SCENE 01-09....IN COLOUR

I didnt make to much changes for this first set of shots, just made the scene more interesting since its a textured version. Gilbert also which was re-textured and taken reference from the concept drawings i did early on in the process.

SCENE 10-41....IN COLOUR

The scene with the hand.
Was acheived very similar in the i made the close shots of the statue. The same techniques were applied yet, but this time with plenty more patience.

Looking back in the way the china doll had been textured, has really stood out in the whole sequence. The purpose of giving off a red dress not only stands out but to emphasis the lead she takes as a main character and also not neglect the oriental theme i had been working towards.

SCENE 42-42-5....IN COLOUR

To be honest, what i was aiming for in this china doll scene turnted out to be really boring to build. The idea was a very close up shot of the statue slowly tracking up to her face. After texturing the whole character, i cropped each scene and slowly moved each scene down at a number of 40 times using just the arrow keys on my keyboard.
Once played as one, it worked quite well. complimented with a steady pace, which made me chuffed !!!!

SCENE 49-88....IN COLOUR

Another of those long sequence. I remember when it came to texturing this whole scene, which took nearly a day an a half to finish. Yet very time consuming but was worth it when the animation paid off. I knew for the first test, it ran abit to on the fast side so for this improvement i was able to touch up on any unwanted scenes or increase them in only particular important areas.

SCENE 89-100....IN COLOUR

As i stated before this was the longest scene to put together as one whole scene. But however for this test video, i feel that this version (below) looked alot more stronger than the part i placed in for my final render.
This was clearly a mistake made by me, where i forgot to add the dash lines, and the one word adjectives to emphasis the movements that he is giving off to make the sculpture. I increased the frames of only the arms to pro-long that section but didnt slow it down.

SCENE 101-113....IN COLOUR

Another section of my close up shotswhere, hes in that proposal position, presenting a gift made and pouring out his little heart. Not much i could elaborate on for this scene, seeing as ive discussed how i came to bringing this scene to life on my previous post.

SCENE 114-130....IN COLOUR

For this scene, i particurly liked the way gilbert has interacted with the statue, i increased the amount of spins just to expand alittle more on the scene. It did take a bit of time to animate this scene, but i felt i covered most of the in-between and major keyframes.

The point where gilbert lets go of the heart shaped pebble, was aimed to slowly driff away from his hands and land beside the statue. I highlighted the feature with a very high contrast of yellow-gold, to keep with the theme of the tank. I felt it might of looked abit odd or obvious if i just textured one pebble which was red.

SCENE 131-141....IN COLOUR

For this scene i did the same yet again just like how i explained scenes 142-148, extended the animation and just copied frames where gilberts arm is bent and about to move in for the poke, so that it creates the arm movement consistent, as if it was a double tap on the statue.

SCENE 142-148....IN COLOUR

For the newly textured and shall i say unbalanced statue, i managed to add acouple more extra frames to increase the anticipation before falling onto impact. All it took was just copying the scenes which were line tested already and paste them just after, it couldn't get harder than that.
For gilbert i added more facial dash lines and incresed the load of question marks buzzing around his head, just to add more to the obvious "confused" look. do have a look.

SCENE 149-151....IN COLOUR

The scenes from 149-151 have definately in my mind improved when colours have been added. I am able to fully emphasise each scene in the way i wanted to interpret it. It's not so much animation in the end but alot of close ups of facial expressions from gilbert, the last moments seen before he is killed.
If your not aware what the dark area which is hanging over him, its the shadow taken from the china doll statue, when he realises that its about to fall on him. A brief reminder of what 149-151 is all about.

SCENE 152-172....IN COLOUR

Its been just a week since i came back to the "hat" scene as ill call it. Finally i textured a colour version. To be honest texturing over 172 frames took a very long time and very time consuming. At one point i almost lost motivation from all the repetition of texturing several similar scenes. But as you see now i've managed to slow down the hat alot more and enhance some more features in the scene to compliment the fish tank, such as bubbles, bamboos, bansai etc.

SCENES 152-172-TEST 01.

