Festivals|PPP3

Since I worked really hard on the extended practice module it seemed like a waste to just hide finished piece inside college walls or deep in YouTube. So I've searched for animation festivals I could submit my work to and here's a list of few that got me interested:

• Be There is a Corfu animation festival, submission for the 4th edition of the festival are open until 30th of June. It got a separate category for student films made in any technique and genre.
• DAFF 2015 - Dublin Animation Film Festival is also open for submission, deadline is also 30th of June and there is a category for student films (international student short film)
• KLIK! - animation festival happening in Amsterdam later this year is open for  submission until 1st of July and there is Animated Student Short Competition category
• Ars Independent Festival - a film/animation/game festival taking place in Katowice, Poland this September. Deadline is again 30th of June, animated shorts must be submitted in The Black Horse of Animation 2015 category, but other than that, it's open to all types of animation and genre

All festivals mentioned above are connected by the same submission deadline and the fact there is no entry fee. They happen in all different parts of the world during autumn, which is pretty interesting.

First Pass|Extended Practice

Today I've put all the scenes together in Premiere to see what changes can be made and what I can still improve. Below is a list of things I feel like stil needs changing:

• Forest moving - opening sequence - if there is enough time I want to revisit it or perhaps make a completly new version;
  
   
• Second running shot - work on run cycle for both Boy and Girl, make it a bit faster, also add little jumps up and down and imrpove lighting;

• Showing left and right - this scene is very bad as I cut it from a longer piece (took out middle part), it needs better lighting, timing and puppets needs to be moved closer to the ground;

• Boy climbs up the branch - overall I'm happy with the movement (might fiddle with it a bit if there is time for it), however I need to change size of the fern flower as it's too big now;

• Vodyanoy appears - I need to either add Boy to it or zoom in so only bottom part of the tree branch and water will be visible; also needs to add lighting and a string to the Vodyanoy puppet;

• Boy/Girl scared - just a better cut, maybe a black slug somewhere in between those two?; 

•  Vodyanoy hides - need to add string, but also work on framing as again Boy is not visible (maybe just add legs?).

I've also been thinking about adding extra scene in between parts where Vodyanoy tries to grab a Boy and Boy reaching for flower - perhaps a fighting scene where Boy triews to kick monster to scare him off? I feel like there is no logical follow of the events and it may be very confusing for the viewer.
Sound still needs to be added, which is my next concern. I started gathering different types of sounds and may also use some classical music.
Test video is 1:28 long (including credits), which is good. It fits perfectly with my brief constraint (up to 2 minutes long), it's fast paced and I hope viewer wil be able to understand what's going on.

Typeface|Extended Practice

I got the idea for what to call my extended practice animation quite early and the only thing stopping me from creating a title/ending sequences was a font. It had to be perfect. It had to match the style of my animation, connect with it. I knew I wanted something simple but in the same time unique. First step was ofcourse searching thru the library of fonts already implemented in After Effects, which was actually pretty unsuccessful. Or maybe I'm just too picky? Luckily I follow few graphic design and creative blogs on twitter, who one day mentioned Besom2. Instantly it clicked.

Besom2 is a typeface I'd describe as playful. Capital letters aren't that much different to the small ones, also 'i' is in a form of a line with a dot above, not just as a line. I also like the edges of each letter being not straight and perfect.
Before finding Besom2 I considered even making my own font, which definately would add to the charm and make this piece even more personal. However, I'm glad with the typeface I used and the look.

Final Crit Feedback|Extended Practice

Last Thursday we had our final crit presentations which means it's only two weeks left until module deadline. Goal was to have a your thing finished to the presentable level. At that point I had around half of the scenes ready, however still without lighting/camera and, in most cases, roughly blocked (I'm revisiting those scenes now and making them smoother). Unfortunately all the videos from animation group (me, Keiron, Sarah and Finn) didn't play properly on a machine we had in that room. It's a really bizzare issue as I've been rendering everything from After Effects as H264 and even used Mac other day to put all scenes together in Premiere. I've tested my file on both Mac and PC and it played fine. However during the crit it was crashing and skipping frames, making it really difficult to watch and therefore to get a accurate feedback. Nevertheless, there were few issues pointed out that I took into account such as making side view for Boy and Girl to use in running scene. There were also few pointers about the animation itself and which parts should be faster/slower which I've changed already.
I'm glad that people liked slightly creepy and gloomy vibe of my work and the way I animated puppets. I've added a string which was mentioned during the session too. As for the sound - this is something I'm going to concentrate more now as I'm almost done with animating (only two scenes left.. or just one as I'm redoing mentioned earlier running scene).

Side View|Extended Practice

I tried to avoid drawing side view for Boy and Girl, hoping I'll save time and that running scene will still make sense. Unfortunately it doesn't work that way. Running scene made by using front view looks a little bit weird and akward and I really couldn't relate to it. So I decided to devote some time to create side view for both Girl and Boy.

