Premise - Reflective Statement

My premise project has definitely had its ups and downs. I started the project unsure of what direction I wanted to go down. I got stuck trying to find an idea I thought would work out. I internalized my thoughts a lot rather than actually trying to develop the project and experiment with designs and concepts. I started to become very worried as I felt like part of me had already given up on the project, and I was posting less frequently to my blog. I felt like this year was just going to be a repeat of last year. It was very frustrating as I could see myself getting worse and worse. I really had to think about my feelings towards the course, and if this was truly the right course for me. For so long I have neglected the 3D side of the course, which is silly considering that 3D is the main focus of Computer Animation Arts. I was very scared during this project because the ideas I wanted to explore, I shut them down without even trying to experiment with them, and my project was getting nowhere for months. 

There were two conversations that really were the turning point for this project for me. One with Phil, where we discussed my relationship with 3D software and the course in general, and how I just need to dive into it before it's too late. The other conversation was with Alan, where I showed him some of my concept drawings, and he suggested that I should try using a different metaphor to visualize the theme I was trying to convey. This is where things started to make more sense to me. I suddenly had such a clear idea of what I wanted to make, and could actually sit down and work properly without feeling stuck. Of course, I was still extremely worried, as I had lost so much time and had to make up for it very quickly, but I started to actually enjoy the project. 

At the interim crit, I was given the challenge of meeting the list of accomplishments I had stated that I would do in my presentation. Phil mentioned that my goals were not that ambitious for the average student, but they were ambitious for me, considering my past projects. I wanted nothing more than to prove to myself that I could achieve this. 

I have finished the project feeling positive. I managed to complete most of the goals on my project commitment list, and the final crit left me feeling confident in my idea. I finally dived into 3D, even though my character is simple. It's taken a long time, but this is the first project I have completed where I truly feel proud and happy with my work. There's a lot I wish I could change, like how the project started, how I organized my time and also reading the brief properly/listening more as I completely forgot that film reviews and the magazine article were part of the premise project, and now It's too late to complete them. I wish I had gone to more one on one tutorials as that would have helped me out so much, especially at the beginning of the project. I didn't give myself time to add sound to my animatic, and I wish I had experimented in 3D/Maya more.

 Although there's much I still need to improve on, I'm extremely proud of how far I've come. I looked back through my blog at my first try at the premise project, where I only had a few drawings and one very small interim crit presentation and compared it to my premise project from this year and I can see how much I have improved. I still have ways to go, but I'm finally starting to feel like I'm properly engaging in this course.

Premise - Final Crit Presentation

Premise - Art Of 'Sketch vs. Artist'

Premise - Sketchbook Concepts

Sketchbook Concepts

I drew a few concepts for the sketchbook as I hadn't figured out what kind of book I wanted the sketchbook to be. I'm still not sure about these concepts but I'm leaning more towards the black sketchbook as it's simple. I also like the blue and pink sketchbook as it's simple but still has a nice pop of colour.

Premise - Artist Outfit Concepts and Colour Keys

Artist Outfit Concepts

Pajama Colour Keys

Comfy Clothes Colour Keys

The setting of my animation is the artist's bedroom/study so I wanted to design the artist in comfy clothes. As the artist is based on myself I designed outfits based on the clothes I wear at home. I'm leaning towards the comfy clothes design (T-shirt and Shorts) Concepts as they read as comfy clothes, without looking too much like pajamas. I feel like the dressing gown design and the pajama shirt designs are a little too much and makes it look like the artist is about to go to sleep rather than sit down and do some drawing.

Concept art - Hand Studies and Rough Concepts

Hand Studies

Something I realized while drawing my first storyboard was that the hands looked really bad, so I took some photos of my hand in different poses I thought would fit in with my animation and used them as drawing references for this set of hand studies. This really helped when I was drawing my cleaned up storyboard.

