Reflection:

Outcome:

 Overall I am okaish with the outcome, the project ended with a lovely style that ended up meshing well with the 3D and looking smooth and picture-book like (showed to a Christchurch friend with no explanation and she said it looked like a picture book so yay!!!) I love the simple style I ended with.

One things I wish is that I spent more time on this, I have been avoiding a lot of stuff this year and crashing down a mountain in terms of mental stuff, and it shows, I wish I spent more time experimenting and researching into this task and find out what else I could have done. Including more blogging which tents to be a weakness of mine (Keeping up to date with writing things, be it social media friends or blogging) 

If I could do this over I might have also chosen something else to study rather than 2D/3D merging as in the end I didn't find it challenging and I already had a solid Idea of what I wanted, If I had chosen something that would have helped me learn a new program or skill such as facial rigging or texturing I might have gotten more out of this project.

Animation Project: One last thing to do

 All I have to do now is my presentation 

Animation Project: Im done

 so Im done.

there is technicly more I can do to improve on my shirt film but by this point, I just can't do anything more, honestly I despise what I have created though my mental state has been declining so thats probably a factor. The file is a bit big to upload here, its possible to put it on youtube but I really don' want it up there., not sure what im doing anymore.

Animaiton Project: Pretty Much Done

 I am at a point where I could call its done and submit, but I will do more 2D if I can and Look into motion blur however I am not pinning on having it if I can't figure it out. I am by this point to tired and done with this year, 
(I'm happy with how the end credits turned out though (Last scene meshes into the credits scene)

:P

 I'm getting through this with sloppy animation and my mental state is crumbling

Screen Arts: Presentation

 

Screen Arts: Forgotten Update One

 Looking through my blogs I have forgotten a lot, disaster me strikes again, however I do have some of the info including my original proposal I can now put up, now that the stress of the presentation is over, in slight hopes that this may suffice.

Screen Arts: Mashing Dimensions

Research purpose, aims and objectives

Screen Arts Question:

In what way,  can I make sure my audience can tell the difference between the main 3D story and the 2D pocket story by creating a distinctive style using both 2D and 3D techniques?

Purpose:

The purpose of this is to make sure my audience can tell the difference between the 3D main story, or the real world and the pocket story or tale being told by Matha to her daughter Ezaru.

While the 2D is already creating a difference in comparison to the 3D, I want to see how I can push this to add more depth and characterization to my short film.

Aim - 

I am aiming to create a distinctive style by combining my 2D pocket story into my 3D main story, in a way that will be clear that the 2D story is a past event in comparison to the 3D world in which my characters are sharing this story. I want the culture that the dragons are based on to have an effect on what the animation looks like, as this will have an effect on what the animation looks like and fit into the aesthetic of the dragons' lifestyles.

Objective - 

I will create experiments to explore the possible styles to use for my 2D pocket story. Each final experiment will be shown through drawing and small animated gifs showing each style I looked and researched into for this project.

Key Terms:

Pocket Story 

A pocket story is a story within a story, a narrative that takes place within a main story (MasterClass, 2020), this may take the form of a flashback, a character telling a tale, a character reciting an event or dreams

Preliminary Research

Discuss key works by other filmmakers / animators/video game developers whose works are relevant to proposed project

In the Film Ice Age (Wedge, 2002)
The flashback is done in 2D and in the style of caveman paintings and has a hazy and old animation style with a very limited colour palette. 

The colour complements and keeps our attention to what happens as well as keeping true to the inspiration for the animation, that being caveman paintings.

This created a clear difference between the main    story and the flashback and creating the flashback in caveman paintings brought an interesting method of showing Manny's past as it smoothly fits into the time era that the film is supposed to take place in, the Ice age, or back in the caveman days.
The flashback itself doesn’t take place in the 3D environment, however, it transitions smoothly with a still from the flashback painted onto the cave wall, showing us that the animation is a thought passing by.  

In the movie Kung fu Panda 2 (Nelson, 2011) we learn about where Po came from through a paper like 2D animation, showing us what happened in the past, while switching between the flashback and the real world showing us how Po is feeling towards these strong emotions. The paper like animation has drawn inspiration from the culture the movie is based off of, that being Chinese culture.

While the 3D animation has plenty of depth, the    2D animation uses limited colours to evoke the                                   

emotions the scene is trying to portray 

(eg, greens and yellows for happy, 

red and black for danger)

The movie Watership Down (Rosen, 1978)

 introduces us to the lore of the world with a simplistic yet bold animation style, different from the main style the movie is animated in, it is narrated over in a  similar fashion to someone telling a story to another person. The lack of a complex background draws attention to the characters and what is happening and the information we are being fed.