I wanted to close the animation with, just his hat floating slowly up to the surface. The idea originally was going to be a scene drawn where it shows gilbert being crushed and flatthen by the statue. But i felt that if i did interpret that scene instead of the hat incident it might of been to obvious, and thats the approach i didnt want to take. I felt that the hat was a significant element to the character and to see the hat come off gilberts head for the very first time, symbolizes that something has happen to the fish either inflicted by someone or just a fatal accident.

For the colour update, i will try to slow down this sequence, alot more seeing that i want the hat to float up ever so slowly, so more work to be done.

SCENES 149-152-TEST 01.

I mentioned before, that the scene i worked on played extremeley quick, did scene just below also did the same. So it was yet again adding more in betweens, and slowly down the duration of the clip.

This clip plays really fast still, but is just an experiment and a working progress to come. I do feel for this part, it does have some really nice close-up shots of gilbert, because this is the part where his life is about to end, being crushed or shall i say squish by the china doll statue itself.

But as soon as the colours are in incorporated for this part, i feel the scene will look a little stronger and clearer to the eye. So more to come very soon.

SCENES 142-149-TEST 01.

To achieve what i wanted in this scene became a little tricky, because here we have one character (the statue) whos been nudge, and is slowly losing its balance, rocking side to side. On the other hand theres gilbert who steps back with a nervous and confuse expression on his face, still trying to work out what he has done.

When this scenes does hit on to colour, i will work alittle more with the positioning for both especially the statue and maybe a little tweak and there for gilbert.

SCENES 131-141-TEST 01.

For my first attempt of line testing this scenes, i had to add alot of extra keyframes just to slow down the pace of the animation, in order for the audience to see exactly what is going on in the scene.It was the part where the fish can no longer tolerate the constant blanking of the feamale, so decides to answer back with a little action by tapping her on the shoulder, but what happens next continues straight ths scene.

Adobe Lecture Day.

All about adobe, I came in today purposly for the the flash animation lecture on CS4. an update to last year's software.
It's been a good couple of years since i last touched up on flash, so i took this lecture as a refresh of what i had forgotten.

I needed some advice as well as some vital information, that could help with my project. I must say that the overrall presentation was very professional with some interesting features shown on the program.
The lecturer mostly focused on compositing live action footage, a very brief outline on basic character animation with simple bone rigging.

I found it quite useful but would of wish he could elaborate more on the topic with character animation, as i was more interested in that area of flash.

But overrall a little insight of what to expect in flash CS4. got me thinking whether to purchase the software?

SCENES 114-130-TEST 01.

I was particularly chuffed in the way this sequence turnted out. I know for the meantime that this is just a rough video upload, but when it came to drawing and animating the scene i knew exactly where i wanted to position the character and roughly how many scenes i will need to draw up.
Just a quick brief of what scene 114-130 was all about. It's the part where hes realise and felt rejection from the statue. As he lets go of the sculpted pebble slowly hitting to the ground, he feels this sense of frustration, and begins to swim around it, in a very upset manner without taking his eyes off her.

SCENES 101-113-TEST 01.

Another attempt to my close up shots. The opening shot to 101 is Gilbert turning at a 90 degree angle whilst still on one knee presenting the heart shaped pebble to her. The position that he's in is an irony of a proposal minus the ring!!!!

As i mentioned earlier on, the CU shot was focusing on Gilbert eyes and cut back to the china dolls face. The purpose to this scene was he's presenting a gift to her but however, statue has not responded nor.even moved, and gilbert looking back at us,audience asking himself "what is going on?" "why aint she appreciating the gift?" nor responding etc.

This hopefully should be a comical part to the scene, if executed really well. There are more improvements to be worked on for this scene, but the first upload is just to show how my work is progressing

SCENES 89-100-TEST 01.

As gilbert is attempting to sculpt a heart shaped pebble, i didn't want to show to the audience how he was making the model but a shot just focusing on his back,and his arms moving in and out, side by side, up and down in a frantic manner.
As this scene runs, my intentions is to play it quick but also giving the audience to establish what exactly is happening.
I couldn't really comment any further on this particular scene, but stating that this was pretty straight forward to animate, all it took was drawing the first set of hands to the desired position, and retracing but moving the arms ever so slightly and so, for the following scenes.

I added dash lines and fart smoke, as i call them to emphasize how vigorously fast his hands are moving.

SCENES 49-88-TEST 01.

