Negotiated Study One: Brief

Negotiated Study:  One

Subject:  Animation

Rational/Working Statement:

From a keen interest on the human body, documentaries and my own personal experiences I intend to create a 2D animation of an abstract representation of the life of the human body through the visuals of bodily systems and organs. This will be accompanied by its own unique soundtrack.

Aims:

I aim to make the animation as scientifically accurate to the body as possible where timing is involved, however it will not be a fact driven animation but emotionally driven instead. The soundtrack will play a major role in setting the mood of the story.  I hope to create this animation so that the majority of the audience will be able to relate to it.

After completing the animation I plan to ask for professional feedback from animation companies and contacts, and possibly enter it into festivals

Details/Content:

The content of the animation will rely deeply on narrative; this will be a story on the life of a human’s body. There will be no use of characters

The animation should include the following themes:

·         Systems of the human body

·         Stages of a humans life, birth , childhood, puberty, adulthood, old age and death

·         Illnesses and problems that most people experience

Specific Skills:

2D drawn animation

2D digital based editing (Photoshop)

Editing

Assessment Criteria:

Critical Theoretical Knowledge

Conceptual Ability

Visual Development Skills

Practical Skills/Use of Media Technique

Professional Practice

Negotiated Study One: The Final Animatic

From the storyboard I created I then went on and created an animatic. 

I feel that this animatic goes on for too long, it would be better  to be 3 minutes long instead of 5 and so I may have to review it and try to cut some out. 

I also made the soundtrack to get some sort of idea as to how the images may go with music, I will be contacting the music department here at university to see if they can create something much better for me. I'm not happy for it to be the final one and as the soundtrack plays an important part of the animation I would prefer to have something really good. 

I feel that I've tried to create something much too complicated and so many things I planned to add into it like every day colds and common illnesses have been left out. Also animating the whole life of the body in 3 minutes, or even 5 may have been way to ambitious, and so I may have to review this too. I feel that it may have been more effective if made simpler by animating one of the systems, for example the heart and the circulatory system or the digestive system.

When animating the final film I plan to make it much looser than this animatic, organs will stretch and change shape to suit what is happening inside them, like they normally would and the movements will be much more detailed. This will make it much more interesting to watch. 

Negotiated Study One: Storyboard Update

After being not very happy with the start of the animatic I went back to the storyboard and improved it. This time I used the image I created of all of the systems put together, which made much more sense. This is the image..

This one shows the circulatory system on the top of the organs

And this one it's underneath, which is how it will be when I animate it.

This is the storyboard in which I created by using these images..

I coloured this first one with textures I created with watercolour paints, this gave me an idea as to how it would look and feel. I will later do the same with the rest of the storyboard.

I was much happier with this storyboard and felt that it would work better when made into an animatic. This storyboard when I colour it will have the same colour theme as the last story board (light, bright blue > purple > red > dark, dull blue > grey)

For this storyboard I also cut out quite a lot of the 'day to day activities' of some of the organs as it made it too long and sometimes repeated too often, more than I felt necessary.

These are some of the textures that I created with watercolour paints and will be using to render the final animation..

Negotiated Study One: Animatic Attempt One

Having made my storyboard to a satisfactory level yesterday I decided to start to create an animatic. I got to doing the first page of the storyboard and wasn't very pleased at all. Here is the video..

I was very pleased with how it started with the heart growing with the veins and arteries and then the heart beating, but it was after that that I'm not very happy with. I feel that after the heart it becomes very weak, all of the organs and systems become disjointed and isolated from one another rather than being and working together. It's also not very visually strong and so I will be going back to the story board and will be making some adjustments before I carry on with any animatic work.

Negotiated Study One: Storyboard Render

I have added the extra detail that was needed so that the images match the description of each frame better and I have also added colour. 

I started by giving each organ/system its own colour but when I reached the fifth and final storyboard page I realised that it wasn't how I wanted it to look like, it looked like it was for children with bright colours and was just a bit too much for the eye....

The very first part I rendered was the heart where I used the typical red and blue. However it was suggested that I needn't stick to the typical diagram colours as it's obvious enough as to what the audience will be looking at so I experimented...

I went back to the original colours that I had decided to use for the circulatory system but I didn't feel it suitable for this different design.

Next I tried green and red, which I liked and so went with it.

I made the kidneys and bladder yellow, the brain orange, the respiratory system blue and the digestive purple. At this point I wasn't happy with the orange and the yellow at the time but I stuck with it.

Again, I still wasn't happy with the orange and the yellow, they didn't feel like they fitted in and made it all look a bit 'sickly'

With this one I didn't think it was as bad as the others but it still did't feel quite right and neither did the next.

To render the images I had used photographs of watercolour textures and erased the parts of the image I didn't want filled. Up until this point I done them all individually, one at a time changing the colour to match the organ or system as the textures I used were all originally blue. For this last one I covered them all and then cut them all out before changing the colours. This gave a result that I really liked, it was very simple but it worked and was much more tasteful. From this I decided that I would use a different could for the three different stages of the bodies life, the beginning, middle and end. The end was already set out for me, I would used the blue, it was a warm darker/grey blue to show the life leaving the body and represent death. The middle I decided would be red as it's known for strength and vitality which is what I wanted to put across. For he beginning I was suck as the colour used would need to be able to flow into the next colour (red) smoothly without becoming muddy, of which the only possible options were purple, orange or yellow, none of which I felt represented birth or new life. In the end I decided to use blue again but in a different tone, a much brighter blue that was vibrant and full of life.

On the first page I used the bright blue, the third page red and the fifth, the darker blue. Then I used the second and fourth to cross fade the colours to make a smooth transition. 

Overall I'm very pleased with the results of these. The only thing I may play around with is the feeling of depth and make it feel like you are inside the body with the organs, possibly by making the background darker than the objects within the screen. 

Negotiated Study One: Rough First Storyboard

This is my first rough storyboard, the reason being is that little details need to be added such as the clot in the arteries at the end and I would like to inject colour into it so that I can create some mood and to see how the animation should feel at different parts.

So far I'm very happy with the shots and how the story progresses. I'm hoping to receive some feedback soon so that I can possibly improve it further.

Negotiated Study One: Digital Image Cleanup

I've cleaned up all of the drawn images of the systems and organs ready for animating.

I decided to leave out the live and the pancreas as I felt that it would make it that little bit too complicated to animate. The liver alone has so many functions itself without animating most of the systems anyway!

Once I had done this I put them all together to create this image which is going to be the main basis from which I will animate. 

Overall I'm really happy with how it all looks however there are some things that I will need to do to tie up the loose ends before animate. For example, the veins and arteries need to be connected to the heart, the stomach and intestines need to be connected and the kidneys need to be attached to the bladder. 

he next step is to create the storyboards