Negotiated Study Two: Animatic

Last night I received my nearly finished soundtrack, made by the brilliantly multi-talented Chris Lacey. If you haven't already go and check out his blog at http://christopherlacey.blogspot.co.uk

So I decided to put the cut down animatic to the soundtrack to get a rough idea as to how it will feel, although the visuals and soundtrack do match together quite well when I animate the final thing they will be much tighter together.

I'm more than pleased with the soundtrack, it's a massive improvement on the one I made as not only does it feel more current but it sets the mood much better, making it more likely for the audience to be drawn in. It also helps the journey that the audience are being taken on flow much more smoothly and the different sounds don't sound disjointed like they did in mine. Overall I'm very pleased that Chris agreed to create this soundtrack for me, it gives me much more inspiration on how I will be animating the visuals. 

I can't wait to hear the finished product!

Negotiated Study Two: Lungs and Heart Test Animation

These are two test animations that I have done, one for the lungs and the other for the heart. I'm really happy with the outcome with both of them, especially the heart. 

I will be creating more test animations for all of the organs to know how they will move when creating the final animation. The animatic didn't allow me to do this as the movement was too blocky and was very rough.

The Lungs

The Heart

Negotiated Study Two: Improved Animatic and Storyboard

Since completing my animatic I had had another look at it and cut it down. I also changed the storyboard to match the animatic. I managed to cut the animatic down to 3 and a half minutes which is a massive improvement. Before it was a little bit over 5 minutes! Here they are.

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.