Narrative and sequence
By: Mohammad Reza Jafari-Fini
Improvements I could do compared to my old blogs and sketchbook with this new blog
By: Mohammad Reza Jafari-Fini
Improvements I could do compared to my old blogs and sketchbook with this new blog
In the past I’ve only used a sketchbook and have never used a blog to write my notes with and research with. My sketchbooks in my opinion have generally been good but I know there is room for improvement such as having more research on what I’m focusing on at the time. I also lack including images not just text which is something I tend to do a lot. On the other hand to be honest I think I’ve been good using sketchbooks but having to use a blog for the first time will be a good experience.
Animated character research and analysis
Homer Simpson
Homer Simpsons appearance, especially his large body mass and lack of hair makes a mockery of the stereotypical middle aged american family man. The creator of the Simpsons, made the characters bright yellow skin on purpose, in order to make them stand out from all the other animated characters at the time. When looking at Homer’s eyes he has large eyes with small pupils, which represents him being easily distracted and not being able to concentrate if given to much information.
Shaggy from Scooby Doo
When looking at Shaggy’s clothing I can instantly tell that his loose clothes can indicate a loose life style. His slouching posture could also represent him being a really lazy person and not really caring about any thing important. His shoes also look quite big which shows that he might have a joker appeal to him. From looking at the colour of the clothes he’s wearing a green t-shirt which could indicate growth/growing. Which means that his personality could also be childish. His red burgundy coloured trousers could also represent him being a low energetic, determined and ambitious person.
Princess Jasmine from Aladdin
When looking at Princess Jasmine character you can instantly tell she’s a princess due to her large gold earrings and neckless, also her head band seems to have some sort of ruby in the middle of it which all signifies her wealth and that she comes from a wealthy family. Her large eyes, thin body and long hair, also shows she is a beautiful and sexy person who probably gets the attention of many guys. When looking at the clothes she is wearing you can also tell she is trying to have a sexy appeal. The colour of the clothes which she is wearing is light blue which also promotes a helpful person that can overcome all obstacles. It also shows that she is ambitious and determined to achieve great things.
Chuckie from Rugrats
When looking at Chuckie you can instantly tell he is a young kid who seems a bit lost and frightened. You can tell he is frightened by his hand gesture. He also looks like the kind of kid who is not very tidy and tends be quite messy, this is shown through his shoe laces which are not done up properly and his hair which looks to be all over the place. We can also tell his vision is not great due to him wearing glasses and we can also tell that he could be very easily distracted due to his large eyes and very small pupils. His teeth also signify that he might be silly not be very intelligent due to them having a buckteeth effect.
Wonder woman
When looking at Wonder woman you can tell that she is a superhero due to her stance with the wind blowing through her hair and her masculine look. The rope in her hand is also stiff in between her two hands which signifies her strength and power. The look on her face is also very serious and seductive giving the impression that she is not here to joke around. She also has a very seductive and sexy appeal this is represented through her short shorts and her cleavage. The gold on her head and on her body also helps gives the impression that she is wealthy. The thick long bracelets on her hand also give the impression of strength and power. Her red t-shirt also gives her a sense of excitement style and romance.
Tarzan
From looking at this picture we can tell Tarzan is a very flexible and masculine man. With different agility's such as speed. We can also tell that he lives in the wild due the background and him being bare foot without any clothing it-sap pants. You can also tell in the photo due to his stance and the wind blowing in his hair and his facial expression he looks as if he is about to pounce on something giving him a superhero look.
Taz-Mania
Looking at this character he looks very wild and crazy. His sharp teeth with his mouth open with his tongue out give the feeling that he will eat anything including you.
Stewie Griffen from Family guy
Looking at this character called Stewie you can tell that he is a very smart and mysterious baby. His big head on top of his body with his hair combed backwards give the impression that he is very intelligent. His eyebrows facing down and his eyes nearly closed with his hands together give the impression that he is making a plan to do something, giving him a very mysterious and edgy look. You can tell he is a baby due to the clothes he is wearing. The colour yellow on his t-shirt can represent him as a very loud person and the colour red can represent him as a very dangerous and daring person.
Goofy
Immediately from looking at the name of the character and the stance in which he is in I can tell that he is a silly childish character. Starting by just the way he looks his teeth are far apart from each other giving him the look that he might not be intelligent. Also his shoes are very big giving him a clownish look. Also his jacket and hat is something you see people wear at a circus. His orange jumper also gives the feeling that he is very lively and energetic. The light blue trousers could also show that he is also a very relaxed and lay backed person.
