As ye all know for our next brief we have to create an animation short. We started the process with a session of creative writing. First, we had to write a short story using 3 preselected phrases.

This is my original story which had to include these subjects; ‘The first day of school’,’ A phone box’, and ‘a recipe’. I only had the first paragraph done on the first day, so it wasn’t much of a contribution to the group story. I’ve finished it since and I have to say it’s not exactly a riveting read. I wouldn’t like to be animating this story as it has very little going for it. Anyway just for the record here it is.

Little Tommy had been looking forward to the first day of school all summer. His older brother and sister came home each day with such exciting stories about their day’ that he couldn’t wait for his turn. Only one more day to go. He should be sad that this is his last day of just playing, but the thought of making new friends, and all the fun they would have at playtime far outweighed this. His mother had bought him a new schoolbag, a new lunchbox and a brand new ‘Power Rangers’ flask. Better still is the new uniform that she got for him. He’ll be a big kid now, just like his brother and sister.

That’s as far as I’d got on the first day. I added this at a later time,

On the way to school in their mother’s car, they got stuck in heavy traffic. This was usual in the mornings but Tommy didn’t know that. He began to worry. He didn’t want to be late on the first day.

Something strange caught all their attention while they were stopped. There was a man in a nearby telephone box who seemed to be taking his clothes off. Other people were watching too. He was actually changing into a different outfit and when he emerged from the box he looked very odd indeed. He was dressed entirely in green. Green t-shirt, green underpants over a pair of green ladies tights (can't see that catching on), green boots and a pair of green gloves, well…. it was cold. There was one exception to the outfits colour in that he wore a black ‘Lone Ranger’ style mask. “I wonder if he’s a Superhero” said Joe, Tommy’s older brother. “Super mad-man more like” replied Mandy, their sister. “People like that shouldn’t be allowed out” said their mother.

The man stuffed his clothes into a duffle bag, green of course, and jogged up the street and into the local bank. Tommy and his family were able to watch everything as the traffic was only inching forward. “There must be robbers in there and that man is going to catch them” said Tommy to the others. He figured that the man was a real-live Superhero.

The traffic began to free up and so they were forced to continue on their journey. “Aw, can’t we stay and watch” moaned Tommy. “No way” replied his mother, “You can’t be late on your very first day, anyway, whatever that guy’s up to, it’s sure to be a recipe for disaster”. As they approached the turn for the school road, several squad cars whizzed past heading towards the bank. ‘Bloody school’ thought Tommy to himself. ‘That’s the only exciting thing to ever happen around here and we have to miss it’. And from that day on, just like most other little boys, Tommy HATED school.

As a follow up exercise to this we were organised into groups of three, to select elements from each of our stories, and combine them into one story. So this is a rough draft of our joint effort.

YESTERDAYS HERO

Our group story starts with a regular suburban house. We’ll set it in America, for now, as it’s the land of Superheroes. Looking at the ground floor windows we can just about make out the shape of a person sitting inside. The blind is down but the slats are half-open and it appears the person is looking out - through a pair of binoculars. This scene should be arousing our suspicion. Then we get to see, through the binoculars, what exactly this person is watching…. School kids.  They’re getting off their bus at the school gates. Inside the house, sitting at the window is an old man. It’s difficult to see him clearly, as the only light in the room is coming from the half-open slats of the window blind. The striped shadows cast over the figure give him a ghost like presence. The room is shabby, sparsely furnished with old newspapers and dirty dishes cluttering up the surfaces. He obviously doesn’t get many visitors and lives a life of solitude.

As he’s watching the children get off the bus something beyond it. In the distance, catches his eye. It’s a big truck, swerving from side to side out of control. The man (We’ve named him Chris after Christopher Reeve) takes a sharp intake of breath. His eyes widen in panic. The truck is headed for the school bus with some kids still on board. Chris jumps to his feet. He takes off his dressing gown, revealing a Super-hero style suit, and pulls on a matching mask. He rushes into the street, past the school bus, and stops the runaway truck with a single punch.

Standing heroically beside the battered truck, with all the children cheering, the image fades out to a white mist. Alternatively it turns into a photograph in a newspaper, accompanying an article about his heroic deed.  As the mist clears we are back in Chris’ front room, where we see that Chris is actually in a wheelchair. He had barely made it to the front door and was just starting to open it as the truck rumbled past….the driver in full control. He had imagined the whole thing. He’s still in his dressing gown and he pulls of the mask, and returns  it to its usual resting place, on his lap. Looking sad and dejected, Chris slowly wheels his way back to the window. Only now do we see the framed newspaper clippings on the walls. They show articles of the brave act Chris carried out as a young man. Chris WAS a superhero.

