Film Study and Cinematography - Project 3
Film Studies and Cinematography
23.9.2024 - 5.11.2024
Johnny Lam Wee Zhe (0363436)
Bachelor of Design in Creative Media
INSTRUCTIONS
PROJECT 3 - ANIMATICS
The third stage of the film making process is to create animatics. Animatics
are essentially storyboards that are animated. This is the final stage before
reaching the beginning of a finishes product. Before I even start creating an
animatic, I would have to first draw the sketch up and a storyboard.
SKETCH UP
I must admit, I don't really draw that much of a sketch up here. I only did small bits of a sketch up before simply getting straight towards the storyboard. Here is what I have:
These beginning scenes are the only sketch up that I did to figure out how
this things could play out. Although I didn't do much of the sketch scene,
this particular sketch up does help me determined the start out point for the
storyboard and eventually animatic.
STORYBOARD
While drawing this storyboard, I try to make sure that the scene in the
storyboard can be animated. I even have the ideas on how to pull off the
falling into radioactive sewage scene. My personal philosophy for this
storyboard is that I don't stick to the storyboard in every way, I am more
likely to make change as I go. That way, it may give myself some space for
improvements on the go.
The hardest part about drawing the storyboard is that I have to decide what
scene to draw in between planned out scene. An example would be between the
scene Cake arrived at the beach and the arrives at the pier. I didn't do any
reference when it comes to the storyboard but I do try to keep in line of a
popular TV show, Tom and Jerry including the humor.
The storyboard may seem to showcase a lot of scenes throughout but I am
determined to include every scene in the animatics.
ANIMATICS
For this process of the project, I'm going to using both Adobe Animate and
Adobe After Effect to help animate the animatic. It would be a hybrid of both
hand-drawn animation and key frame animation.
The most difficult part of the animatics is animating the human characters as
I am yet to be that skilled to draw human movements with out references. What
I did is that I look up on video on humans running and not a lot of video
features a running motion in an certain angle which can prove to be rather
challenging. Eventually, I did found some reference to be made.
Fig 1.1 Ong Bak | Chased through Bangkok
Fig 1.2 Escaping Movements for Action Films
For these video, I trace down some of the scene. Specifically the very first
running scene in the start of the storyboard. After this though, I stop
using any sort of reference as I find the rest to be much easier to animate.
As I have mentioned previously, this animatic uses two types of animation; a
hand-drawn animation and a key frame animation. Which of these animation I
use would depend on the scenes. Instead of explaining how I animate every
storyboard frame, I think it's much more better to explain how I go about
animating these two types of animation with an example for each one of them.
Hand Drawn Animation
For this example, I will be using the very scene where Cake jumps out of the
sewage in the sewer. This is one of the scene that has been 100% hand-drawn.
I will be drawing animation on 2s for this animatic. Hand-drawn animations
are made purely on Adobe Animate. For a character pose, I begin by drawing
the starting pose of the character and the I draw the ending pose in
different frames. These pose would have already been featured in the
storyboard.
Fig 2.1 Starting Pose
Fig 2.2 Ending Pose
I then drag the ending pose frame forward and create a blank frame in
between these two frame. I turn on the onion skin and draw an in-between
action. It could be an overlaps, squash and stretch or anticipation or it is
simply and in between frames.
Fig 2.3 Frames with an Onion Skin turn on
In addition to the character animation, there will also be an environmental
animation. For this particular animation, it would be rather different. I
simply draw where the moving object should be in the first frame and then
create a new frame after it. With onion skin switch on, I simply draw the
next frame. For example: this bubble motive in the beginning of the same
scene.
I draw a bubble on the sewage bursting. I draw two pairs of bubbles in one
frame, two of them are large and another two are small.
Fig 2.4 Two pair of bubbles
I then create a new frame in from of said frame, and turn on the onion skins
so that I know where the bubbles are. I then draw the larger bubbles 'pop'
in this frame while the small bubbles grows in to a bigger bubble.
Fig 2.5 Empty frame with Onion Skin on
Fig 2.6 Large bubbles pop, small bubbles grow
Another thing I would like to mention is that for each of the element on a scene, I tried to put them into different layers. The environment would be a different layer from the character layer. This helps me to create frames that has different pace in animation and allows me to make adjustments to certain elements without affecting other element I don't want to touch. For example: a background overlaps with the character. If I want to make changes to the character only, it would be much easier to keep that in separate layers so that I can lock the background layer and edit the character only. I can even hide the background for a clearer view.
Fig 2.7 Layers
Key Frame Animation
For a Key Frame example, I will be using the scene where you see Cake's POV
swept toward the sewage before getting mutated. In a key frame animation, I
used both Adobe Illustrator and Adobe After Effects. The reason why I used
Adobe Illustrator is because it creates vector graphics and has better
chance of not having it become blurry after getting imported into After
Effects.