First character making
Our teacher gave us the task to bring in a set of random materials we would find at home for our workshop day and to add things together to make a character. Although it sounds easy the process of doing it was to add random materials together in random places to see what you would end up with. This was hard due to the fact that I knew it was going end up as a character which made me think twice about what materials should be attached or placed on different body parts of my character.
To create this character I had a rope with me from an old jumper, different coloured card, toilet roll and tissue paper.
As you can see from the pictures above the outcome of the character did not look aesthetically pleasing at all, but on the other hand it taught me a lot in terms of how to be creative and how different elements in my character can do different things. For example this character has the ability to jump from place to place using its sticky tentacles. The rope at the bottom represents the tail which he uses to jump from place to place for it to be easier for him to grab on the higher branches for example. The character also has one eye making it harder for him to look around. Although this seems like he will bump in to a lot of different things, the tissue paper placed around his lower body is actually a heat sensor which he uses to help him with his visibility and times where he has to hunt for food. The toilet roll placed on his side is actually his nose which is very strong and used to help him to look for food. As you can see from his armed tentacles his right arm seems to have a knot around the end of it giving it a hammer look. This is because his right arm is what the character protects himself and for him to be able to kill his pray faster for when he is hunting.
Creating my new improved character
When creating my new character I wanted it to have similar characteristics to the first character I tried creating but look more aesthetically pleasing.
The materials I used when creating this character were a cafe Nero coffee cup, straws, tape, glue, rope from a jumper and different coloured card.
Process of creating my new improved character.
Process of creating my new improved character.
As you can see from the photos above this character was a lot more aesthetically pleasing than the first character I created but still had all the elements which my last character had aside from the nose. I removed the nose because I felt it was not to important to my characters needs due to the eye on this character being larger and it having heat sensors. Another reason I decided to remove the nose was because I felt like it made my characters aesthetic appeal come down and also thought about how it can get in the way of the characters large armed tentacles when he would be swinging from one place to another.
Character profile
Name: Freddy
Age: 16
Gender: Male
Date of birth: 10/03/1998
Height:
Weight: 8 kg
Place of residence: Portman Square
Profession: Swinging from place to place
Write a few lines about how would you describe yourself to others?
I’m a very clumsy 16 year old, with one eye that I can’t see really well with but I’m fortunate and lucky that I have my large arm tentacles to feel around me and to see and feel my surroundings. Also the skin on my body can detect different heat levels around me, so I can detect if anything is spying on me which really helps me also to hunt and also helps with my vision. I live in the city which means I use my tentacles to move around and to hold on to different things, my tail also helps me to jump around. My right arm tentacle has a bulge on it which is hammer like which means it’s easier for me to hunt and protect myself from others.
If you were stuck on a dessert island and could only bring 5 things, what would it be?
Lighter, rope, bottle, food.
If you could have any job, other than the one you have now, what would it be and why?
Police officer, because my ability to jump from one place to another will give me the ability to always have a good view on the target. My speed and agility also helps me to get through traffic faster than police cars which means no one will ever be able to escape my view and escape from me if I were to be a police officer. Another reason for being a police officer would also be because I love helping people and I hate crime and bad things happening to people.
What is the first thing you do when you wake up and the last before you go to sleep?
The answer to this question would have to be stretching my tentacles this is due to the fact that they can get very stiff.
What makes you feel relaxed and what makes you feel angry?
Eating always relaxes me and helps me feel like I’m in another world, on the other hand when swinging from one thing to another I sometimes miss the branch I’m about to grab for example and really hurt myself which makes me very angry
Tell us a bit about your best friend?
My best friend is definitely Jack who is the person who trained me to be this flexible and to be able to use my heat sensors on my body properly. Not only that he has taught me to be always positive and to take things easy.
Memories from your childhood?
As I’m only 16 I’ve only really been able to use my tentacles and heat level sensors properly now which means, I use to fall a lot and forget things and also hit things a lot.
QUESTION FOR THE CREATOR: Now that you know your character, write a paragraph about him/her and your experience of living with him/her.
I Lived with my character for a week and learnt a lot about him. Firstly it’s very hard to keep up with him which was our main problem during this week. We spent every day with issue because he would eat everything around the house even though I had food ready for him. What I didn’t realise was that his tentacles can also move really fast. This was a huge problem because he is very childish and tries to take my things out of the hand such as my phone. On the positive side I never had to buy him anything to eat and never had to pay for a tube/ bus ticket due to the fact he can just get in my pocket. Overall it was a great experience.