Scene 49-88 challenged me to my limits, and i must say took the most time out of my planning schedule. The reasons being, was i wanted to animate the fish character from the moment he takes off from the ground and swims swiftly towards a pebble he's had fixated on. I had to consider most of the animation principles, such as the weight had to be right and distributed in the right position, adding anticipation just before he takes off and squash and stretch as he swims along. As you can see, the set of numbers and gap is quite big henced why this scene was ever so time consuming, ididnt want to split it because yet again it's just one big scene and less confusion, dilemma.
The purpose to this is scene leads straight after 48. Ill like to interpret this moment where Gilbert is trying to impress her so, an idea is struck, he could sculpt a reasonable sized pebble in a heart shape and present it to her, but still unashamedly aware that the statue isnt real. the question is what happens next.

Update...

So far i've managed to cover scenes 1-10 and half way through scenes 11-20, just alittle more to do, but going well, which is a positive side for a change.

i feel the storyboard in which ive drawn up is helping tremendously, because i'm using it as a guide as well as following it scene by scene to keep my frames in order.

But however just a couple more frames to draw up and complete from scenes 11-20, which will have to be completed tomorrow, just to maintain my scheduling.

SCENES 42-48-TEST 01.

For this scene i decided to put together scenes 42-42.5 and scenes 43-48, because as i went through my storyboard again, i noticed that both scenes interweaved with each other and just to avoid confusion in the long run, i scanned each one, containing them in one folder, labelled as shown above.
This part is where hopfully the first soundtrack comes in place. The idea is a close up shot of the china doll statue, starting below at feet position and slowly tracking up ending at a frame shot of just her face. Whislt this is playing, i want to in the final render to cut in and out shots of gilbert the fish's reaction shots.
Another close up is also placed for the fish, and only the eyes are animated which swiftly shoots up his eye lids followed by a set of heart-shaped pupils. Hopfully if i can find a good sound FX of a fruit machine "CLING" and in incorporate it in that last scene i was discussing, then i got something good going. Just need to find them suitable sound WAVs now.

SCENES 10-41-TEST 01.

This was the opening scene with the hand and the first revcealing shot of the statue. Drawing and positioning the hand whislt holding the model wasn't quite as hard to animate by hand i just ask myself where i would want the statue to land, which as you can see is at center point of the fish tank.
So from the scenes i just drew and animated, i just re-used the scenes and trace over each one slowly moving the hand up until it hit off the page. So all in all thats how i effectively achieved this animated scene.
Right now this is just a test one, which is a very rough upload,with just a faint outline, and no colour. But in the coming weeks another updated version with be uploaded but this time in colour, stay tune.

Most of the first set of videos, wouldn't make much sense. Seeing that it doesn't contain any colour, and some characters are unfinished. This was purposely done because i used it as a temporary outline, a template guide for positioning each character when it came to texturing all images, so that each scene will be in position when played together as one whole sequence.

THURS.30th APR.09

Today's session was on using and producing a working production schedule on MS project. I already briefly mentioned that i typed one up very roughly, and i must say has helped me very much, but however this version, jared introduce to us was far more structured and a more on a professional side.
The newly typed up schedule is to be used in the microsoft project:-

Pre-pro-Research
Planning
Concepts-Characters/Sets/environments
Storyboards
Mood boards
Animatic
Model Sheets? Characters/sets etc.

Production- Open up 2D
Animate- block out main key frames -scenes 1-10
-scenes 11-20
-scenes 21-30
-scenes 31-40
Animate- Draw out characters- facial/body gestures etc
outline everything/scan every scene
Texture everything on photoshop- lighting, working with colour

Post-Pro- Editing on flash?/after effects?/premier pro.?
Sound/music/foley effects
touch up on dvd menu.
burn dvd

StoryBoard

I've done up this storyboard quite awhile now, and just found time today to upload it. More or less the same as the first one you saw, but this time i got rid of some unwanted scenes that maybe seemed unesscessary or just abit long winded, anything in which i can shorthen the whole animation, i did so in this.

2nd Layout:-

Start Animating....

So today was the day i began animating, my way in approaching this was to draw out all the key frames, splitting them through a set of scenes 1-09, just to avoid confusion and overall more clearer.
i started obviously at scene one, my opening CU shot of the pagoda and emerging to a establish shot of the fish tank. I just roughly drew out and mapped the main key frames to each scene whislt numbering them, to keep them in order.
So what you do see is a video clip of all the key scenes played together as an animatic. Running from scenes 1-09.

