Joanna Staniforth Animation

Final Film

2008-05-09T01:58:00.000-07:00

Chimi's Little Helpers

2008-05-08T18:04:00.000-07:00

Bronwyn Dowle - My colouring gal. She has taken most of my frames and coloured them in with Photoshop. Bron also helped with sound design and arranging my thumbnail storyboards in the very early stages of the film. She spent 17 hours on this (some of which were spent as a human rig for Claire's stop motion shot).

Claire Burn - My stop motioner. Who also helped with sound design, storboarding and general assissting.

Laurie Priest - My techie. He built my CG Chimi rig, and has spent ages developing Shake scripts for me and Bronny. All together he has spent 45 hours with me.

Ashley Meyer - Has spent 10 hours assisting me with general skivvy work, rubbing out my pencil lines on my inked frames and capturing them into the computer, ready for Shake.

Natasha Adiletta - Has spent 16 hours with me editing my final film, and adapting Laurie's Shake scripts. She has also written my treatment and script.

Steve White - Spent 8 hours with me editing my animatic for the assessment.

Richard Butler - Designed and created the space backgrounds, supernova and black hole, and animated them in After Effects.

Final Final Poster

2008-05-07T04:55:00.000-07:00

This is the very last version of the poster, I swear. The logo was designed by me, but Antony Manley smartened it up, and added the star background by Richard Butler. The "A Film By..." typography was also by Antony Manley, who took the idea from the logo, and stylized it. Both the logo and the type are part of the titles and credit sequence (by Antony Manley).

My Contribution To Pest Control

2008-05-07T03:29:00.000-07:00

These are actual frames and a clip from Claire's film. I did the sky backgrounds with chalk pastel. See Claire Burn's blog.

Richard's Space Designs

2008-04-30T17:40:00.000-07:00

These are Richard Butler's concept designs for the space world, done in Photoshop.

Treatment and Script by Natasha Adiletta

2008-04-29T22:23:00.000-07:00

My contribution to Pinny Gig

2008-04-29T14:34:00.000-07:00

I have spent the majority of my hour allowance on Bron's film, colouring in all of her 2D frames with Photoshop. I had to colour all the areas that were going to be white, bright green, because the background is white in the frames, and that will be keyed out in Shake so the Maya backgrounds can show through. Bit complicated, and we could have just coloured the backgrounds green in Photoshop, but oh well. Bron has done the same for mine, but I have very few different colours in my film, where she has 10. See Bronwyn Dowle's blog.

Animation Passes

2008-04-29T14:17:00.000-07:00

This is the first shot from my film, from Keys to Coloured frames, to show the process and development.

1. Key frames

2. Keys and Breakdowns

3. Finished Animation

4. Inked and put through Shake

5. Photoshop colouring

6. Complete shot.

Animatic

2008-04-29T14:10:00.000-07:00

This is the most recent animatic, as I am making changes all the time. When I edit the final film together I will use this version as reference.

Amazing!

2008-04-05T11:28:00.001-07:00

In the last 2 weeks I have managed to tween 23 out of those 26 seconds of keys and ink another 19 seconds. That means all together I have inked 33 seconds, and have 22 ready to ink. I still have 38 to key, but I think if I have another productive weekend, then I’ve got no problems.

The Shake script is working fine, and I have given Bron a chunk of work that is ready to colour in. She said she will have all her animation done by the end of the week (11th April) and so she can start putting it into the computer and preparing it for colouring. I think she wants shading on hers though, and we had a play with Shake to see if that could do it; the results were alright, but not brilliant. She might have to play with that after it’s coloured, if there’s time.

I got my dissertation bound today! Finally, after having the library printer break yesterday. Glad its done, but I did notice a goof when I was making sure the pages were in the right order, but I think it should be ok, its just a presentation thing…
Anyway, time for me to get back on with animating. Don’t need to worry about the essay now, so just gotta get on with my film, straight ‘til the end. We hand in in 4 weeks and 6 days!

