is going on once the pages begin to turn. Sound wise I would have liked to have created some sounds for the animation myself using audio recording equipment instead of sourcing the sounds from Soundtrack pro and online at Sounddogs.com. The sound effects are adequate at best and are one of the weakest parts of the animation in my opinion. One last issue was that I would have liked to have used text from each story scene depicted to add in the animation sequences to give the animation more of a story book feel to it. As to me when it opens on blank pages it feels a little bit off as there should be text on the pages to help convey which story each scene is from.
Despite these issues I am content with the how the animation looks as a whole and how it plays. The stop motion sequences of the book opening and closing with the text being covered I feel are one of the best part of the animation and act as book ends to provide sort of symmetry with the story telling element. Overall I feel that the use of stop motion combined with 2D flash animation works well and creates a unique and interesting visual look that was good to work with.