SCENES 1-09-TEST 01.

Character Model Sheet.Part 3

Gilbert the Fish with facial & body language expressions: Final Fish Design In Colour

So here we have Gilbert the fish, it took quite awhile designing and perfecting this fella but was worth it in the end.
I'm particular impress of how the colour has added more appeal and personality to the character, also bringing out his features which was textured with lighter shade of colours. I also added facial expressions, with body gestures to emphasize the posture. It varies from angry, happy, in love, amazed, embrassed/confuse etc.

Also below is a tiny model sheet showing front, side and back of the fish. which will become helpful when attempting to animate the character.
I added some bamboo frame for boarding just to enhance the layout, as well as keeping the presentation theme consistent.
That's all i have to say on this part, overall very please in how Gilbert has turned out.

Microsoft MS Project...Production Schedule

I took a print screen of the schedule i produce just a couple of days after being shown how to use the program.
I already did a rough version of a schedule which was posted awhile ago on an post. But nothing compared to the one i typed up, just shown above. It's alot more clearer, layout in a more professional manner, dates and durations for each task, to keep my project to date, avoiding myself from falling behind and just to show teachers, producers etc. how we go about in tackling projects and testing out on our planning and good organisation skills.

Character Model Sheets.Part 2

This is the final outcome to the bonsai and tank look, firstly for the bonsai tree i wanted to layout the sketches around the final design showing my initial ideas in stages of how i came in achieving the final look.
The bamboo was taken from the dvd menu i designed earlyer and will be used to keep my style of the project consistent. It was used to section out each drawing as well as creating a neat finish to the presentation.
I included the tradtional colours of red and gold for my fishtank framing and just kept the glassware simple shades of sky blue, to give off a glass effect. For the font, it's a chinese interpretation of writing the english alphabet, which always stays black as the font colour.

Bonsai Tree & Fish Tank Sketches: Final Fish Tank In Colour



The frame boarder was layed out the same as seen above but only pagoda drawings shown this time. I chose a few favourites from the sketches i did and mapped them around the colour piece, with bamboos sectioning each one out. Chinese font writing included again, but this time alittle larger on the page.

Pagoda sketches: Final pagoda Design In Colour

DVD Interactive Menu Layout Design.

Initial Layout Designs:-

1) Chinese Bamboo Framing with palm yellow background.


2) Chinese Black Arches with silver Grey Background.


3) Under The Sea with Coral Features and Bubbles at as buttons.

This area of work relates to d.dalli project but also interweaves with this project as well. Here i have three potential design layouts for my dvd interactive menu.

1) All in theme related to my goldfish project.I like to keep my designs very clear with plain, simple frame boarders. The first one is a favourite of mine, i got the idea of using bamboo for my boarders from the oriental theme i have been trying to work towards and just use it to mark out the top right corner of the page finished off with a palm yellow, the colour in which you find in them thread papers?.

2) The idea for the second boarder was taken from chinese frame decking you find feature in gardens or just under pagoda, as a source of design decoration. Kept simple with a grey background to highlight the white frame boarders.

3) Idea three was obviously taken from under the sea. The theme to the fish tank, i included extra features such as coral reef, seaweed and pebbles to enchance the boarder appeal. I the bubbles you see scattered around are act as interactive buttons to click on when use in a dvd menu.

Character Model Sheet

China-Doll: In Colour-

ive managed to finally finalise the desired colours to the china-doll character. I knew that i had to include red, just to compliment the scene to the sountrack- "Lady In Red" by. Chris de'burgh. I suppose for the colour yellow, i was being a little to cliche, as yellow is very common to the chinese culture, relating to luck and good fortune.

Unfortunately, i havent found the time to produce a profile and back view of the model, but if i have the time i will stand back to it. But for the meantime, heres the full textured model standing full in front view,enjoy!!!!

Update..

So far the pre-production is going ok, took abit of time trying to figure out how i would like the characters to look like. But overrall i got there in the end with a couple positive designs.

The planning went quite smoothly with only afew minor changes in the schedule, however both primary & sec. research has panned out really well so far, i was able to obtain the vital parts of my research to help give me a clearer understanding to the project.