         

The film Harry Potter and the Deathly hallows: Part 1  (Yates, 2010)  Tell us the tale of how the deathly hallows came into being, through a narrated story, told by the character Hermionie. The visuals we are shown accompanying the narration of the story, is a 3D animation with limited colours, the simple and hazy style of this

The nariration alone would have made for a more boring experience in learning about the deathly hallows but adding a unique animation style not seen in the rest of the films, it helps bring out the story and make it unique in comparison to the live action in the rest of the movie.

Methods: (How are you going to achieve aims and objectives)

I am going to use a couple of methods to experiment and research techniques that I can incorporate into my own work and figure out what style will suit my story best.

The methods I will be exploring for my animation style will include, paper-like animation, 2D onto a 3D background, simple shapes, flipbook-like, 2D in maya and limited colour pallet, with each technique I have listed I will play around with them by themselves and by merging them with other to figure out what style suits my project.

I want each experiment to show the same story yet be able to be distinct from the main animation style of my project and not clash with it.

The programs I will be using for my experiments will include, Photoshop, After Effects, Maya and Toon Boom Harmony

By the end of my experimentations I expect to have an animation style that best suits and compliments my story 

_____________________________________________________________________

APA Referencing:

MasterClass. (2020, January 22). What Is a Story Within a Story? 7 Examples of Nested Stories. Cloudflare.

https://www.masterclass.com/articles/what-is-a-story-within-a-story#what-is-a-story-within-a-story

Aibel, J., & Berger, G. (Writers), & Nelson, J. Y. (Director). (2011). Kung Fu Panda 2. DreamWorks.

Rosen, M., & Hubley, J. (Directors). (1978). Watership Down. Nepenthe Productions.

Wedge, C., & Sakdanha, C. (Directors). (2002). Ice Age. Blue Sky Studios, 20th Century Fox.

Kloves, S., & Rowling, J. K. (Writers), & Yates, D. (Director). (2010). Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1. Warner Bros. Pictures.

 

Animation Project: Getting there

 Progress, almost over the animation, then a lil clean up with post, and then I go to sleep for about 80 years

Animation Project: Ya know... Sometimes animation scares me

 ya know... sometimes animation scares me

In anycase what is shown in the scene looks absolutely fine, at lest as best as I can make it.

Animation Project: Woops

In some of the scenes I did, I couldn't put the background into maya as it would not light properly

At the time I was exporting as PNG sequences, due to a mistake in my mind being  twat, I didn't export the EXR properly the first time and thought it was the exr format that didn't work, not realizing my mistake.

Before that I messed around in after effects seeing if I could get the black background out my masking the animation layer however the lighting in the animation is quite dark and left the image transparent.

 

eexr, didn't work the first time, not because I thought it was the wrong file type but because in the render settings I didn't have it exporting in a way that the exr file could be used but after fixing that the scene rendered without the black background just fine
(Scene below has also been colour corrected)

Cover

ScreenArts: BreakDown and Animation

Break Down and Animation

Layer breakdown:

Animation:

The 2D scenes are animated in after effects using pins, and pulling them around, I have discovered through this that animating a pin on a compilation will mess up the image and that I either need to pin the image directly, or if I am right, put the pins onto a null layer.

ScreenArts: Round Three; Clean Up

Screen Arts Experiments: Part/Round Three

What was left to do was clean up the silhouettes, but I didn't like that It was hard to make out the shapes of the characters, as they were not drawn with them being silhouettes in mind, adding to that I want them to be able to move, and the audience be able to see moving parts, soooo

I added different done so that certain parts are able to  be told apart without creating an abundance of detail, I only created separate parts based on what I needed to move with as the wings and ears, though this doesn't account for the different colours like the horns, which are separate for aesthetic and design reasons (for detail, I still wanted the horns in)

Then all I needed to do was plaster the paper texture over on top and put it on Overlay

Screen Arts: Experiments Two

 Screen Arts: Experiments, round Two

This round I was looking on how to either make it more simple or dream like, In the second picture I faded the edged to create a foggy or misty atmosphere that makes it feel more distant, however this didn't end up looking that good, even without the linework,  speaking of,

Having the character drawn out in linework seem to be a bit detailed and adding to that I think by not having facial features will help keep the distance, I want the characters to tell a story but not connect too heavily to the characters as I want that to happen in the 3D world.

I did like having lack of linework though in this it is a bit patchy, it keeps it very simple which I am aiming for, and with the paper texture will as I want, look like paper cut outs..

I had already done these experiments on the greyscale version before deciding that the coloured was better the the monochrome