Experimentation: Teacher Walk Cycle

I've taken some time to properly realise this shot in Scene 2, in which the teacher is shown walking down the classroom handing back test papers. The angle is a bit odd, and I've been struggling to figure out the walk cycle. 

Animatic: Scene 2, Shot 2

Early walk cycle test 

My initial test of the walk cycle without any reference footage was not anatomically correct at all. The legs moved unnaturally and it looked awkward. Because of this, I took some reference footage to get a sense of the body position. 

Version 2 of keyframes

Using my initial round of reference footage, I created the above version. I was still not happy with it however. Through conversation with one of my peers, I found that the position of the feet and the timing of the actions wasn't as resolved as I wanted it to be. In the initial reference video, I didn't include the arm movements, so I struggled with timing the foot movements and the arm movements together. This resulted in a lot of trial and error, and no resolutions I was happy with. 

So I recorded another round of footage of myself performing the actions, this time handing out papers to desks and walking towards the camera. I rotoscoped some keyframes in Photoshop, which gave me a much better sense of the body's movements and interaction with its surroundings. 

Rotoscoped keyframes

Rotoscoped version

After testing various methods of animating this walk cycle, I'm much happier with the appearance at this stage. I think during cleanup some more development will take place. 

I've changed the character design slightly to include boots, as this reflects the reference footage I recorded. When trying to draw the ballet pumps on the character, it kept coming across as though the character was walking on their tiptoes. I will need more experience animating walk cycles and foot movement to better understand how to animate flat shoes. Due to my time constraints, I simply chose to change the character's outfit. In future, I would like to have the flexibility in my drawing ability to animate any type of shoes. 

Experimentation: Colour and Lineart for Environments

In developing my environments for my film, I'm thinking about how I will approach colouring the backgrounds. I did a small test on a section of the background for Alistair's room in different styles of colouring and shading to get a feel for how it would look in the rest of the shot. 
Here's the full image I'm working from: 

Lineart of Alistair's room

I've chosen a section of this piece to experiment with colour and lighting to test how the rest of the piece will look. This will also inform the style and palette I use for colouring and shading the rest of the backgrounds in Alistair's room, and the style for other environments for the film. 

Lineart

Monochrome test in green with plant and light details

Monochrome test in yellow with light details

Colour test using colours based on colour script - adjusted

Colour and lighting test using colours from script and coloured lineart

Looking at the final test in the context of the whole space

I like how the final test with coloured lineart looks up close, but I'm not sure if it's going to lose its impact if the whole background is done in this style. Looking back to this piece below from Steven Universe, I'm considering how coloured lineart can be used strategically in direct sunlight, while maintaining darker lineart in the rest of the piece. 

Background from Cartoon Network's Steven Universe

I want my work to evoke the same gentle, warm effect that this piece captures so well. I'll need to keep experimenting.

Experimentation: Representing Anxiety/Panic Attacks

 I'm experimenting with an idea of showing my protagonist's slow build-up to the panic attack that they have in the film through the use of deconstructed shapes. I started with this gif testing the idea to see how it would look in colour. 

I then tried this idea out in my animatic, taking it further and having the shapes start to swirl around, representing the swirling thoughts that would happen in this state. 

Test of these deconstructed shapes in Scene 6 when Sunny has a panic attack

Following this, I tested using this method earlier on in my film, whenever Sunny is experiencing stress/anxiety/anger, they start to slip into this state. I tried using it only on the mirrored version of them at first, though I'm unsure if this would be inconsistent because it doesn't only manifest in reflections later on. 

Test of deconstructed shapes in Scene 1 after Sunny fights with their mom

Experimentation: Developing my animatic

In developing my animatic, I am using reference images to ensure that the perspective on my environments is geometrically correct, and that object interact with each other in a logical way. Through this process I am learning about perspective and scale. 

I'm currently working on Shot 2 of Scene 2 of my film, showing a view of the classroom. Here's my progression from initial sketches to my final animatic version. 

Storyboard sketch

Storyboard

Animatic 1.0

3D environment using an app

Animatic 2.0

References:

 3D environment from Floor Plan Creator app on Android

Chair reference image from https://vintage-industrial-furniture.co.uk/en/shop/vintageindustrialseating/vintagechairs/item/oldschoolchairs/. 

