Transcription: Third Tutorial Session W/ Alan Postings

Today, I had my 3rd tutorial session related to my transcription project. Where I presented my animatic, and some character designs that are not yet posted. while the character designs receive a good welcome, with only some minor changes to emphasise the characteristics of the character, by taking a little further.
The Animatic received feedback in ways I can change it to make the story more fluent and interesting. Alan directed me to this clay motion film, Mary & Max., which I will see and further draw my conclusions. Mainly, he pointed that in my animatic I have to play with the narration, not to describe the shot but to drive the story forward.  Also, I pointed what feel commented on my blog, about getting a voice over to determine the pace and mood of the animatic,  as well as be a bit more expressive with the overall actions. The animatic will suffer some major changes, where I will experiment some more abstract and expressive approaches, more close-ups, juxta- position of shots, etc.

For now the voice over has to be sorted asap. not only to aid but also to motivate me.

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Transcription: The Music of Erich Zann 1st Draft Animatic

I have finally put together all the still shots for my 1st draft animatic. and after getting stressed a couple of times with the program I am using at them moment, After Effects, everything came out ok. As being the first draft, I m awaiting a lot of feedback in how I can make the whole animation, punchier and entertaining.  At the moment, the animatic looks more like a place where I dump the book, carefully choosing the shots, however with some outside feedback ( audience), i will be able to make it more entertaining.

A few things were changed from the last script, the narration in points is slightly less in order to edit the shots faster. and some of not needed actions which doesn't influence the story were thrown away.

At this stage, I can see already some changes to be made, however I will wait for feedback, to carry on with the animatic. For now, concept design is on order.

Lastly, I would like to explain the reason why the blog is being updated not so often, due changing house for a couple of weeks, I didn't get to stay with my internet, so Im back on the "dongle" internet, and although it is saving me sometimes to get some research done, it is just too painful to cope with all the updates I want to bring on the blog, hopefully in a few weeks everything will be just the same.

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Transcription: Use Of Music In An Expressive Way In Film

Although my first draft of animatic is not yet done, I wanted to take some time to research how music is often used in an expressive way in film. The matter of this research is that I want to add some abstract shots to my animatic , for instance when Erich Zann is playing, I want to emphasise the emotions of the music played, not only with the animation shot themselves but also inter-cutting with abstract expressionist shots.

So I began researching some examples:

Firstly,  in Pixar's Film Ratatouille, this technique is used when Remy visualises the tastes he is experiencing when eating food.

It shows how taste is added to music and then representation in an abstract way. 

In Disney's Fantasia, once again music notes are visualised into abstract shapes. In this case, the music assumes a visual shape, a character, therefore it interacts better with the audience. 

Finally, while researching this technique I found a quite interesting short animation Danse Macabre by Brian Allen Carol done as a tribute to German animator Oskar Fischinger. In this case, the music is once again shown in a representative way,  emphasising the notes played by the music as well as the feelings evoked by it.

Now it is time to get back to the animatic, finish it and then find a way to visually interpret the music heard.  

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Transcription: Erich Zann Character Design Beginning

Between getting the last sound effects and rough voiceovers for the animatic, I decided to begin character design for Erich Zann. Although I did have some influence maps and research done for the character, i decided to quickly gather some more photos, however this time around I applied something I learnt in 1 of the Gnomon Workshop DVDs- Visual Storytelling by Iain Mccaig, artist known for working as a storyboard and concept designer for films such as Star Wars, Harry Potter, and Peter Pan.
Iain Mccaig gives a lot of importance to research, however to full gather information from your research you should not only take the pictures from any source but also draw from them, so instead of copying, you are learning how specific things work or are made.
So that was exactly what I did, I gather some pictures and then immediately began to draw them in order to understand my research.

Here are the sketches I did for my research on Erich Zann, it shows me research in different areas, bony human structure for Erich Zann body, Satyr and goat-like faces for Zann's face, and also something really important, the pose in which a viol-player plays, this research is really important because it enables me to understand how I can create motion with my character but also to exaggerate his pose when he begins the frenetic playing. More sketches exploring this area will follow. 

Also here is the Influence Map , I have put together with the images I researched. 

Finally, as I was getting excited with drawing I decided to quickly create some silhouettes for Erich Zann possible face. And then took them in photoshop and try to add some information onto them by creating the character's face. This exercise was extremely helpful, as it allowed me to free my imagination, and try different things that if I was consciously creating a character wouldn't be able to do. The following sketches have strengths that I will later apply to my final concept. 

Here is the ones I explored thus far:

Now, is time to get back to the Storyboard and animatic and finally create the 1st draft. Meanwhile , some research will undergo in order to understand how music can be visual expressed in film. 

Keep tuned!!

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Maya Tutorials: intro to Dynamic Tutorials Week*2

Here is the second week of the Maya dynamics tutorials, overall fairly easy exercise, though with really effective results, I do believe after some tweaking you can get almost anything you need with the dynamics. Indeed, a very helpful tutorial introducing us to the world of dynamics.

Now it is time to get back to the animatic :)

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Transcription: Storyboards and Indication Sheet

Firstly I would like to apologise for the lack of drawings on the blog since the start of the project, but my priority was to resolve the story-telling first, then it comes the design choices.
Here are the storyboards and the indication sheets, for the 1st draft animatic. The animatic is starting to get shape and will be uploaded later. Where I will combine the storyboard stills, a rough voiceover, music and SFX.

For now the drawings:

This whole process of drawing them, scan them in, clean them up and colour them as taken more time than I expected, though it is worth it.

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Transcription: Research on Location

Within getting my storyboards cleaned up and ready to put together in a first draft animatic, I took some time to go to London, because it was a really interesting exhibition I wanted to go to. The exhibition at the British Museum was called 'Picasso to Julie Mehretu: Modern Drawings from the British Museum Collection', and as the name shows, it was a wide range of drawings, prints and paintings from artists ranging those two periods.

Many known artist featured the list, such as Picasso, Matisse, Magritte, Kirschner, Kentridge, etc. 

This exhibition allowed me not only to relax for a bit, but also to do some transcription research on location.

Indeed, the first part of the exhibition had numerous prints and drawings from German Expressionism, from artists such as, Otto Dix, Ludwig Meidner, Max Beckmann or Abraham Walkowitz. They were really strong examples of such a strongly graphical art movement. Many were the notes I wrote on my paper , of those examples. 

Following is a few of the paintings/drawings/ prints, I have seen yesterday, and let be inspired:

Ludwig Meidner

Street Scene, 1914

Max Beckmann 

Die Strasse 

Abraham Walkowitz

Untitled ( City Abstraction)

I found that to do on location research is amazing and despite the exhibition being really small ( approx.only 2 rooms), I was able to spend a lot of time in each painting,absorbing a lot of information as well as techniques. Which I possibly be using to create my textures.

Artists Researched: 

Abraham Walkowitz

Jacob Steinhardt

Ludwig Meidner

Otto Dix

Max Beckmann

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