Living with my character for a week
Living with Freddy was honestly a hard experience the first day we went out together. We went for a walk, which didn't end up as a walk but ended up as him swinging from tree to tree or hanging on things and not getting down and going to fast ahead which made me worry and made me want to put him on a leash. After finally getting him under control and taking him home he decided he wanted to go in my car for a drive around the block which didn't happen because I was way to tired.
Since during the week I had university I couldn't leave him home alone because I didn’t trust him to be there by himself. This is due to fact that he literally eats anything he sees when he is hungry and cant control himself. I know this because when I woke up the next morning he was eating parts of my couch. On the other hand I solved this problem because I gave him a box of cereal to always eat when he gets hungry. Going to university that week with Freddy required me to get on the tube to get there. The great thing about Freddy is due to his small size all he had to do was jump in my bag so I didn’t have to buy him a ticket.
When the weekend came up I had more time to spend with Freddy which made him so happy, that he couldn't believe it and pretended to faint on my desk. Since the weather was good and it was a saturday we decided to go play football together and enjoy the weather. After playing football we decided to have a picnic in the park which is why I brought his cereal with him to eat.
That following saturday night me and my friends really wanted to go clubbing but we were not sure if the bouncers would allow Freddy inside. When we told Freddy were not sure he decided to use the telephone to call the club immediately and ask. The club didn’t pickup the phone so we decided to just go and try anyway so Freddy wouldn’t get upset. When we got there Freddy wasn't aloud in the club but was aloud in the cloakroom which is why he spent the night there. Although it seems tough on just leaving him in the cloakroom it wasn’t that bad because I left him with a little snack. On the way home back from the club Freddy fell asleep so I carried him all the way home and put him to bed. The next morning Freddy woke up around 5pm had his breakfast and decided he wanted to just have a relaxed day watching TV because of his intense night out before. In conclusion the experience with Freddy started of hard and annoying but towards the end of the week I felt like we had a connection. I understood why we had to do this task because it really helped bring out my creativity and really think of things in a different perspective.
How to create a storyboard
“A storyboard is meant to give its viewer the gist of how the story will translate to film. The point isn't to try to recreate the entire experience in a flip book, but to demonstrate important key parts that will draw the viewer in. Think your story through and brainstorm a list of the key moments that you want to illustrate on your storyboard.
Pick scenes that show the plot developing from start to finish.
Turning points are important to show. Any time there’s a plot twist or an important change, include it in the storyboard to move the story along.
You may also want to depict changes in setting. If the story begins in one city and moves to another, make sure that will be clear in your illustrations.
If you’re storyboarding for a commercial, the process is no different: pick key images that will represent the flow and direction of the film from start to finish. As a general guideline, keep in mind that for a typical 30-second commercial, a storyboard should have no more than 15 frames. Factor in two seconds per frame on average.”
The quote above is from the link below which was taken on the 9th of November 2014.
http://www.wikihow.com/Create-a-Storyboard
My groups storyboard:
Process of creating the actual silhouette
The process of doing this was very easy as you can see from the pictures above what I did was put a picture of my character on illustrator and on the top I would build a new layer for my silhouette. As you can also see I made the arms, eyes, leg, mouth separate this was so they can move by me attaching them with pins together.
Animation we created with silhouettes
The pictures above is the process of me and my group creating our animation.
Link to the animation in case the video does not work
https://www.dropbox.com/s/e0g3muguvjh36sv/2D%20animation.mov?dl=0
When creating this animation our narrative was that Chris's character was going to rob Jack's character and my character was going to save Jacks character from the situation. We also wanted to add humour in to the video and by doing this we made my character come in and eat the wallet instead of giving it back to Jack's character. In general I think this animation was a good experiment in terms of how to see how we can actually do our final animation. The process of making this animation was really easy but very time consuming to get around 30 seconds of footage we needed something around 140 images.
Feedback on silhouette animation
After showing our groups animation to our teacher she told us that our animation was good but we were not allowed to use text in the animation we had. This meant that we had to recreate the animation from the start.
The new Silhouette animation
When recreating the animation, before doing so I decided to also recreate the silhouette for my character to make it look more detailed and more like the actual 3D character. To do this I recreated the arms and legs of the character to make it look as close as possible to the 3D version of the character.
As you can see the right arm of the character does not have a circular bulge on it anymore but has the same effect as the 3D characters right arm, which is the end of the rope having a small knot on it and the end of the rope coming out after the knot. Also the leg isn't perfectly shaped anymore and has the same look to it as the 3D characters leg does.
After creating all the different parts of my character I ran in to a problem which was that when I printed the character and tried attaching the arms of the character to the body of the character, I didn't realise that the arm of the character was to thin for the pin and that made the characters arm and body tear up when trying to attach the different pieces together.