Work in Progress: Background sketches

 

colour sketch of Sunny's bedroom

work-in-progress sketch of the classroom

concept art of Alistair's kitchen

sketch of Alistair's bedroom

Experimentation: Lip Sync Test

 For my film, I have a lot of dialogue that I will need to lip sync. I've never done lip syncing before, so it was an interesting process learning how to do this. I first tried recording a video of myself saying the line I'm working with, and rotoscoping my mouth movements. As seen below, this wasn't at all successful. It looks awkward, the mouth movements don't sync up at all with the sound, and it's not very expressive. 

I found a YouTube tutorial on working with lip sync that seemed beginner friendly, so I followed along to that and developed my own chart of mouth shapes. I adjusted some of the shapes to fit more with my film's shape language. 

Here's the lip sync test that resulted from working with this method

This version is a lot more readable and flows well. I'll keep experimenting but I have a good framework for creating my lip synced shots now. 

Animation Test: June

 

I created the above animation test of Alistair's mom June twirling her dress. I tried this to see how long it would take to keyframe and tween a sketchy animation. The next step of this will be lining and colouring the frames. 
I took approximately 12 hours to animate this sequence, though some of this time was spent getting accustomed to Toonboom Harmony. Through this I have a better sense of how much time each sequence should take in my film. In my past experimentation with animation, I hadn't done much tweening, and I hadn't animated at 24 fps before, so this experiment gave me insight into the process. 

I think the twirl of the skirt isn't quite realistic, so I might need to try rotoscoping shots like this in future to get a realistic sense of the physics involved. 

Test: Scene 1 Shot 1

 

This is an animation test of Sunny in the opening shot of the film, opening their curtains to reveal their bedroom. This GIF plays with the colour palette of the film, the visual style, what elements will be visible in the background, and how the characters will interact with the backgrounds. 

By creating this test, I was able to learn that I don't want my colour palette to be so monochromatic, or so based in this yellow ochre hue. To evoke the softness I aim to capture in the film, I need to use slightly lighter tones and more variation in hue. 
I realised that the position of certain background elements, like their bed, don't work well, so this will need to change in future versions of Sunny's bedroom. 
I'm overall happy with the visual style - using charcoal brushes to create blocks of colour with slight variation and "messiness". With some more development I believe this will contribute to evoking the soft mood of the film. 
I've got a better sense now than I did before creating this test of how characters interact with background elements, and how colour and line quality can make them blend in or stand out from their surroundings.  

Experimentation: Colour Scripts

 

Scene 1

Scene 2

Scene 3

Scene 4

Scene 5

Scene 6

In a lecture about colour theory, I was introduced to the idea of a colour script, in which an artist captures the mood and colour palette of a scene in a rough image. We looked at Lou Romano's colour scripts for Pixar animated films. In these we can see the mood of each scene/section of the film, and this gives us another look at the way storytelling is deployed effectively through colour in the film. 

Lou Romano, The Incredibles, colour script

With this in mind, I put all of my colour script together to look at them in the context of one another. I may still make some tweaks to the mood, but this gives me the ability to see my film from a distance and imagine what it might look like by the end. I can also imagine what colour palette is needed when I design and create my backgrounds. 

Colour scripts all together

Development: Environments

I have been using an app (Floor Plan Creator) to visualise my layouts. The app has a 3D mode as well, which has helped with visualising the perspective for my environments. Below are the results of this experimentation. 

Floor plan for Sunny's bedroom created in Floor Plan Creator

Hand drawn floor plan for Sunny's bedroom with extra details. 

3D render of Sunny's bedroom using Floor Plan Creator

Sketch of Sunny's room using the 3D render as reference

Lineart of Sunny's bedroom

 I used a similar process for developing Alistair's bedroom layout and environment. 

Floor plan of Alistair's bedroom using Floor Plan Creator

Hand drawn floor plan for Alistair's room with extra details

Drawing of Alistair's room from my storyboard

Lineart of Alistair's bedroom with more detail

Through this process I have been able to visualise how 3D perspective works and how to fill a space with objects. 

Experimentation: Pose Sheets

 

In developing my pose sheets for my characters, I created a reference video of different poses tailored to each of my characters. Above are some traced images from this reference video, using some of the key poses for my character Sunny. These display a range of their emotions and how they might look when expressing these feelings. As Sunny is a particularly expressive character, their emotions might appear more animated or lively than Alistair, who is more reserved. 

Using these traced images, I can stylise the poses to create a pose sheet for Sunny. I'll do the same process for Alistair and June. This process enabled me to visualise the poses of my characters more thoroughly than doing it from my imagination. I'm able to see how gravity and clothing change how the figure appears, and I'm able to consider how camera angles might alter how much of the face is visible, and how much expression is visible to the audience.