Sadly, time has caught up with him, in the same way that it will catch up with us all. Unless of course were vampires, but then, that’s another story…..

We all made a few drawings to accompany the group story;

 

 

The old Hero reminiscing

 

 

 

This is my version of Mackinleys idea to show our Hero lit only by the striped light coming through the half-closed blinds. The wheelchair wouldn't be revealed this early though, if we were animating the group version.

 

 

 

A couple of versions of Chris punching the truck.

 

I also added some colour to the line drawings for a better visual effect. There's a good atmospheric effect to the drawing of the light through the blinds.

I almost have the story for my animation short completed. Well, the first draft at least. I have a feeling there will be many.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I know there's a bit of a gap between blogs but my laptop hasn't been well lately. This post is being constructed in stages whenever I get a bit of spare time during the day. I figured I might as well show some of the line art that was drawn for this project.

The images above are the motorbikes used in the first scene. Each image was duplicated to be coloured differently and therefore give the impression of a different bike and rider. As they would cross the screen so fast it would only be noticed by scabbing along the timeline (some people do this?).

These images are the bikes used in the second scene. Again they were duplicated and some coloured differently. As the motion path is made up of two arcs, in opposite directions, I was able to flip the images and give the impression of multiple bikes - from four drawings.

The same process was used with these images for scene three.

A few 'extras', to be used for different passengers.

These are the components used to make up the moving objects in scene four.

I changed the background in scene five, making the corridor narrower was intended to make the group of advancing bikers appear more intimidating, for the purpose of the plot. I also ran short of time and could use this view without having to animate their legs.

A selection of faces to use, and alter, for different characters. There would be a selection of different bodies to mix 'n match to avoid drawing multiple full characters.

There was originally to be a doctor coming out of a side room, seeing the advancing group, and then turning on his heels and heading back through the door he came out of. Unfortunately I didn't have enough time to include him.

A couple of characters meant to stand in the corridor in scene five. As the group of bikers walked towards them they would move back against the wall making sure they were out of the way. Again they never made it into the scene due to a lack of time, on my part as the duration of the piece had some flexibility. 

Some of the original characters destined for scene five. Some problems with tracing the scanned images in Illustrator. my own inability, meant these drawings weren't vectorised and therefore would be of poor quality. I ended up drawing new characters in flash which didn't help when time was short.

The drawings above were used in scene six. Again it was a case of re-using components in different colours and orientations.

There was also to be a close-up of a nurse at the end, holding up a sprig of mistletoe and winking (to camera). Her face in the storyboard wasn't very good so this image was intended to replace it.

A selection of the original artwork after adding colour.

Backgrounds for scene's 1-4 after adding colour

The original background for scene 5 after adding colour

Background for scene 6 with colour.

The animatic for the Christmas card project uses oval shapes in place of the motorbikes & riders in scenes 1-4. Ovals were also used for the characters in scenes 5 & 6 but not surprisingly they've mysteriously disappeared. If I have time I'll go back to the original and add them again.

There are a few missing images, the coloured bikes, which I will add to the next post and also the finished animation needs to be added.

That was strange, I went to add a new post a while ago and there was an advert preventing me from reading what I was writing. I'd like to know who allowed some one to place an add on my blog composition page. Especially when it prevents me from adding a post. Anyway I managed to deactivate it but it has made me a bit suspicious as to how it happened.
Back to the matter in hand. I started animating yesterday. I have most of the drawings done and was keen to get started as I know this will take a lot of time. After finishing the drawings, in pencil, I then inked over the lines so they could be scanned. I only just found out that there was a scanner in Clare street. I used my own printer scanner up till now but the quality isn't great. I had noticed that I was spending a lot of time filling gaps in the scanned artwork, prior to filling areas with the paintbucket tool. A way to cut down on this and get much cleaner lines is to trace the image in Illustrator. It gives a comic book style to the images. Thanks Dave for the tip. It became obvious how much better the images traced in Illustrator were when I started to animate. As you can see in the videos the quality of the fist bike is much poorer than the second bike, which was traced in Illustrator.

 

 

 

 

The video above has the first bike after being traced. There is an improvement, but as the bikes all have to pass close to the camera, the quality has to be as good as possible. I think I'll now trace all my scanned images first which will add to the time needed. But then I should save a lot of the time I would have spent touching up the gaps, and it will improve the overall quality.