The Last Month

2008-03-24T05:10:00.000-07:00

It has been mental trying to get everything done. Last night I managed to key out another 14 seconds, but I’ve not been able to test it yet. All in all I have inked 14 secs, have 16 secs ready to ink, and 26 secs keyed out. That means I’ve got 38 still to start, and 7 for Claire to do in stop motion.

Claire has made the armature, and will start putting it together pretty soon. I picked out the plasticine last week, its less purple, and more PURPLE!!!

We had lots of fun and games a couple of weeks ago, trying to sort out the line testers so we get a nice contrast between the white of the paper and the black ink. That all seems to be sorted now, and we’ve got a nice script to use in Shake. We just plonk the jpegs into Shake, it crops it, and does various other things that leaves us with an alpha channel black outline, that we export as targa, stick into Photoshop to colour it, and then stick it all back into Shake to fix something else… its all a bit complicated, but as long as I know what to do and when I don’t think it matters if I know how it works. I just know the result is good, but we’re going to do some more tests tomorrow, and adapt the script to work for Bron’s film – obviously we’re swapping films to colour them, so we both need to know what to do. If it all works then its going to give us so much more time, and help lower stress levels.

I think we are all feeling the pressure now, just to get the films finished. It hasn’t really sunk in that this is the end of uni, and our films are going to be shown to loads of people. The website for the degree show is up and running, and our posters and synopsis will be going on there pretty soon. I need to start thinking about business cards and some kind of advertisement gimmick for my work. Bron had a cool idea about making badges…
I’m a bit dubious about these “awards” – “the peggies” (I’m sorry, but I can not take that name seriously. For 1, my nan’s name is Peggy, and 2 nobody is going to know what on earth a peggie is, or who we are. At least we could make LAFTA stand for something to represent us).

Poster 2

2008-02-25T13:16:00.000-08:00

I thought I would put up the poster, this one has the final colours that I've decided on.

(I wasn't happy leaving the Blog with 13 posts)

I'll need to re-do this, the proportions are out - the frame is too thick and Chimi's legs are too long. The door is also too short - when Chimi stands his eye level is meant to match the position of the spyhole.

It's been a while...

2008-02-25T04:53:00.000-08:00

... but I have been working hard. Spent some time redoing my animatic, needed to jig a few things and it now has the extended ending, which I’m quite happy about (but it means more work). I’ve spent a lot of time on my dissertation, so animating has taken a back seat, but now the draft has been handed in I’m going to work exclusively on my film.
Did Claire’s sky backgrounds last week, it was good to get messy with pastels again, I miss doing my fine art.

So on now with the animation. I have 5 weeks to do it all…

Oh dear.

This is the latest version of my animatic, with the extended ending, and an original piece of music by Bronwyn Dowle, Claire Burn and myself.

Hours

2008-01-31T05:11:00.000-08:00

Nat's going to be working on my film too. She's going to write me a new treatment and script, and help me edit the final film.

For my hours, I am going to ink and colour Bron's film "Pinny Gig", and I am going to paint the backgrounds for Claire's film "Pest Control". Still unsure about working with Ste, not spoken to him for a while.

I have an idea for my title sequence, which I might give to one of the first years - they have to do stings for our films, so I could kill two birds with one stone.

Summative Assessment

2008-01-30T15:59:00.000-08:00

Well.... I got my grade back. 64% which is 5% off a 1st. Not bad. It just means I'm going to have to nail this animation lark and do a top job on the final film to get that 1st.

We were told that this blog is going to be part of our mark for "Client Orientation and Professional Practice" and that it should be kept formal... so far, this is not. As you would know if you are reading this, I have been treating it more like a diary, and this has really helped me. I type out reams of waffle, but these are the internal debates I'm going through, that would consume me if I didn't post on here. I think its important that I include everything, otherwise my decisions would seem to come out of nowhere, and the blog would be lacking.

So, until I get told off, I'm going to keep it as it is.

As for the comments the tutors made...