 

I managed to cheat a bit by using arm from the front view. The hardest part was making side view of the body and face have same feel as the front view ones. Girl has her feminine curves, round belly, while Boy still fits in his rectangular shape. Also their silthuettes are still strong and easy to tell apart.
Left side was created just by mirroring parts as I didn't need it much.

Running scene - evolution|Extended Practice

As I've been animating for few weeks now, some changes to the characters had to take place. Running scenes in Fern Flower are important and take some of the screen time (roughly 15-20 secs of running footage). At the beginning I used the front view to animate them, however it's difficult to make it look right. Boy and Girl are running from left of the screen to the right and I used puppet designs prepared at the beginning.

 

 After showing it to the tutors I decided to draw a side view for Boy and Girl and use it instead for those scenes. Quickly tested side view version of a Boy and after few hours of making animation look decent I started to like it. It actually works quite well. I'm going to make side view for Girl next and create another run scene with both of them.

Also, scene of the Boy running is the first one where I tested string attached to the belly part of the body. Again I used pick whip to follow the movement of the puppet. Initially I went for black, but decided to stick with gray as it works better and stands out better from the background. I also applied light in this scene and made it follow character which reminds me a bit of how actual set lighting works. It all came out very nicely and I'l continue doing it on the other scenes.
Also, I've tried string on other parts of the body but felt like it takes away a bit from the characters, strings becoming main part, which I don't want. After all they're a digital paper/shadow puppets and there is a room to leave things unexplained ;) .

Artifex Mundi|PPP3

Artifex Mundi is a game company based in Poland. Their games are very stylised and illustrative, such as Grim Legends 2 and Deadly Puzzles. One of my good friends worked with them on one of the games

I really like their art style, it's very colourful and stylised. Their website is in both English and Polish and to work with them you actually don't have to be in Poland. I feel like I need to make more enviromental pieces to include in my portfolio before applying.

Puppet Rig|Extended Practice

One of the important moments in my animation is the scene showing fern flower blooms. When designing fern flower I had to take a possible ways to animate it into an account. Since chopping it into parts and adding pins didn't sound right I decided to keep it simple and use puppet tool to animate it.

Each leaf is a separate layer in Photoshop - to animate the movement I just had to move anchor point to the bottom of the drawing. For the flower I used few puppet pins and set keyframes on those. In intial design fern flower stalk is kept straight, which allowed me to manipulate it a lot without destroying it.

For this particular scene I had to bend flower first and hide it behind the leaves. Then I animate it unfolding, which was a pretty straight foward task as I already had some experience with using puppet tool and pins.

I'm pretty happy with this scene. After completing all animations I've added a 'glow' filter to make the scene feel a bit more magical.

Scene List|Extended Practice

Below is a list of the scenes I need to animate along with some notes. I got a very basic, rough storyboard, which I'm basing this list on. Also I feel it may be easier to have a simple shot breakdown on the side.

1. Title screen - black bg, white text: Fern Flower;
2. Opening scene - camera moves thru the forest, wide shot;
3. Running across forest - just feet visible;
4. Looking around;
5. Running across forest - full body visible (or maybe just from torso to toes);
6. Opening bushes - Boy peeks thru the foliage and look around;
7. Fern flower blooms/unfold - use puppet pins, flower starts to glow;
8. Boy points out the path;
9. Boy starts climbing the tree;
10. Vodyanoy appears;
11. Girl looks scared;
12. Boy gets scared ;
13. Vodyanoy tries to grab Boy, Boy jumps back;
14. Vodyanoy hides;
15. Boy and Girl holds glowing fern flower;
16. Ending - credits.

It's 14 scenes that needs to be animated + opening and ending, which may look like not that much but it's going to be a lot of work. With a month until deadline it should be enough time to make this project happen.

Setting a light and camera|Extended Practice

Lights and camera are easy to set in After Effects and can improve scene drastically. Since I wanted to imitate look of the theatre sets, making lighting look right was quite a bit of challenge. I decided to use spot light, as I wanted to illuminate only specific areas as well as have light follow/highlight character or important element of the scene. Moreover, since the action takes place at night, using correct light to give the right feeling was crutial. With the spot light settings I'm able to control cone angle, size and feather.

 I've tested quite a few different colours to create a mood and atmosphere that'll work. I went with the light blue as it gives a very nice eerie vibe to the scenes. It's quite bright, but not too strong, and I feel it complimates glow of the moon well. Also, a small vignette adds to the charm.

Next - camera. In this case I didn't had to use it much, as in most shots camera just moves from left to right and I'm more interested in creating paralax than zoom-in or close-ups. However, I used camera for the opening shot as it felt appropriate to have inviting shot.