So the next thing I have to do is an animatic. The audio would have to be done anyway so it'll get that sorted, and help me to see any areas that might be adjusted or improved. I will be posting that as soon as it's done.

 

Finally got the storyboard finished for the Christmas card brief. I'm starting to get a bit worried already as it's taken the bones of four days to do, and that's just nine still images. O.k. so a day was lost trying to upload it - technical errors - but I have a ton of work to do. I still have several characters to draw plus a dozen or so motorbikes. There's also a lot of background stuff that still needs to be added. First though I think I'll have to clear out some old files as my computer has slowed down dramatically, even Photoshop which worked fine before, closed itself down last night, probably exhausted. There's roughly six scenes, the first four will be only about two seconds long - each. But there's a lot of motion in them so that'll require a lot of drawing.

 

The image above is the opening shot, it will include several bikes speeding past the camera/viewer. It's the only one I've done so far and I want them all to be different so I won't be just copying this bike & rider (though to be honest I'll have to do it if time is a factor). I have animated a moving wheel as part of the research. That is I added lighter shades to opposite arcs and made it move up and down, to give the impression that the wheel was moving. Now that I've been working on the timing I don't think this will be necessary as the bikes will pass by so quickly.

You might guess that I've discovered the clouds filter in photoshop

 

 

Again there will be as many bikes as possible within the time for this scene and hopefully they can all be different.

 

It'll be snowing in this scene, should be interesting to try

 

 

This scene needs to be darkened as it's set at night. I want to include the light beams of the bikes as they pull up outside the hospital. This might be a bit ambitious so it'll be left till near the end and dependant on time.

The main thing for me with regards the storyline was to avoid the stereotypical images of Christmas. I think I've done that in the first half of the animation. O.k. there's a robin in there, and snow, but they don't necessarily have to imply Christmas. There is an obvious reference at the end, there's only two more scenes. But I wanted to build up a sense of tension/ apprehension so that the ending would be a surprise( It'll be a surprise for me if I actually get it finished in time). But that's part of the entertainment isn't it, to have a twist at the end of your storyline.

The remaining two scenes are firstly, the group walking along one of the hospital corridors, and finally reaching their destination and carrying out their business. Hopefully I'll have at least the first scene animated and ready to add to my next post.

 

Since we got our latest project, an animated Christmas card, I've spent a lot of time looking at animations on the net. This is part of my research and it's got to be done. Actually it's good to get an idea of what others are doing. It's not the first time I've checked out animations on the web, but I'm trying to get an idea of what not to do. It was recommended that we avoid stereotypical Christmas visuals, so I 've been looking at Christmas animations mainly. And Christmas e-cards. It's hard enough to come up with an idea without any traditional Christmas visuals, and at the moment I'm still researching (waiting for inspiration). I found it useful to read a few traditional Christmas stories, and am kind of drawn to the message of peace and goodwill, so I have to come up with a script that portrays this.
 In the meantime I've finally got round to photographing what I've done in the drawing classes. What I'm posting here isn't everything to date as there's a share of stuff in my sketchbook. This is just some of the drawings we did in class on larger sheets.

 

 

 

The images above are blind drawings. A good exercise to improve hand eye co-ordination. I can't help thinking of Picasso when I do these.

 

 

 

The two images above were still life's of basic forms made up of a white rectangular box, a white paper cone and two eggs. They were done using a 2H pencil which was probably too light. I built up the forms gradually using shading only. this was because the background was also white and it was more of an exercise in tone. No lines were drawn first which is what I'd usually do to map in the shapes.

 

 

 

 

 

The life drawings above were done with the same 2H pencil. I really need to get a HB. My other pencils are 3B and darker which I tend to use for shading.

 

 

I used a charcoal pencil for the image above. The poses were time limited for this exercise.

 

 

A few of the forearm and hand drawings, again with the 2B pencil, apart from the obvious charcoal one. I really like the Photographic effect gained with this method (charcoal pencil and rubber). I tried it first in the following images. These were similar to the fist still life tonal studies, using white shapes on a white background. A really nice composition can be gained with the right lighting. Again the forms were built up gradually but with the advantage of using a rubber to enhance the lighter tones. By reworking the tones several times the image eventually gains a realistic feel. I have to say I like this method of drawing and will be doing a lot more when I get the chance. I think I'll try a portrait, just out of curiosity. Don't hold your breath though. It might be six months time before that happens.

 

 

Apologies for the poor picture quality. I have to keep the camera resolution low or it takes forever to upload images.