Simon pointed out that once Chimi got to his space world, there would be no gravity. A fair comment. I hadn't even considered that! I've just got him landing on this invisible plane among the stars. BUT, if I changed it so he "floated" into his world, then he would surely have never known gravity, and would therefore be completely freaked out by the gravity in the rest of the film. The door changes the gravity around it, so it can mess Chimi about, thats one of the main themes (the spyglass is the other), Chimi then learns from this and is able to use it to his advantage. Would he come from a world that has no gravity and be able to understand what was happening? No gravity would mean no up or down (or even left and right). I think I'm going to leave that as it is.

I noticed that, as we were watching the animatics, my film got laughs! This was certainly not intended. The audience is supposed to feel uneasy and disorientated, but instead they laughed at the "slapstick" humour... What? When I showed people the animatic before Christmas, they said they felt sorry for him, but NOBODY laughed. I had no idea...

Paul told me to change the character, to make him less "cartoony", mainly by changing the eyes and making them smaller, but this just makes him look evil, and I think the audience would find it harder to connect with him - the "Simpsons" eyes give him an innocent look, wide eyed, naive, and above all, likeable. I am going to stick with them, but I wish people had been honest with me from the start.

Sean wants me to put in the original ending - the Extended Edition if you like. This would have been cool, but I dont think I'm going to have enough time. It has been suggested that I cut out some bits from earlier on in the film, but I'm too close to see what can go.

Assessed Animatic

2008-01-25T04:42:00.000-08:00

This is the version of the animatic that was handed in for assessment. The music was ripped from a meditation CD, but for the final film I will write an original piece. This soundtrack gives an idea of what I want.

Assessments

2008-01-17T06:00:00.000-08:00

Yesterday we watched all the animatics from the year, and had to talk about them... always a lovely experience.

My main problem is that all throughout the year (since September) we were told that this would be a "Formative" assessment, which gives us an idea of our marks, as opposed to "Summative" which is an actual mark. Then, on the first day back (one week before the hand in) Sean announced that this was, in fact, going to be Summative assessment... right.

Major panic ensues.

I had not, at that point, throught about what soundtrack I was going to use, or whether or not to use sound effects. After much messing around I found a soundtrack, and decided that seeing as my film is set in Nothing and space, that sound effects would be useless (because sound cannot carry through space). The soundtrack was only there to provide ambience, because it was a bit bare without it, but the track I picked out, amazingly, fitted almost perfectly with the actions.

Sorted.

I edited it all together, and was happy with the result. I got to the computer to put my animatic on the uni harddrive... and put the wrong file on. The file I handed in was the one devoid of any sound at all.

Typical.

But I actually dont think anybody noticed... I guess my result will tell.

"Group Project"

2008-01-17T05:28:00.000-08:00

Here is a picture of the character Laurie built me in Maya, I was originally going to use this for the film, but now, as things have changed, I will now use the model to help me draw in 2D - I can pose him to get a better idea of proportions and help with foreshortening (which is always a real pain).

This will also help Claire with building the model for Stop Motion - see how the feet are huge? Well thats so he doesn't fall over.

To build up Claire's hours, she is going to make the 3D (wire and wood) model, and has a segment of my film to animate (about 7 or 8 seconds). I have told her roughly what I want from the shot, but really given her free reign (because I have no idea what is possible in Stop Mo).

I also have Bron working on my film! Seeing as we are both working in 2D, we have the same processes to go through -

Animate

Ink

Scan

Colour

Edit

So, we thought that if we animate our films, we can swap over and ink-colour eachother's, and then edit our own. This is so we can both gain hours - and by the time we finish animating we are going to be sick to the back teeth of our films, so the swap means we get a break, and only have to worry about it when it comes to editing it all together.

What else do we have to do?

Theres the -

Dissertation, which we hand in after Easter, leaving 4 weeks before handing in our films.

I think we have to do a CV as part of the group project,

and probably a load of personal reviews and assess the work we do for others, and what people do for us.

