KatMilesAnimation

After making the LIAF film, one comment I received in feedback was to try and take some of the abstract, more experimental style of line work, into my final film. My final film doesn’t fully fit an abstract theme in story or style, although I am enthusiastic to use what I learnt from the LIAF project in my final film. On the basis of this, I have incorporated a ‘dream scene’ into my final film. When FISH falls asleep after the disappointment of realising that they have no legs, and cannot compete in pageants, they dream of an abstract fishy figure with strutting legs. Currently, I have executed the draft of this in TVPaint. Whilst I don’t want the line work to change, if I have time, I am considering using the same techniques that I used in the LIAF project. For the ‘Abstract’ sting, I animated in TVPaint, then rotoscoped my animation onto paper. This method takes twice as long, but the outcome looks lovely!I would like the sequence to look ethereal, with the background feeling like the sort of thing produced in the original Fantasia film.

If I have the time, I would like to rotoscope my animation, and use after effects to project the hand drawn animation onto an animated background. I’m not fully certain about the logistics of this, but if time and technology allows I think it might be an interesting scene in the film.

We recently had the opportunity to watch Joanna Quinn and Les Mills give two lectures about their process of animation and film-making, and later give feedback on our individual films. It was hugely informative to watch Joanna’s film-making process, and helped to de-mystify some of the elements of her fantastic films. I now slightly wish that I’d invested in a proper light desk a while ago and had chosen to make my whole film on paper after seeing Joanna’s fabulous drawings! One thing that Joanna suggested was to sketch out individual scenes from a film to get an idea of how you want a section to look. This was a really helpful tip, as I have been struggling to play around with camera angles and get more interesting shots of Gertie the fish in my film. I also noticed that spending some time mindlessly sketching Gertie whilst watching TV really helped me to get to know the character better, and has ultimately informed how I have approached the character acting for Gertie in the film. Below, I have posted some of the sketches in my book. Some are just doodles of Gertie doing nothing in particular (perhaps dancing, swimming, or chilling in a fish bowl!), whilst others are sketches that I used to get a feel for key frames in the film. After having taken on board feedback from Joanna and Les, I have changed the drawn style of animation, removed a character, and changed around some scenes to get more interesting shots.

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I have been working on animating FISH, and whilst I have a character turn sheet and a clear idea of how I want to character to move, I have decided that I want a clearer model that I can move around and visualise different angles of the character in a more realistic way. In order to achieve this, I have decided to build the character in 3D using Maya software. As I will have the character as a rigged 3D model, I hope to use the character in the film as an ‘imagined’ version of FISH. When the protagonist imagines themselves, first with legs and then winning ‘Fish Universe’, they will do so in 3D to show the audience that was they are seeing is not actually happening, making the distinction between real and imagined in the story clearer.

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Today I had a really useful session with Charles Douglas regarding acting for animation, and recording LAV footage to use when animating my Fish. I already have some outlines of dance moves for the character of FISH, however it was incredibly helpful to have some direction with how to approach the characters ‘leg discovery’ scene. Thinking about fast and slow movements, along with how the character feels the movement, as opposed to just the movement itself, was useful.

Now, when animating the scene where FISH gets legs, I will be thinking more about the initial ‘wobbliness’ of the character, where their eyes are focused as they first learn to move their legs, how they might be approaching the first dance move, and then slowing into the ease of movement that follows for the fish.

I have found whilst working on the animatic that I find it really difficult to imagine the backgrounds in the correct perspective as I move through scenes. I am also struggling with camera work in the film, and am finding difficult angles a struggle to board out.

My solution to this has been to build sets in Maya, so that I can see the shots from different angles in basic shapes. This also means that in a later scene, when OWNER is walking through a city, I can show a camera pan and track through the city setting in 2D by rotoscoping over a 3D built model city. This is quite a long-winded approach, but I’m hoping that it will add an extra layer of believability into the world of FISH, and disorientation when needed in the story.

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In a recent crit it was pointed out that when FISH’s character (spoiler alert) gets packaged up for consumption, the product name is ‘Frog’s Legs n’ Fish’, which could cause some confusion due to the lack of frog legs in the film. The reason that I chose this product name was because A. it’s suitably silly, and B. ‘fish with legs’ wouldn’t be something that could possibly (even in a silly imagined world) be produced for consumption. [Having said that, I now want to make a film in a world where people eat human legs for a tasty snack] I opted for frog’s legs because it’s already considered a food product, so more viable for the story.