So I printed my character again but this time I made different parts of the character thicker such as different parts of his arm for the different parts of the characters body to attach to each other without any problem.
At an end result I was much happier with this silhouette of my character compared to the last silhouette of my character.
When creating the final silhouette animation we decided to change the narrative of the animation as well. In this animation we wanted it to be in a market with the narrative of the animation being Jacks character getting kidnapped by Chris's character and my character saving Jacks character. This narrative is also similar to our storyboard which was good in our opinion because it gave us a chance to see what our final animation could look like. We then decided to add a bit of humour in to the animation also so after I save Jacks character my character puts Chris's character in to a sack and throws him on to a market stool and then my character and Jacks character give each other a this bump and walk away.
To create this animation we first started drawing two market stools to create the market setting effect of the animation.
After creating the animation, when exporting it we had a problem which was that in one of the pictures in the animation one of our hands were in it which is why we decided to look for that particular picture and delete it. But for some reason the picture wasn't there when we were going through all the pictures which didn't make sense to us. Which is why I have these two screenshots to prove we went back to fix the problem but for some reason the problem wouldn't come up on the actual program for us to fix.
Final silhouette animation
In case the video does not work this is a link to the animation
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YY8a_AWAVMI
In conclusion we were very happy with the final outcome of this silhouette animation and were happy that we went back and fixed it and made it better than the original one we already had.
Animation we created outside
The link below is the animation we created outside:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/19koxgawax8xxko/Character%20in%20the%20city.mov?dl=0
The picture below is just a screen shot of it.
As you can see from the video above when we went out in central london to film our characters in the city we wanted to see how the people reacted with our characters. Unfortunately my characters cover for his head fell of in the process of making the video and I had nothing to reattach it with that's why his cover for his head is missing. During this experiment we saw how people completely ignored them or only gave them a glimpse of a look, making me feel like they were already part of the environment. This really shocked me to the fact that my prediction was that many people were going look at them a bit more or come in closer and take a deeper closer look. I feel like if our characters were bigger it would have caught peoples eyes more on the streets of London.
Feedback on outdoor animation
After showing this video to our teacher and getting feedback she agreed that it was a good experiment but felt it didn't really go with what she asked us to do. So we decided to recreate the outdoor animation again.
Recreating the final outdoor animation
This time we decided to attach all of our characters to string and make them move around the city. What we realised was that WinterWonderland was open so we decided to make the narrative, the characters coming out the tube on a trip to WinterWonderland and then back on the tube home.
Link to the outdoor animation in case the video does not work
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GonTxzggx8A
When making this outdoor animation it was very difficult due to how windy it was and the fact that everyone on the street would look at us in a really weird way. What we didn't also realise was that we filmed the animation in portrait mode which looked okay but would have looked a lot more aesthetically pleasing if it were to be in landscape mode. Also we didn't like the fact that our friends hands who was helping us hold the characters was in it. On the other hand we feel like the animation worked well but we didn't want to do anything like this for our final animation.
How we are going to do our final animation and what has influenced us
From all the different methods we have tried so far during the couple of weeks that have gone by the one that me and my other two members of my group are really interested in is definitely animation using after effects. When we had the 2 days with Manos when he taught us how to use after effects properly and gave us the task of trying to make an animated character fly with wings I really enjoyed it and learnt a lot due to the fact I knew very little about after effects at the time. After finishing the 2 day workshop with Manos I decided to look at different clips on youtube on different ways you can use animation to create different special effects.
I started by just looking at clips which use animation and after effects together to create different eye catching illusions.
My biggest influence doing this is definitely Freddie Wong and Video Copilot on Youtube.
Freddie Wong
When looking at the videos above it’s not just the humor in the video which grabs my attention immediately but the way that after effects had been used to create illusion in the special effects in the video. So it’s basically a way of making things come to life. The reason why I picked these particular screenshots is because they are my favourite scene in the whole videos. Also the screenshots show the special effects in action.
Then I looked more in to Video Copilot which focuses more on to animation without using real life videos, so basically just pictures and giving them a moving effect.
As you can see in the video above he has just used 2 images a plane a cloud to give a effect of the pane flying through the clouds. This gives me inspiration in terms of my own character giving him the ability to be able to do other things by just using images.
Another example of this is the tutorial above which Video Copilot uses to explain how you can make a 3D object or title move for example or even explode, as you can see.