Still need to complete:-

• rough animatic
• a completed colour model sheet on the china-doll statue

More Style & Influences

-The Art of East asia: by Gabriele Fahr-Becker (Author, Editor)
-The Art Of Finding Nemo: By Mark cotta Vaz

Websites:-Online helpful tutorials on Flash
http://www.tv.adobe.com/
http://www.creativecow.com/
http://www.lynda.com/ (not free)

http://www.livingsasquatch.com/
http://www.opensourceadobe.com/
http://www.nabble.com/
http://www.newgrounds.com/


http://www.animationmentor.com/

Character Concept.Part 2

More concept yet again but this time concentrating on the look of the tank, bonsai tree and china doll statue.
Still keeping with the oriental theme, i kept the bonsai and fishtank designs to a one page minimum seeing as they will go together in the scene. i didn't worry to much about changing the look of the tree, because i felt that messing around with the original shape ruined the look to the tree, causing it to become unreconisable.
However for the fish tank, i was torn to either have it sphere or rectangular shaped? but after some deep thinking and planning out, i realise i could of animated more in a rectangular shaped because of the increased amount of surface area. I finished it off with a chinese arch framing in front just to add more appeal.

Concept: Bonsai-Tree/Fish Tank

For the pagoda design, i got most of my inspriation through the reference pictures i took at the museum. From that point i was able to manipulate the shapes and size and just overall play around with the design.

For the final design i always wanted to have two sorts of roofs in my design, so i continued to work from that. Not taking away the curved edges keeping it continous for both roofs. I gave the main body of the pagoda a concave look for more of a cute cartoony look.

Concept: Pagoda

I found designing the statue particularly tricky, because i got really indecisive of how i would like the woman to look like. Yet again i didnt want to over complicate the design but kept to a simple basic structure.

I played around with different looks to the kimono and head dresses. Trying to keep her looking as feminine as possible, one of her main accessory was a straw umbrella which i want to include in her look.

Concept: China-Doll

StoryBoard

1st, Rough:-

I feel the first initial layout to a storyboard is always helpful. I am able to map out where i could take this character and interpret a story of my own. Figuring where i could potentially have the shots is always abit tricky, but at this point it isn't to important but helpful to have an idea for the later stages of the process.

The idea of the story i had in mind was the goldfish was joined by a new companion ( china doll statue) and trys every way possible to impress her, not knowing that she isn't real. So from that moment scenes drawn in the middle is where he get's into all sorts of mischief.

I decided at the very end to kill the fish off after being flatten by the statue itself, closing the last shot with his monk hat floating up to the surface. This is a potential maybe to the closing scene, i'm still at the thinking process of deciding.

I realise that i only have just 30 seconds to work with, by looking at the story board i will be definately cutting out some unesscessary scenes, anything to shorten the animation piece.

THURSDAY 23RD APR.09

Character Concept.Part 1
-Gilbert the Fish

Since i was positive to go ahead with the idea of a goldfish to take lead as my main character, i began as always designing and adding some personality to this fella.

Through concept, i experimented with all shapes and size as well as referring back to resources of fishes i picked up online. I wanted the character to look really miserable with big swollen eye lids complimented with a drupey lower lip. In order for the audience to realise that this was a fish character of some sort, i tried not to neglect the obviously features such as his geels, fins & folk tail. So for all my design i stuck with these features consistently.

The theme was having a oriental look to it, so for the noticable features i wanted to include one of the round shaolin monk hats and a long moustache leading down to his chin.

V&A Museum Visit..

Today i devoted this day to visit the Victoria & Albert museum, down south kensington. I arrived roughly about 1:oopm giving myself plenty of time to focus on some research. My main intention visting the place was just to purposely see the Asia exhibition gallery.
It ranged from all various different cultures, but China was what i was particular interested in seeing as the theme to my project is based around it.
The arrangment they did was very nice, and walking in asia section was even more impressive. I was able to snap a variety of colours combined with distinctive patterns and images. I needed more ideas and insipirations for my project so i took more pictures of the head dress and their traditional clothing of anything i could use and interpret a version of my own.
The use of colour in asia was very noticable, alot of gold, yellow, and blood red was thrown around very frequently which is something i am considering in my project.