First I open up Adobe Illustrator and begin the process of illustrating the
assets I need. For this particulars scene, I know that I wanted a layer of
the water pipe that cake is carried in, and the background that features the
sewer (ensuring that I draw the environment bigger than required to reduce
the chance of seeing empty space during After Effects) and the waterfall
itself flowing down.
I draw each of this layer separately and that it doesn't represent the scene
in the storyboard nor the final result. I simply draw the items as I want it
to be shown on it own frame.
Fig 3.1 Illustrating assets
Once I am done with the illustration, I import the illustrator work file
into the Adobe After Effects and that is where the fun begin. For each of
the layers, I enable 3D layer for all of the layers and adjust the z
position to create some space in between the layers.
Fig 3.2 Enable 3D layer and Adjust Z Position
I then arrange each of the asset according to how the scene is going to be
like. I will also add a camera layer so that I could pan it 'down the pipe'
and into the sewer. The 3D space allows for an illusion of a distance effect
for the background.
Fig 3.3 Angled View to See What it looks like Behind The Scene
In some cases, I would also use the blurry effect much more easily
especially when the focused clear spot moves across the scene or even any
other effect I deemed fit.
If I were to do the final animation, each of these layers will likely be
animated rather than a still illustration. I still have yet to find out how
this can be achieved.
Changes Between Storyboard and Animatic
As mentioned previously, I did not follow the storyboard completely as there
are some small details I may have missed during the story boarding process.
- One such difference is the beginning where human chases one another. The
storyboard show two scenes of human chasing but in a different angle. I
simply add just one for an easier animating process.
- Another difference is small but during the scene where Cake encounters the
rats for the first time. The camera pans upwards showing the sky. In the
storyboard, there is bright sun shinning down and onto the back of the rats.
However, I have completely forgot that Boring Town is supposed to be a ever
cloudy location. So I replace it with lightning instead.
- Another change I made is when Cake rolls into Plain Pier and slam into one
of the pier's support beam. It's only a slight change but moment Cake slams
into the beam, the camera angle changes to the top viewing down in response
to Mr. Kamal's feedback.
- Another scene is when Cake is chased by rat beside a cliff and one of the
rats pushes a stone on top of her. In the storyboard, the stone turns out to
be small but hits her and makes her fall and she never once notice the stone
above her. In the animatic, she sees the stone and immediately dodges the
falling stone which is now big enough to be able to crush her. Another
difference is when after the stone had fell and Cake tripped, the camera
simply pans towards the rats coming to her but in the animatic, the fallen
rock causes dust to blow upwards and block out her view. To show the rats
approaching, I simply have their eyes become visible. I made this change so
that it is much easier animate.
- One final changes I have made is when Cake gets shot up into the sky. In
the storyboard, Cake is simply shown falling down and it reveals that she is
falling onto the Fun Island. In the animatic version, Cake is shown to be
shot up into the sky in a side angle and reveals a plane flying pass. The
Cake falls down but the scene did not show where she will be landing until
the end of the fall. I did this to keep some sort of suspense for a little
longer because audience may not have any idea where Cake could have landed
and may have fallen into the ocean.
AUDIO
The final stage of the animatic creation is to add sounds effect into the
animatic. Due to time crunch, I was unable to insert a full sound effect.
Rather, I insert music I have downloaded online to convey the feeling of the
scene with an exception to certain scenes where I use ambient noise and an
indirect sound effect.
Once I have compiled all the scenes and audio, I get to finished the final
project of this module.
FINAL RESULT
Fig 4. Final Result
FEEDBACK
- During the alley chase, have Cake run off to the side before heading
straight down the alley so that the scene will be more consistent.
- Ensure consistency and have the character run from the left to right in all
running scenes.
- When showing the rats approaching Cake in an angle, have them run from left
to right instead.
- Add a bit of gray shadow on characters to make them stand out.
- Have Cake turn her whole body to the island rather than bending the body
(Pier Scene)
- During the third camera switch of the pier scene (facing towards shore),
have Cake be further down the pier.
- Add more frames, the scene is too fast pace.
- add more sound effect.
REFLECTION
Maybe I am bit too ambitious but there is a part of me who is somewhat disappointed that I don't get to do the final animation of this particular animation for this semester but the other part of me knew that I would not be able to catch up if that were to be a case. The final animation could take a very long time, more than two weeks to even finish and that's not including audio. I have been told that I could reuse this for my Major Project where I can actually do the finished product. In the end, I decide I won't be using this as part of my Major Project. If I ever find myself the time (and motivation) to do the completed version of this animation, maybe I'll post it somewhere on this blog. For now, I'll leave it as it is. As difficult as this project is in comparison to the rest of the project, I find it rather enjoyable and I wouldn't mind going through the same process again. The biggest obstacle I have is in regards to time. Both hand-drawn animation and key frame animation takes quite awhile and part of me wish to know a technique to animate thing's faster without compromising the quality of animation.
All in all, I never knew what to expect of this module. I wouldn't have know this would be animation related by the title alone. I quite enjoy this module personally, it may have been my favorite module for this semester.
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