Observational Drawing - (more) Various Days

When you get a little bored during a question & answer session at a talk... (Biro pen - A6 Notebook)

 
Taken from my A5 sketchbook - often using pen or pencil.
 

For quite a wee while I hadn't been doing much observational drawing on the train (probably because Life Drawing had started up again so I don't feel too guilty about it...)

F&T - 18th April: One month later...

A long time has passed with no mention from Deryck. By this point, I've completed my other project and the Easter holidays are coming to an end. And boy, am I glad that I didn't stick with the original deadline of the end of March for Deryck's film - I had enough on my plate before Easter with trying to get See Hear done. I had been planning to meet up with Deryck during the holidays but partly was busy and partly felt he should be the one getting in contact, not me. I have done some sketchbook work for potential visual styles but not a huge amount.

Page taken from my sketchbook for visual ideas.

BUT the exciting news is that last night, Deryck got in contact with me (rather than the other way round, how it has mainly been since the project began). He was apologetic as he had been busy with other things. He did say though he hadn't forgot about the project and had found some inspiration that he was "dying to tell me about". I was worried that it was going to be the film changing completely but it was actually a couple of paintings on display in ECA. He asked whether they could serve as some sort of backdrop for the action to play out on top of. I replied saying they could though the storyboard may require some tweaking but we had planned to do that anyway.

So it's a good feeling that Deryck has taken more ownership of his own film. I don't feel so guilty for having not been in contact with him sooner because not only we were both busy, it confirmed that he wanted to carry on with the project and not just me trying to make it work. I plan to meet up with him in the next week or so to plan ahead for what we want to create by the end of May.

Photos of the paintings that Deryck wanted to incorporate - he said he had tried to get in contact with the artist which shows he's serious.

See Hear Part 2 - Pulling it all together (compositing & final film)

The task of compositing was a massive task for us to bring together all the different forms of media (stop-motion, Photoshop, Flash). Thankfully, Toby had begun tackling some of the more challenging shots whilst the animating was still taking place. I worked on compositing with him as well as to bring the final edit together.

Every shot of our model had to have the green-screen effectively keyed out. I had done a test of this before we had properly started animating so at least I knew it worked. We would then re-scale the model to fit the backgrounds when needed for some of the wider shots. 

Example Stop-Motion Footage

Green Screen Keyed-Out

Once keyed out, any key-frame animation was created (doors closing, guy floating in glass tank, etc.) We would then finish off the shot by tweaking the colour-grade and adding a drop-shadow so that our 3D model looked more integrated within its 2D setting.

Final Composited Shot

Each shot required this process. Some shots required more work such as ones with the robots and the model both in the same shot on top of a background where they would both have to be keyed out. Another challenging scene was when the character was floating in the glass tank. Those shots included adding a transparent green mask, stock footage bubbles, glass cracks, keyframing the guy floating, key-framing the background for the POV shots, and tweaks such as adding blur to create the illusion of depth of field.

See Hear Part 2 Final Film

I am happy with the final version of our film. I wasn't happy just after we finished it but that was because we were tight for time so some of the compositing felt that it was compromised hugely. It was also because I had been working on it for so long (as in through the night) so by that point I had lost interest in it and just  wanted it done. However, I find that the compositing of this version is good. Yes, there are parts that could do with more work, particularly the scenes involving both the model and the CGI robots but I think what we have is good enough to work and suggest them sharing the same space. 

I feel we've especially done well with the fact we only managed to begin the stop-motion side of things 5 days before the deadline as there were external factors causing problems: our animation stage not arriving until much later than expected. Were I to do anything again, I would have used less Super Sculpey for the model's head as it made him very top-heavy and thus difficult to keep him standing up. 

Our approach to the sound was thinking more in terms of subtle atmospheric qualities than synchronising image to sound obviously. I feel we managed to bring together a wide variety of media elements to construct a narrative where the sound design and the image worked effectively together.

See Hear Part 2 - Other guys' roles for the film

This post is a snapshot of what the other guys did in the group and my secondary involvement with there stuff. I'll provide links to their digital journals for more in-depth information on their role in the process of the film:

• Toby: http://tobysanimation.weebly.com/see-hear-project-part-2.html
• Zoe: http://zoehutbersworld.tumblr.com/
• Carwyn: http://ckwl.tumblr.com/

Background Design, Layout & Colour - Toby & Carwyn

Most of the film's design was created by Carwyn. The layout design developed from the storyboard process of planning the composition of the shots. Because the stop-motion character was going to be superimposed on to Photoshop backgrounds, we planned that some backgrounds could be repeated/zoomed-in so that less of them would need to be created. Some of the layouts we needed to create were a bizarre picture ratio to be able to simulate POV camera pans when zoomed in and panned.