We probably have to do showreels, but they cannot actually be completed without our films being done - does that mean we have to add work from the last 2 years? Will I need to make time to improve on some of that stuff?

I also dont know if I am meant to be working on Ste's showreel; originally he wanted me to animate a section, but after watching his animatic I have no idea what he would want me to do.

Hopefully these questions will be answered in the lectures to come, but I am really impatient - I like to get everything organised, because I cant plan my time when I dont know exactly what I need to do.

I (fingers crossed) will have finished animating before Easter, but I dont know how long inking and colouring will take (scanning will only take a couple of hours using one of the line testers).

New Year, Change of Plan

2008-01-17T05:20:00.000-08:00

OK, OK. You might have seen this coming, but I've changed my mind, and I am going to do the film in 2D afterall...

You see, my computer broke a couple of weeks before the Xmas break, so I didn't get chance to practice on Maya. While I was home for Xmas I managed to get this sodding thing fixed, but I lost everything, including Maya, and all the files for installing it. I still dont have it running on here.

This got me to thinking that I was in over my head, trying to learn a new program and making my most important film to date. So, I'm going to do it in 2D, where I feel comfortable and confident.

Anyway, thats enough of that, because in the end, it doesn't really matter what medium I use, as long as the film is good when it's finished.

Chimi's World

2007-12-13T17:55:00.000-08:00

Originally, Chimi was going to be trying to reach his home on Earth - a lush green environment. However, I doubt a purple biped would call Earth his home, so I have changed it, so he is now trying desperately to return to space. Through the spyhole he will see stars and galaxies, and eventually make his way there.

Schedule... Again

2007-11-07T05:09:00.000-08:00

I needed to re-do my other one because obviously, its not going to be in 2D anymore...

Week 7 (this week) - Review went well. Do new storyboards (final). Practice Maya.
Week 8 - Storyboards and Maya practice.
Week 9 - Drawings for the animatic, and edit with Ste (add to his group hours). Maya practice.
Week 10 - Same as "Week 9"
Week 11 - Have Chimi modelled, and start practicing with him. Dissertation.
Week 12 - Sort out Concept portfolio (all prep should be complete) and Chimi practice. Plus Dissertation.
Christmas! - Relax because it will be the last time to do it 'til May hand in! (Could do some Chimi practice though)
Week 13 - Start animating the film!!

If I do, on average, 2 seconds of animation per day, and work for 10 days out of 14, then i can get 20 seconds done every 2 weeks. That means, by week 8 (Semester B)I could have 1 min 40 seconds done - this takes me up to Easter. I then have the 2 weeks at Easter, and 4/5 weeks after that to edit. (need to find out exact hand in day)

Not yet sure how long my film will be (its 1 min 10 at the moment, but I need to stick in an extra scene at the end and add some more to the Stop Motion section for Claire) but 1 min 40 should allow for any extra and the work for Ste.

Could also do with thinking about the titles and credits - would someone else want to to it for me as group work? I think I know what I want, but I'm open to other ideas.

I could do with some more name ideas too, "Door" sounds so boring. "Spyhole" sounds... well it sounds wrong, just wrong. "Chimi"... no. "Stuck in... INFINITY" (I'm not very good at this) "Infinitaaaaah"? like Cartman and "respect my authoritah"? "Infinitargh!"-'cos Chimi is stuck there, and he gets mad, and... no, not quite there yet.

CG Monkey

2007-11-07T04:54:00.000-08:00

It has happened! I have moved over to the dark side (CGI) and started learning Maya. Some people will never speak to me again because I have betrayed them.

After the first few hours I felt like I was in way over my head, and that I could never pull this off, but after a couple of days and lots of help from Laurie, Paul and Simon, I think its going to be O.K.

Practicing with one of the free rigs at the mo, going to redo the walks and runs from last year (if they are good enough I could put them in my showreel), and then, once Chimi has been modelled, I can start practicing with him for my final film, and get animating!