The Artist Rough Concepts #1

The Artist Rough Concepts #2

These are rough concepts for the artist character in my animation. I chose not to give them a head/face because I didn't want them to have an obvious identity as this character is based on myself. My project is a personal story to me that I have adapted into an animation that other people can relate to or just find entertaining. I also wanted to make it more obvious that the sketch is their main character of the animation, and that the story is about the sketch struggling with its identity/ not wanting to conform to the artist's ideas.

Premise - First Animatic (No Audio)

I've finally finished the first version of my animatic! I'm currently working on the sound fx so hopefully, this won't be a silent film for too much longer. There are a few continuity errors and a couple things I need to change/fix but I'll clean that up in the second version of my animatic after I receive feedback from this one. 

Premise - Toon Shader Test

Today I tried using a toon shader on my character. My main character needs to look somewhat 2D as they are a 2D drawing, But I think after my experiment with Adobe Animate, I definitely want to animate the character using 3D animation. I like how the Toon Shader looks, But I'm a little unsure about the look of the character. I think the shadows look a little strange, and so does the plain white color. I think It might look better if I applied a paper-like texture to the model, or painted a different texture to make the model look more illustrated as I think the toon shader outline looks a little too thick and neat. I'm also still unsatisfied with how simple the character looks, so I'll try and develop them more so they're a little more interesting. Although, a lot of their character will come from the way in which they are animated and their interactions with the artists, so I need to run some animation tests too to see if this is a design issue, or just because the character hasn't been brought to life yet (or a bit of both).

Premise - Adobe Animate 2D Animation Test

Main Character 2D Animation Test

Today I played around in Adobe Animate and created a small animation of the main character of my premise project. It's been a while since I've used 2D Animation software so it was a little challenging to create this animation. I decided to choose some of my storyboards as a reference as I thought it was important to create my animation tests based on scenes that might be in the final product.

StoryBoard Referennce

 I think 2D Animation could be a really fun way to bring my main character to life as the character is a 2D drawing and I feel like it would make more sense to animate them using 2D rather than 3D. However, I did find this process challenging and time-consuming. I found that I kept changing the proportions of the character and everything in general looks a bit sloppy and messy. I think a sketchy/messy look could fit the aesthetic of my film quite nicely, but it still needs to look somewhat more polished and smooth. I'm a little undecided on how I feel about 2D at the moment. 

If I were to go forward with using 2D animations for my main character, I would have to learn how to become more proficient in using Adobe Animate for sure. I'm going to be carrying out a few different tests using different animation styles and techniques using this same scene so I can easily compare the different styles and techniques.

Premise - First Storyboard

I've finally finished my first storyboard! Now I've got to neaten some things up and resize images so I can make my animatic. Drawing out the storyboard using the original script I wrote highlighted a few inconsistencies in my story which I've tried to resolve, but as this is only the first storyboard, I'm expecting to make quite a few changes in the future.

Premise First Storyboard by on Scribd

Premise - Main Character Block Model Turnaround

I've created a block model for my main character so I can test out toon shaders and see if I want to animate the main character in 3D or not. The model is very simple at the moment, as are the designs of the main character. I'd like to experiment with the design of the character more and look into making it a little less simple but for now I'll use this model for my 3D tests. I'll also be adding in facial features with animated textures, but this is something I'll also be experimenting with. 

Premise - Storyboards for Animatic

Story boarding: First Attempt

On my schedule, I had put my animatic later on in my project, but Phil suggested that I create an animatic now so I can figure out if the story is readable. I wasn't happy with how my first attempt was turning out. I was struggling to figure out what I wanted the shots to look like. So I wrote down a list of what I wanted to happen in each shot and tried again. 

Story boarding: Second Attempt

Story boarding: Second Attempt

Story boarding: Second Attempt

For my second attempt, I knew what I wanted to draw, but I was drawing the storyboards in way too much detail.I decided to stop and just try and draw the storyboards more rougher and more quickly as I was wasting time spending so much time on storyboards that I potentially might not even use (especially if they're in my first animatic) 

Current Storyboards

Here's where I'm at right now with storyboarding. When I've completed the rough storyboard, I'll neaten it up a little bit so the quality of my first animatic isn't terrible. 