Carwyn's Layout Drawings

Toby's Layout Drawings

Carwyn's Finished Backgrounds

Toby's Finished Backgrounds

CGI & VFX - Toby

Toby's robot created on Maya 2015

Toby was keen right from the beginning to do CGI for this project. Following tutorials, he created a robot on Maya 2015 that would be the antagonist of our film. We discussed the poses of the robots and the timing of their actions. I tried to keep up with understanding how he made it but I gave up pretty early on as it was going way over my head. All just CGI black magic to me...

Animation, Model Clothing & Prop - Zoe

Zoe was keen to play a part in making the model and animating it. With help from a Performance Costume friend of hers, she made the trousers and the shirt. She also made the shoes and prop by herself. Zoe did the majority of the animation since she was keen to get better at it, having not had a chance animating a model before (I did a couple of shots for the film) We planned the action for each shot together according to the length of the shot on the animatic.

One issue we found with the model was that I had applied too much Super-Sculpey to its head, making it difficult to keep our model standing. This meant we had to find ways of keeping him stood up. All the shots of waist above, we had him taped to the animation stage in a sitting position.

Me 'assisting' during animating by holding up our model with thread

See Hear Part 2 - Glass Crack

There is a scene in our film when our main character breaks out of a glass tank that he is being kept in (as you do). I chose to do it as the other members of my group were busy on other things. Our shot was going to be a POV from inside the tank as the glass cracks around him. We felt that this would reflect the sound design as the sound of the cracking pans around the listener's head when using headphones/a surround sound mix.

Inspiration/research for cracking scene from Ice Age

I imported Carwyn's layout drawing of the background as a guide for the position of the crack. With this in place, I planned out the crack's line of action. The final animation was created at 12.5fps.

Crack test created on Flash

Final frame taken from glass cracking sequence

I did use some free stock footage found on Youtube for a couple of shots that are close-ups of the cracking in different places on the tank. We resorted to using this video when we were more tight for time. In an ideal world, I would have drawn this on Flash as well.

Life Drawing 2: Week 5 - 26th March

This week it was looking at the figure and how it relates to a bed.

15-20min Pose - A2 - Charcoal

15-20min Pose - A2 - Charcoal & Chalk

15-20min Pose - A2 - Charcoal & Chalk

Alan our tutor asked us to try approaching the figure by drawing from where we would think the central point was (instead of drawing the head and then working our way down). I found this quite interesting as it got me thinking more about the whole figure and not just everything relative to the head.

15min Pose - A2 - Pencil

15-20min Pose - A2 - Charcoal

20min Pose - A2 - Charcoal & Chalk

What did seem a bit odd was his comments on my work, to scale up my drawings so that the figure is not in isolation. Not so much the task itself that was odd but more so about his communication. This was the last week of Life Drawing for the semester/1st year so whether it seemed that I wasn't filling the page as much that day, it seemed quite an odd time to bring it up. He also meant not to worry about having the full figure on the page as long as it is big. The Life Drawing classes I attended before coming to ECA drilled into us to make sure to have the whole figure, and their method was to start at the head and use it to get proportions correct (classic 7 heads). So it felt a little bit against the grain to have this told to me when it was so near the end of the year.

See Hear Part 2 - Model-making

Coping with latex....disgusting

I made the armature and the structural elements of our model while Zoe created the clothing for it. We talked to Neil (studio technician) for advice and general information on approaches to creating a stop-motion model.

Research imagery for our model's appearance Zoe and I gathered:

 I ended up finding this model (right) in a drawer in the department. I really liked the form being carved out from balsa wood as this would mean it would be light so large forms could be easily created. I decided to base my structural design on this style.

Model structure & design

Creating the model's skeleton

Wireframe armature created using aluminium wire; 

Form carved out of Balsa wood & inlays created for wireframe to be glued into;

Heat shrink applied to neck & brass tubing glued on to be able to slot head on/off.

Held in vice whilst glue set

Model feet made from Milliput w/ metal plate glued on to wire armature for magnetic tie-down

Creating the model's hands

Aluminium wire twisted to make fingers; stuck into Milliput which is stuck on to wire aramature; dipped in liquid latex & painted afterwards.

Dried latex hands before painting (left)
Test hand created with excess Milliput (right)

Quick animation test using a GIF stop-motion app for phone

Creating the model's head

Balsa wood head w/ embedded brass tubing for slotting on head to neck;

holes made for eyes; Supersculpey used for skin & facial details.