In order to make this ending ‘fit’ a bit more, I have edited the character design so that FISH now has green legs, and large webbed feet. The webbed feet will probably be harder to animate, but hopefully will create a little more consistency and clarity to the story. Also, it’s quite nice to have an amphibian ‘monkey’s paw’ style twist to FISH’s dream of getting legs!

I have a pretty solid idea of how I want my short film to look, and am comfortable with the story arc, however have found that the lack of speech in my film makes the storytelling quite tricky. The character of FISH never says anything, beyond maybe a few sounds; the idea is that the story is told through the acting of the characters, and hopefully the flow of the soundtrack.

Working on the animatic has been helpful with regards to realising the flaws in story representation. I have added elements, taken them out again, messed around with timing, changed backgrounds, and so on, in order to tighten up the story. I feel like I have got a grip on my animatic fairly early on in the process, so it has been helpful to get feedback at early stages. I’ve found that I’m quite happy to ‘kill my darlings’ and take out scenes that I was initially keen on, when it became clear that they wouldn’t work. For instance, I animated the keys on a dance scene with FISH doing a well recognised move from the music video for Beyonce’s ‘single ladies’. This took AGES to execute, and added something comical, but I ultimately decided that it wasn’t effective enough to add anything significant to the film. Going forward, I will work on backgrounds so that I can visualise each scene more clearly. I’m currently working on the 6th version of my animatic, but hope that the next edit will be the one I use for the film.

For my final film, I will be producing a story about a fish who desperately wants legs so as to compete in beauty pageants. Whilst I am enthusiastic about the story, I have been struggling to find a way of clearly animating the main character in animation trials. For one, the general movement of fish is difficult to translate onto paper. I spent a day in the London Aquarium, and got about 50 videos for reference footage. Whilst I now have an excellent stock of reference, the issues I have found is that different varieties of fish move so differently in relation to their speed, body size, and length. My character design is fairly simple; I initially opted for a much more complicated design based on the Doctor Fish, however found quickly that this would be very difficult to animated consistently in 2D. I have landed on a simple design of a long fish, and found that a good way to gauge movement is to draw lines of follow through, and then draw the character over those lines. When the character turns however, proportion completely changes. One way that I have thought of the get around this, is downloading free maya models of fish that I can manipulate in 3D in order to get my head around key poses for my character in 2D.

The second big problem is fitting human legs on the fish, and then figuring out how the character should move with the legs. I have thus far placed the legs directly in the middle of the body under the fish, hoping that this will give a sense of balance. I am trying to build sketches of key movements by animating human legs first, and placing ‘Fish’ on top of the legs in a way that looks fairly natural. I imagine that all first attempts will be improved after feedback!

I have been thinking about lips and voice acting in the film, and would like there to be minimal voice-over, as the film does not need a script to be understood. If I do include some voice acting, it will be minimal, and perhaps muffled, as I would like for much of the human interaction to be witnessed from the fish’s point of view.

Having completed my LIAF project, I have learned that I am able to produce an ‘abstract’, more loose style of animation fairly well, using a straight ahead method. Going forward, I would like to try and include this in my final film. My final film will be about a fish who hopes for human legs in order to compete in beauty pageants. When the fish gets legs, I could use a more abstract approach, perhaps briefly changing the style of animation to something more hand-drawn, to show the ‘magical’ transition that allows for character growth, and is a key pivot point in the story. The painted style in the LIAF film could work well for this moment; I am inspired by the strings scene in Disney’s first fantasia, where music is expressed with animated strokes reflecting the music. Whilst I don’t feel that I would necessarily need to base this scene around music, the style of abstract lines that are still clear in their message could be impactful.

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I have been spending some time working on learning about effective storyboarding in preparation for my final film.

I have read more about the ‘rule of thirds’, and the importance of keeping eyeline in the top third of the screen where possible. I have noted that this is used not just in animated film, but in live action productions. Whilst I am already reasonably familiar with the importance of camera angles in adjusting sense of power and emotion to the scene, it has been useful to spend more time looking in greater depth how usual trends can be subverted; for instance learning how a higher camera angle can be used to suggest both vulnerability and power depending on how the character is placed, whilst camera angles can also be used to highlight certain objects of significance in a scene.

Going forward, when creating an animatic for my final film, I will aim to draw on knowledge of how to portray dynamics of power and tension using camera angles, and allocating characters to the most appropriate area of the screen. I will also focus on keeping the ‘camera’ within the 180 degree line so as not to disorientate the audience.