I am not sure to the meaning behind these use of colours but they have become obviously reconisable for people around the world.

Below are a variety of picutres took today, ranging from shape, form and colour. Anything for research ideas.

Schedule

I typed up a very rough schedule of how i am going to tackle this last project. I found out that my time management, wasn't as good as i hoped it will be, so i am learning as well as trying to prevent mistakes in the past from happening again. So far i am following everyday that is written on the schedule and is working pretty effectively, but it does needs some more structuring. However Jared has introduced us to a more professional way in planning and organising our schedule, using microsoft project MS. This way we can keep track of our duration, important dates, and members of the group etc.

Style & Influences

I made afew notes of any artist work etc. i found interesting or could inspire me to interpret something in my own range of style.
Also separated afew books i found quite useful, whilst scanning through them very briefly.

Artist/Illustrators
-Hokusai
-Japanese:Manga Colours
-Meni tzima http://www.yupyland.com/
-Stupid Love http://www.stupid-love.com/
-Ljubisa djukic

PICTOPLASMA: THE CHARACTER ENCYCLOPEDIA

DONOVAN GREGORY/RAFFINERIE/TIM JESTER/SHOKI.SHOKI/IDEA FACTORY.TV TOKYO NORIQ/VIRUS HEAD

Books -Pictoplasma Illustrated by: Peter Thaler (Author), Robert Klanten (Editor), Hendrick Hellige (Editor), M. Mischler (Editor) -Pictoplasma: The Character Encyclopaedia by Peter Thaler and Lars Denicke.

Brain Storming...

As through every start of the project, brainstorming was always a good starter point exploring ideas, and just a way of keeping my thinking cap on.
I jottled down anything i could possibly come up with as a suitable story to fit a 30 second animation sequence. What most of the ideas seem to have are either one or two leading characters. I didn't want to get so over complicated with the story seeing as i only have 30 seconds or less to work with, and keep it simple but with really heavy personalities to the characters.
The "goldfish and fishtank" was highlighted amongst the others purposly because it's a favourite i had in mind, and will probably expand more on the concept.

Story Ideas:-

• Rabbit Vs Hunter/Farmer -
• Shooting Range/Archery Contest
• GoldFish & Fishtank
• A chinese tragedy love story
• Man impresses women - man singing outside window, trying to impress girl only to find out it was the father's room, get's embrassed, bucket of water over head (maybe)
• Chinese waiter/servant is in love with princess, princess already married, waiter gets jealous, attemps to drug tea- kill him, but backfires instead princess drinks 'poison' tea.
• The Marathon run.
• Western Shoot-out

Project Brief

MONDAY 20TH APRIL. 2009
For this brief you will be required to work upon 30 second animation pieces to be either broadcast on Rave On Air (ROA), or used in the associated animation exhibition at the end of term.
You have the choice of working towards one of the following outputs:-


1. An advert or promotion of the brands that level 2 Product Design students have been working on.
2. A character based animation piece to take advantage of the musion setup that will be in place for Rave On Air.
3. An animation piece to your own design.
4. Produce animated content for CCB students if their programmes require it, this will depend upon demand, and will be subject to neg. with you tutor.

You will be free to work in whatever way you choose, so long as it meets the following stipulations:

• A 30 second running time.


• (If you are working towards option 2) it promotes the values of the brand chosen by the PS.


• It meets the formatting requirements for ROA

KEY DATES:-

• FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT THURSDAY 14TH MAY 2009


• SUMMATIVE ASSESSMENT FRIDAY 19TH JUNE 2009- 3PM

DVD INTERACTIVE MENU.- D.DALI PROJECT.

• FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT TUESDAY 19TH MAY 2009


• SUMMATIVE ASSESSMENT TUESDAY 16TH JUNE 2009
  

I will be going ahead with brief 3. as i felt that the other choices didn't really interest me, nor was something i could work with.

THE IDEA: A rough sketch of how the idea came in mind.

The idea i did have in mind is based around a really, bored and miserable goldfish, swimming on his own in a very stylistic fish tank. But is suddenly embarked on new company from a "new" statue of a lady doll place inside by it's owner. So he soon starts to fall madly in love with it, attempted every way to impress her, not aware that she isn't real.