Diving In...

Today i started to do my animation, and so far i worked out the first speech sentence of the devil... since i have 2 characters to animate, i thought it would be easier to concentrate on one at a time and come back to the other later...

Test 1- First Devil Speech

I think this works quite well, his arm pointing isn't too obvious but i'm not too worried about that as it's not really the main focus... The background isnt there at the moment, and i'm aware that something flashes at the beginning on the left-hand side, that's because it was a key frame and the other character was drawn. I noticed his body shrinks and his burger starts to get a bit sloppy so i'm going to fix that.

Animatics and the sort

Hello! it's been a while since i said something but i've been busy trying to finalise character designs and dope sheets and other things that sound quite cool :p

Today, i did my dope sheets (like afore mentioned) and i acted out an animatic so that i can focus my storyboard on it, and eventually do my proper animatic storyboard to follow up... this might be unneccessary detail and wasting my time but to be honest, i can see it helping so i thought why not?

So this is my acting for my animatic, the proper thing to come soon (i hope).

Acting and Filming

To get a general idea of the overall movement, I filmed Joe and I acting out the characters and what they would be doing in the animation so that i could refer to the movements and make sure i get them right. The movements are all very animated and exaggerated so they're easier to compare and draw out.

Here is one video i compiled to just show the general conversation... Obviously in the final animation, both the characters will be on screen and i still have the original footage to go back, but i thought it might be easier to show as an example/taster when put together:

Since i was already in the flow of filming and editing, i thought id seize the opportunity to film my facial expressions and saying the dialogue... Later on, this will help me with lip syncing the characters and make sure they're displaying the right expressions with different tones of voice to make it more convincing.

Male Dialogue

Female Dialogue

11 Second Sound Clip

For the next 4 weeks, we were set to create an animation to go alongside an 11 second audio clip. As usual, i chose one of the most challenging clips (argggh... why do i do this to myself?? -_-')... anyway, as this blog server doesn't really support audio clips, i've written out the dialogue, as accurately as i could:

MAN: Have you written it?

WOMAN: I-i can... No

MAN: (interrupts) Have you written it?

WOMAN: (interrupts) An outline!

MAN: (pause) Okay, but i-it's just an outline, right?

WOMAN: Yeah!... Sort of

MAN: Sort of?!

WOMAN: Yeah, it's just not typed

MAN: Not typed?!

As soon as i started to brainstorm for ideas, I realised how hard it was to find a story that would suit the context of the dialogue...

IDEAS

1. "Homework Slaves"- 2 characters (computer and computer mouse?) forced to do hwk, acting as if they're scared of being punished. [May be hard to animate these objects]
2. "Homework Hut"- Trainee Openings. A superior questions a trainee on their progress on doing the hwk. [doesn't quite work with the worried dialogue]
3. Pencil talking to computer- the computer's just generally panicky... no plotline.
4. Kids- Bully picking on girl to go his hwk/forge note from parent? [doesn't quite work]

First of all, when looking at the clip from a glance, it seems that the man wants something written for him urgently... but when looking at his 3rd line: "okay, but i-it's just an outline, right?", doesn't agree with the idea, so in the end i had no choice but to actually reanalyse the situation, and realised it actually makes more sense if the man DIDN'T want something written.

5. "7 Deadly Sins"- Angel and Devil are speaking about a list of the 7 deadly sins pinned on the wall. Devil displays some attributes of the 7 deadly sins, he's talking to the angel who's just written them (pencil in hand to show she's written it), when she explains that they havent been typed, this is to imply that they will be official and the devil will suffer.

After choosing my final idea, I thought i'd start the character designs before breaking down the dialogue and acting.

Examples of some sketchbook work so far:

I found character designing quite difficult as it's not something I'm familiar with doing, i've learnt that in the future, i should break down the character's body into shapes so they're easier to imagine when drawing them from different angles.

I apologise for the really truely crap photos, i'm not rich enough to own a scanner :(.. sad times