Animation for Nottinghamshire County Council

I have recently completed this Animation working with the great folks at Nottingham County Council. It has been a real pleasure working with them and I feel like I got a lot out of the job. From a conceptual point of view this has certainly been one of my favourite projects so far as I was let loose to storyboard the entire piece myself. It was also left to me to source a voice over artist, so I thought of a friend of mine - Laura Bozic who did a great job. For the soundtrack, I came across audionautix.com which is a great website for music which is free for commercial use (so long as you credit them.)



A summary on the development of style..

In the process of creating this animation, I have learned that it's important to get the style confirmed early on in order to save time later. I knew that style/concept visualisations were an important part of pre-production but in this case, time was a limitation. I had my hands full working on and making suggested changes to the 6-7 minutes worth of content for the animatic.

My initial animatic was met with a surprising amount of enthusiasm, given that it was the result of quick photoshop sketching from a storyboard I had drawn by hand. Some were even questioning whether it was the final product. I had found that my standard procedure of doing things, co-coincided with the style/concept that they were looking for, but I hadn't yet realised this.

Still from original animatic

I thought "great - they will love the final version," and got cracking. Previously they had provided me with reference from Powtoon.com - the black silohuette characters - to provide me with a final finish to aim towards. I had always wanted to get more experience with vector graphics and using Illustrator so I saw this as an ideal opportunity. Here is the first "final look" I created for them ( I spent several days on applying this look to a portion of the animation, before our scheduled feedback session.)

Whilst I was quite proud of this - the subtlety of tonal change to define the horizon, the texture, the smooth motion blurred motion and the perfectly symmetrical characters, I sensed in the Skype feedback/development session with the chaps at Notts CC, that they were slightly disappointed with it.

So later that day, I emailed the client to ask whether there was anything they didn't like about it. This was then followed up by a call which was the turning point of the project. I had a massive "aah ha!" (eureka moment) when I realised what they liked about the animatic was the simple naivety of the style; the way it looked like a child had drawn it. We discussed ideas around this theme (e.g. using a pencil texture and keeping with the stickmen) and it was also suggested I physically draw in the character (or create the impression I'm doing this.)

The audience (0-25 with special educational needs & learning difficulties, their families and linked professionals) became a prominent part of my understanding on how I should approach the style. I researched and found that the key things that appeal to children are: characters clearly depicted in their environment, colours and a simple, accessible style. I remember the maths books I had at school with the squared paper. So, I threw all these elements together and hey presto! Everyone was happy again!

New technical/business skills gained

So aside from learning to nail down the style as soon as possible; I've also picked up some new technical skills - such as using the pen tool in Photoshop to create smooth lines and curves then applying a brush texture to fill the length of this line. Also, filming my hand drawing in the character. For this, I printed the already-created Photoshop stickman onto green card. Then I filmed my hand drawing the character (only the pencil isn't touching the page but just following the printed line.) I removed the green in After Effects and replaced it with the background and character. I applied a stroke effect to make it look like the character was forming as a result of my pencil.

A final positive outcome from this experience is picking up new business skills, including working with a large client, making proposals, subcontracting other professionals (i.e. the voice over artist and her agent) and communicating via Skype. It has been a fantastic project to work on and I look forward to working with them again in the future.

Progress!

I have been very busy since my last blog (hence the lack of blog posts.) I am currently working solely for Kernel which is the main 3D animated film being produced in our year. Since completing a lot of concept design work I have also created the new storyboard for Kernel. From this, I have been able to develop an animatic that has progressed through 6 stages (from an epic 6 mins 38 secs down to a more realistic 4 mins 11 secs.) In the process of refining the animatic, I have kept the essential story information, cut out whats not needed and maintained a good sense of pace and rhythm.

From the animatic, Olly and Hugh have been creating block-throughs in Maya. These Maya shots - that dictate basic animation and camera moves - are being carefully timed to fit with the animatic. (I have also helped by going into Maya and adjusting the camera sequencer lengths to block-through shots that were completed prior to the final animatic.)  The idea is that people who're doing the animating can work within the appropriately timed shots that maintain the correct pacing to the film as a whole. Its an intuitive process and of course, the animation will probably not stick to the frame counter exactly - so long as it roughly fits with all the original timings then we're on the right track!

My roles on the project have extended to editing and compositing for which I have been getting to grips with Adobe Premiere (CS5.5) and The Foundry's Nuke (6.3 v2) software. For both of these I have been working my way through some helpful books - 'Adobe Premiere - classroom in a book' and 'Nuke 101' by Ron Ganbar. Both of which, give you files and exercises to work through. As the editor, I will be constantly updating a premiere project file, as the shots gradually progress from the block through stage to animation and eventually the final composited shots.

The image below shows what I have learned most recently in Nuke. Using a rendered 3D sequence of exr images, I have rebuilt a basic beauty pass which mirrors the way a beauty pass would be created in Maya. The advantage here though, is that the beauty pass has been divided to its essential elements - which I can tweek independently. Working this way should prove highly efficient as it allows one to have good aesthetic control over the shots and save on the lengthy processing and rendering times Maya would incur. The bonus is that the files that Ganbar has provided with his book is of a lemming 'road-skiing' using a car. Amazing!

The Kernel team have been working really well together and it feels like we're building up a creative symbiosis of all our talents. If we maintain this kind of momentum then we should have something good to show by the deadline which is now less then 100 days away!

Aside from Kernel, I have been working on the dissertation and am currently 2 weeks away from completing a Web Communication Dreamweaver AQA course. Busy busy busy!