The Use of CGI in Films

You can use Computer Generated Imagery in various ways; filmmakers in particular have become a lot more reliant on it within the past 15-20 years.
With the advancement of technology in today's society, it has become easier to visualise and create fantasy settings which predated technology could not have handled.

Despite this, some films such as Labyrinth (1986) managed to create a fantasy setting with clever costume and make up designs without much technology.

To the left is an example of how they moulded the material around an actor to create the illusion of a monster.

This shows good use of materials for the time this film was made, but it could not have achieved computer generated imagery, simply because that advanced technology wasn't invented yet.

Ludo from the film Labyrinth, an elaborate costume

Compared to costumes, computer generated imagery has proven to be cost effective and allows the filmmaker to create anything they visualise, whereas with big costumes and make up, a lot of materials go into producing what the artist wants.
In recent films such as the Harry Potter franchise, a lot of fantasy creatures and beasts were needed to bring the film to life. The easiest and cheapest way for them to achieve sufficient images was through CGI.
An example of this is the basilisk in '...The Chamber of Secrets'. A model of the creature, roughly the right size, would be made for the actors to interact with on set, then the motion would be man made through the use of CGI.

Basilisk model

Final shot from the film

A similar technique was used in their third film '...The Prisoner of Azkaban' with the hippogriff being created as a model then animated later on. 

Hippogriff Model

Shot from the film 'Harry Potter'

A limitation to CGI could be when working with actors, they obviously can't feel the computerised creatures they are supposed to be working with on their stage, so to get the best performance out of the actors, models have to be made to interact with, which will cost the team money to build.

Even with this in mind, the high quality of the animated creatures proves that the investments into the film were worth it and will ultimately look more impressive on the big screen.

Loop De Loop - Testing My Ideas

After documenting my best ideas, I thought doing at least one test for my two favourite ideas would be the best way to decide which one to continue with, so I made some GIFs.

The first clip is the one I enjoyed animating the most; despite it moving slightly too fast for the action, I still think the splat and drips look good.
The hard part will be animating over facial features and giving the impression that makeup has been applied. I will also continue the animation until the goo drips off the face, in order for it to loop.

The second clip is from my idea of the tree face paint growing on someone's face, developing and withering away when it dies. This idea would be a lot easier to loop, because at the end the tree will crinkle up and disappear within itself.

Now that I can see both of these ideas forming, I've decided I prefer the first idea with the makeup goo; it's got a simple meaning behind it, which would make more sense from the audience's perspective.

Loop De Loop - Developing My Loopy Ideas

Since I have decided to go with the make up splatter idea, I have experimented with different variations on how certain aspects of the animation could look:

Flynn Rider

The book titled 'The Art Of Tangled' contains some of the development work for the film Tangled. The part which interested me the most was how one of the main characters 'Flynn Rider' was developed and their reasons behind the dramatic change in his design.

In order to design Flynn the artists first had to answer a few questions "Who is this guy? Why is he funny? Why is he so good? Why is he the match for Rapunzel?" - Nathan Greno (Page 103)

Originally he was not meant to be very attractive, but a sweet, good companion for Rapunzel; however their ideas were all over the place, and ultimately they decided that being good looking would be a big part of Flynn Rider's personality.
They wanted Flynn to be an attractive, good looking man, so they did some primary research and asked a lot of women who they find attractive and why.
This lead to them creating the final design for their male lead, who has a symmetrical face and a juxtaposition of horizontal and vertical elements which give him an attractive look.

This story of their process has shown me how important a character is to a narrative, and how their image can make up a part of their personality; I have slightly more understanding of what a character needs in order to make their personality shine through.

Loop De Loop - Inspiration

I have had various inspiration for this project from a number of places, and I'm finally documenting them here!

Spongebob (spongey/flexible face)
Cartoon Network Summer Ident
Tom and Jerry?
Morph

Another film I have taken inspiration from is 'Phantom Limb' by Alex Grigg. In particular for this project is the gooey 'phantom' arm that follows the main character around. If I am able to use this somehow involving faces then it could have interesting results.

I also looked on Pinterest to find pictures of faces to start visualising how some of my ideas could look. Here's a small mood board I made summarising my research:

These images are good inspiration for my current 'faces' project, particularly the top left image with the make up being thrown on her face compared to the black and white complex.

Loop De Loopy Ideas

The first task to do for any project is to create a mind map of words relating to your themed brief. In this case the word is 'faces', so here's the words that first popped into my head as I was documenting:

[Image (mind map)]

From this I have made some quick sketches of some of the most appealing ideas:

[Image (thumbnails)]

Out of these I like 2 of them; the one involving the makeup splatter and the face paint of the tree. Before I can decide which one to go with I will have to experiment with techniques and see if I can visualise either idea more clearly.

Loop De Loop - 'Faces'

One of the brief's I want to partake in for study task 1 is from the Loop De Loop competition website.

