Animated documentary: Week 9

I did a few sound testing either myself or with my mom for an oriental voice as the tutor suggested, tested and edited it to see if it fits the tone. Although with negotiate we decided not to use it due to the inconvenience of recording for her.

I researched for title sequence effects and textures, and did a short animation for it which lasts 6 seconds and fill up the starting part of the narration audio. I used alpha matte in After Effect, which is a new technique I have not used before, where I researched for the method and watched a few guiding videos, and I used the leaf brush in Photoshop which match the shape of the leaves I create in the animation. Here is what I end up with:

Some of the video tutorial I went through to make the alpha matte revealing the title along the brush stroke. I found it useful creating varies more different effects than making a title, but can be applied to professional uses as well, if I am familiar enough.

#Memerize party game

After the discussion we made after the first attempt was made, we decided that the two graphic students are going to make the concept page and the assets for the presentation video, while animation students including me are going to animate the 1 minute video for the submission.

I did the final presentation video in After Effect, compositing the final concept of the card game in Photoshop made by the graphic students in our group. I was aiming to demonstrate the way to play the game but especially the type of cards within the card game. I also highlighted that one of the most important part of the game, which is the booster packs that can be added to the main cards.

So here is the screenshot for the submission of the brief. We submitted it together before the deadline as the D&AD website faced some technical issue before the first deadline that was released on the website.

Animated documentary: Week 8

As we have already based our work on Google drive and Google keep, we refined our script on Google document. It was firstly done in a draft version where all of us can add comments to either the story or the narrator. Through the process of producing the story boards and constantly researching, I found quite a lot of "bug" that does not match the history or reality, therefore we were able to refine the script and make it into a final version with all the narrations we need. I produced the storyboards simultaneously when refining the script based on the first draft version, this would be the final storyboards for the animation.

For one part of the animation the silk goddess is woven the silk from the cocoons, where I was not familiar with the process, therefore I went for a research on websites and films of the process of making silk, here is a documentary of it which I found very useful and informative to watch. It demonstrate the appearance of the woven machine therefore I can include it in the story board as it will appear in the scenes. One other interesting fact that I found was that the silk worms can only be fed with dried leaves, therefore I included the process of drying the leaf on the rack as well.

Loopdeloop: Submitting the animation

I submitted the animation and it was on the page after a long queue of the other submissions for a week. I took a few screenshot of the submission process, where I left the brief detail of me and the animation, and a link to more of my work, which is this blog link.

Here's the link to the animation on the challenge page.

http://www.loopdeloop.org/post/158705507087/a-life-cycle-yixing-qin-leeds-uk

Character Design Challenge: Carnival of Venice

I started from scratch on paper, for the pose and a simple outline of how the character would be like at its final stage. I went on some research on the carnival of venice, its culture and elements that I could include in my design. Mask is the most important element, I decided to give my character a mask that covers half of her face, and a colour panel of mostly black and red.

I re-design the below part of the dress to give it more details.

Looking at reference for laces, I designed the laces on her dress and her gloves.

The research for roses for her cloak and the design of her mask and the shoes.

For the final clean up, I changed slightly the position of her right leg to balance her gravity, and added more details of shadow and lights on her. The painting was mostly done on one layer, which I found, is a great way to challenge myself for the use of colours.

The final complete design has also got a simple shadow of her to make the background less dull. And here's also a screenshot of the submission in the Facebook group.

Animated documentary: Week 7

On the 14th of March we had our first crit session to discuss the progress of planning and researching, Google Slides was what I used to put the presentation together as all of us can edit it online to add the stuff that we want to showcase. The majority presentation was about the route we took of researching, which was mostly through putting together mood boards and sketches, as it is a historical documentary that we are going to make, therefore we should base it on a large quantity of researches. We also showcased the rough story boards and the character designs we came up to. I put together an animatic for the presentation by using Premiere, although there are still some gaps between, but what we need to do is clearly shown in the story board, so we will soon be filling in the gaps.

It is also the first time I made a gantt chart for the animating timeline, I did it in Excel as it is the most convenient way for me. I found it very useful as we can clearly indicate the workflow and setting deadlines for ourselves so that we can animate effectively and efficiently.

Loopdeloop: Chicken Production&Post-Production

For this month of the Loopdeloop challenge, I decided to do a simple frame by frame animation on animation paper, and add the color digitally afterwards. So here is the process of drawing on animation papers on the light box. Key frames where the chicken jumped up in the air and bounced back to the ground, and the transformation of the chicken into an egg. Blow are a few progress recording of my production of the animation. According to the storyboards I did for the planning of the animation, I drew 56 frames on separate animation papers.

I used dragon frame to capture all of the frames onto the computer, and tried on one of the frame to test out if it works when I use a 50% transparency layer to add color to the chicken. As what was expected, it worked quite well with the color added while I could keep the paper texture of the frames as well. At the end of the animation, I used a large textured brush to create the ground where the chicken would be bouncing on, and made the animation looped for 4 times, to match the theme of Loopdeloop by looping animation. The final animation is down the bottom.

Animated documentary: Week 6

According to the script, there is a short part of the animation showcasing the time elapse where the traders travel along the silk road to trade silk, it demonstrates some of the scenes on the route through the silk road. I took the inspiration from a variety of previous films, such as the Lion King, and the music video for White Horse of Darlingside, which we have seen on the 2016's Manchester Animation Festival. I did a few sketches for further references of the animation, with different scenes on the Silk road, and a simple demonstration of the time elapse scene with the ending part of the animatic included.

Loopdeloop: Chicken Pre-Production

The theme of this month for the loopdeloop challenge is Chicken. The initial idea was to make a walk cycle which would work well with a looped sequence. I started with some simple character design for a chicken, made some iterations such as a chicken with human hands and feet. The developed idea of the narration has changed to a simple transformation from an egg to a chicken and back to an egg again.

After I made my mind on the story idea, I started to do the story boards for the animation. As in the rough story board, I intended to make more transformation such as the egg hatched into another animal such as a dinosaur. However due to the workload, I decided to scratch that out and keep it simple as just a chicken's life cycle.

Animated documentary: Week 5

So for the week I did a few sketches digitally based on the references in the mood boards that I made in the last few weeks, for the purpose of getting the rough idea of the scene and layout, and the texture of the dessert that we want to make so that the characters would fit in the backgrounds. Simultaneously, I started to produce assets for the leaves by using scanned water color texture and edited them digitally for the shape of a leaf, this will be the leaf that we use to demonstrate the process of feeding the silk worms.

At the same time, I started to practice with producing the assets with un-solid pencil line and water color to produce the effect of a old fashion, oriental and paper textured characters. I made a few of assets with other posed to apply in different scenes. Here are the cut out assets and a walk cycle I made for the character. For the zoom in scenes for the character's hand, I made an individual set of assets to animate the movements of the fingers.