Meanwhile, I'm still going to be keeping my eye in with 2D, Ste's doing a showreel and I'm going to be animating some bits for him (more stuff I can put into my own showreel), so that's alright.

Its going to be a hell of a lot of work, but its managable.

Rough Animatic

2007-11-04T04:33:00.000-08:00

This animatic was compiled from my thumbnail storyboards, to give me an idea of timing and flow of the film.

CGI Debate

2007-11-03T06:18:00.000-07:00

I got to thinking last night (which is never a good thing) and I think I should learn Maya *hiss!*, because, lets face it, without any experience with CGI there is no way I am going to get a job out of this. So, my plan is to talk to some people on Monday and find out if I can get someone to teach me how to use it, from scratch. If things go well then I might just do my whole film on there! People keep telling me how easy it is, and how I could work so much faster. If this is true then I could make my animation really good!

To do my film in 2D is going to be a nightmare (we all know it deep down). For one, I have, in the past, preferred to work at home (I have my own lightbox, and I can control my entire environment), which means going into Uni, test it all out on the line testers, go home and make the changes. For this year, the work has to be completely polished, so that means after the thousands of tests, I have to have my sheets of paper perfect, then i have to ink each one, rub out all the pencil marks and put it all back through the computers to colour it in - that is, if the inking is spot on, and I don't have to redo some frames because i messed up.

There is also the matter of getting the work into the computer in the first place. After inking, if I use the line testers then I'm not going to get my paper perfectly black and white - it will most likely be yellow, or even blue depending on the bulbs. That is not good, and means more work. The ideal way would be to scan the sheets in - we do have an A4 scanner that feeds the paper in, but that would take hours to do, where I am sat waiting, doing nothing. It also means that I have to work on A4 paper, which is thick and small - I am used to 12" field, proper animation paper, which is nice, and I have lots of, and cost a bloody fortune. To use my paper I would need an A3 scanner, something which the course cannot afford, and I certainly can't.

Once my work is in the computer, and all ready to colour, I then have to colour each frame, individually, in Photoshop - mega pain in the arse. I heard that ToonBoom might be a possibility, but I have no idea how to use it, and heard it was limited.

So, at the moment, doing it in CG seems like the best option. I might be completely naïve, and it could be even worse than 2D because I have to learn a program completely from scratch, and get good at it, but if I spend this time before Christmas practicing and doing tests then it might just work. I can animate, and I have good marks so I must be competent, so maybe it will be O.K. to cross over to the dark side? Sean mentioned a render that makes it look 2D, so it would still have the quality and look that I was going for, but just doing it a different way.

We'll have to see. I am saying all this without talking to anybody else about it first, but I am worried that the response I get will be biased towards CG, and I will be told it will be easy when in reality it's not right for me.

Colour Debate

2007-11-03T05:52:00.000-07:00

This is the orange and purple version. I like how the colours complement eachother, and they stand out nicely against the black background. The orange is also a wild looking colour, but can be interpreted as positive or negative - it's the colour of the sun, which invokes good feeling, but also is the colour of the amber traffic light that signals there could be danger. This would (hopefully) make the audience unsure how to feel about it, and could almost lead them into a false sense of security.

From the very beginning the door was ALWAYS orange, but it took me a while to make Chimi purple. I ended up going with complementary colours (not very original, but I didn't want them to clash). I did try out many, many different colour ideas, but they all looked horrendous (apart from the skin-like, peachy colour).

This is still my personal favourite palette, but I had to take on board some of the comments people made. Some people preferred this, but others said that they did clash, and that they were all too bright and competing for the audience's eye. I suppose Chimi could also look like an alien, which I didn't want, that is why I tried the orange door with Chimi a skin colour...

He does look better in skin, but now the colours of the door are too similar to him, and it washes out a bit. He also looks human, rather than like an alien, which means that he is naked... there are no "distinguishing features", but some people might find that a bit awkward.