Every two months, a new theme is released on their website for animators around the world to generate a short film based on; the theme for December/January is 'Faces'. This film can be of any length and in any medium they choose, so long as it is submitted in the right format. The rules are shown here:

[ http://www.loopdeloop.org/december-january-2015-theme-faces/ (screenshot this) ]

I think this is a good opportunity to explore word association and see how one word could lead onto a number of ideas, so long as it doesn't stop being relevant to the original word.

I will go on to start documenting my ideas and see if I can develop them into fully established animations.

Moo - Feedback and My Plan of Action

After pitching my boards for 'MOO' to my classmates, we had an afternoon on thinking of questions to ask and how to give appropriate feedback to our fellows; as a class we thought of 10 questions at the start of the lesson:

[10 questions]

Then we were put into small groups so we could take it in turns to pitch our ideas to each other within a time limit. After this we were given half an hour to fill out 2 feedback forms to 2 members of our groups, so I received 2 sheets filled with feedback based on my work:

Overall my feedback has been good so far, they were both intrigued by my ideas and the improvements are manageable!

Now that I have another point of view to look at my work from, I can consider and improve upon these points into the next month before I have to have refined my boards and ideas, to gain more feedback at the next stage in January.

Moo - Pitch Boards

After finally pulling together all of my work so far for Moo, I have put together 3 pitch boards to present to my group on the 11th December:


My first board has to show my final product; what it's going to look like and the idea I'm going to produce.
So I thought my storyboard and my final designs would be the best pieces of work to show first since they both demonstrate what my idea is.


















My second board consists of the layout and format I want to work in. I want to show my classmates exactly how I want this to be made and where I want it to be shown.

The third board shows every design involved in the film, and how I want them all to be animated.
I want to describe how I want each line to move throughout the advert so that my classmates can visualise my idea in motion, so that I can hopefully get better feedback on what I can do to improve my work.

Final Idea for 'Moo'

Developing from my compositions and designs, I altered my storyboard slightly and finalised my idea:

Here's the final composition of cards and designs that I will present in my pitch, compared with a photographic version of the cards I want my animations to playback on:

Moo - Business Card Compositions

After the feedback I received in Responsive earlier this week, I looked on Moo's website (http://uk.moo.com/) to see what business cards they offer. I drew them all out onto one page to get an idea of the variety of sizes they provide (left)

This gave me a better idea of how the cards should be displayed on the table, so I was inspired to design 6 different possible compositions I could use in my final piece:

I will take them all into consideration when thinking of potential card designs.

Animation Tests

Within the past few days, I have done the initial animating on scenes 1 and 3. So far I think they have both turned out quite well.

In scene 1 I need more movement in Moom's body to make it slightly more lively, and I will change the position of the hands slightly so they look more natural.



So far in scene 3 I have only moved the arm, which is the most important element of this part of the animation. I timed the movements to my audio, so that I can envision how the rest of the body will move with my voice.

Setting the Scene

Now that my idea for Character and Narrative has been finalised, I'm almost ready to start animating!

Before that however, I have to make my props and set the scenes where my animation will take place. His body language and movements are very important to tell the story, so I will use my reference to get the positioning right.

Here's my first scene in development:

This is roughly the position I want Moom to be in - sat on the bed leaning over slightly with a tired facial expression.

The eye lids will be on show, roughly a third of the way down his eyes, and a quarter of the way up from the bottom lids. I think this combination works the best because as you can see bellow, his eyes look puffy which gives the impression of tiredness.

The rest of his body should be hanging down, his shoulders will be low, the hands will rest on his knees with the backs of his hands facing towards each other; His back will be arched over to suggest that he's struggling to keep his head up.

The facial expression for every scene.

I will make his teeth invisible for the final piece, so I can focus on the positions of the mouth without the teeth sticking through his chin...










My second scene will be the most difficult to complete, because the broom is made up of separate shapes, and I have to use the parent tool to move the broom with the hand. I added in a couple of panels in a portrait position to give the impression that he's inside a room.

Scene 2

Scene 2 with background panels.

My third and final scene requires a cloth in Moom's hand. I will have to use the parent tool again to allow the cloth and hand to move in sync. I then put the character in the starting position of the first frame, and set up the camera angle ready to animate.

Scene 3.

Positioning of the body.

Scene 3 camera angle.

Now that my character is set up in all 3 scenes, I will start animating them!

Development of 'Moo' Idea

After looking and brainstorming through my initial ideas for this brief, I storyboarded my favourite idea:

I want Moo to be portrayed as a professional company yet creative and fun at the same time, so I think my idea works well to demonstrate this. 

Here are some designs I could use on business cards that I would animate:

I will take everything I've done so far to the next Responsive session, which will be about giving and receiving feedback on everybody's work so far.