@Phil @Alan Premise - First Script

In my schedule, I was going to make changes to my script today, but I thought it would be wiser to get some feedback first before I get any changes as I'm not sure what I should change yet. I wasn't sure how to write a script for an animation that has no dialogue, but I wanted to have a general idea so I don't waste a lot of time drawing storyboards I don't need.

Premise - Adding Facial Expressions

I've taken some of the designs I liked from the previous developments and added facial features. I'm not liking most of these drawings, but I wanted to experiment with different eye shapes and mouths. I wanted to see if the character even needs eyes and a mouth, and I feel like the character looks better without a mouth. I think that without eyes, the character loses a lot of emotion, but I'll be adding a lot of emotion in the animation of the character as well so I'm not worried about that. I like thumbnails 2, 3, 8, and 21 the best, and I feel either indifferent or unhappy with the rest. Some look rather scary in my opinion. I think simple is better when adding facial features as the shape of the character is also very simple. My worry is that the character looks a little boring because it is so simple.

Character Development #6: Adding Eyes #1

Character Development #7: Adding Eyes #2

Character Development #8: Adding a Mouth #1

Character Development #9: Adding a Mouth #2

Premise - Character Development

I’ve drawn a few thumbnail sketches of the main character of my animated short. I’ve opted to draw the character cute and small so that the audience can feel sympathy for the character and possibly see its vulnerability more clearly. I think making the character very small and cute will add to the comedic side of the story, especially when it’s standing up for itself in front of a giant human. I wanted to mainly explore shapes in these sketches, but I’m also figuring out how I want the character to be drawn in term of style e.g will I use a dark, sketchy black outline for the character to show that it has been drawn out of pencil, or should the outline be softer. I added some shadows to try and make the character look a little less 2D. I plan to explore how the character would look in 2D and in 3D to see which one works better, so I’m aiming to reflect that in my concept art/research work.

Character Development #1: White Outline

Character Development #2: Softer, Lighter Outline Filled in

Character Development #3: Harsher, Darker Outline Filled in

Character Development #4 : Added Shadows with Lighter Outline

Character Development #5: Added Shadows with Dark Outline

Premise - Interim Crit

Premise Interim Crit by Noah Greenhalgh on Scribd

Project Schedule:

Premise - Art vs Artist Influence Map

Premise - Storyboards

I’ve drawn out two initial storyboards for the beginning of my animation as I’m not sure how I would like the short to start. I know that the scene needs to end up with the main character being the only character on screen (not including the artists hands). In the storyboard above, the main character gets half of their body rubbed out, this alarms all of the other thumbnail drawings and they flee the page, leaving the main character by themself. In the storyboard below, the character starts to get rubbed out, but quickly grabs the legs of the character next to it and flees, pushing past the other characters and leaps onto a clean page. My worry with this is that the main character is supposed to be like able, and the viewers should feel sympathy for them, so I’m not sure if stealing another characters legs is the best way to show that, but I want my animation to be comedic and I personally thought that was quite funny. My worry with the first storyboard I drew was that I would have to animate all of the characters, but I was thinking of making some 2D animated experiments, so I could always animate the main character in 3D, and the side characters in 2D.

Premise - Concept Art

This piece of concept art shows the main character and the artist interacting. I really want my animation to have an ‘Art vs Artist’ feel to it so I thought I’d draw some concept art showing that. I also included part of the artists desk in the frame which is something I’d like to explore more in terms of what I would like the composition to look like.

Premise - Developed Thumbnails

These are some drawings of the art interacting with the artist. The artist draws the character, but then rubs it out and draws it again but with over exaggerated feminine features. The character is shocked and redraws itself. I drew this out so I could get a feel for the character. I will develop the design later, but for now I want to work on the script as I've focused on the design area too much, and I might have a clearer view of what I want the character to look like after I write the script.