HOWEVER, with him being naked, he is vulnerable, and that is good, because this door is screwing him around and he has no idea where he is or how he got there.

So, then I thought about changing the colour of the door, and I tried some more colours for Chimi. I randomly coloured him blue, just to see the effect (purple complements the yellow on the door, and blue complements orange), but he looked too cold and didn't look right against the black. But, I tried the blue on the door with the yellow, and Chimi as skin, and came up with this new palette, the bane of my life...

And so, here it is. It does look nice, but I'm still not entirely convinced. I guess I have a problem with moving on, and like a dog with a bone, because i still prefer the orange door.

I want the door to be orange, and I want Chimi to be skin, but I just don't feel it when they are together. I think I'm going to have to do a line test and see them in the different palettes, just to see how it would work when they (or Chimi at least) move.

Someone suggested having the door change colour, but I think that might be a bit much, and it might not be clear that it was the same door, and there is no real reason for it to change colour.

Gar! I am so annoyed with this now!!

Other Colour Tests

2007-11-03T05:50:00.000-07:00

These are some of the experiments I did with colour, but I feel they did not work. I wanted bold colours, but not garish
like some of these have turned out.

I tried out a few poses, and put colour onto them to get a better idea of how the film might look. These are my favourite colours.

When Chimi shrinks and is on the giant Door, the key will be this size compared to him. This way he can drag it and use it to smash the slyhole without much difficulty.

Poster

2007-11-03T05:45:00.000-07:00

This is a copy of my poster for the film. I think these are the colours I will go with, after so much disputing. My original idea had the door being bright orange instead of blue, and Chimi was going to be purple. I asked around and showed various people my different palettes and this is the one that got the most approval, although it was very close. I may still change it back to orange and purple, but for now at least, this is it.

Schedule

2007-10-29T16:20:00.000-07:00

Week 6 Complete rough animatic and start final storyboards.
Week 7 Progress Review on Tuesday, have all concept work ready. Draw out panels for animatic. Make any changes after review.
Week 8 Final animatic
Week 9 polish the animatic, and start a line test
Week 10 Time the inking and colouring process – make schedule for semester B
Week 11 Finish off any outstanding work. Sound effects/track.
Week 12 All pre-production work should be complete, ready to animate in week 13 onwards.
Christmas
Week 13 Start animating…
Week 14

Poster and Logo Ideas

2007-10-29T16:10:00.000-07:00

Door Ideas

2007-10-29T16:08:00.000-07:00

Character Ideas

2007-10-29T16:06:00.000-07:00

Original Concept Art

2007-10-29T16:04:00.000-07:00

Oil pastel and turps on a black acrylic base.

The spyhole, Chimi's view of hills and trees.

The door. Bright orange and yellow with a garish design.

So far...

2007-10-29T16:02:00.000-07:00

Hello there!

I am now in the 6th week of making my 3rd year film “Door”. The story is pretty much sorted, I have my character designed and named (Chimi – means “thingy” in Spanish, because I am not very imaginative when it comes to naming things - so he would probably have been called George otherwise). My door is designed, and so are my backgrounds (which didn’t take much doing because it’s all black).

I have made a rough 2D animatic from my thumbnail storyboards, that just needs a bit of editing before I go on to draw out my final storyboards and fancy animatic. I find it easier to be able to see how the film would run with the rough animatic, before doing anything final and time consuming like the storyboards.

Still unsure about sound. I know there will be no dialogue, but I have not decided on sound effects or a soundtrack. With it being set in Infinity – there is literally nothing on screen but Chimi and the Door – I don’t know if they would be appropriate. I need to find a soundtrack that will not impose, so you don’t notice it’s there, but if it wasn’t then it would sound odd.

The majority of the animation will be done by me, in 2D drawn, but I have set a scene aside for Claire Burn, a stop motion animator, to play with. She’s going to turn my Chimi into a model, which will be cool because he will then be “real” (and I could possibly use him to pose for some of my key frames, so handy when any life volunteers would be busy on their own projects).