Initial Ideas for 'Moo'

Inspiration for 'Moo'

Since I've decided to go with the Moo brief, I will need some ideas towards a final outcome. After looking through various pieces I'm starting to get an idea of what I want to produce:

The character design in the animation 'Dumb Ways To Die' is cute and simple with soft colours and round figures. I feel this look appeals to a wide audience, so I think it's worth considering for my designs.



The cartoon network ident uses a variety of drawing styles; using the same colour pallet links all of the styles together. The transactions are so smooth throughout the sequences merging them into one; I feel I could create an ident like this one with similar intentions - to merge all styles and types of businesses that Moo sell cards to into one sequence to show how lively and open Moo are to ideas and designs. (Allowing me to try out a variety of styles and set up an animation sequence!)
This ident is a very different style to the actual shows that are broadcast on Cartoon Network but this animation still works - I think if I pull it off right I could combine a variety of styles into one sequence.


Cartoon Network Summer Ident 2013 from CRCR on Vimeo.

My Pinterest mood board, which contains illustrations/art that have inspired some of my ideas:
http://uk.pinterest.com/alexneild/responsive-inspiration/

Animatic

After making my final storyboard, I went on to make an animatic to work out roughly how long my actions are going to take.



My lines need to by tidied up, and I will decide on a font to use after I have developed my animation further.

I think I have timed it pretty well, however I will need to start my final piece in order to determine if I have got this right or not.

YCN Brief Analysis

After reading the briefs with the questions in mind, I have decided to take part in the Moo competition.

http://www.ycn.org/awards/ycn-student-awards/2014-15-ycn-student-awards/briefs/moo 

(Their website): http://uk.moo.com/

To analyse the brief, we were given these questions to answer:

What are the 5 most important words?

• Playful
• Passionate
• All industries
• Striking
• Appeal

The 5 most important considerations?

• Do my styles/designs appeal to their target audience(s)?
• Does my idea encourage the audience that they have creative freedom with this website?
• Is their new tagline 'Design Works Wonders' portrayed well?
• Does it to show that 'Moo' are a playful, open, helpful, social and encouraging company?
• Is the advertisement fun but professional at the same time?

Once I had established these answers I went on to consider:

Who is the audience for this brief?
Mainly business owners from companies that sell a variety of things such as; food, fashion, health and fitness etc.

Who should the audience be?
Anybody that wants to sell themselves; people from the creative industry who need business cards or need to sell their illustrations/designs, down to lawyers, or anybody who wants to work with clients.

Who could the audience be?
They could be family-orientated citizens who want to buy greetings cards (so anybody from all ages)

What do they do?
They design business cards/greetings cards to sell to people who are running a business.

What do they want to be?
They want to be creative, fun and encouraging to anyone who's in the business industry. Their customers want to be unique and able to sell themselves in their own way (summarising themselves into one business card).

Now that I have an idea of what the brief wants me to achieve, I can start researching and developing my ideas ready to pitch in a couple of weeks.

11 Second Club

One competition that I would love to do towards 'Responsive' is the 11 Second Club.
This is an organisation that releases an audio clip every month for artists from anywhere to make a character animation fitting to the clip to be entered and potentially win the monthly competition.

The new task for November 2014 has been released:

It seems straight forward enough, and it allows me to use any technique I want - so I could either develop on stop motion/2D animating (the mediums I'm most comfortable with) or it could be an opportunity to practice 3D animation, to experiment and see how well I can achieve what I want.

I have also considered their previous competitions, to see what techniques other people generally use and if there were any other clips that gave me ideas;

http://www.11secondclub.com/competitions/july13

http://www.11secondclub.com/competitions/september14

http://www.11secondclub.com/competitions/january14

I found a few that I like more than others but they've shown me that most people usually make their animations in either 3D or 2D drawn.

This gives me the opportunity to create something different to try and stand out from the rest - but I think ultimately the best option for me is to try a few of the competitions, rather than just one, so I can properly compare techniques and see which medium I'm best in.


EDIT:
Due to me focusing on other projects, unfortunately I was unable to have enough time on this month's task. i will listen to the next sound clip released in January and improve my time management skills in the new year.

Final Storyboard

After simplifying my ideas, I have designed my final storyboard and concept art:

I am happy with how this idea has turned out, because I believe having only 3 scenes will make it easier for me to focus on combining lip syncing and actions into longer sequences, rather then constantly changing the angles and cutting from scene to scene.

Having fewer, longer sequences will make the story slower, which should reflect the mood of the character (how tired she is); this should make the story more consistent and allow me to see how well my animation flows.

I will animate the title sequences in Photoshop, but the rest of it will be done in Maya.

These are my props. They will look slightly different when I make them 3D in Maya, but I tried to make the designs as simple as possible:

Now that I have my designs and idea in place, I can start building everything in Maya and start animating soon!