After looking at all these tutorials and learning different things I can do and taking inspiration from there I realized video games is another way of looking at this whole project.
http://screenshots.en.sftcdn.net/en/scrn/89000/89984/mario-games-36.jpg
http://designspaceblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/mario.jpg
So I started looking at video games as you can see above such as Mario for example to get a better understanding of how different animations work and if me and my team can create something which has all of these different features to create something aesthetically pleasing and easily understandable in terms of its narrative.
Aladin in game
http://image.dosgamesarchive.com/screenshots/aladdin3.gif
Prince of Persia in game
http://takegame.com/arcade/pictures/princepersia.gif
The reason why I have picked these particular images in the game is because I feel like they best describe what we want to do in our final outcome, I feel like its simplistic feel gives an easy and understandable narrative and still maintains a good aesthetic appeal. Out of all the things I have looked at so far the aesthetic appeal and simplicity in the 'Super Mario' game is what is really attracted me to do that and bring that element in to our final animation.
I then started looking at things which can be done in the time we had. All the references and links below can be created easily using illustrator and can also be customised easily also, and this is the aesthetic look we were looking to do for our final animation.
A Flat animation-(Motion Graphics)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTrzSSf0YlA
Is War Over? — A Paradox Explained
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NbuUW9i-mHs
The Adventures of Tintin
http://vimeo.com/30402976
Santa Animade
http://vimeo.com/channels/animade
This is how we do by Luke Toth which our animations used in Katty Perry's music video, "This is how we do"
Watch the animations on this link
http://luketoth.com/262435/4071972/gallery/this-is-how-we-do-katy-perry-gifs
Creating the FINAL ANIMATION
When creating the final animation we realised that we did not have enough time to do what we wanted to do which was to incorporate a castle scene and so on which is why we cut it down which is shown in our final storyboard.
Processes of creating the final animation
The fruit which we created on illustrator and put on our market stalls
Sound effects
The sound you hear from Jacks character walking in to the market is the sound from Greenwich market that we recorded using our phones. We did this to make the animation sound as realistic as possible and we thought it would be a good idea. The other sound effects you hear such as the wind, sound of the sack getting pulled on the floor, the noise of the sack getting cut open, my characters bouncy noise, prison closing and market falling down were all found on various websites such as www.soundbible.com.
FINAL ANIMATION
This is a link to the video incase the video on this page does not work.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1TBv8lhrsWY
I am really happy about the final outcome of our animation. I feel that it is aesthetically pleasing and the narrative works well and is also easily understandable by anyone. The reasoning behind why the pace of the animation is gradually getting faster and suddenly slows down again is because thats how action movies normally are. I really like our animation and couldn't ask for better.
Final storyboard
Evaluation
Overall I found that this project helped me be more creative as a person. This is due to the fact that I've been having to create narratives and come up with new ways in which I could do things in our animations that we have been creating. The hardest part of this project was definitely creating the final animation, because of all the editing we had to do to get everything working well together. On the other hand the outdoor animation was very difficult also due to the fact that when we did it, it was on a very windy day which meant that the characters were moving the way we didn't want them to move and rotating the way we didn't want them to rotate. Which is why If I could make any improvements to this project it would be that the outdoor animation could be done again and that we would have also filmed in landscape mode rather than portrait mode.
Working as a group in this project was very useful to us, because when doing this project coming up with new ways to do things was the key in to getting a good narrative in our animations. However it was not just the communication which helped but the fact that we all helped each other and got the job done. The easiest part of this project was creating the silhouette animation because me and my group found it easy to play around with and found it fun which is why I think our silhouette animation worked really well.
In terms of improving our actual final animation, I don't have much to say, this is because me and my group kept going for feedback to our teachers and did what they told us to do. However if we did have more time I would of added more secondary animation to create a better aesthetic appeal to the background such as birds flying around. When showing our animation to the teacher we would also show it to our class mates, friends and family this was to get an opinion on it and to see if people really understood it. This is why I showed it to people at a high age range and people at a very low age range to see the reactions we would get. In result of doing this everyone we had showed it to understood the animation and didn't have much criticism. Other than a few minor adjustments which we took on board and fixed.
When creating the final animation we used after effects, I am really happy that we used after effects because from the start of the animation which we pretty much didn't know anything about after effects to now we have learnt a lot about the program. Using after effects has not just made us more knowledgeable about the program but I feel like it has helped us reach the aesthetic appeal and look we were looking to achieve. What I also noticed at the end of this project was that my 3D character that I had created in the start is now all raggedy with bits that are very loose. I find this very interesting because I feel that the character has aged with the project and almost creates another narrative within itself.
By: Mohammad Reza Jafari-Fini
